Polite request for Dev input

Hi Devs,

I've always been really impressed with your level of engagement with this community, as a long time lurker I am consistently awed with your patience!

At the moment I'm scanning the forums for info. on a couple of key questions I have and not finding clear answers from the guys that matter, so it would great to get a consolidated repsonse.

To the various mods/super fans/other interested parties, please don't copy paste links to your past discussions, share your own thoughts, etc, I've read them, I respect them, but I'm keen to ask the devs, and they can choose to answer or ignore of course, but it's them I'm hoping to hear from!

1 - Offline: are we talking days or weeks? What do you reckon?
2 - Server lag: I don't really mind DRM if it works (Diablo 3 worked 95% of the time), so even if you keep it, how long before lagless play is a reality do you think?

No problem if you don't want to / can't answer this right now, but I had to ask cos I like your game so much and can't wait to play it properly

1. Im sure its weeks, if it was days then they would have delayed the 1.0 release , so offline would be included

That depends on what you mean by "lagless". Lag is used to describe many different concepts.

I think he means dilation due to server-side lag. Hence his wondering about offline mode.

/QUOTE]
on how many units? Since PA has no hard limits you can always build enough tanks to make it lag
If I think back to my first games of SupCom, it had the same level of laggnies for ~500 units as PA. Difference is PA doesn't stop me from making much much more.

I imagine that they're working on the offline right now. And the server issue is so big guessing it'll be fixed by the end of the week.

I was under the understanding the really big server issue from last week is fixed already.

It's still far laggier than it should be. I think they fixed the number of games per server issue though.

All, thanks for your replies, but I really don't want this to turn into (or start to look like) a whingefest, or another thread full of various people's ideas about why things are the way they are. To the responses about definitions, I don't want to get pedantic about it, I'll leave it to the devs to interpret. I really would like to keep the thread clear of what can be found in every other thread about this type of thing.

I'm just keen to pose the questions to the devs and see what their response is, as their response is conspicuously absent right now. Happy if it's to ignore the question, that's fair enough, but still wanted to ask.

Also, I've never heard anything from the devs about the unit cannon, I've only seen people talking about how it should be in.

I don't even know what a unit cannon is, other than, perhaps a cannon that shoots units. I don't really see why that keeps cropping up as a demand.

I think that it is fair to say that the devs quite rightly won't be drawn on giving exact answers if they aren't sure, because it becomes a stick to beat them with if they miss the target date.

Most people imagine it'd help with orbital stale mates it seems.

The problem is, with some of the Steam comments and such, they are acting as if Uber isn't even working on it. They, for some reason, don't trust the quotes we post from older responses. Kind of infuriating.

Having been at PAX Prime and watched LOTS of Orbital wars, I can honestly say this: "What orbital Stalemate?"

Uber gave us lots of ways of ending the game in a non-stalemate fashion. The people who get in stalemates are either:
1. Not aggressively building and attacking.
or
2. Built a terrible planetary system for which there is no redeeming quality.

People and their imaginations...

'To the various mods/super fans/other interested parties, please don't copy paste links to your past discussions, share your own thoughts, etc, I've read them, I respect them, but I'm keen to ask the devs, and they can choose to answer or ignore of course, but it's them I'm hoping to hear from!'

So much for this request! I realise asking people to keep their views to themselves to see if the Devs will reply to a straightforward question without having to wade through endless random points is a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bunch of bulls, but please can people take their bull elsewhere? I really just want to see if this thread will get a clear Dev response, I don't want some endless off topic debate about the goddamn unit cannon, or which 'type' of lag is meant, etc!

I suppose it keeps the thread up the listings though....

It was in the original Kickstarter trailer and some of us (like this guy) were really excited at the prospect of launching units from a moon base down to a planets surface to fight an epic ground war. It was one of the reasons I backed the game so I'm seriously looking forward to seeing it implemented, especially since there needs to be more cool ways of moving armies to the front line (when said front line is on another planet).

The problem is you are asking "when" questins.

The devs have already said MANY times they either don't answer those, or answer them with "SOON"

...so the mods/super fans/other interested parties are about all your going to get. sorry.

Yes fair point, but I must admit, I don't think that's OK anymore. I backed the game, gave support and this is the outcome? Not even a 'hey guys, we know this sucks, it'll be done by x'. Rome, SimCity, Diablo 3 - all games with failed / controversial launches at least communicated. That Rome forum was a masterclass in dev PR, guys replying on Steam to every bitchy comment, it really calmed things down.

Not expecting the same engagement from a smaller team, but not expecting silence either.

Anyway, I think I have my answer now, it's an ignore, which is a shame. I'm going to go back to the Steam forums and see what action is being organised re. refunds, for me a buggy game with missing features and no timeline for correction = missale and I want my money back. May well buy again in future, but it's not like I risk losing my save games or anything if I uninstall!

It would allow you to invade other planets without needing a strong presence in the orbital layer or an already established beach head on the planet.