Will there be game-speed controls?

I'm surprised no one has brought this up yet.

The one thing I've used more than anything else in TA was the game-speed controls. For anyone that doesn't know, you could change speed from -10 (paused) to +10 (very fast), default at 0.

Will they be included in PA?

Personally, I doubt it, but as something I missed in SupCom, I feel the need bringing it up for this. Whenever I wanted to watch a nuke land into a base in slow motion, I'd drop the speed down to -9. Pieces flying everywhere. Also, it helped a lot in the early game when there wasn't as much to do, and in the late game when there was too much to do.

This is all of course personal preference. When playing online against other players, it's unfair to use speed controls. In skirmish and co-op games though, they were very helpful.

(And obviously, a poll, since everyone loves polls)

Ok in Multiplayer I would hate it, but yes, Skirmish or during a replay, yes...

Supreme Commander had speed control though.

SupCom has + and - just like TA, in addition you can reset the speed with *. It is just disabled by default in multiplayergames.
In fact the game automatically reduces gamespeed if somebody uses a slow cpu that cant keep up. Thats why big games take forever.

I dont see any reason why we would not see such a system in PA. Any kind of game-engine should have some internal multiplier for the game speed, making it possible to control it from the standard-gui is a very easy thing to do.

WHOA, WHAT?!?! Ah jeez. How did I miss that.

I suppose the question still stands. PA appears to be much more complicated, so will speed controls be possible...? I hope so.

Game speed controls? Yes please. 21 available speeds? No, that's too mutch. Paused, very slow, slow, normal, fast and extremely fast is enough. Defcon model would be good, I think: Game is going at slowest of choosen speeds and you can see who chooses wich one. Probably even without "paused" in multiplayer. (maybe until everyone choose it, and maybe with inability to give orders when paused)

Adding in a multiplier for game-speed should be as simple as adding a single multiplier to a few formulas of the game engine. I would be very surprised if PA's engine would not easily support it.

+ and - is for me even a bigger must have than +sing ;P

I think this is something that should most definitely be available for co op and singleplayer skirmishes.

As for multiplayer, I guess a pre-agreed speed to begin a match with, and an in game vote system for shifting speed up and down after the game has started? With an option to have speed changes turned off for those who prefer to play in multiplayer matches without being hassled to shift their speed.

Agreed. A system like this would maintain the options for game speeds, while keeping them from ruining serious games.

allthough i have to say, we dont know how fast the game is, we just assume it would be the same as TA.

even though PA will be simulated on a server than on a local PC its still possible to start a server on any computer, like local LAN. So if I have a bad computer but play in lan with it, or singleplayer, it obviously will need something like the slow down in SupCom. Therefore I think, there will be again a similar system with sim speeds.

I believe they mentioned the speed settings during the live stream. I'm pretty sure they intent to include them, but as these things go, even if they don't include them as long as them make it an easy thing to add then it should please everyone and make a fun experience.

There is close to 0 chance that there will not be speed controls. TA, SC1 & SC2 all had speed controls. Speed controls are very easily implemented (simply run the simulation more times per second) and allow for much quicker testing.

i guess it would make sense already in the alpha, to make tests faster.

Sorry to bump an older thread, but game speed adjustments are extremely important to me for a large number of reasons. I wanted to chime in and hope they will be taken seriously. Listing in no particular order:

- I play these types of RTS games with my young son, now 7 years old. He has a hard time keeping up with any game that the game speed cannot be adjusted. We've come to expect this of more modern games and have to abandon ones that dont support it. Being able to make the game slower and allowing a young child to look, read, ask questions, and learn, while actually enjoying the game has allowed us many hours of fun.

- I like to play larger scale when available. There are various strategies that are harder to manage when a game speed cannot be adjusted. Examples are branching out to multiple locations. There's shortcuts, jump to unit abilities, etc, but managing a simultaneous set of battles, building, reparing, etc is easier when the ability to adjust the game speed exists. Some strategies are just not possible without this.

- I find that a game is much more playable in many more situations when game speed can be adjusted. Like many people I know, I play games more often to have fun and relax. Sometimes I listen to music while playing, sometimes I eat dinner or a snack while playing, sometimes I watch TV while playing, often I get interrupted by my children, dogs, wife, etc. and so on... I have noticed that I come back a LOT more often to games that allow me to change games speed and pause the game. It is great to be able to jump into a skirmish, turn on the TV, watch a show, play a game, and just relax. I am competitive too, but not all the time. I definitely play a game more often that has adjustable speeds.

- Learning, trying things out, etc. Making a game speed slower while just learning or fooling around is a great option.

- generally, it just seems that all the great games have this ability

- I have seen comments from others about how this should be allowed in skirmish but not in multiplayer. I have to respectfully disagree with that sentiment. When I get a group of friends together to play multiplayer we get a lot more interest for new people to play when we can allow them to get into it slower and then ramp up the speed once they are comfortable. I have one friend who prefers playing at a faster rate than most people. Even in games I am good in I find it hard to keep up with him. However, even he is one of the first to suggest that we slow a game down when we bring in another who is less experienced. He, of course, complains about how slow things are the whole time, but is mostly just heckling everyone.

So, again, sorry for reviving an older posting. I found only a couple others and this one literally seemed the most applicable and I dont plan to add my comments to every place I found a posting about game speed.

Hopefully there has been and will continue to be serious consideration for allowing adjustable game speeds for both skirmish and multiplayer modes.

Agreed,
it would be less stressful to get an overview of several frontlines with a pause-button.

game speed control are excellent for skirmish

don't forget dat pause button.

Never apologise for necro-ing old threads. If only more people were like you and introduced themselves to the search bar before starting new threads...

On topic, I definitely think game speed controls should be in the game for both single and multi player. If the customisability is there it's a feature that won't hurt anyone and will be greatly appreciated by many. Could probably integrate nicely with the chrono cam UI...

I'd like to add my two cents and say that I, too, am waiting to dive into the action properly until an active pause button is present. I'll happily only see this implemented on AI only games. I'm assuming this won't be done until we can run our own servers though, is that correct?

Reason is simple- I'm a super-computer equipped commander robot- I can command multiple battlefronts scattered over multiple planets instantaneously. Active pause allows my feeble meat and blood brain to simulate this.