Confirmed features and suggestions

During Napoleonic times, this also explains why Canada (French colony) uses metric. England was never conquered by the Napoleon, so they stuck with the Imperial system for the most part.

Well, to be fair, England's sphere of control was as large as France's, and only got larger throughout the imperialist era, meaning their system was more widely spread. But otherwise, yes, that is correct. Nations not under their sphere of influence converted quite some time ago. Many of the nations that WERE under their influence converted in the late 1800s/early 1900s. I believe the US tried to convert at some point before WWII, but failed due to something along the lines of "tradition."

In any case, the point is that these nations all converted before it was so ingrained in their industrial society, and it didn't have as big of an influence on the citizenry since not as many of them were educated enough to know the difference or care until after they were converted.

However, since WWII, the US economy ramped up on an enormous scale, and areas of industry where measurement systems would matter to such a great deal all adopted the nationwide standard at the time. As the education system became more public and national in scale, the youth were being taught to use the imperial system as well. So by the time you reach the 80s and 90s, it was kind of too late to really change the system without making it a very radical reform. Adding to that the use of the imperial system in computer records and applications only compounds the problem. (The Y2K problem was a non-issue because of all the work that went into updating the systems for it, and make no mistake, it took a lot of work.)

So now we reach today, where the imperial system is very much ingrained into US society, and it will take a good amount of time (and lots of money) to fix. That said, as much as people love to complain about it, the metric system is slowly gaining traction. And as cynical as that comic linked from The Oatmeal is, US schools were already teaching metric in physics and chemistry classes, both for high-school students and for university students. (In fact, they were doing so back when I was taking them.) The computer and electronics industry (which experienced many gains in the US in the mid 1900s) saw the invention of several new measurements that followed the metric standard straight from their inception. (For example, bytes.)

So as much as people like to point to the US usage of the imperial system as an example of "LOL the US is dumb!", it's a somewhat ignorant way of viewing the situation.

Also, sorry mods for letting this get a bit too far off topic for this thread. :|

This thread has become garbage. It has become into yet another "we hate america" garbage, pointless internet thread.

Somebody should clean these last 8 pages of metric nerdrage.

Australia effectively did in three years, between 1972 and 1974.

Cash was done beforehand, in 1966. But weights, measures, and roadsigns were all done in that period with a enough slack given for existing products to be sold/consumed.

As an engineer living in America... i hate the English system

Good to see that things stayed on topic :L

Sorry guys - the original few posts were originally reasonable questions and a little quipping back and forth. But it's gone on a little long now. This thread is destined to be a few hundred pages long I'm sure, so no real reason to delete, but let's get back on topic.

And a valid point - critiquing something is fine. Picking on an entire culture because of something you don't like gets into bigot territory. If you hate Americans (or any "group" of people, or even an individual, please consider keeping it to yourself. That's not what these forums are for.

So.....uh...erm..

I'm a little late to the forum, but I can see things haven't been going well.

How about I try to get things back on track and ask, has anyone discussed the idea of jump or jet pack units yet?

These would tie in with the concept of variable gravity nicely. They would not be true aerial units but rather be light infantry or tanks, with small boosters they could make use of from time to time. Unlike most ground units, they could essentially jump off most small planets and asteroids. On larger planets, though they would be unable to leave the planets gravitational pull completely, they could jet up and down cliffs and leap over walls. They wouldn't be capable of passing over large bodies of water or lava, or even clearing entire structures, but still capable of getting around where most ground units can't.

Will Planetary Annihilation support multiple monitors like was possible in Subcom 1 and 2.

Basically the game can display on two screens and both screens can move around the map and at different zoom levels individually. This was one feature I never seen in other games and would be really awesome if Planetary Annihilation would also support that. Especially since the use of multiple monitors has risen in popularity quite a bit.

I must admit though that the Subcom Implementation had its issues. It would crash the game when the mode was enabled and 3 monitors where connected, and it would only display the UI on one display and while the later Is more a choice then a limitation It could have at least included some options.

I know this may get extra complicated with Linux and OSX support but I would really love to see this or at least see a statement about this.

I would love to see this, 2 monitors makes it feel much more realistic. No war room has only one monitor, so why should we be limited to one when fighting over planets?

I also want to discuss building Space stations. I mean anything from scouting space probes to Death Stars. Hell, with enough metal, you should be able to build new dwarf metal planets right?

I loved the experimental units in SupCom, especially the UAE ones. The giant forcefield tank that could go underwater and build units was my favorite and I'd love to see a even larger version, A Death Star, in PA.

From what Neutrino has said, multiple monitors will be supported. (And probably won't be limited to just two.) It shouldn't be too big of a challenge to get it working across multiple platforms, as they will be allowing the game to run in multiple windows too. (The main concern is how well it will perform with this implementation, especially on Linux. But that's probably more of a driver issue anyway.)

More then two was more against subcom crashing when you try to run it over two when you have 3, it is not like I need to run it over 3 anyway.

I think something along the lines of the role the reaper in SCII plays would be interesting to see. Having a group of units with more flexibility in movement, decent damage, but low health pool to help snipe key economic targets would be cool to see.

I want to add to diplomacy ideas an idea of teleport network sharing. So the ally being able to use your teleport, which gives the ability to aid each other, etc.
Still, it must be optional. In case of broken alliance.

I seem to remember seeing something written to this effect elsewhere, but I can't find it now. It might be a good idea to include the option for shared unit control. It'd make it a lot easier for large games to have several players specializing their talents, splitting the load between micromanaging units on the battlefield and managing a large economy. I feel like that's more similar to how a team would be structured in an actual scenario.

A final thought, since shared unit control might be rough on bandwidth, maybe some system of automatically passing off control under certain circumstances.

EDIT: It's worth saying that the scenario I'm describing would preclude the possibility of ending the alliance.

Please, don't make the commander a liability in this game! In supcom 1-Fa, the commander was basically dead weight at the mid t2-t3-t4 stages. you had to baby sit him otherwise he would end up being slaughtered in seconds. sc2 fixed this a lot, with the commander being a unit on par with experimentals, winning nearly every fight with them. to also help with this, you could implement a customization/upgrade tree for the commander. but don't make him too powerful!

Nanolathe towers as structures that you can build next to your factories to help with build orders, reclaiming any wrecks near to them, repairing units with no tendency to wander off and probably having more health than construction units.

Yes, we need engineering towers.

+1 on this!