[WIP][SERVER]Planetary Obliteration

Legion + Galactic Annihilation + tons of tweaks, balance adjustments, and unit additions to create a balanced, fun, and well paced mod that eclipses both the vanilla game/mod and my past works.

An in-development version can be downloaded from community mods as stuff is tweaked, rebalanced, polished, implemented, or fixed.

As of October 9th, AI is functional. I won't be putting too much more work into it for the foreseeable future, but if you have any feedback on it I'll take it.

No fancy artwork or vid?

As of four hours ago, balance is now 90% complete. Virtually no units have yet to receive their initial balance pass. All that remains is:
1. Models, textures, anims. There are 16 github issues open relating to these things, and a couple are for multiple models. If you either have the skills or would like to learn the skills to help out here, PLEASE post below or PM me.
2. UI. This is something that I could probably do if I had the time just by looking at what Legion does, but I'd rather it was done by someone who had a better idea of what they were doing. It basically needs to be greenified universally.
3. AI. I could do a passable job although not on the level of @Quitch or @Sorian, but I'm short on time and AI is the most time intensive thing. If someone has the time and/or know-how to help out, please, PLEASE send PMs.
4. FX. There's a lot of FX (especially for beams) that I'm not satisfied with. If you can help out here, then that'd be great.
5. Testing. The mod is not being played enough; I need more testing, especially in a 1v1 format. I'll try and open a casual event later next month if I can find the casters for it. Once again, if you can help either with testing the mod yourself or by streaming and casting a casual event sometime (some saturday in October) then post below or send PMs.
6. Promotion. If you have skills either making videos or making graphics, then that'd be amazing.

Huge thank you to @elodea for taking care of the UI!

Hi, I have some questions:
1) will Architect static tower make a comeback? I really liked the idea of that tower and it didn't seem overpowered and it fulfilled a good purpose. Maybe put on Legion side as unique combat or utility item, or on both teams.

2) will Proteus naval Titan make a comeback? I always wanted a naval Titan, and I was flat out amazed you had one in Galactic Annihilation.

3) In the Lobby UI, could you make it so that the Legion and MLA commanders are differentiated by color like they are normally in the Legion Expansion? Right now they are all blue, which makes it hard to tell which are MLA and which are Legion if you don't already know which is which. Rockteeth is blue just like Nemicus, but they are different factions.

4) Will you bring back Orbital Radar and Deep Space Radar? I don't know, I guess I just like having lots of units. And I sort of like it how you can't just know what other people are doing on other planets without them. Intel is not something you get for free.

5) Green UI is unique, no doubt. But perhaps there could be an option to disable it in the game options? Sometimes I like to see the red in-game UI of the Legion when I am playing as them. Likewise, the blue UI of the MLA. I'm not just talking about the main menu UI, but the actual in-game UI.

Hyped for this mod. Keep going!

1. No, it was kinda buggy/broken and I don't know what analogue the other faction would have to it.
2. I kinda feel like hover titans fill the role of naval titans. Main problem with them in vanilla is that hover titans can't be built by sea fabs, but this isn't a problem in PO. I might think about including sea titans, but they will be more interesting than the proteus.
3. That's a bug and one that I'll fix as soon as I stop being lazy get around to it.
4. I'm not a fan of the binary nature of orbital and deepspace radar and I'm satisfied with orbital mechanics as they work currently, so probably not.
5. There should be an option to disable it in the same space you'd find an option to disable the Legion UI. Some stuff might not be affected by that yet. Report individual things and I'll see about getting them fixed. This isn't recommended because it means that you don't get a UI that matches the build bar icons.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll be posting a change-log for each new Alpha release.

General
Fixed a bug where commanders weren't colored in lobby.
Renamed Legion T1 tank.

AI
The following changes have been made to PO AI personality:
Percent unit type has been set to 0.2 for all units (won't neglect naval; won't prioritize vehicles over bots).
Basic to advanced factory ratio changed to 8.
Max fabbers changed to 100.

