So it's 2 days left until Retail-Release....

I wasn't really drawing any conclusion there. This is one of the areas where I think that the 'awesome' factor should be taken into account.
Do slower projectiles allow for more micro-decisive battles? Most likely.
But the effect of slow but devastating projectiles causing violent explosions all over the battlefield is one of the most awesome things to watch (in TA that is).
In PA we currently mainly have small yellow blips as projectiles which only cause a tiny impact explosion (if any), or simply disappear in space. On top of that those projectiles are rather fast and not quite as intimidating.

So here's my conclusion:
I think projectiles should be more visible by introducing several new projectile types (look-wise), and causing more violent explosions on impact (even if they only hit the terrain). The Leviathan is a pretty good example of awesome in this case.
I also think projectile speeds from most land units could be toned down a little.

I agree with your notion that PA needs to be built around what makes sense for *this game* rather than *because TA or SupCom had it* type attitude. That's why I can accept the removal of mobile unit wreckage for the vanilla game (although I would point out I think it *is* important to include good wreckage support in engine at the very least).

On the subject of simulated projectiles, I think they are essentially to making a good RTS. I have *never* like the Starcraft system which frankly feels totally arbitrary and doesn't make sense. Other games without projectile simulation are equally frustrating (e.g. AOE). The problem with removing simulation of projectiles is 2 fold:

1: Projectiles don't take obsticles into consideration- if I put a unit behind a wall it should be protected from direct fire weapons simple as. It's a critical part of the WYSIWYG principal.

2: Non simulated weapons always winds up with this terrible RPS based mechanic. I mean it can get rediculous like in AOE where a single archer can kill 100 mounted troops because it's the correct counter (don't quote me on those specific units btw, I just remember that 1 unit could defeat countless hords of another type).

The simulation of projectiles in PA (and in earlier games) was where the subtlety comes from naturally without having to resort to RPS systems that frankly make no sense. Ok PA isn't intended to be micro focused, but thanks to projectile simulation there *are* areas where micro is rewarded simply by the nature of how things work (e.g. move this unit behind that building and the opposing units can't hit it). The less arbitrary limits in the system the better from my perspective.

So I just stumbled onto this today at TAUniverse ...
http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43706

Pilfered from the above link, scans from a 17 page preview from a game magazine:
What were we expecting?

Ooh, thank you for finding a bunch of units and such that never made it into the game. Living proof my friends that many things didn't make it into the game.

So.. where are the core mechanics that are missing/misrepresented from the majority of those images?

Not-crap pathfinding.

Also thought it was a cheap shot that, of 150 units, half of them were structures and their identical faction clones.

Oh man, that path finding in OTA.. and that ai were.. well.. yeah.

The original OTA AI was so dumb... I could easily win vs 9 hard AI allied togehter (with the 3.1 update that allowed 10 player games). All you ahd to do was rush them all with a scout and kill their starting mexes and it was gg

It did get quite hard though if you left them alone for too long.

So it looks like they are actually trying to push through with that release date.

And they are going to release the game in the finest banana-ware state.


But what bothers me more, is how rushed this feels all of a sudden. 2 weeks ago, Brad was still all like "release date hasn't even been announced yet" and "we are moving". And now they have only a single shot left for testing all the new features they have planned for 1.0. With PAX taking even more precious time which would be required to get the game at least crash-free for retail.

It doesn't really feel as if 5th of September was originally intended to be the release date. Even more since several devs claimed something around early 2015 as targeted release date.

And there's yet another issue:
Advertising for the retail version is still claiming that dedicated servers would be included at launch.
Same goes for 40 player matches.
Both are known to be impossible yet, due to stability and performance issues.

My BIGGEST problem is the UI...it's really slow, ruins the main menu and has a tendency to crash (I'm on Win7).
And of course...pathfinding. I'm ONLY playing moon biome because I don't trust my units to go to places. I don't want to micro them and I know I have to...that's why.

And true GALACTIC war (the one we can play is first pass, but still). And asteroid belts. And the unit cannons. Wreckage and (!) working pathfinding (c'mon, wreckage even is in the list of confirmed features!). Biomes 2.0. "Drawing walls 'n' stuff". Proper naval units. Lava not being solid but an actual liquid (c'mon Uber, just change the watercolour and let it glow). See where this is going?

The UI is really fast for me now. I think you may have some issues if you're running on windows (there are UI issues on Linux but thats an unrelated problem).

