Ooo. Those two highlighted bits are definitely on my wishlist for a SupCom successor.
Fans made some truly incredible maps for SupCom1, but of course it didn’t have a built in editor (and SupCom2 didn’t allow for custom maps).
I can’t even imagine using a true LoS system for a game like SupCom, but that seems like the biggest step beyond what we’ve seen in other big RTS games. I was already very impressed with the true LoS in the Wargame series, but those games don’t have anywhere near thousands of units per side. Oddly enough, I remember reading on the GPG forums that the radial LoS in SupCom1 is actually one of the things that created a lot of lag (supposedly because of some inefficiencies in the way the cones of vision were calculated for each unit). I have no idea if that’s true, but maybe SteveB will be nice enough to give us the inside scoop?
Is a high unit count of any great advantage? In a strategy title isn’t it the number of ‘orderable’ units that defines it? Once you’re beyond as many as I can sensibly give roles to, the subunits are basically just a cool healthbar, no?
The big selling point as far as the unit counts are concerned seems to be tied to the “meta-units”. They probably offer some kind of behavioral or statistical advantage to grouping units in an intelligent way, or that would at least be my guess. Otherwise I would agree that it does little more in the grand scheme of things than add granularity to a traditional RTS healthbar and suck copious amount of extra system resources.
In some ways, this game seems to be going in the exact opposite direction of what I want in an RTS. It’s going to be too many units to realistically control for most people, and/or too much economy in addition to it. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my first impression.
Servo seems to be going more in the direction I want, though I have to see how the progression mechanic plays out.
So does this meta unit thing mean this is the spiritual successor to kohan 2? That was my favorite RTS of all time, especially in multiplayer, and I’ve been waiting a very long time for someone to take that ball and run with it.
Perhaps you don’t even control units (at least on an individual basis). For example, Star Ruler 2 has fleets numbering in the hundreds if not thousands of support ships, but you only control the flagship of each fleet.
If the number of flagships is low enough, and you can’t go down to the individual unit, then I’d be interested. The thing that made Kohan click for me was that I only needed to control 4-8 units max in a game.
I think one of the blurbs on the Ashes page was “manage wars, not battles”. Or maybe it was a post or interview, I can’t remember. In any case, I have the (perhaps incorrect) impression that this isn’t going to be a unit-level micro game. I’d hope not, because giving orders to thousands of units individually sounds silly to me!
That’s disingenuous though. It doesn’t matter that the internal representation of the map dimensions are kept the same when you’ve increased unit speed and size so that what once was a 1 minute walk across the land bridge across the map is now a 15s trip (times are out of my ass because I haven’t touched either of the two in years, but I think the point should still stand).
Something I found amusing was that apparently if you calculated things out, Supcom 1 already had some pretty outrageous unit speeds (IIRC your average tank was cruising at something like 250 km/hr) =p
Yeah, the world is broken up into regions and your strategic control of them is key.
Also, from Brad’s Q&A:
c. Re Managing units. While each of the potentially tens of thousands of units can be commanded individually, that would be relatively insane to try. Instead, think of each individual as being a lego and being able to quickly and easily put together these legos into a single bigger unit which we call Meta units. The meta unit works together as if it’s a single unit. You click on one, you have clicked on all of them and all their special abilities are available to use. They will automatically help each other (since they see themselves as part of a greater unit).
I hope the “meta units” are smart enough to use formation-like behavior (putting the tanks on front and the glass cannons like artillery units on the back). That would be a nifty addition and a real difference between “meta unit” and the traditional “control group”.
Meta units do that and much more,yes. Your control groups in Ashes will probably be groups of meta units.
Putting all those units in the game is only the first step. Making it fun to play with thousands of units is a whole nother question. The Nitrous engine allows us to run a lot more AI per unit than a traditional RTS, which is what lets meta units work.
The point of having lots of units is having the ability to create really sophisticated “meta units”.
To bring up Kohan again, it arguably created the meta unit concept in many respects. For obvious technical reasons, players were limited in the amount of complexity they could have in their meta units but people really liked being able to create custom armies from individual units.
Ashes does a similar thing here except on a much bigger scale.
Yea, that’s hard. I’m currently re-writing an old article series about what makes a RTS different from a RTT
(Also, TA had that unit count possible in 2000ish, and on a modern massive map I know people using hacked EXE’s who went over 250k units between them :P)
The fact that multiple special abilities are already been talked about doesn’t really give me much hope though.
As I said, sceptical so far about AotS about moving blocks of units - that’s what Total War does and the reference to multiple special abilities. But I’m kinda sceptical because it’s something I’ve been professionally sceptical about for a long time now :)
This is an interesting read, thanks! Have you played Kohan games? If so, what’s your take on them? Custom company composition is more strategic than using homogeneous units Total War-style.
