very...

If the limits go as high as I think they will, 500 ships should definitely be achievable on the larger maps.

I did a testing in beta 3 where i modded files as Baleur just said, where i had 20.368 ships the engine is wonderful, and can handle so much, but the problem is the hardware.
Oh and this was done on a Quad QX6700 2.66 GHZ 8800GTX 4GB PC6400

i dont feel like 1-3 fps is fun at all, maybe in a year or 2 the hardware will be good enough

20.368 ships

Good to see you around more often again Multi

and this doesnt support high end machines, it schackles them to the low end.


"think they will"
the limits are most likely stacked at 2000, seeing as thats the number we keep getting and multi here (seems) to not fight me when I say it. you're maximum ships runs barely over 300 as a frigate spamming TEC.

precisely why this concept is so wack, if the computer can handle a serious number of ships I shouldnt have to deal with some arbitrarily low constant because we're concerned that someone else might not find running their toaster through a 200 planet map as agreeable to their computer as mine.

which is why the alliegance and the per-planet concept was good. an empire should have a fighting chance if it has half the planets, but it certainly shouldnt have all the advantages of a twice as large empire with fewer drawbacks.

you guys are dramatizing the effect of a per planet basis to a giant slipperly slope effect, thats sad. the few games where I've seen the slipperly slope take effect is when the person losing is seriously outproduced, in which case your huge concern(disproportionately sized fleets) only becomes an issue due to the new system

it sounds to me like you have two phantom issues, and you're creating one so that the other has absolutely no effect. poor balance.

ah yes, I'm the idiot. I'm the one turning my once upon a time middle-of-the-line gaming rig into a space heater.
dont ever try that again, or at the very least give me your video card so that at least something in your computer wont explode.

oh I hope so, but all indications seem to point to a cap of exactly 2000, we even have a photo of it at precisely 2000 in a very late game, so I'm not too optimistic.

also note: multi probably would ahve torn me a new asshole on any little factoid I got wrong.

again you're not listening, thats a matter of choice based on someone's computer.

I have Supcom, but my computer cannot possibly run an 8 person game on an 81^2 map, (something considered impossible for just about any modern non-rediculous gaming rig) I obviously am not going to torture myself by putting it through a process taht will only damage my rig

now, having played the unoptimized betas 1, 2 and 3 on a computer with HALF the requirements of the betas at the time (with the only issue being a bit of lag and a broken graphics renderer) I'm not concerned about low end machines running the game on what would be considered the standard maps, maps of which the fleet cap should not even approach 2000 per player anyway, what I'm concerned about is that the nice rig (that I payed 1.5grand to get, thank you) is going to go to waste on a game that is functionally inoperable above HALF the number of stars that retain my preference. that is absurd.

to quote something I remember blair saying a few months back "we have to balance the game for all available options". if the game is completely non-functional at those levels then it certainly is not "balanced"

I agree with schod for once. To all of those of you saying that a solid cap makes for more strategy, tell me this, if I am twice the size of you, how does having the same number of ships as you give any more strategy. It downright punishes me for expanding because now I can't defend nearly as well as you can, much less attack as well. Now everyone will find the magic empire size where attacking, defending and mining are all in perfect balance and a game will never end, and games on large maps especially will never end. After all, just try to kill your enemy with the winning size empire, no need to unnecessarily hinder yourself.

Throught the entire beta process I have felt misled by IC and SD (the primary reason I stopped posting early on), despite the utmost respect I had for SD in regards to GCII. This was my first beta test and if anything I have learned not to preorder anything until I know exactly what it is I will end up receiving. I feel like I had no actual say in what went in to the game but that I volunteered my PCs as guinea pigs to make sure the engine behind the game worked. Although we got many official responses to our queries, a "this is a good idea, we'll see how it works" was extremely rare, and usually it was just, "what? it crashed? we'll look into it" and other extremely vague responses to technical feedback, with the computer literate only suggestions of how to fix something. It looks like as far as gameplay concepts are concerned, only the devs know what their players will really want, not the actual players themselves.



Craig's response here only further supports my dispair at the situation because he offers no response to the concern that schod has put forth (granted schod could have used a nicer tone) but instead (for lack of a better term) kissing butt to multi who (no offense to multi though) is defending the dev's decision.

This is also why I will stay out of TA until release, and probably any other beta that requires me to preorder.

i know that Schod appears a bit hostile in this topic but his key point cant be dismissed.
Give players with a good computer who want to play really huge and epic games the option to do so. Just a minor option to change a fleet cap multiplier would fix all problems and please both sides.
Sure you could change it all by urself but this will just result in a lot of technical problems and isnt really practical for use.
So why not add the additional option to maps what kind of limit u want to have.
This way every player can decide by himself how much his comp can handle.

Well personally i thought this game was quite interesting till i heard about the cap. Yea, it slows down some peoples computers, we get it. maybe make the cap a custom thing to change when on the net, that way both parties are happy.

Assuming he knew anything more than the rest of us.



Your joking, right?

and that's a very powerful computer pleading for mercy, so when you factor in camera movement, motion, effects, and all the other aspects, the actual verge of playability is much lower than that, and on larger maps will often be split among ten players, and although I agree that multipliers are a good idea, there needs to be a limit, or the spam attack against the other guy's computer is still possible, and that isn't strategy, it's just cheap.

While I do think limits are practical, they do need to at least be a sever-side option. I know its been mentioned here before, but I just want to chip in my two cents. I know a lot of people complained about SupCom's army sizes, but it had the option for unit limits, something like 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, and something simple like that would make just about everyone happy. I still remember the burn on loading up Empire at War and finding out the battle limit was 20, woohoo for four star destroyers, the last thing I want is to be unable to play a massive map, and be unable to produce enough vessels to even defend my borders or go on the offensive. Of course, I haven't seen the final product, so I could be panicing over nothing and the devs already have something in place for larger maps.

Oh, on the 20,000 ship picture, that is one epic blob!

yeah, testing now, i've got 1.5k arcovas on a planet, 15 frames per second (highest, 1400x900, 4x aa)

It's definitely not limited by video card, because turning all the options didn't help, but i'm only using about half my cpu power (running firefox, itunes, half the openoffice suite and flash) and 1.75 out of 4 gigs of ram. Odd.

Right, and I expect improvement, but not miracles. I also wonder where the heck the performance drain is coming from. I guess it's a bus, seeing as none of the actual parts were strained.