My two cents after playing lots of PA:

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by paperthinarmor, October 2, 2014.

  1. paperthinarmor

    paperthinarmor New Member

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    Firstly, let's get all the negatives out of the way:
    *I don't post much - so my post automatically isn't going to carry as much weight as someone with a high post-count, and I'm okay with that.

    *I absolutely -suck- at online play, so 99% of my time is spent playing the AI.

    *I have a toaster by comparison to a lot of you guys and gals, so my performance may not be representative of the group.

    Okay, now that that's out of the way, here's my humble suggestion, and you can take it for what you will. I think PA is an *awesome* game that, if it really takes off, could bring the RTS the scale it so desperately needs, in my opinion. The art style is great, so far, I'm not too put-off on the "only one faction" bit, and the (planned) variances in the commanders has me salivating. Everything seems to work pretty smoothly--even on my old hunk of a rig, I can have fairly large battles with nice graphics with a fairly smooth framerate, so long as my internet cooperates. But I feel that there's one major gripe that I've got that I've seen addressed occasionally in other areas, but wanted to bring up again just to see if I was the only one left that thought this, or maybe there was a conversation to be had about this.

    The units are all too fast. And I don't mean that I can't keep up--I know that in an RTS game you're not supposed to be zoomed in watching one column of tanks take out a mex while your base is being decimated--that's for the replay. But in Supcom and even in TA, there was a sense of--well--weight, for lack of a better term, to each unit, and when a formation of tanks rolled in there was a sense of ponderousness, or when a flight of strat bombers flew over there was significance to that. Now, everything feels like toys, with scout planes darting around like little gnats and absolutely huge tank formations zipping around like toy dune buggies. Maybe it's the small planet size--but I'm playing on the "auto-generated" maps most of the time, and in which case, they should be the "average" on which the majority of players are playing, right?

    I bought this game for the sense of scale, and so far, it doesn't have it. Like I said, it's a balls-to-the-wall awesome game for what it is, but it's not really a successor to TA or Supcom. It really just feels like a--and I know everyone will hate me for saying this--but a giant Starcraft, with everything darting around fast and needing immense amounts of micro, and really no grandiose-ness to it at all.
    cwarner7264 likes this.
  2. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Agreed, I'd really like a bit more health and units to be a bit slower in general, makes them feel heavy and more realistic.

    It'd also help gameplay, the only thing is... People might complain of it getting a bit- too slow or boring. In fact I think that's the reasoning behind faster speeds as I think tanks are speed 10 when they used to be 8, bots are 16 or something and had 10 - 12 in the past.

    Super rough numbers btw. :p
  3. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    define sense of scale ...
    because i don't agree with your last paraghraph ...
    i don think it needs lots of micro ... you can micro bots a lot but it isnt needed ... imo ... as for the speed i like it and i dont have much a problem with the squishiness of unittypes it siply makes that more a numbers game ...
  4. avatar100400

    avatar100400 Active Member

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    Can agree with some parts but if i remember correctly from TA [ still have the original disk btw]
    Bots were fairly fast and tanks were slower and it was fairly fast paced.
    TA's scale depending on what maps your played is smaller compared to PA and if the units weren't as fast
    we would have Mega long games of waiting and this would hurt the Gameplay especially when the
    Sim slows down like it usually does in large games.The speed of units is great and works with the game perfectly.
  5. Aliessil

    Aliessil Active Member

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    I play almost exclusively on custom maps, and with one or two exceptions the planets are generally 600-1200 size. Let me assure you, on those planets the units don't seem that quick! If they were slowed down even more you couldn't get anywhere without multiple teleporters or bulk transports.

    Seriously, try it yourself! A single-planet system; go lava or ice, size 1000, and pick a seed with interesting terrain (i.e. lots of choke points). Let me know if you still think the units are too fast :)
  6. jpinard

    jpinard Member

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    I think all aircraft are way too fast for their amazing utility.

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