Things TA did well that SupCom didn't

I'm sure we agree that we want both view to be playable.
While the zoomed out view in SC is a great improvement over TA, the non-zoomed view feel like a downgrade for me.
Look at your screen shot. For my taste the left view level seems perfect.
But it doesn't shows any units! They would still look like ants and that's what bothering a lot of people.

Sure it does, they're the red things at the right of the map.

Then zoom in closer? TA's units look like "ants" too when viewed on a high DPI monitor at its native resolution... what's the point?

No, I play TA in full hd with a 21" screen and everything still look good. And it's hard to find a desktop monitor with higher DPI.
Zoom more and your factories take one quarter of the screen and it show only 2-3 units per screen: It becomes unplayable.

edit: I'll try to make a screen at home to show what I mean

What do you mean with "No". Obviously, units look smaller on high DPI monitors with a game like TA .

That is a complete exaggeration and not even true in that particular screenshot, where the screen is split. Also you need to specify what the exact "problem" is then. The relation of the size of the units in comparison to factories? It's all relative of course.

Yeah, but you didn't say that. You did say:

NO mean: No, they don't look like ants.

Yeah, perhaps I am. That's why I'll try to have some screenshot to compare.

Here's a comparison, I know it's SC2 but whatever

Just to get this topic sort of on track, can I just ask, is the argument
here whether to actually have strategic zoom in PA or not? And if so,
how would the "non-zoomers" allow for the whole multiple planets thing?

Surely even the most ardent hater of strat-zoom would have to realise it's a dead-certainty for PA.
So why even debate it?

Been a bit busy to get back to this. I'm going to debate it because it's going to be a whole different issue in Planetary Annihilation than it was in Supreme Commander due to the synchronous model. Micromanagement is going to be far more viable now that every units movement isn't horrifically sluggish. This is an important issue to talk about.

If I can step down from the slightly extreme view that all strategic zoom is awful full stop, I'd like to see a style of strategic zoom which is easier to use when zoomed in.

There should be a sort of ideal zoom level that all units, buildings and planes look good at. When you've got units that are so diverse in scale, and planes operating on a much higher altitude you're going to have to be zooming in and out constantly to adjust things. Or more likely you'll end up playing totally zoomed out all the time. I want less diverse scale between all the units and buildings on the battlefield.

If micro was viable in Supcom it'd be a pain in the *** switching between 3 different zoom levels constantly. I'd like the UI to make playing at a single zoomed in level to be a viable competitive option. Just as good as if not much better than playing totally zoomed out. When units have a broadly similar Line of Sight there is going to be a sort of ideal level of zoom to play at. Like in TA you could up the resolution to something insane but you'd mostly just be looking at dots and lots of fog of war so it wasn't useful to be that zoomed out.

As for how to play something when there are multiple planets without strategic zoom that's easy. I bet you a million bucks if there was a hotkey to switch planets people would soon start using that over bothering to zoom out, rotate planets and such. Hit 1, 2, 3 to flip from planet to planet. Right click flashing dots on minimap. Less cinematic but 10 times faster. Give me the option to play the game this way better than Supreme Commander did!

As for the visual aspect. I'm not saying chess is rubbish because it's boring to look at. I'm saying Supreme Commander is boring to look at compared to TA. In TA your screen is filled with action at any one moment. In Supreme Commander because the scale of units is so diverse only one type of unit ever looks "right". You're controlling an experimental and the tanks look puny and boring. The planes are speeding around too big in your view (if they're visible at all) and getting in the way. When everything was at a more similar scale you got to watch everything going on at once on the one screen (not to mention being able to micro them all at once). It was more visually stimulating.

I had that feeling, too.
The solution can be found in the options and is called "Always render strategic icons"

Example:



after playing for years with that option enabled the game looks pretty weird without symbols xD

Please bet the developers that, so they can not put it in, resulting them in getting an extra million bucks for developing PA.

All joking aside, the only problem I see with your hotkey solution is for maps with more than 10 planets/asteroids, especially since neutrino had asked why people where thinking so small when they mentioned having 60 asteroids at once. Otherwise, it would definitely make things easy.

Why not have a zoom AND some weird hotkeys for the camera? I would never use the camera and you would never use the zoom. Everyone would be happy in the end.

I thought you wanted it to be cinematic?

This is still a pointless discussion, strategic zoom is still useful (AS IN YOU CAN SEE A BATTLE THAT'S BIGGER THAN THE SCREEN), no matter what you say.

/leaves thread

The trolls have done a fantastic job with this thread. Twenty bloody pages of whether strategic zoom is good or not?

I am impressed.

you are bad and wrong.

Didn't we already have this thread? A thread where pretty much everyone but molloy agreed that these suggestions to mess with strategic zoom are universally terrible? There are two revolutionary features which define the TA/supcom family tree. TA gave us the first - the flow based economy. Supcom gave us the second - strategic zoom. now there's a lot more to making a game fun and a worthy successor, but those two things were unique and definitive. If you dislike either of these features then I'm sorry, but this is not the game you are looking for.

This is game hasn't been made yet. Who are you to say this is not the game he is looking for (whether his ideas are good or bad)?

I think we can all agree that removing Strategic Zoom is a terribad idea, because it's what made Supreme Commander unique, even if it had a bunch of other flaws.

But seriously. This game shouldn't just have fixed zoom, it REQUIRES it. We're smashing planets into other planets, we need something bigger than a breadbox-sized minimap to do so accurately.

It's simple, flow based economy and strategic zoom are obviously going to be a part of PA. If you don't like those features you're going to dislike them in PA, so it's not the game you are looking for.