I have thousands of hours in RTS games, here is my feedback.

[Slick]

I have never seen an Early Access game with more potential than Silica, with that said, a lot has to change for this game to have long-term success. Here are my suggestions, ordered by importance.

1. The game is too slow. Certain buildings and units take more than 3 minutes to make. When infantry gets ordered to attack the enemy base they take 5 minutes to get there. There are StarCraft 2 matches that end before the Harvester in Silica can make 1 delivery.

2. The movement AI is currently very buggy. Units will get ordered to go somewhere and take a very awkward path, 20% of the time they will not go there at all and sometimes they will get stuck in a piece of geometry forever.

3. There is no feedback in FPS mode. You will be shooting at something with no idea if you are hitting, dealing damage, how much health the enemy has left, etc. Additionally, at night time you can not see anything.

4. Commander mode is very bare bones. Start by adding unit commands like attack (it does not work correctly at the moment), hold position, patrol, hold fire, etc. You need to be able to see the units' health bars, building progress of upgrades and units and much more.

5. Movement in FPS feels very clunky. Good FPS games have precise movement, you know exactly where you will land after you jump, you know which surface you can climb, what you can jump over and what will make you stuck. At this stage, movement in Silica feels like what you get when you boot up Unreal Engine and play through the demo. Infantry units will sometimes jump high, sometimes low, they will slide on sand as if it was ice. Vehicles are very inconsistent, sometimes you will jump over a massive rock and be fine, another time you will hit a small bump and spin out or land on your roof.

6. The maps are too big and too empty. Compared to other FPS experiences, in Silica the player can be wondering around a big empty desert for a long time before getting to shoot anything whatsoever.

7. Performance needs to be improved by a lot. Everyone is talking about this, but I just wanted to share my experience. I cover the recommended hardware requirements and I get 20 FPS in multiplayer on medium graphics.

I realize that this game is Early Access for a reason and most of these are already being worked on but I still wanted to share what want to see improved. Silica is a very ambitious project but I can already see myself falling in love with it, hopefully it grows into the RTS classic that it deserves to be.

[Bassuha]

Dude be talking facts. IMO they should improve performance then add new things to the game.

[Curious Mercurius]

I disagree somewhat with the first point. The game will get more exciting and snappier when the COM UX is improved to be more in line with proper RTS like Starcraft. So I would reconsider point 1 only after 4 and 7 are addressed. The game will naturally flow faster once the COM is able to actually play the game with more ease. In fact, I think performance and UX should be priority so that all players can play at their hypothetical best - only then can we actually start worrying about balance.

[Sugam]

Originally posted by Bassuha:

Dude be talking facts. IMO they should improve performance then add new things to the game.

Unless its a game breaking bug that everyone is experiencing, that is not wise. Its more efficient to add content or reach at least complete like 90% of the game before you do a performance sweep otherwise you are going to have to go back and do it again every time you drop a good amount of content. Some frame drops is tolerable.

But the IA path finding for sure needs to be addressed soon or simplify it till they can get to it. The humans are fairly OP right now but its still a real sht experience for the comm.

I know, it sucks for those running on toasters or ill managed PC's but at least for me, I would rather have the game finished in like 2 years rather then like 4 or never.

[neock]

Originally posted by Sugam:

Originally posted by Bassuha:

Dude be talking facts. IMO they should improve performance then add new things to the game.

Unless its a game breaking bug that everyone is experiencing, that is not wise. Its more efficient to add content or reach at least complete like 90% of the game before you do a performance sweep otherwise you are going to have to go back and do it again every time you drop a good amount of content. Some frame drops is tolerable.

But the IA path finding for sure needs to be addressed soon or simplify it till they can get to it. The humans are fairly OP right now but its still a real sht experience for the comm.

I know, it sucks for those running on toasters or ill managed PC's but at least for me, I would rather have the game finished in like 2 years rather then like 4 or never.

this is actualy the mentality most devs have... and they make games that are so buggy its imposable to play as a result.
add content, do some optimizing, add more content, optomize a bit more... this will help keep things running smoother the whole way, and prevent some bugs from getting to the point you have to remove half your content to fix it. this is how it SHOULD be done. but devs of other games only care about pushing content, ignoring all else unless the bugs benifit the players... then said bug becomes critical fixing priority...

[Bassuha]

Originally posted by Sugam:

Originally posted by Bassuha:

Dude be talking facts. IMO they should improve performance then add new things to the game.

