Im not sure how much this has been talked about and what has been decided on. But the interviews I have read all talk about scalability, but never actually talk about how many units you will be able to build in the game, nothing detailing the maximum amount of units one can build in a game. I would like to know if there is going to be a unit cap or and if it will be scalable with the games you are playing. Mavor talks about being able to have quick 20 minute games and then massive 12 hour games. I would like to see the option to have a unit cap in the game but also the ability to turn it off if you really want to go all out and build robots till your computer melts! I think especially with the Galactic war stretch goal where a unit cap would definitely get in the way of that sort of gameplay. (my opinion anyway) What do you guys think and is there any info on Unit caps to be had?
Unit cap should be a parameter when starting some (most?) kinds of games (gallatic war should, by default, provide its own unit cap, not user-defined).
It's been discussed. The unit cap is the point at which your computer runs out of memory (I kid you not, that's neutrino's intention here).
I hope that this cap can be determined in advance, though. I wouldn't want to suddenly be unable to build new units for no apparent reasons - or worse, crash the whole game Also, maybe everyone should have the same unit cap, to prevent someone to take it all by building countless scouts in a rear base.
someone builds a new unit.... and 10 player are... DISCONNECTED... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUU.. lol. oh well I am sure they will do something about, specially when many player want some kind of prevention
Aaaaah Excellent lol thats the type of RTS i love but i gotta agree with others some people will want a Unit Cap somewhere for some game types that i can agree with to.
This stuff is pretty simple. Either you have a unit cap, or you eventually crash. Take your pick. Also keep in mind that the unit cap is more a function of the server than the client.
Hmm. A unit cap is probably desirable for some (crashing midgame would =wtf moment ). Perhaps simply a manual input that allows any number whatsoever, and is toggle able, so if it's off there simply is no unit cap? I get the feeling this was suggested in the last one, but it seems like it would have the most options.
Basically unit cap is a server config option. Turn it off if you want to but do so at your own peril.
Neutrino, what are the chances of an in/out of game tool that could give an approximation of the number of units a system could handle? Some like based on X, Y and Z we believe your system can Handle approximately _____ units? It wouldn't have to be super accurate I'd think, enough to give a decent baseline I'd figure. Mike
I'm pretty sure any current normal computer will bog down way before we hit the ram limit (Star Ruler says hi! dear lord, the masses of scale .5 fighters), but assuming not it would be nice to be able to know a general idea of how much ram equals how many units for the future. Now that you've mentioned unleashed unit cap though, I'm looking forward to watching my process explorer and seeing the ram usage keep climbing higher and higher. Also, ninja'd!
agreed, some kind of benchmark (modelled or measured) would be nice, since there are probably some parameters like unit/player count, world size etc, which would influence the required resources and would show only late in a game. (when not crashing instantly )
Modern computers have so much memory that I doubt the unit limit will factor into gameplay very often. Suppose 8 GB RAM system, and each unit uses, (wild guess) 1 kB to represent location, vitals, and any other parameters. A big chunk of that memory will be used by the engine and other resources regardless of how many units are in play. I could be wildly wrong about how many resources are used by one unit. Even if we wildly overestimate the amount of RAM used by the system, other running processes or applications, the engine itself, and the requirements for players, networking, and maps, we are going to have at the very least a GB or two of memory for units. At 1 kB per unit that's 1,000,000 units in a GB of RAM.
I somehow doubt ram will be the limiting factor. Running out of CPU cycles to process everything will be much more likely. So unit limit would be like.. do you want to play with 50,000 units, but at -10? Or play with 10,000 units at normal speed.
