Why zoom in? The downside of strategic zoom

I don't know how you think it's lost, I find the game unplayable if you zoom out far enough for icons to show all the time.

This.

Starcraft is about managing individual units, not overall strategy. In starcraft you can do more damage using special abilities and moving units in and out of fire range then you can ordering around large groups. Comparing starcraft and supcom or PA is hard to do because they are two very different styles of game, starcraft based on micro management and PA based on macro management, and I want that distinction to stay

Yes, StarCraft shouldn't even be discussed here.

It's not even the same genre. (I wish the german Press would understand this...)

Loving the genreism guys.

StarCraft can be played like SupCom or TA, it just ends up being a very poor play-style.

And SupCom can be played like StarCraft, it just ends up being a very poor play-style.


And that's why I like games like Command and conquer, or SupCom2 as they have a bit of both (Although CNC moved from one end of the spectrum to the other over it's life).

Starcraft was summed up in the E3 showing of Supcom 1, where Chris Taylor said:
"Most RTS games are actually Real Time Tactical games, where you fight over a small area of land like a facility or a city with a few units. This is a Real Time Strategy game where you fight over huge distances using hundreds of different units"

Starcraft is tactical and about micro management, PA is about overall strategy and about macro management.

Only when you take the stance of making your game and then stating that other peoples games have somehow become lesser because of it.

They are still strategy games, because you still use strategy, we just need a term for how much larger these games are, instead of trying to demine other games in some kind of *ick waving contest, because it's getting tiring.

How about Real Time Grand Strategy? RTGS, indicating how the scope is larger and not how StarCraft is now not a strategy game.

It wasn't about making starcraft out to be lesser but more about showing the differences between the two games, showing that supcom will give a very different experience from starcraft.

But starcraft really is more about the tactics then the strategy, to most players its more involving. Its about how many marines you build and how many workers you build, compared to supcom which is more about where and if you build something like an artillery emplacement. There is certainly alot of strategy in starcraft such as bluffs and knowing where to attack from, but PA is more about where you build your base and what units you build rather then how you use them individually.

Also grand strategy is already taken, go look at the Total War series, where the grand strategy is country management and the tactical battles are the actual combat.

The difference in my opinion between a Real Time Strategy and Real Time Tactics is base building. In both Starcraft and PA there is a form of economy always present in game, and plays a major part in the success of your strategy. This is why I believe strategy is a much broader term, encompassing several different aspects of warfare, not just combat

With RTT, games like Wargame:Airland Battle and World in Conflict fit into this category because they are only based on combat. Obviously a simple points mechanic is implemented into both games to regulate the amount of units on the battlefield, so these two games are both RTT games.

With The Total War series (which I am a great fan of ROME 2 FTW) is NOT a grand strategy by any stretch of the imagination. Sure it is large scale, but lacks the extremely in depth features and scale of games such as Hearts of Iron 3, or Crusader Kings 2, which are definitely Grand Strategy games.

Total War instead is Half Real Time Tactics, and half Turn Based Strategy, because obviously the campaign is not 'Real Time'.

Do you guys have any idea how much easier our lives would be without strat zoom?

Only rendering the zoomed in view is like 100 times easier. So can we please cut the zoom?

Eh, It wouldn't make me too sad.

Neutrino, please tell me that you're kidding .

And just in case you're not kidding: will we get a replacement feature that worked like in Homeworld by pressing spacebar?

You are a funny man aren't you xD

I'm kidding about cutting it. I'm not kidding about it being literally 100x easier

Without the zoom you might as well not make the game at all

I can't play games without zoom. So yeah.

What? So no TotalA for you since SupCom?

I must admit, though, I still try to zoom out constantly when I play TA. It's interesting how zoom fits the RTS so perfectly it even infected games I played way before SupCom.

Yeap. Zoom is awesome. Works with scroll wheels. Works with iPads. Despite any perceived downsides, I'll never go back.

my 2 cents on the starcrap talk is that the game doesn't fit into either the tactics or strategy genres. real time micro-management is a more realistic name. strategy usually means a large scale and tactical usually means a small scale, but they both pertain to some kind of thinking about placement and movement. in a strategy game or a tactical game, you simply cant clump a large number of units of various types in one spot and have any sort of success. games that allow such thoughtless play do not deserve to be called strategic nor tactical. death to the RTMM genre.

Also just noticed this... I hope you're kidding 3-4 windows is going to require some beefy hardware my friend.