What do you think the unit limit(s) should be not taking into account engine limitations? Depending on how large the planets are I'd say 2,000 - 20,000. Just a thought. I'd like to here your thoughts.
Why put a mandatory default limit at all? Just give the ability for the end user to chose the limit between 1K and 500K. (or whatever number seems nearly impossible to reach, maybe 500k is too low for this game) So just in case the end user doesn't have a fantastic computer they can make sure the AI doesn't suck up all the resources.
Not taking into account engine limitations, and ignoring the limits of the server, I do not think there should be a limit. Edit: I would guess for performance, a limit of 2^64 units would work for the engine, while the amount the server can handle should be limited only by RAM and CPU.
Hear! Hear! This is by far the best way to go about it. Suggest a default limit which will run fine on the average pc and then simply allow players to slide it up or all the way down. There's no need to limit anything in this case and the end user should decide.
Yes, let there be a user-settable unit limit, not a static cap of any sort. Also, there should also be an option for uncapped games.
Uber said they want to make the game scalable, in such a way, that in 10 years you can still play this game and get more out of it than you would now. The host must be able to pick a unit limit from as low as say 500 units up to infinity (or cap of the server). I also read, I guess in the PC gamer interview, that they were thinking about dividing a total unit cap over all players (total: 5000, with 5 players you would get 1000 each) but after a couple of players have been defeated (total: 5000, with 2 players you would get 2500 each) To fill up the hole after players are defeated.
If it is network traffic based, it would likely be a shared unit cap over all of the players, then divded up to be fair. The merging and increasing of units as each player dies - wow I like it to improve stalemates!
Mavor has already said that the only limit will be the processing power of the server, so the limit will continue to go up as the years progress. No reason to have a hard cap in the engine.
more interesting than a cap would be a benchmark, which would determine your personal unit limit on your configuration/server.(and perhaps a few other limiting settings) For graphics settings it is more or less the norm that you get suggested default settings, would be nice to have something similar server side with respect to the systems strengths.
64 bit long is the max number of units ^-^ but really, I would love to have it a configurable variable.