Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Ground Troops

Been lurking here for a while but sadly there bareley were any topics till the trailer came out.
but with the recent addition of ground units i felt the need to create this thread to voice my opinion about them.

First off: i like it. More tactical depht is sweet and make for a more interresting RTS expirience.

But there is one thing that just doesnt feel right: the Lack of infantry.

I know the Artstyle larian is trying to go for here. We got all the Steampunk walkers and blimps and all that good stuff.
and while i like all that. I think without having infantry simultaniously its not the same.

There are a few reasons for me thinking that way both in terms of the Gameplay but also in terms of presentation.

The first beeing the most glaring part that made me unhappy about the descision with having walkers only:

The scale doesnt look right.
A walker i supose is about as tall as a tree. thats already pretty big. And they are the smallest units on the field.
But instead of making the scale look bigger (wich you would naturally think) it makes the whole thing look alot smaller.
The size of the units is very close to one another and the whole thing just does not look big anymore.
Your Dragon doesnt look as huge anymore.

It didnt have the same effect on the Air combat only version. But now it very much does.

I also think its worth mentioning that burning down a huge walker with a dragon is not quite as satisfying as making a bombing run on an army of little soldiers and burning them to crisp.
Its great for reference of scale and for the feel of Empowerment in Dragon form.

And to me the feel of empowerment is one of the biggest things in Dragon Commander.
Because of the RTS nature of it, throwing a Dragon in the mix there, first and foremost, gives you controll.
It gives you a tool that lets you break out of the RTS bonds and do something about a problem that you could not have respondet to with the regular means of an RTS game.

Throwing soldiers in the mix gives you an alot more complete expirience of beeing a huge Dragon in all its fiery glory.


But its not all about the expirience itself.
Its also about gameplay.

One thing that sticks out in Dragon Commander is the idea of having 3 types of units. Land units, flying units and sea units.
But what lacks is a utility unit.

A role infantry could feel. a unit dedicated to Capturing buildings (From what i can see those will be there)
Repairing other units, setting up fortifications, providing fire support while beeing plentifull on themselves.

The ideal way to implement infantry would not as a new kind of unit wich you can zerg rush. But rather as large tactical squads.
If you look at the scale of Dragon Commander with the smallest unit beeing as tall as a tree. having a squad of 10 to 20 infantry men as one utility unit would be very sensible.
Because of their small size its very easy to go polygon-light on them.
Creating a sense of scale while not saccrificing performance that you would have to do if you got for another means of securing this goal.

The tactical implications of infantry when paired with the synergie ideas we have already seen (blimp placed on battleship) and the upgrades would be tremendous.

Infantry could be picked up by flying units and serve as ground scouts that can be deployed in remote areas harassing enemies from all kinds of angles where they are not suspected.
They could be tempered with to have a wide array of different weapons. Rocket launchers against heavily armored troops, magic protection to sustain fire, repair kits to make an engineer squad that keeps your units fit in the field, cloaking equipment, traps to place that disable enemies.

yeah its quite out there.

I know you got your plants quite set on this game.
But i know that youve been considering different steps throughout the development process.
So yeah, please dont leave out the little guys!

I think it might a little too late for adding in a new unit.

Agreeing with Stabbey's point, the developers are choosing to go for a more vehicle focused mode of warfare to illustrate larger than life battles. Now, is that to say that infantry are not being used in the war? Of course not, likely in the background occupying cities but not on the battlefield. The creation of mobile and inexpensive mechs has filled a niche in battle that could once only be filled by infantry (the glorified mobile weapons platforms that they are).

I think infantry would simply muddle things up, they would be cheaper than tanks and mechs but not as good and so then why bother with them to begin with? In any event there are aesthetic reasons for using only vehicles - they are far easier to animate and polish for looks than infantry who would invariably be more complicated pixel wise lest the game lose it's luster.

considering how many times they changed up the whole thing by now i am actually not too concerned about "too late"
the whole "ground combat" thing has been announced around 2 months ago if im not totaly mistaken.

The idea of infantry was not that its a cheap unit type.
Ive quite clearly discribed them as a squad based unit.

In that case there is no need to nerf neither cost nor effectiveness.

On the point of larger than life battles: thats not what it looks like.
through the abundance of reference points such as ground soldiers it looks like a bunch of toys thrown together, especialy with the dragon beeing that huge.

