First person direct control

Sometimes, a base just has to be destroyed but, like in most games, an attacking unit will move so that the entire enemy unit/building is within range. Then, unfortunately, they move into the range of turrets.

I'm suggesting a mode that allows you to control a unit directly in first person mode. This will make it easier to destroy enemy bases with minimum losses and you can do infiltration objectives far better than an AI ever can. You will have all the conventions of a fps, like crosshairs, click to shoot, wasd move commands etc.

That would be the perfect game, i hope for. A strategic game with hierarchical layers of Ordering and Commands. from top to down all done by players.
A merge of Supreme Commander and planetside.
Though i doubt we will see this with PA.

"Assuming Direct Control"...
(5 points if you recognised the game...).

Altrough it could be funny in some situations (imagine : a small bot is ordered to make a last stand against a Commander, which look at it and shoot with D-Gun)(or even better, the unit is just under the impact point of an asteroïd), i don't see the point : Planetary Annihilation is supposed to be a RTS, not a Hybrid with FPS.

Maybe a mod could be done by the fans, but i wouldn't expect anything about this idea from the devs.

Second question : what do you mean by "infiltration objectives" ?
Cloak an unit and try to stab the Commander in the back ? Chirurgical strikes on power sources ? Can't see the harm that could do one unit on a planetary scenario (remember, Heroes are a lie ! They do not exist and die miserably like everyone else !).

They already exist. I don't have any names, but I'm expecting someone else will come up with them.

If not, I'll look into it tonight

There are a number of RTS style games out there with various levels of direct control, ranging from having a only single leader you control in the battlefield, to direct control of minions, to playing as an individual minion while another player acts as a leader with no explicit representation in the battlefield.

This is however the antithesis of the goals for our game. The goals for this style of RTS is to remove micro of all kinds and have the gameplay purely about macro level decisions; if having direct control of a unit gives a significant advantage over giving a simple command and letting them carry out their orders that means we're doing something wrong for our game.

It's also not a goal for our visuals to hold up at the distances you'd be capable of getting to things in a first person view.

Just so you know i will use that statement from now on in my signature hrhrhr.

Already posted in a similar thread, but PA is NOT the game for this sort of thing. It's wasted time.

Having to design movement systems and weapon systems and cameras and worry about the way the contrasting color palette looks laterally instead of vertically and how such a mode would affect gameplay...this would have sounded cool when I was 12 or so, but I can't remember a single game which combined high-level strategy with direct unit control and ended up the better for it on either end.

What was that one game from waaaay back in like 2005 set in the ancient world with the hero characters? If that's the best example, I want nothing to do with the concept.

Wasnt there something with EVE-Online?

Well it was literally 2 games

Natural Selection does the exact opposite! You play in first person as a team, then one player enters a command mode where they see the map from top down and give orders and place structures.

Anyway, for PA I wouldn't mind if this feature existed for the commander only. It would make for an interesting possibility to turn the tide when, for example, you're close to defeat. But I think it's better as a mod than an included feature.

Ahrg, that trailing semicolon is going to make me edit your profile...

Well it's a quote after all.
Shall i delete it(the semicolon)?

From my experience with first person mode on the Spring engine it causes more trouble than its' worth.
-Network lag. All your input has to be delay to network latency. Most RTSes can do with higher latency but FPSes usually suffers badly from high latency.
So if you are the server you might have no latency while the enemy have up to half a second delay or so.
-Overshooting the maximum range. The most useful situations for using units in First person is to extend the range of the weapon beyond its' maximum firing range. But how fun is it to sit in a little turret and plink away at the enemy when there are whole planets to contest. This usually leads to the game makers on the Spring engine to turn off FPS mode for units that can be exploited this way.
-Units plopping into existance right infront of you. If sight ranges are small, enemy units will just plop out of nowhere as they are discovered by Line of Sight. Works in World of Tanks though so if spotting is far enough it doesn't brake immersion that bad.
-Leading the target. Units will probably have perfect leading barring that the targets trajectory has changed after you fired your gun. Learning to lead the target with different kind of weapons is hard to learn and if there are several weapons with different muzzle velocities it is almost impossible to aim lead with each one of them. If targeting is automatic however you take away most of the fun of using a unit in First person mode.

Well I still think it should First Person Shooting should be in the PA engine but not necessarily in the main game unless you can prevent it from being exploitable which is the opposite of what you want to use it for.

No, it must remain! :twisted:

This feature in Earth 2160 was so cataclysmic.

If you'd like something game changing like this then it usually means you should build a mod.

Machines had that kind of direct control, which was a bit overpowerd because when using direct control every unit could shoot a little bit further ^^

But it was great fun manually controlling spies to infiltrate enemy reasearch facilities XD

I don't know if anyone has played it, but here's a similar feature in a rts/4x game called star drive that is currently in beta. It allows you o take command of a "flagship" and control it, and they seemed to have pulled it off fairly well.

FPRTS games (RTS with an FPS mode available)
BattleZone / BattleZone 2 (the FPRTS remakes, not the original vector tank sim)
Spring has (had?) a first person mode; I used it once with a krogoth just for the giggles :mrgreen:
Brütal Legend (more of a TPRTS than FPRTS, but still...)
The Outfit

FPS games with a "commander" mode
Natural Selection
Soldner Secret Wars
Battlefield 2 / Battlefield 3

These are not exhaustive lists, just the ones I've played or remember seeing

I don't think I would want a first person control component in this game. However, during replays being able to hop onto a unit and observe the chaos first hand would be AWESOME!

I'm in the "no" catagory here. 1st person is useless in RTS games. I would, however, like to see a 3rd person direct control mode, those who have played Men of War should know of what I speak. Men of War did it perfectly, IMO.