Structure Facing?

I haven't seen much/any discussion of this. What about the facing of structures? Will it all be aligned to some planetary axis (N/S or E/W)? Or will it be choosable? It seems like the globular nature of play fields will mess with this to some degree.

IMO, there should be a way to choose facing (click-drag to set structure facing then build perhaps), with a snap feature to nearby existing structures.

I'm failing to see a need.

Mike

Better factory roll-off would be my first use. Or, using FA as an example; using UEF or Sephy factories as giant plate of armour to block fire.

Positioning of buildings in a simulation allows for emergent tactics and shenanigans.

In Supreme Commander 2 there was a big problem with the naval factories, because the ships would always come from one predetermined side. As the pathfinding of naval units is abysmal, they would always get stuck for the uppermost player, because the units would always come out from the top of the factory. This gave opposing players huge advantage in some maps.

Wouldn't the easiest solution be symmetrical factories? So that the factory's rally point would determine the side from which the units are outputted. So you could use your factories as shields and simultaneously protect your units.

On the other hand those randomly generated maps could present some difficulties. It would probably be a good idea to let the players have the full 360* rotation of factories and all the other buildings.

I dont realy see a need for it if the game is even remotely like supcom (the naval factory being a exception).

But i sure wouldent mind having the function to face structures whatever way i wish, for aesthetic reasons if nothing else.

Need to figure out a solution? There's absolutely one. If nothing else, because playing fields are globes and that alone will mess with how things are oriented (what if it's N-S and player wants to build a ring of factories at the bottom of the planet for whatever reason?).

Need for customizable facing? What if you want your land factory rolloff ramps to point towards the battlefield you're facing? Or maybe a bunch of factories pointing towards a teleportation gate or rocket pad or something? Etc.

I've been thinking about the structure facing "issue" but it seems I don't have to create another thread for it.

Like others mentioned above, giving the player the power to change the direction a factory is facing, helps in maximizing the efectiveness of the exit path of a unit from the factory.

Say you're fighting North of your base, you place your factories with the exit facing north and your army doesn't have to go around the building to go north, they simply walk out and forward.

While this isn't a big issue on land units ( and not an issue at all in air units) Naval suffered (suffers) from it a lot.

A solution I've been thinking about is to change the design of the naval factories themselves. Picture a naval factory going underwater as soon as the ship is built. The ship can now rotate in place and go in any direction saving the time it takes to maneuver around the factory structure. Ship goes out, factory comes up and builds the next ship.

This is an idea for a problem that might not even exist. It depends on what's Uber vision for the naval warfare and what they can do/want to do in terms of structure placing freedom.

If nothing of the above appeals to you, think about the aesthetics. If for nothing else, the aesthetics would make it worth it.

I think the best naval factory design would be something like a plain platform that either just sinks when under construction or is always underwater, with construction elements limited to arms that fold under the platform when something debarks.

That's really up to Uber though.

A good way to control the facing direction would be to have a ring around the placement ghost as a boundary between stepped and unrestricted rotation. (the cursor position is of course used to determine the setting)
Steps could be for example 30° or maybe 15°...

45° would be all you ever need IMO. Honestly even 90° steps would be enough.

90° would be best as it also keeps the basic grid alignment.

Mike

I would rather try to design factory that doesn't need facing. Like factory with rotating assembly plate and four exit ramps (one as tunnel) in all directions. Unit being built and pre-rotated towards right direction.

If factories rotating is useful for something more than aesthetic purposes - it could result in a requirement to rotate factories for every player, which is bad thing. And if it's not useful for anything else - than why even bother?

Agreed. Removing the need for facing is a much better solution that requires less player micromanagement. For example, big base structures (or just factories) might be elevated with a "parking lot" pathable area underneath for friendly units. Units can drive out of the factory in any direction. And even drive through other factories on their way out of the base.

Alternate possible implementation- the bulk of the factory is underground, with a flat panel flush with the ground doing the construction, which units can simply drive off of in any direction, or path over freely.

