Some ideas on gameplay

- ACU and engies should be able to build basic units, why not?
- You can choose ACU deployment location
- No Mex nodes
- Anti-air units can attack land and vice versa like in rl (in Supcom interceptors are perfectly capable of attacking landed aircraft lol)

Any supporting reasons for any of these ideas? Also what do you mean by no Mex nodes? Do you mean no Metal spots? Where do you propose we Put metal extractors then?

Reasons? More sanity, less gamey. In my opinion complex games should strive to max their realism (although not so many share it).

I perceive you the person without critical thought, taking all "as is". Well, here goes the lenghty explanation why fixed points for mexes are bad.
In Supreme Commander it makes impossible to hide your resource production, because mass spots are shown on map. Comparing mass spots to strategic points from DoW as incentives for map control would be quite wrong. I saw few games where one player claimed whole map, and another with only his main base had defeated him with high tech units. So there is no point in these fixed mass locations, except for removing fun strategy (aa patrols + stealthed extractors) from game. You should be able to erect your resource base anywhere.

As for my other points, what are your reasons for keeping them as is?

The question of why you can't just build any unit directly on the ground with your build ray is a good one. But it would significantly change gameplay if not to the point of making obsolete factories.

That could be good or bad.

Im unfamiliar with Dawn of War and the function of strategic points, so if you could explain its function i would be grateful.

Your "lengthy explanation" from what i saw offers no evidence of why there is no point in fixed mass points. The only reason i see is that you want to hide your resources. Fixed resource points offer an incentive to map control, and a limit to the amount of resources you can have in an area. Without fixed mass points, i can just spam up 20 mass extractor in a small area and defend those with powerful static weaponry. All this will do is turn the game into a turtle match, which as valid a tactic some people may think it is, is no fun to watch.

If you want something implemented then you should give reasons as to why. I don't want to listen to someone who just spits out ideas and then asks everyone else to tell him why they shouldn't be in the game without offering at least a sentence of why it should. Why should i do the work for his ideas? Thats just being lazy. I could give you hundreds of ideas and ask you to explain why they shouldn't be in the game because i don't want to explain why they should. Here are four of my ideas. If you can explain why they shouldn't be in the game then ill explain why some of yours shouldn't.

-Acu and engineers shouldn't be able to build basic units
-Acu deployment is fixed
-Predetermined Metal spots
-Anti-air can only shoot air.

I believe there has already been a discussion on directly building units.

Actually it mostly ends up bad, but not in the way you think.

So lets say any unit with a lathe can build regular units in a similar manner to how Experimentals/T4s in SupCom/FA. What happens?

A Cluttered build menu UI................that's it. If Uber is even half way successful in solving the 'Large scale engy assist' seen in SupCom its likely that per cost, Factories will be able to produce more units than Engineers would. Then you have to consider that you can't use a repeat build queue with Engineers and they'll require far higher time investment overall.

Then consider the scale we're talking about, we're playing a game where armies could number in the hundreds, combine that with the the large per unit investment required to build them compared to setting a repeat queue on a factory and only changing it when you need to change what your composition is and it should be clear that factories are superior to Engineers.

There is the possibility of edge cases where maybe you only need one or 2 units at a particular locations, but I feel that avoiding the pitfall nature of this setup is far and away the better option. We have also seen ways to build select units in a timely manner by taking advantage of the Factory Assist 'System' in SupCom/FA withoput interrupting your main repeat queue.

Mike

You can use repeat build queues on mobile construction units just fine in Spring. Actually it even worked pretty well with infinity number of units queued up with Zhon back in TA:Kingdoms.
Only problem with that is that the units didn't have waypoints once they were finished. You could solve this by constructors having waypoint commands for units built or that units automatically would join a standing army.
Yes. A factory is conceptually easy to understand while a mobile constructor with a lot of buildoptions could confuse new players.
Ultimately it is important for the game to be easy to learn but I think that any constructor being able to build anything could be manageable if the game is designed with that in mind.

Very well, an in-depth explanation of my propositions, with examples.

