Unit chatter: See unit chat in Total Annihilation. Examples would be thinks like; Air Factory: Construction of <x> completed Ant: Under Attack Advanced Orbital Construction Unit: I cant get there! In Total Annihilation you could press F3 to move camera to last reported unit, something like this would be nice but maybe clicking the unit chat to go to that unit. Obviously with this game using more than one battlefield it might also be helpful to include basic location data such as; Ant: Under Attack on planet Arrakis! D-Gun: To those unfamiliar with Total Annihilation the commander truly was a great combat unit and the player felt linked to it in strong way because of how powerful he was with the D-Gun, a manually aimed weapon that cost large amounts of energy to fire but could destroy any unit or groups of units. In Supreme Commander there was an 'overcharge' mode which simply buffed the commanders damage and rate of fire making him a bit faster at killing things but you didn't really get the same feeling as manually aiming a devastating alternate weapon. Please bring back this mode of combat for commander units. From what I have read on the forums and on the website there will be a few commander special abilities tossed around between the various commanders in interesting combinations, I would like to see these be manually triggered abilities keeping you more involved in the commanders experience, your experience Strategic icons: Strategic Icons are great, however when your zoomed out to view the planet from space to select or move orbital units it can be tricky finding the right area to click with selecting some higher priority target such as a military unit over an orbital solar array. I think it would be a good idea to have keyboard shortcut such as holding down shift to switch between orbital overlay and surface overlay, effecting which units are highlighted and become priority targets for selection. This might help clear up the game screen too when many unit paths are being displayed at once at late or large games. Moving between planets: At the moment moving your commander (or any unit) between planets is tricky, it involves building an orbital lander, selecting commander zooming in and out allot on planets whose locations are never where you expect them when they're moving slowly around the sun. If we could have orbital landers built from ground factory's instead of the orbital launcher it might make more sense than it being launched into space only to descend again and pick up a unit then ascend back into orbit then another planet. Advanced Air Factory could maybe be used to build the orbital lander, or some other non launching method of exiting the Orbital Launcher could work. Distinctions Between Planets: I'd like to see more differences between the planets other than all being more or less the same just in different pretty colours. Things like lower gravity on moons giving artillery longer ranges and, if shields were included, greater effectiveness of shields as shells would impact with less force. Corrosive atmosphere on gas giants or other more volcanic planets that would slowly damage units over time unless repaired often. Different kinds of water, think planets with acid pools, lava & toxic waste. Weather effects like thunderstorms, sandstorms or meteor showers. More ways to destroy planets: Planets with health, nothing visible to the player, but a set amount of damage that a planet can take from say asteroid or meteor impacts, nuclear warhead explosions on the surface or commanders going critical and exploding. after the planets health reaches zero it would explode or fall apart depending on its state. Imagine the planet has had several battles on already and many of those resulted in smaller planets being smashed into it, leaving an apple core effect until finally it crumbles and becomes nothing more than debris. Another thing I was thinking more ways to use the sun, the ultimate end game firing weapons at the sun to make it go super nova destroying everything in the system?
Unit chatter was pretty much the only thing I really disliked in TA. I mean - it never made any sense what so ever. D-gun: +1 Strategic icons - can't you display them at will already? Moving between planets - it's suppose to be expensive and complex operation. But eventually unit guns and teleporters will make it quicker and easier. Distinctions Between Planets - I see no reason to complain (keep in mind gas giants are not there yet, and metal planets don't have their full functionality implemented) More ways to destroy planets - Even if nukes would engulf entire planet - it still wouldn't explode. At most- surface rock would melt a little So it doesn't make any sense to destroy a planet this way or track planet "health" and than magically "BOOM!" when it drops down to zero. But I wouldn't mind anything against destroying planets in a new way ( I guess/hope that the Metal Planets (aka. Huge space station) will come in play here!) As for Sun going supernova - I would say that resources from all of the planets around single star are not enough to make any star go nova. So it also doesn't make any sense. Not to mention that besides being spectacular - it's not really anything improving gameplay in any way. Kinda "everyone loose" scenario - I have no idea why anyone would go for that.
The whole planet smashing thing is unrealistic. But yea, to quote the kick starter video "Not shooting for realism, we're shooting for awesome"
no thanks on repetitive unit chatter. They are machines anyways. Some signature bleeps per unit are all I need, the brain is very good at learning which is which. Isn't the Uber Cannon the D-Gun? Have you tried this? I think you get close in range and hold ctrl and rapidly click. A massive blue energy ball will obliterate a decent area of splash damage. I cant remember how to use it, i just use it without thinking when the time comes. I think the strategic icons could be scaled down. Alternatively, I hope UI elements can have a scale slider to adjust to taste. I think that the lander needs to be tweaked in a way that a unit such as the commander is launched with the lander instead of it going up to space and coming back down at will. The lander would be able to land and lift from moons or perhaps a certain planet size. A commander would have to re-acheive a launcher to be able to lift off from regular planets. This prevents the mad hopping around that some folks do. As for the planet smashing, I hope this becomes more size dependent. So smaller asteroids dont kill all the units on a planet, and knock a chunk out, while larger ones do rediculous damage to a planet. The concept of it being "destroyed" makes no sense as its a ball of matter that would clump itself back together anyways. Since the robots are not reliant on an atmosphere, I think we should be able to ravage the hell out of these planets and keep them useable to a degree.
