Things TA did well that SupCom didn't

Many of us didn't dismiss it, we tried to explain why you are "wrong" or provided counter arguments.

You did not "had to be zoomed out most of the time". The completely zoomed out view provided you with the best overview, naturally. If you don't like or do not need that overview for some reason and think it is "rubbish", then don't zoom out. Forcing a player to stay zoomed in, i.e. forcing him to look at all the pretty stuff close up is silly.

That's fine, there always have been the occassional gamer in the past who shared a similar view (i.e. who for some reason though that minimap clicking and panning is 'better').

You can do all that in Supreme Commander too.

It's not slower, or at least does not need to be. In your prefered way to play the game, you first have to move your cursor away from the center of the screen (where you typically engage in any command issueing), then you need to precisly aim on where you want to go. Then you click and move back and then figure out the state of battle in a completely new reference frame, without any transition in between.

In Supreme Commander, you move your cursor only once in that line of action and the zooming itself can be fast. Even faster if you adjust the zooming rate (or use a modifier via the keyboard). Plus, while you did the zoom, your mind was able to quickly gather the current overview in between these two positions plus ease in to their relative position, providing a better overview overall.

Zooming is not slow and it is very efficient.

How does the interface of Supreme Commander get in the way of doing anything, for you in particular? In fact, this is one of the things that John Mavor frequently mentioned. They want to design the interface (with all its parts, including interaction, not just graphics) so that it is in the way of the user as little as possible. Strategic Zoom is part of that notion. Having a limited zoom would be inherently restricting and thus getting in your way.



Btw., another thing you seem to be missing: Total Annihilation didn't have a "fixed zoom", so to speak. In theory, you could display an entire map in your main view port in Total Annihilation as well, providing you were able to display the game at such a resolution.

But may be the next thing you want to convince us is, that guys who play Total Annihilation in 640x480 are better than those playing it at 1920x1200 for instance...

I did play them quite a bit if not as much as TA. Got to 150ish on the SupCom rankings and was respectable at SupCom2 but it was a long time ago. Got my wires crossed a bit there is a minimap but it doesn't have any really useful functionality like the TA one even if it's a bit bigger.

Thats because strategic zoom more or less made it obsolete.

That is incorrect, the minimap in Supreme Commander was an (almost) fully functional viewport. You were able to do more things in there, than in Total Annihilation.

However the mini map on SupCom is basically a viewport when you used it fully zoomed out to try a get a basic overview it was too small and the icons too big, so it was just all mashed together and didn't give you a practical overview. SO if they do have minimap, try to make units group together in a single icon.

Yes and no. That depended on the size of the map and more importantly the interface you were using. In Forged Alliance you are able to resize the Minimap by default and for both games (SupCom & FA) different UI Mods existed where you could do that as well.

Seems I missed the party, but I'll weight in,

for the first 2 points I admit to just not knowing enough about TA for the first 2 points but I will say that they did have different scales, so things like comparing the engineers doesn't make the best argument, in SupCom you could(and needed to to an extent) spam engineers and often used many for individual projects, so when used in groups they kinda end up as tough or tough then TA engineers I'd assume, Also Mass Extractors might be particularly tough in T3, But T1 and T2 still had good health to support raiding while not taking long to build.

But Strategic Zoom, the biggest innovation to hit any RTS in a long time, and only a handful of games use it such a shame! I Don't have anything new to add to the discussion in that regard, my GPGNet bros have it well in hand! But I will say I'm prolly much better at SupCom than any other RTS I've ever played, and I know Strategic Zoom has a part in that.

Mike

/AGREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ...

No zoom equals no play PA to me. xD
How would you even control a game on multiple planets without an epic zoom?

xD

wahahahahahha.. HAHAHAHAHAH.. no really? wow.. just.. wow..

i was interested in your points.. but then you brought this up, and.. well, NO!

"strategic zoom hurts the game".. he he he.. best laugh i have had in days!

exactly. i also wonder about the discussion in the other thread about minimaps. it is useless to think minimaps would help anything in this game.

Nuking strat zoom sure would save a lot of work <cough cough>.

Don't even joke about that! D:!!!

Why don't we just play on one planet?

Nah, strategic zoom was awesome and i want to have it. One of the reasons i want the game.

and if we are on one planet, we dont need the map to wrap, a traditional square map would do!

not having the strategic zoom on a planetary scaled game would be flat out retarded.

If you Nuck Strat Zoom you would save a lot of work, which is good cause you'll have less funds to work with!

Mike

Haha

But as it seems, nearly everybody including uber is for the strategic zoom. So no worries.

This is true, but there is another suggestion related to this that could let you change what you're looking at without moving your mouse and without changing your zoom level by binding a key to mouselook.

Uber_neurtrino liked this idea, so it might make it in to the game.

With MacOS, you should be able to scroll with two fingers on a touchpad. I'm not sure if this works in Windows, but since Planetary Annihilation is going to work in Mac, this should be an option for him.

Honestly the strategic zoom in Supcomm worked so well I pretty much had no need of the minimap.