PA single player still uses Servers?

Considering that PA is a smaller Dev, why didn't they just accept that the promises they made would take more time to actualize, and delay the release... I didn't bring in blizzard and valve just to compare their games, my point was that even those two huge companies have a "ready when it's ready" policy, and wouldn't rush a 1.0 like uber has.

I cannot understand why you guys are making excuses for Uber.
Maybe the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. Their marketing department promised more than their software department could deliver. I bought this game from the feature set published by Uber on the steam page. Offline and 40 man games to be specifically.

Currently I cannot even play a 2 man game past 1 hour. This isn't the epic scale that was promised, it isn't epic at all.
This is forgivable in alpha/beta/gamma; but not now.

Because Uber isn't a corporate monster, and they deserve all the support they can get at the moment.

I've been here for a year, I'm basically friends with a couple of the devs by now, and I know they didn't mean to Lie, cheat, scam anyone.

I'm helping because I care more about the intentions than about the results. Especially considering they can be fixed.

What is that? Dial-up?!

I have finished every game I've played in the past few weeks. I've only seen one get abandoned due to lag. I really don't understand what people are doing to cause a server freeze. 4v4ai and we still completed it just fine last night.

It's a question of trust towards the devs that they will complete it; knowing their history, and for some of us, being here since the very beginning of the kickstarter, having chats with them and generally getting to know their passion for this game and their jobs. Even in regards to some features, knowing certain bits of information, snippets here and there that build up to a picture that does not include scamming players out of features they are working on. I can certainly understand why this is hard for someone who is just buying the game; "Trust? Why do I need to trust a game dev, shouldn't it just have all the features at launch? I mean, I am paying". Yes, that would have been nice, and would have likely been better for Uber if they did, from a PR point of view. But there's also a reality point of view, and that is that Uber is a smallish game dev hitting way above their weight in this game.

Its hard to describe some of the techincal achievements of the engine to the average layman, harder still to dispell the "Server is just for DRM" myth that gets perpetuated because it's much easier to understand than the technical advantages a Client/Server architecture brings.

I'm not here trying to say your view is wrong, or that you should intrinsically trust them. I'm just trying to explain why many people here do and are optimistic, and aren't as phased about the issues surrounding missing features etc., even when that view seems odd to outsiders.

I am not sure what you define as a corporate monster, but being a small group makes it worst. An anonymous intern did not promise all these things; someone close to the development team did and quietly removed them one by one hoping that we wouldn't notice. This is classic bait and switch, whether they intended it or not.

But they're coming? I don't understand how it could possibly be a bait and switch, IF IT'S STILL COMING!

That doesn't make sense.

They only removed such things from the page leading up to launch to avoid the nightmare of misleading buyers.

You bought into an Early Access game at your own risk of having features being scuttled, adapted or delayed. Uber fully intends to add in offline, something they removed from the page, and if their servers can handle 40 player games, I'm SURE they'll go for it. When they promised 40 player games, they didn't understand the sheer amount of processing power required, especially considering they're using generic servers from Amazon.

Exactly... that's what people need to realize is that this game isn't finished just because its been released now, they're going to be working on this for quite some time yet... Am hoping like lots of people that we aren't left hanging till something ridiculous like christmas for offline mode, personally don't think the game was ready for a launch just yet but this game is far from being done for being worked on, launch was probably just the first initial step for a finished game in a line of some bigger steps taken in alpha and beta.

Exacrtly, they'd be lying to their customers if they kept them on the Steam page after release. It's different having it on there for Early Access, but retail? Steam probably wouldn't even allow it.

I agree Starcraft2 was incredibly well polished when released (not sure about dota2, don't play it). However both those games are 2nd iterations (in fact built on top of the engine developed initially for Warcraft 3). That's not really a fair comparison as most of the back end stuff had already been done, the development in both cases was content, scripting and polish (+ some new effects and so on I'll grant you). That is much easier than what Uber are doing with PA.

I'm not sure Uber made the right call on releasing now, there are a few basic things that *shouldn't have been left out of a release build* so they've opened themselves up to flack. I stand by them though from the view point that they're pretty straight forward in my experience, and they've promised to release the features we're asking for.

I don't think your wrong to be disappointed, and it's reasonable to state that, I'd just ask that everyone in this position keep it fair and civil as Uber aren't bad guys from what I've seen. If they can be accused of anything then it's not being the greatest businessmen ever (although I think circumstances forced their hand a bit), but then they're a company of software engineers and artists rather than managers an marketeers and personally I like that about them.

