Space Combat

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by vpp, May 20, 2013.

  1. vpp

    vpp New Member

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    I should preface this by saying that I'm a huge RTS fan and continue to love Supreme Commander, Forged Alliance, and Command and Conquer Generals. So, I'm so looking forward to PA and hope and pray that my older machines will be able to run it for maximum goodness. Having said that (and after having pre-ordered three copies of the game some time ago), I would like to pick at an old sore in that after having watched the pre-alpha combat demo, I am more convinced than ever that PA needs a space combat/space transport element to the game. I know that Jon Mavor and others have gone on record saying in effect ' its not our intention to make "Homeworld 3" ' and I respect that. But, with all due respect to the development team, I fear that in final release, PA runs the risk of being "just another rts game" coupled with the performance hit caused by rendering and playing with many, many units on complex 3d spherical planetary maps. If we have planets as our battlegrounds then give us the space between the worlds to traverse and fight in, let us build space navies to complement and transport our planet-based forces and engineers. Why couldn't PA strive to be the love-child of "Homeworld" and "Supreme Commander"? For that, I would do what I needed to absorb the performance hit, I would join a second round of Kickstarter fundraising, and I would eagerly wait through the extra time needed to build a true space element into the game. Well, that's my whine. Please consider it - if not for the upcoming release of PA - then perhaps as an after release payfor add-on.
  2. monkeyulize

    monkeyulize Active Member

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    I don't think you realize that simply adding in a space combat component requires a completely rethink of everything. You need new balance, new UI, new everything to support a completely different playstyle. Make a mod for it, I'm sure someone will.

    This game will be plenty epic on it's own without space combat. And remember, there is always a possibility space combat may come down the line in an expansion or something.
  3. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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  4. vpp

    vpp New Member

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    I understand that there would be real challenges in bringing "Homeworld" like space operations into PA. But, I think that they've already gone some distance in that direction with 3d planetary maps for planetside combat. And these planets - to judge from the May17 livestream video - will be embedded into larger volume space maps complete with suns that the planets are orbiting around (orbiting moons are featured too). If some orbital facilities and environments (moons) will be allowed and combat colonization of other worlds is a feature (as well as occupying asteroids and transforming them into kinetic energy weapons) - then why not a fuller spaceside for the game?

    Perhaps you're right - maybe it'll appear as a later feature. Or a fanmod.
  5. muzzledelk

    muzzledelk Member

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    Yes, everyone knows having the super capital ship from the Vasari of SOASE eat a planet would be really hilarious the first time.
    Yes, having a massive RTS battle on top of a moving dreadnought fighting other ships would be pants-creamingly fun.
    Yes, naming one of your heavily damaged ships the "RAMMING SPEED" and throwing it at the enemy's commander's face would be stupidly awesome. Stupidly. Awesome.

    But it's impossible to balance, and incredibly difficult to do in the first place. Hold out for a mod, spread the word around that this won't happen in the vanilla game.
  6. calmesepai

    calmesepai Member

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    There will be space combat but limited to orbits for some extent so it is not a boiled down to a space race to dominate it or be left stuck on a planet till the assult army is built to finish you off.

    (ok it is worst case senario but hey can not expand if enemies space ball of death is just sitting there waiting)
  7. vpp

    vpp New Member

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    While I do agree with the assertion that adding a full "in-space" element to PA would represent a significant technical challenge to PA's team - I don't believe that it would represent an order of magnitude increase in difficulty. Not for a team that has already tackled the thorny issue of 3d planets, is talking about implementing orbital physics for the games planets and moons, and is actively working on the machinery to allow a player to control potentially thousands of units across multiple planetary surfaces. As to the balance issue, that is always with the RTS developer. Adding an additional combat environment with its specific units doesn't suddenly make that issue completely intractable. That said - yes - the presence of space forces would compel a recalculation of the overall balancing scheme.

    But so does adding and in air forces or wet navies...

    In any case, players who are tardy in spreading out from their homeworlds - after presumably successfully fighting for them - still face the potential "Space Ball of Death" in the form of asteroids as kinetic energy weapons or metal planets transformed into "Death Stars". That possibility was mentioned near the end of the most recent livestream event.
  8. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    So you know the Developers better than the Developers themselves do?

    Mike
  9. Vyndicu

    Vyndicu Member

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    I like to put in a reality check of my own in here.

