Size doesn't equate function... >.> The ships move don't they? They actually function don't they? How is this a function issue? Since when did size make something better or worse? I don't see the size breaking the game is it? Is that something I'm missing? How does the size of the overall universal unit break the game? They waited till Beta to readjust the size of Company of heroes 2 buildings and units... Balancing as in adjusting things to better fit what's in play or what the end game is. Wonderful experience you have. How does the overall size of a unit fundamentally break the class? I don't get it really I don't, adjusting damage values, ranges, and sizes doesn't have anything to do with how the game generates worlds... >.> Apples to oranges... Shrink the overall size of the ships sure no-ones arguing that isn't a plausible idea... but it's HONESTLY NOT A BIG DEAL.
Why exactly do you give a ****? You aren't a dev. Either you're being an obstructionist because you have some notion that addressing this issue now would somehow completely ruin the game and throw the release date off, or you're just one of those guys who loiters around indy devs and defends tooth and nail every single thing they do as being flawless and attempts to deflect every single piece of criticism levied against them. So which is it? What exactly is the point of your constant attempt to censor this issue, telling us that we should stop talking about it because you think you know better than anyone else about when is the best time to address it?
Geez sore loser much? I didn't obstruct it, I said quit bringing it up in Alpha and especially as some major flaw when it isn't... bring it up in Beta when it matters. Control yourself Hulk, no need for blown blood vessels. A Mostly finished game isn't even out yet... So why balance something if you've not even seen the final environment that it'll be in? I don't get that. Like I said, you're fixing something when you've half way finished actually making things function correctly. It's 1, 2, not .5, 2, .5.
Its hard to decide what should be adjusted. I do think the T2 units do seem a bit large, but I have been on planets that have enough water to have a succesful naval battle. They have mentioned only a little about how big planets will be. I'm willing to wait and see where they go with it. I def. want ever unit to be viable on every planet type for the most part. BUT I don't need every unit to be viable in every game. At its core this is a strategy game. I LOVE how things are randomly and procedurally created because this means a nice dynamic start that is never the same. So if the map happens to have no water, then I'm ok with not having naval units, I need to adjust and use something else. I think this makes the game more awesome not less. If you could come up with one strategy that worked on every map / planet type the game wouldn't be as strategically deep, and would be a little boring. So I bet they will adjust unit sizes more, and def. give us a look at other planet types and sizes. Personnally I don't care about 32 bit, or linux or mac support but they are working on those as well. Everyone is going to have a different take on what should be worked on when and in what order. I for one want to see the game get to where we are fighting on multiple planets. I'm not worried though. I believe in the devs and I think they will hear what we are all saying and help create a great game out of those comments as well as their vision for the game.
Why do you keep insisting on debating 'function' ? That is a programmer issue, and an entirely different topic. We are discussing graphics here. Immersion, and that the objects simply does not connect to the world. How is this so hard to grasp? Apples and oranges indeed. Regarding 'experience'. You have a choice to either stop being childish, or keep on being it. Lastly: You clearly don't understand the importance of scale, and the sheer amount of art that keeps on piling up on a daily basis (when working as an artist) It is not a simple matter of scale things from the hip. You either put hard work, effort and pride into your work. Or settle for mediocracy. I can't tell you where that last road leads, but it won't be better than the first one, of that I am certain. Having said all this, I want to make something very very clear: Über have good artists that *know* what they are doing, of that I have no doubt. However, here we have an opportunity to raise issues *when* we see them. This is what this forum is all about. I am truly sorry you don't see it that way.
There is one issue though - one big giant body of water and one big giant mass of land (let's say bisecting the planet half and half) - that land is going to be worth more than the water. While I would like bodies of water to be large enough to play in, what would also be ideal is having river generation in the planet generator... basically, it creates sunken water-filled depressions of a limited width and depth that meander from bodies of water and either attempt to connect each other or taper off into some mountains. In this way your naval reach could be extended into land masses.
