Why I dislike Planetary Annihilation

id played the demo of that game befor man that game is EPIC but if you sacle them to Supcom the Huge walker is as big as an ACU

OR...a Unit skin mod if i can make the WWII skin mod work 100%....

The Hierarchy was cool, but their campaign was rendered pointless in the ending cut scene.

Left a bad taste in my mouth.

comparing the balance of a game that is out for 7 years to one that isn´t even retailreleased
do i need to say more?
or shall i just send you the price for " least usefull -no-crap-sherlock- comment ever" right away?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that a lot of the negativity for experimental units come from their role in Supreme Commander. Once you had a monkeylord it was extremely difficult for your opponent to stop it with anything but their own experimentals.

But I feel like that's not really an inherent problem with "epic" units, but rather a product of bad balance. What if PA had experimentals that augmented your army instead of replaced it? What if instead of them being simply a regular unit with more health and damage, they gave powerful but situational advantages instead?

There's plenty of games who got the concept of "epic units" right - look at the Starcraft 2 mothership for example. By no means is it invincible, it has clear roles and counterplay, but can very easily turn the momentum of a game.

I pretty much agree with what you said there. (although I dislike people referring to StarCraft when talking about large scale games like supcom and pa)

Why does everyone seem to think of exp units as the ultimate game ending instawin unit?
They should still feel powerful and like a threat, but not necessarily ultimate game enders.

NO-ONE CAN DEFEAT THE MIGHTY TEMPEST!



omg so op.

It's worth keeping in mind that there is a very clear distinction to be made. "SuperMegaExperimentals" that are large simply "because reasons" are not the same thing as a unit that is large simply as a by-product of it's role/mechanics. To me the Mothership from Starcraft 2 roughly falls into that second category IMO but it's not an easy classification to make because the methodology is so different for the two games.

Mike

I simply don't understand why Uber refuses to look at what is working nicely in the PA family tree.
The balance of PA would be a lot better if they did.

So yes, you need to say more, because it doesn't make any sense to me to scratch 20 years of evolution for the sake of it.

Because those games are not PA. They may be in the same style, they may have inspired PA.

But what worked for them won't necessarily work for PA.

It's like basing Dawn of War 2 balance off of Dawn of War.

That's not true at all and should not serve as an excuse.

It's not an excuse. PA isn't trying to be FA, and FA isn't the best and only way to design a game.

An excuse for what?

Maybe they should have, since DoW was a much better game than its successor.

Pssh, I'd argue all day about that as well

Fair enough. They're different beasts. And you're correct, what worked for the former won't work for the latter since the entire design is, at its most fundamental level, a different kettle of fish.

Same goes for PA and its hybrid TA/SupCom design. Some people like that... other people wish Uber would just make TA2 / SupCom3 and not focus so much on trying to cater to both separate parties. Walking the line between the two gives me a bit of a wishy-washy feel while I'm playing.

I ate a banana the other day. dident really feel like it was enught tho. maybe i shoulde had some more.

It has the same core fundamentals.
Being the best balance or not is irrelevant.
Some things are working great in FA and not at all in PA. So why start from the lesser version, and not improve over what the best one has?

I did a lot of research on TA balance when starting re-balancing FA. That's crucial knowledge.

ie. T2 mass extractors in FA worth 2 extra T1.
In PA, T2 worth a lot more than that, and make T2 economy too strong for PA vision (large army, terrain occupation necessary).

You can take lessons on many things. ie. anti nuke not having almost the same range than nuke, or arty having a much stronger range and higher arc to make them real siege weapons.

I could write pages about all this, but it's wasted time I believe.

If taking FA as the best version feels offending, you can do the opposite too, and not make the same mistake.
Ie. T3 economy in FA is more like T2 in PA, and it's too powerful.
T3 air all mighty, as T2 air in PA. Arguably because of the lack of mobile counter. Like the lack of T2 AA in PA.

@nanolathe - I understand that feeling, especially if you're really familiar with both differing styles. I don't have that myself (never played TA, which is bad of me I know, and I gave up on SupCom a few years back), which probably helps contribute to my attitude of the current design.

Heck, the same applies to DoW vs. DoW 2, as those are both games I have a lot of experience with. At least PA is supremely moddable. DoW was to an extent, and DoW II really kinda wasn't.

Again with the "best one"
It's not. There's no specific reason to take from FA. Why not TA (especially given PA is a successor of TA, not FA)? Why not another game? Why not try for something different altogether? You're entire argument is based on a notion that FA is the ideal (no surprises there ), which is not true, regardless of how great a game it may be. It's just one way of doing it.

If you follow that way you are suggesting, you lock yourself into a game which at it's core would play like FA. So instead, they start from the ground up to develop a balance that gives the game it's own play style. There's no requirement to get it right first go.

I would have expected from a moderator that he read the whole content of a post before posting.

I'm not saying that FA/TA balance is better, I'm saying a lot of things that doesn't work it PA are working in FA/TA, and only a fool would ignore that.

ie. PA claims to be about big armies, big battles and terrain occupation. So far, it's very far from being the case, while it arguably is in FA/PA. So looking back at these games and analyzing why would have make PA balance so much better from the start.

And notice how I'm saying FA/TA, not only FA. It doesn't really matter what game you are looking it, could be starcraft 2 as long as the mechanics apply and are better.