PTE Build 76412-pte now live (updated with new build 12/16/14)

Bug: Cannot build metal extractors on spots where non player extractors have been destroyed+wreckage reclaimed.

Ai skirmish game+ no mods
PTE 76011

Mered4, I actually like the costing of energy for various tasks. it's been posted in other places but with the huge rate you get energy later on, and how little it's used I feel like it could be doing more.

Edit: Keep in mind I haven't mentioned numbers for costs. So it could be as little as 1 energy per tick for firing guns from turrets etc. This would also work for people who don't like using energy to reclaim metal. Reducing energy cost rather than removing it?

Introduce energy cost to maybe Halleys/ Annihilaser. Maybe not Halley so much, I'd love to see it but since halleys only get used once I don't have such a big problem if they're self powered.

Annihilaser on the other hand I really think they should cost energy to use, and have that number a very very big number. That way it creates some kind of restriction so you can't keep using it in succession and end the game so quickly.

Metal I understand, since it goes into everything that's built, but the ubercannon used to use energy and I want that returned. I posted about this specific thing, but I didn't do a good job and noone really voted on my poll

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/energy-consumption-and-balance.65870/

If nothing else, I just wanna get people to put in votes regarding what they think should cost energy if anything.

I've got a list of notes here that I've accumulated over time, some of them are redundant and have already been implemented but I wanted to at least partly bring them up so that all my thoughts are in context with each other.
I'll try to break it up as much as possible for ease of reading. I hope to get plenty of feedback!

Aesthetics
We had a bug a while ago, and then a mod following it regarding the pitch black night cycle of planets.
I wasn't a fan of how dark it was, but I did like that it was much darker than the barely darker version of the current night cycle. So I'd like darker night with more/brighter lights from individual units/buildings
If it creates significantly higher computer costs, have it as a graphics option to enable/scale?
If the night time is only made darker by 50-70% it should still be easily playable while further emphasizing the subtle things uber dev team has done like given headlights/lighting to most of the unit/building roster.

Gameplay mechanics
Originally you could build turrets on any flat surface with a large enough area, but recently you can't anymore.
Please return the capacity to build on elevated terrain, the little desert hill type things with flat tops.
I'd like to see them do more than just create obstructions to pathing. Make them exploitable as defenses?

For a while now I was wondering about why PA you couldn't use existing wreckages to build buildings/units. This was a common thing in Sup Com. Although this might have been abandoned in PA from the start due to fundamental game design differences. I'd really like to know how possible it is for PA? Even if we limit it to things like commander being required to reconstruct stuff from wreckages, maybe do some kind of contextual if a commander is selected with an advanced fabricator and the adv. fabber builds an adv. power gen over an adv. power gen wreckage, it gets built using the wreckage, rather than reclaiming it first??
Is it possible?

I know that the auto econ settings are per unit/building, is there some way to implement a UI or game setting toggle or to manually assign eco priority to advanced/basic factories, orbital, fabricators etc?
So that those of us who can't multitask so well have a streamlined method for managing our costs.

Planktrum mentioned eco management panel, where for art it?

Unit cannon
After reading comments on the unit cannon, and trying it out myself. I'd very much prefer units/pods be vulnerable to orbital defense and air defense If we keep the unit cannon as a factory, then increase power usage, and increase rate of construction/shooting.

Also, I really did like the Kickstarter video of the unit cannon, how the doxes were shooting down. I realise the disclaimer that the unit cannon isn't finished, but a deceleration in falling speed, and the ability of the bots/vehicles to shoot down while in air- even if it's only the dox.

As for whoever it was, I apologise for not going and finding your quote directly, but creating pods of multiple units when smaller units like dox? I really like that idea. That'd mean there's more survivability, and retaliation against air/land defence, and they aren't in the orbital layer long so there's no real need for survivability against orbital layer defense.

I'm torn on whether the umbrella should shoot unit pods, but they can't shoot air layer period, so I think it should stay that way.

Naval
Increasing acceleration, top speed, and decreasing deceleration rates on naval units, while preventing them from turning when stationary. That might help make people happier with naval + naval combat.

Aircraft
While I'm at least thankful at the appearance someone listened to my desire for t2 bombers to stay out of AA range- I didn't want them to hover on the spot like airborne rocket bots.

While I don't have any major complaints about the current fighters, I'm happy they can't pivot/hover and pick off lots of aircraft without moving. I feel like they should have a decrease in deceleration and acceleration?? So that it takes longer to reach max speed, or longer to stop.
Fighters only being able to fire while moving
Fighters only being able to turn when moving forward? I don't know aerial terms.

I feel like some adjustments with those would somewhat improve or make dogfights more interesting.

Orbital
I've noticed, maybe it's just me but the orbital layer seems to be the same distance from the conceptual centre of the planet irrespective of the size of the planet. I was wondering if the orbital layer could be changed so it's consistently x distance from the surface of the planet?

