comparison to TA, supcom, supcom 2, starcraft 2 and the rest

I would say that it is becoming more so, yes. Just not completely there yet.

LOL, holy sh it you guys actually believe this.

To be honest pa is no worse than playing a large map in ta or spring. Now for the 1v1 'experts' who always choose tiny maps pa is probably daunting, but personally I rather like having room to spread out.

I am such a 1v1 "expert" and I know a bunch of other such guys and we are all fine with it I think. I think the people who complain the most are not from the competitive 1v1 scene.

1 planet PA is like FA on 10x10 or 20x20 with no minimap and a sphere to play, which is harder.
X planet PA obviously is kind of harder. But I am hoping a lot for multiple views and a few more UI things.

THis is perfect, but my issue is yes, you can retreat. Retreat before you make contact with the enemy. If you run into an ambush.. you run into an ambush.

From a player versus AI point of view, there isn't really much point expanding to other planets, because it puts you under too much strain and doesn't give you a true advantage. I did it in the most recent game I played, the notifications stuffed up, and before I knew it I had a bunch of bots sitting in the middle of my base. (Although I checked the Chronocam, and I'm convinced that they walked through the middle of the planet to get there, because they walked straight through my army and past missile defense towers without being shot or shooting.

(Disclaimer: My experience with PA is not that big, if I missed a feature please point it out)
I have played FA a lot, however almost only against AI. Nonetheless I think there was way less micro in FA and it wasn't as effective. In PA there is lots of unnecessary clicking due to the UI. Especially building queues are very tedious to manage if you decide to change something in the middle of the queue. I really like how little space the UI takes but more information would be nice sometimes.
Second thing that increases micro are the units itself. Little differences in range and speed as well as low TTK make it very effective to micro bigger groups. On top of that it seems like the biggest difference between FA and PA is the turning speed of units. FA units had rather low acceleration and turning speed, so ordering a big group to turn around in the middle of the fight was kind of useless. PA units can turn aroun really quick even the tanks.
Also: formations. I never see units in formations, even on videos of more experienced players so I'm assuming it's not implemented. Will it ever come?

On a single planet, PA slowly becomes manageable. There is still quite a lot of room in term of UI tool to further decrease the apm needed.
In term of gameplay, I would change two things:
*decrease the quantity of metal given by extractors and adds rocks/egg to speed up the 10 first minutes because the economy quickly comes out of hand now.
*greatly increase the hp ratio (x5 or even x10) between unit and its wreckage. So it's easier with a big army to disengage a battle.

On multiple planet it's really hard to manage...I'm gonna wait on the multiple viewport to see how it change the game.

One planet is perhaps a little intense but a lot of features to reduce stuff isn't implemented yet.

People who seem to think managing multiple planets isn't that bad currently have either not actually microed multiple planets, are playing terrible players or are just playing much more inefficiently than they realise.

It's good to see alot of people agree with me about the APM. It's really clear to me that too much is required to manage multiple planets and that the game becomes almost completely about how many APM you can crank out vs your enemies. The more planets u are trying to control the worse it gets. It's not too bad on 1 planet. Like others have said it becomes manageable as the game progresses. When I play a strategy game I expect it to be about strategic and tactical choices and for the APM to be manageable. Currently, the game is about APM and strategy and tactics are an afterthought for most experienced players. Like I said in the original post, I think this is becuase there are too many metal deposits to capture and defend from another player with excellent micro and too much energy coming from the gererators which allows u to pump huge numbers of units in no time. Both of those things cause the APM to accelerate up really quickly as you expand to more planets and then it all becomes about APM. If there were less deposits it would lower the APM and if u couldnt pump units soo fast it would lower APM. Then the game would become more about strategy and tactics.

ive seen good players with low apm

There are no good players in PA with low APM. You are just being contrary or you're in the dark. It's possible on 1 planet maybe to be "good" without high APM, but this game is not about 1 small planet.

Disengage before you engage. This current mechanic gives the ability for another player to ambush you without further mechanics.

Is it micro if there is just a crapload of stuff to do? It's in the nature of the game that you have more stuff in your hands all the time.. that is if you are winning. Sure some of it can be reduced but then you'll just use the time for something else. Managing several planets is going to be hectic, no matter how you slice it.

abubab wrote: Managing several planets is going to be hectic, no matter how you slice it.

That's true, but also managing several planets should be as manageable as possible and should be streamlined to require less APM, so that it's easier to control all of it at the same time. It needs improvement in my opinion to be manageable like alot of other RTS games are.

The fact that the AI can do so well at the moment is a testament to how important APM is, since that is the only area where the AI has the clear advantage. I definitely agree the game is too "busy" at the moment. From the very beginning of the game it just feels like rushing to do everything.

Doesn't need to be an ambush for this to apply. There are no battles in PA - just skirmishes that are over very quickly. You can't do anything during them. You can't reinforce, retreat or maneuver. Only before.

My main concern is that you can't achieve the same effect of units having survivability just by increasing the number of units.

This is so true. I often catch myself thinking that im doing ok managing 2-3 planets - then i think about how much effort i put into one planet for maximum efficiency and i realize i have far to go.

