Scale Megathread

I doubt that.

I once suggested we get rid of the effect of the nuke so we could see better.

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x'D

reducing the size of units means that if you want bigger playing field you don't need to kill your PC with 4000+ sized planets

well essentially, that's not how things work in the computer world, ironically, if you were to make the units smaller, it would load the PC same as making the planets bigger.

It adds nothing to the game except by making units harder to make out and icons bleed together more. It's the dumbest idea on the board because it's a lot of work for pretty much bugger all gain. Oh wow, terrain is higher now in relation to unit size.

Who gives a ****?

Well, he does.

that's the wrong question to ask pal, apparently 267 people that are for it.

but I digress let's address your points anyways.

"Massive Scale" is the selling catchphrase of this game. okay there's that.

terrain being more interactive has been voiced by the community as a demand in numerous threads (some of them recent, some of them older than this one, you should check how old this one is...)

there's not bugger all gain, if the game "feels" wrong then there'll be "bugger all" extra people to join us after release no?

In anycase I can speak here as the general spokesperson of the FAF community. It has been an impossible endeavor for me to get anyone from FAF to take a second glace at PA.

Whenever i hop onto FAF and scream out "hey there's this and that going on on the PA forum and this and that is happening in PA!" (as I have basically become their PA newsman.) they say "whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses, have they changed the scale yet?" -"well no, but..." -"ok, bye."

this is what I'm dealing with. I hope you understand that if this represents the viewpoint of a 16,000 person community then it may need to be taken seriously.

The scale of units isn't really a problem if planets could scale larger. Ergo, the rub: Large planets have ridiculously high system requirements.

16GB of RAM for a single 3000-radius planet is a non-starter. The presence of a mountain biome tripling or quadrupling the memory requirement of a planet is a non-starter.

Oh, and there's that issue where the biome terrain algorithm doesn't generate terrain at the same scale as the planet, so it ends up looking less like Earth and more like the Florida Everglades.

Edit: Oh yeah, and the unit design for large maps is pretty awful too. Artillery is enormously short ranged, and yet exceedingly powerful because units are as slow as molasses. Apart from Orbital, radar is also too short ranged. Lastly, the economy and tier system is such that, on a large planet, you can tech to orbital before someone can even find you. That's just sad.

Honestly, this thread is so bloated right now, I don't feel motivated to discuss anything worthy that is brought up in it. The shots have been fired, the dust has settled, lets just wait for uber to clean the carnage and reveal what their plan is(in time).

the ram and radius issues are right now aren't realy optimized btw I can make a 4000 planet with 8 giga ram so that 16 is a bit drastic but yeah the game isn't realy optimized yet for Big planets so it drains your PC like a Nuke spam your commanders Healt Bar.

the biome thing is that its not finished if they stay true to the concept how they want it to look it will be WASTLY different and waaay better.

the artillery is fine on bigger maps artillery is more broken and OP the smaller the planet is in my opinion its the opposite what your talking about.
tech to orbital befor finde you ? with planes you can finde the enemy in notime. and also in big Planets you aren't getting rushed in the 1st 5-10 min

Holy ****, an anecdote! Now you've really won me over.

The game has massive scale, it's set across planets. Making units smaller is not making massive scale, it would simply result in smaller planets in smaller systems to compensate for the smaller units, and then people would play at a lower zoom level to allow them to differentiate units leading to... the exact same game they're playing now. With taller hills.

Brilliant. Definitely worth the time and effort.

why would it need compensation ? plannets systems etc stay the same just our units are smaller.

you're forgetting we want to change scale because size difference from props to units (which does not vary with planet size) feels off.

one: there's always more room for more discussion.
two: it's about that time. Uber should come back here again and tell us how this business can or can't come along.

yeah...uhm kinda the point of this whole thread. If you're surprised at how unambitious this thread is, that's only a point of view...
This change actually requires a lot of work and optimization so it's not such a small one at that.

If the battle feels better for it because the terrain interacts more and the battles look better well I feel it's definitely worth it. I'm sorry if you can't see what me and these 267 people (+the entire faf community) see in this. but again that's comprehensible if you haven't gone through the trouble of reading this thread.

