Strategies and Tactics in Planetary Annihilation Video

Join me as I talk about the state of Strategies and Tactics in Planetary Annihilation while I play a FFA with one guy Commander sniping my opponents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrqfn1fJ ... e=youtu.be

For differences in opinions please comment in the video in a manner which does not spark a flame war

The only "strategy" that I saw in PA is one of economic prowess. Build the most units and zerg them into battle until the other side quits in disgust.

Also known as winning...

So as anyone managed to pull off the "Commander kidnapping" strategy in PA alpha yet?

Considering the lack of air transports as yet, I'd be mighty impressed.

LOL. Didn't know that air transports hadn't arrived yet. With all the air assets flying around in the YouTube videos, I'd assumed that transports had been developed by now.

With tanks currently able to drive through water there hasn't been any reason to develop air transport tech yet. Once the tanks develop a healthy fear of water I think we will see the proper technological innovations spring up soon enough.

I wonder if PA will implement the "air ferry" concept of SCFA. If it doesn't, then transporting any substantial ground force via air will become a tedious process at best (and insane at worst), given the scale of unit numbers that PA is supposedly envisioning.

I highly doubt we'll be reverting to the Valkyrie / Atlas model due to the massive scaling issues. In fact even the SupCom capacity would be restrictive on the scale we're looking at here. They'd need to be even bigger.

If they however do make air transports..I kinda want them to look like zeppelins

Then what other air transport model is there?

SupCom model, but with larger capacity or a simplified and/or queuable loading system. I.e. shift-clicking multiple transports with a large group of units will fill all the transports

The one from FA I assume.

You could scale the FA model even more if instead of assigning each transport to ferry duty individually you created a ferry route as its own "object" and then assigned air transports to it. You could even assign air factories to the route so that any transports they produced would go run that route.

Another way to do it would be to let you assign air transports to auto transport duty and let them move around between routes as needed. That way you just have to define the routes, build the transports, and let the AI actually manage how many transports are on each route.

The routes can then be incorporated into land unit pathing so that tanks will automatically use them as needed when going places.

However I feel that it should still be possible to manually control a transport just like in TA and FA.

As I stated in my previous post, PA should look into using the Air Ferry mechanic of SCFA.

What is the Valkyrie / Atlas model??


EDIT: Oh thats the transports from TA. I never really used them. I was more a land attack guy ;-)

The TA model of transport would be a lot better with a modern UI and controls.

I am still holding out for a naval transport for large capacity jobs.

I find that defenses in this game are very strong against units of any kind. My friend usually turtles in this massive area, building numerous turrets and metal extractors. Although he thought he was safe I came at him from the north, and he wasn't expectig it. Though I noticed none of his defenses had AA. Basically my point here I guess is, the tactic of building 100 bombers, and sending them after the commander might always be a sound strategy. Course....bury yourself in endless defenses and it wont.

So i have not played PA in a month now. Because...well to be fair... i am not impressed with the variety of units and atm FA is a lot more fun to play. But i keep my hopes up and wait for the release.

my question is: are there, at the moment, more viable strats (than just making tanks) to win the game? Is it a good option to go all-out air? Or maybe tech up and go orbit?

like to hear what you think

The game has radically changed from the old way of playing planetary annihilation