optional unit cap???

don't know how hard it would be to program in a optional unit cap in to the game.... but I think it would be handy and less laggy for all non uber machines...

played a game with one AI and Two random planets... AI at rate 1 resource and mine at rate 10 resource...

knowing I'm going to get a trashing from the AI, I left the first planet and made home on the other planet in the system....
lucky just as my first base got trashed by a swarm of tanks and bots....
about half hour in to the game and it all starts to get laggy......
i spend another hour reinforcing the metal planet.... by the time i had a good size army and teleport(stargates) gates in place...
my machine is lagging really bad.... took me an 2 hours to build a forward base.... on the AI planet

there, was me thinking, yeh an army of 300+ will do the trick Plus 30+ air defence turrets (cus i hear the AI love to use there planes) 4 artillery guns and 5 adv radar one anti nuke x 3 ready and 5 on reload.....

The AI on the other hand... built what looked like 5000+ units, plus 500+ air units... by this time my machine is lagging so badly it takes me two hours to build four nukes...

by the time i have two nukes the AI starts to move all of its army out of my orbital radar... so i fired the nukes which took 20-30 mins to hit there targets... taking half to 75% of it's army out... but no hit to the AI commander however the lag has become a lot less and just in time for my forward base be taken from behind by 500+ planes... completely annihilated (oh well i though that was my first attempt at taking the AI's planet)

just about to make another forward base.... when I spot the AI commander with my orbital radar.. (he didn't move with all the units that die in the nuke strikes) so I, deep strike his Ar*e with the seven deep strikes that where slowly take out the AI's base (but I had to remember they were there all the time to tell them to shoot the enemy....??? no aggressive stance for units??)

so a 6 hour + game. it would be nice and friendly to my pc if there could be a optional unit cap :- i.e.

low = 400 units per army
normal = 1000 units per army
high= 3000 units per army
uber= no cap

or you could have it so that you can type in a number for unit cap, tick box for unit cap

hope this dosnt sound like i'm moaning.... cus i love the game and the concept... but my machine is not uber

LOL I don't think I've had this much free time in one go, in a few years

Uber have always said that the only limit will be your PC, so I hope there are options for tweaking things like this to make things more playable. I agree though, I think a unit cap should be treated like a graphics option in this regard, given the huge variation in performance it effects.
That said, there is also more optimisation to be done, so maybe see what happens upon release. I'm not sure how a unit cap would screw with the balance. For example, you build up a huige army on the home planet, only to have no available units left to build on any other planet.

may be unit caps for planets??(in the planet editor) or some option in graphics... but i think it would look better if it was in the scenario creator screen under resource rates...
however you are right..... they do say it is base on the speed of your pc.... mines not great...

They also said they plan to try and get it running okay on low end PCs too, so keep the faith

P.S. Welcome to the forums, hope you enjoy your time here and in game!

Here, from a thread on optimising performance:

EDIT: P.S. Forrestthewoods is an Uber Dev

Most optimisation is probably yet to happen, it's normally the last thing in the development process.
Wait and see, it should get better!

Ultimate respect.


My game crashes reliably at the hour and a half mark.

I can get it to crash in 30 minutes if I turn my economy up to 1000 and just spam units.

I had an hour and a half+ game yesterday with a couple of clan mates that was just obscene. I had a small moon orbiting a large planet with several players still on.

Ended with over 500 T2 tanks coming through a teleporter and synchronised 7x nuke strike.

I love this update

For all the balance issues and missing units, this is still the most FUN version of the game I have ever played....Can;t wait for the finished thing!

Good point.

I would say that you can limit the AI's eco to 0.9 or 0.8, and that slows down the AI enough. Instead I rarely grants myself more than 1.0 'cos otherwise my routine would be different in online matches.

Beside that, if I migrate early-phases to a Moon I build only the strict necessary. A good amount of Fabs, and the factories I need, and nearby a Teleporter. I do not build a tons of units 'till I actually need it.

To hold control on the Moon I use 20 something Gunships patrolling all the surface and that's it. They can take down everything tries to sneak on *my* Moon - s*ckers! If you're afraid, you can employ 20 more T2 Bombers. Those can easily kill a Commander as well.

Then, the other night I build 20 Nuke launchers on *my* Moon, surrounded by 4 Anti-nukes. That served the purpose to soften up the enemy armies before I Teleported most of my land units. However, the AI never bother you when you are on a different planet.

Also, Orbital Radar are king. Before to leave for the Moon I rush to the Orbital Launcher, and produce in this order: 1. Astraeus for the Commander, and 5 or 6 Orbital Fabbers - I will use those later to build Orbital Radar over the hot areas of the planet. So I keep an eye on it.

However, I do believe we need some sort of super units, super costly, where to invest the income of a whole Moon or planet. The amount of metal/power is just too massive to spend in basic T1 and T2 units.

Check this out: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/planetary-invasions.54449/page-14#post-857064

guys. This was said before the final game will have a unit cap of units, all players combined. so 500,000 per person if you are two, and will surely feature a lever to lower it (god only knows for what ungodly purpose, I see unit cap as torture). And no there will not be unit cap per planet what kind of noob thought process birthed that thought?

It might be a good idea for games to have an optional unit cap dependent on the players participating, easing suitable matches in the lobby:

• Every user has their own unit cap
• User who creates the game optionally sets a minimum unit cap for the game
• When game starts, the unit cap for the game is the lowest cap of all participants
• If a game has a higher minimum cap than your unit cap, you don't see it in the lobby

Or we can make T3 units made from Gold, and we can solve the issue once and for all. Also, Gold is a soft metal, and dies quickly.

The game is in beta guys.

We need to wait and see how the final performance is like before we start on things like this.

No unit cap is an important part of PA. I really don't want a unit cap implemented.

Well, what *you* want or not has very little to do with what PA will ultimately be. Same I can say about what *I* want or do not. Or anyone else, aside the Devs themselves, I hope.

Fact is, if the game weren't in beta we wouldn't be here speculating about it. And that's a good thing. Don't you think?

So, we don't need to wait 'till the game is finished to finally say what we would have wish it could be. Because then I'm afraid it will make no sense.

Beside, I'm also against an Units Cap. I would like to have a more elegant solution to that issue.

I don't think anyone WANTS a unit cap, but it may be necessary to keep the game running on lower spec machines, that's the point here.

yes that's why i said optional unit cap..... so if you like the way it is play with no unit cap..... but to give us who cant afford uber machines the chance to play the game...

in facted the cap would really be on the AI cus there is no way someone could mico manage 5000+ units but your pc can.... like the pc can give out commands to all its units in a instants and they could be 5000+ different commands where for the player to give out 5000+ different commands would take you hour+

actually as long as you have internet you can play with a lot of units on very shitty machines

There is already a maximum amount of units in a game. The numbers so big that in a game unlikely to hit it. Check out this thread in the backers forum. Opt in unit cap nothing wrong with that as long as you have to opt in to it.