why all the hate? and desperation for a unit cannon?

Of course. That's a possibility.

I've personally read the recent messages from Uber differently. I report here the lines that are the more meaningful in my opinion.

BradNicholson
Now's not the right time to talk about another phase of development. And it's doubtful the Unit Cannon will make it into the 1.0 build on release day.

Metabolical
We made a deal with Nordic to sell a boxed version of the game. There are no contract terms giving them the right to dictate to us anything about ship timing. As good partners however, it is important for us to work together and try to meet whatever dates we might tell them, as they may choose to expend marketing resources publicizing the release. Still, we will ship when it's ready even if that means telling them we have to delay.

Now, I have to admit that this sounds much better now that I read it a second time.

Finally the statement from Brad that worried me the most - then I'll tell you why.

BradNicholson
Do we want to do the Unit Cannon? Totally. This sucks for us, too, man. But, we gotta focus on polishing the game for all of you at the moment.

I am wondering what "this sucks for us, too" really means. If they can postpone the release date at any time, why not including a fundamental key-concept of the game, the Unit Cannon? It will cost them a month to do so, so not really a huge deal. But missing it at release will surely hurt the image of the game and the way it will perceived from the public who little knows about Uber and how hard they worked on this project.

They will see many missing features, and how will they evaluate the game?

To be fair, I have also to admit that I have been unfair in expressing my complain about the status of the things, and my worry about the incoming future. I am sincerely sorry for that.

Is it likely that Nordic games got the date wrong?

I think this shows that Brad (and presumably the other devs) feel our pain, as they want to have these awesome features in as much as we do. However, if functionality, or time and money constraints, delay that, then that is life.

I think you have garnered a lot of ill feeling from some people with these recent topics, Carlo, and maybe could have used a bit more tact, but I think it's important that these topics are brought up occasionally so we know where everyone stands.
Hope you stick around to see it through

Entirely. Or they were just given a placeholder date by Uber, who said "ETA"...
We will see.

I don't understand why this is still being dragged on? Someone posted already a statement about Nordic Game not forcing anything... so why keep going? This is getting sad, fast.

Becoming?

Indeed, there is no reason what so ever to think that nordic games would have any say about release dates.

if they arent forcing anything then why Uber delaying stuff after release ? when they allways said when its ready....

But PA is going to experience continued development, how long would it take until it's "finished"? Do we really want a PA that's in "Perpetual Beta" like Hawken has been? Is that even Financially Viable without some F2P mechancis that go live before the game is complete?

You say you want Uber to wait until it's finished, but if you think about the implecations of that statement, you might see you actually don't want that.

All we should want is for PA to not be rushed out to meet some non-gaming related need like being out in time for the holiday season or something and personally, I think that PA is far from being Rushed out, maybe it's earlier than I'd like and there are some notable exclusions from the initial retail release but at the end of the day you do still need to release at some point and once we accept that the game won't "ever" be "finished" the exact timing of release doesn't really matter.

Mike

Actually this is a good point.

So, since at Uber they should know better than us, we may have to assume that releasing the game as it is (after the polishing phase) is financially more convenient than to keep gathering Early Access supporters for a little longer.

I do hope so, because the alternative (going public and alienate potential customers with bad reviews), will ultimately reduce the capabilities from Uber to keep the development of the game.

Honestly I don't think this is such a big deal with PA as it is with other games. Yes obviously a poor release will hurt it, but lets face it, the internet has a 3 second attention span for stuff, and while I don't doubt a poor release will make it harder to continue development long term, I imagine they'll still be able to at the very least fill in the obvious stuff post release and while Uber might be reduced in what they can do for PA, modders aren't limited in the same way so content will be available in some form and at that point the most important thing PA will have going for it is it's community, and based on my experience with the SupCom community, PA should easily be able to outlast the internet's focus on past mistakes it's made and since fixed in all likelihood.

Mike

This is a good point. Just look at how many EA boycotts there were which never materialised, or that BF4 didn't even WORK properly for the first few months of it's life. I'm sure people are still playing it. Maybe not as many as could have been, but I'm betting still a LOT.

This is obviously not a reason to be complacent, and I still have faith that Uber will deliver eventually.

Well didn't EA make a ton of losses last year (Compared to the year before)? I for one did not buy Battlefield 4 based on the 'beta' (more like a public demo) which played like a pile of rubbish. It seems quite a few people were scared of aswell. None of my friends bought it, and we were playing Battlefield 3 very much.

i did not bought BF4

bicous after i Bought BF3 i found out that they just want to make it like CoD

you know

BF after BF after BF instead of adding a Tonn of content and polishing they just make another BF that is basicaly the same with new skin and missing stuff...............

no thx..........

and also its EA il hope they burn....................

But I also assume EA re-invests a big chunk of their earning in marketing and promotions. It may cost them like crazy.

Don't read too much into what I said, I am just arguing that a lot of people who buy this game on release will be totally unaware of any of the issues that have occurred during development, if they still exist on launch. And even then, I still think a fair proportion would eventually buy the game if when these features were implemented, even if they initially boycotted the game on principle.

unitcannons werent mandatory in supcom 2 they wont be mandatory in pa either ... but no doubt pretty useful
.... what is currently mandatory to get armies between planets are teleporters but those are pretty difficult to get on a well defended planet ... this needs to change
orbital transportation needs either an overhaul or more units ... better both

I want the game to be released as soon as possible, but it's not just the "essentials of a modern RTS" that they need to have on release. Everything they promised on Kickstarter must be in the game at launch. This includes the 40 player matches, million unit battles AND the Unit cannon.
If the game doesn't have these features it's a fail.

Example: Sim City has terrible reviews(that ofc. impacted sales heavily) and will forever be remembered as a game with huge server problems even though they fixed everything quite soon. Why? Because games are judged at launch.

Just for clarification, the one million units were a number they threw out there but not a promise. ^^

No. At worst it's just incomplete.

Also Sim City was dealing with a completely different set of circumstances. The backlash was bad specifically because of the server requirements and all that came with it, including the usual issues with servers on launch. PA will, aside from the expected hiccups of servers on launch will still be fully playable because once "released" players will be able to host servers themselves and the game is already quite playable as we can see from the Alpha/Beta/Gamma.

While it's true that games are judged at launch, the internet also has a 3 second memory, and so long as the Post-Release support goes even half decently there will be a lot of redeeming factors in PA's favor long term, never mind the potential Modding has.

It's better to say it's more so a technical goal rather than a Gameplay one.

Mike