Bleh, I'm replying to the 2 above posts... quote doesn't work in Chrome.

You say that the physics simulation brings a lot of gameplay.

You have to put that into context of:

What true value there is to this simulation versus how much more extra PC Grunt is required to run this smoothly ie the SC syndrome... it runs on my digital watch so you're immediately making it more accessible.

Can you give a specific instance where you purposefully alter your gameplay so that this become useful? At the same time, consider that SupCom was built around the whole concept of minimising micro to bring that big-scale battle feeling.

(please note that I'm not disagreeing/arguing with you here.. I just don't remember it being of any real gameplay value)

Also:

The extra bandwidth requirement for SupCom should be ... at least 10 times more than DG purely from a number of units point of view.

Unfortunately, my memory is not what it once was and I can't remember what kind of army size limit you had....

Slow moving projectiles can be dodged, eg t1 artillery will struggle to hit a moving target, and instead of having some half assed hit chance mechanic you can actually have the projectile loop through the air and either hit its target or miss.

I only played vanilla SupCom online, so things have probably changed but I remember dancing varous units quite a lot, ACU when under broadsword fire, mantis when engaging auroras...probably the t3 bots as well.

But I don't think that's the point of clever simulation.

The scenario u talk about with T1 artillery...

Basically, I reckon (haha cos I'm an expert...) that what you CAN do is this.

1) The artillery fires a shell. It knows where it has to land. A certain time period later, it 'lands'. Are there any units where it lands? If so, they take damage. It's not a random %age chance to hit thing. If there's something there, it's 100% hit. 

2) This is VERY different from a proper physics system where it calculates the position of that shell (not just distance from the artillery but it's height as well) and compares to the location (X+Y) of other units in it's flight path.

For most people, the only thing that matters is the location of the shell when it lands, not it's entire flight path.

The difference is subtle but in terms of processing power and bandwidth, it's prolly mega.

I could be speaking rubbish tho.

In SupCom, if something (I believe friendly units are 'usually' the exception though I've seen them hit as well) gets in the flight path of a projectile, the projectile will stop flying and deal the damage at the point of contact.  A cliff will get in the way of ship-to-land bombardment.  A colossus climbing out of the water in front of a moving battleship round will take the hit.  A falling nuke will explode if it makes contact with a passing T1 bomber. 

SupCom takes a lot more into account than points of origin and contact and while the difference aren't always enough to change ones playstyle (many of the smaller land units track well enough for movement not to make a huge difference though they'll still be commonly interrupted by terrain), there's still plenty of value to be had in running a serpentine pattern or hiding behind a hill.

Exactly.

I've never seen anything like this happen in DG. I use snipe as an example cos it's the sskill with the longest range and therefore has much more opportunity to hit a flying object on the way (like an angel) or even another tall DG like a rook.

So, my point being, I know that the DG engine (ie a modified supcom engine) is able to handle this kind of simulation (unless of course, when they talk about it being modified, this is something they took out) but I'm pretty sure it doesn't use it.

With this in mind, AND the fact that there are so few units in DG (esp if u are playing a 3v3 with only assassins... ie that's 6 players and a handful of creep), the bandwidth requirement you would think would be pretty much negligeable in comparison to a 3v3 in supcom where each team could have 100 units each.. or more.. (whatever the unit limit was).

This is what confuses me most about DG.

Yeah proxies bla bla etc etc... but bandwidth requirements?!?!?

My ultimate point is, I'm just suprised that u don't see more 4v4 and 5v5.

As I said before tho, I don't even know how DG can do 4v4. A team with 4 regs will never lose.

Wrong. Not going into it, look for it yourself.

i hate agreeing with wickedbear, it hurts me. it hurts me more when people belive duplicate demgods are unstoppable

Well, im not sure that the simulation is what takes all the PC’s grunt, I mean total annihilation simulated projectiles too and that game is more than 10 years old. I bought a new PC in 2007 and its run supcom virtually flawlessly (though I tend to only play 1v1 and never against the bugged AI). And yes, I feel the extra grunt necessary is completely worth it, even if other players struggle to run it as well as I can.

What the simulation allows is a far more dynamic relationship between units. How units behave when fighting each other can depend on movement direction, what type of unit they’re shooting at, where that enemy is moving, as well as a natural, organic relationship with the terrain. Unlike other systems such as DoW1, where a player receives a bonus/penalty for standing on a pre-determined spot the game designers have given +-50% armour to, units in supcom gain natural bonuses by hiding behind a hill or ledge or shield. This means that units behave differently in relation to each other depending on which part of the terrain they’re fighting on, without having to sit in contrived areas for bonus.

It also gives a natural bonus/penalty depending on the formation of troops you’re using in combat. If you have 50 units V 50 units the outcome is far more fluid than in other games, because units can miss, hit other units, or have their effectiveness increased/decreased depending on how their position relates to their allies as well as the enemy’s, which gives natural, transparent bonuses to things like flanking, rather than clicking on a formation that gives you +50% damage like LOTR.

Essentially, you can get the same bunch of units fighting another same bunch of units, and the results will be completely different each time because of the simulation and how units are placed/moved on the battlefield, without the need to create arbitrary armour types.

The great thing about FA is that you can use as much or as little micro as you wish. If you just want to mass tanks and send them at the enemy with one click, you can. Now, I prefer giving different units different orders in a group depending on the situation, but that’s me and how I like to play. You can win games in FA by having superior tactics, superior strategy, or superior economy. Its up to you to decide how much attention you pay to each area.

Ranked supcom has a unit limit of 500, so I would agree that it should have more bandwidth concerns than DG. With DG, I suspect its an issue with impulse, as impulse wasn’t designed with p2p in mind, and they had to create an entire system just for DG I believe. As it stands though, as long as the pings are low I don’t experience any issues with performance.