All I see in the lobbies is 2-4 player FFAs with 9+ planets. Not everyone wants to play cat and mouse games.
I'd rather see lots of other game features implemented than larger games. The game simply needs to be more feature complete before we start upping the scale.
I think the OP just refers to the trajectories the planets follow and the radius of them. And I totally agree with him. It will solve moons moving through eachother and just space out the planets more through the system, making it easier to keep track. It might also be a first step towards fixing elliptical orbits.
They aren't that bad if they are 1 halley 200 planets (or modded to be smaller). It really is like there is 1-2 planets, and 6 armable superweapons, so it is hair trigger set up to turn way armageddon real fast.
guys i think he means like now the editer was in beta..where you could make systems not all carmed togather
Indeed, although I can deal with condensed systems if we get 3d planet layouts (so we can place them and their orbits on a 3D sphere rather than 2D plane as it is currently... I just finished playing a 3v3v2botsv2bots in which the game imploded an hour and a half in for myself in which I got no serious warning and there was no option to reconnect... at the games start everyone was freezing here and their at the start, and I know that the 2 on my team were dropping out and reconnecting. I believe what crashed the game was myself having the rally point for 50+ orbital launchers set to 1 planet (the enemy controlled 3 dinky planets... 2 moons and a metal planet that we still had a space fabricator somehow holding out on). We had enough resources to supply an endless stream of the anti-space spaceships... about 3 minutes into that (about the length of time to travel from point A to point B through space rather) the game stopped abruptly, where I was running relatively smoothly before (except for at teh start where we were all on a very small metal planet). The reason I am stating all of this is because in Beta, whilst it had its bugs, we played a 4v4v2bots and only 1 dropped out (that is in sum of both sides and was most likely due to graphics due to what the person said prior). That system was a LARGE system... I mean 1 planet was way out there in a ~16 planet system (A ice planet for it was to be a large Pluto... no dwarf planet name for it... took and hour and a half to get to it... this was before the increased space travel speeds). That 2 in a half hour game ended with 3 players and an not 1, but 2 moons to the home planet... (1 for good measure). I have to run stripped down versions since what was my latest versions wont load, but are view-able and editable in the editor with no warnings/notifications that it will not load for a game, nor why. Point being is yes there are more units, and yes I was streaming units this game across the solar system which I had not done before to the extent I did this game that I crashed out of, so there are optimization issues with cross-space travel I would suppose.... sadly there are not a lot of readouts to the user to tell what caused the games crash. Note: I am not complaining but stating that I do not think it had anything to do with planets nor the units on them, but rather that tons of spacecraft in space (looked like a line of purple (our team color) en route to the planet (and no it was not the traced line, but the actual stream of units). I am testing and pushing the limits of the engine/game, and I intend to keep doing so, for I wish for this game to be the best that it can be... although I have to say I miss the ability to built space to ground bombardment units from the orbital launcher. Babble babble babble... I miss large systems... but would trade them for 3D systems any day, how do trees being actual objects effect the performance? Game fails to enter multiplayer lobby anytime one enters and leaves it... requires game restart. Nothing built 10 commanders (4 AIs) 1 small metal planet most lagging badly or crashing/dcing Babble babble babble... would be nice to have a readout from the server or something that displays why you are lagging/crashing (to know if it is yourself or the hardware at the other end).... Still looking forward to thsoe 40 player games... Important Note: Can we have the selection for what is to be the starting planet back, or at least put the option in the System Editor if not in the multiplayer Lobby... if it were in the Lobby the host could just click on a planet to make ti the primary one, or maybe click and drag to swap with the primary one? One can have over 9 planets but the GUI does not allow for it to display properly... this is especially true for over 12 planets. Can we have the option to start on multiple planets? or maybe have team planet(s) for starting points? I can see it getting a bit hairy otherwise.... especially at the 40 player count to be.
Although this was a huge problem before, I think we can vaguely manage now because orbital transit times are now very fast and nukes can travel anywhere. There are however still going to be problems with planets phasing through each other because there just isn't even enough space to spread out planets. I would rather a (temporary) planet limit but we could place our planets wherever we want because the restrictions are highly constricting imo.
I don't like walking down the road of temporary for what becomes temporary may become permanent... depends on how much you think is a reasonable planet cap, but fair point... and indeed the system range restriction needs to be lifted or greatly expanded... or allow placement in a 3D sphere... at least we have elliptical rotations now... adn ebcause of that I would be greatly appreciative of the former planet anywhere placement (of what once was). I don't mind planets phasing through each other for they are supposed to be collision capable, and the phasing is a reminder of things to come. It is debilitating to not pick ones starting planet though...
The aim of the game is not to have limits. The game is actually simulated in 3D, but is displayed in 2D for clarity. Have you actually thought about how difficult it would be to try and understand a system with planets spinning in all directions? Or trying to work out which planet is on a further orbit? It may sound like a great idea but in practice it would likely end up very confusing and would take much longer to look at a system just to understand a small piece of simple information. You can pick choices of starting planets in the system editor, when you click a planet their is a tickbox to add it to the list of planets you can choose to spawn on.
