3D Terrain a gimmick?

I hope Uber will find a nicer solution than a minimap. It feel like a huge step back when one of the PA ancestors (in term of age get rid of that.

Having a separate map in the corner allows for quick surveillance of the entire play area without having to actually zoom out and look around; very convenient if you're playing with slower zoom-in/out and scrolling speeds. Playing without one may make the screen less cluttered, but it's undeniably convenient for when you're playing on enormous maps (such as an entire solar system).

Not sure how that would work myself....it'd be too cluttered to show....

I'd have to suggest a hotkey and a response noise so once you heard the noise of an attack you press the hotkey to check out whats going on. If you're on a planet and your moon is attacked you'd never know unless someone has a better idea?

Having a zoom-in/out bar and being able to scroll across the surface of planets and select the ones you want to focus on would be extremely useful, but I don't know how they'd be able to pull that off. Maybe scrolling buttons? Have it focus on the planet you're currently on, and zoom out from there? Either way, It'd have to be much more interactive than your typical 2D minimap. It depends on how much real estate they're willing to sacrifice for one; Or they could just let us stretch it to our liking, and see how that goes.

How 'bout having a response noise and a message 'You are being engaged on [Planet Name Here]!'; That might work. A hotkey wouldn't hurt, either.

It's not about being warn of attacks. A "normal" game will have constant attacks.
Such feature will be useless at best.

No, the problem is having a full view of the battefield so you can decide what angle use, and how to attack. Basically, a strategic view.

Well, play chess on multiple spheres, then we can talk

What I meant is that in term of how units go from one plane to another, a plane battlefield isn't "smooth", while intergalactic planetary, planetary intergalactic robots going from planets to planets just rock worlds !

It's way more awesome than interplanary chess, mate.

Nice photo btw.

So it's a damn hard thing to think of. Props to UBER for considering the scale....the implementation will be key I think

The Idea is that you're notified if your stuff is being attacked on a different planet. Also, doesn't the Strategic Zoom feature basically cover that?

All you're saying is "OMG 3D SPHERE THE REALISMS AND AWESUMS" rather than "This definitively actually improves the gameplay and functionality of the game".

You will have constant spam of these alerts. At some point, you will stop giving them attention.

Also, it's bad way to fix a design flaw.
Also, it's probably too late to be warn when the attack occurs.
You don't need an alert to begin with if you are able to see easily that you are going to be under attack on your radars. (what, again, a strategic view allow you to).

Yes, we badly need one in PA.
We currently have a zoom. That's nice. But it's not strategic at all. (I have hard time picturing a general planning an attack by spinning his map constantly while trying to remembering what is on the other side).

It allow you, at best, to see 40% of a planet. Not talking of it being even more useless on several planets.

I think Uber should concentrate on making the game working correctly from a strategy point of view with a single planet before thinking adding multiple planet support.

Ok, from the OP's two posts i can clearly see he's just trying to aggrieve people. But in answer to the gameplay design aspect of a 3D spherical map. Not all game mechanics are made to ease the players' time. Many, in fact, are made to offer a mutual challenge. Others are made to add extra difficulty in a fair way.

A spherical map is fair because it can never benefit one of the players to the detriment of the other. It enhances gameplay because it forces less passivity, since in order to use all of your facilities, and in order to find new ones, you can't just zoom out. It's a choice, and a rather tough one, over which angle to have your camera pointed at. Of course, when it's centered in your base you can easily defend from most close range offensive. But when you're looking for new metal spots you'll need to use other angles. That makes you vulnerable in a way that's not easy to exploit (since it's not actually possible to detect it), but that still creates windows of opportunity.

Besides, it's not realistic. Currently we have very few weapons that can threaten any part of the globe, so battles still take place in very small patches of land. Apart from ICBM's and satellite-mounted weapons, all our engagements take place within a tiny cut of the planet. This is not the case when you can have hundreds of soldiers built in minutes that can be relied upon to reach their destination with barely more than an A-move, and which require no actual logistic support.

