Terrain 2.0

This is more of a question for Uber. I've played PA off and on since the beta release (and there have been many great improvements since) and for the most part i've had a good time. But its getting harder to want to come back, my main reason for this is the terran. Its flat, uninspired and generally provides little to no strategy in a battle( no choke points, valleys or height variation). Which is frustrating considering I love the multi planet hopping and the idea of fighting on round worlds. But sadly, games like ta, that came out over 16 years ago still do terrain better.

Anyways, there was talk from Uber about the possibily of updating the terrain after the 1.0 release. Is that something still planned sometime in the foreseeable future or has that ship sailed?

Even if it has, thanks for the fun ride.

Hopefully, in the mean time, you can check out some of the community made maps.

Easiest way is to get PAMM if you haven't already and download the community map pack mod.

You're one of the many other people that want the terrain to be more lifefull.

But everything you mentioned can be done in the system editor so... My suggestions:

Effect emitters on the surface pls.
Better water pls.
More CSGs
Terraforming in editor

Yup, it's pretty bad. Literally everything you said is voiced many times in reviews and occasionally pops up on these forums too. It's my single biggest pet peeve as well. Every time someone brings it up on these forums the "regulars" claim there are other more important things to work on. Apparently Ubers devolopment process only occurs unilaterally.

It hasn't really been worked on in nearly a year, I have serious doubts it will ever get worked on. I see uber moving on to other projects before terrain gets another pass. But who knows, I might be wrong.

You just haven't used the map editor. You want choke points? I've made a map consisting entirely of trenches. Now, I agree it might be nice to add such handmade CSG maps to the pre-made systems available. But it's not like it doesn't exist. The system editor is incredibly powerful.

You can have choke points right now, I run into them fairly often on the lava planets, but I'd like to see more hills and mountians that aren't just impassable. Give us hills that units can path over (or some units, like say bots yes but tanks no)

Also looking forward to seeing a recreation of this map in PA.

You can't currently adjust the height or make hills, valleys, or cliffs. Hell you can't even make rivers. I wouldn't really call it "incredibly powerful". And honestly, people shouldn't have to spend an hour or so making a decent map to get any kind of enjoyment out of the game. There should be vanilla systems already prebuilt. If it's so easy as you say, why hasn't Uber made a handful and included them?

And then this still only fixes half the problem, maps will still look and feel bland until more art assets and effects are added.

I agree that the terrain could be improved, but saying "its getting harder to want to come back, my main reason for this is the terrain" is something I fail to understand. Would you say the same about Total Annihilation, "its getting harder to want to come back to Total Annihilation, my main reason for this is the lack of multiple planets, I wish TA had totally different biomes (lava, reclaimable tree biomes, Gas Giants, metal planets with annihilazor, water only planets, moons with engines)". Yes Terrain could be improved, but the lack of more interesting terrain doesn't discount the other amazing aspects of PA to the point that "its getting harder to want to come back". What a joke. Planetary Annihilation is the best RTS game ever made. And anyway 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.

I agree with Planktum.
the scope of pa is incredibly ambitious and id say to be completely fair to them they have pretty much nailed it (obv there are still sore points to iron out in the future). But on the overall picture this is an incredible game you can play over large planets / systems have multi planetary battles going on simultaneously whilst some one else is launching a moon at your main base, whilst your also desperatly trying to spam up catalysts on the metal planet to unleash the major lazor of doom.... how is this not epic and not make you want to come back to it.
lets be honest... they are a small team who can work on a select number of projects at once and so obviously theres a large list some where with various features being argued for and against continuously. Just give it some time and stop moaning and enjoy what we currently have. Patience and i'm pretty sure they will deliver in time

I will copy what I said into this thread since you copied this into another thread for some reason.. (maybe by accident? X3 )


"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..."

There is a reason I posted this in both threads. I've updated the post in the other read, so that it now makes more sense.

Yes TA had different "biomes" but each match was confined to a single biome. In PA you fight across multiple biomes in a single match. The current strategic depth of PA far outweighs any minor benefits which would come from Terrain v2.0. Yes I would like to see Terrain v2.0, but when someone says "its getting harder to want to come back" until they see improvements to the terrain is just laughable.