Also, this has been in mods but I don't want to play mods with all the different game changes.
An orbital layer teleporter? that costs slightly more energy (but still relative) than a land teleporter to use, but costs lots more metal compared to a land teleporter. If we added this, and also made it accessible to aircraft?
I think giving aircraft access to orbital layer teleporter will help invasion plans. That way it's still possible to transport aircraft, but it can't be done before the enemy has had time to put together decent anti air/invasion protection.
This is in contrast to letting air use land teleporters, where it'd be severely overwhelming to rush in with land and airforce.

popededi mentioned orbital layer nuke launcher. While keeping the original nuke launcher planetary.
What about making the nuke launcher orbital layer, and make catapult global/ super long range while keeping it's original damage? We could retask flak/anti air turrets or add on an anti rocket laser to the anti nuke launcher.
Some way to dual purpose existing weapons/units to defend against catapults, while giving catapults extra purpose?

I ran outta notes/ideas~

Can I get more info on this? Just tried it on 76011 and could not repro.

AI game, no mods, AI built an extractor, I killed it, reclaimed the wreckage, and built a new extractor.

happens on some metal spots on the ranked map too, no idea why, if a mex is destroyed you cannot rebuild. Can also happen if another fabber has been ordered to build there which is not such a good thing,

Hi and thanks Clopse, and Jables.
No, I couldn't reproduce. I thought I gave you all the relevant information. No mods, multiplanet system.
FFA Ai skirmish on 76011 PTE. Ah, I lost that game against ai (damn hypercompetent Sorian). So I didn't get to confirm other biomes, but from what I could tell the lack of building extractors happened only with desert biome? But I can't confirm.

Please let us know if anyone gets a repro on this one. We'll try on our side as well.

I tried on desert planet (not the ranked one),

• self destruct and rebuild
• destroy AI extractor and rebuild on top of wreckage
• destroy AI extractor and reclaim, then rebuild

all seem to work as expected. Will try destroying wreckage next.

Jables, To clarify I noticed the problem primarily with ai extractors I destroyed, and tried taking those points.
Metal points which had been previously unclaimed posed no problem.
I didn't test destroying my own extractors, but the ai killing my extractors created no problems when I went to rebuild extractors on those points.

I'll update if I get the bug again.

I agree with @Yaegz , changes that, essentially, only lower the skillcap of the game are not a good idea if PA is to become an established competitive RTS some day.

Wasn't the metal spot blocked by a factory or something? They tend to take a lot of no build space next to the ramp.

And macro friendly means queueing infinite buildings or mexes? Where is the difficulty? Once players find decent build orders there is little left in the game to allow better players to separate themselves from mediocre players. Macro is easy in this game already and can be mastered in a matter of weeks by any Uber player. Once macro is mastered, micro is what separates top 3 from top 20. I believe the better player should have enough opportunities to prove they are the better player.

Remy continually questioning me will break my confidence. As for your point though, I wouldn't notice it as a bug if I thought it was something simple like a building was too close.

Sadly I don't think Uber has intentions to make this game into a competitive RTS like SC2. Nor do i know if that would be a great strategic move for Uber based on the mostly casual playerbase. Regardless, the skill cap should never be lowered. The lower skilled players are uneffected and the higher skilled players have a reason to keep playing.

Yaegz, I agree with your wanting opportunities to demonstrate skill. I don't agree though that we should do it via extending and complicating micromanagement. As far as I can tell, a macro based game tries to streamline all the different aspects of gameplay, making it easier to advance or improve your army/economy without overly taxing your attention in a particular combat. That's what the queing is for.

I think that properly finishing PA will give you plenty of demands on your skill by many different choices to accomplish the same goal (eg kill your opponent by x timeframe) with different factories, efficient build compositions, and if you reallly want multi tasking, how about managing your economy/ factory production over multiple planets?

That said, say I agree that Uber should consider raising the skill level by introducing some level of micromanagement.
If you accept you can't give units abilities to complicate things, because this is a game about multiple planets-
What ideas do you have to increase skill ceiling and introduce micromanagement potential?
(What ideas does Yaegz have to increase micromanagement?)

New pte build coming in later today. will have some more balance changes and AI fixes.

Darn that AI!

@Yaegz Are there any other units that allow for such awesome micro-control? If not, that's the issue with the dox. being a casual noob, I can't micro them even decently (anymore ), so I don't notice this. However, if they increase the skill-cap as you want, I think that they should do it with a whole bunch of units rather than the just dox.

Edited for clarity.

I am mostly speaking from a 1v1 perspective since it is my expertise. Multi planet games are incredibly rare in 1v1s so there is never really a chance to raise skill cap by macro on many planets. As far as specific ideas, I am mainly concerned with maintaining the current skill cap rather than increasing it further (even though that would be even better).

I feel like I am quickly approaching the skill cap in the game on single planet games so I am worried I won't be able to continue improving if the micro techniques are removed. However, a higher variety of viable units with different roles will increase the skill cap of the game by making macro decision making more complicated. I have a lot of ideas to make micro more intensive but no one wants that

The extra mex on the ranked ice planet has the problem all the time. try there

Care to elaborate on 'balance changes'?