I feel like the units lack... "soul"

Robots don't need speech if they're talking to other robots.

Geers Said: "Robots don't need speech if they're talking to other robots."

Remember the commander is us and we can understand any information communicated to us by our autonomous subordinates. There's immersion for you.

I have the feeling that Geers is on a quest to make this game as un-epic as possible.

NULLIMUS IS A ROBOT!

That conflicts with my demand for giant sandworms and orbital bombardment.

Again, cosmetics won't help with the feel.

Z was fantastic. I'm trying to learn blender by making the buildings from Z. Maybe it'd work as a PA mod.

No text-to-speech please, give us the fantastic mechanical noises TA's units made instead, no localisation required!

and what is so epic about someone saying
"yes, commander?", "roger that" and "on my way" ? .... to me listening to those speechpatterns over and over isnt epic but simply annoying .... i rather listen to the ambience of war ... which is explosions cannonshots and the sound of merciless destruction .... and that is there ....

Doesn't have to be just those simple things. Take my earlier post in this thread about Dawn of War.
That game simply would not be as epic as it is if it didn't have those voice overs. And it doesn't have to be restricted to just two or three variations. You can have many. For example, look at this link that has all the stuff that is being used in Dawn of War. The initial part is simple main menu quotes, but below that there are all the things each particular unit can say, and there are a lot of them. I played a shitload of Dawn of War and it never got old.

http://warhammer-game.narod.ru/wiki/Dawn_of_War_Quotes.html

And if you want to know what they sound like, some video examples:

That is 3 minutes and 20 seconds of different things JUST the tactical space marine squad says.


2,5 minutes of just Chaplain quotes...

One of my favourite leaders, the Librarian:

"There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt."

Really, there is so much to hear, and what is said is spoken with such conviction that you just can't grow tired of it.

That took a lot of writing though, and a lot of expensive VA work, and they had 30 years of 40k canon to build off, and they're not perfectly-AI-refined combat robots. It's a very nice exception to the general rule that vocal barks suck.

Speech things do get a little old.

It more the sounds of weapons, movement and unit interaction that make them cool.

Units that act a certain way, should sound like it.

Snipers should be firing shots that echo across the battlefield, causing their targets to limp and die.

And tanks should be firing boomy hammers at their targets.

I think PA has actually a lot of soul. Maybe not a specific unit but the whole game itself. When you are on a moon and then you see the planet passing by with structures on it. This game is kinda unique. Experimental units would be rather in this game Halleys, moving planets, the unit cannon, and so on, rather than a Monkeylord.

True enough. 40k might be unique in that way, though plenty of companies manage to **** it up even with all of that source material.
And while I agree that the general units in PA are of a different sort than the units in the Warhammer 40k universe, the PA commanders are not. They could be compared to the T'au from 40k. These are not simple machines but they have their own ideology and modus operandi. So for PA it would be fitting to perhaps not give voice overs to produced units, but give them to just the commanders. They could say stuff when you click on them or send them somewhere, or order them to build something, but they could also be the 'commenter' on what is going on in the game, like "I sense we are being attacked", "Power is getting low" etc. instead of having that seperate (as Neutrino already said that they were going to add in a commentator like that), and have each commander have some unique things to say that are specific to his person. That could be a way to integrate the PA lore into the game without single player campaigns, which there will not be.

That's not a bad idea. Maybe they could go full 90's and have the devs record their own bad voice acting to save money too.

I think something that could add a lot of establishing background would be an explanation of the technology- TA had something like this in the manual IIRC. It went into extreme detail about how the weapons worked and other such things about the game universe.

Your posts are very hard to read with all those '...'.

Units providing feedback does not have to be voices, but could also be distinctive unit sounds based on the unit type.
Go play TA to see what I mean. They did unit responses right there.
Besides: The current sounds for gunfire, explosions, etc.. are not really up to speed aswell, they need a lot of work in my opinion (Again, have a look at TA where every weapon sounded truly intimidating).

i think that most stuff is still first pass same goes for explosions ... nothing is yet set in stone ...

I think the art style is great in PA, has alot of life behind it, I must admit though a few passive animations would not hurt the cause. Maybe a small laser barrel flex every now and then or a small sensor on top of the turrets "looking for a target". Somethin like the radars (orbital, t1 and t2) which I think are done beautifully. But then comes the sound effects which I think should be ALOT more beefy and sound like they do more damage. Here is a sample of what I think would go good with the game, Something like the one around 0:12 I think would go perfectly with the holkins. I mean the holkins can take like 9 units out in a single blast, but its explosion animation and the sound is just so weak it seems like nothing, its a really strange thing that I cant really explain in word, you just gotta try it for yourself. Also I think that if units were less "popcorn"-iy and lasted even a bit longer it would add to the "soul". Also when the units die I think there should be some sort of animation to show that instead of just turning into a grey piece of metal sitting there where ever they last go shot. For example if a laser turret shot an ant, and shot and overkill bullet (which it often does) the ant's corpse should be flung back instead of just sitting there as if invinceable. Essentially what I am trying to say is that there should be more unit feedback when it is shot and that giving everything a more "beefy" feel could work the atmosphere of this game wonders.

I think you broke my earphones.

ZSS is good except for the control and gameplay(CTF) mechanism.