Classic flat map

No planets , no sphere, just good old flat map.

Can this be an optional feature?

Its highly unlikely Uber will spend the development time on this before initial launch.

Its highly likely the modding community will take the insanely epic PA engine and do a total conversion mod to run on a conventional flat map (possibly even 'known' maps from previous games)

How long it will take is anyone's guess, but I wouldn't expect it at launch.

Couldn't one just play any old RTS for that? I thought the spherical and planets were kind of the essential feature of PA. It's practically what makes it PA.

I'd consider it already an optional feature.

Neutrino has said it's very important to them that people can pick a single small planet and just play on that.

Modders could extend that further and design a custom planet that has a super high wall/plateau going half way around it to prevent movement from that direction. If it is tall enough (through the atmosphere?) then air units won't be able to fly over it. At that point it would play exactly like a flat map.

Unless PA is released as open source (which I'm pretty certain it wont) then I doubt modders will have access to the code that would need to be changed to support flat maps, at best modders might be able to do cube planets with spawn points on the same face of the cube, but I'm not sure even that would work properly. Modding usually only allows for superficial changes to a game and I'm sure going from spherical maps to flat maps would require some pretty big changes to the engine so I don't think it will ever happen unless Uber specifically take the time to make it possible.

I should not be that hard to make a really big planet and restrict the play area so the playfield is almost flat. Perhaps it's even possible to make a cubic planet where people fight on one side.

They've said custom shaped planets are a goal, so hopefully we'll see this capability. They'd need to open up hooks for modders to control the camera and adjust how gravity is assumed.

The engine seems to be very open and modular, the amount of parameters that we already know will be open is huge, so i guess modding a flat planet will be possible.

They said custom shaped planets, not planes, there is a huge difference between planets and a flat plane, it will affect nearly every aspect of the game, gravity, orbital units, interplanetary travel, pathing, planet rendering, camera control, unit movement, CSG operations, coordinate systems, and the physics are likely to all need some major changes, and most of those systems are unlikely to be exposed to modders as they are the sorts of things that will need to be efficient and consistent. TBH it would just be a hell of a lot easier to mod Spring to be more like PA than trying to re-write the PA engine to do something that it is unlikely to be designed for. Like I said cube planets might be possible, though it's highly likely that towards the edges of the cube the engine will not be able to handle things as you would expect them to behave because PA will probably treat the edges as mountains without serious re-writes.

However I don't work for Uber and I haven't seen the code so I could be wrong, but I'd strongly advise against getting your hopes up for anything that even resembles a traditional flat RTS map if you don't want to be disappointed. Besides as svip said you could play any other RTS if you want to play on flat maps, and to make PA even remotely playable on a flat map it would basically be a completely different RTS anyway, as a bare minimum all the orbital and interplanetary units would need to be removed which is going to completely change how PA would play, and when everything else is re-balanced for that change you might as well be just playing SupCom with a no shields mod.

You could make a custom map that is a square, with the under side covered in lava, and you'd basically have a flat map.

Maybe make it a circle, and have it supported by a few elephants, on a flying turtle... +.5 for the getting the reference (it's an easy reference folks, I can't offer many fake points as a reward).

well, they didn't show you could alter how oblate the planet was (but assuming you can), maybe you could warp the planet so the only pathable terrain was mostly flat? I'm just speculating right now

If this happens, a total Setons conversion is all but inevitable.

There's no real difference between a plane and a section of a very large planet. As the planet is simply a mesh, there are tons of ways of hiding or otherwise preventing access to areas outside the plane, assuming it's not as simply as just having a plane to start with (my impression is that's perfectly possible.). In short, I see no real reason, technical or otherwise, that this is not achievable based on what Uber has already told us and my understanding of how the engine handles pathfinding and planets.

Make a pizza-like planet that has lava on the backside -> "flat", round map. The only thing that could make a bit of troubles that comes to mind is how gravity is handled. But the difference between a pizza-shape and a planet isnt that big. Why should it not be possible?
Add cheese, tomatoes and onions and I'll be unable to play on it without getting hungry.

it's not a horrid idea. Someone could make a discworld map

They stated that the engine supports it. Thus, it is capable of modding it, but it would probably take a sh*t ton of time.

a *bleep*-ton of time is what i expect at least a few people will consider dedicating to this game, so that' not really a factor.

They did? Awesome, I really didn't think that they would bother supporting it, though I am curious to know to how they solved all the issues flat maps would create, particularly when dealing with orbital units. Of course the pessimist in me is now screaming about how it could split the community and having most preferring flat maps because it's what they are used to leaving those who would prefer something different like planets with too few available players to consistently find a game in a reasonable amount of time (as seen in games with several multi-player modes, one becomes popular and the rest die off), but I'm happy enough to just cram that whiny pessimist windbag into a box and leave him there until it's actually proven or dis-proven to be an issue .

Since the whole concept of orbital units and interplanetary warfare is still pretty undeveloped I would say that it isnt even analyzed what kind of problems a flat map would make. However since Uber itself is not planning to make flat maps they have no obligation to make gameplay work on flat maps anyway. It's technically possible. Everything else in the hand of the modder.

treat it as a cuboid object. That's going to make orbital flight paths interesting, but hey, that opens up the possibility of fighting on a ringworld, or even (and this is a big if, that'd really push the limits of the engine/current tech) the interior of a dyson sphere.