It was a mistake to call this a release

I think your wrong on this one- Uber have been very clear, repeatedly, that the server *is* coming. Them releasing the server won't remove the requirement for a game key as you'll need that to play on their servers (where all the on-line services are). Mavor was very specific about being able to host private lan parties on a single licence for example. You are correct that it won't be open source, they've stated that themselves- however they are going out of their way to create an easy to use modding system including the ability to do stuff with the server side (already available in a limited fashion) so we shouldn't worry to much about that.

People here are talking as if Uber are somehow the 'enemy' or trying to trick us- you do know that the *only* reason TA, Spring and SupCom all still exist one way or another is down to Mavor et al making sure the games were accessible to modders in the first place?! Uber even bid on the TA ip when it was sold off with the plan of 'give it back to the community' (i.e. for TA:Spring) however they were out bid.

It seems portable was talking about sources for the server. No idea how he come up with that, it has been said in the past that due to licensing reasons it is very unlikely Uber will release the full PA source anytime soon at least. The compiled server executable however is pretty much guaranteed to be released in the not too distant future.

EDIT:
oh also @portable about the "no needing a clicky installer thing". One of the main big things for a server release is that single player will be possible without internet. To make that work the game has to start a server and configure it all by itself, hidden away from the player completely.

"Gimmicky" laser?!?! oh no you didn't

So, here's the thing- they might as well release an open-source server because the protocol will be mapped within a month of the private server binary release anyway. And if it isn't because the server requires "phone home" capabilities, well then you all will still complain about DRM.

I find it far more likely that Uber will release a single-player-only "private server" baked into the current system than a ready-t0-roll multiplayer lobby and server (which, as I've said, I don't believe will happen).

I'm still a huge fan of PA, and I'm extremely impressed with the software as a significant technical achievement.

If there was one thing that has always been complained about during the whole development of PA it would be what Uber title the phase of development.

Really what different does it make if PA is titled Early Access or Release? Uber are very up front about the development and design goals.

Well they kinda' have to release the server to the masses, besides, why not? Minecraft did it all fine and well, as did Tf2, and many other games.

Dedicated servers are fine, and Uber has stated they're working on fixing them up to being simplistic enough for the average user.

In the former you have early buyers who are happy to follow through the upfront developpement in the later you have unhappy customers if there are missing a core functionality to them.

non ... except that the game gets the stamp "ready to be thrown to the scrutinydogs" on it

I agree with this point of view. Why would content take priority over basic functionality?

Unless it totally screwed with balance, I would envisage that announcing a Death Star planet a month or two after launch would have been seen as awesome new content. Landing offline play a month or two after launch looks like a dev who didn't release their product at the right time. Meh, I can wait for it, but I can see where a lot of people are coming from, they are still wary of DRM and also want to be able to play long matches against the AI without worrying about being disconnect and losing it all, because there are no save games.
It will be a glorious day when these things are finally in and those people can buy the game and enjoy it too.

so you say that they didnt work on optimisation but "just" the annhilasor that is a bit of extra content to the game

People like to see developers as "the enemy". During SMNC and hell, during every other game I've been even remotely active in the community in, people are ALWAYS accusing developers of trying to scam or trick them, because they like to think game development is this cheap and easy and simple process that never ever has internal issues

Why does everyone seem to think that two randomly selected things in PA would take an equal amount of resources?

And it's mostly because the developers prefer to pretend they have little to no internal issues for better PR.

Chris Taylor once said the game industry is like sausage industry, it's not a good idea to let the customers know the aversive details about how the sausages gets made.

Mapping out the protocol won't help you unless you rewrite the server. In which case ... well you might as well develop PA yourself

Uber quite clearly promised a fully usable server release and I can't see a single reason why they would not deliver that. Yes they may be running "late", but that doesn't mean they will go back on their promise.

And why do you think that is? It certainly has nothing to do with features such as the unit cannon.

Basically if you've been here for a while... Nobody really cared about Uber's explanations in the past, they'd still be pissed over things. Brad's mentioned it multiple times.

everyone now knows how sausage is made... and it's probably hurt sausage sales a bit, but not very much

look, we're all adults here, and we all know that we had no actual vote in the "release now/not yet" discussion

can we just stop the sniping at each other and watch what happens next?

NOOOO ..... MUST ...EXPRESSS DISAPOINTMENT ..

Not sure where to air my grievances, but I played a few games over the weekend and I have to say, I got bored.

Over the past few months I've only managed to play one game a day before getting horrendously bored, this weekend I had some spare time and managed 3-4 games.

They were all 10 player FFAs on a single planet or a single planet and a moon. This shouldn't cause any problems, but it does.

After half an hour, the game slowed down to an almost unplayable degree. After an hour, I'd had enough. The problem with FFAs in PA was that you built a game winning army, walked it through everyone alive in turn and won. The benefit here is that you can't do that, because you lose that army, which results in everyone just hoarding an army and nobody ever really attacking anyone because that would be bad for both sides. All of these units in the game just sitting there results in the game playing slowly. Very slowly.

Every game I've played recently the server has ran so slowly that I've simply lost interest.

I'm not a new player to the genre, and I'm not a new player to this line of games and so I know what to expect. The problem for me is, I can't even tell my friends to go out and get this game because even if they learnt how to play they'd spent 30 minutes playing a good game and then 2 hours stuck in a slow moving slugfest that the server can't handle.

Considering the improvements the game has seen over the past few months I can't understand why Uber would release it in its current state. They were obviously making good progress and it would obviously go down badly due to all of the problems. My fear is, they don't know how to solve the problems and therefore they might as well release it now as they know it will never be fixed.

That's why I stick with single planet systems, haha.