Why I dislike Planetary Annihilation

Don't blow all that steam at once.

Unfortunately the end-game in PA is often nukes and gunships, because once you have an economy that is so much stronger than the opponent that you can win, you crack open their defenses and then send the fastest units you have to go finish the job. It keeps the game from dragging on once a winner has been decided, but it does make the final moments of the game feel a little empty a lot of the time. This will probably not be the case once performance gets to the point where big team games on multiple planets become common, but I'm not sure it will ever change for 1v1.

Id love to see how you could strip the experimentals down to their most base functions, and make assault units from them instead.

Like, strip a monkeylord down into a dps microwave platform, removing the non-essentials like AA, little laser cannons, torpedoes, stealth est.

And make a more compact T3 platform as a result of the experiments, a balanced and usable unit with a purpose, anti-swarm assault bot.

And then you can reduce the cost, hp, and dps proportionally so that instead of one unit for the price, you get 10. That way you can start using it before the whole army has been paid for and the dps of your army will be reduced as it takes damage!

Indeed.

I have never liked how the 'experimental' units are not actual experiments.

i do human vs human some times (takes a LOT longer to finshed then with an hard AI tho and..easer )

...in FA?

what I'm saying is that just about 95% of the FaF playerbase finds hard AI pitifully weak. do you understand what that represents for your turtle strat?

no i mean the hard AI in PA and a little PVP in PA also in FA i do PVP the AI is worthless in FA but PA.....that AI can train pros!

The end game is supposed to be massive armies...

Current game balance is broken – but hey, the game isn't finished.

I really disliked SupCom primarily for the shields.

The vision of shields:
Two big armies clashing with shields preventing either side from making headway too quickly. Epic battles of attrition.

The reality of shields:
I can't scratch you; you can't scratch me. By the time I can build something capable of piercing your shields, I will simply pierce the shields your commander is standing under and kill him directly. Boring turtle-fest.

This is why SupCom tournaments took place on the smaller maps (typical 1v1 maps being laughably tiny) -- to allow the game to be decided by early combat so that hopefully it never had a chance to get bogged down by shields. This also meant that a great deal of tournament fights didn't employ experimentals -- you know, the big things sold to us on the box -- because it was often decided one way or another before you got to that point.

There were some epic 1v1's that involved shields and experimentals of course, but let's be real: those were the exceptional fights, not the typical fights. And if you actually did a 1v1 on a huge map, it frequently degraded into a turtlefest followed by one huge strike that kills someone's commander.


I find PA fights to be a lot more epic than SupCom, on average.

ye that i agree with.

my point about turtle being less valid in Fa than PA still stands though.

Very much agree with this.

Very well put.

I enjoyed building the massive mega unit to pierce the shields – but the enjoyment died pretty quickly. It just isn't fun to build defensive lines and try and get to the mega unit first.

Speak for yourself, It is fun to build defensive lines and try to get to the mega unit first.
Turtle games play like a typical soccer match, game goes on until one team gets tired and starts making mistakes.
No doubt that it is boring for e-sports and for guys who like to make videos for a tough audience. I for one would be bored watching this but would enjoy playing it.

I dislike repeating myself, but all your concerns are not valid anymore, and the current FA balance is a proof that shields and XP can be in a game without breaking the pace of it.

For tournaments being on tiny maps only, you should check at what level of play FA is now....
ie.

You will, for exemple, see heavy T1/T2 armies, T2 stealth drops and T3 added later. Something you wouldn't see 7 years ago (probably the balance your remembered).

I actually strongly believe that the tiers (the four tiers) are much more balance than the tiers in PA.
Not perfect yet, but we are getting there..

Also, a lot of 1v1 game go in late game more than often, and you don't see shields or XP spam even in team games (unless it's a big chokepoint map, but it's a map problem, not a balance one
You sure some shields because they are useful but not crazy OP (they are offering you time as they should), and you see more T3 than XP because "basic" units are the core of the game now. (they are more like meatshields while the T3 are dealing the damages).

I'm really impressed with what FAF has done. Hopefully PA and FAF both get to perfect balance and stay relevant for a long time. I also hope it doesn't take 7 years for PA to get there, but I'm patient.

you're talking out of your arsch you have no notion of what it is you're talking about like literally.

you could know what you were talking about if you played the game but you obviously don't.

setons is one of the frequent maps on ladder, is that a small map?

hehe yea, I doubt without all that time, FaF would be he way it is. ^^

I don't think PA can accomplish this instantly but I really hope it can give some stepping stones a miss by using FaF 's experience.

There will be a "Supreme Commander" mod, count on it

What about a Star Wars mod? Every game is better with a Star Wars mod.

yea definitely

definitely a Star Wars mod.

Well nobody is saying that the final version Uber releases is what we all are gonna be playing. There has been many games that players has taken over literally modded and that is what people played.

Im pretty sure there will be total conversion mods that will add experimentals if uber does add it, in fact i would bet on that fact. But again who knows. its not like the game is near done even when they release 1.0.

I like big units i gotta say, call me old fashion hehe. but UNniverse at war, while not a well known or super popular but also buggy game, was quite fun. A faction in that game could build these HUGE robot things. and i mean huge, biggest units ive ever seen in an RTS. They had hard points which you could improve with armor, weapons, building facilities for units so the big units could build units.