1.0 Release - Short Term vs Long Term

I really hope so.

But honestly the amount of players with this patch seems to be far lower.

If i just bought a game that is crashing constantly, or has some pretty major bugs, i would not keep playing it.

I know not everyone crashes constantly, but i sure do. I crashed 7 times in one game. The only reason why i kept trying to reconnect was to see how many times it would actually crash.

When it comes to RTS games, these types of bugs are very detrimental.

Need a ladder for that I think.

Air isn't OP early game in the PTE because of the commanders god-tier missile launcher and massive anti-air tower buff. Its almost like some of you guys don't actually play vanilla balance Still sucks there's no cheap anti-air to make bots first more viable of course.

Going off numbers alone, I think the Dox and Vanguard changes are good. I'm happy to see Uber being a bit more subtle rather than 3x'ing and 1/3'ing things now.

Other than balance, the main thing I'm hoping note work is done to before release is orbital.

I still think that orbital play is unclear, unmanageable, unintuitive, uninteresting, and unimaginative.

When I have orbital units, I lose them. When I have many orbital units, they stack and I don't know what I'm selecting. If I try to select a bunch, they won't actually all be selected because there's probably a fabricator in there. If I shift+select to get the fabbers too, I select a bunch of stuff that's on the ground by accident. I can't predict movement speed or the time it takes for an orbital unit to get somewhere. I often can't remember where ive sent orbital units, because the move icon is a tiny dot on the planets surface thats hard to see when zoomed out in "orbital view" I can't judge what's winning an orbital "dogfight" and the combat looks weird and clunky. I can't tell what path an interplanetary nuke will take so can't avoid anti-nukes or build my own anti's in sensible places. I can't full-planet-area build umbrellas because the placement algorithm is dodgy and I don't know what order my fabbers will build them in. I can't tell what my umbrellas are firing at without zooming the camera out and searching the skies for too long. Orbital units look awesome from the side on view, but when actually playing I don't think their looks are diverse enough to be able to tell what is what. Patrolling a commander in an air transport is a really weird unintuitive way to dodge otherwise unstoppable SXX snipes. Orbital radars are messy and not obvious - the commander and ground radars give orbital vision, but most people don't know or don't know how much. The orbital and deep space radar gives TONS of Intel but is really cheap and cheap to run. Picking up units with astraeus is slow and fiddly (even with area commands). A commander being insta-sniped out an astraeus 2 feet off the ground is weird and annoying.

Essay over, for now.

Were there vanguards changed in the PTE? I haven't tinkered with it much. Or are you talking about the Uber Cannon BS?
If it's the latter, please explain how it's good, I'd LOVE to hear it.

Sorry to say but this post is just as useless as the 10 that came before it. Uber will not state what is in 1.0 because they say it's to much "subject to change" we don't know on what feature there working, or how far in development some features are and will only be announced if a feature is almost done and will be in a PTE update very soon.

I'm not sure, but I think they just got a cost increase. Their Uber Cannon is still a bit too good and made weird by the unclear nature of it not being the same damage as the commanders. Armour types grr. I'd like to see it have a different firing effect and sound.

A laughable cost increase of 15%

Ooh wonderful a cost increase now I need to put 7 engineers on my advanced factory instead of 6 to pump out overpowered death machines, so balaaaaaaaaanced.

1200 to 1500, 25%. Soooo instead of factory+6 fabbers to get one in 10 seconds, it's a factory+9. If you do include the extra cost of those fabbers and 5 extra pgens to power them, it ends up a being lot more than 25%.

You know, after giving it some thought, I do actually think the vanguard can be balanced.

Maybe if you took a quarter of its health out and made the Uber Cannon have the same recharge rate of the commander's Uber Cannon but with half the power to it, then maybe it'd be a bit better designed as a unit. Also make it so that it takes more energy than a commander (that way it doesn't become overpowered through sheer numbers and maybe can even get some extra range to it)

Or how about this? Turn it into like an anti-air Uber Cannon firing unit, where it can't hit land units but it can be very powerful against air units.
But keep that same reload time so that air still has a chance at taking it out, it isn't entirely recommended to use air to take it out, but you'll have a chance at taking out a couple before your swarm is torn apart.

There, TWO SUGGESTIONS on making this stupid freaking omnipotent monster an actually balanced unit with upsides and downsides like ANY UNIT SHOULD HAVE. SOMEONE GET SCATHIS.

Or maybe a reduction in armor, replace the flamethrower with a twin laser autocannon thingie, and make the damage crap so it's better against air.



Problem SOLVED.

Or better yet, maybe a long-range tank with guns on the side that can't be aimed, making it useless in combat but incredibly good at base destroying.
Gee, where have I heard THAT before?

Vanguard not used in competitive 1v1s.

"Vanguard OP!"

Vanguard significantly nerfed.

No one tries out new balance.

"Vanguard OP!"

It hasn't even used a flamethrower in ages >.>

WHAT?!
SIGNIFICANTLY NERFED?
You think that changing a flamethrower to an uber cannon is a significant nerf?
You seriously think that something with 5000 hp and 8000 DPS is BALANCED?
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!

The problem is, it doesn't really matter how many doxes you have. They are easily destroyed by most any army before they get in range.

The Uber cannon is more powerful than the flamethrower. When they swapped it to the Uber cannon, they kept the same DPS and gave it a large AOE. It can kill more units with the uber cannon than with the flamethrower.

Swapping the flamethrower for an uber cannon was not a nerf. Not by a long shot.

The main reason for me speaking out against the Vanguard, and Sheller, is because they are so damn powerful. They invalidate other units.

Most of T2 goes against the premise that we were sold: all units valid at all stages of the game.

T2 units are so powerful they invalidate T1 units once they're built. It's a matter of stepping up to T2 without getting overwhelmed.

This makes PA all about teching up, not about how to use your units.

I was talking about the PTE cost increase, calm your melons. The flamethrower thing was directed at Mereds post, implying he hasn't played since they got buffed, let alone since the PTE nerf

The cost increase is not a significant nerf either. It's a slight increase. They still can destroy WAY more than they cost.

YOU THINK A ******* COST INCR--
*deep breath*
You sir, are either a really good troll, or have no understanding of balancing in an RTS.

Calm YOUR melons. I only use vannys in FFAs.

I just mistyped is all

"Any question that starts out 'Why don't they -- ' the answer is always 'Money.' " - Robert A. Heinlein

I must point out that it's been 22 months since the Kickstarter. If you know the average game developer salary for Seattle, you can compute an upper bound for how long ago the initial funding ran out. (The actual estimate is left as an exercise to the reader.) Early access sales have made up the difference to date but the price has been decreasing steadily.

In other words, it should be self evident that it's at least in part about the money. That is not to say that Uber are not doing their absolute best to make PA as great as it can be; it's equally self evident that they are. Eventually, though, Uber has to wrap things up and move on to the next source of income.

We have to believe that Uber will come as close as they can to something everybody will enjoy (and I would say that they are very close) and trust in the community to provide mods to smooth over any individual areas that players are dissatisfied about.