2 months to release and the game feels like pre-alpha and is a letdown. Please delay the release.

I don't know why some of you are mocking Starcraft 2 for having a beta release without glaring bugs and missing features. Beta tests for their games are essential and contribute a lot to the quality of the final product. This is how beta has typically been used, before developers realized they could stretch beta to infinity as long as their product was marginally playable. Since people will pay money for beta access, it's free testing, and it allows them to avoid taking on some of the responsibility that comes with releasing the game.

Also, you should realize that Starcraft 2 was already playable in 2007, but that the game was only released in 2010. That's because of the rule in software development that says that it takes the same amount of time to finish the first 90% of a product as the last 10%. If Uber wants to they could easily spend another two years on developing and polishing the game, I can guarantee you they won't run out of meaningful things to do.

I don't have a problem with a beta being a beta. My worry is that they'll release the game too early in favour of meeting that deadline as soon as possible, when the game clearly isn't even close to being finished.
This is a problem because first impressions can make or break a game. Gamers are getting sick of games that get released half-broken with the promise that they'll be fixed some time in the future.

It's the difference between this being a game that only a few hundred play, or a game with thousands of players.
That's why I can fully understand why some people are a bit on their toes.

we wont have 25 pages, if the peoples would read the posts.
peoples would read the posts, if there arent 25 pages.

btw. its very important to get the definition of a beta. this changes everything.

Ok, however beta may be defined, could we please get something like Ubers definition of a release version and what that should look like? Is it still allowed to crash? Does it have to be feature/content complete?

Ok, Ill try on that.
A release version, to me, is a complete game with only the most minor bugs remaining that are fixed in a matter of days after release. Maybe some bigger errors creep up that result of the extreme ammounts of players that came in with the release, those have to be fixed in hours and distributed as fast as possible.
Now, heres where it makes no sense:
PA has made great progress, but from that state, its miles away. Many core features are not working well or implemented at all and while thats lacking, discussion goes on about factions and names. The game isnt in any state to talk about such final touches or plan to delay the release a week or two. Makes no sense.

What makes "no sense" isnt the beta state now or however you call it. Its the games state in conjunction with a possible December or mid January release.

Its of no importance as it changes nothing.
Defining "beta" for PA doesnt bring on features, doesnt fix bugs, doesnt balance the game and wont push the release date back.

I think Uber could do it, it is just ui. Its a small bit of code to make raw the numbers the ui needs from the engine, and a mediocre bit of html/java. The hard part is figuring out all the features, and you did that part already which is the use of a beta.

Ask for the scale, i am fine with it so it isn't unanimous. I do see that request a lot though. I was wondering if someone wants to photoshop a basic image showing several assets in pa, like the ant, dox, commander, tree, rock, and a few structures and factories, and resize them where they deem "better"

And ask for release, release should be a working fun to play game. Possibly with less than ten percent of crash, possibly with content left to be added, hopefully very close to balanced. Tell me something, does GTA5 crash? Yes, it does, it gives you all kinds of buggy problems, and it's also full of exploitable bugs, missing announced features, and worst of all, did all of the above with a 10/10 rating by some assanine reviewers who would rate this one a 4/10.

In that reguard, sometimes infants die at birth and drunk drivers kill a family of five, the world isn't always fair but i find people are willing to fight for the wierdest things they claim to be injustices, like video games android apps and internet purchases...

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/scale-megathread.48650/

Have you seen the scale thread?

in general beta simply is the state before a game is released with either missing content like accses to weopons/Units abilities (depending on genre) and/or actualy playing all singleplayer levels or other modes to be unlocked for the player to play and eventual gamepatches be it for game or performancebalance

and say what you want for me this game is defenitively past the state of beeing an alpha with most content beeing in and basic patching of the roughest bugs having been done ... beta is all bout optimisation of details ...

anyhow
uber stated before they will add content and further support the game postlaunch so it will defenitively NOT be featurecomlplete ... ... ... and i also expect there still will be some occassional chrashes here and there as i think many new players may try out how many units their comp could run

Im a mechanical engineer and the definition of beta to us is: beta- a inprogress, or nearly complete prototype of a product. Pa seems to fit in my understanding of the word. I wont make any assumptions until uber says its done.

Oh yeah. And you reminded me. That is why i am fine with the scale

Gameplay. The distance between objects across a planet as a function of a unit's travel time is really good already. They either need to make terrain a bit larger, make factories a bit smaller, make the commander and units a bit bigger, and by all these i mean 10% most.

