Looking to the past to push PA into the future

Dear Planetary Annihilation overlords, as you consider how to make your kingdom even greater, please
- make 40 player matches standard (without needing a password to the community server). When the creators first pitched the game to prospective buyers during its development phase, they touted the awesome drama of 40 player free for all matches;
- bring back craters. They were great in the development phase but disappeared for the official launch;
- more to come...

Craters and dynamic planet collisions were in the game until Titans released. At the very least they should make the old version available as a beta branch. Hitting planets with asteroids for RELATIVE damage was the big selling point of the initial pitch for a lot of people. Having all collisions cause both objects to explode into nothing regardless of size difference ruined the game. Me and my friends haven't played it since they changed it, and we won't play it until it comes back.

???

This was never in the original pitch, so it would have struggled to be a big point for anyone, let alone the uncited "lots of people". The Kickstarter trailer shows the planet being turned into molten lava by the impact.

craters like they were back then caused too many issues midmatch
one being their generationtime
another being that pathing didn´t adjust to the new csg or units that came close to it got damaged/exploded for no reason .. aswell as if the asteroid hit an area with mexxes or catalistpoints they often were still floating above the crater ..

And iirc there were issues if the crater region intersected with an area containing water

>

false.

as a real planet in this scenario would.

not disappearing into thin air as PA T currently has it do.

Culture Pause : the inclination of our planet thus the seasons, some of it's water and alot of it's metal and our moon are all caused by the impact of theia, a mars-sized planet with what was then gaia, our earth.

so obviously the scale and the violence of the impact was considerably larger than what we witness in PA, yet here we stand today.

the earth did cool down and relativity speaking, it cooled down quite quickly all kinetic energy considered.

and since in PA there are colonizable lava planets it stands to reason that you're talking out of your proverbial ***.

but thanks for shooting down good new ideas of new and less influential users.

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about in my galactic robot war sim.

I didn't reply to an idea, I replied to a factually inaccurate statement.

well you broke down his idea by presenting it as "uncannon to the trailer" ...which really I can't stand as an argument anymore,.. and also seemed to suggest a dichotomy to the trailer's pitch ...which I ruled out as false.

All's fair in the world now.

what's the argument against again?

I didn't reply to an idea, I responded to a factually incorrect statement. Nor is your observation of my response, or my position, accurate in any way. Allow me to simply for you:

"This thing I want was promised in the pitch, and a lot of people bought in because of this."

"No it wasn't, so no they can't of."

I have no time for an idea whose support is based on a pitch that never happened and people who don't exist.

I know you're playing deaf and dumb to protect your image (noone cares)

but you can only bend the truth so much before it snaps.

here's a toast to this not being dragged out any longer than it needs to :

Original pitch :

Current gameplay :


Do you really not see how his proposition of relative damage makes more sense then the planet disappearing even from a "THE TRAILER HERALDS THY LORD AND SAVIOR'S RETURN" mindset ?

PS : I understand when you say you don't feel this represents your point of view but I exist to prevent people playing both cards whenever convenient. Here's my understanding of the human psyche : if someone understands how they "come off", then they are de-facto "utilizing" how they come off. As I know and understand this rule, if you want me to acknowledge a different stance from you, then you have to openly proclaim that different stance rather then pretend you didn't emit it and that it doesn't behoove you to do anything about the apparent mix-up.

OK trying to keep out of the who said what argument here...

I think purely from a gameplay point of view, leaving the planet in play after a smash (as was the case with early beta) was more fun than the current planet smash mechanic as it creates a race to recolonise the planet mid game. It also helps differentiate the game ends mechanics a bit more. So purely on that basis this is something I'd like to see brought back in some form.

I don't think proportional damage is needed, simply leaving the planet in play would be enough. I also note the old crater mechanics were very broken so would need to do something different imo.

Hello again. Just a comment on my original ask (disregarding the psychoanalysis that followed): I understand that the craters from impact didn't work all that well (filled with water, and troops died if they tried to cross the threshold) but it made for some hopping good action. For example, I had created a map with orbits set perfectly so that planets clipped each other at various times in the game, resulting in a bunch of orange slice-shaped planets in the end (hilarious). I thought when asteroids were introduced craters might be reintroduced, but alas -- nope. So if there's some way to figure out the technical side to make it work, that would be cool.

As for 40 player matches, 32 player games seem to work fine on the community server, so there's no technical issue there, I presume. Would be fun if 40 player games were made standard.

You might also consider introducing black holes, solar flares that burn off a planet's surface, comets and rings like Saturn's (just for aesthetic). Thanks again for reading my post and for considering a Luddite's input.

i rather would want an option either to wipe the planet's surface or to bust it entirely ... so these 2 at least as personaly i do like the concept of reducing the battlefieldarea ... however one thing to keep in mind still is to not have surfacewiping asteroids turn nukes redundant ..

My point is though that *if* you make smashes not destroy the target planet (remember the smashing planet / asteroid is lost either way), we still have other options to remove a planet from play i.e. Ragnarok and Annihilaser.

Also if all smashes wipe the whole planet, that makes nukes more relevant imo- as a whole planet wipe kills both enemy and allied players. Nukes would then be the 'surgical strike' option.

Don't get me wrong, a proportional damage system could be really good- however the PA devs have historically always gone for keeping it simple (so no variable power like wind in TA for example).

I suppose the argument could be made that you could differentiate asteroids from planet smashing (maybe asteroids wipe surface, planet vs planet smash destroys both)? I just think for there to be any chance of it *actually happening* the mechanics need to be simple and straight forward.

