Unit Counters
There doesn't see to be a thread discussing unit counters yet. It seems to me like all of the squads and units have a range of play but I'm not sure how they would work in combat against each other, I'm sure that's what we will figure out come pvp.
In most other RTSs there is this idea of a hard counter where you can still beat the enemy army if you do things such as micro efficiently, have positional advantage, have a bigger army, use your abilities or get upgrades. In an equal battle however one unit type will always counter another, resource wise. Is there anything like this in Atlas or are there any plans for it to exist? Currently the two damage types, physical and magic, don't see to have any relevance to this aside from there being two armour types that you can upgrade to counteract it.
I feel like having hard counters, even slightly, and obviously not to the point of making the other variables that determine combat success that I mentioned earlier irrelevant will be a very useful addition to the game in terms of broadening the strategy without adding too much complexity. It seems that although the game is captivating people seem to find it gets boring mid-late game or so that is my experience with the other playtesters I have played with.
Comments
Because of small unit counts (ie. 3 unique units + Hero per squad) having one squad with units that "hard counter" another squad's units could be risky. In the bottom 1v1 section of the map this could make it impossible to collect gems.
It's an interesting thought but I feel would have to be handled with care.
We have plans to introduce slightly more "rock / paper / scissorsy" type interaction but, as Cerebral suggests, we have a careful plan to do so :D. We don't want to have something as extreme as a rock-rock-rock squad vs a paper-paper-paper squad, but it's definitely a huge fun to feel like "i made a better choice before the battle, so I'm 90% going to win this one!"
Though it's a bit obfuscated right now, some squads DO completely stink vs other squads, and some units do completely stink vs other units. So, in addition to amping up the RPSness of certain behaviors, we also want to improve the clarity of the fights (and have plans for that too!)