My two cents on PA: Meh...

The kickstarter was a concept. It was not in-game footage nor a binding list of features. The unit cannon they are still working on, as I imagine they are with asteroids. At least neither has been confirmed as to have been fully cut from the final 'long off in the future' version they are working towards.

@squishypon3 sure, if you strip out the variety, you get zero variety -_-. I know you're trying to say that the one faction is enough for PA, but fact of the matter is, FA is currently much more interesting than PA *because* of the different factions *and* the extra 10 or so units.

PA ROX FA ANYDAYS

Factions actually hamper unit variety, if all factions were just one there would be one huge amazing faction. The reason it's unfair to point out unit variety between separate factions is because those factions have separate niches, of course they'd be different. If you compare one faction to the PA faction then Supcom has ten more units, but it also has t3. So that means if ten extra units, across naval, land, and air. You'd get only 3.5 more units I believe. Which could be explained by Supcom's added tech level.

:/ I'm sorry but I'm perfectly apt and willing to think that.

so what they look alike, are the same size and relative same cost and health and purpose? their differences stuck out like sore thumbs.

I mean common..... there only was ONE race (and a single unit) who had a walking boat. ONE race (and a single unit) who had map spot scan. ONE race (and a single unit: the commander) who had EMP. ONE race (and two units but one of the two was the commander) who had microwave laser ONE race (and a single unit) that was in the orbital layer (I mean fuc k there was a whole layer just for one unit). I could go on like this for awhile.

when it comes down to it. only cruisers and tanks (basic units that you HAVE TO HAVE) your base building block units that were relatively similar. (the building block units PA is currently made up of)

And when they where they still had variations in HP damage and such, with an obvious ranking per unit for each race.

so yeah.

there are reasons that would explain the heresy behind many of us believing SupCom units had ALOT of variety, moreso than PA.

Well I must say I am a tiny bit also disappointed. Shields did nothing? No! They defended your trenched positions! Also I find on the default maps that there is way too much metal. Why was the graphics designed this way? Why couldnt it be like SupCom graph? That looks much much better. (would have been a lot more expensive?)

Indeed, the current factory types could be made a little more special even with similar unit types like the land/sea/air scouts, and the static and orbital radars.

Actually units in this game have a very similar polygon count, the difference is texture res/details. Why didn't they make them better?

1. So the server doesn't have to render all those dang textures. Those pixels really add up. I
2. Because it's just the aesthetic.

If argue PA has... Better graphics honestly, the shadows are pretty amazing. Though I haven't play Supcom in quite a while so I can't exactly remember how it looks, so take that with a grain of salt, please.

Also shields aren't useless, in fact.. that's why we don't want them, shields often times can really encourage turtling, and truly were only in supcom as a soft counter to map crossing artillery. Shields don't have to help turtling, but they're hard to balance, and let's just say.. Uber's has some issues following what they've said to be their ideals behind balance in the past, such as the whole peregrine fiasco (t2 fighter, was literally removed because they couldn't get... The "right" balance, no matter how subjective that is, haha.)

@squishypon3
PA not having textures like Supcom is NOT about graphics performance. It was purely an effort to cut down on the amount of work it would cost per unit (and customer commanders). So they chose a particular aesthetic which would support a smaller workload.

Just wanted to make that clear

As far as unit diversity, having 3 different factions in Supcom allows us to play the t1 game in 3 slightly different ways. You cannot do that with PA. The only way you could argue differently is if FA:F matches ONLY consisted of UEF vs UEF because the other factions just aren't viable -but that's evidently untrue. And factions are important in that they allow you to modify the playstyle - if you were to lump all the factions into one in Supcom, it would completely and utterly ruin the game's diversity, because you'd pick the best t1 tank, t1 bot, t1 artillery, etc.

But really, it's fine. We can accept the more limited unit roster and texture design because there are pretty solid reasons why PA is the way it is.

Mind sourcing that? The bit about the texture quality of units not being in an effort to cut down resource usage, and instead to be lazy?

