Spherical maps will be this game's downfall

I enjoy the spherical maps as well myself, it makes scouting actually important. Instead of me spawning in a corner and the enemy spawning in the other corner, I now have no idea where the enemy starts. Now it's no longer a game of ASSAULT THAT CORNER, and I can now enjoy the full effectiveness in using pincer, flanking, and surprise attacks on the enemy.

I'm just going to say briefly that the topic of this thread is just wrong in my opinion. Spherical maps are different, and you cant go into the game with the same thought process of every other RTS game out therem I dont however think that this is the games best feature, smashing planets or playing on multiple planets at the same time are in my opinion. They've fixed or are fixing the disoirentation of spherical maps now anyway so you shouldn't be loosing your barings so easily now. The only issue I have with the spherical map layout is there is zero easy ways to defend yourself, you get attacked everywhere from every side at any time lol...

I actually think this is a plus point, not a negative. Don't forget that this means (generally) your opponent will be exposed too. I think it allows for a more dynamic game, with both sides incurring losses and making gains at a more frequent rate. Maybe I'm just a masochist

oh it is a plus point.. i'm just not very good at the game yet ha!

I find it somehow liberating to play on spherical maps, and not only because of the "360 degrees of oh god i'm screwed", as someone put it, though that is awesome too. Personally I think spherical maps enforce a more strategic approach to the game, you have to plan more carefully and form a mental image of the battlefield, when you can't have everything in view at once. Makes it somehow more "real", and less tidy. I hate microing units in strategy games, that is so not the point of these games in my opinion. I also expect the notification system seen in the recent play test streams to help a lot with army management issues.

the problem with sperhical map and lacks of orientation is:

- they should make a minimap
- they should disable the possibility to rotate the camera (starcraft 2 doesn't allow that for example)

- Minimaps have been discussed a lot. There are some advantages to gameplay if they can be done properly, but it isn't entirely clear exactly how the projection to a flat surface should work with minimal distortion. I'm not trying to bring the minimap debate back up here - just summarizing the discussion.

- Have you tried turning on pole lock in the settings? This pretty much does what you are asking for. It has some issues too, but I am confident that they can work through this.

Regarding lack of orientation and minimaps.. Due to the recently held chess world championship, I watched a documentary about grandmaster level chess players.. the current chess world champion once played blindfolded against 10 different opponents in 10 different games at the same time. He memorized every move in every game, having a complete mental picture of each game in his head at the same time. And apparently also won every single one of those matches. So I think it is safe to say that minimaps in PA are not needed.

Lol. Just try to play PA blindfolded and keep all the simulation in your head.

Challenge accepted...this will be interesting

yeah as a gamer you need your eyes more then anything XD
but you can give it a try and tell me how much clicking you needed to put down that 1 metal extractor in its proper place XD

Starcraft pro Slayers Boxer(Terran) playing "blindfolded".
Edit:Wasn't full video...

I just got PA over the weekend, and I am really loving the spherical map mechanic as well as the massive amount of production it can handle. I can relate to some of the issues described here with the planetary sphere view, it can be disorienting to realize your view of your base rotated 60 degrees after you panned around the planet for a minute. However I'm really impressed with how they've handled the new camera elements and I do think these issues will all be manageable over time and they will be able to work the kinks out before the first official release.

IMHO, some more elaborate Ctrl bindings could help a lot. Binding a camera position (and orientation) to a Ctrl + Function key set up might work out well, similar to how unit control groups work with the number keys. It would also help if I could hold a button and it change my mouse to rotate over a fixed point of view, allowing to change the orientation at which I am viewing the base. I think those two things would handle most of my navigation issues. I saw some mention of a minimap too, and I would love to see that implementation =D

You've got it backwards, having 360 degrees worth of strategic planning is requires more strategy than sitting in a corner of a non-spherical map. For example any strategy you could implement to breach the defenses of an opponent you can choose to implement on a non-spherical map can be done as well as choosing to attack from a completely different direction. More strategy.

Also there is such a thing as a solar system with two suns, it's called a binary system. Be cool to see some more unusual solar systems in the mix.

The spherical nature of the planets and the fact that there will be multiples of these in each battle give this game a lot of potential. And are some of it's best features.

Thanks for all the reactions.

Some people brought up an interesting point, in that another aspect of spherical maps is that it forces more micromanagement because turtling strategies are not possible. Now I wouldn't call myself a turtle, but there's a limit to the amount of micromanagement I can handle before the game just becomes random to me. The strength of TA/supcom was partially in needing less micromanagement, allowing more planning, and thus allowing you to command larger, more complex armies more precisely. Now if PA wants to go in a different direction, that is their choice, but you'll lose out on a lot of players that liked that aspect.

For those of you who think that being attacked from all sides is naturally more strategic, please go watch some TA/supcom matches online, notice the intricate little exchanges that happen thruout that really matter for the outcome, and then think if those would also happen in PA.

An analogy: what is more strategic in a first person shooter, a FFA or a duel? In the latter, you only need to focus on one player, in one direction, and use of sound cues and predicting the other player can get very intricate. In a FFA, strategy is reduced to shoot at whatever moves.

As for the procedural levels, I am actually a big fan of procedural content (wrote many such algorithms myself), but the key is to have humans select what pieces of procedural content have the highest quality. Or better yet, allow humans to influence random seeds on parts of the map, i.e. to force more sea etc in a map which is otherwise rather good but has minor flaws.

I'm not sure which one is supposed to be PA. However IMO i would have to disagree with you on that. For one it seems weird to me to use a FPS in comparison to a RTS two completely different genres, and also having more people is not "shoot at whatever moves" you have to now add in multiple people each playing differently some more unpredictably then others. Some may be using longer ranged weapons so you have to consider that while also considering the short ranged high damage players. Meanwhile in a 1v1 you just have that person to consider.