Why remove Unit Wreckage?

When i read over the patch notes...."All units: - No Longer leave wreckage." wait...what?
Question: why remove unit wreckage?

I mean...i thought unit wreckage was cool, seeing the aftermath of huge battles was really cool and unit wreckage has been in TA and Supreme Commander 1 @ 2.
The only 2 good reasons i can see for removing wreckage is
1) Helps unit pathing
2) Stability? i mean theres more stuff on the screen, i dont know if it helps stability but im just guessing it does

But wreckage is cool! it changes the terrain and blocks people from swiftly moving their armies where you can trap them because of the wreckage, there is also reclaiming battlefields (takes power to do so last i checked so not optimal but still there) its like removing a small but important aspect of PA =(

Maybe it just means units won't litter?

I was also sad to see unit wrecks removed. I hope this is just a temporary fix.

Unit wreckage was always a pain in the past because right-clicking on it would issue a fire command instead of a move command. It also was a bit counter-intuitive to be able to hide behind it when playing from strategic view.

Purely decorative wreckage/blast marks is probably the better way to do it.

I hope it's a temporary fix.

It better be a temporary fix.

The problem is unit pathing and attacking through wreckage fields. An attack force will get shredded to pieces, particularly by Laser Defense Towers, because they can't move forward through the wrecks.

Removing them fixes that issue, but removes a very important gameplay mechanic as well as some excellent eye candy.

I'm guessing it's Uber just trying to cut corners to rush out 1.0.

It'll probably be fixed eventually.

Yeah it's likely the AI issues with patching and aiming, I agree.

The problem with unit wreckage was that the command overlay (or whatever) on it was terrible. A shot would hit the wreckage even though the shot clearly goes over it and it kind of ruined tank vs tank gameplay. There's a similar problem with trees. I'm kind of glad they removed it but I hope it's temporary to fix it.

Hoping this is temporary.

Reclaiming and possibly resurrecting units is interesting and important.
It means the battlefield and resource distribution alter as we play.

WTF !?

That was when the best features of the game. Hopefully it's temporary.

One more putting a vote down for hoping that this is temporary.

Wreckage is a simple and elegant negative feedback mechanism on the run-away expansion problem. Suppose one player has claimed more territory in the initial land-grab. They will normally be able to use their advantage to go on the offensive, throwing units at the defensive player. If an assault is unsuccessful (which often happens), then it leaves a lot of metal on the defensive player's doorstep, which they are able to reclaim, and throw back at their opponent. Thus, it allows a potential come-back mechanism for players who are a little behind. I hope I don't need to explain why a good mixture of negative and positive feedback mechanisms are absolutely vital for any game, and PA is currently a little lacking on the negative feedback mechanisms.

Unfortunately, the current wreckage system (even if it was put back in) is blighted by two problems:

1. Units do not intelligently try to alter their position if their shots miss. This would probably be a bit of work to fix, but ultimately, the solution wouldn't be more difficult than "if my last shot missed, then either circle or move closer to my target" (which of these is right for a particular unit could be modelled as dependant upon the preference for a low/high arc firing solution, as a quick approximation to the problem).

2. Reclaim is micro-heavy compared to the other way of gaining metal. I think this could be easily fixed by adding an automatic reclaim behaviour to units, similar to how combat fabbers have auto-repair behaviour. This is something that I would like to leverage, and has been noted down in our list of hooks that it would be nice to have.

However, I suspect that this change may end up being something that hangs around for a while. Uber seem to be pushing very hard for release, and if a feature is hard to polish, I'm guessing that it is going to be cut, at least till post release, in order to get the game ready to launch. I suspect that now is not the time for suggestions as Uber already know what they want to do, although I would love to be proved wrong.

Important? Are you crazy? As wreckage was, it's nearly useless, only there to get in the way. I needs to be adjusted, very much as MadSci said and usually isn't worth reclaiming because it's more effective to raid for metal points than to waste all that energy reclaiming.

I can't deny that it looked good though. I would love to see it come back and be properly implemented as it was in TA, but that may not make it in for 1.0.

Have you played RCBM?

When balanced correctly, wreckage is a very important and useful gameplay mechanic.

VERY useful for keeping a positive economy.

Yea im jumping on the bandwagon that this is hopefully a temp option.
The amount of times iv been struggling for a bit of extra mass and scooping up all the dead units around my base has saved my *** / turned the game around for me

That was my point. It isn't balanced correctly in vanilla PA. It's not an important mechanic if it's useless. It has the strong potential to be important, but like I said, as it was, it was basically useless.

P.S.: I suck so bad at RCBM I wouldn't know

Yet more key features of the TA-like subgenre being dropped put on the back burner/swept under a rug?

Yet another feature being " de-prioritised " without any explanation to the community?
(Other than presumably the push for release)

Somehow I'm not surprised.

It's honestly like the developers have never even played Total Annihilation/SupCom... or at the least, fundamentally misunderstood the gameplay mechanics.

Ah, but since there is no explanation, how do we know it's been de-prioritized? You just assumed that they did, for all we know, there was a fatal bug involved that's getting fixed.

Not attacking you, or the rest of your post, I'm just pointing out a flaw in reasoning that the whole community is often plagued with.

@nanolathe
Nobody from Uber has even commented yet so isn't it a bit early to be proclaiming the imminent end of the world?

Having actually spoken to Jon Mavor on several occasions, there seems to be a very obvious disconnect between the Development team and the playerbase in terms of what each believes is required for deep and meaningful gameplay.

Webby, I'm drawing that conclusion because every single time previous to this, when a feature has been removed, not discussed or just generally uncommunicated, it is because the feature has been de-prioritised.

Then it should be fixed, not removed.