Legion Meteriod Drone
Meteoroids were bugged prior to Alpha 2 such that they couldn't attack ground. They were very OP after that for three reasons: They took too long to die, they did too much damage, and they lasted too long. As the Meteor is supposed to be a siege unit I've made the following changes to their drones:
Health - 40 -> 30
Damage - 40 -> 20
Lifetime - 15 -> 10

MLA Inforno T2 Flame Tank
I nerfed Infernos a few patches ago because it was better than the Shielder and more flexible than it, making Shielder useless once you reached T2. I think the HP nerfs may have been slightly too far and the inferno wasn't dealing quite enough damage to be worth building.
Health - 1200 -> 1300
Damage - 120 -> 150
Splash Damage - 50 -> 80
Splash Radius - 5 -> 6

MLA Shielder Mobile Wall
I've come to the conclusion that Shielder is too costly for its role as an HP tank when there are more flexible HP tanks out there that aren't worse enough for hp/metal efficiency.
Cost - 500 -> 400

Legion Scorpion Advanced Tank
The Scorpion was dealing too much damage relative to the Obliterator which led to it being too favored over it. As a result I've nerfed the damage down significantly.
Damage - 500 -> 400
Splash Radius - 4 -> 1
Rate of Fire - 0.3 -> 0.25

Legion Obliterator Heavy Tank
The didn't bring enough to the table for its high cost. Along with the Scorpion nerf, I've nerfed its cost down.
Cost - 1500 -> 1200.

1)))))Wait so are you saying you would be willing to make separate red and blue in-game UIs (depending on the faction) like it is in the normal Legion Expansion? Because when I go into game settings and turn off the in-game PO UI, the hud is still green but some hud elements are no longer green and have a strange font (like the part of the hud in the bottom right where it says 'planetary obliteration alpha). Other than that, the default OP UI looks pretty solid.
If not, whatevs. I understand but just a thought
1.5))))) Might want to look into the Striker spam meta that has developed in OP. I've seen it for a few games now. Strikers are just so cheap and damn fast that they can swarm bases early game.
2)))))

So I checked this out and I mean I guess it's fixed... but it took a me second to realize what was changed (you added a light green line in the commander picture for Legion commanders.) Could the difference perhaps be more demonstrable? Like it is in the normal Legion Expansion where the Legion commanders are very clearly distinguished by a red background. This may be more of a nitpick more than anything else.

3)))))OK, and Lastly I will leave you alone after this last note I swear: Will you please make the PO space background optional? I know it might sound weird by I actually have a liking for the vanilla PA blue in-game space background. It's not that yours is necessarily bad, it's just that I 'd like to try and keep the feel of soft blue vanilla space if I coule while playing PO.

Derp, I didn't read that closely. This might be possible, I'll have to talk to @elodea. In any case, it won't be a priority.

I've seen this, and I'm not convinced it can't be countered. A heavy laser tower will go a long way to stopping strikers in their tracks, and the other defenses aren't shabby as well. There's a bug affecting the MLA T0 laser tower that's responsible for a number of deficiencies in it that I've fixed for the next version, but other than that defenses are great against them. They also suck against massed ranged missile units, especially Legion's Patriots but also MLA's Spinners, and MLA's Spark should massacre them. I might make a minor nerf to them, but I think the reason Striker spam is successful is mainly lack of knowledge of the mod's counters.

Damnit, I thought that was fixed but what I did didn't fix it as I intended. I've tried paging @elodea for help but they've been non-responsive. Elodea, if you're seeing this, please fix that as well as a bug where the bottom right corner is messed up with the sim speed display.

I might consider moving it to a separate mod. The background is, however, highly recommended as it goes with the green theme (and also, imho, looks a helluvalot better than the vanilla background. Credit to @superouman for making it!)

Alpha Four

General
Actually fixed a bug where commanders weren't colored in lobby.
Updated some FX from most recent version of Bigger Explosions mod.
Fixed a bug where some missiles didn't have a model attached.
Renamed some stuff for consistency.

