TITANS Impressions

So you're saying map makers should be *more* restricted in what kind of maps they can make by making metal planets *only* have the metal everywhere option? or what, add another toggle? you can already functionally do that by setting metal points to cover basically the entire surface, which is also an immediately more readable solution to the player, rather than having to check what 'kind' of metal planet this particular system is using.

The other problem there is that metal planets have the annihilazer, often, in multiplanet systems, you really don't want the planet with the super weapon ALSO the one with way more available metal. In fact, a lot of really good systems make the metal planet have no metal points, so that the only reason you'd go there is for the sake of a late game catalyst-game-ender.

Some of the stuff in terms of clunky orbital control certainly has merit.

A lot of your other complaints, however, seem to be complaints about things that aren't true:

("you can only build land titans from orbit" = False, you can build the land titans from any corresponding T2 fabber)

(also the anchor gripe, which is just incorrect.)

Or things which you seem to imagine were 'supposed' to be in the game, but were actually never intended or promised. Or, things like the 'halley drive by', which were thought about during development, but decided against because of reasons of either gameplay, tech, or dev budget. All of this was explained and discussed within these very forums, between the devs and the community at the time.

You can "functionally" do almost anything by fudging numbers, but it's a kludge, inelegant, and sloppy. You could cover a TA map in metal spots, not the same as a metal map really.

It's the kind of thing that leads to reviews like this:

Which I think is basically 100% on point, but nobody here wants to admit it.

There's already toggles for things like free spawning and symmetry for the sake of "competition", so what would you have against this one? If it was up to me alone there would be no toggle but there's some kind of irrational knee jerk reaction against the concept behind metal planets around here. You also seem to lack imagination in terms of balance, and cannot foresee how it would work out? Without even having tried it?

There is at least one land based Titan that is only buildable by the orbital fabber. And for the anchor, you can simply zoom in yourself. The shot that goes to the surface emanates from the side turrets as it has already done. These things are absolutely true.

The thing about the halley driveby is that it's an interesting gameplay concept utilizing the orbital mechanics. Flinging cheap nukes from distant planets is not.

There is good reasoning behind each point I made, as I made it. You should attempt to read it again with greater understanding.

Why so hostile?

You are not everyone and should stop presuming to speak for others to gain legitimacy yourself. I've already shown you how it is almost exactly TA with orbital mechanics. It's not TA2 yes, it's just TA1 in space. TA was an awesome game, I can dig wanting to recreate and update it. And I can appreciate the new ideas built on top, but that does not change the basis of it.

You're delusional. This game is NOT TA. It was built as a spiritual successor just as Supcom was.

It follows the simple rules that all Annihilation series games follow:

1. Primary mode is assasination (commander).
2. Large battles and macro take priority over tactical micro without invalidating micro completely.
3. Simple tech structure (t1/2/3). Upgrading/building to a new tech level grants access to engineers at that level, and losing those buildings means you've basically lost that tech level.
4. Engineers used as primary means of base building. Engineers can assist eachother to build faster.
5. Streaming economy, and little to no fixed build times.
6. Two primary resources: Metal and Energy

And that's it.

Those are the only similarities that are consistent throughout the entire Annihilation series.

This is NOT TA. Uber has said MULTIPLE TIMES in livestreams and the forums that they are forging a different formula. Does it have similarities? Of course! It's in the same sub-genre! Devs who worked on both Supcom and TA built PA from the ground up. That doesn't give you grounds to say that it should be more like TA because you misinterpreted the incredibly blunt and obvious signs that this game is NOT TA.

You're delusional when you would rather listen to claims by the devs over what is right in front of your eyes. I think I understand what your problem is now, you don't perceive and are not interested in conclusions drawn from logic, only what the devs say.

PA uses the advanced factory concept from TA which was not in SC, SC used upgrading. These are not the same. It uses specialized factories and fabbers again from TA, where supcom had more generalized factories and a universal engineer unit. Supcom had multitransports, shields, commander upgrades, and adjacency none of which were in TA and none of which are in PA because they aren't building on the lessons learned from supcom but are just copying TA because they think it was great. SC had extractor upgrading which is not in PA. PA uses the same kind of laser tower defense structure as in TA, not much differently designed turrets from SC. Many of the units are similar in design to TA units in this way, rather than the very different SC units. They were against super units until recently, a move that rejects SC and adopts TA. PA uses the roam/manuever terminology, calls the resource metal instead of mass, has more scattered resource points where supcom tended to have very designed points. It uses the same kind of build effect as TA. In almost every case where you can compare PA to TA or SC it falls back on TA instead. It does very little to change the formula where SC did a whole lot. Aside from the strategic zoom it takes very little from SC if anything at all.