People want kerbal space program. They don't realize that the units would either have to travel at unbelievable speeds, or the whole game would have to act like it is being played in fast-forward mode. Which the unit speeds already mildly look like they are exaggerated as being faster than they actually should be, but maybe that is because they are the size of a tree and still moving their treads/legs real fast.

By the way, ksp scale is off too, every tree on that planet is a redwood tree to our standards. Gravity is also scaled by size scale compared to reality. So i accept trees being twice the scale on smaller appearing planets that still have an atmosphere despite their moonlike size.

In lamens terms, if it were realistic, then it would be real easy to make the terrain, because nothing is visible from space. Nothing but the general elevations. Globes are often accurate in elevation, and they often have by scale much less elevation diversity than planets in this game.

i guess people seem to forget that this is meant to be a game and not a real life interplanetary warsimulator ...

WHAT?
A small bit of code? The whole UI is a placeholder and MUST be done from the ground up. Even though the underlying mechanics are the majority of work for sure I would not consider an UI that has to handle all the stuff that goes on in PA a "small bit of code".

For my part this isnt a "fight against injustice". More something like offensive begging about not messing PA up by a rushed out release.

As said, I dont give a damn about game reviews.
Did I buy GTA5? No. Will I ever? Nope.
Not my fault most gamers seem to accept that, I certainly dont.
Look at BF4. Same mess as BF3 was, still people buy it like mad. Ive learned from 3 and skipped on it.
And guess what? BF5 will sell like hot cakes too because you can push any crap to gamers as long as youve got good marketing. More important than a good product.

Some see the glass half full and others half empty. Guess Im of the latter kind. Half the unitset is absent. Whole of the UI. Niche units. Lava planets. Gas giants. Asteroids. Formations. Lobby. Matchmaking. Some kind of minimap/orientation/overview,..
All more or less small pieces of code that together pile up to a giant bunch.
However, discussion of whats "alpha" and "beta" doesnt change a thing.

Release is what its about and I seem to have too high of standards when it comes to finished software/products.
Content added after release, well thats nice if its additional content expanding the game but not stuff that really should have been in there in the first place.

Id just be happy with somewhat simplified orbital units instead of another air layer to give somewhat more options and depth to the game
Wont happen, I know.

You ever make a minecraft mod for the games overlay? Then you have made a planetary annihilation UI mod, and didn't even know it. To them it would be like Mojang remaking fifteen minecraft mods someone else already made into the vanilla version.

It is only me or guys do you experience a very annoying interface lag ? I mean even browsing the menu is pretty slow. When i type my passowrd i see chars * appearing after some ms...

I have a pretty good comp (other games are fine). Are you aware of this performance lags ?

Some people claim with good computers this happens. This happens to me on rare occasion because I was trying to open PA with web browsers at same time.

Some say they have high dollar hardware in the computers and are choppy playing this game, when I have a 1g gpu 4g ram and standard dual core and I am playing it at barely noticeably low fps and the menu definitely never lags.

We believe it is just the difference in the way this game likes hardware and drivers. If you updated to most recent drivers, and if you are sure you don't have any other problems, then you might just have to wait until they target this inside of release optimization.

PS: THANKS A LOT! I just found out another source of game lag. I will post it in beta forums and in the bug tracker perhaps but it really isn't anything on their side. Everyone reading here, if you have some form of adblocker or possibly other web browser plugins, go to your processes and make sure they aren't taking up 100k of your ram there.

This game will be released in 6 weeks max, and its beta for about 7 weeks now (since 27sept). so far we have seen an orbital factory and a few orbital units (introduced the first moment the beta began). 2 new commanders a radar tower and a laser tower. Wich is a total of 3 buildings, 2 comms and 6 units (correct me if i'm wrong). Also some minor changes have been made to units and how they are supposed to work.

* The schedule has always been subject to change.

Ofcourse, but they didn't change anything. The game will be released in 6 weeks max.

@arsene, I don't think people quite understand,

Huh?
There is nothing to change...

And you say 6 weeks.
I'm going to watch you eat your words.

What i said, is whats happening afaik. Its 6 weeks till releasetime unless they decide to announce a delay on the last moment, wich they can and wich i confirmed they might.

I would imagine the early release of beta would make it easier for the devs to postpone the release date a bit. Cant imagine anyone of us caring if the game is released january or february if it means we get a better end result.