Planets: square or spherical?

obviously there are different opinions of that, and of course its on Uber to decide, or at the alpha testers. Maybe even several options can be introduced, that players can decide if they rather use a minimap, or a transparent view or something else.

If the dual hemispheres minimap is rotatable like a free camera, it might be a lot more confusing than a reversed view, if it is fixed, then using it to keep the track of a battle that happens on the edge of the hemispheres would be tiring, half of the battle is on this side, and the other half is on the other side.
And I think recognizing that a object's back side would be mirrored if it turn around isn't hard, maybe even easier than recognizing a split view.

It is indeed a matter, but it might be not a big matter as long as the players can click things on the back sides, and be able to transfer the camera to anywhere quicklly, like scrolling in SupCom or tab in Spring.
But perhaps the players should have a way to switch between this kind of camera and free camera, free camera might be indeed a lot more handy when you need to manage things on poles, but it is confusing if you want to know something's position.
Maybe a dual hemispheres minimap could use this kind of switch too, but I still think the minimaps would be problematic cause the mentioned troubles about UI design.

Personally I'm super-excited for the concept of a spherical battlefield. No longer will you be able to use The Black (as a browncoat would put it) as an impenetrable moat to back yourself into. No longer will you be forced to have your air units take ridiculous routes (and in the case of SupComm, exploiting movement to get them to fly through The Black just to get around the wall of defenses. You will now be vulnerable from all directions and this will really change how people play.

Is there any real reason from a technical standpoint that would stop this, or why we'd go for 'square map wrapped around a sphere'? Or is it just hard simply because it's different from anything we've seen before?

Mapping cube to sphere

You could allow the player to recenter the mini map so if your opponent builds near the seam you can simply shift the mini map so his units are once again clustered and easy to see.

For what it's worth here's a visualization of my strategic zoom/minimap idea.



Should be pretty self explanatory: when units leave the top of the square map they enter the rim of the north polar circular map, and the same goes for the south pole. This way you can hopefully limit distortion to a level players can learn to manage.

I know it looks hacky but is there any better way to combine spherical planets with strategic zoom? You have to cut a few corners, natch.

As for the interface question of how you enter the strategic map, I agree with the poster who wants a way to see all the planets in full 3D. So I suggest making the strategic 2d map entirely separate from the 3d map. You can't get to the strategic map by zooming out normally, you have to press a special key, maybe 'S' for 'Strategic Zoom'. If you zoom out normally you just get to a 3d solar system overview, great for watching planets collide but not for strategizing.

I guess I can make the camera style that I mentioned less limited and much better on poles.

If a player's camera got across the poles, then its binding to the local axis should be turned up side down, the bottom would faces the north pole.
There should be a certain key to invert the camera angle, the players can use that as an adjustment.

I think this is better than a free camera with a adjustment key, cause the angle would only changes in limited situations, and the way it changes is monotonous.

Imagine an aircraft on patrol between Australia and Antarctica jumping about all over the shop in that example.

Furthermore this might work for individual spheres but how do you make it work with multiple spheres?
It is a bunch of these 2D peeled sphere sprites but no information on their relative positions to one another or giant icon covered '%' floating in 3D space and potentially orbiting each other?

Frankly an all-encompassing mini-map view of solar system is next to impossible, even with translucent spheres (the best option IMO) you will get occlusion issues.

I think some sort of CCTV video-wall approach is the only one that will work combined with some relatively unobtrusive proximity/in-coming alarms. E.g. flash the window containing new enemy activity and/or units moving on an intercept with yours.

Yes? I don't see the problem, you can still clearly see where it is.

How about several icon covered '%', static, together filling most of the screen, over a 2d space background, with indicators of distance and orbital relationships?

