How is planets and interplanetary a gimmicks?

I've been seeing people calling interplanetary and planets gimmicks. How can they be gimmicks when they alter gameplay.

Now does planets and interplanetary have little relevance or use? Do they exist just to be there?

They are saying it because you don't have to go to another planet at all. You all spawn on one and can finish the game on one. Until multi-planet spawning is there then you don't have to travel to another planet. Just watch the steams, you will quickly see that few go to another planet cause its necessary.

Until planets can be expanded on with better ease its just going to be a an excess thing that isn't needed to win the fight. Currently its locked to past advanced when you can start expanding onto another planet.

If only feels gimmicky now since the units haven't been completely balanced.

I have started to make a point to build orbitals within the first 15 minutes, unless there is only one other planet or I am most definitely going to win. The recon value from sats alone is phenomenal, though expensive. I have found it is relatively easy to fend off an attack if you know exactly where they are at all times, even if you are outnumbered.

And where are these gimmick people? I want to send them a nice juicy asteroid from another planet. Hows THAT for game changing?

I personally think orbital is too deep in the tree, which leads to people leaving the planet simply running rather than making an expansion decision. Multi-planetary starts are simply a band-aid for this, since it'll be like those team games where it's a series of 1v1s, you wrap up on your planet and then you move on to the next.

I wouldn't mind basic and advanced orbital factories, or at least something a standard fabber can build which opens up inter-planetary expansion. Right now only the winning player really has that option, and if you're winning you've no reason to do it.

But I believe Uber are working on a big overhaul of this part of the game, so we'll see. If they get it working it'll be very exciting.

Currently inter-planetary is not relevant to gameplay purely due to lack of units. We need mass transport between planets, which uber has plans for with unit cannons. They are just not in the game yet, and all interplanetary games do is extend the game meaninglessly with no end in sight. Soon this wont be the case though.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about, at one point in World of Warcraft they introduced "vehicle combat":

Blizzard sought to add variety to the game and vehicles served that purpose. For a game designer they are useful tools to add new types of fights and experiences.

However, the problem was that a sizable portion of the player base generally disliked this new mechanic and could only tolerate them in small portions. Players complained that they wanted to play their class and they felt like they were trapped in these unresponsive, awkward contraptions that forced them to learn several new abilities purely for a single quest or fight. The fluidity of the rest of the game proved to be the downfall of the vehicle mechanic, there was too strong a shift in quality of gameplay compared to controlling your regular class. That's why in the next expansion the designers cut down the number of instances where it appeared.

In the end, too many people thought of the vehicle combat as an obnoxious gimmick.

I think there is a lesson here for Planetary Annihilation: the fundamental building blocks of RTS games have not changed significantly for the last decade, furthermore, the designers of PA are quite experienced. There is no way that they are going to create an RTS game that is not enjoyable on a basic level, because they are walking a well-trodden path. However, going off course by introducing new and innovative aspects to the game such as interplanetary travel has the potential to create awkward gameplay not up to the standards of previous RTS games. It's simply a lot more difficult to create something new.

If you add interplanetary combat and it's mostly an annoyance that doesn't contribute positively to the game then most of the time it will be seen as a gimmick, especially since it's an advertising point that will draw people to the game.

Fundamentally it's just multi-map combat. Quite a bit like playing several games at the same time. It's one time where I actually like having teammates -- if the battle goes off-world, one teammate can work that while the other continues work at home. Managing a single RTS fight across more than one map is something I don't think has ever been done before. (And it is significant because moving resources from map to map will probably never be THAT easy. A group of nukes you build on one map will not do anything to help you on the other maps.)

The problem right now is just that it's not well implemented, which I think they are aware of. Moving between planets is clumsy at best and getting the player the information he needs to effectively fight on more than one planet at a time isn't there right now.

Metal Fatigue did multiple levels/maps: 3 layers. Subterranean, Land, Orbital.
It just never did it well.
It was a gimmick.


Previous games have laid a great foundation for how to control your armies in a 2D flat plane.
RTS has done well with the UI and players are familiar with it.

But now, Uber is moving forward us onwards:

1. Spherical planets
2. Eliminated building grids
3. Orbital layer
4. Interplanetary battles
5. Planet smashing
6. Gas giants

It's a not just a tiny jump, this is a literal massive jump.
They all have to balance well and the UI control scheme for them has to be up to snuff.

Flat map without boundary has been done before too, like this one:

Combine this with Metal Fatigue like multiple maps, then adds a mechanism that allow you sacrificing one map to partly destory another one, the gameplay will end up quite similar to PA, and UI and pathfinding will be much easier to do. It's just without the animation of planets collapsing, it might won't sell as much.

Ah the good old late 90s, when everything was an RTS.

Eh. People are dumb.

Playing on a sphere DRASTICALLY alters gameplay.

Starting on two different spheres (which we'll be able to do soon) DRASTICALLY alters gameplay even more.

The game just isn't done yet.

Seriously. Spherical maps alone has been a pipe dream for years. That being said, there is some credence to this:

If anything, nukes are the biggest problem in preventing the game from reaching interplanetary stage, in my opinion...

The sad part is that currently planets are dully completely flats, so it doesn't bring anything at all to gameplay.

Not true at all. Functionally the height differences might not have a large effect currently but they are still present and there are the different types of terrain brushes as well that have a usable height element as well.

If you want to complain about something at least be accurate about it.

Mike

I'm confused about Gasgiants - they only have an orbital layer? So the way to win on them is just to literally spam more Avengers than your opponent?

Based on the Current mechanics/units, yes.

Mike

But I thought spaceships were confirmed not to be in the game?
Lol. I got confused. I didn't read that to understand "no battles in the dark void". I read that to understand "orbital units will be limited"

To be honest, I don't really care what the technicality are, what is possible or not, what is in or not.
All I care is what is actually in the game, and currently, all I see are boring flat maps that looks all the same.

The fact that they are round and that you can attack from every angle doesn't make up for that : Gameplay-wise, I don't really see any difference with a relatively big 2d flat map where people are spawning at the center.

I agree that we need terrain values (terrain where units can see and shoot further, for instance)

I have used the terrain to great effect though - Particularly on metal planets. Those are gold