So I tried PA for the first time yesterday, and I just wanted to take down some of my initial problems/highlights in the experience. This is mostly going to be centered around the UI and general feel of the game as opposed to specific balance concerns, as I feel that being able to adequately track and control your units takes precedence for the time being. Feel free to correct me if any of this is definitely being worked on. Speed-wise, everything seems to move a little bit too quickly. Ground units have a fairly measured pace, but some of the faster air units zip around so quickly that I have a hard time even keeping track of them. Fights seem to resolve almost alarmingly quickly as well, with rapid bursts of projectiles destroying whole armies before they knew what hit them. This doesn't bother me too much, but as far as strategy games go it's personally a little bit disorienting when a situation is over before I can adequately wrap my head around it. This is all from my personal standpoint, however, and I'm sure there are people that enjoy the quick pace. (Maybe some kind of match speed setting is in order, a la Sins of a Solar Empire?) Camera controls are a little iffy, but functional. It's about what I expect from a beta build, and the controls for moving from planet to planet work fairly well. Mostly, I just wish I had a simpler way of rotating the camera, like alt-right/middle click or something. One of the major problems I had was when I started sending things into orbit - I found it very hard to keep track of what was in orbit around what planet, what was in orbit versus what wasn't, and what was in transit. I understand that interplanetary combat/orbital units are still very early in implementation, so it's understandable that the methods for tracking them are rough around the edges; for the future, I'd suggest some sort of readout on the celestial view that tells you how many units are on the surface + how many units are in orbit of any given planet, maybe with little icons to differentiate between unit types. In general, actually, tracking units seemed to be fairly difficult. I had a hard time understanding what icons pertained to what units or buildings (with the notable exception of the commander,) so it might be advisable to have icons slightly more representative of unit types (I.E. land/air/bot + artillery/AA/anti-ground/etc) for quicker selections. One of my bigger problems was that there's no change in the icons when you select units, only the small box drawn around them at ground level. When viewing units from higher camera levels, this makes it quite difficult to keep track of what group you're controlling, which can make issuing orders a pain. I'd imagine this is being worked on, however, and I'm sure other things take priority. This is a slight personal gripe that I'm not entirely sure about, but it almost seems as if there are just too many units spread across too many different factories. Having distinct factories for bots and land vehicles, then having distinct fabricators for bots, aircraft, land vehicles, boats and subs just seems incredibly redundant, especially when the only way to build an advanced land vehicle factory is with a land fabricator, the only way to build an advance bot factory is with a bot fabricator, and so on and so forth. It forces you to spit out a number of different fabricators for the sole purpose of building the factories you need, and it ends up tedious and confusing. It seems as if the spread of units and factories could be consolidated a bit, and as a result the gameplay could run a bit more smoothly. (I.E. combine land/bot factories, narrow down the number of different fabricator types, possibly even consider allowing advanced factories to be build over standard ones much like mass extractors, and then allow advanced factories to produce standard units?) On a more specific note, walls just seem a little bit useless in their present form. Maybe if there was a key you could hold down to make a consistent row of them they could be used effectively (please let me know if this exists and I haven't found it yet,) but when you're forced to place them down one at a time using them is just time consuming and tedious. Also, it seems that the spawns of metal deposits need to be controlled slightly, as occasionally they will spawn on surfaces that aren't capable of supporting mass extractors. On a similar note, it seems as if the metal planet type needs some various tweaks, from modelling and gameplay standpoints; sometimes some surfaces of the metal planet type won't render, allowing you to see through the other side of the planet, and the planet type itself just isn't very conducive to gameplay because of its limited smooth surfaces. Finally, and this is a widespread problem from what I can tell, I haven't been able to finish a game yet, due to my losing connection to the servers. I hope that there's some sort of reconnection or host migration feature planned for the future, as connection hiccups were the bane of many of my Supreme Commander/SC2 matches. For the time being, I'm just hoping that in the future it will be possible to hold Solo vs. AI matches offline, as it feels a bit silly to be kicked out of a solo match due to loss of server connection. That's all I've got for now, I apologize for the lack of organization. Again, I'd like to stress that these are initial thoughts and reactions, not carefully considered gameplay suggestions. Feel free to let me know if there are any blatant inaccuracies, or if anything I mentioned is being actively considered and worked on. For the time being, I'm going to keep at the game and see what else I can glean from it. EDIT: Actually managed to finish a game without the server crashing. A couple of things I'd like to mention from the experience: It seems a bit odd that crashing a smaller asteroid into a planet would destroy every unit on the target planet. I think it would be reasonable to destroy the whole planet if something properly massive was crashed into it, or if something small were crashed into it at very very high velocity, (consider possibly changing the damage output of planet smashings depending on how many engines are built on the planet?) but in my opinion smaller moons and asteroids should only take small-medium chunks out of the planet instead of auto-killing everything on it. (At least at the velocity that they currently smash into things.) It was a little weird to watch the planet crash and leave a relatively small (but appropriately sized) crater at its target location, but then see every other unit on the planet explode regardless of their location. Also, when I clicked the review match button on the post-match menu, the game only displayed in a small strip along the top of the screen while the rest of the screen remained black. The chrono-cam icon was still on the bottom-right of the screen, and the menus opened properly and everything, but the game didn't actually render except for on that small strip. Speaking of rendering, it seems a bit strange to me that the game seems to re-render every time the player goes into the options menu. Naturally it makes sense if the player was adjusting video options, but otherwise it seems like a waste of system resources to have to redo it all if all they're doing is changing some key bindings or something.