I would almost go as far as saying that these people are actually turtlers and they want Terrain features which will allow them to turtle more. But this game isn't about turtling and the angles of attack in this game are numerous (there's no corner of the map!) so Terrain v2.0 is more likely just going to add aesthetic (visual) changes rather than any real gameplay changes.

There were at least a few TA maps that were combinations of the city and forest biomes. In fact on one map half of it was forest and half was city. (And the city could be reclaimed for metal, and trees for energy)

But I guess I sort of agree at the same time?

I agree about the looks of the terrain. I wrote a post a few months ago suggesting some improvements (here) but, in any case, terrain really needs some love.

difference between spheres to play on and flat maps .. the later was available for far longer and is as such easier to work with ...
i heavily doubt you can code terrain on spheres the same way you could code on flat maps ... and i am certain uber themselves actualy wants to make more intresting terrain ... but the thing is ... it is NOT that easy ...

i seriously have to wonder if people are actualy considering this at all ..
or just simply throw out their suggestions in a "don't care how hard it is just do it" - manner ...

I want better terrain in two ways:

From a gameplay perspective that adds more depth, higher elevation means increased range. Climbing hills slows acceleration. Swamps, mud, and shallow water also slows. Different terrains effect vehicles, ice could cause increased momentum when trying to stop, snow and sand could slow. I want valleys, hill and mountains. I want canyons that wind around that you battle in. Man made and Ice bridges you battle across.

From an art perspective I want to see improvements. I would love to see lava pop and boil, fissures to steam, water to have waves and better reflections. Desert to have dust storms. The environments need little touches like that. I'd also love to see more biomes instead of the earth ones we have now. You could have alien cities with narrow choke points to battle through. Acid, crystal and Mars biomes. Or something completely new never though of. I am tired of mostly playing on earth's climates. We are in space afterall, where is the variety?

gameplay effects need to be carefully balance out, but sure those are nice things and I am sure Uber agrees on them. Question of time to some of them at least hopefully. I think adding stuff like wreckages should have priority over nice to have terrain features though, having units die by going "plop" and then just be gone is just sooooo wrong and immersion breaking. Much much much worse than missing trails in the sand.

I definately want to see wreckage. I HATE how units just "poof" out of existence. It makes the game feel really silly and childish. Maybe that's what they are going for. The art style reminds me of Zelda Wind Waker. I don't hate it, but I prefer the gritty feel of TA or FA.

You keep saying you are sure Uber agrees on things, or you are sure they are working on it. But do they really agree? Are they working on them? How do you know? How would any of us know? I haven't seen them be vocal about it, or even admit they need work. That type of communication is really lacking. Other indie developers often release weekly or even biweekly updates detailing what direction they are taking the game, what feedback they have read, and what needs improvement. Even a simple, "Yes we are aware terrain is a bit lacking, we plan to fix is soon." would go a long way. I haven't see any of that really on these forums. Maybe for some minor things like balance fixes but beyond that there isn't much transparency.

Erm... You need to read a bit more Jables talks a whole lot here and actually quite a bit on the Steam forums. And Sorian makes many threads on AI developments, Bgolus is on often talking about effects and such, helping modders, etc...

I'd argue the devs here are more communicative thank other indie devs, as yes they may make weekly or biweekly posts, but you don't really get the same 1 on 1 interaction that you do here.

Also wreckage used to be present in the game but was removed at one point, hopefully it'll make a come back. (I believe they did say it would be temporary)

I read the forums a lot and I get the impression that they realize that PA isn't complete.
And yes the art style of PA is different and I doubt it will ever look like FA, simply because PA's style is different, but I am sure even with this style anyone realize that PA can have more effects and more stuff like wreckage to make it look better. That's not hard to come up with imho.

you do realize that uber is a small team right? and that the team working on pa is smaller than before ? and no they can't bring more people as they have to work on multiple projects ... yes they speak to us regularly ... or are you closing your eyes in the pte and stable threads?
no they are not focusing on effects as there are still things with higher priority than that ..