Unit Designs

The Astraeus is a VTOL, and is not designed for high speed dog fights.

It is a bad example to make for your case.

They're all VTOL.

The catch here is that the more "basic" such a program would be the worse it is for being artistically creative which is kinda counter intuitive to the original purpose.

Mike

MSPaint 3D.

But, they are not all jet fighters.

And the Astraeus isn't a jet fighter, it is a transport unit designed to travel through space and land, but currently they can also achieve escape velocity.

It's still possible to make them look unique and interesting.

That doesn't make it logical however.

It looks like a cordless drill.

And asymmetry is no requirement for what you are asking.

I like the style of PA's units.

The only real difference between PA units and SupCom units is the decals. SupCom units have more detailed decals. I'm sure lots of decal mods will come out eventually.

I've also found that lots of Sci-fi styles are dumb. Just because it is the future doesn't mean physics changes.

No matter what Uber does, someone will want different style of units. Uber is going for a certain style.

Except that is a poor tank design. It has too many straight edges meaning it would take full damage.

The reason why today's tanks have angles on the front is to deflect the energy of incoming projectiles.

Just because it looks different, doesn't mean it's futuristic or actually viable.

"interesting" and "cool" is subjective.

I think PA units look cool and interesting. You don't.

Also worth mentioning, Uber does seem to be changing things up with some of the new models.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO EYES CAN NOT UNSEE:




Geers i do understand what you´re saying, but for quite the part you could´ve seen this coming. E.G. the Dox and Ant are in the original trailer. (just like most models you call "generic". I doubt that will change.


Personally i think asymmetry looks mindblowingly ugly on most things. Not everything (the GDI walker from Tiberian Sun remains one of my favorites) but the Seraphim from Supcom, i won't ever play them since everything just makes me feel like i want to puke.

Some cool things i would like to see:







(now i belong in the Mile Long club, the club for mile-long picdumps)

Once again. Personal style.

What looks cool to you, doesn't look cool to me.

I thought the Brick was an incredibly dumb looking unit. You think it looks cool. I don't. Neither of us are wrong or right. We just have different preferences.

You keep on saying "Can we expect something a little more interesting eventually?" but it's all subjective. So you saying it over and over is pointless.

What looks "interesting" to you is boring and unpractical to me.

Logic does not work as an argument here. Because you can't apply logic to the unit design and then just throw it away for everything else.

I agree that the brick was probably the worst design.

I think that Orbital right now is probably the most interesting, daring branch of unit design so far.

I don't think it was cool or uncool. I don't exactly have an orgasm over every unit design that I like, except in very rare circumstances (Brawler (TA) and leveller (PA) fap fap fap). But I really don't understand the concept of having 'cool-looking' commanders, when they are all practically the same. It's just over-hyped by some of the players. However, they do need to look reasonably cool, at least by some players.
I come to play RTS games for the strategy, art-style and immersion into the atmosphere/content. I don't spend money just for a couple cool looking units (ahem..commanders ahem), nor do I shy away if I see bad unit designs. We need consistent unit designs - stuff that's cool AND fits in with the style. I've seen this in the PTE build with the orbital units/factory etc, which look like they've been properly stylised (so i agree with devak).

And if it were possible, it would rather quickly make the overall awesomeness drop.

I personally was a huge fan of the King Kryptor cannon effect. While godawefully ugly as a unit, every shot made me sit at the edge of my chair. It imbues it with a power and violence that makes you really feel good.

But if everything is made to look super-cool then the really good effects rapidly drown and a ton of effort is wasted on some blur on screen.

Which is why i'm fine with my little ants and dox looking pretty uneventful. I loved Ta's brawlers, they were perfect with their cool design and great effect.

I loved the megalith II from Supcom2. It was a unit that fit nicely with armies and it's weapon effects (the lasers) really made it stand out.



In the end, this is a game of massive scale. That means that information -embedded in the form of unit design and effects- is limited. If every unit had a similar complexity, it would rapidly make the T1/T2 distinguishing impossible. crank up the size, you say, but that hurts pathfinding.

For that purpose, i think that a good but most of all consistent design scheme and good and consistent effects scheme is going to be vital to this game. Moreso than just "this unit needs to be cool".


(obviously the current "generic bomb/laser" effects do not fulfill this, but some simple color filtering shouldn't take the world to do?)

The problem is there aren't enough cool units. As in, almost none.

Doesn't have to be ludicrous either:

The stuff that makes a unit cool is really it's weapon system. The best examples of an awesome unit would be the Big Bertha artillery, which was fairly simple since it just looked like a shotgun with a leg, but dat sound, dat power, dat velocity and dat explosion made it such a cool building. Also the battleships from subcom looked pretty cool, but the most amazing thing was the payload they could deliver and the range. It was such a great bombardment unit, which made it fun to use and enjoyable to zoom in and admire it while it shoots - I want this kind of immersion in PA.

i don´t know PA uniticons to me are easier to read than those in supcom ... i always had some problems with reading the symbols of supcomuniticons ... it is less a problem in PA but would also need a bit more work imho

one thing i like to ask is if you could add those icons to the unitwiki of yours

....by decal, of course, he means the pictures that were loaded within each surface of the 3D models. TT_TT