Some changes in how we use PTE

TA's terrain was a 2d picture with a hight map.

PA uses 3d models on the map terrain, that doesn't always blend well with flow field path finding.

TA's technology even back then had horrendous path finding issues.

Sometimes it's the opposite. You are only bottle necked on energy when lack thereof does not allow you to efficiently spend the metal income.

With this map you could spend all the metal on the entire half of the planet with a measly 8 power gens. Making your statement moot.

Vehicle pathing in TA was the devil, so was it in FA. So far we've traded realistic motion for playability with large numbers of units, and I think it's a good trade.
Also, if you take a 2d picture and give it a third dimension, the height map, doesn't that make it a 3d image?

Not in the pathfinding sense. For heightmapped terrain, pathing is 2d, with the slopes merely dictating go/no go areas. Pathing in PA is 3D; you can have bridges, overhangs and multi-level features, none of which are possible with heightmaps.

I am pretty sure you can click together something similar looking even with my version of the map editor by stretching existing brushes only in the z axis (so the height). I wonder if the default editor will allow people to change the size in all 3 dimensions independently from each other.

not enough metal ... so i take it you don't wan't scrap to matter ...
my biggest critic on players IS that they play with TOO much metalspots ... i have honestly to yet see a match were all mexxes were captured and players fight to capture enemy territory ... it was mostly bout getting your initial territory that was uncaptured max that out and "only" raid the enemy ... ... imho opinion if you want more tactics to matter then aside from propper terrain you better play with limited resources ... else it ends almost every time in a brawl with the occasional snipe ....

This couldn't be farther from the truth.

99% of the time the winning player has a greater economy due to superior tactics, raiding, and expanding.

If a player is constructing in enemy territory the match is already over.

You will not see uber players sitting back on their eco letting enemy expand hoping their death ball wins in a single push.

Just gonna throw my thoughts in since you're mentioning capital ships.

Capital ships can't travel between planets on their own, they should need orbital teleporters to do that.

Fighters and satellites still can travel between planets, give us a little more variety with orbital structures, like a long range slow rate of fire laser, and make avengers unable to effectively kill anchors.

This would force orbital to have more stable front lines, locked to where players are able to get teleporters up as their bases. make orbital less of a chaotic mess.

who ever said anything bout sitting back? it is because of the limited resources that you have to engage enemy territory and capture it ... it wouldnt be just greater eco but who manages his eco more efficient

Every time I see that picture I can't believe it's what people expected or wanted. It's a picture designed to fit in all the features of the biome into a tiny space, designed by an art team to look good not to play well. If a map was actually like that it would be a bloody nightmare, that thing is a maze! Could you imagine the frustration of trying to place factories?

PREACH IT QUITCH!

I wonder if we can overlap props,
I bet people want to make longer ridges to act as natural walls.

Fundamentally your concerns regarding "look good but not play well" and "that thing is a maze" don't make any sense because for all practical intents and purposes (unit pathing, building placement, etc.) the rock features depicted in the concept art function just like the shitty looking rock features we have in the game today. In fact, that concept art even alleviates "the frustration of trying to place factories" in a way that PA does not handle today, by allowing buildings to be constructed on the plateaus.

I mean seriously Quitch, did you even look at the screenshots at the beginning of this thread. Take a look at the first picture, up the top - or the second picture, left side. The number of rock features impacting both building placement and unit pathing is practically the same as what you see in that biome concept art...the main difference though: the biome art looks cool, what we have today looks shitty.

When it comes to the biomes in PA today, almost everything can be explained not by "the alternative looks good but doesn't play well" but rather "what is the laziest way you can tick a box to visually represent a particular biome concept". It's why lava looks like trash, it's why desert looks like trash, it's why the earth biome looks like trash. Same gameplay, 1/10 of the effort to create.

Um dude, what we have today has much, much better textures then that stuff.

That's pretty normal. Concept arts always look damn much better than the actual game. Their only purpose is to look good after all. I agree that in a kickstarter game the artists should've tried not to look too much better than the game, but the normal process for "advertisement" "screenshots"/concept art is to apply a massive amount of "look good" photoshop. It's not good, but nothing unusual and I guess artists are used to giving all they have when they make those concept arts, they are supposed to be the "this is what we are trying to achieve" images, fully knowing that a real game usually looks different.

EDIT:
Though honestly apart from the height of the plateaus I can't see a big graphical difference to the game we have today. Yes currently you can't build on the plateaus and they are not as big in the z-axis, but those are settings and from playing around with modding I know for a fact that PA can by now deal with both: Strechted height for brushes and the ability to place stuff on top of plateaus or even configure them so units easily walk up walls. Since we are about to get a map editor I would not be surprised to soon see planets that feature such terrain depth again.

Yep, fair point there. Saying what we have now looks "trash" is probably a bit unfair of me as well.

You're fast, notice my edit ^^

because supcom maps are realistic as f**k

i do not have one of those.