I personally always thought it was silly that we had to pick where we landed, aren't commanders super smart combat robots designed to land in unknown enemy territory? Surely they can figure out where to land on their own :lol: The best part, though, is when everybody picks spots in one hemisphere, dies quickly, then comes to the forums to complain about "spawn points" even though THEY picked where they spawn. heh :mrgreen: Edit: I'm worried that land units move to slowly to be of any real value on an 800-1000 size planet. Especially given the state that pathfinding is in. Air is heavily incentivized as it stands.
Selectable spawn will be fine once the algorithm for metal points is fixed, which sadly won't be for a while. Selectable spawn points is a *necessity* for team games.
Although I understand what you're saying, it's also somewhat irrelevant due to the fact that there is literally no possible way of telling where the other players start, aside from straight up asking them pre-landing. They complain because there is no fail-safe to all the players being a stone's throw away from each other in the start, and being that close isn't fun to the majority of people because of the way that basically every other strategy game in existence has worked, and thus what they are used to, and sort of expect. In any other RTS, when you start a game you know for damn sure that there will be a certain amount of distance that your opponent has to cover before he will be able to reach you, and you know that you have about X amount of time to get a base started - that point is mostly dependent on exactly what game you're playing though. At least, that's my take on it, lol. People will get mad at anything now-a-days. Possible solution to the whole thing: Have the spawn point choices change colour to notify if another player has chosen a spawn close by. It wouldn't be near exact enough to determine the actual landing point of another player, but for example, it would get a darker hue of red the closer another player is to that point. People shouldn't still get mad at the spawns as much any more, because it'd be they're own fault for choosing that point, as they could clearly tell there was another player(s) close by, and was something they took a risk in.
interesting idea, but normaly it takes some scouting from you, witch is one of the basic game-mechanics. also the player who is landing "secound" would know there is an enemy in the near landing and the allrdy landed player wouldnt witch would give the "secound" one an advantage since you build up other way when you encounter close attacks. bigger planets, better metal-spot-placement and eventually a system making the possible to pick locations more distant to each other in general would solve the problem without telling you there is an enemy near by.
You might be surprised to learn that there is already such a failsafe in place: There's nothing stopping you from picking one of the less desirable spawn locations. Additionally, running away is almost always a viable tactic within the first 10 minutes. I can't count the number of easy com-kills I've gotten in the first 3 minutes of a match, simply because people choose to walk their commander towards my fledgling base as soon as they see one building. They often do not bring their fab units along to repair, and die. I've personally had a lot of fun with close starting engagements. In fact, I would go so far as to complain that I have had games where I get an entire side of the planet to myself, which can be quite boring. I'm certainly not going to build up an ant farm of ground units to march all the way around the world while having catapult slapfights and spamming walls, I'm going to build some planes and snipe. That said, simply stating that "this is the way things are in every other game" without justification doesn't really add anything of value to the discussion. It simply isn't true, and existing expectations are a poor metric with which to make PA bland (imo, much like every other RTS game). If everybody always did things the way they used to be done, we would never have any forward progress or innovation! Additionally, there are plenty of strong examples against static spawn systems, such as certain Starcraft 2 maps that favor or even reward cheese. Do we really want to have to use the same build order over and over for a given map because that's the best way to win? Waiting for patches with balance changes to shift the metagame gets old fast. I can't count the number of people who lost interest in Starcraft 2 at a point in time because a certain build order/map pool was imbalanced. If you want to see what this looks like, look for any number of youtube videos of otherwise talented players, wasting their time by 6 pooling/proxy rax/4gate-ing their way into masters. They usually do this to prove a point before they lose interest. A more dynamic, random system rewards the player for having more flexibility in their play style, and discourages the kind of abuse that brings about balance changes in the first place. I don't want to have to remember which maps I need to watch out for a given cheese/rush on, and neither should you, because that isn't interesting or fun! Similarly, as you start to standardize the spawn distances to have a guaranteed amount of space, things like tech rushes and snipes become much more viable and common. Perhaps these people should re-align their expectations, seeing as it's not a complete product yet. I certainly don't want PA to be just like every other RTS out there, and neither should you! I think a more favorable outlook towards experimentation, while shunning established strategy gaming paradigms, is a surefire way to end up with an interesting and innovative new RTS game, especially given the talent at Uber.
Well, imagine this. You have a 3v3v3; 3 enemy bad guys spawn to your south, and 3 to your north. Two of your Commanders in your main base, and the third one spawned right next to one of the 3 enemy Commanders.
yeah and doomed. also this game is intentionally for long epic battles with end-game planetary annihilation, and not for quick close combats and/or rush-scenarios of 10-15 minutes. if you wanna play that go starcraft 2
It is whatever the player wants. That being said, it could be viable in both. I have seen a lot of good close quarters games where you build back miles but fight a hell skirmish line.
If I play a 2 hour game, I want to fight 1 hour and 59 minutes. That is epic. Babysitting my base during the first 15 minutes and make sure that everybody is ready is not epic at all.
There's a simple solution to this, allow to vote for reselection of position during the first 2 minutes of the game. Chances are that the enemy dislikes being right next to you just as much as you are. So he'll accept the vote and you simply get to pick again.
in theory yes, but in 9x% of the time, one player loses a mayority of his base, and instead of fleeing with his commander to the other side of the planet he combombs -> one player eliminatet. since it is very hard to counter such a combomb in early game because a commander can do good damage to t1 units, even more when there are not more than 20 or so allready he mostly explodes in the base of the other player throwing him way back in economy and build power -> mostly next player eliminatet. game over in less than 25 minutes. maybe i played with the wrong ppl all the time, but that issnt epic.
This. I would expect short skirmishes on a single planet should be very viable (Already are), and of course much longer, multi-planet + asteroid games as well. Will you be able to play a 15 minute skirmish that involves crashing asteroids into things? Probably not, without a mod.
I can't wait till the ui allows for one to send early game waves of assault while not having to micro it. People are right, early combat is decided by the best micro, with the multitask unit combat while building base. The only close range micro once the ui is better will be poking them with your commanders shots. Besides that, it will just be build the Berlin wall or the neutral zone between Koreas, and build backwards.
Having a way to at least guess the enemies spawn point would be nice. Either give a colour indicator to the spawn circle (red, possible enemy spawn circles are close up to green, no enemy spawn circle nearby) or also show enemy spawn circles on the map. There is still no guarantee that the enemy will spawn there with multiple ones, but it gives at least some information to decide where to spawn in regards to the enemy. Currently its just luck or not.
This is less about UI, and more about pathing + formations + a little UI. Right now, it's waypoint (wait) waypoint (wait) ...n... Launch final assault so all units are pretty close together. With formations, it should be shift+Waypoint+waypoint+waypoint+attack move.
So like civilization style? Why is having to control your units in an RTS so vehemently hated by some people?
its not the controll in generell what is hatet, its the "get units in range, shot, retrat, in range again, shot, retreat, a little left, shot, retreat, shot, retreat, a litte left again, shot, retreat etc. ..." or whatever is neccesarry to micro effectively. yes, a block formation in witch for example are 4 tanks on same range you get 4 shots at the beginning, while in actual line you have 1 tank and get 1 shot (if you have intel, without it may be no shot making killrates from 1:4 for defender/the guy with intel possible).
