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!
