Scale Megathread

Exactly, but more importantly I want a Unit Scale Slider, so people can see what fits them best, the devs can collect that data and make whatever out of it. That would be a proper test, as any other that collects data in a meaningful way, that's the only thing a good test needs, a way to properly integrate the data into a system.
(animals playing is a good example imho)

I didn't write I want to test different metal and energy incomes, the devs stole/copied/kidnapped/robbed the rates for ressource generation from a line of games which were all in the spirit of Total Annihilation.
They had those Energy/Metal/Speedsliders
I just want them. FOREVER like now and in the final. And please no "what if a guy sets speed to 100 and has horrible fun" they use the Total Annihilation ressource system, which also was used as a 1 on 1 copy in Supreme Commander 1 and 2, it works and needs no big testing and common sense will protect the devs from ******* up the maxima and minima on those customizations.

I also didn't insult you, you showed a great lack of common sense, if it's an insult to tell a person that when he ignores common sense for the sake of something else he wants, well uh no clue, could only imply you did that with full intent and ignored it, as I already offered in my 'insult' I mean, that you ignored it.
I'm more than happy to go into lengthy detail about what kind of eristic arguments were used and how well you fitted so many in so few sentences and engarnered it with implications.

Perhaps you should have read my post better and viewed it less prejudiced or whatever happened there.
Either way, I'm sorry too that we have this argument.

Interesting. I've read only the first page, not all 32...

Personally I do like the way units and buildings are sized. After all they aren't real. A unit is a symbol on a symbolic map. We're playing with meta entities. Size doesn't really matter. What does it matter is the game-play.

Beside that, I rarely see units. I like a more eagle-eyed view. Icons are just great to give me quick understanding of what's going on and what's gonna happen next on the map. And icons are huge, too. I do not complain about that, I think they're ok.

the debate isn't really on looks but, as you cleverly deduced; gameplay, and yes scale does factor in gameplay and the scale is so small (big units) that it is disrupting gameplay. (and accessorily turning off those who are into looks).

I too mostly play by the icons but I would like if the terrain had a much greater impact on strategy then it currently does.

I strongly advise reading as much of the thread as possible. you won't get a good outline with just the first page.

1. Indeed. I do have the same wish. I dunno about you, but I would go much further than now, implementing Weather and other stuffs. But of course, those random events could heavily affect equilibrium on the map. Personally I do not mind losing an unfair game, it's still fun to see how long I can survive under unhappy circumstances.

2. Ok. I will find the time to read most of it.

If it is because of gameplay then just have bigger terrain pieces ... let the units be as they are ... afaik uber is still experimenting with biomes so there could come more stuff terrainwise ... changing the seed should decide how many and big the terainpieces should be on a planet ... not to forget Stuff like groundhight and hills ... just have more options to play around with planets

If you don't care about unitsize because you play mostly on orbital view, there will be no difference.
If you care about the game having a good graphical feeling, a correct and plausible scale for maintaining a good enough suspension of disbelief, a better scale is needed.

If immersion and suspension of disbelief doesn't really matter, then the game only need some text and Harpoon like basic icon draft, or even ASCII graphics...

Well, so perhaps my imagination is strong, 'cos I don't have any issue in immersing in PA as it is now. When I'm playing it see a Teleporter popping out like three Martian Olympus Mountains on a surface of a tiny moon, I very much believe it's real. I actually think it's cute.

Usually I hate when units or stuffs are too big on screen for no reason. However, in PA units aren't *too* big. They seem to fit the overall design and concept of the game.

I'm not say that resizing units would degrade the design of the game. I'm just saying that I do not find units size disturbing at the moment. When I zoom in to see the action, it seems quite all right to me. A little big toyish, in a cute way.

For the record, I play just a click above the Air overview. Right when icons appears on screen. That's my usual point of view on the map. Instead I find the Orbital view rather annoying.

Anyway, units (specially when reduced to icons) are merely symbols. The game wouldn't even need other that icons to be perfectly playable. What does really matter is the interaction between symbols. We want units as we can see them from a closeup for a mere aesthetic reason. Which I agree with. Of course it's nice to have that.

On the other hand, what annoys me very much is when units have to be very close in order to be in range and fire. Here, even if I don't negate what I've said earlier, I find it disturbing: in that case it seems to me a poor design choice.

But, ultimately, PA is doing fine so far.

If Uber wants smaller units, I'll be fine as well.

ps. There will possibly be mods in future to change the size of Icons and Units.

I read this thread back when it 1st got posted, but that was awhile ago so I've missed most of the 32 pages as well. Maybe OP can reboot this into a new thread summarizing the discussion so far? I think This issue is as relevant as ever TBH.

I was just thinking before coming to the boards today that The game seems too fast paced. Often I'll have to concentrate on my commander just arriveing at a new planet for instance, while my main base is under attack. In that situation it's hard to choose what to focus on, indeed that even happened to me in the 1v1 tournament 2nd round I was in (you can check the live stream ). I think if all units and buildings were smaller it would:

• Give us more playing field on each planet without actually making the planets bigger
• Give us a better feeling of Big Scale (a core concept of PA)
• Slow units down, making battles take longer (so I can look away to something else during them now and again) and units feel like they are made of more than paper

Scale is mostly fine when you consider art style.
I think some units could be much larger though to make them more visually appealing. Need new units that are the same size as a commander, or even bigger.

Didn't read but I am absolutely not interested in invisibly small units. Supcom 2 already had everything so tiny you could barely see your stuff. PA has a really nice scale to things as far as I'm concerned they nailed it.

Reposting a reminder that "scale" as such is a function of
- how fast units move across the screen compared to their size
and
- how far they can shoot compared to their size

Take supcom1, the distance from points of interest such as mountains, chokepoints, wrecks, rivers, hills, cliffs, and mass points etc. was really long compared to the size of a unit. Units moved at a fair speed compared to their size. But compared to the distance between points of interest they moved really slowly, dragging games out. This worked nicely on small 5-10km maps, but broke down on anything larger. FA increased unit speeds across the board so that the movement speed compared to features of interest was more reasonable, but unit sizes remained constant. Maps were effectively made smaller, but units were harder to see as a result.
While ranges weren't changed, the effect of increasing range would be the same. You can see a huge disconnect between the size of units and the range of artillery for example. One is designed at one scale, the other operates on the scale of a large map.

Realistic scales just do not at all work for RTS games, all you end up with is impossibly tiny dots shooting all the way across an impractically huge map and no fun left

Since bloody when?

The experimentals obviously were big enough but did you see the size of the basic combat units? They're like 1/3rd of the size of an engineer which was already small.

I do not see the problem with them, as they are still like twice the size of a PA dox.

Twice the size of what? In the lore? That doesn't matter here. There's certainly no unit in PA that is less than half the size of a fabber.

Twice the size of the dox, as I said.

And just because SC2 engineers were big, that doesn't make the tanks small.

It makes them small when they are hard to see as anything but dots at a basic zoom level.

That is not true, the tanks were always very easy to see.

Even with the current scaling.

I honestly think, this poll needs to be redone. Just to get a fresh look at everyone's opinion. I actually think the size in the game is pretty good. Any smaller and things would have to be zoomed in to far to enjoy the details.

What the unit is actually supposed to look like:


What you typically see in game:


Engineers represent a better minimum for where you can typically see the units in an engagement as anything other than a blob of dots. PA doesn't have anything like that because fabbers are the smallest unit that I can tell.

Was just wondering if there's still something planed regarding scale ?