PA is a "Spam Fest?" Oh please...

For some reason, players seem to whine saying that Planetary Annihilation is a "spam fest."

I watched a player lose his entire base, a whopping 2 factories (both air), 4 metal extractors, 5 turrets, a handful of power generators, and no offensive units. He was overwhelmed by a small attacking force of maybe 20 bots and 20 ants. And this was 15 minutes into the match.

The defeated them whined in chat talking about how Planetary Annihilation was a "spam fest" and therefore, not worth playing.

...

...

wtf?

So these players who make such claims think that the only way to have a good game is... ... I don't know. You can only build 5 units? Maybe they want their super mega hero unit that can't die. I don't know what they're whining about or what they're thinking.

If you don't have a single offensive unit 15 minutes into the game, then you need to get better at the game. I mean... much better.

Planetary Annihilation is all about destroying your opponent. You do so by producing units and using them to destroy your opponent.

How you destroy them can vary tremendously. Be it land, advanced units, air, naval, nukes, or artillery. All have their own strengths and weaknesses and ALL of them can be countered in one way or another.

</rant>

noobs will always blame the game instead of themselves. With "noobs" I mean those who are resistant to learning the game.

It is true though, that PA is like Supreme Commander and TA about mass armies. There is another kind of RTS where you have special counters to certain units (and most famous RTS like Starcraft, C&C, CoH) belong to this kind of RTS. They are less about macro but more about micro. In PA a huge army can most times only be countered by other huge armies, or weapons of mass destruction. In Starcraft a huge amount of one kind of unit will be countered by a small amount of a counter unit. Both is not bad or better, its just different. Some players probably start playing PA and think it will be like Starcraft with Asteroids.

Well... obviously it wont. And some of them will get pissed or angry or mad^^

this is to be expected, just picture this : there are sides to everything, imagine PA had been a game where you loose if you spamed (yes I know "gods no!" but sit tight with me here...) you'd have had US complaining instead.
choices have to be made, spaming or other is not "better" it is simply errrrrrr "more intelligent".

In short, you are not to be troubled by this, you can even reassure yourself with the idea that you would have had much more to put up with in the opposite case senario.

spamfest? oh please so far we only reach maybe 1k units around 20 minutes. we need to egg concept to be implemented to get more stuff in less time!

Offtopic: Watch out you are gonna fall!
Ontopic: Arty & catapult(Long-Range-Missile) can't really be countered...

It most certainly can. Nukes, other arties with walls in front of them to absorb fire, bombers, bots blitzing in past defenses...

There's a counter to everything.

I don't have enough experience in this game to go into very deep conversation about this sadly, but I will scratch the surface.
Nukes their counter are anti-nukes.
You can counter bots by bots or defenses(PD/arty/catapult/(Too a worse trade-off)nukes.)

If you try to build a catapult to kill their catapult, he will most likely kill your catapult before you can finish it, same with the lobber(T2 arty). Though bomber spam(Or just a few advanced) will likely work, bots will get sniped by it and his friends(Read: bots & defences) before they will get to it probaly.
A mixed assault of both distracting him and building a counter-catapult/lobber will likely work, but there is no real counter to it.

I may be wrong there, I will fully admit that, but that is the kind of info I got from playing a few test rounds with a friends testing the units/buildings in this game so far.

Well in most games when you get attacked by a army its a army of ants and bots. The player who micro's his army better and/or has a bigger army usually wins. What i miss here is more variation in the units that are used. Its always ant or rox and pretty much nothing else.

But thats also a big part balancing so likely we wont see that until the beta. But i hope uber ads some unique units to each factory more than we had in supcom 2. More like TA.

It is likely that they will destroy your catapult/lobber/pelter before you do – but not if you do it right. Build walls. Attack while building. Build quickly. Or, as I said, attack them. Pelters/lobbers/catapults don't have much health and Doxes or Slammers can make short work of most defensive lines.

There are anti-nukes, but not everyone builds anti-nukes. What more, they don't have anti-nukes around their entire base or their attacking army. Or, likely, at their outlying defensive lines. Furthermore, anti-nukes aren't a guarantee hit. If the incoming nuke only barely gets into the anti-nuke range and/or there isn't much advance notice of the incoming nuke, the anti-nuke will likely miss.

I didn't say the counters were easy or guaranteed. But there's a counter for everything if you do it right.

Even so. It's alpha. They're still balancing and they have lots of units and structures to add.

And I'm sure if you want something else, like even more units, or shields, or a giant monkey that will throw explosive bannanas, there will be a mod for it.

In a way the game isn't as relaxed as TA. I presume having it on a 3D planet changed that... and of course it's a spam fest (in a certain context) it's a macro based rts aimed at having large armies. Units are or will be well balanced as you've said and units are used strategically (the point of this genre of game) .... People need to learn the game but I'm patient with newb's even if they complain...