I mean, christ, even tree's kill the game's fps on the client side even, and trees are barely any polys at all, if everything was super HD textures, the game's perf would be dead for the average computer.

We had them but they were removed during the balancing phase (they're just not needed).

Actually it was due to some errors getting subs to go underwater, or resurface.

Silly tunnelling submarines.

True submarines aren't needed right now, because naval barely works at all. Why build a unit to counter units that no one builds?

Graphic and polys count per units, or even not optimized textures have nothing to do with servers' performance.

What the server needs is exclusively the coordinates of units and objects at a specific time in game. I'm 110% (multiplied 1.000) sure that no graphical assets pass through the servers, but purely exquisite vectors. Otherwise you wouldn't even need to install the game, and you could play it directly from the server.

The trees killed the frame rate 'cos they weren't optimized yet. That's really a minimal issue coding wise, and anyway it affects exclusively the client.

Since the data is passed asynchronously, clients should not affect servers' performance at any given time. Actually I start wondering if PA core is made in nodejs. That's basically what I'm personally working on as well.

So, no, the graphic in PA, as in any video game, it's due to a precise design choice. And personally I like the way it is. Pretty much.

On the other hand I didn't like the SC's graphic. But I do agree that PA is behind regarding units variety. Not necessarily a bad thing, chess has much less variety, for example.

Hi Webkilla,

I would have to agree somewhat to this comment. I too was hoping that given the scope of the game, there would be more room for extended gameplay. I would have liked to have the option to play a sneaky stealth game on one planet whilst tank rushing on another. I find I can fortify one planet and wipe everyone else out from there. If I try and conquer a planet already heavily occupied, I get a more imvolved game. However, I can't spend the time playing that out as I will be being rushed elsewhere anyway.

If I'm not rushing them, they are rushing me. I would like to see more strategy options that are viable in any game, like this:

I play a sneaky stealth game but can set up enough fortifications (if I have invested enough metal), to ward off rushes.

I play a rush game but the other player can ward that off if hes smart and play a air supremacy game at me.

I go for naval only and am able to hold my own against an orbital only player.

You see what I'm getting at. Each avenue: Air, Navel, Orbital, Ground, artillery, should be able to stand on its own. So that the player can enter play systems with say a water planet and ba able to roll with that. If we are going to have all these types of planet and all these types of unit, it would be a shame if we counldn't play all these types of game. This is what I was hoping for with PA. I was tatally happy with the simplified graphics in exchange for gameplay. Yes the game is very good but there is the opportunity for utter greatness in the gameplay.

I have to agree with you about there being enough possible variation in the game for us all to play the way we like. And be able to option in or out, the things we want. I guess if the units all worked and were balanced nicely the gameplay would take care of itself. I am just glad that its a work in progress still. I hope this format will prosper and other Devs take note. Uber must be getting a wealth of player feedback and are able to do something about it. I reckon that we will see more RTS games built like this in the future. I mean, why not ask the player base before hand what they want? its a sure fire way of creating a product with definite demand.

end of line.

I was actually talking about client perf by that point.

@squishypon3
It's not laziness, just like the decision to make 1 faction isn't lazy. It is, however, less work to do, and therefore cheaper. I can't find a post explaining it, must have been one of the dev blogs / videos.

As for texture perf, the only thing that affects performance is how *big* the texture maps are. I don't believe PA unit textures are any smaller than Supcom textures.

That makes no sense since you can setup how the game render graphic and sound on your specific machine. Plus I like the expression "Lot of efforts have been made to make this effortless.".

Simple design isn't equal to lees work. So do not worry, I do believe that programmers and designers at Uber didn't spare themselves. At least, if I would be their boss, impacting them on my final bill as much as 10k/month per head, I would surely expect them to do their job just fine

"...shields often times can really encourage turtling..."

oh-noz!


...but wait, shields often times can really discourage rushing.

Oh yes, I said it.


-Morloc