Will this game ever be epic?

I think the custom maps prove categorically that the engine is capable of all this. I'll have to organise some games with your guys on some of the best hand crafted maps and you'll see. The vanilla game plays it safe, I'm more interested in the underlying potential and trust me it's there.

I downloaded the two community map packs on PAMM and so far I have been unimpressed with the handful of systems I tried. Are there any names you'd recommend? Also keep in mind spherical planets also come with the con of bad pathing. Meaning we can never really have large naval ships or land units. Is it worth it? Currently in my mind, no. Will it be in the future? That remains to be seen.

Large units are not exactly PA's thing, but I digress.

Planets for PA add a completely different play style to this game, that in my eyes improves the game immensely. And canyons, moutains, etc.. Are entirely possible in PA, and in fact things that were impossible in TA and FA are possible in PA due to the fact PA doesn't use height maps. Bridges for example.

Conundrums crossing is my personal fave... Spread out metal, tunnels you can fight in and over (!)... really interesting map imo.... Not especially big in the hight variation but that isn't what the map maker was going for.

Hot platforms is another good one, remake of lava high ground from ta in metal map form....

Actually there is a sizable group of people who feel PA has basically all units way too big. Navy before that patch was by far the worst offender though, the ships were so big it felt to me like playing with toy boats in a bath tube due to the relation between the size of the ships and the water they were in.

"Epic" is a pretty vague term. So big giant units are epic? Is this epic?


or rather tiny units on large planets?


I would argue in favor of the 2nd image. Certainly the first isn't all that serious, but I rather have small units on planets that seem big. That is more "epic" to me.

You give up a lot when you push out a RTS of the technical complexity of PA within 2 years.
Uber is showing that they are quite willing to continue to fill in the holes the game had or still has.
The new system editor is showing a lot potential to improve the gameplay value of maps and for example ladder maps have become a lot better with it. To make really interesting maps some features are still missing ofc, but the devs at Uber don't just idle
Also when you look for the edge of what is possible in the game you will always end up with "look at mods", because that is what mods are all about. I am sure Uber will take another look at better map features as well in the future, the system editor was the first step towards it, a big step.

Harder to implement for sure, but I think Uber is on their way to get pathfinding to work decent. Yes it's not optimal, but it has improved in the last 2 years from "my ships decided to fly, my tanks decided to climb into factories and get stuck on top and my dox are stuck on the seashore and won't ever move again" to a pretty playable state.

They did a test with one of the Supcom's pathing and PA's side by side, and I believe Supcom either did very similarly, or slightly worse... I want to find that again.

Found it!



Edit: This video is also a bit dated which means pathing has most likely improved, AND I forgot that FA doesn't even have allied units collide with eachother, they just phase through.

PA's pathing is much better than people give it credit I feel. Silly people and their silly nostalgia. =P

I agree that the terrain could be improved, but the lack of more interesting terrain doesn't discount the other amazing aspects of PA. Planetary Annihilation is the best RTS game ever made. And PA does have gameplay affecting terrain already with lava, mountains, trees, fissures, water, and metal planets have many choke points.

Guess what... naval units can't path over land and you need a teleporter to move land units between planets. You need T2 fighters to invade air on another planet. They are some pretty epic examples of choke points if you ask me.

I think you are looking at this from the wrong perspective (glass half full). The amount of strategic depth in this game is crazy.

TA kinda had.. More biomes than PA. (Lava, metal, alien, marsian, city, green, tropical, desert, etc...)

But I will admit many really caused eye bleeding...

Especially the metal biome...

I am pretty sure they usually did collide. Just in some cases it didn't work out anymore when you had too many units. FA pathfinding is pretty bad once you have too many units. It takes ages until a whole army has started moving. PA is ages ahead in that regard. The only thing that PA still makes feel bad sometimes are bugs that cause units to get stuck, but that is mainly a lack of polish. Additionally some people might dislike how units seem stupid and bump into each other, but that huge amounts of humans don't pathfind much better in reality.

I must agree that FA engine is old and horrible pathfind .

But honestly the best game that got the best pathfind is Supreeme commander 2 they have make a fantastic job there.

I belive PA can and will improve .
But also im sure will never give the epic battles FA do .

Just have 1k units on field means nothing , the variations on options a game give you make the epic game.

And on FA you just need the mind because the game got all that no other game have give us.

They have think in all to all kind situations .

But who nows iff PA wont get that point let the time pass and maybe they surprise us.

I like the second picture better too. Im down to try these custom maps will someone host a game?

I'm actually online for one, I can host one of you like!

What is your name? I will log on. Host the best custom map you know of.

Hosted now (P)cdrkf in game

@cola_colin regarding defintion of epic yes it is vague it depends on the matter of how the various units and features complement each other ... a single unit or feature by itself might be cool or unintresting but may aswell be blant or awesome to watch in numbers ... the sense of something epic depends on the relation to something else or various factors ...

to me saying epic means that the mix of content pa offers feels right to give that feel of grandness ...
yes massive units can give that feel as well as massive numbers of tiny units do ... the thing is to not make it monotone
and PA to me does not feel monotone in that regard ...

it is not just large units, way to turn my argument into hyperbole.

What is epic to me? More unit variety and nice looking effects. interesting weapons like the giant laser on the spider bot from FA. Great booming sounds that immerse you. Ships that transform into amphibious units. Mobile factories that have large battleship batteries on them. Units with multiple weapons on them that fire in all directions. Tanks with sheilds. Mobile shield generators. Lots of chaos and eye candy. PA has none of this and it completely lacks a soul. I definitely wouldn't call PA epic. Uber needs to go to sign it's crew up for some creativity workshops or something. Maybe a few Michael Bay movies and take notes on ONLY the special effects and sound.

If I had to some up what PA is missing in one word I'd say variety. It lacks sound variety, effect variety, unit variety, and terrain variety. PA is by definition very monotonous.

in other words ... the fancy ...

and i entirely disagree with your statement that pa lacks a soul...

i pity you who seems to not be able to appreciate the "simple" things of this game

I broke down why this video was utter non-scientifical shi in an older post

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAabsolute boloni.

the exact opposite is the case actually.

tatsu no matter how you look at it, the pathfinding in FA is horrible if you want to send around large armies FA simply was before the flowfield stuff was introduced into RTS games, it cant compete with pathfinding of supcom2, PA or starcraft 2 (do they use flowfields actually? large ling swarms do look like water at least). PA needs a bunch of bug fixes sure, but unless you run into a bug units react much more fluid than in FA.

Reading this gives me the feeling you don't understand at all what it means to develop a game like PA within 2 years. They don't need creativity workshops, they need more time.

"monotonous" is a totally fair critic. I personally would not say PA is that bad of in terms of variety, but sure a few extra things and stuff can make it much better. Does that mean Uber can just add it by tomorrow? No. By next month? Well the next few small steps yes. You can see them constantly in PTE. Yes they are small steps. But there won't be a patch that magically turns the game into the game of all our dreams. That takes a lot of small steps over a longer duration.