Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game question

So with the upcoming planet editor coming into play it got me thinking about how we would obviously want to be able to generate a planet and then play on it. So far we have been confined to one world to play. Soon we will be able to visit other worlds, moons, and possibly asteroids. So it makes sense to me then that we will at least be fighting across one solar system with more than one planet.

The question then becomes one of really needing a Solar system editor that then uses the planet editor in modular fashion. That way you can iteratively give detail to each planet and its position / distance from the sun. Then you could add more detail like how many moons each planet will have.

If we think Moons and asteroids as different kinds of planets (not necessarily biomes) then we could use the planet editor to create them and then places them in orbit around another planet or in a position orbiting the sun.

Side note some moons in may not be like our moon but actually have water and look more terran in nature, so it would be cool to have the ability to when creating a moon in orbit around a planet just to use the planet editor to create it obviously.

The final question then becomes if our scope max is to get a 40 player game with 1 million ish units fighting it out how big of a sandbox would be comfortable to be playing in?

Do we then need more than one solar system? Or will one solar system with 10+ planets with moons, asteroids, etc be sufficient?

I'm looking for dev input on their plans as well as other backers thoughts etc.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Well.....yeah.

I'm sure Uber's goal is for everything to be as seamless as possible, so I don't think they are aiming for separate Planet and System Generators, rather it'll be a context driven system where you can hop around as needed.

For example you could start off a new "map" with prcedurally generating a "map" with a simple input like the intended number of player(or desired length of game) to pop out a fairly 'random' "map" which you could then pop around and tweak as you see fit or just start fully from scratch.

As far as the 'galaxy' stuff is concern, the scope of the game seems to be such that a game will always take place withing A single system.

Before you ask the idea of the Galactic War is that it's a Meta Game which strings together a series of regular games into a larger war, a lot like Risk or that one typ eof Dawn of War Campaign(I can never remember which one that's from, I think the one that introduced the Tau).

Mike

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Map makers will fix that one pretty quick.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Hi there, these are great news indeed !
.. so damn great that I chose to finally post something on this forum instead of just silently read it for months now
even it is not implemented yet, this new feature lets me brainstorm about the possibilities of the generator !
back in the old days I loved to play with the mapeditor of total annihilation ...

my first questions are:

... will there possibly be a slider for:

1- .. the amount of reclaimable resources ? such as trees and rocks?
(seperat from metalspots)
2- .. the level of destruction of the planet
3- .. the amount of wreckage from wars long past (would be great if this would come along seperat to point 1.and 2. imo)
4- .. the colour of the water for eyecandy
5- .. the colour of the atmosphere .. ?
6- .. colour of the sun?? and along with that the overall lightning colour ??

Point 1. and 3. bring me back to the TA editor where i spent hours to evenly place and design maps covered with destructed bases and units..
.. those maps had very little up to no metalpoints at all and so you had to fight for the wreckagefields and you were forced to advance continuosly!
(great and devastating battles but you needed to get used to this kind of play)

Point 2, 4, 5, 6 eyecandy

I know those are extra gimmicks and don`t need to be in there right after the release but I`m very corious if they are possible to implement at all .. moddable ?
.. so what do you think?

cheers, moldez

ps: sry for my rusty english :?

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

It'll take more than just the map makers to fix everything such a change will require.

moldez, I think you meant to post that in Planet Editor Sticky thread maybe?

Mike

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

whoops .. you got me

klicked on the link of vorell255 and didn`t notice

thx
moldez

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

How so? From what uber is telling us, a good number of arbitrary orbits will be allowed. It's not difficult to create multiple systems with that.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Well aside from the issue of everything orbiting a single star, you could also run into issues with basic gameplay and not being able to up scale well to multiple system.

A bit of mis-wording on my part. It's true multiple system at their core is strictly do-able solely by Map Makers, but you can't deny there is a butterfly effect that trickles down that would require tweaking in other areas to make a "Multiple System" System functional from a gameplay perspective as opposed from purely a technical one.

Mike

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

A single "game" takes place in a single star system made up of one or more planets.

The galactic war takes place across multiple star systems but you still fight in a single system at a time, it's not a giant realtime battle space. It's very much like the original boneyards galactic war in concept.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

I guess since the [planet scope] perhaps is a good place to ask this..

If the largest planets are 3000meters, that's 3km, but I don't know how much surface area that would be compared to like.. an 81x81km map on Supreme Commander.

And by that I mean only the surface area of play alone. Will a 3k meter planet have as much (or almost as much) surface area as we have map area on an 81x81 map? Or will this be made up with the other planets? I'm just really curious at how much realistic play area we get on a globe when our minds don't wrap around a globe as much as we can a flat area. (as ironic as that statement is)

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

This is pretty basic math, even if you don't know it(like me) Google will supply everything you need to get the surface area of a Sphere.

Also I feel that using th e81KM as a benchmark isn't all that representative, Gameplay was in no way suited to such large areas, even 40kms maps were pretty much too big.

Also keep in mind there is the option of multiple planets, so even if one doesn't match up, you can just add moar planets.

Mike

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Thank you. That cleared up any question from this lurker.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

3km rad sphere == 113,097km^2 surface area, not counting terrain features and geometry warping.

81km*81km == 6561km^2

Edit: Oops... I forgot to account for the power of two. A 3km rad sphere would have only 113.097km^2 surface area, significantly less than an 81x81km map.

I knew there was something wrong with that math lol.

But don't fret, units in PA move slower than units in SupCom, and there is a consensus to reduce unit size by 25-50%.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Just putting it out there; a 3km radius sphere has a hundred and thirteen square-kilometre surface.

It does not have a hundred and thirteen thousand square-kilometre surface.

For reference, if you had a 113km^2 sphere, unwrapped it and mushed it into a flat square; its sides would be a touch over ten and a half kilometres.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Also the fact that, you know, you can only ever play on one 81km map at once, where as in PA you could play across multiple planets of varying sizes. This is on top of the fact that 81km maps aren't representative of SupCom's Gameplay, only it's technical capabilities.

Mike

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

There's really no point in comparing those numbers, as units size and unit speed in PA and Supcom is entirely different.

You're basically comparing made up numbers which have nothing in common with itself. You'd need to compare the time it takes for average armies to cover a whole map in PA compared to Supcom to get a feeling for a map/planet size.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

This is a good point. The Seton's Clutch maps in Sup1 and Sup2 were the same size when measured in blocks, but units and structures in the first were much smaller than in the second so the first map was proportionally larger.

If the scale between the two SupComs isn't consistent, it's completely impossible to compare PA to them.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

Not to mention that the core fundamentals between;

A] Spherical and Flat Rectangular Maps

B] Dealing with a Single Rectangular Map and Multiple Spherical Maps

are so different that trying to figure out direct comparisons it a futile pursuit.

Mike

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

I feel that a 3000 radius planet is comparable to a 20km map in FA.

I put out some numbers to clarify this, and here's what I got.

PA: Time for a Adv Fighter to circumnavigate the globe is 209.4 seconds. ([6000*Pi]/90m/s)

FA: Time for a Gemini to travel from one side of a 20km to the other side is 41.0 seconds. (20000/[25*19.5])

Okay, so not at all comparable. If anything, bigger!

This of course assumes that the speed shown for the PA fighter is in m/s and that the units of length in FA are equal to 19.5m.

Re: Galaxy / Solar System / Planet Scope of the game questio

PA units are much slower than FA units. You'll notice LABs run at speeds in excess of 150km/h.