Oh. I see. Another person quoting a SupCom fanboy who has no idea what the game is or how it works. He probably didn't even play for more than ten hours before going back to his precious FaF.

SupCom plays like a more convenient version of PA? Have they lost their minds? Have they even played PA? PA has area commands for EVERYTHING. Supcom has zilch. PA is in a solar system - Supcom is on a small fraction of a planet. PA has four workable layers, each with their own unit set. SupCom has only three. PA is even easier to mod than SupCom ever was. And PA's netcode is lightyears ahead of SupCom's terribad peer-to-peer stuff.

Sure, blame people for lack of imagination. Have you visited the modding forums lately? Or the balance threads?
Many of us test various balance changes in mods just to see how it would turn out. Then we report our findings here, on this forum.

It's not about *not trying it* - it's about you not liking that your precious ideas are based on the wrong assumptions.

The Air Titan is built from the Air Fabbers, the Tank Titan is built from the Vehicle Fabbers, the Bot Titan is built from the Bot Fabbers, and the Ragnarok is built by all of these. Get your facts straight.

And the Anchor? You seem to be completely ignoring everyone else in this thread, so I'll post a screenshot for you:
http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...666/9E3F204C5A5DD483C85FD13003FF543EB898C8EA/

Sure it's interesting. If you want it, why don't you program it? Last I checked, the devs didn't add in moving Halleys because of the gameplay implications. Sorry to burst your bubble. I wanted it too, but you don't see me whining about it.

Because you refuse to listen.

I do my own research, BmB. I'm not a petty fanboy who parades Uber as some infallible entity. Just because I disagree with your points does not mean I'm suddenly missing my right brain or something.

You, however, refuse to listen to the countless people who have mentioned the many flaws in your reasoning and assumptions about PA. Stubbornness is a great character trait if you are willing to listen. You are apparently unable or unwilling to do so.

Moving halleys are in the game right now, you can cancel the attack and go into orbit around the nearest body at any time.

And no, you can't mod it in because mod support is basically non existent. You can change the balance values and edit the UI and that is it. Nothing in the sim is scriptable, every single thing you want to do Uber has to explicitly add support for. You cannot restrict units by planet type, alter bullet drop by planet size, or change the build behaviour based on surface type unless Uber implements these as fields in blueprints.

You are the one who is the fanboy, and refuse to listen. I think you are projecting these faults onto me. PA hasn't gotten a lot of good reviews and it is simply because it is not very polished and it is not very balanced. You can deny it all you want on these forums but there is a reason that supcom is alive and well after 8 years and PA is struggling only in its third. Sycophanty does the game and the devs no favors.

The problem is that PA is simultaneously too similar to TA (Metal Planets, particle nanolathes, bot and vehicle factories, advanced factories instead of upgrades) and not similar enough. It evokes TA, but the way it invokes it feels cheap in too many ways, like it's trying to be like TA and doing a bad job at it.

Countless people right now consists of you and maybe one other participant in the thread.

Im am ok with that because i want more product spectrum in the series. TA is still playable, it should be some different. Although game-enders like fortresses or orbital battleships make quick end are bot-cannon and nanobots sooo awesome, that i fully accept the TITANS addon.

We, the community, had a big part to play in convincing the devs that the best way to go was the TA way, not SupCom's tedious tech tree. Uber accepeted our feedback and went with what had worked in the past. When you are on a limited budget, experimenting all over the place with unit balance and new units is bad for business.

But comparing apples to oranges is worthless at this point. PA is it's own game - and we should stop trying to compare the unit balance directly. Yes, there are similarities - but SupCom and Ta had many of the same similarities. Just give it a rest, for crying out loud.

PA's defining feature that differentiates it from TA is the orbital gameplay. It needs to be used well. In a way that is tactically and strategically and also thematically satisfying. Right now orbital mechanics are extremely basic, feel broken and do not add a whole lot to the game. When every planet plays the same you may as well not have them at all.

The TA influence was clear long before anyone opened their mouthes. It is not apples to oranges just because you say it is. All of these games are comparable. And PA is undeniably very close to how TA was. It adds very little, takes some things away, and generally has only innovated in the space department.

