Developers of this amazing IP that you are currently the custodians of: please read my feedback I beg of thee. These items are important to more than just myself, and represent the discussions of many in my group of long time players of TA and SupCom; whome I represent in this post because I am the small percentage that bothers to create an account. Because I love the game, I therefore post that it may improve. Assist a factory with another factory. Why do I have to re-create my entire build order (effectively unit ratio decisions on macro scale) for each factory, then set them to a unique rally... This one omitted function, and the related issue of not being able to share the rally path and end patrol location (and then move the patrol points...) basically has us waiting until this game completes development before taking it seriously. Could be playing any other random RTS otherwise. Assist factory or path with a transport. This is also a pretty core feature. We have hundreds/thousands of units... They have to get from where they are made to where they fight. Why is this hard and involving micro? I actually want to know, it's not a 'you guys suck' thing... it's a 'was this a design decision?' thing... Move waypoints and patrol nodes. Battles move. Why can't the waypoints and patrol nodes be dragged (like they can in all previous incarnations of this game)? I'm confused why this is not implemented, or if it is... not obvious how to do. Re-creating all the rally points for all my factories and then re-creating all the patrol points... just to move the front a little forward.... In SupCom (yea, i keep bringing it up...) All that took was dragging two waypoints to move the front line patrol arm in to an area. To clicks. Two. Build templates. I'm sure this is a bit of flamebait, but the fact is this is a macro oriented multi planet game. Spending 30 clicks selecting, placing, and re-selecting just for a simple 3-factory defended by some AA/PD cluster... That's Micro. I guess there are differing opinions on this, but this feature of supcom was a core tenet of many players love for the game. Because of the controversial nature, feel free to ignore I guess, but it sticks in my SupCom loving craw and I can't help mentioning it. I'm not complaining really, and I'm amazed at what has been accomplished by these folks that bought the IP I have been loyal to. I'm just confused that it doesn't feel at all like the IP they bought for the above reasons. Also, supcom 2 didn't happen. Kinda like Star Trek Enterprise... Some mistakes can be forgiven; though time travel and not being able to assist factories with factories aren't on that list. Game on, and please lock it if people get silly, not going to come back and respond to trolls as the post is only for developers anyway. Even if you disagree, our piece was said.
Seconded. Except point four, and I'm not sure I really understand point two. Kinda think this is missing the point though? Like, Point one, that title I automatically thought no, but why can't I add a new factory and add it onto an existing set of plans that I have another set of factories running on? But also, is this really a huge issue? I mean, it's not a small one, but it's nowhere near game breaking. It's just like, a small little UI option for slightly less micro. Point three gets an automatic yes, this needs to be included. But also, it's in the same net as point one. Not really game breaking that this is missing, but it would certainly add to the polish on the game and would err for a little less micro. ... Yeah, I'm just not getting what he's getting at with point two. Unless it's just an expansion on point one? And point four is entirely mod territory. Since there is already a mod that does that, and it doesn't seem to jive with the rest of PA's UI functionality. It's also only flame bait if you die hard argue your case for it. As there are solid points on each side, but the general consensus is on the side of "don't include this", as far as I've ever seen. (which is admittedly mostly from early early alpha and pre-beta times... took a long break from the forums until I stumbled on Zaphod's videos recently.)
Well obviously. Not sure if you've noticed bruv, but this game is a lot less polished than the other iterations are at this point. I'm consistently amazed every time they add a layer of polish, and I really do think these things are coming as they are so obvious, but if not, then it will be for the greater good.
I believe point two is referring ability to have a transport automatically move units from factory to rally point. this makes sense, except the transport doesn't exactly move at warp speed. still, I get the point. I would prefer to first have an airborne transport that can carry multipoint units and drop them off. I guess that's the point of portals, though, right?
I too want those (remaining) amazing macro features from Supcom to make it into this game, but I fear that this is just something we as RTS fans assumed would happen because we really hoped it would, and they might not happen. Uber has stated that this game is not Supcom3, nor are they trying to make it that. Having said that, there's infinite buildqueues, streaming economy, area commands are great, we have strategic zoom, we will get multi monitor support, no unit limit, 64bizzle, multithreading, KILLER AI. I think that if given enough time PA will rival and surpass Supcom in macro features.
a) double click a factory to select all. Bind to group hotkey OR b) Use provided select all factories hotkey bind in options menu. One click dude. It's not hard 'micro'. Do the above. a) Use the above already implemented easy way to manage your factories. b) Also, waypoints can indeed be dragged to form area circles If a game goes for 10 minutes, what are you doing for all that time? I don't think people who keep saying this realise what macro orientated means. It means macro management requires attention to do. That a player's attention is more valuable if spent on actions that gain resource income and unit production than on unit management in combat. Also, i can place 3 factories and an aa turret with 4 mouse clicks. Then spend measly 3 actions to select all factories, set a waypoint, and set a unit ratio. If this is 'tedious micro' in your opinion, then I don't really know what else there is to say. I don't know about supcom, but whats funny is TA had way more 'micro' in the macro management aspect than PA.
Also, not really the point, but to clarify UberEnt hasn't bought the IP of TA or SupCom. This game may be a 'spiritual successor' to those games but in reality it has no actual relation to them on a legal level, it's just an RTS with many similar features.
I'm not too sure about building structures being a micro thing that needs to be changed, I mean if buildings are micro, surely building with a com is to and it should be changed. Personally I like some aspects of the game being micro, the game itself doesn't feel micro intensive like SC2 and also isn't too macro intensive. I feel like the balance between the two at the moment perfect apart from the few other things you mentioned as well as a few other things
That's not really workable on all levels, sure it's fine if you have a handful of factories in one spot on the planet and you want all your factories to be building the same thing but outside of that it's clunky. You can't add factories to a group without rebuilding the queue, you can't request different units from the "assisting" factories without breaking the queue, you can't easily change what is being built and even a bit more on top of that yet. It might not be strictly needed on a fundamental level but it sure makes things a heck of a lot simpler and flexible. Mike
It occurs to me that the 'assist factory with another factory' benefits could also be achieved with a variation of templates (I also really want templates ). Where a building template would just be a building queue with preserved locations, a unit template could just be a preserved factory queue, easily saved and select-able on other factories.
That would still lacking in regards to the "On the Fly" type of flexibility that was the biggest part of what made the SupCom Factory Assist so great. Mike
Had to go read up on how SupCom did it, not sure I was ever even aware of that feature . That would definitely be among the best (if not the best) features to have, at least for local groups of factories. That said, I'd still be interested in having a queue template on top of that. I would not think of it as any more than selecting a factory, and clicking a 'save template' button. After which, all other factors (of appropriate type) would have the template in their build menus, easy way to get things going in a near area. Of course, with the SupCom style factory assist, you'd only really need to use the template on one of the new factories and then slave the rest, which makes the template less relevant anyways.
Yeah, it's not that the idea of Unit Templates is bad per say, but as you said, the greater flexibility and the fact that you don't need to set up queues for ALL your factories anymore. Mike
