Making the game competitive. Current and future problems.

The game is played relatively competitively and even has an absolutely tremendous potential for competitive E-Sports, and organized prize winning tournaments.
But alas the game currently has some barriers. Certain mechanics which limit the introduction of professional players, along with mechanics that have yet to be implemented.
Boundaries:
*spawn locations
A current barrier for pros. is this; Spawn locations can be unfair and unbalanced. For a game to be played professionally both sides need to have an equal chance of winning. Currently it's not always an issue, but there's been situations where I've played and my opponent has 60 metal's easily accessed and easily defended while I sit there with 10 or 15 (and vice versa).
*Unit balancing
This has been disgust quite heavily prior, it's importance is obvious, Pointed out even more in this thread.
Unimplemented features:
*Ranking system.
I believe Uber has already stated they already have plans to implement such feature so this isn't much of a problem.
*Clan tags.
For games to be played competitively this could very likely be a necessity. Currently people just put brackets and there clan in front of there name as a sort of make shift Clan/guild tag. Yet the problem with that is someone can easily fake membership and miss represent the clan. Personally I feel Clan tags should definitely be added, I'm interested to see if anyone can think of reason to not add the feature.

This is currently all I can think of, If I do think of more subjects to bring up I will indeed being them up.
All in all PA has the potential to be a very competitive game, I'm excited to see how it turns out. I myself would love to watch an E-sport stream cast a pro. game of PA, Something similar to the StarCraft's tournaments.
Well, that's been my thoughts. Like I said I'll add more if I think of more, and I'd love to hear feedback from the community and intend to add good ideas I here from "said community" .

Uber has said that;

• spawns are going to be worked on,
• balance is going to be worked on,
• ranking is going to be worked on.

Tags would be handy, but you can change your name to include a tag if you feel so inclined.

The game is in beta, of course it's not good for competitive play.

It's being worked on and will be greatly improved.

True, but someone can currently fake membership as I stated above. They can then proceed to do what people on the internet do... potentially bringing problems to clans/guilds. I'm interested to hear your opinion, do you currently think the game could be played competitively with tournaments involving money?

The biggest general problem about the game (not balance or low level problems like fabber energy usage) is how erratic scouting is. The fact that a player could spawn anywhere on a planet means we have to scout every inch to find them. This has huge implications for rushing, or knowing to eco.

100% agreed. I rise this topic to discuss the issues the game currently has, restraining competitive play. In general The developers can't improve anything if they don't get feedback, to my knowledge...getting feedback is the entire point of a beta.

I don't see how this is an issue. Air scouts are cheap, fast and have long Sight range so it's easy to find the opponent with Fireflies.

That's a good point. I don't really have a solution other than adding proper clan support.

I was under the impression that the whole point of PA was not scouting WHAT your opponent has under construction, but WHERE they are building it. That is, stealth was as big an issue as is actually having the force to back it up.

In contrast from supcom, TA, and SC, in that you KNOW where your opponent is, or there is a very finite number of places he could be.

Still knowing what your opponent intends to attack you with and how much is valuable information!

All of the stuff you brought up is being worked on.

on midget planets like we always use, sure its not that big of a problem. But there WILL be issues if we try to use larger planets. I dont understand why we should be limited to smaller planets due to something like this.

I usually don't have problems finding my opponents even on larger planets. Sure, it's not really as easy as in other rts games and can sometimes be very time consuming. The problems will occur if planets get any bigger than they already are, though bigger planets also usually means more players, which in return makes finding your neighbours easier again due to sheer statistical chance. You don't really take really big planets if you're playing 1v1s, do you?

I believe Uber have mentioned before that they don't intend to pour resources into the game for the sake of eSports... I can't remember the conversation/video, otherwise I'd link it, but I'm sure they said that for instance the developers of League Of Legends, put a lot of money and resources into making their game a platform for eSports.

Although I don't think that's to say it won't happen. I personally think PA would be great for competitive play (it already is!). If equal and balanced spawns can happen as well as some sort of official ranking system (easy for a 1v1 ladder), I can't see anything stopping it.

I don't really see the difference between knowing where the enemy starts or not knowing on a really big planet. In both cases you want to scout the enemy to know what type of strategy they are employing, where they are sending their forces or if they are trying to raid your expansion. Even "close" start positions are likely to be far away on a large planet so if you just start scouting out your vicinity by spiraling outwards with your scouts you are likely to find your opponent pretty fast in that case.

For the record, we do like to see Planetary Annihilation as a high-octane competitive strategy game. Currently, we're focusing on implementing features and tweaking what we have. Balance, as a result, is going to be fluid.

what about tools? we need the proper macro an micro tools. there's so many ideas in Culverin's UI list. And there was talks of a complete revamp on the UI. Personally I think this is what the game needs most in the world. we're far from the "ultimate macro game" advertised, even though all I want is for that to be true.

My question is : will there be said UI revamp and when it comes will Culverin's thread's ideas be rounded up and used through and through?

UI will see quite a few changes down the line. I'm hesitant to use the word "overhaul" or "revamp," just because I think the foundation is already there.

yowsers.

It really really needs it.

Since the very first game these guys built they have always done slightly uneven start spots so to be honest its no accident, they obviously want it like that.