Take a chill pill... You did focus on one point of his post which ultimately led you to comment on something that was not the point. We are in alpha not beta, beta is for the balancing right now the game needs toget to a suitable point to make sure that things are the WAY THEY APPEAR IE working with planets that cover a huge score of situations. So tone it down.
Sure, beta is for balance, but this is hardly a balance issue. It's more an issue in how a specific aspect of the game is currently working in practice. And yet I wasn't aware that I was under some kind of duty to respond to every part of a post, especially when 2/3rds of it was basically "shut up it's an alpha". I can focus on as many or as few parts of a post as I damn-well want. Who the **** died and made him king of the forum? Because he has lots of posts I should care? Because he has an obnoxiously huge sig that would have been considered in bad taste in 1999, and is in fact so bad looking that the fact that he advertises himself as an 'artist' directly above it is nothing short of completely embarrassing? Throwing a little fit, dropping insults completely unprovoked, and 12-year-old talk about how he's ignoring me as a direct response to not specifically addressing every aspect of his post is so f***ing immature I don't know how else to put it. This guy must seriously be autistic or something, if me pointing out what a total intellectual void his post was was enough to send him careening over the edge into a frantic raging freakout. Would you like me to address more of his almost totally worthless post? He basically said only three things. The first was a massive generalization of someone's post so that he could more easily blow it off completely. The second was generic 'it's an alpha, waah!' deflection which isn't even worth my time addressing, because it's such a facile argument. The third thing is this: Again, not worth my time because it's such a stupid thing to say, but I'll humor him: Well then it's a good thing then that they knew they were going to be adding naval units before the game was even funded, and thus they should've adjusted goals accordingly. Using the excuse that it wasn't originally going to have naval is ridiculous. Navies isn't something that they decided to throw in last week, it was one of the first stretch goals and it was met a long time ago. They knew they were going to have to support naval units before they even had a functional game or a planet generator. The only purpose of his post was being a developer apologist and trying to deflect criticism like a typical fanboy white-knight that always infests forums of indy games like this.
No I'd like you not to replicate pmsing and instead write a response based on another persons actual point, not a fabricated one that you actually believe was the point based on one sentence. This is why we use them all.
Frostiken is in the right here. Knight acted like a total ***, not once but twice. That kind of off hand, holier than thou attitude is enough to drive anyone over the edge. For what its worth, I agree with his assessment of naval units in the game, they are far too large for the oceans which are currently created by the planet generator, making them next to useless. This is a real issue with the game as it currently stands. Perhaps it will be fixed by larger planets (which are also necessary imo, once you get 3 or 4 reasonable sized bases on a planet their outer edges almost touch), perhaps it will be that naval units are only useful on ocean planets. As it stands its definitely not a 'balance issue,' its a problem with what is supposed to be core gameplay which renders an entire set of factories and units completely useless.
That's assuming we're MEANT to use Naval units in the bodies of water currently being generated. Think back to SupCom, how many 5km Maps did you use Naval on that didn't have bodies of water obviously created such that they were large enough for it? Devs have stated that they feel the current size planet is good for 1v1 and cramped for 4 players as I'm sure we've all experienced by now. It's just like the Island example. Mike
As already has been stated, you misunderstood my points. Also, and in this context I am saying this only once again, this is all dependent on the current situation, we do not know how devs intend naval to look like when fleshed out. This is not a matter of 'don't build it if you don't like it', in fact this is quite an ignorant statement. I am not building in rivers, i am building in oceans based on the relation land size to water size. However due to the relation planet size to unit size, a ship might literally turn 90 degree and we get a bridge right there. That feels a bit strange. Depending on the power of naval, in a given competitive game, not building ships might not be an option. Possible solutions could be to have different water depth levels, so that you can build t1 naval only in shallow water and t2 ships only in deep water. Depending on planet size or planet specifics in general, you could allow for only shallow water. Alternatively deep water can only be after a certain amount of shallow water etc., there are a few ideas. I ll also accept the way it is right now and deal with it, but IMHO there are a few better solutions possible, to make it feel or look better.
But it's not about the Ocean size relative to the planet, its how the ocean size compares to the Naval units. Looking at it in SupCom terms, imagine you have a 5km Map and a 20km Map, each of which had an 'ocean' that was 33% of the map, are you saying the Naval units should be made smaller just so they work on the smaller map even thought the map was never designed with the intent of Naval usage based on it's overall size? Just because there are bodies of water on a given planet shouldn't mean they HAVE to be sufficient size to support naval play. Mike
He is not wrong though, because it is a matter of point of view. You can either take to the view that the planet is too small for the models put on it. Or, you may take to the view that the planet appears cramped because the models are too large. But any view you chose to take it is pretty clear that there is a real problem with scaling here. Now, Uber have stated from the very beginning that they don't go for realism. They go for awesome. I am, fine with this, in fact I agree with that it is the correct way to do it. But for immersion to work, there needs to be a believable connection between the models and the world they are in. This is sadly not the case at he moment. Scaling is a real problem in the game, and judging by other threads, quite a significant one. When I used to work as a senior graphics artist (before focusing on my passion for programming) this very issue did happen to me as well on occasion, and you can choose to ignore it at the peril of the game. But I do hope they evaluate our points, and do whatever they feel is correct to do something about it. I am sorry if this point does not agree with you, but you have to remember that there are more people than you who shares a passion for this game. And many who sees things very differently.
