Please allow for simcity!

We have the path finding devil again. Even though lots of games do this and they don't have a problem and PA probably has a pahtfinding system that is miles ahead of supcom 2 and certainly of TA.

Building placement should matter. I don't like just spamming buildings around.

For those people who just answer "no", please elaborate.

I already did. If you want to block units, build walls and dragon's teeth. That's what they're there for.

Shitty gimmicks like supply depot walls are not needed and add nothing but frustration.

And if you don't want your building to block, just put a space between them, that what space is for

LOL SimCity.

I think it should come down to a matter of practicality. Factories need space around them for the units they are building (but perhaps the factories dont need to be as huge as they are in SupCom). Wind Generators and point defenses need some space around them. But other resource generators, storage and other such things could be butted up against each other...

Because it's irritating as hell when units get stuck in a base. SupCom had a good solution which worked well in most cases. It's still possible to get your base clogged up in SupCom but it's nowhere near as bad as TA was. Asking to go back to TA's system is akin to asking for no strategic zoom - backwards progress because you got used to playing in a way to compensate for a deficient system.

If somebody doesn't like strategic zoom I'm not stopping them removing the wheel from their mouse, and likewise if you want to block units use walls. Don't try to force inferior gameplay mechanics on everybody else.

People are speaking about building, not wreckage. You're just out of context.
If you get stuck between building in your base, you're doing it wrong.
If you can't destroy ennemi building, you're doing it wrong.

Wreckage and strategic zoom are discussed in ohers topic. You should post there.

Just a flat no. Just go sandbox and build what ever you want....

By the way, I really don't understand the connection with simcity.
It's just asking to be flammed

I dont see why there should be extra reserved space around a building so its impossible to clog up your base. It makes no sense for a 50 by 50 meter building to need 70 by 70 meters.

Yeah, there are a few people who are missing the point. Would you rather:
- Be able to make your base exactly how you want it and risk the consequences, or
- Have buildings place down a larger footprint to avoid blocking

The former probably requires more micromanagement when placing things, which may be annoying when building interplanetary infrastructure. Instead, with the latter, dedicated 'blocking' structures would fill the need for that.

Allowing yourself to make your own layout benefits your ability to make walls with anything. An inherent spacing of buildings benefits pathfinding. IMO, pathfinding is more important here, mostly for the AI.

Also, a different thread name would probably be for the best

Most of the replies so far seem to be revolved around clogging in your own bases. Well, if there was a config option that sets minimum clearance when you place buildings, would that not make everyone happy? Everyone sets it to whatever they want, the computer players would probably use a non-zero setting.

Why does there need to be a config file? Players can just put buildings down and choose to make a space. AIs can put spaces in their algorithm if they want.

In TA people used buildings to protect their base. Dragons teeth were too time consuming to build much in competitive games so people used solar panels around their vulnerable metal extractors, or metal storage around their Big Bertha cannons.

There would also be plenty of fun playing cat and mouse with the Commander in the early game. You could try and keep your attacking flash tanks on the opposite sides of buildings so he couldn't d-gun you without blowing up his own structures.

As much as I enjoyed this aspect it would probably seem a bit clunky in a modern RTS. It was kind of nice that buildings and the wreckage they left behind functioned as cover though.

Not a file, but in the UI options menus.

A setting of 0 emulates 'simcity' and gives you the most flexibility, assuming you don't make mistakes when clicking. If you slip up slightly with your mouse aim you might get annoyed. Some people may play at hectic speed or from really zoomed out, and adding more mouse precision to a strategy game seems silly when it is easily fixed. That's why I suggested that the UI be able to handle that spacing for you if you so desired. The choice to leave how much space is still there, just optionally done ahead of time rather than with every building placement.

I'm kind of confused as to why you think I was talking about wreckage, it's not even implied. I'm talking about buildings being too close together for units to get through.

Not automatically spacing out buildings complicates the click+drag "build several buildings in a line" feature by requiring that you manually increase the sparsity if you want space in between the buildings.