Things that can cause the UI to be slow: Insufficient ram (really uou need 8gb for PA, less means loading can take ages) and out of date graphics drivers. Also old mods can cause issues (e.g. if you have the UI fix installed that actually makes it slower now).

I would be happy to look at your set-up and see if there is anything obvios, if you could post a DXDIAG?

The only performance issue on Windows now are server related from my experience.

I have a FX-6300, 8 GB ram, and a GTX 770, ending up in my processor bottlenecking. But do you really expect everyone to have an i7? I think not. My hard drive is a Seagate 7200 rpm 1 TB. My setup is not beasty, but yet not too bad. My video drivers were old, but are updating right now. The thing is: the build bar and stuff feels fine, but when you're in the main menu, it just feels bad. Long loading times even though you're in frickin' main menu. I might record a video just for showing it.

Strange, I've really not been having much in the way of performance issues like that, and both my machines are weaker than yours: My desktop is a Phenom II X3 @ 2.6ghz, 4gb ram and a GTX 560 runs the game well on medium settings although I have to keep map size to a minimum otherwise it sits there disk caching and is basically unplayable. I also play on a laptop which is a 1st gen i5 460m (2.4ghz dual core + ht) with 8gb ram and a Nvidia GT 420 (only 96 shader cores) and I can play on pretty large maps on that machine on low settings (due to graphics card).


There is a big of 'lag' when going into the multi-player menu, however I think that is more related to a communication delay to the Uber servers. The UI *in game* is very fast now since Uber split into about 10 separate processes (although it is a big heavy on memory usage which is why my 4gb machine struggles so much). I don't think the menu UI is particularly fast for anyone although perhaps you are having a worse experience than most?

Yea multiplayer lobbies are just slower than turtles right now. It even makes playing a game difficult.

I'm a broken record here ... but TA had this problem too! Before TA, I had a rig with a 33mhz Cyrix CPU and maybe an 80MB HD. 8MB RAM. 56kbs modem. At the time it was the shiit for running Red Alert with my friend at the end of the street as long as nobody needed to use the phone. I built my first computer because TA needed a 100mhz CPU and 16MB RAM. And performance was still pretty bad. Lots of crashes on Win98.

My point is that PA is very rough around the edges right now, but if you look at the long term, it has huge potential. SupCom was like this too - I built a new PC for that game as well and it still ran badly at launch. Now, of course, it's nothing to an i7. Got to keep a long term outlook.

I doubt for a second that the game is going to be released in the next few weeks. Uber must delay it.
The game needs to be in a playable state WITHOUT any updates applied.
However by the sides of it uber have been hiding a few updates and will be showing them off at PAX.

One thing that is STILL bugging me about the game is how terrible the unit sounds are.
All the units in TA & Sup Com had big beefy sounds, everything sounding like nuclear explosions. Heck even clicking on a unit you could tell it was some mechanical beast by the clunks and chatter of servos it responded with. Everything in the game so far is very "puny" and lacks any oomph.
I needs my oomph!

It's too late.

It's easy to agree on the fact that the game isn't ready to be released yet, but the date is set and it's far too late to postpone it now. Pre-sale has been running for weeks now, with that precise date announced as release date.

Bad communication between Uber and Nordic Games? Very likely. But not much which could possibly be done about it now.

Im still waiting for a proper Plug-in for 3DS Max so I can convert my FA mod into PA


Id rather then hang back a few weeks and get rid of the more disturbing bugs, then release the game as it is >-<

Question: Is there really a difference between PA now and when it'll be 1.0? I mean I know Uber is doing a lot of polish work and stuff but what difference does it really make if they "release" now? They plan to support the game well after it's "released" so I don't see the big issue. You can pretty much buy the game in any marketplace right now, digital and physical.

Also dates change all the time. Heck the original release date of PA was changed 2-3 days before it was planned to do so. Nothing is final until Uber say it is.

You catch on quickly. Really, release is politics, while it has nothing to do with practice. In practice, they will continue to support it just like SMNC. Actually, it is very similar, as a new platform it will have some bugs they will continue to work on more than likely, as well as content they will continue to expand on. At the same time, there really isn't a big deal to release now or not, the roadmap of features is still work in progress and with all intention a short while down the road.

For instance, September 5th or not, I would bet that linux and serverside would come before year's end, and things like stealth and more mod hooks like victory conditions and other unit roles will probably come to this game for free at some later date.

All release means, is a build with new things and release-support instead of beta-test support.