Unless its a game breaking bug that everyone is experiencing, that is not wise. Its more efficient to add content or reach at least complete like 90% of the game before you do a performance sweep otherwise you are going to have to go back and do it again every time you drop a good amount of content. Some frame drops is tolerable.

But the IA path finding for sure needs to be addressed soon or simplify it till they can get to it. The humans are fairly OP right now but its still a real sht experience for the comm.

I know, it sucks for those running on toasters or ill managed PC's but at least for me, I would rather have the game finished in like 2 years rather then like 4 or never.

"some frame drops" meanwhile many players complain about having low FPS closer to mid-game and afterwards. Like, what's the point of adding new content when game can't show AT LEAST 40-45 fps(which is fine by me). So I'd rather wait 4 years and get game that can run good and is playable, than 2 years and getting game with lot of content that is unaccsessible due to low framrate.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Curious Mercurius:

I disagree somewhat with the first point. The game will get more exciting and snappier when the COM UX is improved to be more in line with proper RTS like Starcraft. So I would reconsider point 1 only after 4 and 7 are addressed. The game will naturally flow faster once the COM is able to actually play the game with more ease. In fact, I think performance and UX should be priority so that all players can play at their hypothetical best - only then can we actually start worrying about balance.

The first point is not a balance suggestion it is just how the game feels. Even after the performance issues are fixed and the UI is improved the game will still start out way too slow. The Refinery for the humans takes 95 seconds to build. This is the first and only building you can place at the start of the game, why does it take so long to start the game out? This applies to most aspects of the commander mode, you constantly have to wait before you can do the next thing, nothing to do with performance or UI.

[SmellyTerror]

Originally posted by Jaeger:

I have never seen an Early Access game with more potential than Silica, with that said, a lot has to change for this game to have long-term success. Here are my suggestions, ordered by importance.

1. The game is too slow. Certain buildings and units take more than 3 minutes to make. When infantry gets ordered to attack the enemy base they take 5 minutes to get there. There are StarCraft 2 matches that end before the Harvester in Silica can make 1 delivery.

I think the way to go right now is make the maps smaller, but also slow down most of the vehicles a touch (make it less of a difference for the foot-troops).

I actually quite like the insanely slow harvester deliveries - it's a massive feast, but a long famine waiting for the next one.

2. The movement AI is currently very buggy. Units will get ordered to go somewhere and take a very awkward path, 20% of the time they will not go there at all and sometimes they will get stuck in a piece of geometry forever.

I'm pleasantly surprised at the pathing for most stuff, but it's the faster vehicles and (weirdly) crabs that seem to suck a bit. Early days yet, so I'd expect this will get addressed.

3. There is no feedback in FPS mode. You will be shooting at something with no idea if you are hitting, dealing damage, how much health the enemy has left, etc. Additionally, at night time you can not see anything.

This is my #1: just give a reticle feedback for hits on enemy, at the very least. Would also like a sound alert if doing friendly fire damage.

4. Commander mode is very bare bones. Start by adding unit commands like attack (it does not work correctly at the moment), hold position, patrol, hold fire, etc. You need to be able to see the units' health bars, building progress of upgrades and units and much more.

Given the AI commander can already issue different commands, I'd expect this is coming.

5. Movement in FPS feels very clunky. Good FPS games have precise movement, you know exactly where you will land after you jump, you know which surface you can climb, what you can jump over and what will make you stuck. At this stage, movement in Silica feels like what you get when you boot up Unreal Engine and play through the demo. Infantry units will sometimes jump high, sometimes low, they will slide on sand as if it was ice. Vehicles are very inconsistent, sometimes you will jump over a massive rock and be fine, another time you will hit a small bump and spin out or land on your roof.

It sort of feels like low gravity? I think upping the engine's gravity setting would fix a lot of this.

6. The maps are too big and too empty. Compared to other FPS experiences, in Silica the player can be wondering around a big empty desert for a long time before getting to shoot anything whatsoever.

Yeah, see also point 1: smaller maps, slow the vehicles a bit, see how that goes.

Finally, I'll add one: skew the in-game sounds a bit deeper. The sound of the quad engine, for example, get's pretty painful pretty fast. A bit of a grumble would help. Same thing for the guns on it - get just a little bit more of a chunky sound to it.