I still think you guys are barking up the wrong tree.. it's not the planet size OR the unit size that is the issue.. it's the detail that links the two together, namely the decals and props that give the planet your point of reference for scale. Mountains look like small hills. Buildings are the size of small mountains. Trees seem insubstantial. It's FINE if the planet is small - but then lets make it FEEL small, and make the decals and details make it to scale.Right now it looks like you should be playing in an ocean and instead you feel like you're playing in a puddle. You can't downsize the units because there's a minimum size for movement etc, you can't upsize the planets because it's meant to be a small map world.. but then make it feel like a small world.
I get your point, though the comparison is difficult to accept. Supcom maps were hand tailored usually in a way that they seemed or felt 'realistic', at least I don't remember a map on top of my head where it felt totally wrong when using naval. You still had to maneuver them around and drive rather large distances. Even that popular 1v1 map (looked like an 8 surrounded by water), the ocean around felt natural. And I believe a majority of the small maps had no water at all, for a reason, both immersion and balance I would think. The problem in PA arises more from the random generation of water on the map. The units shouldn't be changed in size, as long as the relative size among units generally fits. But I would suggest to somehow consider the size of the water surface and limiting naval build options based on this. Again, we don't even know if core naval gameplay generally is in its final design stage already.
If you read my comment more carefully you will see that I actually am talking about '..there needs to be a believable connection between the models and the world they are in.." that includes trees and such. I did not miss this point.
indeed Mithri, aimed that more at the others . It's definitely that connection that is missing, not the size of the planet or units or anything else.
What one considers as connecting might be subjective though. I agree with your points, but to me putting out a huge battleship in mass production for war on a piece of water that is barely big enough for the ship yard does not connect for me as well.
How about Canis River? The water features are too small for naval units, by your arguments either the units should be made to fit or the water features should be made to fit. But water isn't just for Naval units, they also have indirect effects on land units, primarily the non-amphibious ones(but to Amphibious ones as well in a way) in that they can't go to that location. Yet it's still not the same as a Rock outcrop the same size, even thought you might not be able to play around with ships in smaller bodies of water, that doesn't mean there isn't purpose to them, we know there will be a full selection of water based structures for the Water planets, and it's entirely possible some of those can be put to use in some of then smaller bodies of water. From what we've seen and what Uber has told us, the Planet Generator is going to be powerful, and in the long run we need to remember it's not random either. In time as Uber gets to work out exactly how they want Biomes and Planet types to work I think you'll see the Procedural aspects get much more refined. Mike
Go re-watch the planet builder livestream. If you want naval battles that feel to scale, then play on a planet generated with lots of water and ~3000 meter diameter. That's 5-6x as big as the alpha planets. The scale feels off because we are playing on the absolute smallest maps. Maps this small in these types on games almost never use naval at all, there's no point to it normally (you can just build a static artillery for cheaper than a battleship for the same weapon).
As knight has said several times before you have literally no way to know that you're judging scaling correctly yet because we haven't found maps dedicated to water play... Just because there's a lake doesn't mean you should be in it lol and that may be effectin your perspective
You dont have to convince me or something, i am fully aware of the impact on larger planetsizes. However i dont understand why everyone basically wants this to be ignored. I personally dont mind it, but i would certainly appreciate some improvements. Also refering to larger planets is absolutely not solving the problem. Randomly genrated maps can still create small amounts of water which could be something of the size less than a sea, but still allowing to place ships in there. In case ships are very powerful, they will be built in the smallest spot possible if it gives an advantage. Refrain from stupid 'lol you dont have to be in the small sea if you dont like' comments, it only shows your lack of experience or ignorance.
There is nothing being Ignored we are saying WAIT TILL BETA AT LEAST. Where they focus on game balancing instead of function...
In what ridiculously loose definition of the word 'balance' you're using here could this possibly be construed as a balance issue? This isn't a 'beta' problem. This is a fundamental problem with how an entire class of units functions on what will most likely be the most common world type based on current world generation algorithms. Alright, so how about you tell us what should be considered an appropriately-sized body of water to allow naval conflict. Seeing as how right now, an ocean that covers almost an entire visible half is barely big enough and smaller connecting bodies end up looking comical if you try to send ships up them... if your only answer is 'Naval units should only be for 100% ocean planets', well I already brought that up: making naval units only for oceanic planets is a waste of units. That would be like making aircraft only usable on terran planets because volcanic planets have too much ash in the air, ice planets are too cold, and moon planets have no atmosphere. Would you like that? Zero air units except for one specific type of planet? Maybe we can also make it so legged units cannot be used on ice planets because they get stuck, and wheeled/tracked units can't be used on volcanic worlds because it's too rocky and unstable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd like to see all units reduced in scale, but at the very least I think naval units need to be shrunk by a considerable margin. I'd like to point out that the factories alone for producing naval units are basically double the size of their land-based contemporaries. The Advanced Naval Yard is the size of two Advanced Vehicle Factories stuck side-by-side. Furthermore, I think the planetary generation algorithm should be adjusted to fill the land with shallow rivers connecting to large oceans, allowing naval units (tier 1 units mostly) to project influence beyond the limitations of the solitary body of water that they are currently stuck occupying.
This isn't a beta issue. Beta is where you fix things that are decided upon. Beta is usually feature complete. This is an Alpha issue, the scaling needs to be fixed now. And speaking from my own experience in the field, the longer you wait to deal with it, the more models need to be fixed. Perhaps to the point where you can't fix it any longer. They should absolutely *not* wait to deal with this.
