Wave of New Players for Planetary Annihilation! New posts and such...

My oh my, I do see a lot of activity from fresh accounts on these forums. That is a great thing as far as a game in development goes. I would just like to post a few things as a fellow forum member.

This game is in development. If you haven't purchased it, it does not have fancy minimaps or notifications ingame, the UI is actually fairly bare. It has only the smallest number of orbital units, a limit on planet size at 250-1200 (small but not tiny, to medium). It is online-required atm, like starcraft if I am not mistaken, but it will be offline-play at release. There is no save feature yet. There is 1-2 units of each role in each terrain-type, so each factory makes like 6 total. There are quite a bit of structures, sure.

These are things you may find wrong with the game in advance. It isn't being hidden. It just isn't finished yet. There are a lot of nifty features planned on release, wide variety of units, save feature, play on a single computer no internet, lots of player modifications... read into those if you like before purchasing.

So, this game is in beta. Meaning it isn't even technically a game "yet", though you can play it and it is fun for those who do. It might bother you with some things like some weird NES games bother Angry Video Game Nerd, with lack of a pause button and controls that differ from other games and no save. However, the purpose of getting a game in beta isn't for all the features.

Getting this game in beta means getting to see it in it's small bare state, throughout all it's additions to completion and patches to game after completion. It is to help steer the game's early development with ideas or bugs to be fixed. It is to get a feel for the game and get used to playing it earlier to be better later ALTHOUGH the game will not stay exactly the same with same strategies and everything you will have experience with the controls and layout. It also helps development with player support, the more the merrier.

So, I see a lot of common questions. So first off, go to the beta forums and read the stickies.

-Many game features you want to be added, might already be ingame. Don't know how to do something? Go to the key commands page, link here.

-If you notice you can't fire your "d-gun" or as we call it the Uber Cannon, you do it under closer-than-normal-shot range with your commander and selecting the side bar attack option and specifying the enemy shooting at.

-There is pole-lock in the menu, activating it keeps the planet facing upwards and otherwise your up may face down on the planet.

-Clicking something builds, right clicking removes a build, "shift" builds-5, "ctrl" builds at front of queue, and all of these things combine ("ctrl-shift-rightclick" will "remove 5 of build from front of queue)

-Comma and period cycle you between planet view and space view and between planets, I forget which does which.

-Steam and UberStore both work on both for playing the game. It is encouraged you buy from UberStore as the devs get more profit where Steam gives Valve some, but either works. On UberStore, you can enter a game-key for a steam-download-key (old key works while steam key allows download from steam). On Steam, when you download and log in for first time your account activates and then you can sign in from UberLauncher and it will accept your account all the same. Both, work on both.

If you do have questions, we welcome them. There are just a lot and I thought I would cover frequents here.

Lastly, any opinions about balance are to be thoroughly chewed over and even sleep on them. Then, look up how the game is already because most RTS players play "single-structure-base" while this is more of a "scattered pockets of structures" game. This game is usually played with 200 unit army wave attacks, a base with a lot of empty space inside and covering a whole screen of space amongst multiple pockets of mex-pp-turrets-factory-artillery, and a lot of metal-breaking raids from beginning of game to end of game. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DISCUSS but metal-converters and shields are discussed a lot and never usually end well because one can turtle in this game but its not really meant to be played in a dense-structure-tiny-area-base.

Thank you for reading this if you did.

Great write-up! I hope the new players find this helpful. I know I would have loved to have this when I first played PA Alpha.

Can I either steal this and post this in the steam forums (with credit obviously), or even better, can I please ask you to post it there as well? Cheers

Make Notch play this in the MineCon...

This was going to be my post in this thread.

Somebody please make this an FAQ.

Internet has short attention span.

- Short questions.
- Short answers.

I second that!

well said, hopefully can keep the new thread traffic down for things already addressed

I got off, you can do it though.

I'll do it when I get to work in about an hour. I'll see if i can turn it into a faq and ask SXX to sticky it.

wait why don't we turn it into a Steam Guide?

Also...

Links to

• Mega Scale Thread
• Minimap discussion Thread
• UI Thread

I have no idea how to do that, I'm a long time steam user, but quite unfamiliar with it's social features, but I can take a look in the evening from my PC, posting tot he forums and formatting from an iPad is painful as is.

Although I hope it gets more visibility on the forums.