is there something missing? story?

look game is fun i feel like its missing something tho, my friend thinks it's inorganic. unrelated robots fight each other, massive scale but no empire earth feel. like human connection/story just this commander out of no where fighting this battle against another commander at least empire earth gave history/reason to fight the other commander. Battling over a planet/galaxy is reason but just missing a story/events i know it not done to be the best rts but think my friends wrong or right?

Uber are developing a back story to PA that should give you some more context:

http://www.uberent.com/pa/2013/10/10/faction-1-reveal/

And:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/faction-update-faction-2-name-and-leader.53543/

There are also going to be a few more factions (there was a thread discussing names for the 3rd faction). The factions will be determined by the type of commander and will probably have relevance in the Galactic War when it is released.

The factions are kinda.....meh? at the moment.

Find "meh"
Replace "unoriginal".

Yes, there's nothing that really gives me that OH GOD YES feeling. I found TA's premise (two factions with such uberpowers that it's a perpetual stalemate) to be interesting. I found Supcom's premise to be kind of copied from that (not to mention that the Cybran were kind of right all along).

The amnesia part i get. Specific, even laser-guided amnesia? yes. It's just that a roman empire and anti-life collective are kind of meh. It's not a story of shades of grey, it's a story of evil guys fighting it out.

Yeah, like having the factions base their military structure and organisation on say, the Romans, that is fine, but it's like they try to follow them a little too closely to be a natural thing.

I feel like they all need to acknowledge that they are what they are, 41'st century Armageddon weapons. (Weather they are engram's, AI or what not).

And that their shared goal, no matter why they are fighting, is to firstly survive, and to secondly utterly annihilate the others.

There will be no remorse in the war, no time to think, no peace, just a continuous war at any and all costs.

Story goes like this.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far in that direction. A civilisation of people waged war over the last remaining resources on their world. Eventually the war ended, not due to the efforts of each warring party, but due to the lack of coffee to keep their robot pilots awake, and lack of resources to continue and produce energy, but coffee was the main reason.

After the leaders of these factions collapsed and the planet fell into anarchy, the survivors realised their only hope was to venture into space. Their resources limited, they put their greatest minds and gave them all their remaining coffee to develop the technology needed to traverse the great distances in space over long period of time.

This technology led to the development of the Core, allowed conscious mind to exist inside a artificial neural structure, this allowed milliions of survivors to survive the long time needed to reach a habitable world with such limited resources.

The ship itself despite carrying millions of lives, was much smaller than one would imagine, holding only the precious Core. It eventually landed on its world, and civilisation began anew, but with one difference. Being without a body for so long, ones minds had grown accustomed to living in the artificial neural strata, and so continued to do so, using robotic bodies to perform work in the real world.

Meanwhile back on the first world, those who were unfortunate not to go with the others, found life difficult on this now barren world. The coffee supply completely taken by the others who now known as the Core, had left them with the curse of always feeling tired in the morning. Over time, they adapted to this change, and from the wreckage of their civilisation and the minds no longer hyped by caffine they built ships of their own, first traveling ot the moon, stripping it of its worth, then onto other worlds. The limited range of these fleets did not deter them, soon the entire system had been converted into a fleet, with one goal, Vengence against those who would deny us our morning coffee.

Thousands of years later, a colony of the Core was attacked with nothing but a sign left behind, reading. Your Coffee belong to us now and so the great Infinite War began.

Uber can do the rest.

Ever consider, after billions of battles, they would forget why they fight, but as computers rest assured they are definitely programmed to fight? They don't consider the why, they just know they are programmed to automatically shoot on sight. They don't react, the first thing they notice is a machine falling apart down the sights of their robotic weapons without any reason why they aimed and fired.

I got a neat lore that does incorporate the earth. It isn't PA Canon though.

I've always had a problem with the "The computer forgot its original programming" premise, not just in PA but in scifi as a whole. Computers don't "forget" anything. Sure, aspects of their memory core could have been damaged, but wouldn't that same damage have caused the base "firmware" to become corrupt and cause the machine to become inoperable? I have been sort of pressing the "I believe" button so far with the back stories so far but I have some reservations about them. I think about the only way the backstory could be believable enough for me is if the memory wipes were somehow caused by the mysterious "progenitors" to force the machines to forget why they were fighting to begin with. I could accept that premise so long as the reason behind it was believable. For example, a virus that was designed to disable the commanders but instead, destroyed resident memory while keeping intact base programming. Perhaps the faction leaders were once the tools of the warring factions of the progenitors. One progenitor faction programmed the virus in hope of wiping out the opposing factions and claiming victory but instead accidentally caused the memory wipe which caused the comms to turn against the progenitors and wipe them all out and now all the comms know is build fight and destroy.