    Image that for a moment you are a CPU handling PA game play session alone. Now Image you are updating orbital position for 500 celestial bodies (asteroid/planet in a big galaxy).

    Now image trying to update 8 player's fleet of one thousand space starship for everyone. Not just their firing solutions but also their position in respective to each solar systems on top of this having mega battle across navy, air, and land.

    Now with all of that in mind, do you still feel like it do not add difficult to what is already a ground-breaking RTS without space battle?

    Personally I would like to see space combat in a future expansion just not right now because they are gearing up for an alpha phase in just two weeks or less.
  10. vpp

    vpp New Member

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    No - I do not presume to "know the developers" better than they know themselves. I'm just advocating for something which is not out of line given the scale of the game being presented. I understand that the basic foundation for the game is becoming more solid with an alpha release scheduled in two weeks. I just want to argue that as a possible add on for the future, that space combat be strongly considered. I'm arguing the point to hopefully - in a very small way - keep the door open for such a feature.

    Given how advanced the game is, I am forced to concede that adding in a space element at this point (in time for the scheduled Dec retail release) is probably a forlorn hope.

    As to the demands that adding in a space element might make on code and machine resources, the game will already be setting a high demand mark even absent the High Frontier. Adding in a space element needn't send that demand level crashing into the impossible (Jaguar super-computer needed) realm of operations.
  11. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    You're wrong. I mean that very kindly, but that's the kind of statement that makes most devs heads explode. ;)

    Suffice it to say that while many of us here would love space combat, there is no way it's happening any time soon, if it ever happens. The work it represents to make real space gameplay is almost making a brand new game.
  12. vpp

    vpp New Member

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    Garat. Thanks much for the reply. A response from the Uber team was more than I could've hoped for. I stand - cloaked in my manifest ignorance - corrected.

    Though I have to say that I am disappointed at the near categorical rejection of the idea of adding a space combat element to the game - even as a post release add-on.

    But, I have to ask - and I don't mean to cause any further explosive cranial decompressions among the members of the dev staff - why?

    Why is it that in a game that seems more or less a "space" (spacish?) game - judging from some of the visuals shown in the 5/17 live steam - where combat can be spread from planet to planet via big rocks and launched engineers and combat units - that it would be re-inventing the software wheel to add a space combat element? This is asked not to be snarky or confrontational but really to learn a little.

    I have great respect for the work that you folks do and I understand that few consumers appreciate the amount of sweat that goes into making the games run.
  13. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    Think about it from a design perspective, if you want to do the exercise.

    Take a game that is already doing something very unusual for an RTS, and playing on a sphere, rather than playing on a flat plane.

    Take that to space. How does any of the planetary gameplay mechanics apply in the arbitrary dimensions of space? How do you determine points of reference that make sense? how do you handle pathing and formations when you can suddenly have a full 3 dimensions of movement? How do you tell your units where to move with no easy way to target a 3 dimensional vector in space?

    Don't take it as a categorical denial that we'll never ever have space combat, because who knows what the future will bring. But for launch, yes, you can take it as a "no way no how", even if we massively increased the budget and the team size. The differing design goals would just make the entire game suffer for an ancillary feature.

    Even on a sphere, you still end up abstracting much of your movement to a plane - just a plane with a lot of curvature. :) In space, you don't have that limit, and no easy way to define the whats and hows of combat. It is a very much different style of gameplay once you take it into space, and if we were to make that someday, we'd want it to have every bit as much focus as the attention we're putting into planetary warfare.

    I have a blog post about scope and feature requests in general that I need to get around to posting one of these days, as this is one of the topics I specifically go into detail on.
  14. teradyn

    teradyn Member

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    While I fully understand the reasoning behind no space component, and agree, I also don't think it has to be fully 3D, unless something about the planetary orbits dictate that.

    Based on what you describe, it sounds like planetary orbits may not be locked to a simple flat orbital plane. Is this correct?
  15. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    The vision for this game doesn't include Homeworld style space combat at the moment.

    I do think the engine will be great for this kind of game eventually but it's simply not part of the vision for PA and would be a different game.
  16. vpp

    vpp New Member

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    Garat and Neutrino - thank you for the responses.

    I guess I have a better understanding of the difficulty. Most of the unit types in the game will be restricted to degrees of freedom defined and constrained by the rules that are mapping the action onto 3d spheres. Allowing for a new class of units without similar constraints - means a whole new rules set with a challenge presented in meshing the two general types so that in border environments (where the two meet; say a ship bombing a planetary surface) the code won't become confused and allow a ship to fly through a planet or a ground unit to do something similar.