I'm talking of the top of my head and I'm a little tipsy at this point so not all of hte data I gave could be 100% accurate.
Add your voice to the UI Discussion in my sig. The other UI people will want to hear what you have to say
Unit chatter being optional would be lovely. Having notifications that mention which planet it's happening on would be much more useful than simple noise-based notifications. At the bare minimum, if you're not looking at a planet, something that says "Combat on Planet X" so you know it's off-world would be good. Strategic icons/orbital/planets; It's all being worked on. More ways to destroy planets: I'd think dumping nukes into chasms could cause them to spread/crack further, causing planet-wide earthquakes until the world can't take it anymore and fragments apart... or, barring that, they could leave craters where they hit, rendering the planet uninhabitable after too many nukes.
I do miss the D-gun. It basically made the commander close to invulnerable from tier 1 unit rushes as he could wipe out massive numbers of them before they could whittle him down. It forced "rush" tactics to focus on economic destruction rather than trying to assassinate the commander. But it also generated "Commander Rushes" where one commander rushes the other just to D-gun him and blow them both up... or at least D-gun as many structures as he can before turning around, having gotten a big advantage on his opponent.
The Commander has an ubercannon, but I'm unclear on the factors controlling when it fires. I know it's shorter range than his laser. The d-gun and the way commander explosions worked in TA did nothing but generate a really painful set of gentleman's rules around how commanders could be used. SUPCOM and PA are a big improvement over this since you see commanders used in the way TA clearly intended them to be.
It's not very intuitive yet. First, you have to be fairly close to the enemy. Second, you need to manually select the Attack button from the menu on the right and LEFT-click on the enemy. Right-clicking will just result in the normal gun being used, rather than the Uber-cannon. I suspect there will be a dedicated button for the Uber-cannon once the game gets more polished.
In the kickstarter video the lander looked more like an air unit that transported the commander into the rocket. I am highly anticipating the Dox Slinger and the tech 3 Fabbers with flying nano lathes among many things. I feel like our current version of the game's space theatre is supremely raw and to undergo many iterations of awesome.
i like the idea of some kind of news feed, where you can click on an action and camera warps to that point of interest.
I like this. A sort of commander data stream which basically feeds text of important notices and warnings and happenings. Just make it a toggleable text box beside of the player chat, or combined with player chat where you can choose just chat or just notices or both or neither. Make the warnings like "first contact with the enemy" when you first scout an enemy, or warn you when enemy units get almost within firing range and even tell you what units it sees. This may become strategic icon ticker tape, blanding the game down to strategy without graphics or sound, but fundamentally this is what everyone wants. If there was toggleable sound in place or addition to text box warnings, i would not complain but some days i would turn them off. Sometimes i just want sterile tryhard focus, no hard to read graphics or fancied up voice warnings, just sending my icons to clear their icons as efficiently as possible.
Sorry for the late reply everyone, for one thing i wanted to get allot of responses before i reply so I don't have to respond to each idiot individually (joking) Unit Chatter: Unit Chatter in TA was not pointless, Just underused and basic, Considering this game has many conceptual difficulties such as how to do minimap with multiple battle fronts on many planets. There are many ways to improve upon this system without it bothering the user (off setting anyone?) I also dont mean for this to appear in the chat area of the screen as it did in TA, its own 'information' area on the screen might make sense for this, a display perhaps that can be toggled on/off Communication between machines is very important IMO, it makes sense for them to communicate in some way. Also the current 'beep' you hear in game tells you only that there is conflict, not who or where, and there is allot more assumptions to be made in this game than in other RTS games as there is literally many many battlefields to keep track of, a simple beep system might be good enough for you but i doubt it will be for others D-Gun: Yes. I have tried this, I'm afraid you may have misunderstood me, this is NOT manual control OR manual AIMING, what I want is a system where i can shoot at where the enemy is going to be, not where he is. Simply clicking on an enemy unit to attack feels too much like giving orders (your don't give orders to yourself) attacking a point on the floor, a location which your enemy will soon enter if they don't evade your shot feels more like control and thus manually controlling your commander. Moving Between Planets: I understand this, Not sure you follow what I mean though, So say you've built your oribital launcher facility and finished your first dropship and now have him selected. from here you must, keeping your mouse on the centre of your planet, fully scroll out to 'celestial' view and them zoom back in again on target destination Its an interface thing not a story or fluff or balance issue, I am simply requesting the ability to select unit and click on target planet regardless of what 'zoom' level you are in, beit planetary view, high orbital or celestial. the switching views is what is the pain. This sounds like a good idea +1 More Ways to Destroy Planets: To further illustrate what i meant was, nukes would leave craters, other weapons may do so also, what happens when the planet has so many craters it can no longer be considered a planet? just a pretty apple core effect? In addition, if anyone has ever before played K240 from the golden years of amiga computers they will remember how fun it was to 'build bases' on asteroids and mine them dry of literally everything resulting in the asteroid loosing integrity and exploding (falling apart prettily). This would be a nice thing to see on the smallest of asteroids. Tracking Planet health is not quite what i meant, rather tracking how much punishment a planet can take before its destroyed. Its the future, who knows what these super robot commanders can dream up with, in TA it was a quantum implosion device built from an alien beacon +1 As much as I too like the idea of battling on ravaged planets, hatred fuelled by over 4000 years of total war, yada yada, I also however like the idea of smashing a planet (destroying it) into lots of smaller separate pieces (asteroid belts anyone?)
