The Vanguard Newsletter - Issue 2

Introduction

It's been a while since our last newsletter. Uber has been doing a great job with livestreaming their playtests, and they have been hard at work adding more features. However, we managed to pry them away from their keyboards for a quick discussion on Monday, February 3rd. We had a long discussion about current issues affecting the PA community with Neutrino, Scathis and Garat.

The last build changed a lot, and generated a lot of discussion. In order to cover as much as possible, the discussion was fairly broad, and it touched on a number of points including pacing, the competitive scene, and a new launcher.

If you’d like to catch our last newsletter then please follow this link: [Vanguard Newsletter #1].

If you have any suggestions for future newsletters that don’t relate directly to what’s discussed we would welcome you to post them in this linked thread: [Vanguard Newsletter Suggestions].

ALL INFORMATION RELAYED IN THIS NEWSLETTER MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Uber is actively developing the game, and may decide that some of these things don’t actually work when tried out.

Topics to be covered hereafter:

1. Game Pacing and Balance
2. Competitive PA
3. New Launcher and Lobby
4. Odds, Ends and Potentials

Game pacing and balance

The topic we spent the most time discussing is pacing. There has been a lot of recent discussion about how fast the game feels and how the balance has changed recently (e.g. 1, 2) . Neutrino reiterated that pacing is very much a work in progress. He feels some parts of the game are probably too fast, and others feel too slow. Although PA will probably play faster than it’s predecessors (e.g. TA), it is nowhere near complete enough yet to begin actually tuning the pacing. Scathis talked about how core features are still under development, and how pacing is impossible to tune sensibly until more features are fleshed out. In particular, Scathis frequently needs to request more hooks in order to reveal more levers for balance tuning.

We also briefly discussed the importance of wreckage as a source of metal; a feature that hasn’t had any serious balance passes done on it yet. However, from what we gathered from Scathis he is in favour of bases leaving behind substantial wreckage, but for mobile units to not leave much behind at all. His comment was that ground units are underpowered as it is considering the mobility available to air and orbital units, so he doesn’t want mechanics that will make them even less viable. Scathis intends to do a comprehensive evaluation of all the units in the game, including how much metal they leave upon destruction. Work is also ongoing about making reclaimable rocks and trees.

Overall, the developers were very keen to stress that when it comes to balancing, things have barely even started yet, so expect significant changes in the future.

Uber’s view on the competitive scene in PA

Several threads (e.g. 1, 2, 3) have recently been brought up about the competitive or e-sports potential for PA. Uber assured us that the competitive scene is important to them, but explained that they must focus on building the game before they can start tuning it for competitive play.

However, Neutrino spoke of some features that he thinks would be potentially useful to support the competitive or e-sports scene further down the line. Uber has conducted a few experiments on making symmetrical maps to equalize player spawns. Another big feature in the works is the ability to share solar systems so that good procedurally generated maps can be preserved by the community. This would pave the way for Uber to compile a list of “official” maps of perceived good balance, which could be used for official ladders as well.

Uber also wants to build in default templates for solar system generation, for example, a template might contain a planet, a moon and 3 asteroids. This would pull the randomness into to a more predictable format allowing guarenteed types and numbers of specific planets, moons and asteroids. The example given was a ‘Gas Giant’ template that would always include a Giant and its attendant moons. This is needed for Galactic War, as it allows different styles and archetypes of systems to be generated consistently, even if the finer details are left to the procedural generator. Players will still have the full custom options, but without any custom settings a game could use a “good” template, which most players would find balanced.

New launcher and lobby

Uber has hinted that they have been working on a new launcher, so we took the opportunity to ask about it. o started working on a new launcher a while ago, but has since passed the baton to Chargrove, who is hard at work on it. One of the features that is being worked on is the ability to select between multiple versions of the game at launch, which potentially opens the door to play using ‘stable’, ‘unstable’, and ‘experimental’ builds, similar to Minecraft’s snapshot system. In theory, version selection could allow Uber to open up their in-office playtests to everyone, which is certainly an exciting possibility.

We discussed their thoughts on the community tools that have been created by the PA community so far, and they expressed an interest in supporting the creators of these tools going forward. Overall, the fact that the UI is based on a browser engine means that a community hub could contain anything from in-game forums, to a wiki, or even embedded videos. The tools that the Community has already created have impressed the Devs to no end and the support for those enterprising modders is only going to increase in the future.

Uber is excited about the next big update and is keen to discuss those features with the Community directly in the near future.

Odd bits and bobs

It was a long meeting, and not everything which we discussed fits neatly into the topics discussed so far. A few other interesting things are:

• Neutrino: “Pinbender has picture-in-picture working on his machine [...] He is a badass.” - couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

• Uber is interested on community feedback on area commands, and how useful they are. Feedback on balance is less useful now (given how rudimentary the balance is), but will become more useful after successive builds have been released.
  
  
• There has been a lot of discussion about commanders. Commanders have been given a significant buff against hordes of weak units, now that the Ubercannon is functional. The developers have stated that the main purpose of this weapon is to be an anti-rush device, and that the different kinds of weapons will be fairly similar in terms of what they do.

Hopefully this as all been useful information. The biggest message that the Developers have stated is that Things are still in beta, so expect big changes ahead.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

All that work I've done on my system sharing mod... and it's already obsolete!

With this, livestreams and soon, Brian's weekly newsletter, I'm really happy with the information that is being relayed between fans and devs right now. Long live crowd funding

Honestly, they really don't need to worry about this for quite some time. The community has this in the bag right now, Uber needs to just worry about making a BOSS game and that in turn will help us make a better eSport.

+1 for this, and an extra +1 for using the word BOSS.

bout time ....

it seems however that they didn´t say anything about the commander in teamarmy games , did they? as in should be a player lose controll over the army and production when his comander is destroyed ...

I can answer that - they won't be doing it because that's what the Alliance game mode is for!

but alliance is not intendet to have shared eco or armycontrol ...

I died a little inside upon reading this. I am fine with ground units not leaving too much worth of metal to reclaim, but for the love of god make the wreckage more resilient and block shots and pathing.

Precisely - shared army control is one of the key tenets of the Army game mode, and I'd be extremely surprised if Uber looked to remove player control after the death of one of the (shared) commanders arbitrarily assigned to a player.

Unless the game mode changes significantly, of course.

you are aware that a player not losing control when "he´s" destroyed totaly violates with what the commander is supposed to be? otherwise what are they there for if not representing you ...
could be as well replaced by some arbitrary flagbotfabricator ...

You're jumping to conclusions here, never was it said that wreckage wouldn't act as obstructions, if anything it seems that is the plan currently but Scathis is concerned over what would happen to big admires if everything always dropped wreckage. But it hasn't been worked on too heavily yet so we don't know yet what will the outcome will be until is been implemented and tested.

Mike

What about the non-competitive scene? My concern is e-sports would eventually become the raison detre of the game. For the way it's being pushed.

Not gonna happen - as they said their primary focus is making an awesome game. Once they've got an awesome game, then they can look at an eSports scene that revolves around it.

Yeah, eSports is definitely not the initial focus, though we think we're going to make one hell of a competitive game.

Already is ramping up with the competitive play with the formation of PAEL and us starting a League with a championship

So is the primary focus of PA going to shift from having fun to a competitive game? e.g. StarCraft II

errrrmmm...

I think you will still be allowed to play for fun.

You say this like its either one or the other. What do you mean?