Small maps wrapped on a small sphere is not a planet

Long time ta/cc, supcom, fa, supcom2 player. Big maps good. Small spheres are not planets they are just small maps that are hard to work with. Yay for the goal of the developers, but please no small round maps. Everything else sounds great. The small spherical maps make it like every crappy rts that doesn't have strategic zoom. Best wishes.

Small maps, like moons or asteroids?

Why would a small map be hard to work with??

Cause it's really hard to Turtle when you're within spitting distance of your opponent.

OP, Planet sizes are completely variable.

Mike

Then don't turtle.

this => /thread

But what if a large map was made of many small maps?

Personally i'm looking forward to the spherical maps no matter how big or small...

Fighting with Orbital forces over the upper atmosphere of a Gas giant will be epic.

When I think of the small planets/moons figure it'll be like the island hopping in FA. You just go someplace else if it's too much bother.

Just imagine what modders could do with that scenario... *dreams*

I think this is a non issue since maps are spherical. Even a small map where you have no wall to put your back against completely changes how you play the game.

If I may, I think I may have an idea that could help smooth over some potential problems.

I believe the key to smoothly commanding forces on and over a planet's surface is a specialized, context-sensitive minimap. Nothing shocking or original, I know, but hear me out.

To describe my intended model, let us start with the system used by the Spore Civilization stage. The main screen would function as expected; show the units within the field of view of the camera. I intend for this view to show the curvature of the planet in question.

On the topic of minimaps; perhaps the User Interface could, in "planet-management" mode as well as in inter-planetary "strategic zoom" mode and above, have multiple separate minimap slots. The largest slot, perhaps placed at the center of a hub with other relevant maps arranged around it, would deal with whatever level of zoom you are at. For example, as a player zooms out from the surface of a planet the primary minimap display would cycle through a "Transverse Mercator Projection" style map of the planets surface (with orbital units shown as faint markers), another map focusing on orbital units (with surface units similarly shown as faint markers), a map of the solar system (if one exists), and so on.

These maps, especially ones focusing on the planet's surface and in orbit, should have a number of interface options, perhaps shown as a series of buttons arranged above the primary minimap display. This section of the HUD would allow the style of the map to be changed (full, warped map, orange-peel style unwarped map, all that good stuff) in addition to changing the orientation of the minimap (rotating, sliding, you get the idea).

As a side note, units capable of moving between the planets orbit and atmosphere, as well as units capable of sub-orbital flight (High-altitude satellite-killing interceptors and the like) could have their minimap icons tagged with appropriate icons (like an orange dot in the lower right corner) to prevent these units from vanishing or appearing on appropriate minimaps without warning.

keep in mind that when you have no "wall" both sides need to be equally far away from your opponent, so even the smallest non spherical maps need to be twice as large to compare to a normal map

I'd personally be happy if they cut and pasted how Spore worked with the maps and multiple planets... except without the small lag when you "zoomed" out towards the System view. It wasn't hard to get used to

I hope there is support for very small maps. Of course this is not realistic but who cares? Very small maps probably aren't even suitable for serious play but in other games I find them fun to play occasionally.

When does an orbital body become so small that it ceases to be classed as a planet? I believe the term is planetoid, which if googled takes you to a wiki link for minor planet. So maybe it isn't that unrealistic? Furthermore, what's to say you couldn't have options in the procedural generator to limit playable terrain to a percentage of the planet's surface? This could be done with lava, deep crevices or other impassable terrain.

I don't see any reason why maps couldn't be this small. Furthermore, there is always the option to start on two small moons orbiting a single, contested planet. Small games are just as important as the big ones that are the focus of a lot of talk in the livestreams and so on.

Personally, I don't think it's something that they can afford to take out of the game. I believe denying players the option to play short duration games on small maps would make a lot of people think twice about buying the game. That's just based on online gaming trends and what is popular when I play online.

EDITED: Corrected my link.

Small maps are nice sometimes. It Offers a nice change from long games, and adds new strategy. It would also probably encourage players to adapt more, since a build that you might have won with on a larger map will not work on a smaller one.

I'm with Wolfdogg on this. Flexability in the range of planet size/type and size of solar systems is a really important aspect to this game, allowing games of all types to emerge. One of their major focus points is ensuring that the game is very scalable and that PA is playable on maps from very small scale through the extremely large, both from a gamplay and hardware perspective.

Uber are building a proceedural planet/solarsystem generator for PA so it isnt a case of "no small maps only large maps" Once they have built the generator the map size is up to the players. Having a restriction on the minimum size of a solarsystem or planet (within reason of course) would be very arbitrary and in my opinion unnessesary.

If planet size is adjustable, as one post stated, or there are big and small planets (a-la FA) then awesome!

Keep in mind, a map will consist of multiple planets that can have multiple moons, and many asteroids.
With the in-game system generator we will be able to have both extremes; we can make one massive planet to fight on in a more traditional way, a planetary system, or only an asteroid belt.