Internal Playtest – Various Fixes and Improvements – 5/6

http://www.twitch.tv/metabolical/b/526483557

• Meta had music playing for the first part of the playtest. I didn’t really like that. Couldn’t hear anything he said. Thanks for turning it off Meta!
• The new PTE builds include quite a few fixes, including icon bugfixes and improvements to pathfinding.
• Uber is putting an emphasis
• Metal extractors still generate 5 metal per second and Scathis doesn’t seem too happy about it.
• The build bar got fixed. It was just a graphical bug anyways.
• Forest fires now are only seen if you have vision – as they should be. Now we don’t get free intel if someone starts a forest fire during a battle.
• Forest fire seem to spread pretty far. It’s an iterative process, but maybe they shouldn’t spread quite so far/fast?
• It does look pretty cool when a scout flies overhead and sees the forest below just burning.
• Scathis complained about the fire sounds. We’ll get improvements to it eventually.
• Meta still struggles with not using his economy.
• Scathis complains about massive pathing issues. They’re working hard on it, so we’ll get there. Planetary Annihilation’s live build isn’t quite ready for trees blocking paths.
• Man anchors are very impressive structures. Probably will need a nerf, or anti-orbital ground units. I’d also love the idea of a fighter that is built from the advanced air factory that can move between layers.
• Bombers seem to have working ammo bars. I don’t think we should be able to see our enemy’s ammo bars though.
• Defensive structures now have a more spaced out line build by default.
• Meta was having issues with red and pink being nigh indistinguishable. I hope that means they’ll fix those color issues, like blue/purple as well.
• Orbital units flying in and out of view of the PiP looks pretty awesome.
• Warring units starting forest fires looks pretty awesome.
• Major pathing issues…
• Meta almost got sniped by bumblebees but was saved by Anchors. The poor guy kept on getting teamed up on. But such is the nature of FFAs.
• T1 tanks don’t have much of an issue killing Slammers.
• Not sure if the players simply didn’t build any anti-air, or if Bumblebees have had improvements and are more viable now. They were used and they worked well. They aren’t going to wipe out an entire base, but they’re great for outlying metal extractors and strategic strikes.
• The AI can use interplanetary nukes.
• The AI was using the beast commander! That’s cheating!
• Remember, nukes destroy units in orbit now!
• Nukes can also travel to any planet in the system, regardless of whether they share a gravity well or not.
• The AI pulled off a win!

Über is putting an emphasis on what?
Also, the build bar was a bug? That's kind of unfortunate..

That AI >.O

It's back to 7 in the latest PTE build.

This was changed in a much earlier PTE build (64758)

Why that's cheating? Did it affect game play?

Take it how you may, but anchors not moving is actually an incredible buff. Nothing can contest them once built. As 'epic' as lines of anchors all around a planet are, it isn't very exciting or engaging gameplay. Not a great idea to combine laser turrets and anti air turrets, and put them into the orbital shell where they are immune to their normal counters.

Hope this is just another case of the 'dox panic', where they have proper anti orbital already planned but are not showing us for whatever reason.

Anchors not moving is a huge nerf, especially since they have a lot less DPS than they used to have. Now the only way to invade other planets is with Avengers. And due to the stat shuffling, it's a lot easier to use Avengers to kill an Anchor. It's the shooting at the ground layer that's a huge buff. It's an awesome mechanic.

However, PA is in an extremely iterative process and Uber is experimenting with a lot of things. They introduce one dynamic, and break a lot of others.

Something will change to combat anchors. I'm hoping we'll get a ground to orbital unit. So you can combat the Anchors without needing to build lots of Avengers. Either way, destroying an Anchor will be a costly endeavor, just like destroying a laser defense tower.

I'd say the anchor is in the dox/grenadier stage, they added a new behavior (pew pew to the ground layer) without having to add a new orbital unit. They watch how it is and then make appropriate changes.

That's not the correct way to think about this. If your opponent has avengers, why do you not have avengers? The last thing this game needed was extra static defence that interacted with the ground layer.

And quite honestly, while anti-orbital units will solve the problem, the required unit composition in any given game just becomes bloated due to 'specialty units' like grenadier and anti-orbital. It's bloated design to have pairs of units that simply act to counter each other.

did you not mention that nukes destroy units in orbit now? if that is indeed the case, then - anti-nukes aside - why not just NUKE the anchors away?

Erm.. No they're just counter units, this game needs 100+ units. Anti-Nuke and Anti-orbital units should both exist, they make your army composition even more diverse. Diversity is what we should have. Seeing one big blob of one unit is very boring, seeing a blob of so many different units all working together to best eachothers stats? Now that's interesting. It's just as putting some grenadiers into your army of Scampers, give them that extra range to help get passed walls and then even some combat fabricators to help out with your longevity of your units. Sure, you don't need to put the anti-orbital unit in there, but now you run the risk of getting shot, same goes for many other roles, you don't NEED the grenadier bot, but you might as well when you get near any kind of defensive line.

Well i guess if the devs only want to make the farmville or LoL of RTS, then fine. I won't be sticking around to annoy the forums (not a "do what i tell you to do or i quit" thing).

I'm only pointing out design flaws from the perspective of tight RTS based gameplay, and a bloated selection of unit pairs that don't interact with other units except their counter is just bad design.

But an anti-orbital unit would interact with a lot of units in the orbital layer? Just look at it as another type of anti-air unit but for orbital instead! Now I think that static defenses should always surpass mobile defenses. A mobile anti-nuke should not be as good as a static one; it could, for example, only carry one anti-nuke missile as it's max as apposed to 3. Also, don't worry about annoying the forums, honestly you can't be that bad. All you're doing is giving your opinion on something; I'm only trying to state mine! Also, I imagine you're a bit new here? If so, welcome! (If you want to see real long discussions you should take a look at the balance forum. )

How would that work? Would the mobile antinuke build nukes onthemove? Or would it need to deploy so it can fabricate em? Or would it just load an antinuke from a stationary launcher? I like it, dont wanna know how many times my gate gets nuked when i finnaly finish it on a locked down planet.

The same way bombers create bombs.

Likely both, meta gave Bumblebees slightly more health, so now AA takes 4 hits to kill them, however, I doubt the players built enough AA anyway.

oh boy

It's a teeest~! It's a tesssssst~! Iiiiiit's a teeeeeeest~!

Really, it is a little better than invunerable planets. Really, if an enemy produces 8 nucks and carpet bombs your planet, they get props for having enough time to do so. Especially with PTE economy. You could have done any number of cheaper things, the nukes definitely should be that effective for that cost. A single nuke, even with orbital scouting, is no issue because an uncontested planet lets you build as spread out as possible and if you don't take advantage of that it is your fault. No 4 buildings should be that close to each other, and mex spots are not usually within 5 in the range of a nuke together.

As far as antinuke and antiorbital units, its hard to describe how a unit with standard unit cost and standard unit ability would be balanced to functionally takedown an 30k nuke. I said elsewhere, I think an orbital antinuke is the best possibility of a mobile antinuke due to how much it can cost and how limited it can be.

And antiorbital units, how cheap is the umbrella at what tier? You can build one underneath an anchor if you bum-rush it with fabbers.

Nukes must hit the ground to detonate. So you can't nuke the anchors above an anti-nuke.