So was Supcom's. It's not a direct comparison in either case. STOP MAKING IT ONE. TA is not a shining beacon of light. Neither is SupCom. They are each unique - just as PA is.

The UI elements were removed and nukes were given infinite range due to the need for better reach between planets. Yes, moving planets around is a great idea, but in practice, it would have never worked well. Why move a planet when you could just demolish it from afar?

Have you tried modding in this game?
At all?
Because there is a crapton of mod support.

There's not as much as we'd like, sure, but the devs are constantly adding stuff - as is the community. We've got basically everything you would ever need, short of the actual game code from the .exe and application extensions.

Not very polished, eh? That's quite subjective - but all I can tell you is that it plays way better than a title just out of release. As it should.
Not very balanced? What's OP that hasn't already been addressed? What besides the goddamn Icarus is worthless?
It's not perfect and I'm working on a way to solve some of these problems for the better - but calling it not well balanced is subjective and unquantifiable. Give me a metric - TA wasn't so hot either.

Supcom isn't *still alive.* It's got a hardcore community of a few thousand at most, with a few hundred regular players. PA has almost a thousand regular players and a much larger backbone for a community.

You think I'm a sycophant? Really?

Get off your high horse.

By the way "Total Annihilation" was a very, very good game. It also had lags and strange
public response.

I disagree. Have you played TA lately? Because I did. Its slower, UI is so frykin BAD comparing to PA, units move into each other and moving between terrain is pain in the ***. Eco is really slow and doing anything in first 5 minutes is hard.

Take of your magic glasses and see how it really is. TA is not as great as people describe it to be. Its old, its slow, its not good in UI or anything. If you would try to play TA in multi like PA, you would be frustrated. You think why people made Zero-K and other games? Because they were bored? No, because TA was not perfect and needed way more polish and waaay better UI.

supcom is the only RTS ever made. Neither TA or PA compares in my opinion. But PA definitely uses almost everything from TA straight up, but does so sloppily. You keep denying it. You must be blind or in denial.

I have the files open right now. And the limitations are quite severe. If you want to make a balance mod you can. If you want to add some new UI elements you can do that. If you want to add any kind of new gameplay that is impossible. Supcom was one of the best games for modding and if adding new races had been less restricted I'm sure it would have seen a lot more modding action. Having the entire game logic in script enabled so many features to be added. With PA you cannot script even the slightest thing, it's more locked down than supcom2 was.

Refusing to admit that PA is doing poorly because of a lack of polish pretty much makes you one yeah. Almost every RTS played better on release that PA did. Some played better than it does now. Some were better in their betas than PA is now. You are hostile and defensive and deny and deny and deny that anything could be wrong with the game. That is being a sycophant.

Readability, "oh, when you see a green point on the ground, that means metal, lots of dots means lots of metal, except for when you're building on metal planets, in which case there are no dots, but infinite metal, except for when no dots actually does mean no metal."

So you'd make the planet type that has a built-in superweapon and game ender also have infinite metal by default? And you don't see a problem with that? and as per before, you can already do a 'metal planet', and it's not even restricted to only working on a metal planet type, you can make a water world into a 'metal planet' if you want. Talk about variability!

Nope, we have a total of 5 titans, 2 land, 1 air, 1 building, and 1 orbital.

The tank and bot titans can be build by a T2 tank or bot engineer respectively, the Zeus, the air titan, can be built by the T2 air fabber, and all advanced fabbers can build the Ragnarok. only the orbital titan, the Helios, is restricted to being built by orbital fabbers.

Orbital fabbers can build the land titans as well but they aren't the only means of building them.

As everyone else in this thread has told you, this is not the case, perhaps you need to go play the game again "with greater understanding."

Yes, it certainly was an interesting concept. But like with many concepts, it proved janky and un-fun when implemented.

Firstly, nukes are certainly not cheap, nor are they in any way central in the current balance, which is much more focused on asteroids and Helios drops.

Secondly, who says flinging nukes across the system isn't interesting? they add a great dynamic along with the other suite of interplanetary invasion tools.

I know you Think there's good reasoning behind your points, but perhaps when several other disagree with you, and give you legitimate counterpoints to your assertions, you need to not just ignore them and continue believing your own points without evidence, or worse, in blatant disregard for evidence.

Can you try to start PA with the "--no-mods" option? Reading your responses, I get the feeling that you have some old mods hanging around there and with the major changes in units in PA:T it can cause some really strange effects.