What's missing from TA and SupCom in PA

In another thread about the catapult, I brought up the tactical missiles from SupCom2 as an example of different artillery and tactical missiles, and I realised that missile defence is a mechanic absent in PA. There's so much common ground, so it got me thinking about the units and mechanics missing from PA that were present in SupCom and TA.

This certainly isn't a complaint about things not (yet) in PA, but just for the sake of curiosity, plus I've never played TA so I'm wondering about things there that didn't make it into it's successors. I know that not everything from those games will fit into PA

Some of the big ones that come to mind for me are:

• Commander customisation: the ability to stick those expensive upgrades on your commander to improve his build options or his effectiveness in combat. Certainly one of my favourite things in SupCom
• Shields: Shield domes in particular were a huge part of SupCom, but their omission in PA hasn't really felt like a big deal to me as I would've thought in practice.
• Building adjacency: Where buildings would become more efficient with production structures adjacent. I know this was absent from SupCom 2, so maybe that was a mechanic nobody liked?
• Veterancy: Always felt a little out of place in a game conducted on the scale on SupCom, and given that PA is immensely more scalable it makes sense it's not present. Was a fun incentive to keep your commander in the action with the improved HP/Regen, but ultimately in PA they're just too outmatched beyond early skirmishes to make it viable.

I'm sure there are mods for some of the more desired features that are 'missing', so please share them in the thread too. I'm going to install this one [link] right now, I loved having that commander icon in SupCom.

Modders will take care of all that for ya!

Absence of these things is what makes PA good to me.

All four of those have been actively discussed on these forums throughout PA's development and have been confirmed that they do not fit into PA's design and will not be implemented. (Possible exception of shields - that's a contentious one in these parts.)

If you like I can link a few threads when I'm back on my PC and not mobile.

I know that PA isn't going to inherit every feature from the preceding games. It's just interesting to see which didn't make it and why. Particularly as many players will no doubt be coming from those games. For example, another difference is moving from 3 tiers in SupCom to 2 tiers, and I'm all on board with that particular change as I don't think the first tier was terribly useful for more than a few minutes, while T2 remained useful even while operating comfortably at T3. While on the other hand I liked being able to upgrade the mex (and to a lesser extent the factories) independently without having to build over it.

others stuff which comes to my mind:
- a minimap
- com-bombing
- commander suicide+reclaim, and reclaiming wrackeges in general
- metal makers
- deformable terrain (in Spring it was possible to create a new sea using e.g. nukes)
- PA has metal spots instead of metal areas - no SpeedMetal map ;(
- wind generators/tidal generators (and wind/tidal strength map-settings)
- T3/T4 units
- air repair pods, air-area-load-unload-patrol order (so some non-trivial air orders)
- imprecise artillery (with buildings which improve/decrease accuracy)
- toggable artillery modes (in Spring:BA it was possible to switch some artillery units from high-angle+high-dmg+low-accuracy to low-angle+low-dmg+high-acc)
- stealth
- lobby: ability to ban certain units before the game. global chat. ring button.
- ui: ability to edit order queue. to draw team-shared lines on the ground.
- and more...

Lol minimap. Why do you need it?

You have strat zoom

Picture in picture as well.

Edit: Not to mention spring games tend to be a catalogue of ideas all bunched together into something that's completely unplayable to new players.

Like a web app for a ui with hundreds of buttons that mean nothing to a player from literally every other rts ever made.

the strat icon thing from SupCom!

For radar? idk. Seems like it makes radar much less important.

Kinda like the radar we have now....

There are many threads about minimaps. Short version is - because minimap gives better instant overview and PIP/zoom do not, especially not for spherical maps.

no for scout, but for radar thing too(the thing that stay the strat icons)

In the same way the minimap gives you a strategic view of the entire battlefield, there's no easy way of doing the same thing in PA. Between alerts and team-mates you have to work out how best to keep tabs on multiple fronts. It's perhaps the biggest major difference.

There's a mod by Cola Colin that gives you one.

Metal makers
Shields
Monkeyloard
Upgrades
Unbalanced factions
Abusing air by flying it off the edge of the map
That missile/water bug that accidentally balanced skeeters and pelicans

supcom:
multiunittransports and factoryassist + ferrysystem

TA:
hovercrafts and hovercraft factory ...

Lol minimaps? what are they going to look like, this?

um

well hovercraft were kind crappy... I only remember building them distinctly to screw around.
since the com couldn't build the factory, I had no interest in using them to reach the underwater mex included in cc.

just because they were bad in ta doesnt mean they have to be as bad or bad at all in pa ...