So I've been playing a few games this morning and I've realised something about the planets: they barely have any geographical features! As an example, go to google images and put in 'Total Annihilation Maps', and check out some of the geography. The terrain in TA controlled how you had to attack, it affected indirect weapons fire, it basically played a big part of the game. Now I realise that to a certain extent the gameplay effect of features like natural defensive walls is replicated by having different planets (i.e. I can't attack you because of the natural defensive property of YOU'RE ON A DIFFERENT PLANET!) but even so I feel the loss of TA's (and to a certain extent SC's) complex terrain! I remember a particular lava map in TA where Commanders spawned on a cross-like map with 4 points at each end, with a highly raised centre. Units could not fire into the centre due to the geography, so they had to walk into it to fight... it was a clusterfuck! Anyway I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
There's plenty of geography on PA's planets; check the system editor and see what you can build with various changes to water, water heigth, temperature etc. What's really limiting "complex" maps right now is planet size. For example, most standard planets are too small to have any meaningful bodies of water - and thus won't support proper naval play.
Lots of terrain props were cut out cause they messed with the navigation of units(Navigation on spherical maps are really hard compared to flat maps)
Yeh I think it was playing havoc with the pathing and such, which can already be patchy on the planets we have. Maybe as time progresses they will think about implementing advanced features, but for now you'll just have to tinker with the system editor to try and get planets with more features, like cracks or lakes or mountain ranges.
Ok thats interesting, so it's a pathing issue. Yes there is some limited geographical features but in terms of the gameplay effect they are just 'you can't walk here'. At the moment we have no raised plateaus for example, or natural defensive high walls. Another example (shoutout to old school TA players) is the green map with 3 commander spawns on it where there was a defensive hill protecting one of the spawns, it gave that player protection against artillery. I can't remember the name of it.
Terrain height in top down perspective game is really hard to pull off properly. So many times in sup com, i've built a wall of pd's only to watch them pitfully shoot the ground in front of them as my enemy marches happily into my base. I say **** hills.
People keep saying this, but I am pretty sure it's not the case. Uber have never said or even implied this afaik. I can see two reasons for the lack of big geographic features. Aesthetics will play a big part. You could quite easily argue that big mountains and cliffs look out of place on a small sphere. Personally I think its a good fit with the slightly cartoonish art style that PA took. How they function ingame. I am sure people have observed this already, two armies attempting to shoot each other not realising that there's a great big mountain separating them.
Welcome to the Forums Larger CSG Terrain and height differences are a frequently requested feature. Terrain had greater variation back in Alpha, but some brushes had to be removed (hopefully postponed) for whatever reason. There are lots of threads on this (more than a few of which I started) which I could dig up for you. There is also a mod for cliffs by Aeves
As eroticburrito mentioned, there is a mod available that adds cliffs into the terrain... And its good if you haven't tried any mods yet I'd recommend downloading and installing pa mod manager (PAMM)- which can be found in the mod sub forum in released mods. That will give you access to all the available mods and gives you an easy way to turn them on or off (usually a good idea to turn them off after a major update)...
You could zoom down and look at the terrain from the ground level to see if your PD (or anything else) would be obstructed.
Zooming in doesn't help, you'd have to zoom in and alter the camera angle. WAY to time consuming for a game like this, you want to throw out some defenses and get back to the job at hand, not pend 30 minutes micro placing turrets.
I'd be interested if they added in some planets some large unique planetary features, similar to how they make some worlds unique in space 4X games. For example a planet nearly split in two with a supersized ravine running through the centre, or already spawns with a massive chunk missing out of it, supervolcanoes or even activatable systems such as a super large radiotelescope ( think Arecibo ) which gives intel on a planet of choice, this can make some systems a lot more unique and adds further strategic depth to what planet you may want to move onto next rather than the tactical advantages it may have as being metal extractor planet #4
I'm not so sure about passing issues. Especially lava planets can have bigger mountain range's and create huge natural chokes. Had a game where the enemy AI had build a base of one side of a big choke and expanded past it. Seemed to work just fine, the only thing bugging out was his air army. Imo the planets we have now are already good, but i'm sure there is much more potential.
you might find this an interesting read : https://www.google.fr/search?client...-8&oe=utf-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=9jcLVNjaO4zDbL_FgtgH
That's what I meant. And it wasn't that big of a problem (maybe 5 seconds at the most), and because maps were premade you would typically have some idea of the terrain of maps after playing on them for a while. It wouldn't work for this game because the free camera controls aren't as quick as the free camera in supcom was.