    Well, maybe in '14 or '15.

    Thanks for your time.
  17. Pawz

    Pawz Active Member

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    If anything it seems to me like the engine would suit a Sins of a Solar Empire style space game better than Homeworld, what with Sins being focused around combat in the gravity well.

    Maybe.

    I'm still hoping for the ability to set altitudes for satelites and aircarft :)
  18. sylvesterink

    sylvesterink Active Member

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    You guys also have to consider that even if it were easier from a development perspective, would it really make the game that much more fun? There's already so much being done in PA that makes the game deep and complex.

    Firstly, you have TA's unit variety, so you'll be busy organizing specific types of attacks for specific types of units.

    Then you have Supcom's scale, and then some. Not only are maps bigger, but they also have no boundaries. You have to consider attacks from ANY direction.

    Add to that all the additional depth of unit control you'll get with the features that weren't in TA or Supcom.

    So in the end you get a lot of deep and complex gameplay, and that's only considering a single planet! Adding multiple planets/spacial objects to the mix only broadens the scope. That's a lot to keep track of, and I'm pretty sure that as gamers we will be more than occupied with all that we can do with the game that we get.

    But if you add devoted space combat, suddenly there's a break in the type of gameplay the player has to devote their mind to. Not only do you have to consider the previous game complexity, but suddenly you have a whole new way of playing the game. (Because space combat is NOT like ground combat.) The transition from ground combat to space combat is a jarring one, and I can guarantee that as a gamer, it won't be anywhere near as enjoyable as it sounds.

    I tried to find examples of previous games that try to do the kind of thing that is being proposed, but it's actually pretty hard. No doubt the developers were sane enough to understand the scope of their game and stick with it.

    I'll just leave you with an example: The Battle For Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game that sticks with the KISS principle, and as a result, the game mechanics are very clean and straightforward. The resulting gameplay has some of the deepest strategy I've seen from a non-wargame. And this is from a game that's been developed for over a decade. Again, the developers are smart enough to know the scope of their game, and that's what makes it fun.
  19. generalskye

    generalskye New Member

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    Hey guys i just joined here, and am super excited for the game. but i have seen this issue bounced around for a while. What i would like to see is space combat in orbit around planets and jumping from planet to planet as a late game sort of technology, since it has already been stated that there will be satellite type units in orbit why not have ships that follow the same logic? and work like the rockets to go between systems. i just don't really like the idea of building multiple bases without being able to move large numbers of units from planet A to planet B.

    By having the ships act like sattelites they would move in the same way aircraft do but at a higher orbit. i just like it as a high end method of moving between systems and waging war. they would obviously be expensive and late game but would make planetary invasions so much cooler.

    Imagine clearing and LZ from orbit then dropping in your forces from large transports.

    anyeways that's my $0.02, let me know what you think.
  20. teradyn

    teradyn Member

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    First, since the game allows you to have multiple people playing the game as the same team, I don't think the complexity or fun cards can be used to argue against a space combat component to this game. Only a game like this that concentrates on macro, rather than micro, could get away with that.

    That being said, I think most here understand the reasoning behind no space combat in the release of PA. The compelling question is whether or not the celestial mechanics of asteroid movement and egg travel provides the necessary mechanisms to allow someone to mod a space component in or not. The questions center around things like:

    When the asteroid is in motion, do we have the ability to lock our view to it like we could (I hope) when it was stationary and we were building on it?

    While the asteroid is traveling, do we have the capability to assign a new target and have it switch to that?

    Can we build on the asteroid while it is moving?

    Since we can (according to information so far) assign an orbital target, rather than impact, and then bombard the surface, can we take shots from pre-built artillery sites on the asteroid while it is in motion?

    Is there an artificial limit on the number of asteroids we can have at a time, or have in motion?

    Based on the answers to these questions, we might be able to see what tools modders may have at there disposal to add a space component to the game. The problem is, many of these questions may not have answers yet. Uber has said that the celestial mechanics portion of the game hasn't been delineated yet. This being the case, we need to try to reign in the questions about whether the game will have a space combat portion. We know the answer, no, not even planned for after release.

    What we need to do, is continue to ask for hooks and mechanisms that would allow modders the freedom to implement some sort of space mod.

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