[Dakone]

Originally posted by Jaeger:

I have never seen an Early Access game with more potential than Silica, with that said, a lot has to change for this game to have long-term success. Here are my suggestions, ordered by importance.

1. The game is too slow. Certain buildings and units take more than 3 minutes to make. When infantry gets ordered to attack the enemy base they take 5 minutes to get there. There are StarCraft 2 matches that end before the Harvester in Silica can make 1 delivery.

2. The movement AI is currently very buggy. Units will get ordered to go somewhere and take a very awkward path, 20% of the time they will not go there at all and sometimes they will get stuck in a piece of geometry forever.

3. There is no feedback in FPS mode. You will be shooting at something with no idea if you are hitting, dealing damage, how much health the enemy has left, etc. Additionally, at night time you can not see anything.

4. Commander mode is very bare bones. Start by adding unit commands like attack (it does not work correctly at the moment), hold position, patrol, hold fire, etc. You need to be able to see the units' health bars, building progress of upgrades and units and much more.

5. Movement in FPS feels very clunky. Good FPS games have precise movement, you know exactly where you will land after you jump, you know which surface you can climb, what you can jump over and what will make you stuck. At this stage, movement in Silica feels like what you get when you boot up Unreal Engine and play through the demo. Infantry units will sometimes jump high, sometimes low, they will slide on sand as if it was ice. Vehicles are very inconsistent, sometimes you will jump over a massive rock and be fine, another time you will hit a small bump and spin out or land on your roof.

6. The maps are too big and too empty. Compared to other FPS experiences, in Silica the player can be wondering around a big empty desert for a long time before getting to shoot anything whatsoever.

7. Performance needs to be improved by a lot. Everyone is talking about this, but I just wanted to share my experience. I cover the recommended hardware requirements and I get 20 FPS in multiplayer on medium graphics.

I realize that this game is Early Access for a reason and most of these are already being worked on but I still wanted to share what want to see improved. Silica is a very ambitious project but I can already see myself falling in love with it, hopefully it grows into the RTS classic that it deserves to be.

1. Most RTS games are slow and I feel the pace this one follows is fine however I feel most of the slow progress is due to AI path issues. I would also agree that having more than one factory producing units is a bit redundant we should be able to upgrade existing ones to do more than one unit at a time while also keeping the same cook time I feel this would also help in reducing lag at end game for humans since everything will be done in mostly one building or two.

2. I feel like the reason for this was to help reduce lag since having too many path nodes can cause major lag when there is a lot of them being used. Sadly I would say the only way to fix this would be to limit units and increase the path nodes.

3&4. The game is hardly optimized already as it is I feel he should wait a bit before putting more stuff into a already sticky pot and work out the things hes already got on the plate.

5. would require unit limits to reduce lag in order to put more into the FPS perspective. Bugs would be nerf the most because most bug coms like to make around 100 or more units to stand a chance at all. I remember a game long ago that did this in order to make the FPS perspective more solid this however made RTS players enjoy it less. SO this will be a tricky thing to complete.

6. I agree on this maps are too big and empty but then again it is a desert planet..

7. doesn't happen till you hit a large unit point then it bogs down.. This also can be in fault to the person running the game too since it uses our computers to make a makeshift server. Don't think this will be changing anytime soon either but I feel running dedicated servers would help out some on this, but even high tier computers are also struggling but I feel that is because of bad net coding for the hosting while also having too many entities on the board that doesn't just include units. This will be hard fix and I know will take a while to fix if it ever does happen. This could also require rebuilding the code from scratch.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Zapp Brannigan:

Originally posted by Jaeger:

1. The game is too slow. Certain buildings and units take more than 3 minutes to make. When infantry gets ordered to attack the enemy base they take 5 minutes to get there. There are StarCraft 2 matches that end before the Harvester in Silica can make 1 delivery.

1. Most RTS games are slow and I feel the pace this one follows is fine however I feel most of the slow progress is due to AI path issues. I would also agree that having more than one factory producing units is a bit redundant we should be able to upgrade existing ones to do more than one unit at a time while also keeping the same cook time I feel this would also help in reducing lag at end game for humans since everything will be done in mostly one building or two.

