Scale Megathread

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD (now with quick poll!)

I think the scale of the commander should be the same but reduce everything else.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD (now with quick poll!)

Its hard to say atm, i feel, because i dont know what size planets we are playing on. If we are playing on the biggest planets. then yeah stuff needs to be smaller.

But if we are playing on the smallest planet, it might be okay.

But the buildings, the advanced ones are just way to big compared to the small units they make. I have no problem with big buildings if its serves a purpose, like it makes HUGE units then okay cool.

It will also help when they get mountains and stuff in, the we have something to compare it against.

I feel like radar structure atm, is a bit tiny and underwhelming,, feels like they should be bigger / taller and more fancy, its like THE target you wanna take out, to deny your enemy information

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD (now with quick poll!)

Yes, the scale and styling of units are a little all over the place at the moment, in my opinion. But it's alpha, so things can change possibly.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD (now with quick poll!)

Yeah totally. im not to concerned at all. Its actually pretty amazing how much they have gotten done. since the kickstarter. Its pretty impressive. Not to mention the rate they ship updates out to us.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

well I think the proportions between the units do not have any problem at all NONE, whatsoever, on all of them. Simply because it makes sence to me that somewhere in there has to be a huge amount of ressources with which to build a fleet of units before getting a ressource refill. Of course this isn't a game mechanic, it just had always taken me out of the experience, for example, in starcraft 2 and 1, when units that were a bit smaller would be pumped out by the dozens from a factory that evidently could not possibly have contained the ressources to produce them and didn't even have a sufficiently big opening to let them out.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD (now with quick poll!)

Exactly this. I don't mind small planets in the least, but when mountains feel like molehills and crevasses feel like sidewalk cracks something's really wrong. I think it would be better to have features (even more) oversized in comparison to planets than to have the current situation of units oversized compared to features.

Also, a thought: If features are changed to block LoS, and units and/or features are rescaled such that most units aren't taller than a tree (a tank taller than a tree is kind of ridiculous!), then forests would provide a really interesting game mechanic of being passable walls of darkness.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

Hi guys, I know it seems drastic but I am actually + 1 for the much reduced sizes, I think that would make the game feel really epic.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

Hi, I too agree that the scale needs to be changed so that the units look smaller compared to the terrain features.

One thing I find interesting though, if you look at the old Unit Scale renders that Uber did a while ago all of the units and structures have an almost perfect scale compared to the human figure. http://planetaryannihilation.tumblr.com/post/41301381883/pa-srt-2013-1. Even the tree's and rock features in that look correct!

Rather than doing a scale down of the units, as that will throw off this "realistic" scale, it's the terrain features and planet radius that need increasing. The end result should be the same whilst still allowing Uber and modders to realistically size units and features in meters, rather than 0.7 of a meter.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

You do make an interesting suggestion!
The only problem with your idea is that as far as I understand, the terrain features could be more difficult to alter in size and have a more pronounced impact on a variety of other features.
Although I do have only limited experience in such things (and I could very much be wrong); at the most basic level terrain features like mountains and such have a vertical limit where they cannot get any higher. It is also a possibility that increasing the size of the terrain features, will just make the terrain features look absurdly big (along with the units) on the planets surface.
On a non technical note too, I like the size of current terrain features. I think a smaller world would be brutally crowded if they were to be made bigger! It's the size of the units that I feel is the major issue!

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

I find it interesting that you say that, as I would have thought the reverse would be true. I may be wrong but scaling the units down would effect movement speed, headlight size, animations, projectiles, the camera, and the majority of effects/decals. On the other hand, scaling the planet up would affect the terrain features, planet radius, and perhaps the resolution of the flow-field (which considering the planets can be different sizes anyway, shouldn't be a problem).

I certainly agree with you that increasing the feature size on their own will make the problem even worse, that's why I suggest increasing the terrain features AND planet radius (thus increasing the vertical limit as well).

You'll still end up with the same overall scale difference, but rather than scaling the units by 0.7x to be smaller on the planet, the planet is scaled by 1.428x to be larger around the units. I guess it's a question for Uber as to which is technically more practical, as the result is the same.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

I think we can all agree the relationship between terrain features and units is what's off. The planets will never be Outerra big, and they don't need to be.

This.

Reducing unit scale is one way to attack the problem, but it really also needs more variety in terrain feature size. Obviously, it's still in alpha, so I'm not really worried at the moment.

This is something I think should be nailed down by the beginning of beta, though. Seeing some bigger terrain features in the game would give us a better idea on how much unit scale is actually contributing.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

I'm all for decreasing the overall size of the units in the pool, but if they do then they gotta decrease the size of trees and pebbles as well. Decreasing the size of trees makes them still feel like giant war machines because people have actual trees to reference them by, and since the units would be smaller the pebbles the units now just drive over would most likely be too big for them.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

I support decreasing the scale by half (50%) at least, those terrain features look better towering over units. Also, the scale between the units appears to need revision too, this may not be supcom, but there is no reason not to take the lessons that supcom taught us about how awesome semi-realistic size differences could look and apply them to the artstyle of PA. Also, the frigates look like fat little tugboats. I'm hoping the navy design tends more towards Supcom than TA, as the former did it better.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

Steve and I had a pow-wow. We are still investigating so don't expect any imminent changes. Overall I'm personally in favor of scaling the units down a bit but this is actually a fairly huge amount of work for us so we aren't going to jump in without more thought on the best thing to actually tweak (e.g. we could change the terrain as well).

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

Thanks for keeping us updated! I'm personally glad your investigating things, even if any changes are a long way away. Keep up the amazing work

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

isn't it all relative? If scaling all the units down is a massive undertaking, then why not just make the planets bigger?

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

Being that this is the one of the smallest planet sizes I don't think scaling units down is necessary. Though making the actual features on the planet themselves larger would probably address the issue that most people actually have with the relative scale.

The small planet already has a decent travel time for armies and making the units smaller would make the travel time become more egregious, or if you keep their speed the same then many units will appear to be moving too fast for their size.

But being that this is just alpha whatever solution you eventually land on I am sure will be appropriate, especially seeing how I am quite satisfied with most decisions you have all made thus far. I just really don't think scaling the units down is the right solution, because when fully zoomed in the last thing I want is to see less detail on all my units!

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

This isn't really about unit scale gameplay-wise, moreso about unit scale in relation to everything else. Mountains are about the size of large boulders in relation to units, not really the several-kilometer tall death-from-above artillery platforms they should be.

Re: SCALE MEGATHREAD POLL

I have realized that the comparison with Supcom does not make sense.
While i would also like to have units scaled down a little bit, there's absolutly no chance to get the epicness of supcom, just because a flat map can't be compared to a sphere :

Let's take the largest supcom map. It will allways be flat. Yes it's possible to have a planet for which the entire surface is equal or even larger than the largest Supcom flat map.

However, this does not mean at all that you will get the same feeling of epicness as in supcom and because of this :

If you consider that the largest supcom flat map is mapped to a sphere, and then compute what this sphere diameter is then the corresponding sphere diameter will just be infinite.

A supcom flat map, is just a small piece of a sphere having an infinite diameter.

That's why one can't feel the same on FA than on PA.

And to a certain extent, even the smallest supcom map is also just a small piece of a sphere having an infinite diameter.

So comparing Supcom to PA scale does not really makes sense to me.