What Planetary Scale Really Means

There seems to be a common under-estimation of the scale of this game, due in part to the very small nature of the planet used in the concept video.

Now we know that they want to be able to support big maps (40+ players says Neutrino!), with planetary sizes to match, so I believe it's quite reasonable to assume that the concept video is probably a good illustration of a 1v1 size solar system.
The problem is, we need to think bigger.

Take for example, Seton's Clutch. Imagine that as the size of a medium-large planet in the system. We're talking about games with lots of players, so this probably isn't too unreasonable for a somewhat 'standard' planet size.

With that in mind, take a look at this:


The tiny red dot next to the big start position indicator is a indicative of the actual scale of your commander. The shaded area is indicative of the standard base area for a player. With that much room, you are able to support an economy that throws enormous numbers of units onto the battlefield, up to and including super units and game enders. Now add another planet the same size, and a little moon to the mix as well. That is a LOT OF ROOM. (The little moon is about the same size as a 1v1 map)

There are a couple of serious implications and questions to be answered.

1. We know you will start as a commander on a planet. That's one unit, and you need to be able to build a planetary infrastructure with the one unit. The game needs to be able to handle individual ground unit combat as well as bonking planets into each other, and more importantly, it needs to do so in a way that rewards the player for doing both.

2. Making planetary-level defense systems may not be as practical as you thought - imagine building a shield that would have to cover Setons...

3. How do you keep combat interesting over the long haul? You just conquered your enemy on one planet, and now you have another whole planet to attack? Even more importantly, why wouldn't you just move the game up a level and just focus on throwing rocks at each other on a planetary scale and ignore ground units entirely? What kind of impact does this have on tech 1 units and keeping units relevant throughout the game?

another point I'd like to mention here is that you wouldn't be able to simply barricade in one direction, planets are round, people can choose to go the other way around the planet.

Planets are just spheres (I hope at least) so I don't see how planetary scale implies anything about size. I don't see why each planet would have to be huge, games could work fine on relatively small planets. Planets do imply that bases will have larger perimeter/area than normal.

I agree that it should be costly to defend a whole planet. As for keeping ground units relevant they could be used to attack and destroy anti-bombardment defences.

I was wondering what "size" the visualisation planet was meant to be. You're probably right, it's a "small" 1v1. Not even a medium 1v1, but not a "tiny" either.

Is that the supcom 1 or supcom 2 variation map?

Because the supcom 2 version was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too small.

Well that's easy:
1. Manual unit fighting leaves the planet relatively unscathed for you to own, but it takes time and skills.
2. Bonking planets means much less unit casualties and time wasted in return for an annihilated planet.

This led me to a realization: in real life, security is a focus but so are resources. In an RTS, once you have built up enough economy, your focus would turn to annihilating everything else. The victory conditions do not take into account the value of the environment that the winner won, ie. you don't really care that the solar system is left worthless. I don't think a game having 'annihilation' in its title should change this, but it is a significant ideological difference to bear in mind.

The biggest concern that i have is trying to imagine what it would be like to play on the ground with intense, supcom-style combat & building, and then to take that gameplay and say "Oh hey, btw your enemy is actually on another planet".

Wouldn't that just make a 2 planet system a variation on 'Lol no nuke no air no land no sea 30 minute build time'?

The first time you'd bump into each other you'd be like 'FIRE THE ASTEROIDS' and all the lower tech units / combat would be irrelevant.

It's really hard to guess what it's going to be like with such a limited (none) idea of what units there'll be, how hard it'll be to cross space and probably a dozen other factors none of us will know until we give it a try.

Well, it's not too different from playing 1v1 on a large map that would really support 4 or even 8 players. I suppose you could just not play on large maps 1v1. Alternatively, you could start from close positions on the large map, such as beginning on the same planet. Basically, the main way to fix your concern is to make sure its possible to make meaningful contact early on, and not just build up from opposite sides of the solar system for twenty minutes and then FIRE ZE MISSILES.