Basicly this is the replacement to a tech tree. You need to work your way to the advanced units and allowing any fabber to do it would make the game tech up too quickly. It certainly threw me off on my first few tries but as I am more aware of the game mechanics these things dont throw me off anymore. As for the Orbital, agreed it is hard to differentiate. I hope that perhaps the orbital will feel more like a seperate layer, and when one zooms out to that layer that the depth of field blurs the planet a bit so that the orbiting units are crisp over a soft backdrop. Like a rack-focus of sorts. In the planet generator, there are sliders for the metal spot control. This is currently greyed out so that balance issues can be resolved for units and resources of a "Standard Game". Right now they need to identify where the standard fair game is, and this can only be defined when it is not whimsically adjusted by players. One of the reasons your AI games are still on the network may be because for every server crash there is a log created on Uber's end. If everybody recluses to their offline mode, then uber is not getting enough information or crash conditions to make a beta relevant. Remember this is a beta, and is ment for testing and getting an early taste. When a game crashes, this is the time to check if this is a known issue or post as a unique one. Thats all, back to work for me. Cheers
I understand the point of the system, as it's practically identical to the system used in the original Supreme Commander. Recall, however, that SC had only one type of engineer that would level up with each tier. My issue isn't that higher tiers of fabricators are needed to produce more advanced structures, but the sheer number of different fabricators. My suggestion is to possibly cut out a few of those redundant varieties, instead having one or two different basic types of different fabricators, plus their advanced counterparts. Instead of having a land fabricator that can produce all the basic buildings and the advanced land facility, an air fabricator that can produce all the basic buildings and the advanced air facility, and so on and so fourth, just have a land fabricator that can produce the advanced land, air, and bot facilities. In my opinion, this removes a lot of unnecessary bulk from the game, as there isn't a whole lot of need for all of those different fabricators. I wasn't referring to the number of metal spots generated, only that sometimes it appears that metal spots are generated on terrain on which it is impossible to actually build a metal extractor. (I may have been mistaken on this, however, as it turns out the spot I was using was just so close to an adjacent metal spot that I had to rotate the extractor in order to place it.) Ah, that makes sense. Fair enough.
Hello -insert name- to the Planetary Annihilation Forum. We all appreciate that you have purchased and support PA. However, please note that Planetary Annihilation is still in the BETA. We also appreciate that you are willing to contribute to the community by posting on the forum. However, dumping a giant list of suggestions and missing features is not so very appreciated. For there are already a great number of treads concerning most, if not all, of the points that you have addressed. One tread simply isn't enough to adress all the different subjects. Your opinion is highly valued but please just place it in the appropriate tread. I can understand that you want to add your thought and experiance to the forum, in a the shape of a well organized list. However, you have not been the first to do this, there are many others. As stated previously 'one tread simply isn't enough' and you tread will eventually only make the forum more disorganized. I would like to propose that you use the amazing "Search" function located in the upper right corner of the forum. So that you can add you valued opinion in the appropriate tread. There you and other supporters can discuss the topic in length. Short tour of the forum: It might be interesting to know that most discussions take place in the "Planetary Annihilation General Discussion." There everybody even (non-backers) can add there opinion to the ongoing discussion concering there favorite topics. As a backer can even enter the "Backers Lounge" and the "PA Beta Discussion." In the "Backers Lounge" the the dev team does there very best to involve the community in "the creation of" Planetary Annihilation. In the "PA Beta Discussion" the bugs of the BETA are discussed. Please note, bugs are reported elsewhere. There are also some other places in the forum all of whom you can explore at your leisure. Finally, I want to refer you to the "Topic Index" and the "Confirmed features List 2.0" by KNight. These are easy to use lists which show what features will be in the game or not and it includes links to the concerning topics that discuss those features. I have tried to keep this as polite as possible. However many people start treads that already exist and to be honest it is starting to get on my nerves. Please consider these words: "A place for everything and everything in it's place."