Because an alpha is about function... Not feel... You need to get this straight before you debate the relevance of something now versus later. Immersion is not function. The graphics don't connect to the world? That is a feel. Because the game is running smooth thus far. Yet again a beta issue. Well gee that's a great ultimatum boss! In your words a beta is feature complete guess what naval combat is in working condition, size of a model is not in any relation to the feature outside balancing, it's a property. Your experience is as an artist? Here I am thinking you know a damn about game mechanics and development, you just draw whoop tie doo, well then you should know how much simpler it is to shrink a model with its art then it is to enlarge it, what a priority.
Hey all, There's obviously people who feel very strongly about both sides of the argument and i respect both sides of the argument. I suppose this is a really tricky one in terms of balance vs what is possible vs the overall goal. Now I don't pretend to understand any of what i just said but i'll continue anyway Please keep in mind im being VERY simplistic here.... Overall goal is to have a bunch of planets/moons/asteroids as a battlefield Balance of the universe in terms of size and size of units What is possible none of us really know until the code is optimized. I can understand the argument that ships look too big in the current bodies of water. I totally get that even if I don't have a problem with it. Now maybe someone from Uber can jump in and maybe talk about the technical limitations here. This is just how my mind works..... but as I understand it decreasing the size of objects in the world....specifically ships would generally mean you need to make everything else smaller to match which could mean from the default camera view everything could look too small. Which in turn means you need to make the zoomed camera view closer and in turn then increase the fidelity of the environments which could have negative drain on processing power? Now I could be completely off the mark because as I admitted further up I have no idea what i'm talking about but i would be interested to hear the Devs ideas on this. I know in a previous live stream I think neutrino mentioned that they have saved alot of cost by only calculating the animations of what is currently on screen. I have no idea how the game engine works and if it is similar..... Just thought I'd throw my perspective on this. Please feel free to disagree or disprove me in any way... It's the only way i learn! Cheers all, -Todd
Everyone should go to the time out corner 'till one of the devs handles the OP's very valid worry. I feel this can be resolved once we see the bigger planets, so that we have some real sense of scale, instead of just a few very limited options.
Whethter this is considered an alpha or a beta issue (or no issue at all for that mattter) is entirely up to the developers. For now i would consider it a design issue being discussed separately. It could very well be possible that the outcome requires fundamental changes on alpha level (or no changes at all). To me it seems you mix up alpha with a Proof of Concept version.
The thing is, whatever the planet size is, there are objects like trees, rock mountains that will allways keep the same size. So let's compare tree size agains T1 tank size. And again this is independant from planet size. To me, even on the smaller planet, T1 tank size looks like ridiculously too much big compared to tree size [I'm not complaining, just reporting a feeling and if Uber says : do not bother this is something that can be addressed later without any massive impact on game mechanics, then 'm ok and i'm not requesting this to be changed now since there are much more important things to be addressed in alpha]. Actually this was not the case in pictures from Biome concepts (see attached). And that's the same for rock mountains. Not because you're on a larger planet means you're going to increase trees or rock mountains size. To me biome concepts picture reflect the feeling i would like to have on any planet, whatever the size is. If anyone is supposed to feel like "Hey i'm not going to build a naval factory in this little piece of water, it does not make sense", then it means scale of other environment objects must match with each other and with Units size and vice-versa. This is, as a matter of fact, how all things connect to each other. So far if you only consider trees/rock mountains VS T1 tanks, then you can't have this feeling at all. Allready posted elsewhere, but since there's no feedback from Uber on this (I know they are busy on fixing bugs, i'm not blaming) i will post it here : http://imgur.com/a/jy15P#1 Now this may not mean all units have to be scaled down, but that environment objects should be scaled up and a few units should be scaled down. It's obviously a not easy to address concern. I guess many people are posting about this right now in alpha because they do not have any idea if this can be fixed later in Beta (Knowing that Beta is supposed to make more people feeling good and propagate the good news that PA is just Awesome & Epic) or if this has to be fixed in alpha. Scaling up/down objects (and units) may have more consequences