RE the 'epic scale', well the engine is very capable compared to anything else really. I mean the only other games in existence that can come close to PA is SupCom (practical limit of a few thousand units) or TA:Spring (when the SpringMT executable was available it could handle 10,000 units smoothly, however since that was removed 2000 units is probably the limit). PA can cope with very high numbers of units (record is 76,000 units alive at once in a game, 5 - 10k is currently playable and I imagine with more optimisation that can climb to 20k+), so it isn't that bad.

The main issue is that I think Uber are running too many games per server (the server is multi-threaded, however Uber are only assigning 1 core per game at the moment which I don't think is enough, play on PTE which is hosted on Amazon servers and the game is MUCH smoother).

The other problem is there are a few tools that currently allow the player to break the sim really easily. I think that is 50% of the problem.

Currently what happens it:
- Players spam masses of dox so number of units rises very quickly
- Players then use area patrol with said large clumps of units. That's a guaranteed way to crash the sim 10 mins into a game. Couple that with a planet with trees (more obstacles) and you can kill the performance. I think these issues can be solved though- one good fix would be to adjust balance to *reduce the average number of units in play by making everything tougher but slower to build*. Also preventing the use of area patrol on land based combat units may help as it will prevent the lazy (but convenient) "I'll just area patrol the whole planet from this teleporter" -> instant sim performance crash and slow-mo game.

As for larger number of players and offline- well back in beta we held some massive games (the functionality is baked into the engine, I don't know what the actual limit is but 60 players were attempted so I think the engine can potentially do more that 40). Uber forcibly capped it as it was hurting their servers and crucially causing issues for *other people* on said server. Now offline is definitely being worked on, I agree it probably *should* have been in the release build, still it is coming. Once that comes out we can probably host the larger games on a dedicated server where we won't be crippling performance for other players so that should tackle both points.

As it stands large games are possible so long as the system is designed well to avoid excessive lag. Currently the best option for a large map is to focus on planets like Metal, Moon and Gas Giant, whilst avoiding biomes with too many things like trees. It's also a good idea to minimise orbital travel times (as too many orbital transfers causes sim slow down)- so making a system where the planets orbit each other is a good plan rather than sending everything via the sun.

We tried hosting a 100 player game, even the lobby itself killed the servers, so that's when they capped it serverside.

Did we really reach the point where we compare Starcraft 2, one of the most expensive RTS of all times, costing 100 million's to make, to a small kickstarter?

Also, Starcraft 2 has terrible performance, PA already runs a lot better.

It's just like this: PA was released without offline (as well as a boatload of other features). It is coming, and there is no hint on Uber not taking promises/development serious.
You might not like how it is, but talking it to death won't change things. Best thing to do imo is to wait and look how things develope. If everything arrives, it won't change a thing for people buying earlier. And people buying now are completely aware of what they're getting.

There is actually nobody getting misled, as weird as it might sound with all this drama.

I remember Garat saying that he killed the game himself since it was going to cause server issues and that it didn't crash.
Or does my memory deceive me?

Oh you might be right, that was pretty hilarious though no matter what.

corporate monster: massiv ammounts of money manpower and time available

uber: limited budget and small team ..

uber doesnt have the luxury to spend more time as they may have available and thus devs spend even many nights working on the game ... and you can see that sometimes in their face how fatiged they are ... they are fkin fighting to make this game a thing
were others just release a mess or nothing and leave it at that showing you the finger and either run of or try their next messed up thing ...
uber is not flawless, but they care and frankly just stamping them as evil scammy company for some comaribly rather small missing features is resiculous ... and people judge on missinformation most of the time .. PA is their big opportunity that has been and further will be a big impact on rtsgaming and development .. i seriously am intrested in that documentary of them hopefully show the highs and lows hopes and strugglings of this projekt .. its quite fascinating thinking about it ... and frankly i am glad that i took the opportunity to be a part of that even if a small one ... for that i like to thank uber ... the whole thing to me is a bit of an eyeopener being able to more indepth than ever what goes on during making a projekt like this behind closed doors ..

I would agree, if not for this...

...which is the exact response I would expect if the other party was engaged in a scam.

Or, more specifically, that Uber intends milk the community for every dollar they can before finally releasing the server.

Oh well, if you don't like capitalism, move.

The counter argument, based on what happened to MNC/SMNC, is that Uber will just drop support without adding a lot of promised features in favor of a new game. Despite what happened to MNC/SMNC, I don't think that will happen with PA.

However, this is what a lot of people are expecting to happen and is something we must convince them otherwise because they aren't buying the game because of it and convincing other people to not buy the game. Saying "it's coming" does nothing to convince these people.

When the game comes out of beta we should have offline mode.