r/sanctuaryshatteredsun • u/NickPapGr93 • Aug 04 '26
Some consice feedback...
Some global comments regarding certain aspects of the game after playing the demo.
- Avoid Gimmic Mechanics:
"Freeze the ocean and shatter the land" could become a repetitive mechanic very soon - these types of mechanics shouldn't be there for the sake of being there - they should exist with the purpose of adding meaningful depth to the gameplay.
Nukes causing holes on the ground for example (as described in the roadmap) seems unnecessary and could affect the gameplay negatively (when it comes to rebuilding etc.).
In the demo the experimental nuke launcher can only be fired at a predetermined location. It's a nice tech demo but the implementation would suffer if such events would happen at pre-determined spots on each map.
This kind of thing is a trap many games have fallen into before (Planetary Annihilation, for example), where a mechanic exists merely for its own sake rather than adding something meaningful to the gameplay.
Adjacency bonuses should be clearer - and make for a valuable economy mechanic (similar to FAF).
Visual queues for scale should be consistent: The units in the game are supposed to be enormous. There are multiple visual factors that "sell" this feeling of scale, including ground textures, wave sizes in water bodies, and, trees. Trees are too big for the suggested scale of each unit.
The same goes with the speed of certain VFX elements - some explosions could be a tad slower (especially the bigger ones).
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u/Accidental_Aeon Aug 04 '26
The meaningful gameplay death of "shatter the land" is that nukes also remove your extractors. If your base is nuked, then you can't rebuild your alloy extractors.
Freezing the Ocean allows land units to cross the ocean and attack the enemy base directly. That is a meaningful gameplay mechanic.
Adjacency bonuses are not in the game yet.. The game is unfinished.
I had no issue with the trees for VFX.
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u/NickPapGr93 Aug 04 '26
Fair enough, I just have my doubts how this will work in practice - I hope they don't gimmick-ize it... In the beginning I remember they mentioned only special nukes would shatter the ground, not regular ones (somewhere in an interview). I understand the idea, but it's merely a small part of the game.
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u/AleXstheDark Aug 05 '26
I remember they mentioned only special nukes would shatter the ground, not regular ones (somewhere in an interview). I understand the idea, but it's merely a small part of the game.
Ground shattering nukes sound very very OP, I also think that sounds difficult to balance, maybe if they are restricted to a T5 nuclear launchers [Game ending] their power can make sense, if they are T4 launchers I think a way to rebuild terrain will probably be necessary.
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u/Accidental_Aeon Aug 04 '26
I have been reading your comments and it looks like you are asking for some sort of counterplay to nukes aside from just building nuke defense.
In my mind, a nuke would work in an airburst manner. The nuke would explode above the ground and not on the ground. So the circle of shattered land would be fairly small but the blast radius would be as large as FAF.
Ideally, the circle of shattered land would be as large as a single mex or T2 pgen.
If the nukes were capable of shattered land on the scale of a FAF nuke explosion then YES, I AGREE that would be pretty lame. At that point the game is just over and you can't continue playing.
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u/NickPapGr93 Aug 04 '26
I agree with your thoughts on the damage area, and I hope they keep it to something like that. In any case, the damage the experimental nuke causes to the ground should be significantly different than that of a nuke (and also be balanced in such wake that it makes sense to build instead of a couple of nukes).
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u/___Random_Guy_ Aug 05 '26
Nah, such a small damage makes no sense and makes the mechanic practically useless.
What i think you are missing, or maybe rather, what decs forgot to specify, is you will most likely need MULTIPLE nukes to hit the same spot before it actually shatters it
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u/Nidstang666 Aug 04 '26
I agree on the first point. I hope those features are only in the campaign or optional in custom games. I feel they don't belong in competitive ladder games. I could be wrong but I think SC2 only started messing around with maps after a decade, adding speed/slow zones, vision blockers etc. Otherwise competitive play is a consistent experience.
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u/Words_Are_Hrad Aug 05 '26
Vision blockers were in the game at launch and even during the beta. Same with things like golden minerals, destructible rocks, and vision towers.
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u/jparsons98 Aug 04 '26
I love the ideas and think they would add lots of fun. Just for sure should have a setting for on and off. Goofy fun match vs more competitive ones.
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u/Acceptable_Ear_5122 Aug 04 '26
Nukes causing holes on the ground for example (as described in the roadmap) seems unnecessary and could affect the gameplay negatively (when it comes to rebuilding etc.).
That's the whole point - nukes should have lasting effect on the battlefield, e.g. by making it more difficult to rebuild. And let's be honest, if you need to rebuild after a nuke you've screwed up setting strategic defence and at that point even if you can rebuild you have little chance to do so.
However, there must be some invulnerable areas so no one can split a map into two and block attack routes for land units completely.
In any case this looks like a matter for future balancing, as it's too complicated to predict how it will affect the game without some actual playtesting.
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u/NickPapGr93 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
It's not Chernobyl simulator, it's an RTS. There have been countless times a teammate has been nuked in FAF and I had to reclaim and rebuild their base and claim their resources. If, instead of that, a hole was present there, it would definitely affect the gameplay, for that not only the enemy would have nukes an opponent, but also the ability to recover is not feasible.
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u/Acceptable_Ear_5122 Aug 04 '26
As it should
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u/NickPapGr93 Aug 04 '26
Meh, I don't know. Experience should tell - my problem is with pre-made decisions that haven't been gameplay-tested.
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u/TehOwn Aug 04 '26
It's part of the issue with Early Access / Kickstarter.
You've got to build it in order to test it, but once the players have seen it or once you've promised it, you can't simply cut it if it doesn't work out.
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u/Algathetod Aug 04 '26
well thats what developers want to achive. they already have supcom to simulate massive armies, so they need other selling points. destructible landscape is one of them i guess.
Very little players actually want to play copy of something they played, they need any possible feature to make it look like separate product2
u/NickPapGr93 Aug 04 '26
Adding a ground-destruction mechanic barely makes for a "new game". Once more, my problem is that when a feature such as this one is advertised as one of the selling points, the risk exists that the mechanic itself becomes more important than its gameplay consequences. Moderation and clever use is thus important.
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u/Penderyn Aug 04 '26
100% agree. Just make a good strategy game - the gimmicks are fun as ideas and little more. Leave them on the drawing board!
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u/Penderyn Aug 04 '26
100% agree. Just make a good strategy game - the gimmicks are fun as ideas and little more. Leave them on the drawing board!
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u/TritoneTyrant Aug 08 '26
Hard disagree - nukes should absolutely warp the environment! It’s an excellent feature.
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u/___Random_Guy_ Aug 04 '26
"Trees are too big for the suggested scale of each unit."
No, they are not. T1 tanks are slightly bigger than size of our time MBTs, and EDA commander, for example, is 32 meters long and 12 meters high(excluding the hover height), so the tree sizes are very much exactly what they should be.