Legion T1 Power Catalyst
Cost - 300 -> 250
Health - 750 -> 600
Death Weapon - Damage 80-> 400, range 15->7.5.

MLA Holkins T2 Artillery Gun
Energy needs halved.

MLA Needler T1 Laser Tower
Fixed an issue where it was using the wrong weapon file. This has had the following effects:
Rate of Fire - 2 -> 3
Range - 100 -> 115
Can Attack Air - No -> Yes

MLA Striker T1 Fast Attack Tank
Damage per Shot - 12 -> 10

Alpha Five

Not a whole lot here and it's mostly polish and bug fixes, so listed it all below.

New (Old) model for Specialist Walker Foundry.
Possibly fixed Legion commander aim issues.
Fixed a bug where the Legion Iron Dome anti-nuke was broken.
Fixed an issue where the Obliterator super-heavy tank had a massively oversized selection circle.
Renamed the Legion T1 Tank.
Renamed the Legion Planetary Engine.
Fixed a bug where the MLA Advanced Fabrication Sub was selected with combat units.
Fixed an issue where the Hermes was missing the attack command.
Gustav cost increased from 9600 to 12000 to match the Holkins.
"Chastener" Long range medium air defense - Splash increased from 15 -> 25.

Just had a quick MLA game:

Range on Holkins is incorrect.

Cost doesn't show for nuke/anti nuke. (Not sure if this is the case in MLA)

Slinger: Infinite Range bug, force attack somewhere in it's radius, after the first volley, attack any unit on the planet and the remaining shots will hit. (High priority fix this one)

That T2 dgun unit is way op. Also transportable, can make for easy snipes (4 shots)

Some strange balance numbers between legion and mla, especially t1 fabbers, don't have much time to look too much more for a while. But looks nice.

Fixed for Alpha six, thanks!

Damnit, I thought I already fixed this. I'll take a look later today.

Bizarre. I scanned through the weapon json and did see something off that I've fixed for Alpha six, but it shouldn't affect targeting. Lowered missile lifetime (it was already way too high anyway).

Its got mediocre range and it has only half an hp/metal, which is quite low for this mod. I think it performing well says more about what you're using it against than the Brutalizer itself. Ranged units perform very well against it.

If someone dies to a Brutalizer drop, they're doing it wrong; a Brutalizer drop is easier to shut down than the vanguard drops of old.

Yeah most of my fabber values were function being informed by form. The Legion Air Fabs looked beefier than the MLA ones, so I made them more armored and slightly faster at fabbing but costlier.

Thanks for your feedback!

No problem at all,happy to help.

I'm guessing that will still bug within the missiles range ie. you will want it to have the same lifetime as galata turret as it attacks air and that's pretty far I'm guessing.

Yeah, it's annoying but it is what it is.

Think I've fixed the antinuke text issue. Haven't tested yet though.

Or you could keep it a default feature of your mod and make an optional secondary mod that removes it. I am just at a loss of any custom skybox mods where I could just do it myself so I didn't have to bother you. :/
Do you know of any mods out there that would allow me to insert the vanilla space background over the green PO one?

Curious if anyone's interested in me switching some purchasable commanders over to Legion.

This would be possible. I'll see about it.

brief first look mla

shatterer clipping is a huge issue with its range .. i say rather change it to a gil-e esk projectile ..

personaly still dislike there being no option for ranged air like the vanilla hornet ..
having 2 versions of carpedbombers feels unnesseccary even if the former has mines instead of bombs

Thank you for this mod!

Before I played Planetary Annihilation, I played Absolute Annihilation, which is a free game based on the spring engine and looks like the good old Total Annihilation. They have a bit more unit, and I love it! Mobile Radar, EMP, tactical nukes, different sizes of tanks and units. slow ones, fast ones, heavy armored ecetera...

I just played one game of Planetary Obliteration and I like it. Yeah, some more funny units And a few bugs of course. But it was fun. Are more different-purpose-units coming?