[Polygon preview video] Pathfinding issues, formations?

[Daedalus29]

Hello! I Just saw the polygon lets play of Homeworld: deserts of kharak and it was stunning. It has the same feel of the other homeworld games (maybe more of the second because of the music), and I like all the little details you put on each units like the dune jump, the suspensions, the general unit animations etc.

But I saw some odd pathfinding issues with some terrestrials units, like the baserunner being hidden into the structure of the ground carrier when given an order, the scout vehicles squad strafing and colliding with a support unit in its path, and some vehicles jumping in place when they stops.

I saw also the lack of trail under some tracked vehicles in the sand and some weird stuff when hovercraft are reaching the top of a dune.

Is it an early press demo and this is already corrected or is it still there?

And a last thing: I didn’t see a formation icon, but I see units moving in differents formations, can we order some formations commands, like in ground control?

[ForceUser]

So far form all the videos I’ve seen it looks like the formations thing is automated. That is to say if only one class of unit is selected they move into a specific formation, with the LAVs going into delta formation, corvettes going into a line formation etc. When selecting a whole bunch of units they automatically move into what looks like a ‘stikegroup’ (dirty word I know) where the vulnerable arty type units go to very rear with LAVs screening the battlecruisers up front etc.

It does also look like you can position your line formation (Like on the ridge of a dune for example) almost like you would unit formation in the Total War series (and other games) when giving orders, either via shortcut key or maybe holding right or left mouse button (Thinking about how it’s done in other games).

While I did notice one or two weird instances of pathing there was zero stuck units, zero units going back and forth uselessly, something a lot of other games struggle with CONSTANTLY and is one of the most frustrating things I know of in RTS games. This is probably due to exactly what you saw, units kinda bumping off each other a little bit.

If I had to choose between some slight bumping and units getting stuck (and believe me it’s one or the other) I would choose the bumping and slight clipping ever single time.

Honestly though there was a couple of times I just stared at the screen going, WOW that’s actually some really amazing path-finding. It is one of the true banes of RTS games and even MOBAS so super stoked to see how well it’s actually performing considering the non-tiled nature of the maps.

[mlr321]

yeah i notice those issues too from the polygon preview. some issue with avoidance maybe? cause i notice the root cause of the issue is they kind of run into each other…or in some cases, inside of each other.