Terrain deformation, is it still coming?

This being my first post and all, I'd first of all like to congratulate Uber on their impressive achievements so far. I've been following this game since the Kickstarter announcement and I'm quite amazed to see how much you guys have been able to do in just one year. So much so, that I've decided to finally place a pre-order.

Now for my question. I remember reading or hearing about weapons being able to deform terrain and it was one of the features that excited me most. I think the prospect of a smoking, cratered landscape after a long and hard battle is awesome. So far though, I've not seen anything of this kind in the alpha. So is this still being planned? I'm not talking about fabbers terraforming the terrain, I'm talking about stuff like artillery, nukes and of course asteroids well, annihilating planets!

It's still coming. At least no word to the contrary appears to have been said by the developers.

Few days ago there was twitch stream from PAX where neutrino said they working on deformation right now:
http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/455418215 (uber part starts from 04:04:40 and he said about that on 04:13:00).

Ok, cool, thanks! Can't wait to see it in game.

Well it would use the CSG system to do it, and seeing as we can already get craters and crevasses we know that it's possible, so technically it's just that we don't have weapons doing it yet.

Mike

I didn't even think about it like that.

Is it possible to do addition/subtraction after the game has started, or is that just in a specific, non-"live" planet generation process?

Well the idea is that everything can be modified, that's why we have things like persistent 'decals' for scorch marks or tank tracks/bot foot prints and is the idea behind any weapon-based deformation.

Also based on Neutrino's comments it seems they also want that potential for structures, so that one could have a structure that is "sunken" into the ground, much like the UEF Experimental Land and Air Gantries from SupCom2(one of the few things I liked about it >.>) but the reality is that until it's implemented and usable it's not confirmed. ;p

Mike

Would be nice to have some game changing effects like craters rather than just some eye candy.

I'd be interested to see if somebody makes a mod to introduce units such as sea-dredgers and bulldozer-type units who could actively move terrain to create new land/hills, with a player drawing the curves of where they want the land raised or lowered.

I got the impression that there are no plans for small scale terrain deformation. Nukes and orbital body collisions could change the environment in large ways but smaller explosions would not. Players wouldn't have the ability to move 'dirt' around with small scale terraforming.

I see evidence for this in the current planet designs. There aren't any hills so they are either not possible or unimportant. They would be unimportant if units don't slow down while climbing hills. Without partial speed effects based on terrain there is little point to small scale terraforming.

Well there are hills last I checked, they aren't obvious like one might expect from starcraft but they are there in varying degrees.

Mike

There is height variations with respect to the middle of a planet but it is not significant, I would not call them hills. As in there is no point thinking about height variation while playing, it has no effect on gameplay. The height based features which affect gameplay are much more stark than what I would call hills.

Large height variation on smaller planets does cause you to hit the ground and be careful about unit/building placement.

Hopefully artillery units will be able to shoot farther the further up they are. But that may be a pipe dream due to how difficult that particular problem is to answer.

Yeah you can make really lumpy planets, but they don't seem to make a gameplay effect beyond building placement and water levels.

For instance, if metal water deposits are too deep, you can't build on them!

I'm in hopes for units on cliffs and such will be able to do more in a theoretical theater.

An artillery unit on a small mesa will end up being able to shoot further sure, but it will also lose a huge part of it's minimum range too, so any type of medium range mobile units like missile launchers or mortars will easily be able to come into the minimum range with a decent number of them and take it out. Defending that minimum range would be an absolute must. This would be a perfect reason to have things like the punisher/guardian plasma turret from TA. They weren't artillery, but they had a decent rate of fire and dished out quite a bit of damage. They would be perfect to have at the base of any cliff with artillery on the top.

It has no CURRENT effect on gameplay, but the Alpha is nothing but a shadow of what PA will be at and after Release, what happens when we get Beam weapons? Hills(and the general Curvature of the planet) will matter. Or the system could be refined such that the hills have more impact even in the current game state.

Mike

That's interesting. The kickstarter video, all concept art and planet generation I've seen since lack hills. There seems to be a lot of work put towards creating terrain variation via large features (such as the mountain peaks in the black biome). Hills also don't seem the match the artistic style. With all this put together I assumed planets were going to be fairly round things with features stuck on them, no hills.

I would like significant terrain height changes which have an impact on gameplay, for example changes to weapon range and movement speed. Any devs care to chime in?

Yet they've been part of the planet generation since at least late June, I noticed them when playing around with the camera controls back then.

Mike

I would prefer hills to stay purely aesthetic. Either that, or they should be clearly visible starcraft-like ones. Making current ones affect gameplay in any significant way would add a lot of confusion - gentle slopes are barely visible with top-down perspective.