Why zoom in? The downside of strategic zoom

Like many here, I played a lot of Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. While I really enjoy the power and control of strategic zoom in SC, I often felt like I was missing out on the combat. There was little reason to zoom in.

A lot of work goes into the units, the missiles, the action. It looks awesome and feels fun. But in a multiplayer game, I usually play to win. So I usually play fairly zoomed out most of the time. It feels more sterile, but offers far more control.

Has any one else felt this? Will Planetary Annihilation feel the same way?

I play mainly to have fun, zooming in and seeing stuff blow up is fun

Maybe there isn't a reason to zoom ALL the way in, but in SC i couldn't really properly control armies and building placement without being close enough that i could see most of the graphic artist's handiwork. Plus it's impossible to play completely zoomed out, in my opinion.

The whole point of Strat zoom is that you can go in super close, or all the way out. It's completely up to you, the game is not forcing you to stay zoomed out if you don't want to. Heck when playing SupCom I prolly spend more time zoomed in than I should , but it doesn't matter because it's within my control.

Compared to Starcraft2, with it's massive UI and standard perspective to me it's downright Claustrophobic.

It's just a tool, you can use it however you want.

Mike

THIS.

Starcraft 2 makes me feel like I have to jump out of a window to get more space. Full zoom ability is magnificent and having it makes the game more awesome and free.

Starcraft 2 works pretty well because its designed with its zoom in mind. Which also means pretty small maps and very small engagement ranges for units.


But I agree, playing games like this you often miss out on the fireworks itself. Personally I can't see any way to avoid that (besides, buy yourself a second monitor and have a second window open in it which is always zoomed close in).

That's why I also think that close up zooms should have as much bells and whistles as possible, so the few times you get close up of a battle, it looks as good as possible, even if it may be less usefull then a further zoom level.

You can have one window open for zoomed in effects. Just like you can have one window zoomed for a complete overhead so it shows everything while another window you can use to move about the map, like a minimap.

That being said, you can watch things more closely with the chrono-cam anyway. All the while a window stays open to see the current fight.

I wouldn't mind being able to press a button to get an automatic camera effect zoomed into a unit's fight, and the same button unzooming you to wherever you were.

The engagement ranges and unit move speeds make a huge difference to how far you need to be zoomed out in order to get an overview.

Supcom had long view ranges, long weapon ranges and small, fast units and maps that were large and spread out. This effectively meant you had to be zoomed out pretty far to get an overview.

The more reasonable these values are the less you will need to zoom out to feel in control of the situation.

I've been looking forward to the multiple windows system in PA - I'm really hoping it's not going to be too resource intensive to have 3 or 4 windows up at once.

Instead of some 'whoop whoop' alarm on combat being engaged, it'd be a lot nicer to get a small window popup of the action happening (think something the size of 2 build pics side by side). Add to that a toggle to 'track' a unit group, and have the camera follow that group around in its own little window.

I tend to stay mid-zoom, while once every few seconds zooming out to keep an eye on my radar grids, and force movements.

Zooming out to command strategic decisions like troop movement, and bombardment locations for my artillery and silos, zooming in to micromanage the placement of buildings, the control and positioning of a battle and to analyse the finer points of the battle that would be somewhat harder to do at a greater zoom level.

I zoom in for all major battles in-order to micromanage the movement of my tank columns to avoid artillery fire, to focus fire on particular targets, to flank, hound and otherwise to hunt down enemy scattered troops and because it looks REALLY REALLY COOL, just before zooming out to again reassess the strategic level for my next engagement, new base locations or possibly where I should mass up another brigade in case my initial forces were beaten and I risk counter attack.

I really abuse my mouse in these games, constantly zooming in and out for ever level of command.

I kinda want to get a head set or something that lets me zoom with my tongue or by wiggling my ears. My mouse wheel is worn down from SupCom's strat zoom.

Or by blinking! :roll:

I'm actually planning on getting a 3rd monitor.
I do SupCom with left 24" as my main monitor where I do buildings and micro.
The 2nd one is my "send all units this way", air battles and minimap usage.

I want the 3rd monitor to be my permanent minimap so I can leave 2 monitors devoted to handling base and frontlines.


To me, SupCom wasn't just army fights, but how to base build and how to scale your econ.
So yes, to me, there is a VERY good reason to zoom in. It could be the difference between grabbing 3 close engineers, or selecting 15 which is far too many to move across to an expansion.

Why zoom in? I'll tell you why: FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT! No, just kidding . For me: I hate zoom level restrictions.

As I'm visually impaired I like the possibility to zoom in a lot, to actualy see what my units/buildings are doing; or to zoom all the way out to see an overview with icons. Minimaps are useless for me.

I usually play zoomed out too. Offers me a better tactical view of the game and aids in situation awareness.

Only time i zoom in is if im bored and just fooling around in a skirmish.

Lol, seems like 9/10 times im just staring at a screen with icons, like a 2D game.

Selecting icons is fiddly work though, you certainly lose a lot of precision by playing zoomed out.

I have a philosophy of focus and it reflects in how I play. I zoom in to focus on one task and do it well. I have one view with no distractions. I zoom out to focus on the strategy and select new tasks to focus on.

I actually have to zoom out more than I'd like because zoom is pretty much my only navigation method. I hate screen edge panning, arrow keys are too awkward to use, and the mouse panning is click and drag and not smooth scrolling like in command and conquer.

So if the camera needs to be repositioned I zoom out and back in again.

Whenever playing Supreme Commander I would always do things close-up. Strategic Zoom is one of the biggest things I miss in Starcraft 2.

The longer the game progresses the farther out you'll zoom. It seems like zooming out to be able to monitor everything is a necessity. The cost is losing some of the visual eye candy. It seems like multiple monitors will be the answer.

I think because the game is so new and I'm super excited about it I'm feeling disappointed at the thought of not being able to see all the visual details. But once I get used to the game and move towards strategic play I think I will be fine with being zoomed out all the time.

Also, I think another reason why I didn't like the zoomed out strategic zoom of the combat demonstration is because as a spectator I want to see details in the action that's happening. I hope you can create hotkeys for specific zoom levels.

worked great in homeworld and sup com. i do agree with ubers decision to axe the minimap though. with strategic zoom, its simply unnecessary.

You have to remember that the idea of strategic zoom is combining two seperate views into one screen. It's combining the close up placement and control that a zoomed in view gives, where you can see the grid lines of the map to place building very precisely (very important for adjacency bonuses in supcom), and it's combining the idea of a tactical map of the entire battlefield that a real military commaner would have in front of them to make decisions based on enemy unit placements and to plan out the paths for units to take.

The second view is rarely seen in RTS games, Empire Earth 2 had this view as a completely seperate screen that was used to control resource gathering and plan out attacks with allies and such but the strategic view system makes the transition between these two views seemless.

While I agree that alot of the beautiful details of supcom were lost when zoomed out (litterally lost because they were not rendered), they were not important to the actual game and such details were more useful for a more cinematic view of the game, something for an observer to watch or to be broadcast as part of e-sports (since watching a bunch of icons shoot yellow dots at each other isnt hugely exciting compared to watching tanks and giant robots blast at each other).

PAs visual design aids the strategic zoom system with its low polygon count to units and more polygons designated to planet geometry, which is more important when zoomed out. Most players will stay at a medium zoom level to be able to select and control buildings and give units movement orders, but will zoom out to get an overview of the battle (unless they have a second screen that's their overview). So PA is engineered towards the use of strategic zoom