Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbreaker

I can understand, that is it is more expansive and more difficult to balance
three fractions than one.And that, with this huge amount of objects on the
planets/low polycount-tradeoff artdirection (which i personally love),
its hard to create more roundshaped units, like an organic alienrace,
with organic buildings,etc...

But if you are successful with your game, which you undeniably will be,
is there a possibility that you will integrate two more fractions, maybe as an
addon in the game?The gameplaydiversity would benefit a huge amount from that.
And if the game is not too expensive i would definitely pay 10-15 bucks
for 2 more fractions and maybe some additional features/planetbiotops.
I think most other players would also , am i wrong?
Think of it: Different fractions could have, among some resources which are
equal, additional different secondary resources. And one fraction could pollute/destroy
the secondary resource of the others, if it finds it, as some resource denying mechanic!

I have two other questions:

1. Will there be special abilitys for the units.
For example siegemode for thanks to trade off mobility against damage/areacontroll.
Or transforming airunits into groundunits or into naval units.
Or units which can traverse jump through different heights in the terrain.
Or some chemical cluster bombs which slows the enemy down/clues the
enemy to the ground for an certain amount of time.
Or giant robots which are huge compared to the other units.
Etc...

I loved the concept of the giant battles in supremecomander one.
But i felt a bit let down of the 1-dimensionality of most units.
Some interesting special abilitys would be definitely a huge benefit
gameplaywise and would it also make even more interesting to watch as an esport.
I know that your gameplayfocus lies on huge scale battles , but that must not mean
that there are no position-related abilitys at all , for making the single unit also interesting.

2. Will it be possible to create different fractions in the modding tool
and is it possible to create new skins with an higher polycount for
the units and buildings in the editor , if my computer can handle that.
That been said , is it possible to import own created polymodels from
renderprograms like maya and cinema 4d into the modding tool/editor ?

It would be great if you developer could answer my questions.

Keep up the great work your game has really some unique concepts.
Especially this microcosms concept, with the different planets,moons and astoroids,
is fantastic.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

i'd rather they give us 100 different units than 100 analogous new-faction units

the only way multiple factions are worth adding is if they are meaningfully different from the original faction, we're talking starcraft diversity. and that's a lot more effort than the 10-15$ dlc you think it is.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

If they build many different units, which are really unique on their own, and add
many different strategys and playstyles to the game . Than i also would love that.

But then , we are talking not only off 10-15 units. It should at least be in the
high 20s , and each of them really unique with special abilitys etc.. .

Also some new gameplay mechanics like burrowing tunnels and underground caves.
So that it is possible to build secret tunnels, rigth under the enemy base,
and for building some underground bases, would be nice.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

are you trolling us? you are two posts on your account that complain about a lot of crap thats been brought up before... edit: also who said there were "only" 10-15 units?

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

1. No special abilities. They are lame, and should be left out.

2. Modders will be able to do pretty much anything they like, even adding in your number one (not that they should).

But seriously, Neutrino has expressed a strong interest in allowing modders to do whatever the **** they want to change/improve the game.

If you don't like something, you're perfectly entitled to learn how to fix it yourself.

[EDIT:] Since you're new here. If you have an idea, search.php

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

There is something to be said for one race, no one can complain that the other side in unbalanced.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Having no "Faction X" is so imbalanced kind of talk ever actually seems like a good future.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Special abilities are great and can give you much higher unit diversity.


But it is unclear what kind of abilities would fit in the scope PA tries to achieve. I'm curious anyway what kind of unit diversity we will have in the final game and what will even be necessary, considering the scope of the game. Too much can be a bad thing.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

My thoughts to the 'special ability to make units more interesting line' was initially: Yeah no, you can't really get special abilities for units in a game at as large a scale as PA. However, if they simply did animations for units to an impressive standard (think how the Maverick in TA draws and holsters its guns), bang, you suddenly have more interesting and diverse units. And with the awesome animations that they are suggesting are coming, I'm definitely excited on this front.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

No, there is no trolling involved, at least not from my side.Noboady said it would only be 15 units. Its my hope, that they are not only building 15 units. They are still in the alpha and have not showen a great amount of unit design since now, so im curiouse what the unitdesign and diversity of the units will be.But given the fact that they are still relativly early in the developmentprocess of the game ,they will propably talk about this aspects later.

Is that a fact, or only you represanting your own personal opinion and taste as an fact? It must not be abilitys to micromanage singular units.But some units moving underground and building caves for underground bases and burrowing tunnels to the enemy base, would be nice.
Or some units which can transforme from air into ground or naval, would be nice.
And some hit and run/guerrilla warfare tactics, like sneaking into enemy bases and
taking control of enemy productionbuildings if he has no defence units around, would also be nice.Also some giant robotspiders which rocketbatterys on their back.

Im talking about things like that. Why are they lame ?

Thats definitiv true, you have a good point there.
But than, there must be a huge amount of units and/or special gameplaymechanics,
like they have already shown in the video by turning astoroids into kinetic bombs
-Ability to build,burrow under ground.
-Ability to make suns of enemy solar systems into slow growing super novas or black holes.
-Ability to take planets out of their orbit.
-Ability to make wormholes out of suns and blackholes, for fasttraveling between
solarsystems.
-Nativ a.i controlled alien live, which populates some planet, like in starshiptroopers the bugs. And which attacks you automatically if you get in their territory. Or spacepirates
-Ability to build laser or rocketguidet defencesystems against atillary fire or incomming rockets.
-Ability to put an giant railgun on an sattelite and shooting down on the enemy base if he orbits it, or it can shoot from an neighbor-solarsystem into your own system as some kind of interstelar atillary.
And counterabilitys to shoot down enemy sattelites which are spying on you like an frequence jamer which can be build on the ground.

