Wreckage blocking unit movement

I say no.
It doesn't really add anything to the game except frustration, since battle areas become littered with obstacles and therefore rather risky to advance through, since you get slowed down and more spread out.
It makes it rather unattractive to play with land units and it imo doesn't add anything fun to the game, just realistic deadweight.

N.O.

At least no for smaller units.. Maybe yes for Huge units..
Still, this feature do not add anything good to the gameplay.

I my opinion it would just add frustration to have units trying to path through a maze of obstacles. If there are experiments or in general very large units I would be okay with their remains blocking movement (or better yet exploding into a glorious fireball).

I voted no, because I hate to see a huge land army getting defeated by a small outpost...just because they get stuck in each other. That might not happen with up to date pathfinding routines, but that is what happened in TA all the time. Micro your whole army well or they will get destroyed without even shooting properly at the enemy. That's frustrating and annoying. Especially with chokepoints, this was just a bad joke in some games.

But I do want to see working walls and large wreckages. It wouldn't make sense to have a Galatic Collosus get destroyed and then having a Flea walk through that monster. If we can have good pathing, so ground troops will work properly, I'm fine with wreckages blocking units. But I do not want to have a micro festival just to attack a small outpost with a huge army. It doesn't make sense in a RTS to send less units to make the attack more effective, especially in a RTS which is supposed to be awesome and epic.

Really the only way for this to work would be if units could push wreckage out of the way. I think walking units should be able to move "through" wreckage, to simulate their walking over it, and rolling units should simply push it out of the way. This kind of physics processing could be very taxing on our systems, however. Remember, that adds a lot more simulation to an already simulation-heavy game.

I started a gratuitously detailed poll for wreckage, just to help consolidate this thread's info

I'm in favor of blocking wreckage on principle, but it has the potential to severely bog down land campaigns.

So, my 'Yes' vote is a conditional one. If there's a good way to deal with wreckage strewn areas, whether that be walking over it, having bulldozers, or something else, then yes. If not, then no, wreckage should not be blocking.

I like this idea;

That said, again, if your huge army is defeated by a small outpost because your idea of "strategy" is to just stuff your army down a canyon pass... then, you fail as a commander ... and you shouldn't be calling foul because of unit wreckage.

If unit wreckage is really such a hot button issue, it should block unit movement by default, but have an option to be turned-off when starting a game.

Let's see... this is kind of a hot issue .

In custom TA maps with forest plus wreckage, (go explore TAUniverse.com and be amazed by the awesome community maps) units would get hopelessly stuck in TA. And don't think "better pathfinding methods" will solve the problem: a large amount of small units trying to traverse a field of small obstacles is still a nightmare to solve for any pathfinding algorigthm.

If you can zoom out like in Supcom, the problem would become even worse because your try to order your big group of units around while zoomed out and you don't understand why they don't all follow. Lesson learned: in a strategic game, obstacles must be of a strategic scale.

On the other hand if you wanna favor the use of big units rather than the equivalent mass spent in a horde of small ones (experienced players always say huge experimental units are not worth it, blah blah), then small units getting stuck in wrecks while large units stomped through is a great mechanic. Krogoth wins in canyon because opposite team just can't align enough units on one front to seriously damage it.

Overall, to keep things at the strategic level, only huge wrecks should block movement, and small wrecks could create areas where units move slower. Wrecks can still block shots, or provide an overall cover bonus vs incoming fire.

4th option, it depends on the size of the wreckage.

Small stuff no, robots will just tramp all over it.

But, if blasts a battleship so hard it lands on the land, it should probably get in the way, just like large structure wreckage should.

i would hope the more modern path finding techniques in use, should eliminate the pains of TA. And they were very painful.

Slim

I think it should be a matter of gameplay, test it in alpha

IMHO wrecks should be destroyed when a unit goes over it, or just maybe if there will be experimental sized units, than I could see their wrecks as impassable, but still destructible. It would be cool if you would hold an attack in a choke point where enemy is attacking you and is leading his force with a very large unit (experimental or etc.), and after you destroy it, his other units can't get around it right away, but have to destroy the wreckage before they proceed. It could open some fun strategies in my opinion, but small wreckages shouldn't block movement, they should just get squashed by other units, or if that's to demanding just be left alone by the game

Wreckages that don't block is just weird. You can't not have wreckages because of the reclaim mechanic. The impact on the gameplay is quite unique and not bad at all. Pathfinding is of course no longer a problem. And even in TA you could simply blow up wrecks by shooting them.

I totally agree that larger units should be able to crush wreckages though.

And I don't see why bots and hover units could not step or drive over, depending on size.

Definitely not. Wreckage blocking things was cool, but it led to excessive turtling.

When I did my own mod of TA, I took the unit collision off of wreckage, which turned out to still block shots. That worked out a lot better. It was much easier to path units, but preserved the advantage ballistic-firing units had.

Definitely Yes! Wreckage blocking things was cool, and it allowed turtling to be a viable opition.