One thing StarCraft II does right is provide the player with all pertinent ingame information. A nice backstory to abilities and units like what existed in SupCom vanilla is neat and it certainly creates atmosphere but it isn't nearly as important as seeing the DPS, weapon cooldown and other useful information that would allow you to better make assessments on the fly. Sure, you can probably look up specific stats on a wiki but I think it would be better to put the unit lore on the wiki and the actual stats in the game. I also understand once you start including obscure stats like muzzle velocity things get silly - but being able to see DPS is about as pertinent as being able to see HP. I don't understand how that was neglected in SupCom. I also apologize if this has been covered before.
Damage Per Second is a terribly useless statistic without knowing whether the damage is front-loaded or not.
How can the UI reflect, at a glance, how front-loaded a weapon is? I don't think just having a number is good enough. A weapon's reload time doesn't give you any information on how it compares to other units. For it to be useful you have to have memorised reload times of most of the other units too. Even then, it's a conscious act by the player - numbers are a very recent invention by evolutionary standards, and we haven't grown the ability to interpret them instinctively. I'm thinking shape, or colour could be used.
I think a display of info (damage, speed, HP and range) when you hover the mouse over the unit factory, like in state of war.
Honestly, I think making sure that all this kind of stuff is easily readable based on the the unit and it's weapon is more important than putting in a spreadsheet. Mike
In Supcom, the units were limited in variety and had very specific functions, so details like that weren't particularly useful with the exception of comparing equivalent units of different factions. In TA, this would have been a bit more useful, considering the broad range of vehicle types. But in the end, for a game designed like PA, numbers shouldn't matter to the player at all. That's the advantage a computer game has over a pen and paper wargame. The player doesn't have to concern themselves with math. Instead, the ideal goal is that each unit should have distinct properties that dictate how the player uses them, rather than what their stats are. The only time such stats would really matter is when it comes to comparing very similar units, and if the units are similar enough to warrant numerical comparison, then perhaps one of those units is superfluous. In any case, if Uber doesn't include such detailed stats for some reason, I don't think it would be all that hard to add a UI mod in to allow that display.
Unit: Heavy Tank "Sniffles McGee" Role: Long range high accuracy bombardment, watering tulips. Info: Likes long walks on the beach, wants another tank (or bot!) who understands and shares similar values and can make them laugh every day. 12 bazillion hit points. 50 jazillion damage per second. 0-60 mph in 1500.2 seconds. Top speed 2500 mph (if launched in to orbit), 61 mph on land, downhill. How long until someone makes a PA unit dating sim I wonder...
Provide something like this: http://www.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/ and let the game's UI display it (or the subpages for single units) ingame.
There isn't any particular reason we can't build a wiki into the UI. The beauty of having a browser right there...
You disgust me. I blame the liberals corrupting our youth, making them think that vehicles having relationships with bots is an okay thing.
no need for a spreadsheet to appear when you rollover a unit, but being able to compare the DPS, attack speed, move speed etc of gunships and tanks relative to their cost is going to be something you will want to do (at least until memorization kicks in). Being able to incorporate a unit database into the game is actually pretty cool. I appreciate the response here which is why I hate to persist but let me elaborate with what exactly I had in mind when making a construction selection or unit rollover tooltip: [Construction Selection] | (Rollover Selection) Construction Selection: [Resource & Time Cost] [Resource Drain Rates if not universal or being assisted] [(HP)] [(Shield Points)] [(Build Power)] [(DPS)] [(Attack Speed or Attacks Per Second)] [(Move Speed)] [(Resource Consumption/Production)] [(Logistical Information?)] Rollover or Unit Selection: (Construction Progress %, ETA) (Total Drain Rate including assisting engineers) [(HP)] [(Shield Points)] [(Build Power)] [(DPS)] [(Attack Speed or Attacks Per Second)] [(Move Speed)] [(Resource Consumption/Production)] [(Logistical Information?)] I think that about covers it, if I missed anything let me know. It does seem like a lot, but but I think it can be condensed while still being readily available, e.g. DPS and APS being in the same tooltip. edit: probably derped out on the formatting up there
