I find this game frustrating and almost hopeless to play. It suffers the same problem as SupCom 1 and 2. The units appear so small in scale that I can't tell them apart from each other. Neither can I tell friend from foe apart quickly for similar reasons. Finding a construction bot quickly is next to impossible. At least quickly. They are completely lost in the clutter. Compare this with the original Total Annihilation. It had infinitely more types of units and buildings but they were instantly recognizable. Colors were vibrant and if nothing else, you could tell a unit a part by its colored patches. In TA, constructor units had that very recognizable chevron pattern on them. PA has that, but it's soooo incredibly small that it doesn't make a difference at the camera height you want and need to play at. Yes, TA only had one camera height and much smaller maps in comparison, but there has to be a way to mix the two.... Another thing is that everything sounds dull and muted and muddled. In TA, if a T2 laser tower was firing at your tanks there was no mistaking it. You knew instantly what was happening. Bright green lasers flew across the battlefield and the characteristic, evil sound could easily be picked out among the rest of the chaos. Now I can hardly tell a radar tower from a missile tower. Take TA's units; The peewee, the bulldog, the zipper, the jeffy, the can (so brilliantly animated as well) and of course the big bertha. Simplistic, almost naive, but so incredibly recognizable at a glance. Visuals AND sound. Everybody loved the spider robot of Supreme Commander. It stood out. It was visual, it was visceral. But what about everything else? Lost in icons and clutter. You've gone for a stylistic and simplistic art style and that's fine. But contrary to this, the design of the units are so cluttered and small that everything gets lost. Especially readability. You only see the detail once you zoom in all the way, but nobody plays like that because you can only see a handful of units at the same time then. Not only that, but the colors are so muted and desaturated that nothing sticks out. Units gets lost in each other and units are mistaken for rocks in the landscape. The lighting is super cool. I love that the sun rises and sets, that the planets you are fighting on are actually moving around the sun. But overall it also hampers readability greatly. The sharp shadows of the tiny units make it even more difficult to tell what's what in the clutter. You might say this is a game about macro control not micro. If nothing else, I still need to micro my construction units to build stuff. And I still want to enjoy a chaotic battlefield and know instantly at a glance what's happening. What units are attacking, what tier are they, how many of each. Not only to counter it, gameplay-wise, but to simply ENJOY it. I want to feel that awesome defensive turret when it fires and I want to hear the rumble of the tanks and the thumping of their cannons. TA had all of this. PA has none of it.
Although it has been admittedly a while since I last played the game but I never found the issues which you suggest. Currently the sounds in place for most units are certainly distinctive enough, especially laser turrets , to pkck out from the soundscape. As for unit and building design the only confusion I often had was distinguishing tech 1 aircraft from there tech 2 counterparts. The issue with engineers I do somewhat sympathise with but by the time I had large enough armies and bases to lose individual engineers in, most were focused in large groups assisting with large scale construction, thus i can't really comment. Again I reiterate it has been a while i've played a game beyond to just see a new feature.
Uber has said they are still working on the UI so there will likely be improvements. I think the sounds are fine, though making explosive stuff more awesome would be nice. Right now it feels a little underwhelming when you hit stuff. shortcuts like the f key are very useful for the engineer problem. We still need a select and jump to next idle fabricator key, rather than select them all though. And have a better view of of ordnance on the strategic level would be really nice. (like supcom's yellow dots)
I agree with this thread. An info popup window would work well. I imagine the same kind of deal your browser does when you hover your mouse over a web link. A small transparent window just displaying unit name/type, abilities, etc.
The game isn't done. All the things you are talking about can be fixed with polish etc. The UI isn't done, the sounds aren't done. A good number of units aren't in the game yet. There are features that aren't implemented yet. The game just isn't done. Your critic sadly like many others is really one that should be reserved for final products not games in development.