Having all units be able to attack all targets albeit with differing efficiency is a no-brainer; all rl units have such capabilities, like aa machinegun on tanks to shoot at copters, or Soviet "Shilka" aa autocannon carrier which doubles as extremely effective anti-personnel and anti-light vehicle. There is no reason that weapons should be locked from attacking certain types of targets if they are able to, except for mild insanity.

I again repeat that in Supcom mex control is largely irrelevant. Just watched a replay when one guy invested into land expansion and controlled 2/3 of the map while his opponent simply built a few t2 walking destroyers and owned him.
At your notice of building a lot of res gens in a single base with static defences i say lol. Static defences arent worth a damn in Supcom and no one ever uses them, because if you invest into immobile units your opponent would just blockade you and finish you off with tml spam, experimental, t3 mobile arty and whatnot. The point of any Supcom game is to kill commander who is mobile which in turn requires mobile units. A rl examples: Majino line which got bypassed, German fortifications in Prussia and Normandy which got owned, etc. You cannot win by sitting in a fortress, ever. Germans thought they could do it by finishing their wunderwaffles, all they achieved was to provide USSR and USA with lewt.

A point about being able to build units with mobile constructors was well covered by previous posters; which also gave me an idea of mobile resource generators, so you can nomad on large maps. One such thing already exists in Supcom, which is an ACU/SACU upgrade, but as it is too expensive it never gets used. Having something like this for reasonable cost in t2 would be quite fun, like an equivalent of t1 pgen or mex you can load into transport. A fine example of this are chinese hackers in C&C Generals.

About choosing ACU deploy location, i had a dream about extremely advanced Supcom-like game i played, and there you were given a large area in which you could select a landing point. It was quite c00l.

So dont you dare to accuse me of lazyness you conforming lout.

SupCom != Planetary Annihilation.

Go play Total Annihilation and see how important Metal Extractors in a regular (non-metal) map.

...

It's a lot more than SupCom, by the way.
No namby-pamby upgradable Mexes in Total Annihilation, and a lot of the Metal points aren't "worth" the same as others. Some give you 3 Metal per second, others give you like... 0.5.

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Stop comparing SupCom and Planetary Annihilation mechanics... apples and oranges.
Seek Total Annihilation for your inspiration, not SupCom.

Also... stop comparing real world examples to a game. The real world does not have good "gameplay" because, surprising though this may be to you, the real world is not a game.

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Also if you want a discussion then try putting your ideas down FIRST and your reasons for thinking so. Don't expect everyone here to do your work for you or they're very likely to call you lazy until you do give reasons.

There's no need for such a backlash against someone calling you out. What on Earth possessed you to call someone names for no good reason?

Nanolathe,

I understand where you are coming from speaking of the core game mechanics of TA vs SupCom.

A lot of the PA backers are those who found SupCom to be an evolutions of the TA gameplay. Some people believe that an added depth to the econ through managing timing of investing into your econ while keeping your opponent in check is a very desirable mechanic.
It is not longer map control = more econ.

But it also adds in a couple more items.
1. Army size vs Econ investment
2. Map control vs Econ investment
3. Army size vs Tech

That is 3 layers of added depth to the game.
While I understand it it nowhere near as accessible to the casual player, many gamers find that added depth highly appealing.


This makes it so a player has to very carefully balance how much army to make vs how much to invest into economy.
While forcing them to scout to see if the enemy is up to any dirty tricks (hard econ, tac missiles, jumping to T3 or experimentals).
Those added layers bring much more in terms of gameplay depth.

The question that must be asked is "how much depth is too much"?

You are talking about a game with earthlike planets a few kilometers in diameter here. There are a lot more offenders than those four if you want to maximise realism. And it won't end up with a game that in any way resembles Planetary Annihilation.

Haha, no. What were the ratings of the two players involved? That's not how good players play. Map control is everything if players know what they're doing. I expect the player with map control wasn't spending his mass, or was feeding the other player reclaim. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlGyqmlQ0HE Other than the crazy ending, this is how good SupCom play usually plays out. Frenzy was on the back foot for most of the game. Why? He had inferior map control. He only turned it around when he managed to secure both side islands, giving him a much better position (he won anyway due to his opponent making a mistake, but he was ahead on eco when it happened so he probably could have secured a conventional victory there).