Do you mean like this? I think it's already available on the dedicated server.

the annihilaser in almost all cases is a general gameender weapon and ragnaroks need to be ON the planet to destroy it as well as defending it for its charge up and not to mention its buildprocedure being announced unlike halleys iirc (heck thinking about it there maybe should rather be a surfacewiping version/option of it, that sounds like fun xD) ..
so considering that you can fortify an asteroid more reliably in that case AND give it the benefit to be able to recolonise its target is .. quite frankly TOO good ...
especialy if you bring in respawning asteroids .. nukes in this case become surgical weapons ONLY if both players are on the same planet .. however in a multiplanetmatches it doesn´t matter as you wipe the planet and take it by yourself (like who cares if the planetoidprojectile is destroyed considering the benefits?) and any other player that doesn´t manage to get a foothold on your planet or where your commander is located is more or less destined to be smashed than nuked as rocks can´t be antinuked and being able to nuke halleays has a timewindow as if iirc (and correct me if i´m wrong) once a planetoid is on the move you can´t target it .. i mean come on WE HAD this during BETA ...

so at the very least if rocks become capable to surfacewipe again it should require at least 3 halleays of the current cost (or more) ..

as i said i´m rather for the battlefieldremoval aspect of it .. ..

it´s not so much the question weither you can differentiate rocksmashes but rather if you should in the first place ..

I think we shouldn't base too much of our argument on the current game mechanics / balance wich IMHO deserves a ground-up re-tooling / re-design to get rid of the current go-to meta that has a case-by-case for every possible tweak you can make to the system.

you'll be fighting an uphill battle right now if you wanted to stand on the defending side of current Annihilazer balance.

and this alone should make a clear cut case that it isn't functioning as the game-ender that it was intended to be but rather as a cheese.

and all of the game enders in this game are set up in this pyramidal scheme where as soon as one is made available (via the type of solar system) it's de-facto dethroning your previous go-to strategy with a go-to strategy.

>host loads system with only one planet (no asteroids): I'm gonna go t2 drops

>host changes his mind and loads a multiple-planet system, no gaz giant, no metal planet : this is actually one of the rare setups where the choices are many but I'm definitely going to prefer orbital and in particular orbital teleporter.

>host changes his mind again and now the system has just one planet with asteroids : ok I'm gonna eco on the main planet but drop early on one of the astroids and go for hallieys, I'll either lift the com before collision or move him to another asteroid before launch.

>host changes the system to one with gaz giant but no asteroids or metal planet : now i'm definitely all in on orbital, i'll mine the shiz out of the gaz giant and on my main planet I'll have nothing but factories, the game should play itself.

>host has system with no asteroids, a gaz giant and metal planet : screw everyone, the metal planet's mine I'll defend the cap HARD, I'll eco a bit from the gaz but I woun't waste too much time with that as I'm Annihilazer-rushing and the game should be over well under minute 20.

all of this basically translates to the planet mechanics having no flexibility and no balance leeway that would allow other strategies to penetrate the meta.

there may be inaccuracies above on which strategy is best in each case figure but my point still stands about there being an overly crushing and inflexible meta that doesn't allow for the sort of flexibility this game had in mind when being conceived.

PA inc is an opportunity to solve this.

I don't like the complete extinction of robotics when a planet gets hit neither it being totally destroyed, Im sure there is a way to implement craters properly, if they have time im sure they will be looking at it, mikey already made moves on it with proportional damage, which I think is cool, if a moon/roid is big big it will remove the planet it collided with from play, if its not all that big it maybe wipes out half the planets infrastructure. Proportional damage is good.

i like to disagree with this a bit ..

you are definitively right about how players gonna chose their strategy on how the system is set up starting a match ..
but imo there is some flexibility in how a battle over a system can progress ..
certain systems will require adaptation to what each player will do and how successfull he is in his atempt ..

the general thing though is that any match no matter how it s set up will be a race to SOMETHING ..
weither that is race to get to and hold the metal planet
race to get to the asteroid or race to get to the heavenplanet before a set collision of two planetoids ..

a couple days ago there was a bit of a intresting teammatch BRNKoInsanity had on Pax that features almost everything ..
and i agree with you in the starting strategy .. go orbital get the a hold of the metalplanet and gasgiant ...
they did however a bit of a mistake as in their team spawning all on one planet were the other team was split between the haleymoon and lavaplanet .. so what ended up happaning the gasgiant was contested .. the moon was already in team 2´s hand uncontested .. team 1 however got the metalplanet ... in the end team one lost the gasgiant, the metalplanet was smashed thus 2 assets were taken out .. and the game ended in team 2 wiping team 1´s homeplanet through a orbital fleet attack ... but still that system could have gone a number of ways ..

otherwise how else would you wanna go to change the setup to be flexible?
take away the fixed annihilazer and instead have catalists be buildable on any planet´s northpole like a orbital plattform that rotates torwards its target instead of the planet?

have any planet be halleyable by default but have its size/mass dictate its impact and number of hallays required?

not use gas giants except as pure orbital battlefield because as they are they inevatably turn any system into a money"map" and instead have jigs work like general metalmakers? ..

now changing jigs shouldn´t be difficult

astroids with varying level of impact will definetively require some work but i doubt craters ever will be a thing

and annihilazer on any planet in the system i imagine while possible is also not easily done ...


the problem of flexibility that you descripe can however also be said for a planet itself (speaking singleplanetmatches) weither it is a moon/metalplanet, a lavaplanet of varing lava/groundmass or a waterrich- or poor earthplanet .. because any of these set up a way of local planetcombat ..

so what i am wondering is that if this kind of flexiblitiy is realy that neccesary/wanted cause i argue that if you take certain fixed assests away and reimplement them as a more general version there will be ultimately a general meta that develops from it in a general setup ... however with the current assets you have a bit of direction how you want metaplay to go atleast initialy ..