eSports?

My main point is the small sizes of units in SupCom are unnecessary, if we make the units bigger, and tweak the projectile speeds and perhaps some aoe, the gameplay could still mostly stay the same, and the units will be easier to distinguish, and their movements will look better.

Ah, right, my bad.
But don't forget, as the unit sizes increase, the relative planet size decreases, thus reducing the overall scale of the conflict. The trick will be in finding a balance in scale and speed so that the units are visible and the game isn't too slow.

Also remember that the only time this really was an issue in FA was when you were close enough to really see the units. Since the game was mostly played zoomed out, the perceived scale to speed issue was minimal.

I feel the ratio of travel speed/map size is the most important factor of scale, perhaps that's one of the reasons why not many people think SupCom has much bigger maps than OTA.
And although the unit size/map size and the unit size/unit range are also important factors, it seems the travel speed/unit size plays a role in scale too, people usually tend to feel the things with a higher ratio of travel speed/size are smaller things, like fleas or flies, even though they are supposed to be giant robots.

I dont want to start a discussion again, but I need to remember you people that this view is not shared by everyone here. GPG tried it with SupCom2, and the scale just sucked.

I kinda want unit scales to be more like TA then supcom, with units being the size of real tanks, then the supcom units the size of country's.

well let them be sized correctly in relation to the PLANETS and you cant even see them

Well within reason :lol:

Let me shine the light on some people who haven't paid enough attention while playing TA or Supcom FA.

Unit movement in these games can be split into two categories: Strategic(placement of squads on the map) and tactical(micro of units in individual battles)

You want a game where unit speed for the same unit optimizes both strategic and tactical movements. This is one of the main areas where TA and Supcom FA succeeded.(as has been previously mentioned on this thread)

This optimization is achieved by choosing the correct ratio of unit size to map size.

For the tactical movement you want a unit speed, where in a small corner of the map ~100 units can comfortably fit(unit size) and do battle, where their unit speed is fast enough that the battlefield isn't actually separate battles, and units are able to make an impact everywhere.

For strategic movement you want a unit speed, where squads of unit take minutes to get from one place on the map to another(size of the map).

You can see that both of the above optimizations contain unit speed, while unit size and map size are the two separate parameters to optimize.

The above is of course a simplification of the actual combat, there are a number of other parameters that affect this balance. For example weapon range can greatly affect the size of the battle field.

This optimization process is beautifully illusetrated if you look at navy vs land vs air in Supcom FA.

Air units are fast and their battlefield is basically the entire map.

Land units are slow with short ranged weapons and have engagements in small subsets of the map.

Naval units are extremely slow and are confined to a particular terrain, but their weapons are long range.

Look at how this affects micro of units: Air(split second decisions, hit and run), Land (Positioning, and micro on the second time scale), Naval (positioning and taking advantage of unit ranges)

All of this is depth, that is there to explore when you play TA or Supcom FA. This is the depth that is non existent in most other RTS games and the depth that was lost in Supcom 2.

In Supcom 2 tactical and strategic aspects of the game were merged into one. Don't do this in PA.

I am 100% confident that this is crystal clear in Mavor's mind, since the design of Supcom FA and TA is so awesome it couldn't have been an accident.

Exactly. At a certain point, the game will look very much like FA, probably to an even greater degree as you zoom out of the planet.

Here's something pretty cool to think about, if you haven't already. Go look at that PA metal world screen shot. See those bridges crossing the ravines? Imagine, for a moment, that those are about the size of Seton's Clutch.
Or, perhaps imagine that the smallest bridge you can see is one tank width, increasing the scale vastly. It's still darn impressive.

The point is that with either of these sizes, the scale is still so big that we could keep everything exactly the same as FA, and it would be just fine.

That's why I am glad experiments are taking a backseat in this game, they were gratuitously sized.

How terrifying would a command sized Galactic/Universal Colossus be? The point when it fires and shreds an entire army that's how.

TA has a lower ratio of travel speed/unit size than FA, and the ratio of travel speed/map size is the same if not lower, and it works fine, hundreds of units could still sit at a small corner, they just need to be less spread out than in FA.
And "separate battles" exist in real wars, and exist on the larger maps in TA or FA when a group of units are too far away to another group of units, actually, I think one of the main characters of TA-like RTS is the reinforcement is harder and battles are more "separate" than in other rts games.
But they are not really separate as long as one battle's outcome will affect other things, real separate battles can not exist in a RTS game unless the different parts of a map are completely disconnected.

I am a huge LoL fan, and I'd like to point out that LoL has an RPGish metagame (the Summoner Spells, the Runes and Masteries setup pregame, and the Champion selection itself), features at least two ways to play each Champion (and that's per game), and is built centered around one concept like DOTA, Heroes of Newerth, and Demigod: PvP. LoL does this through an unranked matchmaking queue and ranked queue.

If you honestly are not that great at the game, you can still play unranked games with your friends for the fun of it.

If you think you're the next TheRainMan there are thousands, if not millions, of other players who are willing to challenge that statement on the field of battle.

And as the recent MLG and LoL World Championships have demonstrated, not only does competitiveness breed itself but those Koreans be crazy good.

I am actually expecting that Planets in PA in normal games will be very small in comparison to the units. It will definitely needs testing, but I think a size were a unit on the metal-planet-screen (I have it right here to my left ^^) is maybe a 8x8 pixels big might work out, with smaller planets having units at the size of one of the smaller bridges as you said and bigger planets being well bigger, I guess there will be no hard limit. You might aswell make a planet that can have 3 units on it before it is filled.

You mean like an asteroid?

Without reading the whole thread, my thoughts:

Supreme Commander Vanilla and FA would have been great esports titles. And for those who played competitively it actually was. Even now there are tourneys going on in FAF. So I think PA will be as competitive as FA. It will turn out, what game mode will be best for 1v1, 2v2 3v3 tournaments. Probably not those maps with 40 planets and unit travel time of 10 minutes or more... xD

The reason why SupCom was not really picked up by esports communities (leagues and such, just my opinion): when it came out it was advertised like this...

• epic games of 2 hours
• epic games with 1000 units of 2 hours and more
• epic games with eco building of 2 hours

its true this is possible in supcom on certain maps, but noone did advertise the fast paced 1on1. Ask TheLittleOne, who is now one of the best Starcraft players. I think I recall him saying something like that SupCom is quite competitive, but simply wasnt advertised for it.

I guess the developers really love the epic games and SupCom was majorly made for them, you can see that from the carriers, the main function of those units (mobile fueling) is not very useful unless the map is really big.
I don't understand why we can't have a E-sport with longer gaming time, there are many traditional sports that take hours to play.

I wish carriers could build units while moving like in SC2, seems silly considering what could have been with the moving factory's in this game.

Possibly have a distinction between carrier borne aircraft and land borne ones so carriers don't replace traditional factory's.

well esports in gaming is fast paced, not only ingame but the whole system. most 1on1 tournaments have to take place on one evening, as its hard to get players to play over a long period of time (if there is no money involved). and tbh, soccer is quite boring sometimes xD

And i remember 2v2 tournaments where some games took >1hour, where everyone else was finished and bored xD

I would not judge the whole game based on a single mostly broken unit. The changes made to FA in comparison to vanilla also heavily favored rather fast-paced game with lots of action on small to medium maps. From that I would rather say that the people in charge of balancing there were trying to make ladder play more interesting and they did a VERY good job.

yeah and they are all so extremely boring for the most part

It might be due to consistency of the content.