What's your biggest worry about this game?

As long as it is because of the game mechanisms related stuffs, not some fancy graphic effects, I don't mind high system requirements.

Designing a game to work on technology that was obsolete 5 years ago is equally tragic. Future proofing a game that you want to have stick around for a while is good.

However, a disturbing trend of late is just how ineffective performance options can be. A game run on "low" settings more often than not needs the same $300 CPU as the same game run at max performance. Many game options can't even bridge a single generation of hardware, or have such pathetic yet demanding low settings that previous generation titles put it to shame. The problem has more to do with crappy performance options and bad code, rather than some seckrit PC obsoleting agenda.

There will ALWAYS be new hardware that is better and cheaper, to make any game run better. Computers that can do more should be given more demanding options to improve the game experience. Your master race theory is both unfounded and childish.

As PC titles go SC2 was a failure as it only really catered to the console market and ignored to requests of its player base.

Now as for childish, I've been playing PC games since I was a child (30 + years) and the one thing that always stood out about PC games was the specialized hardware needed to run some of the most advanced games. Now according to you this is unrealistic but what you fail to realize is that this specialization is what made possible the games and computers that are available today. Granted this left some people (like you) unable to play but the end result was that it drove the industry to create advanced products and tools having a profound impact on the entertainment industry as a whole.

But hell.... who needs all that advancement, its not like anything useful came from it, like the internet, 3d movies, data networking or VOIP. We'd rather just live without all these cool advancements, come to you house and hang out while you play with your crappy computer.

And oh... If there was a PC master race I'd sure as sh!t cleanse your dumb arse!

Resin_Smoker (Part of the PC master Race)

A classic response from someone who obviously doesn't have the luxury of paying bills.

LOL right! I've the luxury of working for a living just like everyone else. However unlike you I know how to handle my finances and thus I can later afford a few toys for the computer.

Personal request: igncom1 please quit b!tching about the gaming requirements being too steep for your broke arse, move out of your parents house and get a real job. Maybe then you'll have a few bones left over to buy a computer from this decade.

BTW: Did you know that there are color monitors available now that don't use tubes? You can give up your monochrome one to the Smithsonian for a rather profound upgrade. Unless of coarse your color blind, in which case keep it and let the good times roll.

Resin

Elitism at its finest.

And insults from the 90's! How you do spoil me.

You deserve no less!

Resin

From that I guess we can agree to disagree.

A gentleman's agreement to leave this on a higher note?

With technology advancing, the budgets for game development are also getting bigger and bigger, as a result, the publishers have to cater the casual players more and more, that might be one of the reasons that some hardcore genres such like RTS are in decline, which harms PC gaming a lot.

That's where your wrong... Money sets the tone of the development cycle as easily shown by the PA Kickstarter backing. (more $ = greater dev time) Also consider that "catering" to more players refers to providing support to multiple platforms. This takes time, money and usually means that the whole game must be developed to support the weakest platform of the group. (Perfect Example: SC2) Casual players IMO should stick to I-Phone games where depth and critical thinking are not required as I didn't pay a premium price to play a watered down "casual" game.

Here's a question for you:

Q: Why is it that Console gamers and PC gamers don't play against each other if they have the same title?

A: Most often PC players will have the edge both in performance and control-ability. Thus you'll never see a game of Modern Warfare between two platforms as the console players will have their collective arses handed to them. Thus the result of which is that the console players will either cry foul, demanding a Nerf of PC systems or console players will become PC players in mass after realizing the extent of which they're out classed.

To this day I can't think of single successful console game that can be played as an even match its PC equivalent. Hence the titles released today do not offer multi-platform support as this would high light the weakness of the console system as a gaming platform. The major software houses realized situation long ago and have gone to great lengths to avoid this as it's not something they want known.

Resin

Sorry for my bad english if I used the wrong words, I mean the games nowadays cost more money to make because of the more detailed graphic etc, so cater to the smaller customer groups become more risky, and the PC gaming crowd is smaller and a bit more hardcore than the console one, so I think the technology advancing might played a role in the decline of PC gamning, If we want to revive the PC gamning, we might need more low budget games, which tend to have lower system requirements.
It seems PA, just like the most low budget games, will not require a very powerful system to run. It has pretty simple graphic, the huge amount of units and a lot of physic simulation are not anything we haven't seen in a Spring game, the terrain system will be quite advanced but that's it.

I don't think you understand balancing. A well balanced game should have more strategic options.

I pretty much agree with you here... I would always enjoy RTS games back when I played ones such as Total Annihilation, Starcraft 1, much of the older C&C series (Red Alert series particularly), C&C Generals, etc. The thing I really enjoyed the most about these was that you did not have to be an expert player with 534857 APM to play the game and have fun.

