Cosmic War (persistent PA universe hosted by culture.vg)

Hello all. Videogame criticism and theory website Insomnia, that recently began publishing, in several parts, the longest and most detailed analysis of PA yet (Videogame Art: Planetary Annihilation), is about to begin hosting a persistent PA universe called Cosmic War. It is a universe featuring rules and lore designed by Alex Kierkegaard aka icycalm, and will soon have its own space on the web at the following address:

http://cosmicwar.pa (coming soon)

Everything about this universe will be explained on that new site, but I will give you a quick summary of the main ideas that power it (the theoretical underpinnings of which will be explored in detail in upcoming parts of AK's review of PA).

Cosmic War is made up of many Galactic Wars, which are themselves made up of many regular PA system wars (like the ones you play every day). The Galactic Wars are played according to these rules:

And the overall Cosmic War is played according to these rules:

tl,dr: The Cult is dividing itself into the official PA factions, and starting Galactic War #1 within the next few days. The results of this first Galactic War will feed into the Cosmic War, and we'll keep expanding our internal factions in both size and number and playing the war between us indefinitely. If other clans want to join, they can do so starting with Galactic War #2, and we'll work them into the grand plot of the universe as we go. If all the above text sounds too complicated for you, just wait until our new site and streams and videos go up, and you'll see how simple it is in practice.

We look forward to developing and hosting this very promising game mode, and to having many of you observing it and, hopefully, participating in it.

Been wanting something akin to this for quite some time now
I'm so excited

inb4 The Realm is barred from participating because Philoscience and myself are in it and have negative opinions of IcyCalm.

... but we'd still win.

BRN shall destroy

Lol yeah we represent the casual arm of RLM so no loss there. Or at least I do, not sure how good Stuart is. Still sad to see Cult getting any airtime. Don't give your credit card details to the Cult people, it's bad fiscal policy.

Actually, yeah, we'll need your credit card details if you want to participate. Social security numbers would be nice too.

I'm sure your glorious leader could find some nefarious use for those too.

holy ****, big mistake, you're about to be booted out of the cult pal, xD

but THANK youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Who plays the Synchronous will win, duh!

We are still working on the site, and do not plan to have it ready for the first galactic war, because everyone's really excited to get going right away. But the first post on the site has already been written, and I will share it here with you.

-------------------------------------------




The Age of Humanity has long passed.

Scattered across the Universe, agents of destruction lay dormant for millennia, until... the Awakening.

Sentient war machines, relics of a universe in turmoil, forged by their ancestors to complete one mission: annihilate everything!

The endless conflict continues to march into the vast darkness of space.

Battles rage across the cold void, devastating planets, moons and asteroids, cosmic obliteration for a purpose long forgotten. Technology has been captured, assimilated, refined and transformed into brutally efficient, self-replicating mechanisms of War!




[Welcome to Cosmic War, a persistent online multiplayer gameworld based on Jon Mavor's and Uber Entertainment's next-generation RTS, Planetary Annihilation. Cosmic War will be an ongoing project based on rules and lore written primarily by me, with input from the Insomnia and PA forum communities, and regular updates on the state of the game posted on this website. Lore updates will be in italics, while mechanics discussions will be in brackets, to easily differentiate them, and make this website a little more immersive to follow.

The initial lore that I'll be posting was written by Uber's in-house writer Matthew Kehm, and will mostly be used as is, with only the occasional minor modification. After the initial stages of the first galactic war, our universe will diverge from the official one, and its general direction will be the result of what happens during the actual gaming sessions, with me writing and posting lore that aesthetically reflects those developments.

There will be no interactive aspect to this site in the form of comments or a message board: please use the above-linked PA forum thread to leave your comments and suggestions. If, on the other hand, you want to get more involved with the project, you can post in the Insomnia subforum also linked above. We can certainly use all the help we can get in making Cosmic War the ultimate persistent RTS universe.

More details on Cosmic War and the start of the first galactic war are on the way. Please look forward to them.

ALEX KIERKEGAARD]

-------------------------------------------

As you can see we will be using and modifying official PA art as much as possible, to start with, until we get a good artist onboard. All the early logos, images and such are temporary, until we've played a few sessions, recruited a few more people, and things start falling into place.

icy continues to churn out blog posts for the new site, while we work on the background to get the site up and running. Here is the second one.

---------------------------------

Cosmic War vs. Clan Wars #1

Before we begin delving into the mechanical and lore aspects of how Cosmic War will play out, I feel it would be beneficial to talk a little bit about the differences of what we are trying to do here compared to the premier competitive PA event: Clan Wars. This is for two reasons. One is pure critical curiosity and inquisitiveness, in the sense that a fan of PA would naturally be interested in comparing the two different "game modes", so to speak, which are (or at least promise to become) the largest in scope available. PA itself, as I have been examining at length in my review of the game, is built around a "bigger is better" design philosophy, so the bigger modes will naturally also be the most exciting ones, and the ones in which the core strengths of the game can be enjoyed most fully. And the second reason is practical: many players will not have the time to participate in both events, so they would want to consider their differences in order to decide which one to participate in.

Now, despite all the criticisms of Clan Wars that you are about to read, I really have nothing but praise for the event, ultimately. I decided to withdraw my clan from it purely because of problems with the organizers, and would strongly consider rejoining it if those problems were resolved. Then again, if Cosmic War evolves into what I want it to evolve, it will take up all my available PA time, several months into the future, and I would eventually have to withdraw from Clan Wars anyway, so perhaps it's best that things went the way that they did. If we had remained in Clan Wars, I would not have had such a strong incentive to develop my own ideas for a long-running PA event, and Cosmic War would either never have come into being, or at the very least it would have been greatly delayed, and would have perhaps even appeared in a considerably scaled down form to what I am trying to turn it into today.

So without further ado I will simply summarize the differences between the two events in two words, and these words are "sports" and "art". Clan Wars is about sports. Cosmic War is about art.

Exodus is trying to turn PA into a sport, and Insomnia is trying to turn it into art -- into more art than it already is. That is the essence of the opposition here.

Leaving aside that huge, and now opened, can of worms for a moment, let's talk a little bit about the mechanical differences between the two events, leaving the rather more difficult to grasp aesthetic ones aside for a little later.

The biggest mechanical issue with Clan Wars for me is that it doesn't really feel like a "Clan War" at all, since the very same 5 or 6 guys from each clan take part in more or less every single battle. After all, you are either trying to win, or you aren't. If you are trying to win, why would you ever use any other players than the most experienced 4 players you have available to you at any given moment? I know that this is what my clan did in every battle it fought, and I can see that that's more or less what all the other clans have been doing too, and will have to KEEP doing if they want to grab the highest spot in the rankings that they can grab. Anything other than that would be stupid, and a betrayal of the very nature of the event, which is supposed to be competitive. Some clan leaders will contest this, and claim that they are open to less experienced players taking part and blah blah blah, but just look at the names taking part in the actual battles: it's always the same small number of names. And that's good, because, due to the nature of the event, that's how it's SUPPOSED to be. Exodus and the viewers WANT to see the best players taking part, and in a 4v4 format that leaves the vast majority of the clan players out of the battles.

So it is obvious to me Clan Wars is not really a Clan War, but merely a 4v4 team-based competitive league. And because I am really fascinated about the idea of a REAL clan war, I set out to make Cosmic War into what Clan Wars should have been if it had been designed with that idea in mind.


To be continued in Part 2...