The reason why PA bores me (feedback)

not everyone watches/wants to watch twitch ...

Well...mountains, seas and chokepoints maybe?

The mountains we currently have are simple rocks - most of them have no impact on the battlefield. You cant send units on top of them, all you can do is sending units around them. You cant even hide behind them properly. There is no hillside to build your base next to, so that the enemy has to come from another side or where you can shoot down from above.
The planets are simply flat with a few placed things on it, there are no height differences that you could use for some tactics (like i said, artillery on a hill)

Seas? unless its a flooded planet, the seas are totaly neglectable. Same issue that the rocks have...avoid them since they have no other use.

Chokepoints? seriously...i have never seen one besides the glitchy mess on metal planets in GC where units get stuck.

i agree that it doesnt need to be a supcom clone, but to be honest...the mapdesign there was simply better. remember setons clutch?
chockepoint? check. hills? check. water? check...
that map alone had more depth than PA has with the whole planetary system...
not to mention what the whole intel-play did to some battles...seriously, i tricked my friends a lot with jammers, used the different direct sight tools to figure out what they are up to, ambushed them with cloaked units and hid whole bases with stealth to prepare my invasion.

not that i dislike PA, its still a nice game...the current planets are just way to repetetive.
its like playing on marbles, they may look fancy, but on the surface they are all the same...flat.

supcom had its own issues...like OP seraphim or overall unbalanced factions...
lucky for us, PA wont have this issue, here it is just balancing between units, not between factions.

Have you tried out any of the custom maps?! There is for example a rather good setons remake with 2 large islands connected by a land bridge and a sizeable sea between them + large areas of mountains creating a safe spot. It's available in the community map pack on PAMM.

These concerns *were valid* before the custom CSG edit changes were made, but now I don't think it's fair criticism. The *only* limitation still remaining to the current tools is we can't manually adjust the terrian height to get more extreme height variation in the underlying terrian. That said, you can make CSG pathable, so you can make tall messas you can built on, ramps up and down them and you can even create bridges and tunnels that allow units both over and under them. Add to that the fact we can create whole solar systems, with multiple planets, all with different terrain... it's actually a pretty capable system now imo.

i have seen it, yes, but as i said a few post back...i cant play with most mods or maps...
as soon as the mod needs an upload, it takes ages for me to load...IF it loads.

Its nice that its possible to create those things manually, but that still doesnt change the fact that all the vanilla maps are basically flat.
if the engine allready supports them, its only a matter of time until the devs implement it into the random generator...hopefully.

Still, it doesnt change a thing. Its still a reason why PA bores me. It would also bore me if i would have to play the same map over and over again, thats why i liked the random generation, its just sad that its not used with its full potential.

as i said, dont get me wrong, PA has a lot of potential alone through modding, it just needs to use it, refine it. Maybe it will take a while - thats fine. I still see PA as open beta and not as a released version, it doesnt cost monthly, so whatever, i can wait. As long as the devs still work on it, its fine

also im still curious what will happen in the Galactic War overhaul...honestly i like this mode,
not to mention the announced asteroids and what else they are working on.

Im waiting for a simcity mod personally.

Synchronous CityTM!

I'm not sure if integrating more complex map will change anything about the size that needs to be uploaded in the lobby. so even if they put those maps in vanilla you might need to upgrade your internet connection.

If you're "it's fine" response points to installing a mod, then it's not fine.

Introduce some more interesting maps in the standard game for CRYING OUT LOUD. This is the biggest area where development seems to have totally stopped before it ever really got started.

Well there is this thing called the 'system editor' thats, you know, integrated into the vanilla game that everyone has....

Now if it's too much trouble to make a decent map yourself, and your not prepared to download one someone else did for you, I'm not sure I can help.

I think he might be talking about biomes and terrain in general. And he would be right to do so.

Does anyone know how hard it would be (from a development standpoint) to give units standing on elevations a range advantage? Say one equal to their height off the ground times some factor for simplicity's sake? I ask because that sounds like a really cool idea. I'm for anything that make strategic positioning more important.

I imagine the hardest part of this would be taking into account the relative height of the target and the unit firing. If the range just increased as height increased we'd wind up with units on hills able to hit each other from extended ranges and that's not what we really want.

you do remember that before that they worked heavily on the editor to allow for more variet maps in the first place right?
and yes it was put on hold as the singleplayer of this game is heavily lacking at the moment .. and that is not just missing saving ..

biomes at this point would be just visual variety ... nothing gameplay impacting we don´t realy have already ...
both people who used the editor and modders who made their own maps
showed many times what crazy maps you can actualy make already ...
so to me it is rather improving the editor further to allow for ballanced planetgeneration maybe add some more csg variation ...
if you want more intresting maps you better make your own or take maps made from others ...

Well as visual entity's, they could use some more umpf!

I wanna see THEIR OWN vision of lava worlds come to life, let alone our visions of the planet biomes!

oh there is a lot of stuff that could use more umpf visualy ... ... but you know how it is with priorities .....


also:
regarding simcitymod .... while not realy simcity ... buuuut kinda sim

I bought Spore on day one.

It'll take far more then a trailer.

nobody said you should buy a game based on a trailer ...

The trailer did!

I backed universim during its kickstarter. The devs have been doing some nice updates recently, with alpha slated for this summer... Looking good so far ps the people in universim are known as 'nuggets' lol. They're also having the whole family thing a la black and white.... looks like it will be quite a detailed game when it's done.

well...i would not have to explain to a friend how to create such a map then, so that he can host a game, right?
we could just generate a random map and play it, without spending hours creating a good map first.

SupComs pathfinding was...well...lets call it garbage.
properly adjusted pathfinding for projectiles and units are a necessary thing for a complex terrain to function.
What brings a good pathfinding if there is nearly no path to find? if a planet is just a marble where units can freely roam? same goes the other way around, what brings a nice designed terrain when the pathfinding cant handle it?
SupCom had a nice terrain but terrible pathfinding, whie PA has nice pathfinding but terrible terrain

finally something about SupCom on this forum that I can get behind!

remember to good old cluttering at the beach? thousands of units who want to cross the ocean? the bumper game when you want to move one unit through a bunch of others? yeah...^^