Imagine a 1v1 with both player spawning exactly opposite each other on the planet. It forces major decisions as to base placement and defense. Assuming you don't want to spend your whole eco building turrets, you have to actually decide which are the most viable routes for enemy attack. Of course, whatever you choose, air can get over it, but there are viable methods of countering air from any direction, since current interceptor aircraft is built to be sightly more effective that AA turrets. That means you have to choose a spot where you can easily defend against infantry, so you look for cliffs, mountains, and natural bridges. However, the latter of these offers and additional risk, Navy attacks. That forces you to build your own navy to secure the seas, sine it currently overpowers pretty much any static or mobile D apart from itself. Once again, this is only possible because you can never see the whole of the planet, even with perfect radar coverage. If you could it would never be a surprise to be attacked by slow units, since you'd have far too much time to react.

I think these are sufficient reasons to convince you that 3D maps can be very challenging in an interesting way.

Not all about a game is about 'gameplay & functionality', art, atmosphere, background are as important.

- 3d spheres increase the strategic depth because attacks can come from any direction, as you don't get the free walls you get when you start against the square map boundary.
- along with the long distance zoom, they add a feeling of large scale to the game

- this is really the only way to scale up the battle from the ground battlefield to a larger interplanetary battlefield : Layered planes with "underground" "ground" "air" and "space" both looks and feel silly, and are awkward gameplay-wise, contrarily to a smooth zooming.
You could imagine a cubic battle field, or swapping between battlefields, but it's not interplanetary warfare.

Now, I agree it's not realistic "physically", and you could say that interplanetary warfare is gimmick, but I think
- it improves the scalability of warfare, you can play on a small planet or in a giant system
- it adds depth to the gameplay by opening new "tech routes": going into space etc.
- the art associated with it is new and interesting
- it makes way for new, interesting features, like satellites and orbital combat.

I don't have the alpha and I'll withhold judgement till I've played 1.0.

But from here, it looks like some of the old-school, long-time RTS fans half-legitimate criticisms stem from PA not conforming to the ossified tropes of the genre. And that's not good.

I think it is hard to get rid of 3d now since it has been there since the kickstarter vid.
The discussion would be a lot more interesting if we could agree that this game needs to made as it is advertised (cannot change the basics now).
And then try to figure out what we need to be able to play it.

Sure it might be hard (er) or different to play then 2d maps.
On the other hand, we do not yet have the right UI tools to play the game.

- A default radar would not do much good for a solar system.
But we do need something to monitor multiple planets all at once, how do we do it?
The game will be supporting multiple windows.
We need some tactical hud/mode to have tactical information about what is going on planets. maybe we do not need the see what is on which side of the planet if we are zoomed out but we just need some sort of list of the most important structures/ amount of units.

- Larger spheres might give a different game experience then small planets.
(not as easy/not possible to move land forces to the other side of the globe without some forward base)

Got no time left to type more ..
Anyway, I think we have to give it a chance, watch some SF movies, how do planetary maps look like? It is not like we as humans have ever needed to wage war on that scale, we are in the unknown here (lucky us ).

I think 3D planets bring with them a genuine problem, in that you can no longer zoom out for a fully strategic view where you're able to see everything at once.

You could argue it adds an extra layer of challenge, or something, but for me this was the main success of the strategic zoom in Supreme Commander: you could see everything at once and react to that information. I miss having that. That's all.

I do think some solutions are direly needed, but it seems tough to come up with good ones; it'll also only get tougher when interplanetary gameplay is added.

Spherical planets is the whole point. If you don't want spherical planets there are many games with otherwise similar mechanics which play out on a rectangle. Simply play one of those instead.

That's, I think, what I will do if they don't find a solution.

Actually our opinion doesn't matter much : We already bought the game.
You probably need to look on other forums than uber.

Your post is just strange, or trolling for no reason.

All your points against a spherical map has to do with camera controls, not against the map itself, which as you well know is the entire point of the game. Since a simple 2d projection of the map into another view port would easily stop any of the arguments you have it's a dumb complaint and not constructive at all.