To be honest all those ideas sound insufficient to me. The whole point is to get strategic zoom at the same time as spherical planets. Civ-style 2d planets would be a big letdown for me and many others (for one you would lose the 'nowhere to hide' aspect), so how can you get an accurate overview of a sphere, and of several spheres simultaneously? That's the question. The CCTV wall is already confirmed but that frankly doesn't give you anything like strategic zoom. Translucent planets are out for the reason you said, and in my estimation it would just be messy as hell. (Not that translucent planets shouldn't be in the game, it would be a nice option)

My idea gives you:

-Overview of everything at once. Most important of all!
-Obvious equator and poles. You don't get confused as you might with a free scrolling minimap; everything is where you'd expect on an Earth map.
-Limited map distortion. AFAICS the only reason a straight 2d projection is unacceptable is because of the distortion making it so you can't see what's going on at the poles. Hopefully Uber will not rule out any kind of distorted map but consider options with limited distortion.

Of course I would prefer a more elegant solution that provides all of these. Can you think of any?

How the strategic system view might work:



No more wasted space, it's all information now. Can you see what's going on? (Red started on Mars, Orange started in the Americas and spread to Africa. Red took advantage of Mars' lower gravity and built a base on Luna, from which he invaded Eurasia. Now they fight in the Middle East.)

It might be cluttered if you list the numbers of each unit type but I'm sure something can be worked out. The most important info is probably resource output and factories - you should be able to give orders to a planet's whole industrial complex from this screen.

World attributes probably need to be simplified for game purposes. Atmospheres for terrestrial (not gas giant) planets could be divided into 'none' (Luna), 'trace' (Mars), 'thin', 'medium' (Earth), 'dense' and 'superdense' (Venus). This would affect solar power output, and superdense atmospheres would slowly crush units. You could reduce the atmosphere by one level with some terraforming structure or a sufficiently powerful impact. There could also be an attribute for hazardous conditions like Venus' acid rain. Temperature can also be simplified to a half dozen levels, which you can increase with impacts, nukes, thickening the atmosphere, or moving the planet into a closer orbit. (This kind of terraforming may be too much - but it would be cool!). To save space you could change 'distance from primary', 'surface temperature', 'surface area' and 'ocean coverage' into 'orbit', 'temperature', 'area' and 'ocean' respectively.

I'm assuming asteroids are defined by being too small to build anything except a few special structures. May be wrong on that.

I do think there should not be distinct world types for planets and moons, as this would make the game feel needlessly restricted. I mean, gas giants could have life-bearing moons bigger than earth. So Luna and Mars are the same class with all the same attributes, the only difference being one is a satelite.

(Am I the only one who's really, really looking forward to playing in our solar system? )

I think that's as good as we're going to get. I can deal with a distorted minimap so long as the world is a proper sphere.

I can understand why most of you demand and highly enjoy minimaps that display all information at once, because frankly they simplify managing your own units and reacting to your opponent.
But what if you remove that function? Will you be at a tactical disadvantage?
No. In fact, you gain an advantage. Sure you won't know your opponent's plan, but he won't know of yours as well! Sure he can trick you, but you can trick him too!
However hard it will be on you, your opponent is in the same position.
Wanna know what that is called? Fog of war. A FEATURE in some, if not all, games!
Instead of embracing the natural emergence of a fun element in strategy games, some of you cry cause it makes the game harder.

But hey, information is one of the most important and fundamental resources in war. Withouth information, you will most likely lose. You need information, but it surely does not need to come in the form of a minimap.
Yes, Uber repeatedly explained one important aspect to PA: "We are not shooting for realism, we are shooting for awesome."
Doesn't mean we shouldn't borrow from reality, as any game does actually, however much simplified in the end.
How do we, here on our planet, deal with information gathering on a global scale?
We use drones in high-altitude and satellites in orbit as spies.
Drones and satellites. Sounds like new units to me. Very fitting ones for a game that wants a global, even solar scope.
Want intel? Build drones, now the planetary view shows enemy units.
Want a map? Build a satellite, shoot it into (stationary) orbit, now you get a partial minimap of a certain area. (Since it's partial, any distortion is insignificant.)
Best part. They could even come in different flavors. Some work in the visual spectrum. Others show heat-maps. Yet again others are sensitive to all sorts of radiation occuring in powerplants and factories.
"But wut about dem astroids?"
Simple. How do we observe the sky? With telescopes! Ground and orbital ones. Shoot up a Hubble and it automatically scans the sky, whenever an asteroid comes dangerously near, it alarms you of it. Then you can react. (Big things aimed for earth are easy enough to detect, once they are close enough, that is.)

