Planets are absurdly small.

Everything about this game is amazing except for this horrendously glaring flaw. Seeing the units walk around on this absurdly small planet makes the game look like a page out of The Little Prince. Is it too late to fix this? Surely it would be fine to have the game start off with most of the action in one area of the planet, and just as it is expensive and difficult to achieve space travel, it could be difficult and expensive to travel to remote areas of a planet. Am I the only one having trouble accepting this?

If you'd bother read to the forums, you'd see the multiple threads about scale and the consensus about decrease unit scale or increasing planet size. Also notes planets are not at near full size even at their current scale, nor will there be just one planet.

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=48650

Well the current planet size(there is only 1 so far) is a small planet, Uber commented that think it's a size ideal for quickish 1v1s.

Mike

Yup. Basically you can't just make the planets bigger without changing gameplay (or making units comically fast). The current sizes are great for short matches and 1v1. Anything bigger and you'd draw them out too mutch.

There is more than one size planet in the alpha right now. The biggest of which is the terran looking planet. It's size varies from 700-750 units. The max planet size is 3000 units. Thus the biggest planet in the alpha is 25% or a 1/4 of the size of the biggest planet possible with the current planet editor.

The smallest planet / thing is the moon looking one.

So in order from smallest to largest is Moon -> Ice -> Terran.

Also note that with it being a 1/4 the DIAMETER doesn't map to 1/4 the play area. A ~50% increase to diameter ( so from 750 -> 1125 ) increases the play area by ~125% (so from ~1.7 million units squared -> ~3.9 million ). Rough numbers, but you get the idea.

Common sense is a luxury nowdays :lol:

I understand that fun and awesome are higher priorities than realistic, but when realism is completely abandoned for utter absurdity, I get too distracted to enjoy the fun awesomeness.

Ships can sail around a world in a minute. The height of a tree as a percentage of the radius of the planet is a million times bigger than it should be. When one unit fires a laser beam at another that is very close by, the laser must curve around the world to hit its target. It's like a Bugs Bunny planet where you can throw a rock and hit yourself in the back of the head.

A perfectly fine solution for a small 1v1 map would be to have only a tiny part of the surface of that planet be useful. This would render the ability to rotate the view of the world around pointless, but then the ability to blow up planets is already out the window in this micro-game scenario.

I was just curious if I was alone in having this hangup with the game.

so you're saying planets should be earth sized and units as big as a house?... well thats F'd up man :lol:

According to the polls that have been held it seems that the majority of people would like the unit sizes to be reduced somewhat, and it's likely that this will be addressed once balancing starts. The units must still be large enough to be distinguishable and recognisable from a decent distance however, and if you increase the size of the planets compared to the units too much then moving anywhere will end up being a major trek.

It's a fine balance, but likely as not sizing will be addressed at a suitable point.

He's basically saying he doesn't want planets except in an abstract sense whereby you can tech up to take the battle to another slightly-curved-but-large battlefield on another "planet".

Yeah no, that's not happening. A key feature of PA so far is the fact that flanking is incredibly important due to the fact that the map is literally a sphere. If you superimpose a small square on a huge sphere, that's taken out. You're about a year late on this boat.

How is the ability to blow up planets out?

Alpha's are not meant to be played for fun, they are meant to be played to find and resolve bugs.

And Yes Uber has commented on several occasions that the planets we are playing now, are purposefully so small, so it gives easy quick fights, with loads of opportunities to find bugs. The moon/ice planet we have, are ideal for 1v1's, the earth like one we have, it maybe be possible to do a 4 man FFA game on it, but that would be pretty much the max for that planet. Once again, they are planned to be this small, for easier bughunting.

Second part, entirely true. First part, I entirely disagree with.

Today was PA Day for The Realm, and while I wasn't playing too terribly well, I still had butt-tons of fun. Yes, it is good to report bugs and create repros and work arounds, but if you aren't having fun doing it...

To reiterate on scale, planets are an ideal size and Uber has stated that these are indeed tiny planets. I personally believe trees need to be bigger, as well as mesas and mountains. Remember, a planet is only ~600-800m in radius, which makes a tree only a few meters tall. More of a tall grass than anything.

As for the bugs bunny planet comparison, I agree, though there are screenshots of a 3000m radius planet, 5 times what we have now and posessing quadratically greater surface area. And that wasn't even said to be the maximum planet size, newer, faster hardware, engine optimization and mods will allow for even larger planets.

If it helps, think of it like you're on a round asteroid which just so happens to have plants on it which project a magnetic shield around the planet and somehow maintain a dense, active atmosphere on a space rock with the gravity of Rhode Island.

Thats already not workin because even a 1on1 is probably to be played on several planets. Actually you are saying "i see what is special about this game and dont want this anymore"

I dont know, man, i like the idea that the map is not really bigger, but looks more realistic, but i just go with the "Awesomeness rather than realistic", just go google maps, you wouldnt see trees at all until u zoom in really close, and i kinda like seeing trees in the game

I must say I agree - I quite like the characture-esque disproportionation of things. The trees and mountains and things already look cartoony, so it kind of fits to have them cartoonishly large compared to the planet size.

taiiifanatic, I answered; no you're not alone, this is a duplicate thread and yours doesn't even have the top spot.

please go here and vote

No, you always have the ability to attack from every direction, and making hotspots like some large continents filled with metal (starting points) in the middle of a big ocean (=basically like Earth) would help concentrate action on fewer really strategic spots, which counter the "too big planet" issue. (And bigger planets would also help suspension of disbelief, with some more focal and unitsize tricks thepilot showed in the megascale thread)

Also big oceans would allow playing more seriously with naval.
That's linked to another problem: maps are way too much homogeneous.

Also less useless rotation would help the ergonomy, and the need of always spinning the planet is a known ergonomy design issue.

Oh you. :3

And honestly, it sounds like this game isn't made for you. There's not much else I can say.