You talk a hilarious amount of rubbish.

The current scale hurts this game a lot, as it breaks immersion and makes the entire game feel 'toy boxy'. Clearly there are an over whelming number of people who also agree that the scale is an issue.

Still, please feel free to keep voicing your opinion like its the law and calling other peoples ideas " the dumbest idea on the board". It makes you look really cool.

The thing is, the toyboxy look is at least somewhat intentional or did you not notice the art-style (and scale) which has persisted from concept video to game, the scale could probably do with a tweek but its far from immersion breaking, unless you were shooting for realism over awesome. The scale issue is primarily one of illusion anyway, created mainly by camera angles, and exasperated by people insisting on playing on the tiniest planets possible with naval units and crying 'toybox!'

Bottom line the scale cannot ever be realistic, planet props will have to be a hundred times larger, rendering 200 radius planets completely fubar, or the tiny like fleas on an elephant, neither of which will look good or play good, nor will it run good on any reasonable machine if it were to look/play good.

Unit weapon ranges, aren't exactly scaled all that realistically either, seriously tanks in real life can fire shells considerably further in relation to their size than a leveller but i dont see anyone moaning about that breaking immersion (it should all things being equal), because its a game and its somewhat abstracted and thats how it should be. Incidentally i voted for a small, moderate decrease in size, but i'm not going to be totally miserable/refuse to play if it doesn't change.

seeing as scaling down units means increasing the poly count on the planet. This thread should relay be called.
Reduce poly count on planets so we can have bigger ones.(This might not be necessary, deepens what programming magic Uber has up there sleeve )

The art scale right now seems very much inline with their kickstarter trailer.
But it's not quite matching the Biome concept renders.
Perhaps they were different artists or different groups within the art team?
It seems like a large group from the community, 70%, feels scale need to be addressed.

Do keep in mind, the "cartoon-like" scale we have now is very much more inline with the rest of the art design in Uber's portfolio.
Maybe that's just how they like to roll.

It is definitely a trend I have noticed with new players.
More than often than not, they comment on the "cartoon-like" scale in their "first impressions" threads.
With a 70% vote.
And a trend of mentioning scale as a negative from new players, I personally feel that this could harm the game's sales from the impression that it is not a serious RTS. That's rather unfortunate.
Because this is THE most serious, groundbreaking and revolutions I have seen in the RTS genre in a long time.

If you define groundbreaking rts by making it unplayable big you are right.

For the normal 1v1 player this game removes all the complexity ta had and just adds a round planet. Thats a tradeoff I dont want to accept.

I did, but I wouldn't call the art style toyboxy. It's clean, uncluttered and different. I like the art style.

That's your opinion. For me, and for a number of others I know, it is immersion breaking.

If it was just camera angle I am very very sure Uber would have tweaked it when this 26 page thread kept surfacing on the forums. While a camera change might help, its not the whole answer.

Also, the scale issue is exasperated by people coming from games like Supreme Commander (which while it had its many faults, got its scale exactly right at EPIC) and wondering why the battle cruiser can only shoot twice its own length. That's not realistic, and its not even close to being awesome. It's ****.

No one here is looking for 'realism'. But you can have have a scale with is both 'awesome', and looks amazing. Go check out supreme commander.

No one moans about tanks shooting less distance than they do in real life because a) no one here wants 'realism' b) the range which tanks shoot in PA doesn't look or feel stupid. Its exactly as you say, 'somewhat abstracted' because it's a game. Yet if they started shooting one tank length in front of themselves it would look stupid, go beyond just being a bit abstract, and people would complain.

I don't think one person in this thread have based their desires on total 'realism'. Changing the scale isn't about achieving realism. Its about achieving a game that feels and looks right, without things that make you go 'wtf' in a bad way. The scale makes me go 'wtf' in a bad way.

Not really bothered about scale. Terrain sparsity and small units being unreadable, thus leading to icon-wars and a complete waste of time for the art department is what concerns me more.

PA's units and models look nice. They should be visible.