Internal Playtest – Mostly Debugging, New Models, and Lots of Questions Answered – 2/4

http://pamatches.com/news/internal-...ng-new-models-and-lots-of-questions-answered/

http://www.twitch.tv/uber_garat/c/3666145

• The next release will have balance and stability improvements, but not nessesarily a “huge” feature release. I consider stability improvements to be “huge” though.
• New models:
  • Gunship
    
  • Vanguard
    
• (Garat! When your base is next to a lake, don’t neglect naval or you’ll have a bad time!)
• Naval is a lot better balanced now. They’re going to feel very different. They are still slow, but high damage.
• Uber Cannon did a loop da loop!
  
• They’re working to improve the coordination and functionality of multiple weapons
• There will be some slightly difference between commanders, functionality wise. But they will be mostly the same. Their weapons will behave a little differently, but will be mostly the same.
• Deepspace travel speed will be increased and will be on a per unit basis
• Performance and overall framerate has been increased a decent amount.
• The ambient light looks pretty darn awesome
• The limit for whether a planet is moveable and how much is required to move it is entirely determinant by Uber and what they think is good balance.
• Notifications specifically for spectators will be in the game.
• The Desert biome has been tweaked and improved.
• Lots of coming graphics changes in the coming months. Planetary Annihilation is going to look a lot better in the future.
• AI playing along side with players is possible, but “probably” won’t be something we see in the vanilla Planetary Annihilation. It would make the game too much like “Sim City with Armies.”
• We still don’t see the strategic icons for interplanetary nukes.
• We’ll be able to customize our formations through mods. If we want our units to sit in a different order
• Balance between Vehicles and Bots have been tweaked and much better balanced.
• Nukes may or may not end up creating craters when they hit. Depends on performance.
• There may be additional ground/mobile anti-air units in the works. Garat didn’t know for sure.
• Some of the devs still don’t know how to expand. They gain control of an entire planet and then don’t claim all the metal extractors. They’ve been getting better… but that’s a huge mistake.
• We will be able to choose whether units go into formation or not.
• They’re not currently working on dual screen stuff, but they’re working on “related” stuff. Likely they’re working on multi window stuff. Which is gonna be an awesome feature for managing multiple planets at once.
• They currently can play on LAN, but they play on an internal server instead.

That gunship is pretty damn smexy.
It may not be a big one, but it's going to be a damn good patch update.

Another helpful post. I would of probably missed this, Thanks@

Some good stuff there.

By the sounds of it, Garat was reminded of the interplanetary nuke icon glitch when he was spectating, so maybe it is going to be fixed sooner rather than later, now.

Increased deep sauce travelling times YESSSSSSSS.

Some of the additional graphical touches really added some life to the game, so if there are lots more on the way I am happy.

Gawd bless you, Brian, another excellent recap.

Lol deep sauce travel

As always, thank you for the thorough and prompt summaries, they are such a timesaver.

nice recap brian!

By the way, when are we getting our newsletter?

The newsletter will be every Friday with the first one coming out this Friday.

Link to sign up for those who are interested: http://pamatches.com/planetary-annihilation-weekly-newsletter/

Great! Thanks for setting all of this up!

wonderful recap. Those gunships look awesome. I also noticed some new animations for the orbital launcher.

Agreed. Uber did a great job with the new models.

"Performance and overall framerate has been increased a decent amount." Thats all I wanted to hear.

Edit. Thanks Brian again! Doing gods work.

Will we be able to use different sized screens or will they have to be the same?

Not completely sure what you're asking... so I'll just kinda talk on the topic.

In the future we'll have multi monitor support and multi window support. Those are two separate things.

We'll be able to set up multiple windows within one computer monitor – kinda like opening up two browser windows on your single computer monitor and browsing two separate websites. We'll be able to interact with the two windows with complete fluidity, which will make multi planet management a breeze. Fight two battles at once on two sides of the planet with ease. Gonna be awesome.

Uber has also mentioned that their mini map will be somehow tied into the multi window support.

Then there will be multi monitor support where players can have several monitors. Players will be able to put their multi windows across multiple monitors.

Gonna be super freaking awesome.

PA is going to change the RTS genre.

will be amazing update. Also, is the devs skill ingame really a momento of information? We know most devs are terrible at their own game, including call of duty and battlefield.

If devs would be better at their own games it would help them make a better game. Unfortunately they rarely have time to get better

I've called them out on their skill a few times and the devs have responded to those callouts in the subsequent videos and have improved their gameplay because of it.

I'm very concerned about the devs incorrectly balancing the game due to their lack of skill, as are many other people here on the forums.

Uber's thought process:

One day I suppose they'll learn...

The devs do not play the game in the same way as the pro's. They do not use the same tactics, opening rushes, strategy... it is a little bit concerning for me. Devs pulling one way, pros pulling the other. But hey ho we will see.

I'm fine with them having a certain goal with gameplay and changing things to fit with that goal.

But the community takes the current game mechanics and finds and employs the best tactics for what we have.