Planetary Annihilation LiveStream: March 22nd, 2013

yes please

A while ago a played around with something that maybe might be described as a rather primitive version of the PA flow field system. Based on that experience and the information we got from the live stream I doubt that it would be easy/cost efficient to get units to automatically hop into transports to shorten their ways.
As far as I understand the described flow field mechanic it seems to work best if each unit only has one goal at any given time. If a unit has more than just one goal the flow field on its own doesn't ensure that the unit will head for the one easiest reached.
Let's say our unit's goal is on its left while a transporter is on its right while the (semi) static cost field says that going left costs more than going right. If both goals (transporter and the location we want the unit to be) are valued equally this could (based on how the incentive system works) cause the unit to move towards the transporter.
But, at the end of the day, using the transporter might not be the most efficient way for the unit to reach its destination. We don't know anything about the cost field for flying units at this point, it is totally possible that there are some high cost areas that will force the transporter to go on a detour. This can also lead to weird and unwanted behavior where having transporters around will actually slow your howl army down.
Yes, it is possible to take a look at the transporters flow field and compare it to the units flow field to decide whether or not the unit should use the transporter but making these comparison comes at a price cause we basically have to make the movement calculations (at least a part of them) for the unit as well as for the transporter. This might be okay if there is only one unit and one transporter, but as soon as we want to move a group of units and there are several transporters arounnd things can get messy fast.
In addition, I'm not entirely sure whether the path of a unit is predetermined or not, cause the flow field system allows it to just give a unit a move order and a preferred direction (in relation to its destination). In that case auto using transporters would require a lot more computing power.

Again, I might be totally wrong here, but I don't think auto using transporters is easy to do with a flow field system.

Also very in favor of tech toy releases :lol:

If think it would be sound to release it as soon as it has the ability to add new resources ( textures, 3d models , etc ...)

just wanting to say that this livestream allready is on site 1 of your most viewed vids on youtube. So tech talk isnt that bad