In how many years will the true potential of PA be unlocked?

This is where good map design comes in. For example in SupCom:FA on the map 'Shards' or 'Setonds Clutch' there are specific areas that depend on a T1 battle (where distances between players are small), areas for T2 battle (with medium distances) and when entering T3 the game will head against endgame. But the earlier T1 and T2 phases definitely determine the outcome of the game as a whole.

But at the moment this example cannot relate to PA since the current 'map' concept is a whole new episode in RTS gaming.

The problems with large maps are actually 2-fold, in addition to what I've already mentioned you also have to deal with the idea that the map gets "bigger" as players are pulled out of the game, sure a 41km map is workable with 8 players, but what happens after 6 players have been removed? Then it can start feel really empty and you're kinda back at square one almost.

PA, in addition to providing large overall playing areas in smaller, more manageable chunks also has another trick up it's sleeve, the aptly named Planetary Annihilation. IT means that the number of planets you start out with won't be the number of planets you end up with in the late game, so a 20 planet, 40 player game has enough surface area for those players to play comfortable and once you start removing a decent number of players from the game you've also removed some of that surface area as well, meaning that the fewer players still have more area than they started with in all likely hood but don't have to contend with the entire map either.

PA still has a bit of progress to make before it can fully make use of this full but that's okay, we can't really make use of truly larger systems yet either.

Mike

i think big maps are a matter of providing the propper logistics and flexible units such as hovercraft and orbital capable aircraft ... because let´s be honest with systems being this large it´s already the case ... so masstransportation for orbital air and hovercraft as well as teleporters will be a even more common thing i assume ...
so realy it´s a matter of a well made unitpool that covers those travel distances than fireranges imo ....

Tbh Fa still slows to crawl on the highest maps esp if you raise the unit cap due to its poor multithreaded performance...

Pa scales much better, but as others have pointed out it's currently bottlenecked by the server, so things will probably improve when we can dedicate multicore mashines to one game.

You have raised a good point with keeping Pa going once sales slow down, I'm personally hoping for expantion packs to keep the game going farward.

I love getting exp packs for rts games. Personally I'm hoping for a fully fledged map editor and super units (allthough maybe not the game enders from Fa).

Good post man

Not going to lie, once we have off-line and server hosting, this game is going to take off like a motherucking rocket.

Like, you have no idea the game sizes people are planning, the game modes we will try and the nasa computers we will burn through.

SOMEONE GET INTO THAT NEW SUPERCOMPUTER AND INSTALL PA ON IT ..... NOW!!!!

That's not my experience, I can got for well over an hour VS multiple AIs and still be above zero in regards to sim speed.

Not to mention that the game can handle a ridiculous number of triangles on screen at any given time;


Mike

you don't understand it's not about the gameplay, it's about the schwartz.

Earth map? Zero point map?

How many fps has that?

Zero point map?

Also, a earth map isn't interesting, it's just earth, that's like the most unoriginal map design ever.

that is personal preference ... thing with earthmap in supcom it´s simply no symetrical like most Supcom maps are .. and there is something familiar to it
on PA ... yea wouldn´t be such a big thing i suppose .. but would be still neat to say the least ...

I agree, FA must have been optimized much better than SC1 as SC1 still slows down for me, but FA does quite well.

I'll not lie, things slowed down once I sent the entire mass of 1000 Basilisks to chain react but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting and it got right back in-line once all the exploding was done.

Mike

I think the potential for PA is already massive, even with no more development from Uber. I've a pretty decent iMac at the moment (3.5ghz quad-core i7, 16gb RAM, 4gb GeForce GTX 780M), and the kind of games I like to play can bring that to it's knees - I keep thinking I should've gone for 32gb RAM or more. I'd like a lot more processing power too. Just from that perspective I really want several years of hardware advancements, or some SERIOUS optimisation from Uber (assuming that's even possible)!

As a quick interjection, my favourite games at the moment are 4-way FFA or 3v3 in a system with a gas giant, a metal planet, 2 main planets of size 600+ and multiple moons. Playing like that, the game's starting to struggle around 45mins.

As the game stands at the moment, I prefer larger worlds because the geography's a lot more interesting. This is a lava planet with the same settings; I've just changed the radius from 1100 to 800 to 500 ...




... I much prefer the larger planet with more bottlenecks, more lava in the way, etc. I'd love to play a 12-way FFA on my favourite system after I've increased the size of the main planets to 1100 and maybe added a few more small moons, but I'm pretty sure my computer couldn't handle it.


If you then consider other features that we're all hoping will be added at some point, the hardware becomes an even larger limitation, unless Uber can somehow optimise the game much, much more than they already have. Features like:
- cliffs, ridges, glaciers, mesas
- improved mountains and mountain ranges
- better lava
- underwater layer
- Asteroid fields / belts
.. would increase the effect on system performance, especially when coupled with associated requirements like improved pathing, reintroducing wreckage, etc.

I can't think of another game with more potential to scale with hardware advancements, even without Uber adding more features. Hats off to the developers, to achieve so much already ... I really think PA is ahead of it's time!

Most realistic big-scale map ever made.

Ok, I take it back, that looks bloody awesome.

Ya I agree Fa was better, still relies very much on single thread performance in vanila tho, just check task manager when your playing against 7 ai's on 81xmaps.....

Still Its at the top of my fave games, alongside Pa and dow 2

I really am going to have to mod FA one day.

All I want is more T2 ships, like really, so many mods, all focusing on either T3 stuff, or not boats.

Grinds my gears.

Hey! What did I d- oh never mind...

The best mod would very obviously be one that adds giant sandworms.

Try to move units on that map. Going with ships from one side to another would take 10-20 minutes.