Can you give some details on republic command?  I don't know that games system.

If I don't have control over the general creeps whats the point of having a "General" class of demigods. Just call them all assasins. If you have played an RTS game you have control over ALL units and ALL cercumstances that occur during the game. This is what I want the general to be like. A hero with a mini army of units that you CONTROL not partially control. If the minions of the generals are just going to be creeps that run the same paths as the others with different skins I am going to be pissed. I wont buy a single expansion of the game because being screwed with a 60 dollar game that got rid of its major selling point for its RTS fans is enough for me.

Iprometheus, I want to know where you are getting your information. Your posts seem to sound like you are 100% sure of everything you say, almost as if you were designing the game yourseld, yet I don't see where you are getting your evidence. Maybe I'm just optimistic, but I feel that in the Mike Marr interview he was referring to current creeps, and not those of generals. For someone who says he loves RTS so much, you seem to really thrive on idea that they aren't implementing it. Let me know when you get some really solid evidence to back up your story.

Trigeminal for you i am not going to attack ToxDrawace.

Fact Demigod was designed by GPG off the Supcom engine.

Fact assassin all four are in the Beta First (The target market of the product)

Fact generals have went to a major redesign

Fact each general has one unique Creep there is a web site that shows you that creep

Fact game zone question: “There are dozens of minions on the battlefield but none can be influenced by the player”.

Fact Mike Marr “We found the Demigods so compelling and interesting to play that we elected to play to our strengths and focus on what made the game fun”.

Fact people go crazy in the forms then a new Journal Report is posted “While on paper having assassins play like they do now and have generals play like a Supreme Commander style RTS might sound good, that would be impossible to balance”.

So from this they have a problem a game has been marketed to have both elements of RPG and RTS. Then you change direction and play on your strengths IE no control and the people are upset so you are left with how to fix it and so this journal report is created. So that is my facts.

Seems logical, but this may be a bit of a leap.  I am hoping it is.  My hope is they found a great compromise.  I am not looking for SupCom RTS in this game, but I am definately looking for control over my minions.

I'm not saying there aren't reasons to think it might be this way, but no one has come out and said it definitely will be, and that seems to be your tone of voice.

Supcom engine? Alright... What does that have to do with not being able to control units?

As you say, assassins are the the only ones in the beta. Even less evidence to say what is true/false about them.

Major redesign. They needed balancing. Note: The entire game is going throught redesigns. That's why its a beta. Maybe Generals need more focus, but that still doesn't say anything specifically about controlling units.

I believe one unique creep means that is their specialty. They can still make all the other creeps that are spawned. Look at Vampire Lord's Achievements: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/323908. He gets one for building catapultasauruses. Maybe he can't control them. Maybe he can.

“There are dozens of minions on the battlefield but none can be influenced by the player.” is the most convincing argument, but the fact that there are only assasins right now makes it feel like he is only talking about the naturally spawned creeps. Also, Generals were almost completely ommitted from that interview, making me think the quote relates to Generals even more. The only quote about generals was "All four of these demigods are being classified as assassins, but another class will be included in the final version: generals. Those demigods command minions who battle for them – sort of a walking army that will make life very difficult for their opponents." Sort of a walking army. Why would he say that if they were the same as any other creep. Don't we already have walking armies? It sounds to me like they are different somehow.

Mike Marr said they are focusing on what's making the game fun. It doesn't mean they aren't going to add other stuff as well. 

And "not like supcom" just means different then supcom. No control MIGHT have something to do with it. Who knows?

"Then you change direction and play on your strengths IE no control". Again, big leap there. Changing Direction = no control? It could mean a lot of things

Again, I'm not saying it's not a possibility, I just don't think there's enough evidence to support that specific claim. Maybe I'm just being hopeful, but why not be?

(Now, if it DOES end up being that we have no control over the minions, not only am I going to be majorly dissapointed, but I'm going to feel pretty stupid. Please don't let me down!)

Mike "Tyo" Marr attempted to answer some questions over here.

Looks to me like there will be generals.  Let's hope the lack of presence on the forums leads to a quick release, 1st or 2nd week of November, for Beta 2.  Then we can see what they have and really discuss what is really there as opposed to discussing our interpretation of their innuendo.

All I mwean by this is that since SupCom is a RTS and this is based on that engine, implementing basic RTS controls shouldn't be to difficult.  To me the engine is not the limitation.  The limitation if direct command is excluded is creativity, desire to keep the game easily accessible, or to keep the ui simple and uncluttered.

Nice catch.  I saw this a while back, but did not catch the "I love catapultasaurus" achievement. 

Hopefully our question on some sort of direct control can be answered soon.

