Structure Facing?

'may'

But then you would build the building in a place where it would be enough, like every other rts game.

I think factories should rotate automatically depending on a move order to the factory. The fact of the matter is that on a sphere the front lines are going to change. You may set up your perfect defensive line of factories, just for the enemy to come from the opposite direction. While there's nothing particularly wrong with this, it means that any permanent decision for factory facing is going to be wrong some of the time by default, and wrong all the time once your enemy sees it.

You are all missing a very important point. There is no axis with which to align square buildings. Do you want factories facing into each other if you happen to build them across a pole?

That is why I say this:

Anyone who wants to defend square and un-rotatable structures has to answer this question because there is no obvious foolproof way to automatically orient squares on a sphere. Many methods of orienting them will make some base positions arbitrarily better than others just because of the underlying grid.

I don't see a good way to automatically align which is why I think non-rotatable buildings would be best done with circular footprints. The computation for those is even simpler than squares.

Just an idea...
thefreemon mentioned naval factories that submerged after making a unit.
How about the "opposite" for land-based factories?
ie, these factories are all raised above the ground, and their respective
units are dropped/placed/transported onto the ground directly underneath
them? This would allow a unit to turn on-the-spot, and set off in any
direction chosen by the player?

Google makes an excellent point about the underlying mathematics of grids on spheres. However I am reasonably sure PA will solve this problem by simply having large spheres with (relatively) small structures compared to the size of the map.

Even in FA, structures are extremely small compared to the map's dimensions, so the fact that they are square or any other shape is sort of irrelevant.

Good point, really. But as we will get random maps I presume that there will be no "balance" in positions, so making one position better than another is not a big deal (it could be handled other way). As about your question - you can't set square building on sphere, but you can setup it on sphere sweep. More or less it will mean "face factory towards nearest pole". If you have 4-side-exit passable-though factory than it just doesn't matter.

As from design point - you may make all factories on small pedestal with tunnels above, so every unit rolls (as designer want) into some lift/hole and then rolls out of this tunnels. No need for complex animations.

Why not just "Point to face X position"?

Build ring of factories at point near X position = factory circle you can't get out of

Having pathable area under/above/through/around square structures. Entire thread solved.

Good lord. Never mind that every RTS game I played to have rotateable buildings acomplished it through simply dragging the mouse held down while placing without modifiers--which Forged Alliance could theoretically do and sacrifice zero user interface functionality.

Why simply utilizing the 3d world and simulation recieves such contention in this community is beyond me.

The problem with drag to rotate buildings is that it makes it hard to place down groups of them.

Why does it matter what direction a structure is facing?

You are asking me to commit clicks to doing something that literally has no purpose. Unless you want to add limited arcs of fire or other directional mechanics, there isn't a purpose to include this. I agree it wouldn't be hard to do- but why?

If you can come up with an interesting decision that might flow from what direction a building is facing, then we can talk about the system that might be used to determine which direction they face. Clicking to determine a direction is indeed a good way to do that.

"Hey guys! How can we solve this in the most boring, lame, bandaid-esque way possible? I know, a way that doesn't solve the issue of which way structures point by default and makes it impossible to use structures as pathing blockers for tactical situations!"

It's not facing for facing. It's facing for A: tactical deployment (create wall of structures to block pathing), B: balance (so that certain locations don't have advantage based on vagaries of rolloff directions), and C: niche units (stuff like the unit cannon or artillery which may have limited firing arcs).

It's a trivial UI cost to the player to add rotation support if done correctly and brings so much to the table in terms of unit design options and smoothing balance concerns.

Because globes make it matter. No matter what static facing direction you pick, you run into pathing and construction issues near the locus (loci) of facing.

Neutrino has said he wants to tinker with directional fire as a mechanic for artillery -- it's an interesting tradeoff that lets the artillery itself be stronger as a result.

And it's not even clicks. The simplest way would be "pick a default direction optionally based on nearby structures, add a drag modifier to let facing be picked".

The aforementioned directional stuff. Preventing possible balance issues because of rolloff (no other complete or non-clunky solutions have been proposed). Using structures to create pathing blocks. Hell, aesthetics is a decent reason. It would be neat to build power plants all in a circle around my rocket gantry or something. Not everyone plays hardcore must make me more likely to win or I ignore it you know...

Simple enough to solve. You wouldn't have to set the orientation every time. You click and drag to set the orientation of one, and then each building after that will automatically be oriented the same way.

So, I want a group facing one way... click, drag, shift click click click
Now I want a group facing the other way... click drag shift click click click

The degree to which it would slow you down is almost null. Plus it doesn't matter for most of the things you might build in mass, like power generators. So for those there's no change.

I also am a firm supporter of things being locked to 45 degree increments, otherwise it's impossible to align everything.
Then again, on a spherical surface it's sort of impossible to align everything anyway

A good compromise.

Yes, anyone suggesting it adds complexity or takes longer to develop is being deliberately dense.

That's a bit harsh.

Use walls as pathing blockers. That's not a starcraft - there is no need to build pylon at only exit because you don't have any more suitable building. You have one - wall. You need a projectile blocker? A tall wall!

Don't give same role to multiple units - it creates only confusion.

And about being "boring" - I'm not used to watch my tanks rolling though my base past first 5 minutes in FA (except that's an enemy tanks). So I don't care how boring roll-out sequence/pathing sequence is - they may just spawn near the factories or teleport around base - I don't care.

I missed something? I thought that most of people here do agree that PA should be about "strategy", not about "tactic". If it gives a huge tactical advantage then everyone should use it to be efficient, thus you implying more required micro. If it doesn't give significant tactical advantage - then why even bother?

It's a trivial UI cost to the player to add rotation support if done correctly and brings so much to the table in terms of unit design options and smoothing balance concerns.

If you have omni-directional building it doesn't matter anyway.

So, well, you are suggesting to place artillery in non-rotatable placements (not even very slow) on round planet? So you need to rebuild it each time you expect enemy to came from other direction on ROUND planet? Great idea! Arc limiting could be nice tactic, but it has nothing to do with build-time structure facing.

Yeah, it should have a specific focus on strategy. That doesn't mean that tactic is banned.
A game were you just have to count the number of untis/defence to know the output of a battle would be really boring.

Omnidirectional buildings are A: not looking like the direction PA is heading, and B: arguably too constraining in terms of design.

That's the whole point of the tradeoff -- Make artillery really strong but it can only fire in a cone, so you have to build it in the direction of what you want to cover and it is vulnerable to flanking. The alternative is bland-feeling artillery like SupCom has that is low damage, stupidly inaccurate, can't fire at nearby units, or any combination of the above.