Okay, so by 'Gist' I mean scope. I'm new to the 'total annihilation' 'supreme commander' world, but love this game. The alpha is really starting to function pretty well. So, answering my own question, I would say the gist of this game is to just amass a huge large economy, queuing actions, queuing units, even sending them to spawn right to the battle. A well developed game can have an entire planet or thirds or halves of it completely covered in buildings and units. So that's where the 'planetary' part comes in. I'd love to see this game become something where the players' units are almost logjammed in a solar system, automatically fighting, where player's adopt new tactics on individual front lines to change the pace of the battle. Obviously, that's not what will happen every time, or even most of the time. But the key question to answer is: what are planets beyond more places to escape to? So, I'd love if certain planets are easier to blow up, but more minerally rich. Or, some planets have these long orbits and you can only travel to or from every three minutes. Here's the point: you take the massive scale of the planetary game play, the overflow of resources and units, and add this strategy dance of heavenly bodies into the mix. That would make this game very unique. To that point, it would be great if a 'colonizing' rocket auto-built a small resource/factory base on a world that you wouldn't have to immediately micromanage, but rather it would be ready for you once you had time to devote attention to it. Well, that's what I'm envisioning as the gist of this game. Planets with unique qualities that significantly affect what you do there. And then the interplay between planets: travel, ballistic rockets. Also: battle damage - say a lot of nukes are used on a planet, you can't build planes there - the air's to irradiated. Again, the idea that the basic game play is subject to this canvas of differences between worlds.
You are most of the way there with some of the ideas. There are already confirmed plans for different planet types. For example there WILL be ocean planets, obviously where naval combat will take a much higher priority. The galactic conquest feature is really going to be more along the lines of an in-between strategy phase if I remember correctly, rather than a live battle map that you zoom in to individual planets. This may seem sort of disappointing in a way, but remember that it can be hard enough to properly manage things on one planet. Doing that on more than two is basically impossible (cause remember there are moons and junk too, and those ARE live) As a side note, massing res and just building a massive factory complex to pump out units is not going to be feasible. Right now there is not a limiting factor for those metal extractors, but very soon (TM) these will be limited to those little gray patches on the ground. This will significantly reduce base sprawl, and severely limit your ability to mass produce an army. As well, good tactics will win out against a massive army almost every time, unless you are caught with your pants down so to speak. And as for the nukes idea, these planes do not really "fly," they are all VTOL and do not seem to overheat so thus they do not technically need any lift at all to stay up. To boot, just because the air is irradiated does not mean a plane cannot fly there. Not really sure what you meant. Remember there are no people, these are all robotic. They do not care about your silly radiation, they have hardened shells for just such a contingency!
There will be expanding to multiple planets in one system, maybe even more, where you just get to zoom in and out on one. To help with managing multiple planets there will be the ability to "split" your game window into multiple smaller screens, or even better yet, have dual monitors, even triple monitor setups (I have dual, couldn't fit triple on my desk). But there will be the option to play on maps at that scale! The greatest part is that with the server architecture is that they have beefy (or near release, have your own like I am working on!) servers where 40 player games are possible across systems, but you just have to render what you are looking at client side. Anyways the galactic conquest is a meta-game layer over that game-play for a "galaxy" sized battlefield were you fight over sectors, that are just those planet around a sun, or multiple planets and moons sized battlefield. At least that is the impression I am getting from what I have heard so far. Note that since this game is in development that really is all bound to change over time into whatever will make this game the best it can be!
Do note that the economy will work very differently once mass points are properly added. You will have to fight for a world then, not just bunker up. The economic "gist" off course being the same as you stated, "amass a huge large economy", but it wont be as easy as it currently is and the struggle for a world might enclose the entire globe. ... Just envisioning it gives me a chill down my spine. Image a world burning in war, explosions and fires lightning up the surface, burnt out husks of units smoking on fields of ash, nukes going of and then a astroid hitting the planet reducing it to a molten sphere that then explodes... Major has described the game like this (in a interview): A couple of players start out on a world (there being a couple of more worlds like this with players spawning on them). These players battle it out on the world, then they head for the other bodies in the system (either fleeing to survive or expanding). (Its described as "a kind of cat and mouse game with the commanders".) Asteroids start hitting the playing field (player made projectile weapon astroids off course) destroying worlds or part of worlds. The player field continue to shrinks forcing the players that still live together. They destroy each other and one prevails being the victor that has vanquished his foes and taken the system (Thats not allmost completely destroyed :roll: ). (Do note that this is not a quote, so i might have gotten a thing or two wrong.) I would say that thats a good description of the "gist/scope" of the game. God damnit i want this game to be finished yesterday!
