[TrashMan]

Sure, but on the other hand you get situations like Supreme Commander where units are practically unusable in rough terran because they have low angles of fire and they'll hit ridges. It does add some overhead to basic functionality.

Well, low angles of fire are a problem with the unit itself. Either it has a very limited fire arc, OR terrain actually restricts fire and can make it harder or easier to hit enemies - as it does in RL.

[Phantom Hoover]

Lazy?
You do know games have a fixed budgets, and there's probably better things to spend it on than basicly scripting events that are cool the first time, but happen exactly the same every time after that.

By the same token there are better things to spend the budget on than an unwieldy, hard-to-balance simulation that tracks a bunch of detail which will mostly just be seen in promotional material (aka the Star Citizen model of game design).

Sure, but on the other hand you get situations like Supreme Commander where units are practically unusable in rough terran because they have low angles of fire and they'll hit ridges. It does add some overhead to basic functionality.

Well, low angles of fire are a problem with the unit itself. Either it has a very limited fire arc, OR terrain actually restricts fire and can make it harder or easier to hit enemies - as it does in RL.

Have you actually played Supcom? Because what happens is that units move into firing range of an enemy, stop dead, and shoot until it's dead, regardless of whether their shots actually hit. Realistic it ain't. And sure, you could fix this with better AI, but that's more budget wasted on a useless feature.

[Dragon]

Yeah. Detailed simulation is only good when it's actually the point of the game. For example, modern games rarely even bother with modeled cockpits for fighters/tanks/whatever (you're lucky if they don't force 3rd person on you when flying/driving), with the exception of actual vehicle simulators, in which it's precisely this stuff that makes the game what it is. On the other hand, a combat flight sim isn't going to simulate force acting on every component of an aircraft independently, but a game like KSP needs to.
Similarly, tracking every shot is the domain of FPSes, and RTS games don't need this, because it complicates stuff a lot. Now, while there certainly is room for a sort of "hybrid" game which allows both types of gameplay (there was at least one multiplayer-only title that worked like this, but it's scale was rather small), but for a pure RTS like SupCom, it's unneeded.

[AdmiralRalwood]

And sure, you could fix this with better AI, but that's more budget wasted on a useless feature.

I... I got nothing, there.

[Scourge of Ages]

Similarly, tracking every shot is the domain of FPSes, and RTS games don't need this, because it complicates stuff a lot. Now, while there certainly is room for a sort of "hybrid" game which allows both types of gameplay (there was at least one multiplayer-only title that worked like this, but it's scale was rather small), but for a pure RTS like SupCom, it's unneeded.

I remember modding Medieval: Total War, and found a "track every projectile" flag. It killed performance, and was largely unnecessary for archers/gunners. Actually useful for siege and cannon, and probably those naphtha thrower guys.

[The E]

Tracking every shot in an RTS is a perfectly valid design decision, but its repercussions have to be ackknowledged. When a unit cannot engage a target due to intervening terrain, its AI has to either reposition, or the UI has to give appropriate feedback to the user.

In any case, leaving the player with insufficient information about what his orders are actually accomplishing is bad.

[Flipside]

It's a case of Macro vs Micro to be honest. There's nothing essentially 'wrong' with tracking every shot, and in something like a space simulator, you probably don't need to worry too much about terrain, gravity and other CPU/AI taxing tasks as you would in a surface-based game.

I'm inclined to agree with The E that it depends heavily on feedback to the player. The problem I see with battles on this scale is that they are mostly going to be won by deployment and luck, actually making battle-changing decisions within the game when dealing with those numbers of units is going to be an interesting feat of GUI manipulation.

[Dragon]

Similarly, tracking every shot is the domain of FPSes, and RTS games don't need this, because it complicates stuff a lot. Now, while there certainly is room for a sort of "hybrid" game which allows both types of gameplay (there was at least one multiplayer-only title that worked like this, but it's scale was rather small), but for a pure RTS like SupCom, it's unneeded.

I remember modding Medieval: Total War, and found a "track every projectile" flag. It killed performance, and was largely unnecessary for archers/gunners. Actually useful for siege and cannon, and probably those naphtha thrower guys.

Well, in that case, you've got a perfect example where it's good and where it's a bad decision. For some units (like most artillery and many heavy weapons), the weapon mechanics make it important to track every projectile, otherwise it gets silly. I've seen many RTSes where a projectile which rolled a hit struck nowhere near the target, yet still dealt damage like a direct hit. However, with fast-flying bullets that might not even be rendered and hitscan beams, individual tracking is pointless and only hogs performance. It all depends on what you're trying to do.

[Phantom Hoover]

And sure, you could fix this with better AI, but that's more budget wasted on a useless feature.

I... I got nothing, there.

The useless feature being projectile tracking, not AI. Although AI is often overrated too!

[AdmiralRalwood]

And sure, you could fix this with better AI, but that's more budget wasted on a useless feature.

I... I got nothing, there.

The useless feature being projectile tracking, not AI.

Oh, okay, now that makes a lot more sense.

Still, I think I'd rather have a game with projectile tracking and good AI than a game with neither. ;P

[Mikes]

Well, name another engine that can do a 'massive-scale strategy game where every single shot is tracked' and do it well.

supcom?

supcom would probably have been better off with a more abstracted combat system though

You ninja'd me there. I was just typing this up.

I think most games would have been better off with a more abstracted combat system. The whole 'every shot is a tracked projectile' thing has never added much to gameplay for any of the games ive played that have done it. In supcom it just made a lot of shots disappear into the terrain, every slightly sloped hill became an enemy. In sots it just made the game perform poorly with bigger battles and most weapons had a really low rof because of it too.

Possibly, the kind of abstraction that people prefer directly correlates with how important immersion is for them in games.

Wouldn't you agree that games who actually model as much as possible "feel" completely different from more abstract games?

[Mongoose]

Wouldn't you agree that games who actually model as much as possible "feel" completely different from more abstract games?

I don't necessarily think that's the case, depending on the environment in question.  For instance, all of the classic 2D RTS titles (Age of Empires II, StarCraft, C&C) represented weapons fire as mere sprites on the screen, but I know I felt like I was really shooting at my enemies while playing them.

[Flipside]

Well, strictly speaking nearly ALL games are a mixture of both, because you have to stop modelling and start abstracting at one point or another. The universal example of this is 'hit points' or 'Health' as a value.