Can't believe how polite you're being. Dude writes at least 1000 words, says "that's all I have for now" then proceeds to write at least another 300 words.
ghost: The tips are all very much appreciated, but the overly abundant passive-aggressive tone is not. I understand that it can be frustrating to feel that you need to repeat the same information ad infinitum to every new member of any given forum, but sometimes it helps to keep in mind that if you can't be bothered to explain things without the attitude, someone else more than likely has the time. In any case, I'll try to keep your suggestions in mind in the future. Stormie: Thanks for the interface/rally point tips, I'll be sure to try them next time I play! I also must admit that I've never played TA, so I'm lacking a bit of perspective in that area. I do look forward to playing some more games against human players, though, even if I do end up mumbling unflattering things about walls in my sleep - I probably ought to acquaint myself a little better with the scale and pacing of the game before I do that, though!
or you could just use a search and avoid the whole issue to begin with? I have to agree though, there are a lot of these 'i have played a couple hours and i understand how the game works'
You'll have to forgive him - many of the points you have raised have been raised before (some many, many times) and it can be a bit tiresome having to repeat things, so I can understand his frustration. However your intentions were decent and you took the time to write a fairly lengthy and detailed post giving an honest critique of the game in its current state. Now that you know about the search function, you can begin to wind people up by necroing threads instead I also did want to say that was a very mature response to a fairly provocative post, and I hope you stick around on the forums so we can have more of the same
Be aware that I believe there's a sort of gentleman's agreement online right now where players won't tend to build more than one wall per turret. You'd want to check though before going into a game that everyone is on the same page regarding that. It's also possible that my info is out of date.
Hi, welcome to the forum! Personally I don't think anything you've said is unreasonable. I'm a little unclear why some people have reacted negatively. If you want to get a better feel for where PA comes from (as this is more a follow up to TA than SupCom- I play both), you might want to check out the 'Spring' project. This is an open source engine on which a number of TA based mods can be played. XTA or BA are probably the most related to TA and would give you more of a feel for this game than SupCom. That would probably clear up the unit types / tech structure (TA had ALLOT more units than PA currently has- I'm sure the unit set is going to be fleshed out allot in the future).
At least quote me, so I get a "Alert." But you will always remember the day, I wrote a post in an overly abundant passive-aggressive tone. My job here is done. I've might have been a bit to harsh... or I might add:"GUIDE - How To Search for Fun and Profit" by KNight, to my post. The next time someone does a "I'm new and here is my giant mind dump of things already discussed elsewhere." I'm actualy pretty lay-back kinda guy but I wanted to see if I could pull off the 'polite, with dark undertone' thing. It toke me longer then half an hour to write that post. I don't think I'm gonne write such an annoying thing again. Kopie-paste is the way to go. I regret nothing!!! Moehahahahaha
I can definitely understand that, and believe me when I say that I'm doing my absolute best to avoid the "but I'm new!" excuse because it gets on my nerves as much as anyone else. If anything, I never really looked around to see how many people there were making threads to just put their thoughts down. Regardless, this is likely the only such thread you'll see from me; from here on out I'll for the most part just be adding commentary to other threads. I generally try to avoid necroing threads, but sometimes it can be a little tempting when there's an interesting discussion that just stops without any trace... I'll be sure to give that a look! I'd definitely like to get a better idea of what exactly I'm getting into since I initially missed out on TA. I've always been pretty interested in the "big huge armies" sub-genre of RTS, although sometimes I can get in a little over my head and completely lose track of what I'm doing. I'm actually really looking forward to seeing how effectively Uber can tailor its UI for keeping track of lots and lots of units scattered throughout space. O_O Definitely one of the more memorable first impressions I've seen. Yeah, I'll be sure to check out that thread so that I can dig up some discussions to add to. I'm really interested in seeing what kinds of ideas people are pitching for future features or suggestions - especially new ideas for orbital stuff. I'll be sure to look into that before I throw myself headlong into a multiplayer game, thanks for the heads-up!
Generally the gentlemens agreement only applies when all the players know about it and are regular forum users (which is a minority of games). since i dont play pre-organised games preferring the luck of the draw, i tend to be happy when theres only one layer of walls per turret . Case in point: had a big FFA few days ago where i mistakenly left one guy alone too long(had intel and realised he wasnt a threat), hed built three rings of walls+turrets around his very small base. i decided to test how efficient it was rather than disecting the defense and instead just throw spam at it till it died. he killed over 1100 units which i was honestly quite impressed with.
That's terrifying. Did you just use standard combat units or did you have some artillery mixed in as well?