Ideally we want the player to operate at a higher level of abstraction to allow for bigger games. Small features like facing of structures are not really that interesting. Even in SupCom/FA, facing of structures was not relevant enough to be worth the micro. The gains of changing facing would have been extremely marginal. Even the exact position of structures wouldn't be that relevant if it weren't for the adjacency bonuses for small gains.

Honestly, even the exact position of structures within a base is sort of irrelevant on a large enough map. Having a "base" abstract entity which you can order to make 10 factories and not really care where they go would be a further step upward in abstraction that would be preferable.

Give me proof that Planetary Annihilation will play more "massively" than prior games, that structure placement in the vein of classic RTS games would be too nuanced. I'm sick of people using the "massive" angle as an excuse in argument that certain game functions need to be retarded. Why not the game just play like the Civilization games, because those are arguably the most "massive" of all for representing the entire earth and recorded human history as the playing field.

You're right. They should also replace the whole UI with a single large button that says "build a million units and destroy the enemy while I watch."

The placement of buildings SHOULD matter because those factories are a long term investment that contribute to overall strategy.

Amen.

Placement of buildings on the map obviously matters. Does it really matter if a building is placed in a certain spot, as opposed to two feet to the left, however? Even on a 20km SupCom or FA map that doesn't really matter. Good players just drag lines of factories and power generators because it's not worth the actions to place them perfectly, even though there are actual adjacency resource bonuses (which hopefully PA will not include).

And the devs have said they want PA to be scalable to arbitrarily large maps. Rather like the old Total Annihilation Epic maps (which were STUPIDLY large)- and that game didn't work at ALL on such a large scale, because INFINITY STEALTH FIGHTERS, gg. The epic maps in TA are still fun though, despite being totally borked from a game design perspective.

I for one am hoping PA is designed to work on large maps. And I think the devs have actually said they want epic maps also. That is why I think this game will be "massive."

And I am getting really tired of this ridiculous argument of "oh then why not just let the AI autowin the game for you." The entire point is that players want to make the decisions. When I hear this argument, it makes me think of the idiots who must have once made the same argument in response to the suggestion that the AI fire units' weapons automatically, without the player having to order them to fire, or move closer to shoot.

I think PA has an advantage in regards to pretty much every other RTS in the fact that PA larger PA games aren't so much based on 1 map as much as a series of maps, so you can have a big system of planets for a big game, but much of the game play takes part is smaller "sections" so the gameplay should break down in the same was as you describe it did for TA.

Mike

You are changing topic. Question is - why you need structure facing at all. You may create most of structures symmetrical, so it doesn't matter how you face them (actually, most of structure are symmetrical or self-rotating in previous games of series). So, why you should implement factories (two types of four - land and sea) other way around AND implement special feature of structure facing JUST for factories?

In FA all land factories had three ramps to exit the factory and unit was placed towards right exit upon creation. You just need to improve this by adding fourth exit (as tunnel though factory structure, or panel going down and then unit rolling out from beneath the factory, or whatever else suggested by ledarsi) and make unit face right exit (towards rally point) during building process.

As for sea factory, one way is to make factory slightly underwater, with only few parts (on angles) above water (so it could be still hit by above-water units). Ships are being built in submersible (glass made, to visualize process ) dry-dock which could rotate during building phase.

Because I want complete control over how I position my structures, and simply letting players switch the orientation of structures you place, which should be a given in a fully 3d environment and simulated world no longer hinged to old limitations of 2d sprites, seems far more straightforward to implement than directing your art assets to making sh!tty looking factories just so they aesthetically can have exits in all directions- just to overcome the aforementioned limitation of not having adjustable building orientations. All it takes then is basic human cognition to not deliberately face your factories directly into cliffs or anywhere that will block their exits off, and I don't think anyone on any sort of mental level while healthy is utterly capable of that sort of neglection.

Some people have no clue obviously how important about placement of building structures.

Especially when they say "have no need" and that's all they contribute to the discussion.

There are plenty of reasons why you would need to rotate the structure around - reasons from defensiveness to pathing reasons.

This is including taking advantages of the terrain as well.

Each building should be able to press a key binding button (at least to rotate it) at all sides - this should be the bare minimum.