If a machine intelligence can rewrite its own code it might "forget" (overwrite) original programming.

Yeah, i feel like we need a more detailed background story. There isn't very much at the moment. But hey, it's still in gamma.

Maybe uber will flesh out the story a lot more when we get our hands on the galactic war mode.

I think we need to slash and burn the current backstory(s) and trim it back to something a little simpler and less trite.

Laser guided amnesia is an interesting hook if the character who has it is still interesting and more than likely, is concerned about their apparent lack of memory. These robots have neither endeared themselves as characters nor do they seem to care that they have no memory past TDZ. Thus, they are dull, cardboard-cutout villains, anti-villains or whatever you want to call their various overused archetypes.

I'll take a stab at making them interesting in the Commander Overhaul mod I have in mind but I'm aware that my own backstory for each of them is likely to be coloured towards what I personally like when it comes to SciFi tropes, archetypes and so on; I can't guarantee that everyone will like them so I'll make the lore changes (if there's any way to actually view it in game) as an optional feature.

Expect the ARM-WM and CX-D3 Commanders to reappear in some fashion.

Aye, the backstory is lacking at the moment, but considering, that only 3 out of 4 factions had been revealed yet, we can expect more in the future.

As for me, I'm kinda getting impatient with faction reveals... because you know... they don't have their final names yet, and it would be lovely to have those final names, because the longer I have to wait, the more [temporary names] I have to replace in my ongoing fan fiction (in singature).

In the meantime, everyone's welcome to read my fan fiction (shameless advertisement )!

I feel people are making an assumption that these giant robots do not have pilots and are completely machines. Perhaps we should start with some basics.

Are there pilots in these robots?
Are they people in Cores, transferred to the robots to wage war?
Are they Artificial intelligence programmed for war?
Are they sentient robots?
All of the above?

Last, possibly important question? What are they fighting over? I personally think its the ancient alien artefact, the coffee machine.
Or perhaps why are they fighting in the first place?

Are we dealing with individuals stories, or the stories of entire civilisations? This is important for scope. Most stories involve both, usually how an individual effects the civilisation with a change of some sort.

For example, there are individual commander types, is this significant? Are they representative of their civilisation or faction? Is it a customised commander bot? Or simply a model mass produced in one era or the next, some being obsolete while others are brand new.

Not all of these questions need to be answered, but some do in order to form a story. Once that's done, everyone whos reading this will have a coherent foundation from what to draw ideas from.

I do have one idea for a background story, which doesn't involve coffee. It involves tea, kidding. Here it is.

You have your once great civilisation, barren rocks and space is too dangerous for civilians and normal colonisation, but resources are needed. Commander bots were sent out to originally gather resources and send them back to the colonies. Due to mass mining, that involved digging up a planets entire crust, civilian populations now live on giant space stations build around suns to harness its energy.

Many thousands of years went past, this civilisation grew, as it spread, the distance between one colony and another caused communications to break down, leading to the creation of separate factions. The miners, were still being sent out to collect resources for their colonies, the galaxy was slowly being whittled down.

However a similar problem occurred, although the commanders, whether they be pilots, cores or robots understood their mission. There was a fierce competition and need for those resources. This led to the development of war machines, colonies simply took a if the war is not seen it is not happening approach to the situation.

Then as things grew worse, an incident known as Dying sun which led to the death of 33 billion civilians, caused by a misfiring of a new weapon known only as (The metal planet Project). This caused great fear among the colonies who now could not deny the existence of the war. Building great halleys on their colonies, they knew that if they remained in a solar system they would be found and the war would come to them. So out of fear they left into the great void between solar systems, where they believed they would be safe.

The commanders however were never told, nor were they recalled, now being feared as war mongers and war criminals by many of these factions. Communications broke down, and unable to return home many continued the only life they knew, cut of from support from the colonies. It now became a fight for survival.

New fragile alliances were forged between the commanders, eventually these formed into factions that are still waging war to this day. Generations have past, only a few scant reminders of the colonies are left, including the metal worlds that once housed the billions of lives that served as miners that provided for them. Now they are abandoned, the people know only war, no longer providers for a great civilisation, but providers for themselves.

One way or another, every planet shall be annihilated as the fuel for a never ending war of survival. Will you survive?

I have my doubts about artificial intelligence having consciousness in any form except through what's functionally a one-to-one facsimile to the human brain. Because of that, all the flaws and vulnerabilities of a human brain are going to be present in an artificial one.