I define a "counter" as a cost-effective way to efficiently destroy a threat. Let me reiterate that for those that cannot read flavorless text; counters must cost-effectively and efficiently eliminate threats to be considered a counter.

Artillery does not cost-effectively eliminate other artillery.

Tanks do not cost-effectively eliminate other tanks.

Bots do not cost-effectively eliminate other bots.

Etc. etc.

There are counters in PA mind you; Bots easily eliminate undefended or lightly defended economy units. Tanks will easily best Bots in a large-army engagement, but will loose in a direct 1v1. Nukes beat everything, and they are arguably cost efficient because (I think I remember the numbers) a single nuke is worth about 200 Ants and a single nuke is entirely capable of doing more damage than 200 ants. However by that same argument 200 Ants are capable of destroying a nuke before its launched, and doing more damage to a larger area in a shorter amount of time.

But there aren't enough counters at the moment. I do agree that PA is a bit spammy in that the best way to destroy a tank/botblob is with your own tank/botblob. Artillery deals negligble splash damage when it does hit, towers fire too slowly to actually destroy a significant number of units (also they're towers, BOOOORINNNG!), and there are no mines or equivalents to TA's Leveler.

But I will wait to make a big stink about this. Beta will be the time to get angry at Uber for making a terrible game and ruining all my hopes and dreams.

Kill vs. kill is not the only way to be cost effective.

A skirmisher that evades enemy tanks and destroys several extractors was cost effective.

A raider that reaches wreckage before the enemy is cost effective.

A repair that keeps your army going longer than the enemy is cost effective.

A fast force that forces the enemy to split a slower army multiple ways is cost effective.

Go sit in the corner with Neutrino. ಠ_ಠ

It is a spam fest bro lol. That was a very poor and one sided example of why though. The most popular tactic Ive seen in this game by far is make a giant mass of factories, accumulate units, mindlessly send units at enemy knowing that there are so many there is nothing they can do to stop them aside from sending their own mass of units to intercept. Rinse and repeat until until somebody spams harder and wins

Which is why you'd lose against the best. This isn't Starcraft where there's only one or two chokepoints in each map. In PA, there are basically no choke points. And instead of micromanaging their attacks, you end up doing something I find far more satisfying - flanking and raiding.

You can spam a bunch of units. But if you don't use them right, then you'll lose always. I've seen players win matches with half the force of their opponent. It's all a matter of using the units efficiently – flanking, using range, using countering units, etc.

Planetary Annihilation is about constant large scale action and maneuvering. Not small scale combat, heroes, or choke points.

It's very different than many other RTS games. And I can't wait to see how the game evolves when interplanetary interaction changes the game. When that happens, micromanaging will be the farthest thing from your mind when you have five different battles on three different planets while expanding your economy on a fourth and launching rockets to a fifth. It's going to be insane!

If I could just magically have one or the other pop into existence, I'd rather have 200 ants than a single nuke. Well assuming my computer could handle them.

I don't know what's more true, that it is specifically designed to be a spam fest, or that it is designed to instead of collect resources instead produce units out of control.

I summarized it at the end.

It isn't hard for new players to do. Just don't play like any rts you played before, instead:

Produce collectors, then a factory, have that factory pump out builders then other units endlessly. Then, have builders build other chunks of collectors and factory, which build builders to repeat. Periodically scout for enemy and chunk units at his collectors, engineers, commander, or factories to slow his growth. Grow as fast as possible across the largest surface area of map.

It isn't like there is no strategy involved in map coverage. Also, with a steaming economy and self replicating technology, it's designed to be this way. It is easy to nearly fully automate this process already, and will only get easier.

If you want to shoot junk with lots of missiles and shells, just do this until you get to building artillery. Consider it creating a distraction by sending lots of units your enemy must fight, while you set up the simbase or firebase in the midst of all your chunks of unit-factory-collectors.

This game has micro. It is just in the form of choosing how to get to the enemy commander. How to find him, where to sneak your units through, how to position artillery on him, how to collapse his base expansion weak enough to bluntly smother him.

So, use bulk expansion, to achieve desired results. Summary.

There is plenty of micro if you mess around with flanking and having bots circlestrafe the enemy (which makes them nearly invincible)

@ the two replies above (mainly the first) I know all of this already I was just making a statement.

What disturbe me the most here, is that we are on alpha stage. That means there should be "only" players aware of the macro style of PA (with experience from TA to FA). It's not like the game is GA and anybody is playing it... if you're in alpha, that means you really want it, and it costs you more actually. Strange.

As for the spam fest, well, that's the macro game: large army. And I like it.