Hey Developers, Great game and great idea. This is what I think the game needs. Most of them is probably already in the making, and you've probably also heard them before, however i will still type them here. Playing vs. AI: - Needs easy, medium, hard AI. - Solar system: should be possible to choose how many planets one would like, and then the system with this amount of planets should be generated - Should be possible to start on your own planet, and chose where AI should start as well - Generally the gameflow needs to be considered. - Very hard to understand the energy consumption - does not make any sense to me however. - Why are there land, air, and naval constructers? Why not just one, e.g. land unit, and then a transport plane should be integrated into the game. - Should be possible to pause a game, and save a game when playing versus AI - A Map would be very nice. - The ability to upgrade already existing energy plants and metal extractors. Looking forward to what you guys are developing right now, and looking forward to an awesome game experience.
I have emboldened stuff that is being worked on - the AI is constantly being reworked. It brought in new features this last build. Also you have easy, medium and hard AI. You can control the scale of the AI's economy (which is how most RTS games control the difficulty of the AI) After you join the game, when you click ready, notice AI: 1, Player: 1 in the left hand corner of your screen. Change the values to any value you like, and that is the absolute value of the AI's economy. Change it to 0, and it multiplies the AI income by zero. (Sandbox mode.) Change it to 9000, and instead of producing 1000 energy, the commander produces 9000000. You get the idea. Multi planetary starts and off-line single player will be implemented later. So you will gain control to pause and save, etc. Can you explain what you mean by gameflow? Units and structures consume energy when they produce stuff. Your commander consumes 1500 energy per second when he produces stuff. Why are there land, air, and naval constructers? Why not just one, e.g. land unit, and then a transport plane should be integrated into the game. You're seriously asking this? Because that's the way the game works. Vehicles and bots don't float or fly. So there are units that can build stuff in areas that they can't get to. If you play an oceanic planet, you'll appreciate the fact that you have more than just your commander to fabricate stuff.
As you can see, my entire post was ironic... Yes i did seriously ask that... Thanks for asking, and answering in a professional and very awesome way. - I do however see your point now. As you can see the headline states "My first look...", so I was just giving feedback on MY first experience with the game. Anyways... What i mean about gameplay is that i can find it hard to play in generel. This might be because of the AI, as you stated I can change this, or i just need more practice. However, i still find it hard to navigate and I get disoriented in the game. Also, I think implementing a button that selects contruction units that is not doing anything would help alot. Please, don't go all defensive now. This is just feedback, that I personally think could make the game a little better.
If you look at the game settings under keyboard there are several key bindings which you can help with navigation. Bare in mind I have been playing since alpha and sometimes have trouble. I believe f is the default key for idle fabbers. Press it twice and the screen switches to the fabbers location. For navigation, you can try as I do, and save camera locations on key areas. I usually set up one for my base, my key proxies , enemy's base and key areas. Then you are one click away from these areas. Double tapping C for commander will bring the camera to him. Pressing N helps a lot at beginning. This will change the view back so north is always north. A lot of players use pole lock too.
I find pole lock and camera anchors (shift+# to set, alt+# to go to) essential, otherwise I just get all turned around and messed up. The disadvantage is it can be a bit weird fighting around the poles. Otherwise you can use the n key constantly in game.
The UI should probably include 3 new elements: Metal % (60 generated / 100 needed = 60%) Energy % Build rate % (which I believe is the lesser of the above two) The build rate could be colored silver or blue to signify if the limiting factor right now is metal or energy. I also wonder if the view should auto-lock to always face north. Maybe a toggle to disable it but by default it's locked to north. Because I feel like my leading newbie tips are: When you first start, hit "N" to orient the map north Zoom out until you get the strategic icons. Hit Shift-1 to memorize this camera location. Hit Alt-1 to return to it. Hit "N" after any time you move the camera so you are always oriented with north being "up". This vastly improves my gameplay.
Yeah... there is pole lock to stop planet swirling, I too feel it should be on by default to help newbies but right now you have to look up on the forums what the hotkeys are and go use them ingame... there are multi window support coming soon so you can have 2 windows looking at different areas or the same area at different zooms so that will be this game's minimap... there is an ai starting metal, starting energy, and resource multiplier, one makes him start slower because he needs more mexes and energy, the other makes him expand slower because he needs 2 mexes to produce 1 worth of metal. Setting either for 0 makes him unable to build a single thing and renders him unthreatening... currently there is a way to rewind and watch a game while playing same said game, it works by the game actually always running as a recording of it's own events just being played at the very front, and that also later down the line works as a direct replay or save feature since you can start the game from any point in the game's recorded history... ...Most things that require energy to run might not consume it, I still don't get that either, but I do know that the main use for energy anyway is that the builders DO consume it, so if a unit is used to build then you spend energy and if you use too many units to build things at once your energy can become all spent so you have none... In that last reguard, if you meant you don't understand the rates in general, this is not a "collect resources and spend in a lump sum" kind of game, this is a spend-as-you-collect kind of game. In C&C Red Alert 2, you got 10000 credits, and you collected ore till you had 20000 credits, and then structures costed a one time payment of 4000 credits. In this game, metal extractors and power plants produce 40 a second, and builders use 10 a second, so you try to always have 4 builders building SOMETHING so you neither overspend metal nor waste metal you could be using. The trick beyond that is playing until you get used to building metal extractors, then building factories and builder units, then building more metal while building tanks and gunbots, and when you are using all your metal continue to expand to more metal spots and build more powerplants, so you can build more factories and more units. The reason the economy isn't "collection" based is so instead of building bulks of units and structures just all at once, you build constantly throughout the entire game until you spread over the surface of the planet, and the goal is to be stronger at spreading so you spread over your enemy. Essentially, to sum it up, C&C Red Alert 2 is like Chess with immediate costs and exchanges occurring between immediate costs, while Planetary Annihilation is like Go with surface area and the unit density being the measure of "win" and the strategy being half "getting surface area and bulks of units faster than your enemy" and half "using them in combat to effectively capture land against direct enemy opposition". Some people lose early game because they didn't expand to every metal spot as early as possible, some people lose early game because they expanded too far without enough firepower to enforce ownership, and some people lose because they had more surface area and units but let themselves get nuked or sniped so their enemy used their units more tactically.
Lol no problem - I meant that it was one of those very difficult to answer questions because it kind of comes down to "That's just how the world works, because someone says so and everyone agreed" Sorry dude. I didn't mean to be offsided. I did the same thing in my first few posts on this forum. That's true. It's fairly confusing. How are you getting on, one week on?
