If you could change one thing about PA what would it be?

We don't have official server support. And if memory serves me, the only way for our servers to show up in the server browser is to tap into PA Stat's and people have to have the PA Stats mod installed.

I would say a decent tutorial would go a long way. For example, even though i've been supporting since beta, i don't really play for the main reason that it just baffles me sometimes. A strong tutorial would help this game significantly. The basics are fairly easy to grasp, but everything beyond that, like techs, orbital, and even just good eco management are far beyond me. I'm okay at more structured RTS like starcraft, but this is a whole new beast that i can't wrap my head around, even though i love the game. I hate having it installed and rarely playing it, but at the same time, i can't play it that well, because(And i'm not proud to admit this), even base level ai can wreck me 5 times over before i even realize what's going on. If there was a decent tutorial, or even something as small as a series of tutorial videos, i feel like the game would be alot less intimidating for newer players such as myself.

Don't get me wrong, i love every second of all of my PA matches. Even though i get slaughtered, stomped, and basically just destroyed within 10 minutes. I just want to get better, and i feel like a decent tutorial system would be a massive step in the right direction.

wasn't that what @datura2012 originally meant?

Let's just turn this into rock em sock em robots in space.

super unit's....

Cue cries of heresy

Going against the long established circle jerk against supers, I actually agree. The logic against them was that FA turned into a turtle-until-super fest. But FA wasn't built around completely mind-bogglingly massive armies or 3D play like PA is. And, PA doesn't have shields. I think PA is much better equipped to balance the trade-off between spending metal on T1 units versus trying to turtle up a bit until you can get experimentals. I believe in most games, the player spamming T1 would have easily overrun the player turtling through sheer economic differences. Instead experimentals would be a more dynamic tie-breaker alteernative to the (somewhat boring in my view) planetary annihilation options. Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose.

I think you make a very good point there. I can imagine a situation with tw0 well matched players are well dug in both with full anti nuke coverage and needing a big tanky unit to break through the enemy's defence.

Having said that, I just love have big awesome robot's blowing 10 tons of heavy out of everything...I'm kinda shallow like that.

Was a BIG Fa fan. Loved Ta also (still have my old cavedog cdroms) but Supcom just blew me away.

Heard someone made a super unit mod for Pa using Com models.

Would be Interesting to see how that changes the gameplay.

It sounds strange at first, but actually I think this could indeed be a solution to the multi planet orbital mess.

So I would really like to try out the following: Completely take out orbital units, buildable teleporters and interplanetary space travel, add 1-4 indestructable neutral teleporters (number depending on planet size) to each planet that can be used by everyone in both directions. Teleporters are either able to connect to every other teleporter, or there are fixed 2-way paths, both would be interesting.

The teleporters would be important points of interest on each planet, so fights would surely break out around them, resulting in more interesting encounters and strategies. Imagine you had to decide if you fight over one teleporter that is heavily contested, or rather try to sneak through another one. You could even try to backdoor your enemies with those teleporters. This would also help to make terrain and environment more important, another good thing mentioned in this thread. It would eliminate the need to micro your clumpy orbital units (which only distracts from the core gameplay: epic ground/naval/air battles), so no more boring orbital battles that interrupt the fun parts of the game, no more fiddling around with orbital fabbers and astreus for minutes trying to set a foot on a heavily camped planet. Of course one player can camp around the teleporter entrance, which gives him an advantage over the arriving units, but you could still break through with enough units (or take another teleporter). Or how about we make nukes able to fly through teleporters, or a new vehicle that carries a nuke that can be moved through the teleporter to eradicate the surrounding enemies (just like Stargate command sent a nuke through the stargate to bomb the Goa'uld in the alternative timeline^^). You also don't have to scroll all the way out anymore to monitor flight paths of orbital units, you just switch from planet to planet, everything you need to see is on the planets. Then add minimaps for each planet for even more ease in keeping overview, and make the core gameplay of land/sea/air battle more interesting.

Maybe some modders could try out that idea?

This is btw. comparable to those classic fantasy strategy games that had multiple planes. For example Age of Wonders had a overworld plane, a subterranean plane (connected through indestructable cave entrances), and a shadow plane (connected through indestructable shadow portals). Keeping overview over those different planes was easier, because you don't have another plane in between that you also have to monitor (in PA: space), you just click a button to switch to the other plane. And the whole approach was easier to understand cos it is straight forward, you saw the entrances and knew how to get your units from plane A to plane B (whereas a new player in PA is probably overwhelmed with the whole orbital stuff going on).