What's missing from TA and SupCom in PA

Don't forget Red Alert 2 + Yuri's Revenge, and Emperor Battle For Dune. Both those games played like cheap 70's B movies.


A taste

PA is lacking Good and unique maps like this https://forums.uberent.com/threads/i-bring-you-hot-platforms.66831/
I wish we could make better custom maps and also do landscaping and customize ground hight and water placement. Also the current system designer is very buggy:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/frustrating-bugs-in-the-system-designer-buid-76557.66808/

I also miss some cool unit types (t3) game changing units can be nice and break the extreme long turtle games from time to time.

They were good, but the style and content of the homeworld series / world in conflict, is always the first game i think of for story.

I don't think PA needs a story, who cares why giant robots oblitarate planets???

We have been killing each other for centuries for shitty reasons, why robots need one???

I think more biomes, more terrain elements, add new gameplay features (like asteroids (like the kickstarter video... ) or starships (which may not be very playable)) and BIGGER units...

Well, simply for more single player content would be nice, as the current galactic war is little more then a challenge mode, the AI could use a little more umph, and most of the features you suggested would actually benefit everybody.

Multiplayer got it's ranked mode, so why not a little work on a singleplayer mode?

they set the bar too high? ...
there may some things still missing they mentioned to include but what actualy was to be put in was long VERY long known to the audience ... like did you EVER take a look on the planetary annihilation kickstarter page ?
maybe you are rather the one who set the bar too high ...

The only references to Supreme Commander was that they shared some devs. All other references are to Total Annihilation, not Supreme Commander (Hence the name Planetary ANNIHILATION, not Planetary COMMANDER).

As @MrTBSC said, there's no reason to expect what we had been told from the start would not be occurring - It was always going to be one faction, and Galactic war in lieu of a traditional campaign.
Remember that this game has only a fraction of the budget of Supreme Commander.

That is the last refuge of the PA UBER fanatic, “they didn’t have enough money…cut them some slack” Look at Endless Legend and Endless Space. Two games developed by an Indie developer, both games are chock full of lore, and they tell an interesting story. I doubt very much; that Amplitude had the budget of Civilization - Beyond Earth. You make do with what you have, but you still try to deliver the best product you can…and you don’t cry about it.

Sorry, but budget is a real argument. You were complaining that PA didn't have what Sup Com did, yet sup com had many many millions more to work with. You're basically saying Uber should have somehow managed to make an equivalent game in half the time or less, with only a fraction of the budget. You were also expecting things you knew wouldn't be in the game, which is not Ubers fault.

Amplitude use existing engines for their games, and as far as I can tell are a studio made up of many smaller studios combined. Simpler games from a technical standpoint, and likely more capital to work with too.

Edit: Found some further information. They had close to the same initial budget as PA to make Endless space. But it's a far simpler game, which just goes to show how much Uber managed to do with the time and money they had.

Not to forget what endless space was like upon release.

I was there, it was alright, but nothing special really.

I feel that a lot of people overlook the sheer complexity of what Uber has had to do to get PA to where it is. They made a custom, purpose-built engine to handle this game, which is a technical marvel. The Chronocam feature I'm certain is something other games will attempt to emulate in the near future because it is a real game-changer as far as things like eSports are concerned. Again, extremely technically impressive - on a shoestring budget and an incredibly short development timeframe for a game of this magnitude.

That PA even exists at all today is nothing short of a miracle - we are walking among giants of the gaming industry.

It's ok to want more, but in reality they didn't do as much as we expected, because we're not in the know.

And who knows, it could be as innocent or as corrupt as we imagine, but what matters is that we are here now.

PA is in the same vein as supcom or TA, even if it doesn't live up to personal expectations.

Planetary Annihilation is nothing like Total Annihilation, except for the name. I have no real description for this game. This is supposed to be a major RTS…or a major RTS on a budget, with one faction, no story campaign, the focus of the game seems to be multiplayer. I think this game is in the vein of Monday Night Combat and Super Monday Night Combat, with the art style of Supreme Commander 2. For a multiplayer focused RTS, its player retention is horrible. At the end of day, this is the game the developers gave us, hate it or love it…it is what it is. The game isn’t horrible, it’s what they could afford to make, and nothing more.

Well as someone who *played Multi Player TA* on line back when it was a being played seriously (I was active online around 99' 2000 time frame) PA *does* feel very TA like in that setting.

I agree it lacks the storyline / campaign, however I loved TA first and foremost as a multi-player experience (even over horrible dial up internet). The pacing is different (it's much quicker to create large armies in PA, though I feel the slower pace of TA may have been a decision intended to go easy on the hardware of the day rather than the 'vision' behind the game), however the way things work and interact is very TA like in many respects.

I mean the unit to unit interaction is somewhat simpler, however the battlefields your dealing with are so much more complex and we have an additional layer of play to worry about that I can forgive PA that. It's all subjective however, I mean if the *main* attraction of TA for you was the campaign then I can understand why you'd find PA lacking.

Well that's exactly what I said, but sure.

And some of us like supcom2.

That must be why the last 30 days had the highest number of average players on steam ever.

[Citation needed]

Certainly.

Last 30 day average: 1007.4
Previous highest: 876.6 (Sep 2014)

http://steamcharts.com/app/233250

Which isn't even including the player's not using Steam which I have discovered is maybe half of the player base. (It could be less now since the steam sales, and the fact my data is a little old)