But yeah, any sort of data corruption (what I'd consider brain damage) that affects cognitive ability isn't going to manifest itself as memory loss - it's going to be brain dead or spasm and twitching.

Throw that right out the window once we hit the singularity. In fact throw everything we know out the window once we hit the singularity... scientific predictions on AI completely break down once we make a machine that can think and improve itself.

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@alantoner, That's all well and good but you have to actually care about the Commanders and their place in the universe before you start throwing plot at people.

I personally can't give a damn about the plot and ultimate fate of the universe if the characters presented are one-dimensional Clichés without any factors that make them likable... or even interesting.

Which singularity?

Oh, that AI singularity.

Yeah, I have my doubts.

Imagine digitising the mind. A human mind. For argument's sake - we're digitising @nanolathe's mind. It'll become an accurate electronic simulation of your brain chemistry and synapses. Do you think digitial-lathe will be able to improve itself in a way that nanolathe couldn't?

Neuroplasticity is one thing - your mind changes and evolves in its own right. But those changes aren't consciously made or controlled.

Your reasoning for "unoriginal" boils down to "you don't like it". That is not an objective argument, nor reasoning for something being unoriginal.

Correct Gorbles, it's not really "unoriginal" so much as it is cliché, over-written, overall dull and lacking any kind of purpose is what most people really have a problem with.

TA : War over Transhumanism
SupCom : War for Freedom because of Slavery, Zealotry, Rebellion and Oppression
PA : War over... ??? ... because of ... lost memories??? maybe???

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Edit: BulletMagnet, to answer your question succinctly, yes I believe that an AI would be able to reprogram itself (even if based of a human-like brain) far more effectively and efficiently than I am able to, nevermind what said AI could create for its next iteration and how that would be different to the original meaty fleshbag.

By the way, as soon as Humans can reliably and usefully augment themselves through technology you can bet that I'll be first in line to get cyberised.

Im more of a, 'brain in a jar' kinda guy.

Id like to keep my body for as long as it works.......core scum.

Edit: So based on the overall themes of the past games, as presented to us by nano, could we devise a similar setting between morally gray factions, of a no right answer war till death?

Based on what we know of the game, could they all be fighting over the last remains of digitised humanity? Could they all be deciding what to do with humanity, and are fighting over different interpretations on how to do this?

Based on earth sociality, one side might want to be a overseer of new humanity, and tech them peace from war and help them develop a agricultural society, and keep them there.

Where as another faction might be more industrialist, and want to keep fulfilling humantys potential and push them to develop empires of even greater heights then before the fall.

One of the factions might seek to unify humanity under one ruler, and wield them to rebuild the empire of old, and once again begin the transhuman process.

And another might feel like humanity should be left to their own devices, and thus needs to assert that the commanders reseed them and leave all known space.


All fighting for somewhat noble and just causes, all with drawbacks to their intervention or lack of one.

It's tricky because you don't want to have one faction become the defacto "good guys" like the Cybran became. As far as armed uprisings go, rebelling against those that put into a situation akin to slavery isn't a bad reason. Your "Fate of Humanity" isn't really a bad premise to hang a moral dilemma upon... but if I may say so, take it to 11. push every faction into black and white interpretations of what's right and what's wrong.

That's how TA did it; no half measures. Either you're fully digitised or 100% natural (even if it is a clone).

Partial corruption of the ideal is also a bonus. I'd call neither the CORE or the ARM "noble" in their endeavours. They're two extremes that have destroyed everything in their path. The ARM use robot 'suits' to fight, even if they are trying to destroy their all-machine enemy, while the CORE still conform to humanoid shapes to fight, betraying their claim that machines are completely superior to flesh.

Edit: Or take some trope and just have fun with it. Tropes like "The Collector" whose small beginnings have escalated to the point at which the AI is now only satisfied with collecting whole planets... and naturally it wants all of them. A harmless habit turned up to 11... Maybe it's Commander Serial and ID numbers, personality engrams or something even more esoteric and ephemeral, who knows; All that's apparent is that he's willing to fight to gain the last pieces of his collection.

Put a bunch of similarly deluded individuals in a blender and see who comes out on top... and the mystery is how or why they all arose at the same time.

Maybe they didn't! and there are some young Commanders and some that are unimaginably old. Are they all of human make or are some from beyond the furthest reaches of the galaxy? Are they tools of war or have they "evolved" that way because of circumstance and lack of any morality chip? Or have they overridden a very present but no longer functional morality subroutine?! Do they just want to fight that much?!

The problem with the Lore as it stands is that it actually tells us far too much.