The direction seems to be off...

I've been playing TA since before any mods, so a long time. Of course, I backed PA and I think it has great potential but I think some key things are missing.

1) The prototype video had live units dropping from orbit unassisted (bots shooting on the way down). I think this needs to be a major focus of the game to fix fluidity problems across planets.

2) The introduction of rock-paper-scissors in damage dealt. In TA a shot did X damage to any type of target, this allowed true play and tactics, not the r-p-s game where I have to build that Y boat to beat X boat. Even if your guns weren't good, enough guns still could win. This game does not have those tactical options and should.

3) Buildings are fragile, and should not be. Building strength should be (like it was before in early testing) 10 times what it is now. The argument for this is this is a bot war lasting for millenia, building should be able to fend off assaults from space and continue their mission or this war would be over as soon as one side had more production (would last years not hundreds of years).

4) When trying to select orbital I also select land units. Hitting space should take me to the orbital plane where I can only see orbitals. I would suggest "zone" transition be done with arrow keys, up to orbital, up again to space, down to orbital, down again to my currently selected planet.

5) Orbital fabbers are wrong, they kill the fluidity of the game. Orbital units should be shot into space from ground production.

6) There needs to be expensive one-way teleporters, besides the point to point variety.

7) Planet to planet delivery of ground (and maybe water) units needs to be simplified. A ground based gun that shoots units into orbit. An orbital unit that can "carry" hundreds of tanks/bots/ships/planes and drop them on distant planet would fix some of the orbital problems. Ships would be VERY expensive to transport this way but allows for all water planet wars across systems.

8) Planet to planet guns that shoot nukes/units/orbitals/artillery should be in the game.

9) Radar should have to be in orbit to see the planet surface (for other units) but any orbital unit should be able to see the ground for itself. IRL with just optics you can see any building from orbit. For example, a planet to planet artillery could not shoot a building on another planet because it can't see a specific building without radar but it could shoot the ground of the other planet (might hit nothing, might hit the commander).

10) Asteroid belts are missing. Units should be able to "boost" from asteroid to asteroid, of course, for example, a land based "Ant" (tech one tank) might cost more to have an asteroid capable version.

I know the game is incomplete and we're still balancing, so I have high hopes. Can't wait to see what's new.

It's in development, of course there are features missing/incomplete

I will start with 10. That personally, is a bad *** unit idea. One that, depending on planet size, can simply land on the ground and fight like an astraeus move command, and can just jumpjet off planet and move orbital to other planets. Kind of skews your idea a bit, but the role is interesting. Just makes it questionable, if it lands on a large planet it really just wastes the resource if you do it accidentally, it is still useful for landing on large enemy planets as partial invasion force but it would be one way.

1) the egg, unit cannon projectiles, and possibly in the future items built from orbital fabricator, will do that.

2) Some of the units feel like that, they aren't completely one-sided-damage as they have no armor types and weapons still do the damage they do, but they could balance it more and make it where anything can take pot-shots at anything else instead of limiting what can try to shoot what.

3) Buildings are somewhat durable in the t2. T1 are mobile assault and temporary throw-down structures anyway, they perform a function without fortification. As such, the idea is they are expendable and replaceable and a dime a dozen. Attacks kill things in this game, no biggie, build new ones. Same with units really, you build a hundred of them, they die, you make 100 more, no biggie.

4) This is suggested a lot. With new orbital zoom, they should consider making land selection disappear after zooming so far while retaining orbital selection, and at a certain zoom making both selectable, and below the orbitals obviously you just have land units.

5) I agree, but that is a "transitional" thing. Before, orbital being t2 and all launched felt wrong. Now, individual fabrication of individual units like they are structures is wrong. There will probably be an orbital factory perhaps, or a balance of what you can launch and what you have to build in-air because really it is ok with radar and solar satellites and theoretically mining platforms and other "sturcturesque" satellites.

6) This might be cheesy, probably wasn't immediately thrown in because of cheese. Possibly considerable if it teleported individual units at the cost of power equivalent to a nuke in metal, and required a certain stream of power to recharge which limit's its spam and extends it's power cost.

7) Allowing for naval teleport, naval unit-cannon-capatability, and carrier ships, are all good ideas. Possible to come down the line.

8) Nukes are already interplanetary, they can shoot within the same orbit, as in moon to planet and planet to moon. Planets can't shoot at distant planets around the same star. Artillery is another consideration, I wouldn't mind some form of balanced sattelite that does this, like the Borderlands 2 Hyperion sattelite, as a tip of the hat to them you could even make it H shaped.

9) This just makes scouting too easy, although I believe there should be an orbital unit with this specific role (like the old advanced satellite but not the whole map, just underneath of it). This makes orbital-to-ground visual possible again but at an investment and a limited range instead of everything at once.

Also regarding 8, and expanding on Trophy's point, planet to planet nukes are on the table and mostly leaning towards implementation. It may become another class of launcher. This was mentioned in the last stream I beleive, or it was in the write-up made after, cant remember which but it was exciting news.

Don't go promising things you can't deliver, trophy. Uber will answer game issues if and when they get around to it.

