Will the planets ever look close to the kickstarter stuff?

Ok, it all makes sense.

Today I was showing an official gameplay trailer (Aug/12) to a friend, and I've notice that the graphic of the units is already very close to what the trailer displayed.

With some differences in the orbital transport and related invasion mechanic. Indeed when the Astraeus gets destroyed, it changes shape and it looks like a rocket module. Very similar to what the trailer displays.

I've also seen that the defender could try to destroy an inbound asteroids with nukes. Awesome. Will that be possible?

What's your comment about, please?

To me some of the current planets and units look already better then in the conceptvideo or conceptpictures but that may just be me ...

I think especially the current smooth gradient terrain transitions look much better than the curly ones in the trailer. This might be why some people say the colors "pop" more in the trailer because there is more contrast and it looks more cartoony, but I like the smooth gradient stuff on the terrain better.

I'm still want to see trailer-like moon craters in-game. They looks much better then those we have now.

Is there any change we might get a planet where lost society is scatherd around the planet ruins of old building cars ect ?

Mods. Check this @maxpowerz topic:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/citys-on-earth-planets.54357/

ooeh thank you very much sorry for the repost and lack of search

I like how in the concept trailer mountains are part of the regular terrain and not separated into a different biome. This would look a lot better than what we have now.

I was thinking that as well.

In practice, i think the parts of the 'mountain biome' that arn't actually mountains should probably just get taken over by other nearby biomes.

I agree with that.
I also don't think that 'mountain biomes' should be defined by water height as they are now, which makes it so that you can't have a desert planet without either quite a bit of water or quite a lot of mountain biome. It also means mountains can be nowhere near the coast, which doesn't make much sense. Would be cool if we had a different setting for tectonic activity or something of the sort to deal with mountains/ mountain ranges instead.

I would like altitude to have an effect on fire range. Perhaps just a slight improvement the higher a unit can go.

Some units shouldn't be able to enter into some biomes. T1 Bot should be able to go nearly everywhere, giving them some dignity longer across the length of a match.

While tanks may slow down on impervious biomes, T2 tanks may raze trees without slowing down. Same could be said for the Commander.

In fact, already units can't enter in any biomes: land units can't float or even jump into the water, and I don't see ships climbing a mountain.

Well, at this degree small moon lacking of atmosphere shouldn't allow the use of conventional planes. We could still have some other kind of flying units.

Perhaps on small moon bots may walk with long steps or small jumps. Perhaps they could even jump over walls.

I mean, bots are cool, and right now we don't use them apart for the first 2 minutes of a match. Let's give them some love.

I personally think the visuals are more mature than the concepts now. It's starting to look great! My only request would be to add more local height variation as currently we have predominantly flat maps with a few impassable features but nothing in between. I'd like to terrain effecting unit choices more, for example having very hilly sand dunes that slow tanks but not bots. I guess that's more down to the planet generation process than art however.

So this is an issue that we are well aware of internally and we definitely share this concern about not having enough cool strategy in the terrain.

What I want is more trees, undergrowth, anything to make the planets feel more alive, at this point they feel very... lifeless, I think that adding more plants and trees would help a lot. I would love to play on the fourth planet down, rain forests are awesome

The problem atm is that planets lack depth. what do i mean ?

I mean that planets are basically just flat wide open spaces, i mean lets be honest here, a starcraft 2 map has more depth and compleixity atm.

layers which you go up and down in height,
choke points.
lots of impassable areas and such.

I sure hope the game will be getting these eventually, because just playing on wide open planets each and every game, short of having the see block path, its kinda boring and bland.

i would definitely take more planet depth and complexity over the galactic war anyday, if its a problem with speed and processing power. Quality above quantity after all.

Now imagine a planet where you drive units down in huge canyon. or up on moutains,. Attacking over narrow stone bridge. stuff like that.

The planets feel very open and empty and flat, even if they are round.

It would be nice to get a clean response what the stance is on this, because i know game aint done yet. Just if planets will stay as planets are now. im gonna be mighty sad. Always just being able to a move your units in a straight line to your opponent isnt very engaging or fun after the first few times.

This is also very these options open options for more units, like units that can climb up and down cliffs / mountains, burrow / dig under them.

Lets take the craters on the moon, it would be pretty awesome if some of those actually had sides that would allow units to drive down into them and op, even build down in time. have workers that can scale the walls, being able to reach strategical resources, like metal in craters, metal on mountains.

Wind generators making more wind power while up high on a moutain, while the geothermal works best down close to lava or deep in a hole.

i even wish there were some neutral dangers. If there is one thing i miss, and no other RTS has done to my knowledge since dune, was those freaking WORMS; omfg those were hilarious and scary,they gave me nightnares haha. WORM SIGN, hey where did my harvesters go lol.

Sure maybe it would be another game mode, but there is some potential here with planetary dangerous, awaken ancient stone statue, machine, worm whatever.

Cant wait to see changes going forwards to planets.

And dont forget the Water Only Planets

Loved Dune II !! Those goddam' worms...

Yeah, definitely it would be super cool to randomly add those details to planets. Or making a Dune mod, where instead of metal and energy, one has to gather Spice

What about animals who run away from battles and get hopelessly killed in the cross fire. Aha, that's ugly :-D

But less horror like, what about ancient structures that get destroyed if hit. Or terrain modifiers. Just let us not make a giant Buddha

Yeah i totally think there is huge potential here for a dune 2 mod. Dune was amazing, loved that game so much.

This is kinda off topic but:

The main thing I'm concerned about with the visuals is the readability. I play with strategic icons always on because I can't see some units sometimes, I can't tell some units apart, I can't tell different players apart and I can't tell different structure icons apart. I occasionally build a vehicle factory when I meant to build a bot factory because there is nothing distinctive about them. This is me is a far bigger problem than terrain visual and detail.