With games such as Starcraft 2, for example, if you don't have a particular rush strategy planned out from the beginning, you lose. Period. If you accidentally have one of your SCV's die, you lose. If you dont move out to the next expansion point at exactly X minutes and X seconds into the map, game over. I really hate how RTS games have moved over to this new system... Sure you could do rushes in TA but if the other player knew what they were doing, they could have a decent anti-rush defense up in just as much time resulting in an epic battle and enjoyment. In SC2, defenses are a joke. In SC1, I could go Protoss and build myself up a nice base, defend myself, defend my allies, and depending on what the other player(s) were doing, change my strategy accordingly. On top of that, I could do the same with the other races!

Even EA took the wrong turn when they came out with C&C 3 Tiberium Wars... Multiplayer on that is just as much of a joke as Starcraft 2 is.

Personally, I believe that there are two games in particular that should be looked at on how to approach the design for this one (mostly for ideas... not necessarily to use THAT style). They are C&C 3 Tiberium Wars Kane's Wrath and C&C 4 (Yes, I said it... C&C 4... that horrible catastrophe that EA actually published...).
With C&C 3, Kanes Wrath, EA introduced what I thought was something that could have been the best thing ever if they had of actually completed it. Global Conquest. There were several reasons why this was a complete failure. First off was I do not believe you could save your game in this mode at first. Secondly, you could not play against other people.

Basically this game-mode was Risk. C&C Style. You had positions on the map and basically deployed into them and fended off/conquered the AI's bases until you assumed global domination against the other factions/players.

There were several elements that made this great. When you would go to attack another player's position, you would have two choices. You could let the AI do all the work for you and battle it out automatically OR you could actually go in and control the base yourself and play the actual map/game. This would get very interesting because when you would have a case where you have a lower tier base versus a higher one, or where you may be severely outnumbered, you could actually stand a chance and do the impossible.

Now... why did I say or even dare mention C&C 4... As much as I HATED the horrible, pack your base up, fight with your base, etc. etc. etc. system, it may have some potential with other applications. In the case of PA, one could have their super base (lets say a continent's worth of units/structures) and pay a fee to have it packed up into a mobile package that you can send (maybe for an additional distance fee) (or even have it be a user-controllable ship that can be put anywhere) across the galaxy to another planet in need. Once it gets there, unpack, place the structures that are to be deployed, and bam. Same concept but EXTREMELY improved over the crap in C&C4... Of course in no way should this be implemented into the actual gameplay/battles on any level beyond transit/defending the 'vehicle' along the way, escorts, etc. imo.

I hope this helps and I will post the actual idea in a more appropriate thread as well.

Isn't the idea that you build units to defend yourself?.........And that the best defense is a good offense?

The most newbies want to survive longer before they can think about winning, it's a part of human nature, and that's why so many newbies play the rts games defensively.
I'm not saying the game should promote turtling, but perhaps the newbies should not be defeated too fast in a match, or the multiplayer games would be unfun for them.

I have said this before but, that's where power costing defenses come in right?

Good players beat bad players, that's how it works generally. You can't be a chess master and expect to have a good match with a total newbie. That's just not how mastery curves for games work. One of the things you can do to allow for a wider competitive range for each person is if there is some sort of handicap system that can help balance things out so people of different skills can still have a good match. There are different ways of doing that. For a game like Go a simple stone advantage works well, for PA it might be something like units costing slightly more or something like that.

As for the bickering about machine power and upgrading and all that crap, I have one word: SCALABILITY. Have an older system you can still play the game but you're going to be more limited while people with better systems will be able to crank up the settings, play on bigger maps, and with more units. Also the server/client model can help out on that front too some. I remember when I first got TA and was playing on a dinky little 16mb map and I still had fun. Then when I could play on a more powerful map I was able to play on the 32mb and 64mb maps and with more units. It was cool like that, I could still play the game with my dinky Pentium 100mhz system or whatever exactly it was I had then, but when I could start playing on like 300mhz+ systems I could scale things up, it was great. This game is going for the same thing.

I have a few minor concerns, like the 3d map style map inhibiting good changes in elevation. The demo was rather flat with little blocks dispersed, but I expect that to change. And just how having the 3d map style will effect control and visibility mechanics.

I also hope the game's economics won't be like SupComm (I never played FA) because that game was just a huge fail in my book and I think how the economy worked was a good part of that. I didn't play that game for long because it had too many problems and things I didn't like.

But on the whole I have no major concerns for the game. The team seems pretty competent and like they're sticking more towards what made TA awesome than to how other games are done. Let's just make sure air dog fights are great. TA air battles make games like Starcraft calling their units 'air' units kind of look silly because they're just all floating blimps in comparison.

It's early in the process so it's hard to be too worried about anything at this point until you start seeing developments on the game that give a better idea of how things are heading.

Asynchronous network model is a really great thing, if you don't have a powerful machine, at least you can try to find a powerful server, the server side could be a spectator so you could still play singleplayer games with that.
Good players beat bad players in all games, but in Go at least you would still need many steps to defeat a newbie, unlike in some rts games you could defeat a newbie by the first several units you built in several minutes, which might be not long enough to have fun for them.

I don't see how it is fun to just demolish people, there is no challenge in it, seems almost sadistic.

And thus the gaming gods bestowed upon us......

Matchmaking!

Mike