Also it baffles me how many of you think transperant planets are alright and easy to handle, but simply clicking and dragging to see the other side is complicated and strenuous. Sure you need to move your hand, that's so much more diffucult to seeing a clutter of icons and symbols. (Not that it shouldn't be a function in the game.)
Planets allow you such different tactical applications, new ways to move and react. I guess it's to hard on some guys, who are just so used to 2d maps, they think anything new and different is bad and fundamentally flawed?

Ah, in the end I incoherently ranted more than anything else. Less against maps and more about how to implement information gathering. But I would say the three-fold guy above me presented the solution easiest on the brain, if one wanted a global map.

I don't know if your ideas would work, but by Jove, they're awesome!

abtesk with that reasoning you could argue away multiple unit selection.

The 3-segment minimap has a lot of wasted space. I think by this point I would have to try out some minimaps and see how they work. There is probably something that would work although even if there wasn't I would not want to compromise the spherical nature of the planet just to make it fit to a minimap.

If there's anything that noob RTS players HATE it's the idea that they can't curl into a defensive ball in a corner of a map and not last 5 minutes without dying.

If you could be attacked for any direction at any time every new RTS player would throw their toys out of the pram and say the game was full of cheap rushing cheaters, or enforce 10 minute build times and then complain that people attacked them before they were ready.

People need a certain comfort zone and I think square/rectangular maps are kind of necessary just so people don't have TOO many things to worry about. There's only so much complexity you can put into an RTS and when you add it in one area you kind of need to remove it elsewhere to stop the learning curve from being too horrifying for novice players. Spherical maps would be confusing as hell.

Honestly, I think abstek is right. Why the crap do we really need a super-advanced minimap? It didn't take long for the minimap in SupCom to become a cluttered mess.

Yeah, as I said, in the end it was more of a rant. It just annoys me how some people want to throw out a feature of PA, actual planets, for something as minimaps, or rather, just because they aren't nice and square and easy to read.

Nope, the one reason why I want this game to succeed.
On the planet-types: I sure hope Venus-type planets are part of one of the stretch goals. Trying to survive on a planet where the atmosphere tries to constantly erode you into scraps sure is adventurous. (Though some kind of advantage would be necessary to go there in the first place.)
Also your division in types of atmosphere is the right way to go. One of the discerning factors for planets, besides gravity, is the atmosphere. Only planetoids with atmospheres have erosion, thus are theoretically harmful to you in the long run. If you wannt more realism.

You can probably surround it with even more useful information. Like shortcuts to all factories on that planet.

I really can't agree. Spherical maps is one of the game's unique selling points. We already have eleventy billion RTS with flat maps, why Kickstart one more? For me spherical maps is right up there on the 'essential' list.

And AFAIK a good player can beat a turtler in any RTS. Expanding to grab resources has always been the best strat. So I'm not really seeing the added difficulty either. If you want to turtle you can still play vs newbies or the AI.

I think lack of a minimap/overview wouldn't really make the game more fun as much as more hard to manage. You could still theoretically keep track of everything, you'd just have to keep skipping back and forth between all the different views. In the end it would reward the player with the highest APM. That's the opposite of what the devs intend.

In the end it's about making the game as good as it can possibly be. That means finding a way to have both the best feature of Supcom, strategic zoom, and the best feature (indeed, for many the central value proposition) enabled by the new interplanetary scope, spherical battlefields.

I'm sorry but that is horribly unintuitive.

Bear in mind we need to rotate, or orbit the camera around the planet. Not vice versa, otherwise that'd create a lot of problems

So do we have dev confirmation either way? Are they still locked into square planets? It's a pretty big deal for me... :|