I respectfully disagree, the first building for the humans - the refinery takes 95 seconds to build. In SC2 the first building for the humans takes 17 seconds. I realize that these are two very different games but in most other games you build workers while you wait for the building to complete or you scout your opponent, etc. In Silica there is no workers before that building is complete, you place it down and you wait a minute and a half to start getting resources. Then it takes another 3 minutes for the harvester to deliver if ur lucky and it does not get stuck somewhere. The moments where you sit there and wait with nothing to do are just too many and it just gets worse and worse with the big tanks taking 3 minutes +. Ain't nobody got time for that in today's ADHD age. For RTS games to strive they need to get with modern standards.

[SmellyTerror]

Originally posted by Jaeger:

Originally posted by Zapp Brannigan:

1. Most RTS games are slow and I feel the pace this one follows is fine however I feel most of the slow progress is due to AI path issues. I would also agree that having more than one factory producing units is a bit redundant we should be able to upgrade existing ones to do more than one unit at a time while also keeping the same cook time I feel this would also help in reducing lag at end game for humans since everything will be done in mostly one building or two.

I respectfully disagree, the first building for the humans - the refinery takes 95 seconds to build. In SC2 the first building for the humans takes 17 seconds. I realize that these are two very different games but in most other games you build workers while you wait for the building to complete or you scout your opponent, etc. In Silica there is no workers before that building is complete, you place it down and you wait a minute and a half to start getting resources. Then it takes another 3 minutes for the harvester to deliver if ur lucky and it does not get stuck somewhere. The moments where you sit there and wait with nothing to do are just too many and it just gets worse and worse with the big tanks taking 3 minutes +. Ain't nobody got time for that in today's ADHD age. For RTS games to strive they need to get with modern standards.

I agree overall, but if you've played Natural Selection 2, you will have seen that a more sedate pace for the RTS gives the FPS players time to get something done.

(See also my suggestion the maps be smaller and the vehicles a little slower to compensate, to give the foot soldiers a better chance to do something cool).

And it is meant to be a big deal to build something, when you have so few buildings overall. In SC2, you build 40 buildings through to the mid game. In this it might be 12 total for Sol.

Because there are players, the RTS side becomes in large part calling the map, and directing players. If anything, the alien commander is going to be a bit too frantic in placing nodes and doing builds. The fact that the Sol player has time to discuss a game-plan with their team in the early game is going to be a real advantage in pick up games.

A commander should expect to spend a fair bit of time with a worried eye on the map.

I agree that it needs to be faster, for sure, but at the same time it's important to recognise that there can be a LOT going on if you have a team of players to organise.

[Ngangulero Indifferento]

Haven't played much commander, but when I do I'm kind of glad things are a bit slow. Gives me time to micromanage some units, chat with my players to see who wants to do want.
After all human players will not blindly follow all orders, but always have a mind of their own.
I'm similar, I don't follow waypoints of a commander that doesnt take the time to chat and share what is goin on. I mostly assume they made an error in giving me a waypoint (unless it makes sense to me) so do whatever I was doing instead.

[Eightball]

Originally posted by Sugam:

Originally posted by Bassuha:

Dude be talking facts. IMO they should improve performance then add new things to the game.

Unless its a game breaking bug that everyone is experiencing, that is not wise. Its more efficient to add content or reach at least complete like 90% of the game before you do a performance sweep otherwise you are going to have to go back and do it again every time you drop a good amount of content. Some frame drops is tolerable.

How to spaghetti code your game 101.

[Dakone]

Originally posted by Eightball:

Originally posted by Sugam:

Unless its a game breaking bug that everyone is experiencing, that is not wise. Its more efficient to add content or reach at least complete like 90% of the game before you do a performance sweep otherwise you are going to have to go back and do it again every time you drop a good amount of content. Some frame drops is tolerable.

How to spaghetti code your game 101.

Uncooked spaghetti.

[W h i t e .Boy_JUN]

playing age of empires 4 after a long history of AOE2 and RON, it is sad to see aoe4 devs making sure that matchmaking gets players addicted with perfectly times lags, to keep players at lower ratings and keep them addicted, i mean you dont have to work so hard for me to play aoe but it is sad to watch the matchmaking being the same as other mmorpgs, trying to addiction algorithm rather than focusing on skill.

AOE4 is the best of the RTS community so id advise the devs to keep the rts acommunity alive by making the games less "sly" and more skill based

[Bambi]

It is not starcraft, it is not a singleplayer RTS, it is a team based game, do not treat your teammates like units that are "too slow"
gunfights in FPS just take longer than fights in RTS, always will.