Alpha [v.49122] First impressions / Bugs / Suggestions

dav3 · June 7, 2013

Hi All,

Just received an Alpha key, and subsequently whiled away the last two hours - loving every minute of it
Thought I would share my first impressions + bugs / suggestions that I noticed along the way. I'll try and categorise these things as best I can - prefixing each bug/idea with a number denoting how serious an issue it was to me (5 being not serious at all, 1 being very serious and I cannot play.)
(Sorry if it ends up as a wall of text - i'll try and use quotes to break things up a bit if necessary)
(Note - all screenshots have been set to private mode and can only be seen by those with direct access to the link in question.)

First Impressions
The look and the style of PA is great. Up close and personal I feel very much at home as with other RTS games, however the zoomed out spherical planet view is very much unique and was well recieved (by me at least).

Bugs
[bug]

2. Dragging a selection box around an engineer unit doesn't activate the unit's build options.
You have to click directly onto the engineer before the build options will appear on screen.

2. Several of my tanks managed to escape the boundaries of the land they were on and managed to float off into the ocean:
http://imgur.com/a/LMXaE#2
http://imgur.com/a/LMXaE#3
I'm not quite sure how I did this, I think the tanks were idling near where my commander was creating some new buildings.
Alternatively - this is something to do with those tanks getting stuck inside / on the side of factories.

3. (Not sure if bug) All buildings when selected with the mouse button display the typical unit interaction options to the user (Move/Fire/Reclaim e.t.c). While this doesn't cause any gameplay issues, it makes the game interface very difficult to understand for first time players.

3. Several of my units performed some strange movements when they encountered a block of terrain in their path. Instead of simply moving around the obstacle, they moved off in an odd direction and disapeared underneath the map. Eventually they re-surfaced from a nearby crack in the terrain.

2. The same problem as above seemed to occur, however in reverse. When one of my units drove into a fissure in the map, they ended up teleported on top of a rock on the map - meaning they were then stuck in that position:
http://imgur.com/a/LMXaE#0

4. If you attempt to place a building and hold down the cursor to enter rotate mode, but then right click to dismiss your building placement. Any subsequent buildings placed will automatically appear in the same spot that you tried to build the first building in.
It's easilly fixed by simply placing a building in that spot and then telling your engineer to do something else (move order) to cancel the build. Things then revert back to normal building mode after this.

4. I think there was a problem wioth one of my land factory placements, as I managed to get several land units to get stuck inside - or on the outside of one of my factories.
(See image)
http://imgur.com/a/LMXaE#7

4. There are two bot units in the Advanced bot factory that have the same tooltip / name but with different icons.
(Stomper)

4. Artillery units seem to fire straight up into the air but don't seem to damage units.
Additionally, these artillery units will also fire even when there are currently no targets available:
http://imgur.com/a/LMXaE#4
Click to expand...

Suggestions

2. Can the front of a building's "blueprint" be highlighted? (This would be a very important factor for the naval factories as all units are deployed at the front of the structure.)

2. Can the orientation of the building placement be changed to track the current cursor position of my mouse? That way I am simply designating a build location and moving my mouse in the desired direction for the building to face.

2. I could really use some options to rotate the camera - panning and zooming is available with the scroll wheel and arrow keys, but with the map being sperical, I found I was never able to get back to that sweet spot camera orientation.
(An alternate for this would be to add support for WASD to control the camera - then we could use the likes of Q/E to control camera rotation around the planet axis.)

3. Some part of the UI needs to represent the units i have selected.
I found if I was placing structures / units near one another - it was hard to tell which of those units I was clicking on.

3. Icons for the tactical map (Zoomed out map).
I understand that at the moment, these Icons may be placeholders, just wanted to mention though:
It is difficult for me to distinguish between different types of units on the tactical map as there is just one icon for different types of units (e.g. Air, Land, Sea or Bot.)
It's also difficult to tell from the tactical map which buildings are advanced generators and which are normal generators.

4. It's difficult to see what units are on patrol - and where that patrol will take those units. It would be nice to be able to see patrol routes at a glance.

4. Wall placement is very odd - placing a single wall unit at a time seems a very cumbersome way of doing things, especially with the building system allowing me to build almost wherever I want. Will you be putting in a system that allows me to simply click and drag out my wall placement?

4. Some symbol to represent a rally point for a factory building would be great.

5. While in the game lobby menu you are able to click on your flag to alter its colour. However if you accidentally click past a colour you want you have to click through all of the flag colours again before you arive at the one you wanted. Simply right clicking to go back a colour would be nice.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to read through these - and I'm really looking forward to seeing the completed game!

Dav3

Alpha [v.49122] First impressions / Bugs / Suggestions

dav3 New Member

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Alpha [v.49122] First impressions / Bugs / Suggestions

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