There are problems with a full RTS control of units: it will make the characters feel segmented and broken compared to each other, it will be hard to balance and the items will also feel segmented and broken. But a system where buying makes computer controlled creeps follow the pre-designated path would be boring and it will probably be hard to make legitimately useful.

I feel the most interesting answer will be somewhere inbetween, but ill be buggered if i know what it is

Ah...missed Tyo's reply to that thread.  Thanks, Trigeminal.

I'm going on instinct here but I don't think generals will be able to make spawned creeps, only minion creeps.  The reason Vampire Lord gets a Catapultasaurus Achievement is because he has a unique way of resurrecting the corpses of fallen spawned creeps as his vampire minions.  So he gets an achievement for raising enough zombie catsaurs. I don't think this will apply to any other generals.  

I'm going to have to agree and respectfully disagree with you.  It looks like the VampireLord achievement for catapultasauruses is unique.  However, after looking over the achievement, though they may know be outdated and useless for the upcoming beta 2 build, all of the general demigods have similar achievements.  For example:

# ----------------
# Oak Achievements
# ----------------

Name = Oak's Army of the Dead
Description = Build 200 units in a single game.

Name = Soul Keeper
Description = Gain 200 spirits in a single game.

# ------------------
# Sedna Achievements
# ------------------

Name = Sedna's Acolytes
Description = Build 200 units in a single game.

Name = Ready the Yetis!
Description = Gain 10 yetis in a single game.

# ----------------------------
# Queen of Thorns Achievements
# ----------------------------

Name = Queen of Thorns' Court
Description = Build 200 units in a single game.

Name = Endless Ents
Description = Gain 40 ents in a single game.

# -------------------------
# Vampire Lord Achievements
# -------------------------

Name = Vampire Lord's Brood
Description = Build 200 units in a single game.

Name = King of the Suckers
Description = Gain 250 vampires in a single game.

# -------------------
# Oculus Achievements
# -------------------

Name = Oculus' Bench Warmers
Description = Build 200 units in a single game.

Name = Eye of the Beholder
Description = Gain 40 eyes in a single game.

200 units in a single game, may be more than they want now, but that would be awesome.  Obviously all 200 would not be recruited at once, but all I can say is this is amazingly hopeful stuff here.  Again it is off the old build, but it definately is good "fact" that we can look at.

I just saw your commant and you now what, that was quite insulting, i'm a proud player of Supcom and many other rts games for many years so don't be so arrogant. besides, I only made an opinion.

what i meant is that while assassin's don't have to worry all the time about their units and can focus on develop their characters and having fun killing enemies, generals would constantly need to wait for the waves just for ordering them to move.

why do I find it annoying?-

while they will not be as powerfull as assassin's the generals would still be needed at the front lines and having you always need to order them to move by yourself will always draw you out of combat and focus.

what if you forget to move them? the generals would also have to move, cast spells and using abilites, with all that you can easily forget about the creeps and be left with no reinforcement.

I know many of you want that because its micro-managment but i think it will just wont be fun and I rather see them making the generals stratigic through combat and customizing options instead of micro-managment. this game can't play like sup com but you (and others) choose to ignore the the other things I wrote and what draginol wrote.

and for your comment, I'm not going to return you by calling you a kid or swear you like others tend to do on forums, but for next time- don't be so arrogant and disrespectful about people you don't know and consider others people's opinions.

OK Trigeminal, good point.  To play Dev's Advocate for a sec - the achievements tell us that at one point generals were able to create two tiers of minion: "units" and DG specific spirits, vampires, yetis, etc.  We don't know that by "units" the achievements were referring to the spawned creeps we already have and not to DG specific, lower-level creeps, but I think that is a semantic point.  "Units" probably does refer to spawned creeps.  

So if we take that premise I'm not surprised it's being reworked.  I don't see how you can balance that against Assassins, and keep it powerful enough to be fun. 

At this point I'm holding out for generals with small groups of controllable unique minions who can be upgraded and synergize with the abilities of the parent demigod.  I feel like that can be balanced against Assassins.  I'm not sure how anything more would work.

I'd love to be wrong

I still like the idea of having squads like in Dawn of War. Less micro management so that you can use both your general and the squad. Still gives you 2 things to balance between tho. That's why I originally thought the Generals were going to stay in the base. Now that I think about it though, that would get pretty boring if your creeps happened to get slaughtered right after spawning, and you having to wait before you can send out new units.

I expect that it will work similarly to Sacrifice.  In that game the wizard could create creeps up to a certain maximum "point" value.  Creeps could be organized into squads, and directed to various places on the map.  By default creeps would follow the summoning mage around.

Creeps could also be anchored to a location, which made them more durable but unable to move outside of their leash.

The wizard had some spell powers that typical direct damage or buffs depending on the spell.