Things like that ,to have a ton of different options, how to play the game and what
strategy to use.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Two factions are nice. One faction with the units of two factions is better.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Having different factions with different unit pools is redundant. Having more than one heavy tank or AAA gun with slightly different stats and models is just dumb.

Unit special abilities are lame and encourage micro. However unit traits such as being amphibious or not showing up on radar are fine. The key point is that abilities have to be manually activated while traits are always active.

If only having one unit pool is a deal breaker for you then go play Starcraft or learn how to mod PA once it is released.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

I have played Starcraft 1 and 2 for a long time . But after some time, its getting boring
to see the same unitcompositions over and over again. At the beginning of an rts game
everything is new and exciting, with lots of room to experiment with different tactics, but as time goes by things become more stale.

So no, no more SC2, i am done with it.

My hopes lie on this one and Hardware:Shipbreakers and maybe Comand and Conquer.
But last one is a huge maybe.

You are laying words in my mouth and i dont like that. I never said that a game shoud have more than one heavy tank or AAA gun,with slightly different stats and models.

Im talking about units , which can transform or burrow or dig holes and build underground
caves/bases, or tunnels, or are able to cloak your base and make it invisible. Or are able to slow down enemy units. Or railgunatillery, which can shoot from one solarsystem in another. Or hit and run, selfexploding guerillia warefare units.

As i said two times before. Just read my posts more carefully pleace.

You really must hate micro , guess what, there are many rts fans out there which like
to micro. Its a matter of taste and its your opinion, not a fact.

Of corse with this large scale battles and ability to zoom out that much(which i find great , i totally miss something like lifting up of the battlefield and building a second base on the moon or astoroid to turn the astoroid into an kinetic bomb , in SC2.) there is a danger of introducing overly complex units. But units shoud have at least some special abilitys, like the ones mentioned above. If nearly every unit plays the same with the exception of different health , range and speed than it gets real stale real soon. There should be many different units, which support different playstyles and strats.And no the should not be sligtly iterations of the same unittype and i did not say this in one word. The only differents in mechanics of the units should not only be that there are air, naval and ground units.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

If you compare it to Starcraft, one PA faction is not like one SC faction, but more like having access to all three factions at the same time.

Having more unique units is nice, but you need to be sure that their roles don't overlap too much.

Also, everything you said about doing stuff with stars and wormholes is off the table: 1map = 1solar system.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Yeah, Nah.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Go, play Star Craft. Or build a mod. Plenty of options.
I don't see how you can implementing something like that in PA without introducing ridiculous amount of micromanagement on a player when it comes to 500+ units spread among few 3D maps.

It's not about hating micro. It's about doing micromanagement on 3+ planets at the same time. That's dumb idea.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

There is nothing wrong with micromanagement, obviously you can only micro at one place at a time, and doing so miss out on managing on the macroscale or on another spot. I think it's a choice you have to make, since in a game such as this, where you're in fact on several places at once, you will both benefit and not, at the same time.

Since doing one takes away attention from the other.

I think that even though they say that the focus is on the macroscale, you can still hop in and do a little micromanagement here and there. I don't see how you can not do that if you so wished.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

The biggest benefit of having a single faction with all the units is that in essence you let your playstyle determine your faction. If you have 100+ unique combat units in the game with a good mix of active & passive abilities it won't matter if you prefer the micro heavy playstyle or not. You choose what units you build and utilize.

By choosing to only have 1 unit pool the Devs are eliminating the need to spend time, and modeling/texturing takes alot of time, creating multiple units/buildings that essentually do the exact same thing for each faction. Instead they just keep expanding the unit pool with more stuff for us to play with.

They have also mentioned the game will be highly moddable & that they intend to work with the modding community to continuously add new engine controls for things people may run into that requires it. If you really want multiple factions there is nothing stopping you from making another model/texture skin set or writing a lobby script to break the 100+ planned/mentioned units into 2-3 factions of 20-40 units each (minus redundant buildings needed for each faction).

Its not really something that needs to be argued over in my opinion. The Devs are releasing the game based on a design they want to see like every game dev. But if their modding tools are as powerful & adaptive as it sounds like they will be, then anyone who wants to take the time to learn can mold the game to what they think it should be.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

You know, I'm sure it's been brought up somewhere a billion times before, but I actually like the idea of pre-populated NPC planets that might have hundreds of the Pee-Wee equivalent bots (runaway factory?), or other sorts of mob challenges that groups of players could take on in co-op.

It would be much like having an extra race in character (a bot that uses only legged ground units, for instance), without the issues of creating an extra race.

Easy to mod in, too.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

I find it funny that you are complaining about adding more features and gameplay mechanics when this is the one RTS I've seen in a while that actually has a completely new mechanic and gameplay style for games of its genre. You have planets, asteroids, rockets, unit cannons, the return of the rate based economy, quadrupeds, the return of flying construction units, kinetic energy weapons, terrain destruction, procedurally generated maps, the chronocam, multiple view screens, orbital units, gas planets, metal planets, lava planets, water planets, probably underwater bases, persistent decals on terrain, lighting systems that can accommodate tons of units without slowing down, flow-fields, selectable commanders with different abilities AND full mod support from the ground up. If that's not enough for you... I'd say you're SOL because no-one else is doing anything like this.