What is the expected game scale. what I mean by this is, what is an expected planet size? class 2 or 3 seem far too small for a good solid ground battle even for just the units in the beta. There seems to be a huge drive to build a game that exactly fits the promo materials of the concept, instead of using the concept as a starting point and extending that into a game. is this a game about building units so that I can smash the planet, or is this a good solid RTS that happens to have a (possibly) game ending ability of planet smashing?. I was a huge fan of TA and liked the premise of SupCom. In supcom we saw the biggest RTS maps ever, with the idea of having large continent sized wars going on. In PA we seem to have gone to an even larger scale, but in a comical way. The planets are so tiny that the curvature is difficult for me to handle in working in my bases etc, the actual RTS maps feel like an after thought to making content that matches the artwork etc. Now I suspect that this is a lot to do with being a true beta and much being missing, so I hesitated quite a bit to bother coming in and posting this, but I feel that I just need to let my opinion be heard. I want HUGE planetary battles (like my multi day long fights in TA), then I want to be able to jump to a couple of other planets to have the same sort of battles going on. I don't want a game that requires me to have a ridiculously powerful computer to be able to have a feature like that either. I want impossible, now dammit give me impossible!! Thanks, and lots of love. This beta is great and I am enjoying doing things to break the game. Please put a way for us to see the latest beta patch notes ingame, (or make it more visible for me cause i didn't see it) and give us goals for things you want us to break! keep it up! (ps, an ingame bug submission tool would be fun, but I don't want time wasted in implimenting that)
I'm not sure about their plans for the battle sizes you're talking about are but I can give you some info on the other in game points. In the main menu in the top right hand corner is a button which takes you to the patch notes I believe, more patch details here as well: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pa-beta-launch-build-54382-54412.51584/ . Also there is an in game bug submission tool coming soon, it'll be key bound to ctrl-f10 and will let you submit bugs and issues you have but for the moment you'll need to use the online system found here: http://pa.lennardf1989.com/Tracker/ Hope this answers some of your questions
The answer is that it'll really depend on a lot of things. First and foremost it depends if you're talking about the desired scale for "Competitive"/Ranked play or the more casual play. Mike
Don't forget that the game is scalable too, you can adjust the size of the planets in the system editor with the Radias slider, and I'm sure they will be other sliders to add to make the planets to the scale you'll want, this whole game is all about the sandbox, to play exactly how we all want to play, they couldn't push that concept enough during the last live stream. The point is to fight across multiple planets as well, that's were the extra major scaling of the battles comes into play, its like putting 3 or 4 regular SupCom maps together into a single match but I'm sure you'll get the ability to play on one absolutely massive planet if you wanted to instead of multiple planets. I definitely think you'll be getting multi-day battles without a doubt, the only downfall is the fast paced gameplay, this game is extremely fast paced, much closer to the fast paced SupCom 2 over forged alliance, which was one of the critics for supcom2. This is one concern a friend of mine has, he thinks the fast paced aspect of the game is actually a little "Too" fast, things just die really really fast, its a mad dash for everything, a rush to who can get to a new planet the fastest will win ect... With the economy only being Metal and Energy, it may just simplify the gameplay just a little too much which is way the game is so fast paced right now. This is still beta, and VERY early at that, so things will change definitely throughout the beta for sure..... but I hope I have somewhat have answered the question
it would be easy to scale the speed of the game though (through mods or just in general) by adjusting speed of units and damage/vs health. I would say that the build speeds are pretty good right now though. a slower pace game would be more fun for me, my father and I used to play TA back in the day and I know for him a "slow down" mod would be much welcomed. yeah I realize it is about the sandbox, but a lot of how the game is built is based on an idea of what they're picturing for planet and map size. I hope the "competitive" scene takes a bit to hold on, becuase the're idea of gameplay isn't much fun to me.the tiers and the units i've seen in the beta so far (pretty hard to build things once the AI starts to just overwhelm me with air spam, anyone have a strat that works for that yet?) is pretty encouraging.
I build a massive circle spam of AA turrets all around my base with nothing but air units (fighters not bombers) and build outwards so you can get a couple extractors. This prevents the air spam of bombers and coz the AI is very inteligent, it'll scout out your weakest side, so thats why I do a full complete circle of turrets everywhere with Air units to assist. This allows me time to move on out to a new planet and build my real resources there lol.. I haven't found a very successfull way yet to survive long enough if I dont spam AA absolutely everywhere with air units as well... I love the intelligence of the AI in that respect... Slower paced game would be nice, I would welcome it, I would also welcome the ability to disable certain things like you could with SupCom, no air units, no nukes, no artillary if you wanted, so if you only wanted to play a certain way, you could absolutely do that... hope they bring that in... I think in the livestream friday they mentioned you will be able to select which planet you spawn on, so each player can have their planet to start if they wanted to? not sure on that though as I was trying to grab a key for a friend of mine at the time lol... I hope there will be mods out there that increase the HP of stuff so if we want those massive long battles, we can actually still have that if we want, I think a mod would be the best way for that, as I think everyone really enjoys the fast paced combat, so its just to cater to the few of us that like a little longer gameplay really. Also the current units in the game, there is going to be a LOT more units coming in the beta, these were sort of the standard place holders for the most part just to make the game a playable state if I remember right, so dont worry about the units, lot more varity is coming. Heres an example of my AA spam turtle play lol http://www.twitch.tv/vackillers2013/b/465890512
I'm very much hoping that these factions will eventually have more unique looking units as time progresses, maybe not to the point of (but close to) supcom where the units look different but more or less do the same thing save the late game stuff. But not something like EAW/FOC and SCII where the units all look different and each faction has a different strategy for everything (makes things slightly easier to predict imo) And if I've read right if they do add in gas giants I'm hoping for 2 things 1. Gas as a new material for late-late game stuff 2. orbital/floating facilities (vaguely reminds me of Bespin haha) And I'm also hopping on to the long drawn out games over a solar system(s) bus, It's what made me love supcom since a standard fight against even medium AI took at least 2 hours (FYI I played the console version which crashed after every save or match on the regular 360 console, my new one doesn't have that issue and I played supcom so much my assassins creed 3 game is still factory sealed) then again I would also appreciate the whole I can hop on and play a quick half hour game type of deal, but I'd still love a long fight more sorry if I rambled a bit
Yeah I think the best bet would be mods for the slow gameplay, that way like you said it doesn't affect the main game speed if you just want to have a quick game or something or the ranked competitive games either. It already takes me couple hours to spawn onto a new planet as it is anyway haha!! as far as orbital defenses go though I think something should be in play so a commander just cant simply fly off into space and never get hit, right now its a complete safe zone for them....there has to be "some" danger when going across to different planets...
Art is one of the biggest single costs when talking about factions, regardless of whether they're SupCom or Starfraft Style Factions so it's not liable to happen any time soon. Gas Giants don't present a new resource, they will simply provide an abundance of Energy based on Neutrino's comments thus far. You'll have large amount of control over the systems you can play on, which will have a fair amount of influence over the game length. Mike