There should be NO limit on depth of gameplay, only a limit in complexity.

Depth and Complexity are not the same thing. SupCom was more complicated than TA, and mostly in bad ways that didn't enhance gameplay depth all that much.

Forged Alliance is a great game, it suffered heavily from superfluous complexity, economic micromanagement, tactical trumping and faction nuance. PA should be careful to avoid the pratfalls of Forged Alliance.

I must also say that all three of these points

• Army size vs Econ investment
• Map control vs Econ investment
• Army size vs Tech

Are nowhere CLOSE to exlusive to SupCom... they're not even excluded from TA either, every RTS has these elements.
Dawn of War had all of those elements,
C&C did,
Blizzard RTS's did and continue to do so,
Company of Heroes and even Homeworld did...

What SupCom did was no different than many other RTS's, it just did it bigger and more complicated. The Complexity Wall for entry for SupCom was set prohibitively high and it didn't even make it a more deep gameplay experience by much, if at all, compared to Total Annihilation.

One could honestly argue that SupCom/FA are actually rather poorly designed games for that very reason. They increased scale and complexity of gameplay over Total Annihilation's standards without significantly increasing depth of gameplay.
:?

Really the only thing I would champion and fight through hell to preserve from SupCom/FA would be the Strategic Zoom... but that's already present, so I don't need to.

Well, the larger scale (qua map control and armies) meant that Supreme Commander was a bit more strategic, although I still feel that it was too much like other RTS'es; there were no key battles or such. You know, World War II had the Battle of Bulge, the invasion of Normandy, and so on.

But in games, you have minor skirmishes, perhaps a major attack, and then an all-out attack that wins you the game. There isn't much use in retreating, feigning, flanking... Supreme Commander comes closer than most games to simulating what I want, but not close enough. I hope Planetary Annihilation fares better.

I did feel, however, that the rate based economy was interesting and more fun than 'normal' economies.

... But re-reading your post, you're comparing Supreme Commander to Total Annihilation. Well, then I wouldn't know, as I haven't played that (I really should, someday).

supcom is not a particularly complex game, that's the beauty
I think you're truly mistaking depth for complexity here

Wanting to marry gameplay with simulation is not a bad thing. Don't attack the guy for actually putting thought into it. Don't try and conflate realism with boredom or imbalance.
Small planets are an abstraction, a stylization. There are concessions made for gameplay and balance and style, but the less of them you have the better. And if you can accomplish the same goal of balance and style with less compromises to the simulation then you have a better end result. That's how truly great games are designed.

Taking the concept to its logical extreme and contemplating its impact is a healthy thing to do.

I point you towards SupCom's Adjacency bonus as just a single example of overwrought complexity for arguably less gameplay depth than Total Annihilation had. There are more. Would you like me to list more?

I've already argued to you the case for adjacency being good for the gameplay I shallnt do it again.

I remember no such discussion. You must be thinking of one of the OTHER dozen or so people you argue with on a regular basis, while they try to have a reasonable discussion.

Let me just say that any reason that involves "its realistic" and nothing more should not ever be considered. As Nanolathe said, the real life doesn't have good gameplay. Also note that having a dream about something and thinking it was cool is another terrible explanation to as why something should be in a game. Im asking you about the gameplay pro's and con's of these ideas, not whether its realistic or you thought it was cool in your dream.

It seems none of your "lengthy explanations" offer any reasons related to gameplay other then your own observation of one game in Supreme commander. I recommend not arguing your points by referring to different games that have different mechanics. While it may be an example of when map control wasn't important, it offers no pros or cons of gameplay related to fixed mass points!

I am sorry if it seemed like i was calling you specifically lazy or if my previous post seemed hostile. The reason for that may have been because you said you perceived me as a person without critical thought when i asked some perfectly reasonable questions. Especially since from what i have seen you have put little to no thought into the gameplay repercussions of your ideas.

If you can't argue with someone without insulting them I would suggest taking a break from posting until you can abstain from such immature actions.