in terms of game mechanics than one think. You remember Supcom 2 player feelings when they saw factories size in first supcom 2 video shooting ? This was a major disapointment (not only scale actually ...) I allready posted elsewhere, but here we go again : This is i think a good reminder about what Chris Taylor fairly recognized about overscaled units in Supreme commander 2 : http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1 ... es/c812jfl "I wished we had pushed harder to optimize memory on the PC so we could have bigger maps... and we made the units bigger, and between the two, we basically f'd up the game." So i also guess that there's some kind of Supcom 2 syndrome : And people prefer to react now and ensure there's a good balance that can be find in order to fix this bad feeling. They do not want to discover, too much later that, sorry there's nothing we can do about it, otherwise it's going to break many things. This scale issue contributed for a large part of players disapointement. initially they were said the same : wait for bigger maps, but it did not change anything. Again, it could be that : It's not a problem, it's not an alpha concern because Uber can find a good balance later in beta. But, Uber has allready downsized T1 powergen during alpha. So either relative scale is a major concern in alpha or that was just a random cosmetic fix. Whatever the planet size is, what we have in biome concepts provide a feeling i hope we'll have whateve the planetsize is. It's not a matter of planet size, it's a matter of relative scale and about units and world objects connect to each other. last but not least, taker the smallest 1v1 map on Supcom 1. Even on the smallest map where land was surrounded by water, you did not have the feeling that it was small. Just because the relative scale was ok. As far as i know, they are no players who have reported this concern on even smallest Supcom 1 maps. This because the relative scale of units compared to the world looked like ok.
The problem of water areas is, again, a problem with the global feeling of scale in PA that is wrong (basically all that doud said). This feel like it is a fairly large area of water. (I know it's not, again, feeling). But .... http://uppix.com/f-Capture51bcb57a00131e22.jpg And in supcom : http://uppix.com/f-Capture51bcb64000131e24.jpg Yes, this is finn's revenge middle pond. The PA pond is not a lot more bigger (maybe 15%, because it's round unlike the finn's one). The whole planet is actually smaller than finn's. In supcom, you will never think of ever build a T2/T3 (or even T1) navy in that pound. It feel small, it looks small, it is small. The big question/problem the developpers has to solve now is : Why don't you feel that in PA?
This is only being perceived as an issue because the planet creation isn't functional yet. An ocean like that looks big when compared to the planet yes, but we will be perceiving these planets much differently later on. An ocean relative to the planet on a 3000 to 4000 meter world is going to 'feel' vast and expansive. Such a body of water will be 25 or even 50 times as large area wise.
The fundamental issue people continue to ignore on this discussion is feature size to planet size. If you make features bigger, they don't work anymore on the smaller planets. Yes, a better size of unit to features would be nice, you can't just make it though because those features don't work anymore on smaller planets. Just making planets larger also doesn't work, because it increases game length quite a big which is a big gameplay change. Just making units faster isn't also a solution. You can't fix scale issues and then have units speeding around at incredible speed (compared to their size) just so the map stays playable. You would fix one graphical issue while introducing another one. Those concept works of biomes only would work on planets that are much much larger then the ones we currently have. And I personally doubt that having only huge planets (to work with upscaled biomes) is a good solution.
Hum, it works on Supcom / Forged Alliance. You simply probably need to be able to transport units accross oceans, air as you would do in real life. And thus you need special units for transport purpose. I do not see any reason to change units speed. Make it OK on smallest planets and for larger ones provide abilities to transport units on long distance. Also provide units that can shoot on a longer distance and that may only be available depending on planet size. I do not expect to have the same strategies on larger planets. locally the same strategy would apply with quick rush on short distances : There would be many local battles. and for longer distance you need special units to send your stuff to a different local battlefield. I guess that if 1) you properly scale units for the smallest planet 2) you provide required units (not necessaraly availble for small planets) to transport your armies to other local battlefield The issue is fixed. Why many people are complaining is simply because on small planets units look oversized. not because you scale them down means this will not work for larger planets. Again this is working fine on supreme commander provided you manage to transport units over seas.