It's suppose to be like a bunch of toys are fighting, that's the mood they were going for. The units look cute and have a nice fantasy steampunk vibe that vehicles are much easier to pull off with. As I said before, vehicles are easier to use in a game than infantry- if you have looked at any of the gameplay you will not how rapid combat is yet how simplistic the graphics are. I just do not see infantry fitting any niche in the fast paced, rock paper scissors combat that the game has managed to produce.

simplistic? have you looked at the screenshots?
The detail on the units is actually quite high. Look at the one where you can see the Naval units close up.
thats not low detail there.

And i disagree that the toy combat is the idea of the game.
Beeing a huge Dragon is definitly a completeley different notion.
A well executed steampunk look does not resemble toys at all.

Its all about getting reference points for hight.
And there are two ways of doing this: having overly large things or things that we recognize. Such as humans.

The smallest thing on the battlefield seen so far are spider walkers and air-to-air fighters, if they had units smaller than that (even if cobbled together into squads) then it may get difficult to manage. By cutting out the infantry you make the game less complicated (less units) while avoiding the need to deal with standing scales. How fast would a rifleman squad move? How many hits could they take? This isn't Dawn of War or Company of Heroes were we have all the time in the world to micromanage - in the few combat footages I have seen I saw tanks and aircraft being taken out in a mere 1-2 shots. Everything that infantry could be expected to do, save storming a city, can be relegated to mechs who are far better at the destructive power play that the game is going for.

If they don't have infantry now then it would be best if they did not deal with it, as the developers have already specified in their faq that they would rather be dealing with dragon customization options in their spare time. As stipulated below:


Q - Is there dragon customization?
A - There are Different dragons to choose from - further customization is one of those things that’s on the want to have but not confirmed because we need to figure out how much time we’ll need for other stuff on the list.

So yes, a good idea on paper, but it doesn't contribute enough to the game overall enough to warrant overhauling the current system - especially if we want a release in May or June in some part of the world. Larian Studios is a small Belgian game company, plenty of other big studios and brands have done infantry combat and far better than the studio ever could (no offense intended). Starcraft, Total War - the list goes on.

at the end of the day thats bs.
Just because someone else does soemthing realy good does not mean that you cannot incorporate it into the game.

How are squads difficult to manage?
Infantry would be easy to kill. Thats the point.

The idea is that they can take on utility actions that are not represented in the game as of yet.
setting up traps, turrets, fixing things, taking over buildings, going stealth and applying harrassment.

Basically all kinds of advanced strategies that dont seem to be in just yet but could make the game more interresting and deep.
an infantry squad would handle int he same sense as one walker would. and would probably be as effective one on one.

There is absolutely no reason why a walker or aircraft can't do all of the things you just mentioned.

because loading one troop type with all kinds of advantages is good balance...

There can be different kinds of tanks, walker and aircraft- who said anything about one unit? You have not stated a single adequate reason that would mandate the necessary implementation of infantry. From what can be seen in the few gameplay videos infantry would have to be pretty damn small, and as I have repeatedly said infantry would require more detail and work to look just right than vehicles and especially if they have not yet been implemented. The budget costs would be a waste when, as I speculated earlier, upgrading available units with your tactics and stratagems would very well accomplish the same thing as introducing a new unit type.

I honestly don't know what we are arguing about anymore, the game can subsist well enough without the introduction of infantry (in fact I think it would look better). If the developers want to field an rts based solely on vehicular and ship combat (with a dragon thrown in) then that is their prerogative.

So having different tanks does not require new assets?
for the small size of infantry means that they require lower resolution textures and less detailed models.

You simply cannot state what the developers want.
If they did not state it its irrelevant.

And so far they have not given a clear indication of their artistic stance on the matter.
So id suggest you stop using that as an argument.

i was simply giving my thoughts and suggestions on the matter.
While you stated assumptions on artistic vision as fact to disprove me, completeley missing the point (nameley a suggestion) in the process.

There's a difference between changing things before and changing things now. Specifically, NOW is closer to the release date than THEN is. The game is still on track for a May/June release.

It has not been two months since they made a big change, it has been four months since they announced that the experiments they'd started making at least 4 1/2 months ago were the right ones. Five months ago, Larian was worried that they might not have enough time to make changes to get the gameplay working.




So now you not only want to add in a new unit, but change the existing gameplay up to revolve around uses for the new unit. That's a hell of a lot more complicated than you think it is.



That's correct. The tanks are not "new assets", because they're already part of the existing assets. You are talking about adding new assets, new units, new roles, and new gameplay.

In the latest preview video, one of the things you could build was a barracks, so some kind of little ground troops are in, although I don't know if that means humans or humans in mechs.

It's humanoids in mechs - we really tried everything we could to get smaller units in but you just can't see them and they weren't a lot of fun.