I vote in favour of near unlimited space. Systems would be huge, but if they fix the UI in the system overview in-game with arrows, circles, crosshairs and more menus, I think it would give a very good oversight. On a side note, the first time I pressed the "Simulate" button in the system editor, I thought it would actually simulate the system and give an error if at some point planets would move through eachother rather than just make them spin slowly.
Thanks for the info about the system editor. On another note, yes I understand how it may look abstract, and the implementation would make it harder. I know it is 3D, but currently the planets are on a 2D plane, which i understand makes the gameplay smoother. The logistical issues of looking at a 3D system (as I put it) with 6 planets under the current circle translated to sphere range is as manageable as that of a 16 planet system on a unrestricted 2D plane (not this current circle of limitation). It probably will never happen regaurdless of it would be or has been seriously considered for a 3D planet rotation, for the game is quite far along and there would be those people that have 12-16 planets in a 3D planet rotation sphere. However, we do have that handy bar at the top where we can click on a plenet and woosh we're off. Also I have played 12 planet systems of late of which I tend to have a hotkey of some sort on each in which it is as simple as 1 2 3 4 5... well you use it to get there. One could simply hotkey the planet locations... aka use the anchors mappings as seen under the Camera commands, shift 0-9 to map then alt 0-9 to go to... maybe additional controls can be added so if one wanted to make additional location mappings one could. Some planets tend to orbit others so does one really need 1 for all locations. One may simply eat up those hard to eat unit hotkeys of the keyboard (to each their own, for me it is 6-0). What would be really cool would be if they let us create our own command blocks via the keyboard control interface in which we can add as many as we want for a command, such as anchors, groups, and anything else one could think of as being applicable... maybe just give us all the sets of what things can be maped to what, and we simply drag and drop to create our commands... and RTS that we can customize what we can map what to? Point being is as long as one does not make a 40 planet system (for exaggerations sake, applicable to 11+) a 3D sphere rather than 2D plane would make the game utterly unique, and just because 3D would be an option does not mean the 2D plane system would disappear... just for us hardcore RTS players/lovers it would push us to be better micromanages, as well as provide for a very interesting viewing. The navigation is already in place should not make it utterly confusing for as long as the system at hand does not use the same cookie-cutter planets everywhere (after all the planets tend to be different biomes, shapes, sizes, terrain, orbits, what orbits it and or what it orbits... etc.). Finally... I am certain that someone would create solar system imitations if the limits on orbits were removed... don't you want to play in our solar system? or that of others? I sure want to see and play the cosmos, not just take it over as one does in Spore. 3D systems as opposed to 2D planes... maybe to adress the final note of planet depth perception the systems could give a camera sweep game start to comprehend it, or the orbit lines as with any line would get "smaller" the further away it is, and larger the closer to the screen it is (just have an algorithm to maybe exaggerate it... finesse it)... and planets in your face should be hovered over to make them transparent, maybe one could hold a key down and double click to click on what is on the other side of such an object. One inquire as to what happens if there is a planet behind a planet behind a planet (etc.)... a simple solution would be a system that is properly crafted (Darwinian planets/solar systems?) one can just rotate the camera and do as we do now to zoom in on a selected planet. Not so simply put, I do not know if there is a good solution to that past knowing how to navigate the camera, wise anchor and other hotkey placements... unless one wants to simply say the planet that is immediately behind the 1 you are trying to see through... or one could hit "T" to make it transparent (not clickable and see-through) and one can repeat (and undo any 1 of the chain of transparencies in reverse order that they were done... like control z)... and once one zooms in on the desired planet (assuming no misclick) then they become visible again. Once collisions are fixed we wont have to worry about the phasing of planets through one another, although a temporary fix there might be to make the planet you are not on become invisible as it phases through. I suppose in short, to some systems may get confusing, but well made systems wont be... especially if one can rotate around the system as 1 can rotate around planets currently, a still image resutls it difficulty seeing the depth. As for knowing where everything is, that is why 1 leaves the anchor hotkeys, or maybe one could qutie literally color code the planets and/or turn on a HUD that displays numbers over/on each planet with (inverted) contrast so that it is quite blatant what is what... of course such a HUD would need implementation, and yet again, that bar at the top right of your screen (by default) that shows all the planets and is clickable is a great solution. Maybe this was not argued in the best of words, but when your typing something up on little sleep in the wee hours of the morn' slack is due to an extent.
+1 to op. I'd love to see bigger systems (read: allow more distant orbits). As for having more planets in a system that most of the people here talk about - I'm not a big fan of that, if anything: there should be a warning (intended to discourage) before player joins a system with more than 4 planetary bodies.
In the game game listings it says +X (amount more). It also shows in the Game Lobby the number of planets once one joins... as long as 1 can opt out of a nag like that, and can set the nag to whatever number of planets, I'm game... for I'd opt out. On another note, I forgot to mention that that game not having limits is ideal and am in no way advocating limits, was just saying that 3D systems (X Y Z (currently just X Y) rotation axes) would be nice in the absence of the former... I already tackled some takes the logistical problems of player interaction in my prior post. That being said, I do say that 3D systems almost make it so that there would be no need for the lift/expansion of the solar system... although it would be awesome if it was.