Actually it might not be so bad, think of it this way;

So from what we've seen/heard it will be 'hard' to escape a planet's gravity well(thus the big rocket sending 1 unit out to space/moon) but once off a planet moving around will be much easier(unit cannon/engineer lander seen in the video).

So, 1 or more spawns on a planet lead to immediate pressure, fighting for metal spots and whatnot, so the choice of trying to get to space into going to space or going "all-in" to try and win the game before he gets to space.

But with 1 spawn per planet there is no immediate pressure, so you can focus less on units, and more on economy, but there is still a choice, Do you rush for space or spend more time securing yourself on the planet(getting all the metal spots, starting unit construction for defense and what have you).

So while 1 spawn for planet will be less exciting to start, I think there is potential for better gameplay than the standard NR20 stuff simply because you progress at your own pace.

Mike

You lost me at "standard no rush 20."

You are correct in your analysis of what one spawn per planet would mean, if a significant investment is required to get off the planet. You also make a good point that this creates an interesting tension about whether to up your economy on your planet, or try to get into space

However we want interaction between players. Having players spawn on their own individual planet should probably be atypical (available, but not standard for duel games).

Heh, progressing at your own pace means you'll get a neighbor knocking on your door when you're not ready for it

I know it's going to need to be hashed out in gameplay, but I'm foreseeing that a game where you each start on your own planet is going to be fought only with the highest tech units, since everyone will have a well established base long before they make contact. Which could be kind of detrimental to the gameplay.

This sort of thing is the reason why every unit should be viable all through the game. Tech-based obsolescence means at any given point you are only playing with a subset of the units in the game. Flat balancing means all units are viable at all points in play.

Higher tech units (if indeed tech levels are even included) should be more expensive, more specialized, and more effective at their job, but less efficient for cost.

I do not see "time until contact" and "being on the same planet" as being too highly correlated. It depends on planet size and how easy it is to get off world.

You can have a 'contact = fire ze missiles' game if you get your own planet and each is far apart. You can also start on the same large planet and have really developed armies when you meet. But consider if the map was many small planets/moons. You don't really have enough space or resources on your starting world and are forced to spread early and often. The lower gravity of a smaller world makes it easier to escape.

The idea of planets in a system lends itself to thinking of the game as happening on many maps at once. But really it is one map, with various-sized 'islands' drifting around on an 'ocean' of space. By adjusting starting positions, number and size of 'islands', and the layout and size of the 'ocean', all the different gameplay styles can be possible.

And the ability to smash islands together, of course.

I watched Total Biscuts interview earlier today and I recall Chris(?) saying that the planet in the concept video is an 8 kilometre map. And Setons Clutch IIRC is a 21 by 21km map.

I think there's 8K maps, and there's 8KM maps.

Seton's was indeed 20KM (according to all the measurements and scales), however the number of little squares across was a wildly different number.

I for one am seriously hoping that the tiny, spherical planet from the video was just a conceptual demonstration. Spherical maps of size comparable to the smaller maps in FA are going to be VERY small, because even if you were on diametric opposite ends of the sphere, the distance between you is half as great as it would be if you were on opposite middle spawns in a square map. Note, the middle. Not the corners.

Spherical maps are going to need to be considerably larger than FA maps to avoid being very cramped, with very mindlessly aggressive gameplay due to extreme proximity.

It should be readily obvious from looking at the map in the conceptual demo that such a map is tiny- much too small to have a protracted war over, with multiple regions being contested.

In summary.... What is this, a planet for ants? How can we be expected to fight giant robot wars of annihilation if we can't even fit armies on the planet?

I don't want to hear your excuses. The planet has to be at least... three times bigger than this!

Well, we better have the option to play planets at least as small as what was shown in the video. I for one like playing maps on a variety of sizes, large, to very small (like a fraction of even what was shown in the video).

Anyway, they already said that they want planet size to only be limited by computing power, so why are you even saying all those things? I'm more worried that the minimum size allowed will be too big for the super cramped games I might want to occasionally play.

Minimum map size is almost certainly not going to be an issue- nobody ever heard of an RTS game where the minimum map size was incongruously large.