Scale Megathread

Terrain really need to be an important and crucial actor on a strategy game, especially a "massive scaled" one.
Terrain must play an active role while building a defensive/offensive strategy.
Terrain must be seriously taken into consideration while thinking where to setup our bases, where to place the defenses, where to place unit's pathways etc.

Higher mesas should be contested places to install some defensive ground artillery and radars, allowing greater detecting range and extended firing range.
Large mountains should be prefered place to set important buildings, in order to benefit the natural protection of an heavily armored mountain.
Valleys should be natural chokepoint to defend, sea coasts should be monitored and protected from naval attacks and amphibious invasions.

But terrain can't play any role while it's reduced to ornamental toy props.
I want really strategic maps, not homogeneous slop without any real distinctive landmark or strategic valuable point to conquer and worth to be defended.

The game really lack a good feeling, and i didn't said it need to be 1:1 earth sized and 100% realistic, i said it need to be consistent, it need to avoid hurting so much the suspension of disbelief.

Hell, everybody is wanting "cool art" and be able to look all the nice animation and explosions from the ground battles using high zooming, but the game is currently pretty much the opposite, because there is no fun for me watching a bunch of completely off scaled toys crawling a dull and distorted map.

I really enjoyed watching the small skirmishes and strategic epic battles from FA, precisely because the scale was, if not 100% realistic, much more right sized.

Think Mount Atlas on Mars, think about the martian canyons and valleys that dwarf even Earth's Grand Canyon. (search "mars canyon" on google image to get an idea)
That is the type of landscape i want to play on, that is what is coming into my mind when i think about Planetary Annihilation, spiritual successor of Total Annihilation on a much more massive scale.

Remember TA's Yerrot Mountains map. Remember the mountains that can be crawled only by bots, the valleys that helped defend the bases, the mesas and concentrated groups of rich metal spots.
Yes, even TA is more consistent and epic thanks to it's right feeling scale and strategically useful maps.

The problem of having a "too large" planet, that would make the game boring because of the unit time travel and because of the immense area to scout are all very easy to fix.
By making very attractive strategic spots, again.
Because why scout and explore large empty seas or unbuildable mountains if there are only a few spots of great strategic value on the planet, because of the natural defenses, because of the concentrated metal resources, or because of anything of value, like geothermal activity allowing geothermal power plants.
The equator could be specially interesting for launching rockets (reduced energy cost) or installing some space elevator for example.

The unit's speed is also very easy to fix; because as the game take place in a distant futur, there is many many ways to project an entire army far far away, using air transports, orbital transports, unit catapults, teleporters, or anything else.
Yes, a kbot or tank will not be able to cross the whole planet in a few minutes, but that is for the sake of the game!
We don't want this, because that is killing all the richness of the game. How to build a large scaled strategy if the first T1 tank can cross the whole planet in such a short time?
Units with limits are way more interesting to play with because that mean more strategy and more possibilities.
The scouting of vast planetary surface is even easier to fix simply by increasing the detection range of units and especially the scouts & radars, and making faster scouts.
Think about the scouting capabilities or the real life SR-71 and think about what could do an advanced robotic army from the PA era and you'll stop worrying about "finding the enemy".

And if you still want small maps that's easy: decrease the size of the continents and increase the size of the ocean/lava/mountains/whatever that is unbuildable and uncrossable for ground units.

So you want to see the whole battlefield on a large proportion of the planet AND be able to see the unit's individual little combat animations and graphics without needing to zoom in?
That is completely contradictory!
Do you realize achieving this mean making something like gigantics units in order to have a whole planet=small FA map?
I think even Starcraft or micromanagement focused tactic games don't do this.

A larger proportion of the planet, not a large proportion of the planet. Larger does not mean that it is large, merely that it is bigger than something else. In this case it is something that I contend is too small.

We do not need " Gigantic " units, as you put it... just ones that are bigger than tiny.

It's very important to actually read what you're quoting before you try a reductio ad absurdum.

This is a difficult problem to solve.. Frankly i find strategic icons hard to beat when it comes to playing the game.. I really dont see how you can retain massive armies without using icons.. It is just practical. If everybody were playing on >300dpi displays, gameplay without icons might be possible in theory..but that is not the case yet. I think it is better to just accept that eyecandy is for watching replays or spectating, which may seem a bit boring of a solution but i cant think of any other way.

Hi, i would like a wide angle lens that also have the advantages of showing all the macro details a super tele lens can capture, can you do this please Mr Nikon? (Yeah, and also F/1.2 with a weight of 200g)

These are pretty obviously contradictory objectives.
The only ways to achieve this are:
-heavy distortion of reality: bigger units on smaller planets. (I mean even MUCH MORE than currently, especially if you want to be able to identify them without icon, and even be able to watch the pretty graphics and animations from a strategic point of view)
-heavy distortion of the view: add some sort of magnifier to the cursor to have a zoomed view from orbital without having to zoom in using the mousewheel. (Why not? Could be nice, but that would be pretty much the same as zooming up)

You simply can't have a larger view AND bigger units while keeping a relatively sane sense of scale, because the current units are already oversized.

When "Larger" mean larger than already oversized units, that's pretty big indeed.

