Re: "the gimmicky laser moon"

that's the thing though. Your game is going to be randomly decided by who got and kept the metal planet.

If you have no smashing planets (and most times even if you do) and the guy has avenger-spamed his metal planet, the game is over, there's no point being such a tryhard anymore. You can just sit back and slowly watch you and other adversaries get annihilated.

So is the core of PA's gameplay "getting to the metal planet first" to you?

Is that a metal planet balance, or orbital balance?

metal first.

the bigger balance offest is obviously the metal one. then comes the orbital one.

If it weren’t the case you could eventually use the orbital pinpoint exploit I raised in the other thread, to your advantage to at least try to stop catalyst construction, but you can't even get enough avengers and SXX out the speed at which you can get five catalyst out for the same eco.

and the orbital units have to travel there.....

...the lazor.... effective immediately... for all planets.

It is not over, because your assumption is that he has more avengers or army. But he just "wasted" alot mass and energy into building fabbers and starting Catalyst. If so, enemy could build more army, avengers or anything else.

Metal is a strategic point in game, game ender if enemy is just better, and other person turtle.

You can do alot to deny metal planet if anyone tries to use it, and there is going to be more ways to stop it.

Thanks I agree the laser is great as is.

On a system with a metal planet, yes it is very much about who gets takes and keeps the hill. Metal maps introduce a fundemental king of the hill dynamic that is great for large systems. Getting and keeping the metal (or any) planet is the core of PA gameplay. Any weakness here is a sign that tweaks need to be made to make it easier to invade, not that the game ender is poorly balanced. If the metal planet does not deliver a decisive victory when held then it adds nothing to PA.

The issue I have with the current implementation is that it's clearly meant to be a game mode without actually being a game mode. The thing is that I like playing on Metal planets, they have arguably the most unique terrain of all the planet/biome types in my experience, but now to play on/with a metal planet usually means playing a game mode I didn't want to play.

Mike

A quick band-aid solution is to make a mod that removes catalysts from the game, I only suggest this because I know you're a fellow modder.

I understand that a rather major game mechanic such as the annihilaser made the cut while offline play didn't is because PA is oriented more towards a multi-player experience. Having the laser in affects multiplayer and makes multiplayer games more dynamic. The uber employees will add what features they want in the order that they feel will satisfy what they're design goal of the game, and it makes complete sense that with their limited resources they chose to include features that suited their design goal, instead of deviating from it.
Before you add a flashlight to a swiss army knife, make sure the blade is to satisfactory quality.

Hopefully they add that option in the system editor, similar to how you can add an engine requirement to any planet.

It's NOT "king of the hill", it's NOT "dynamic".

when the hell will you come to terms with the reality of metal planets getting to annihilate ALL planets effective basically immediately.

The firing sequence lasts 9 seconds (counted here

Spoiler

)and it falling back into place takes 8 seconds.

after that you can fire straight away again.

SAY YOU HAVE A SYSTEM WITH 19 PLANETS (CUZ' WE'RE BEING REEEEAL GENEROUS)


(if it's three planets you have 34 seconds, let the games begin)

I get that it's a problem that once you pop, you just can't stop.

But what angle do we want to deal with this?

during the construction of the catalysts?

The firing of the weapon?

After a shot has been fired?

Or possibly even before then?

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/okay-uber-we-should-talk-balance-d.63288/#post-985916

What on earth are you talking about? Obviously the point is to stop all the catalyst from being completed, not wait for them to finish before making your move.

Knight hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned, the annihilaser currently dominates any game it's in and essentially turns it into a king of the hill map. That's all well and good (and I do think the annihilaser does it well) but I personally don't always want to play that game mode, and that prevents me from ever playing on any system with a metal planet.

An option to disable the catalysts would be very welcome for those that want to play metal planets without the laser (it could even simply be an option to add that awesome smashed metal planet effect we saw a while back over some of the catalyst points.)

Having the option to spawn pre-asteroided metal worlds would be cool.

Or pre-asteroided anything for that matter...

True, natural impact craters would be sweet to occasionally have.

Oh you can actually!


/troll

I see the Anihilaser as the Mavor in SC: it is a game-ender that you normally don't see but when you do, its awesome. I think it is fine the way it is IF we get more higher level game-play elements like: UNIT-CANNON, asteriods, and multi-unit orbital transports. Add those three things and the Anihilaser will be that cool game-ender not seen all the time ... but when it is, its extra special.

There is no point in a unit that you only see once in a blue moon.