Laser or bullets?

Hi,

It may seem a bit silly to speak about graphic rendering during an alpha version but i m a bit disappointed by the lasers. The laser turrets seems to shoot bullets. I miss the laser visual effect of TA or Spring (which were the best).

From a general point view every units seems to shoot yellow bullets. The combats lack of clarity.

A clear visual design with some old codes (red = weak, green = medium, blue = strong) could help the players to quickly evaluate the fire power of the enemy.

Very true - I loved how you could instantly tell apart the weaponry the enemy uses by their projectiles/lasers in TA.

I think the devs stated that they wanted to do more lasers in the future and that the current projectiles are partly placeholders .

More then sorta placeholders, I believe they are nearly completely placeholders.

Almost all units use rockets. These are placeholders.

Yeah, everything is placeholders, most notably the current projectiles.

With the way the unit files handle weapons and ammo, I'm rather hoping for consistent red/green/blue laser damage a lá TA.

I agree. I think just about everything in an alpha is a placeholder to some extent or other.

Or I hope that is the case.

Alpha is Alpha

I dig out one of my old topic.

So we are in the beta now. There is a chance to see real laser sometime ?

Beta is beta.


scnr

I can't wait for the:
Release is release !

Color coding bullets can't be THAT difficult. In many cases, it's just a few color sliders.

Getting the different shapes and sparkly effects takes a while, though.

Sure hope for some of everything, Laser is gonna look amazing at night if they really make nights darker.

Seeing the flashes of laser flying across the battle field OH YEAH:

Considering the pile of stuff yet to be implemented, wouldn't you say that making metal planets into superweapons and having planet smashing do more than just make a crater is more of a priority than projectile colors.

*not so precise bullets & ballistic shells like on TA for massive bombing with area of effect.

*lasers firing a continuous sweeping beam for taking off large groups of units, or a very short and powerful shot for precise and focused attack.
(and not a "laser bullet" that takes time to reach it's destination -unless it's a distant planet-)
lasers can be blocked by wreckage (but make them melt and pass through if the beam is powerful enough)

*missiles for precise ballistic attack with area of effect, fly over obstacle but can be intercepted.

I think using the visual spectrum to correlate to the relative strength of the laser is a cool idea.

having a good mix of lasers, bombs, bullets etc etc would be good.

Plus the sounds in TA from lasers were amazing! we need those sounds!

Remeber the Annihilator? that sounds

Yep, they did this in TA.
My memory was hazy, but it worked like this
Weak = red lasers (light laser turrets, think PD in SupCom)
Medium = green (most units)
Beastly = blue (krogoth and doomday, somewhere between the power of T3 PD and a Monkey's laser in SupCom)

This has precedent in Total Annihilation, I have no doubt it will be implemented.

... I can't believe I never twigged that the damage scaled with light frequency. I knew it was colour coded but it never occurred to me that it wasn't totally arbitrary.

Laser bolts (star wars) are cooler than laser beams (monkeylord) for everyday use (ie bots) anyway, loads of beams gets incredibly messy visually. Save it for rare stuff like the laser satellite.

Beams don't have to be too messy, and I think I kinda like the instantaneous nature of the lasers and the "hard sci-fi" feel to it more than "bolts". If the beams don't last very long, I wouldn't predict them being any more cluttering on the screen than bolts. I rather like how the energy weapons look in MWO for instance:

The issue I have with mass use of beams is it harder to read than bolts. It is more difficult to see which end is coming from a unit and which end is damaging another unit. If it's kept to only a few units then it's obvious, but with 60 laser bots engaging 60 other laser bots it's unpleasant to look at.

I don't think PA is going for a hard scifi aesthetic, it's much more soft, so bolts are more appropriate. I do like hard scifi a lot, I just don't think it's right here.

I'm not usually so focused on graphics but I don't have much to contribute on RTS design compared to most other posters. I'm looking forward to seeing how the weapon effects progress. I already love the explosions. Looking forward to seeing PP and burning forests implemented.