Comparing myself to the playerbase in general, however, i've found that I am actually on the better end of the multitasking spectrum - which doesn't inspire confidence.

Now that I think of it, ever since IP nukes were added I do not believe I have lost a multiplanet fight in a FFA or 1v1............................

That's just weird. I am in no way that good.

In any case, APM comparison is extremely UNIMPORTANT once both players have a certain APM (i think its around 70 on one planet, unless your opponent can be everywhere at once).

For multiple planets, though, you really do need multiple people to be completely efficient - which i completely agree with! A team competitive scene would be awesome!

Most of these problems come down to one of two things; improper game balance or insufficient UI tools. These are both things that we are going to see more and more work on as the game matures, so it is still too early to judge this game. Area commands help a lot - area commands with intelligent squad behavior via neural nets will help so much more.

Once units start to get better at micro-ing themselves, I think this game is going to really look completely different. Multiple planets and fronts will get a lot easier once we get multi-window support in. Important notifications can be modded to automatically pop up a window showing the event.

I kind of want to be able to tell my factories to automatically build a pre-set repeat queue unless I order them to do something different. It gets a little tedious to keep coming back to factories and telling them to start building if I just ordered 20 of them to be built in a line.

The more the developers open up to the client API, the more we can play with the game's UI until we get to something we can be happy with.

That's rather a moot point, because if you're commander is caught by a group of Ants you definitely cannot retreat him because they can chase him indefinitely. So you have to retreat before you get attacked.


For greater understanding of what I'm talking about, play Praetorians, where if your troops become engaged in a battle at melee range they can't retreat until they or their enemy is dead.

Fact of the matter is you can reinforce, retreat and maneuver. You just have to think about what those terms actually mean.


You basically get the same scenario in Sins, even those units are more survivable. If you try and retreat units under fire you substantially lower your damage output and take the same amount of damage from the enemy.

But you can retreat your commander because it has survivability, and in fact shows why this is desirable - moving your commander back closer to friendly territory to allow your own units to come up and defend. It would be great if this could be done with your army too, but once combat starts this is not possible with regular units because the minute you turn them around they are dead, so they may as well die fighting. If units had survivability, retreat in order to save the majority of your force is a reasonable strategic move. Right now, it's all or nothing, and decided before combat.

Why would you want combat to be so black and white? This is basically pre-determined.

Not once combat starts. If you do anything but attempt maximum damage while in combat, you will lose out. All options disappear - you can't reinforce when your army can be wiped out in seconds, you can retreat or maneuver as you'll just reduce your damage output with no corresponding benefit.

It's not the same - yes, you lower damage output and take increased damage by retreating in Sins. But your army as a whole is highly likely to survive long enough to jump out of a system - you have a choice, and all because your units survive longer than a blink of an eye.

To simplify, ideally you should be able to do this During Combat:

• Reinforce your army (a reasonably large battle should enable streams of new units joining in)
• Withdraw/retreat as feasible options
• Ability to stage rearguard/delay actions
• Maneuver part or whole of force (for instance, attack part of the front where there artillery are)
• Have a front line

Not one of these is possible without units have staying power. Quantity of units is not a substitute.

I don't think this should be the main measurement of skill. I think strategical thinking and understanding of the game should be the most important skill. Those types of skills are harder to evaluate and balance the game for though.

I think this should be actively combated so that apm isn't a main factor of skill.

One problem with anticipating and retreating when appropriate currently in PA is that is hard to assess the strength of the enemy forces or defences. Unless you are actively scouting and paying close attention to your scouts you won't see the size of the enemy forces or defences and radar coverage is usually too small to allow you to assess the enemies strength without actively scouting.
It feels like I'm blind when I'm sending out my forces as I can't follow all of them with the camera. As it is currently, your attention is basically limited to where you have your camera. Multiple screens, minimaps and longer radar range would help alleviate this.

Trying to retreat with a large group of units in FA is painful. Not only do they turn slowly but it takes a while before all units in the group get their new orders and they will also collide into each other. Basically you cannot micro large groups of land units in FA. In PA you can actually micro large groups of units effectively as they are much more responsive and just slide around each other with the so called "Flowfield pathfinding".

Combat in FA is also pretty much predetermined. You can't easily retreat without your units clumping into a clusterfuck of units, bumping into each other for a long while.

I don't think there is really many ways to perform "delay actions" in TA or FA either. You would have to give me some examples. You basically have to use the terrain to your advantage like retreating back to a choke-point otherwise it is just a regroup where you fall back to meet up with re-enforcements which does apply in PA as well.

The biggest factor that drives the establishment of front lines is maximizing firepower. In order for players to actually be able to maximize their firepower they need to be able to spread out their units in a line. In order to allow players to do this we need formation tools that makes it easy to achieve and the capability to allow their units to form around incoming enemy blobs so that the defender have a larger surface area against the incoming enemies.
Another big driver of frontline gameplay is AoE as it further increases the need for units to spread out and gives the advantage to the player who can spread out their units the most while also maximizing firepower.
If the units with AoE is also slow or static it means that it is very likely that front lines will be established as players try to avoid bunching up their units while trying to manouver around the slower or static enemy AoE units.