1) Orbital is a huge WIP. I like to keep the orbital critique light because it's very much unexplored territory and will be difficult to work code-wise.

2) Uh. Yeah. That's a thing.

3) Buildings are not THAT fragile. Perhaps you are seeing a continuation of the rock/paper/scissors damage system. It takes only one or two of the right role to beat a dozen of the wrong one. The excessive damage of arty makes the high health of structures look like tissue paper.

4) The UI is definitely a work in progress. The best solution is to not flood the orbital layer with redundant crap, such as a fighter craft in a game that already has fighters.

5) Yes. That is a good way to do things.

6) In the Total Annihilation universe, the Galactic Gate was a 1-way teleporter that formed the central point of the war. It's a great thing to have in terms of lore. The only problem is that 1-way teles are simply game ending weapons, no matter what you do.

7) Yes. Orbital is still incomplete, but many options are on the table and it is up to Uber to pick them. It's okay for the initial effort to be difficult, but overall transport should not be cost prohibitive. High costs lead to game stalls.

8) The cannon from the kickstarter is a definite thing. Nukes are currently in a "meh" state. Big bertha planet arty could be very nice.

9) IRL China has been running the best anti-surveillance program in the world. Blocking visual access through 50+ miles of atmosphere is trivial at this level of technology.

10) Belts are likely to exist as a source of free rocks, but there are no plans to make them essential nor actual arenas in the game. The game has to be functional without having an unlimited source of rocks.

I will admit, I got a great laugh out of point nine in @bobucles' post.

It's not just hilarious but also relevant. China is a prime example of raping and pillaging the land with mega industry. That's exactly what these machines do. The rampant destruction of the atmosphere has a nice side effect of ruining standard vision.

What better way to protect your stuff from orbital dangers than not having it visible at all?

That unit could work. A smog producer or cloud seeding building to block vision from the orbital layer. But naysayers won't like it on "non armospheric planets". No idea why I did the quotes but they staying

Meh. Nothing is promised at this game is still beta. I mentioned "idea" in like half the numbers I listed.

That being said, I did commentate to which ones were more likely. Do you feel it is more likely they will keep individual orbital fighters as independent structure builds and queued similarly (instead of queue 100 at a time)? Do you feel with naval planets that one will not be able to travel with anything but the orbital fabricator, if it even keeps it's current abilities? Belts currently do exist if you make a ton of smallest size planets densely close to one another, it just needs slightly smaller and a unique editor and possibly other features, and I am quoting a dev livestream on that. As far as 9 goes, its all gameplay, not realism, so whatever works for gameplay.

As far as orbital fighters go, if that was your intent to argue it, I would not mind if they decided not to have a "fighter" orbital at all, and just left it as slow moving defense satellites, slow moving attack satellites, intel satellites, and structural satellites. The fabber, in my opinion, is a step in the right direction, better than the way the game was prior, but has it's own set of current issues. The next idea Uber implements should get even closer, possibly completely unanimous as the right way.

I've thought of something that would make the teleporters easier and more fluid to use. After you have selected the units you want to transport through a teleporter and you right click on a teleporter you get a dialog that shows an isometric view of every teleporter in your system. Left clicking on the image will activate that and send those units to that teleporter. "Cancel" causes the units to not go through. This would be much more fluid than the current system, as I can activate from one place, and an understandable interface that anyone would get.

Wouldn't this require that all teleporters are linked to every other teleporter? Currently they only link up with a single Teleporter. Making a kind of bridge rather than a network.

Mike

You can re-link them at any time though. I'm not sure if this idea would have it permanently re-link the teleporters or wait for any current traffic to stop, automatically switch to let the new group through, and then go back to the previous link.

Then whats the point of having specific links? If the system is so easily mutable might as well drop it for a completely open-ended system.

Mike

Oh I don't really agree that there is a need for the idea he suggested. I was just trying to help clarify. Someone suggested making it easy to view the other end, perhaps by a double-click. That is a ui improvement for the teleporter that I do agree with.

Gamma is much improved!! Haven't had a chance to test naval, but the tank/bot building balance seems much better. The catapult unit is too smart on its targeting. Any ground defenses are negated by just one or two catapults. Still wish all orbital units were built on the ground and launched. Also hate scrolling into space on accident, wish I cold limit zoom out to the current planet I am looking at. And have three views of the universe: planet, orbital (where ground would be shadowed so you could only target it but not select it (so you can only select orbital units with no interference from areas on the game), and space.

Still I am liking the improvements!!

4. They already have implemented an option in the UI settings that turn off strategic icons on the surface except for the orbital launcher and commander once zoomed out to a certain distance. This allows you to easily select and use orbital but also gives you the option of selecting all layers if need be.

We have picture-in-picture now! Press v to open it up, and you can have a second view of the game from whatever position you would like.

Neh... just switch on some other visual/radio frequency. Infrared, for example.

As for teleporters...just make them like stargates

#click teleporter
#choose destination (each teleporter aviable)
#wait for connection
#move in
#after last unit gate closes
#maybe give the gates a cooldown

I actually pretty much agree with his idea. It's a pain in the neck and a half to actually use the teleporters from planet to planet.