Frogboy,
Setting up Supreme Commander:
1) I also think that single player is a great addition to strategy games, but to date, the only game I know where the AI is capable of actually outwitting you is Ultimate General: Gettysburg. Even the AI in FAF is only functional because of massive cheating on the AI's part.
Fingers crossed that AoTS doesn't go the way of Rome 2 Total War!
Elegant main game UI:
2) One item that stands out heavily to me is how "apparent" events are on the UI. For example, the mass and energy bars on FAF are very bright and bold. If you stall either of these, the numbers will flash and turn red, quickly attracting your eyes to the bars because your peripheral vision will pick up on the flashing.
Currently I feel that AoTS lacks this. The resource bars blend so well with the entire UI's color.
I hope this example is clear. Another example is unit icons. In FAF, I feel that every unit you might want to build is pretty obvious when looking at it's picture in the factory build que. A tank looks like a tank. In AoTS I feel that the icons for units in factories are fairly similar to each other, and not as blatantly obvious as to what is what.
3) I like the hot key lay out right now, in that you press "Q" to select economy buildings, and then press the subset keys once again to select which resource building you want. Really frees up the keyboard. The problem I see with this is that I can't quickly que up several resource buildings, then a factory, and then a SMARTY system with just hotkeys. Since you 1st press "Q" to select resource buildings, you can no longer press hot keys to select the other building tier types, as other keys are now hot keyed to the various economy buildings. Hope this makes sense.
I hope we will be able to individually map units and builds to keys in the future
4) I find the way a meta group displays what is it comprised of rather confusing with the "star mechanic". Right now I think a Sins of the Solar Empire approach, where the actual unit number is displayed, would be more intuitive. Maybe make a zoomed out meta unit an icon and have it function like the fleet bar on the side of a planet.
5) Is there a limit to how many units a t2 and t3 unit can command? Because whenever I have had multiple t3 units paired with many t1 and t2 units, I could never make 1 big meta group. The game always made me 3 meta units, one for each t3 unit.
Gameplay:
6) I agree with all points
7) Please allow us to build buildings and units even when we are stalling metal. This kind of cuts into the flow of things right now.
8) Please consider some form of reclaim mechanic. This is such a unique game play feature as it perpetually creates critical regions all over the map. This allows for more interesting game play in the long run because even if you play a map hundreds of times, you can still have a unique game because somehow some usually forgotten part of the map acquired a lot of reclaim and became a critical battleground. I always thought of it as "mobile capture points", or making strategic map points organically.
9) Right now I feel that it is a tad bit to easy to begin cranking out T2 and T3 units. I would like to see a longer transitional period.
10) Games are over much to quickly by capturing points. I have won games without ever actually engaging the AI. And many times I have had a brief skirmish somewhere and that was it.
11) Air is rather underwhelming, and due to lack of icons, rather hard to find sometimes, even with the empire tier on the left
Strategic Zoom:
12) I am eager to see your solutions to this without icons! Personally I wouldn't mind icons on meta units. I don't mind icons at all as a general in actually would essentially be dealing with icons anyway. Just blocks or what not representing brigades, divisions, armies etc.
Cheers!