FA showed up big units, because it's maximum zoom level is higher than PA, but FA still keeps a way better sense of scale with the map and others (more useful) landscape objects like mountains and seas.

I do think there should be size diferentiation between basic and advanced units.

It'd be pretty cool to have slammers twice as large as doxes.

Yes, and the design should reflect the units differences too.
The current blocky design make all units too much look alike.
(FA units had roughly the same poly number.)

This is a very weird ' rule of thumb ' to enforce. For a start I'd ask; why does a supposedly specialised unit necessitate an increased size? Are you saying that the majority of specialised units need to be easily recognisable in an encounter regardless of their intended role? And are you saying that size is the key factor that should be used to differentiate between basic units and advanced ones and that overall model complexity and aesthetic design choices to create unique silhouettes are secondary concerns?

Doesn't that severely limit the potential uses of specialised units if the majority need to be so much larger than basic units to adhere to your bizarre standards of what is ' cool ' ?

nanolathe, I think we may be mixing up issues here.
Uber's had originally intended that T2 would NOT better than T1.

However, the current rosters has stronger, more efficient versions as we tech up.
I agree with you, that specialty units should not mean bigger units.

But I believe the point Brian is trying to get across is that a stronger unit of the same type should be larger.
Consider the sizes of these units in Total Annihilation:
Krogoth > Sumo > The Can > AK

Stronger units were more more "dense" than the equivalent strength in weaker units.
But since power increased, so can size, making a single unit more voluminous and taller.


I totally agree with that.

Assuming the flawed president, precedent sure. But I thought we were trying to stay away from upgrade units.

Have we even made any progress other then hot air?

Obama's doing fine! Or did you mean precedent? (I'm so sorry)

Of course. Jon's adamant that the balance seen in the game right now isn't representative of what he's got planned.
It's merely ' functional ' until the full unit roster is in place.

This.

And This.
Thank you two for showing a level of intellect generally above that of the average person around here.

I disagree with @broadsideet, Unit Size IS related to Unit Speed.
Just like how a Unit Size can be defined as a "% of Planet Size".
Speed is a measure of Distance/Time.
Thus, Unit Speed be defined as a "% of Unit Length/Time".

Make your units smaller, and aside from increase the density of firepower (of defenses and your deathballs) game-balance will mostly stay intact.
But change it too much, and your units will look faster.
It could look wonky, but it's probably fine.



BUT, that's just a relatively minor issue compared to the big ones at hand.

1. Unit Size: Planet Size (The topic of this thread)
   
   
2. It's linked to, but not the same as:
   Unit Size: Terrain Feature Density
   
3. Which is also linked to, but not the same as:
   Unit Size: Terrain Feature Elevation

I think all 3 need to be addressed.
#1 for feel.
and #2 and #3 for this to bring out the strategy and tactics that are possible in PA.

yes but as we've brought up numerous times, nothing really keeps us from fiddling with the speed until it's just right. It's defeatist to say speed will be an issue with changing scale when it's an obvious fix and there truly is no obstacle there.

I personally believe the speed is off as is, so bringing the question of speed to the spotlight by changing the scale would be much welcome.

Would speed be an issue?

Think about a super carrier and an aluminium dinghy. If both travel at 7 knots an hour, they would both be going at the same speed.

They would both arrive at the same destination at the same time.

If your units are too big, and speed too slow, you could have a fighter jet only move "1 body length/second".
That just looks wonky and nobody wants that.

In order to maintain game balance, speed should be somewhere reasonable, where a player has time to react.
So if we shrink units and buildings too much, then density will increase.
So if we keep the same speed, and shrink size (unit length) by half, suddenly, your unit is now moving double the "X-body length per second".

So when your assault tanks drive like a Ferrari.
Or your main-line bots look more maneuverable than Gundam Freedom...
Then we've got the opposite problem we have now.


Pretty much, we need to meet somewhere in the middle.

I would just like to say that I think this thread is a complete mess, because everyone seems to have a different idea what scale exactly means. Root of the problem probably lies in the fact that it is not as straight-forward of an issue as it would seem.

I take this thread to be about unit size relative to the terrain props. I know some people want this game to look/feel like Supreme Commander. Well.. I don't think that is possible with the way this game is set up. The planetary stuff puts restrictions on going for a "realistic" scale. I think Uber understood this from the beginning by choosing this art style. Mainly this is a visual preference thing, because I believe the battlefield size in PA will probably still be much bigger than in SupCom, even if it "feels" smaller.

Increasing planet radius relative to unit size is a completely separate issue in my mind, and would change the game entirely, distances would be enormous etc.

I would like to see more mock ups of actual gameplay situations with different terrain prop sizes, because you can't really tell from concept art how it would work when playing the game. The picture in OP is good, but it would be good to also have one where in the image the unit size remains constant, but terrain prop size grows/shrinks.

units don't move by body length per second. They move by distance per second.

Body length per second is a derived attribute based on speed and unit size. Culverin's point is that body length per second needs to be kept within a reasonable range; if you decrease unit size without slowing down the speed, it can end up looking ridiculous. Consider a wheel; if you halve the diameter, you only expect it to travel half as far.