Scale Megathread

It should happen, when is uncertain.

I will not talk about the following:
- # of units
- Unit balance
- Graphical quality
- Lack of UI

Uber says those are coming and I believe them.
I will speak only about aesthetics and scale.


I'm a bit of an old dog I guess. I have played a lot of RTS in my time.
I'm horrible at RTS, but it is still my favorite genre.
I played TA growing up, then SupCom, FA, then onto FAF.
We don't have to worry about the license, we know that it is essentially the Uber crew's legacy.

This line of games are about massive armies clashing in an enormous field of war.
Not a squad-sized forces, but endless waves of big, stompy, lumbering instruments of war.
I feel the strongest part of this lineage was not about unit balance, but mod friendly, and having a highly intelligent engine UI.

• Total Annhilation: The "guard/assist" function. Blew my freaking mind. Radar range, big berthas across the map? happy dance. Factory waypoints?!?!
  
  
• Supreme commander: Strategic zoom was revolutionary with dual screens?
  And then command queues, loop function on factory.
  
  
• Forged Alliance: UI was non-intrusive, collapsible, floating, customizable, transparent.
  Ferry command? Good lord, that just felt like cheating.

That is the progression I see.
In each following game, I felt more and more like the I was "Commander", that he was me personified.I observed more of the battlefield with less effort.I could command smarter, while doing less micro.
This meant I could have an even larger army, and move it as an extension of myself.

It felt more like a space opera and I was the conductor.



So if we jump to PA, a few things about PA right now feel a bit odd to me.

This looks very different from the game today.
And I don't mean the graphics, I mean the aesthetics.


Ignore the rocks, textures and lighting. Look at the size of terrain. It's big.
There is a sense of scale and the plateaus dwarf even the largest structures.
This is aesthetics, it is a sense of scale.
To me, this is a clear improvement over SupCom.

Now take a look at the flowfield pathfinding demo back in the March livecast.


When I thought about really smart units navigating really narrow trenches without seeing the pathfinding issues from the previous games, I shat my pants with excitement.
I wanted to throw 200-unit tsunami into that canyon network and just see the units fill ever corner and leave destruction in it's wake.


That to me is scale.
Right now, we lack scale.It feels like very big units, on very small flat maps.


I didn't support Uber because they helped build my favorite line of games.

I threw money at Planetary Annihilation because I hoped it would destroy Forged Alliance in terms of "scale".




I'm not complaining.
It's Uber's project.
But as of right now, it is not what I expected.

goodness this is so true!

A bit late to throw in my two cents, but I like it just where it is.

have you voted?

Yupp

ok, it's important.

Too large.
Fa's scale seemed to be about right, but im aware that might colour my perspective somewhat.

That said, When a "mountain" is about twice the height of a commander? Or a volcano crater is smaller than tank?
Yeah... There are issues.

Decrease definitely, but if you take it too far (like your x0.3 scale), you sort of lose your sense of purpose/importance I feel.

I'm not sure.

look at it this way:

• is it a crack or a HUGE-*** crevasse that you feel like placing a dubious rickety one-man bridge over for more dramatic effect?
• Is it a rock or a TOWERRING work of nature, looming yet spectacular, ominous yet beautiful?

I know what you mean.
But considering how we're fighting for a planet and not a country, there has to be a compromise somewhere no?

yep.

We need to remember that the planets we're fighting on are incredibly tiny.

I have a purpose and importance on Setons.
I want what is best in life.

PSst.

Your video is disabled if its embedded D=

Think what you demonstrated here is exactly spot on when it comes to scale and how everything is scaled compared to everything else. That desert biome concept is about what I'm looking at in terms of how the final game will come to pass, with huge canyon structures that can drawf buildings and structures while keep all the aspect ratio in tact with the environment. Unfortunately I dont think the buildings on top of those peaks on the biome are going to happen though but as its still very early beta with a lot of things to be done still I'm really hoping we'll get this look in the final game. Scale is everything when it comes to RTS games, and if its not quite done to how we like it, it might actually be possible to change the scale of things in the files and mod it to the scale we want it at.............

There was a scale mod for SupCom2 which I never thought would be possible so I'm thinking a similar mod would be much easily done for PA. Only thing is that was for units and buildings, not for the world biomes which I already mentioned in other threads really need to be worked on right now.

no they arn't they're at least twice as big as the ones in alpha on average. and we can go much higher than the old "100 radius" (the max)

if you mean to say they are small compared to our earth yea sure but really who cares? noone here is aiming to play o a planet as big as the earth, however, if moutains were flatter, making them look less like spikes and more like ...well mountains, end the units were much smaller in comparison the feel of scale would really be there.

No. I'm talking about how they are incredibly tiny compared to the planets we will be fighting on. Planets will be getting much much bigger than the ones we're fighting on.

quotes or it didn't happen ^^

anyways I'M talking about scale from unit to terrain feature.
this thread has had it's share of counter arguments to the "bigger planets" thing.

bigger planets don't solve anything if what's off is the scale of units to the props.
trees should be smaller compared to mountain and maybe units should be compared to trees than they currently are but much much smaller compared to all other features.

I completely agree. The desert biome concept looked amazing. Not just because of how it flat out looked, but having buildings on the different tiers... that implied that there will be some sort of vertical gameplay which is a big freaking deal to me. Units that can take advantage of terrain levels would be awesome, and that just really isn't an option with the current scale levels.

I hope they plan on making it so that the biomes are actually scaled to size so things like tree's and canyons are are the correct ratio. That desert biome concept was just simply an amazing piece of art and hopefully we'll see it close to that