What to AVOID AT ALL COSTS in the making of this game.

Ok so there is a simple yet very common problem with rts games now. When you move units, they tend to kind of walk around (for realism) and spread out (for realism again) DONT DO THAT. It may look realistic when WATCHING the game but it is very annoying when playing the game and it isn't even noticeable. StarCraft 2 does a really good job at fixing this (watch their videos to see what I mean) and that is often the number one rts game on most top 10 lists. Anyway I would literally like the game twice as much if you stayed away from that kind of visual realism, I'm dead serious, it just ruins many games. Also try to put a lot of effort in the movement of units, but for everything else just keep doing what your doing, looks good!

Oh yeah, that's definitely a deal breaker. In this game of intense micromanagement it would be disastrous if your units didn't immediately start moving where you want them to. I couldn't bear to see a game as beautiful as this one be ruined by such a fatal flaw. The inevitable backlash of not fixing this would be monumental. It would echo through the ages that a perfect game was ruined by the most obvious and breaking feature ever conceived.

This is definitely something to AVOID AT ALL COSTS in the making of this game.

Are you talking about units adjusting themselves while and after moving? I don't see how that wrecks or impacts the game at all really, its not like we're going to stutter-step the bots any time soon.

Just like to point this out befor the conversation continues. PA is a macro rts NOT a micro rts. Also pointing out formation are going to be in the game and path finding is going to ve a big deal. So no worries there

Since TA and FA both had massive blobs of units moving around the map in tight bunches I don't know why you think this will be a problem in PA.

Because it's the Internet, and everyone has to over-react.


And for everyone who is replying to madsurgery's post; Poe's Law is in effect.

the people who supported this game practically give a damn about what starcraft did..
because this game and starcraft are pretty much the stellar opposides of how RTS is depicted..
you want superquick unitresponsiveness in a macrostyl game? go ask starcraft2 modders to bring in the TA costruction, economy and warhead style (and probably even unitshootingbehavior) into their game..
i don´t say starcraft is bad..but i don´t want anything from starcraft into this game..

I wonder if PA's final pathfinding solution will be as "innovative" as that of SupCom2's (I hope not). SC2 had units practically moving through each other.

OP is talking about units immediately moving in the direction you click, even if it's opposite the direction they're facing. For example, he wouldn't want vehicles to need to U-turn.

I can sort of understand - that is something that bothered me when I first played Supreme Commander, coming from Brood War. It's frustrating when your units don't immediately do what you want - especially to those of us who like to spam-click. You get used to it though and it's not that big a deal. I would say I'm indifferent either way but "realistic" movement for units (airplanes banking, vehicles u-turning, etc) is pretty core to this type of game.

I can't disagree that units should be responsive though, that's integral to playability.

They're using the same underlying pathfinding technology (flowfields), but SupCom2 was heavily tuned in favor of small units sliding around to make way for big units (since the main focus of SupCom2 was experimental units), which looked cool in Strategic Zoom but closer up it caused tanks to drive sideways... from what I gather, they're not planning on doing that here, primarily because the focus of the game is not on big units but on planets.

Yea that's what I like about it, you can control your units so easily becuase they aren't spread out so much that some don't even know a battle is going on. I haven't seen much gameplay besides the trailer so if they are doing something like this then great. Also apparently they might have formations, I think this should be an option. Like you could turn it off an don for your units only depending on what you prefer.

I liked the flexibility of TA's unit stance and pathfinding the most of all the RTS games I've played.

While not perfect, TA's system was still great and versatile. You could set the "response state" of any unit as it traveled from one point to another.

For example, you could set a unit's "response state" to "ignore", so that it would move from one point to another and ignore ALL distractions (even when attacked). This was useful when you needed to make sure that a group of reinforcements actually arrived at their destination without being drawn off by diversionary attacks.

You could also set a unit's "response state" to "defend", so that the unit would move from one point to another and respond to enemy units ONLY IF attacked (or the units they were guarding were attacked). This allowed you to create convoy escorts and the like that would focus on defending weaker units and the like.

Finally, you could set a unit's "response state" to "attack", so that the unit would attack any detected enemy units as it traveled form one point to another. This was useful when you wanted to have units function as aggressive recon patrols.

Also I think planes should only land if commanded but they should hover over their destination unless it is a bomber or something.

I rather like the idea of them landing. It lets ground units ambush them before they can get away.

Not if you are the guy with the planes, but yes, I think landing would be a cool option.

This man. I like him.

Edit: As for planes, I think Spring had an option as to whether or not planes would land while idle. It was either circle or land.

It comes down to what separates a fighter from a bomber from this? This feels like a very arbitrary distinction.

What's the difference between a Hovering unit and a Landed Plane? in all likely hood the Horizontal Movement aspects will be the same for both, it would only be the Vertical movement aspects that would be affected, and based on SupCom I don't see this being a sufficiently large issue to cause any problems.

Mike

It certainly looks nice, but if there is no benefit to being on the ground, then staying airborne will be mandatory (regardless of what the default AI does).

TA had a marginal bonus of letting certain planes hide under the water. This rendered them immune to many weapons, and enabled a small value to ambush tactics.

Hmm. What if bombers had to land in order to reload their weapons(or got a boosted rate for it)? That would most certainly change how they get used.

Landing should be good for something, otherwise it's a punishing vestige of seminal RTS. What if landed planes were immune to radar?

That sounds good. How about invisible to radar AND no fuel consumption.