[Request/Poll] A Short-list of Recommendations Drawing from Total Annihilation.

Hello Uber,

As a fan of Planetary Annihilation, and the genre as a whole, I wanted to make a few suggestions. These are partly based on experience, partly on those things which were popular in past Forum discussions, and partly pure nostalgia.

I've compiled comprehensive threads before, but this short-list aims to summarise and prioritise.
These are things which worked well in Total Annihilation, and I believe they would enrich its successor.

1. Larger Terrain Features. Mesas. Canyons. Valleys. Rivers.
   • Terrain features big enough to build a small base on/in, and lose an army in.
2. Reclaiming.
   • Unit Wreckage. This an awesome element in a game - going out to cannibalise your fallen troops, fighting over their twisted metal corpses. The battlefield itself becomes a valuable resource. Both TA and SupCom incorporated this extremely well.
     • Wreck degradation. As with TA, wreckage should become increasingly dispersed it is are shot at, or rolled over by enough tanks (that just happen not to be able to path around them ).
   • Rocks for Metal. Trees for Energy.
     • Scrolling over these resources and their Metal/Energy Value being displayed.
3. Unit Deployment.
   • In Total Annihilation, many units had a delay before activating. Engineers folded out a nanolathe, Artillery Bots had flaps which opened up before firing.
     • This is an enduring part of Total Annihilation's mechanical aesthetic charm for me - the Factories and Solar Arrays opened up like flowers and came alive. I love PA's Deepspace Orbital Radar for this reason.
     • Deployment adds another layer of tactics to unit interaction. It delays combat, offering a different means of balancing.
       • For instance, a delayed attack on a heavy-hitting unit might mean Dox could swamp it, but with some support to hold off the swarm, that heavy-hitter would be able to pull its weight.
4. Terrain Speed Modifiers and Height-Based Range Increases.
   • Ground Units moving slower in shallow water or underwater.
   • Height granting range bonuses, giving us a reason to hold the high ground.
     
   • Both these environmental effects worked well in Total Annihilation, adding tactical depth and interaction with the map. Terrain should be more than a series of obstacles in warfare.
     • Amended at 22 votes (See raevn's posts below). And again at 25 votes.
5. Specialised Units.
   • Spider Bots! Goes with #1.

Suggestions, corrections, discussion and criticism are welcome.
I'm also going to throw up a Poll to see what everybody else thinks.

Uber - I love what you've been up to these past couple of months. Both the standard of communication and improvements to the game have been great.
For me, the core of this genre lies with the ground - the Commander, the base, the bots, the tanks. That's what these suggestions aim to enrich.

+1

+2

+pi

+42

+1337

+ OVER 9000!!!!

No seriously all of this gimme.

And the potato too.

All about terrain ... #1 and #4.

The Full Monty.

Nitpick with #2 - There was no "rollover" damage to wreckages in TA or Sup Com (other than units that did footfall damage in Sup Com, such as some experimentals, but that's classed as weapon damage).
Nitpick with #4 - TA had no movement changes based on terrain type (like ice/snow).
I'm also 90% sure terrain slope didn't affect movement either (in terms of speed; units did have a limit to what slope they could traverse). The fixed camera angle made it appear that going uphill takes longer and downhill faster in some cases. The terrain height affecting range aspect is correct though.

Carry on

I'm fairly sure that in TA, units could crush wreckages into rubble. And slopes definitely affected unit speed, but I think that was more to make it seem like they were going uphill, and obviously trading horizontal movement for vertical means that you move slower going horizontal.

Normal wreckage (non-rubble) was damageable by weapons fire, but completely blocked movement. You could run into it with units all day, but it won't go to rubble until hit by weapons fire (each wreckage had a defined amount of HP). What tended to happen was the units would run into the wreck, then fire, hitting the wreck in front of them. Note: IIRC there's a bug with the ARM metal storage, which had an extra 0 in the wreckage HP. Made them abusable as cheap, very high walls that could absorb a lot of hits
And yeah that's what I meant with the movement speed - the distance they moved stayed the same, but not necessarily the horizontal distance.

Number one and 5 for me. Game needs hills and more epicness.

We kinda need units that are good at getting you back into a game but are not great in large numbers, its kinda hard to come up with ideas for them but here is one....

Boom Lords ~~ T2 Bot
Large, Slow
Creates baby boom bots that have minimal health, high speed, low damage, high AOE, timed limit before it dies...so has a limited operating range
each baby boom bot takes 100 energy to create (Boom Lord starts creating baby boom bots when enemies enter range) Boom Lord drains 20 energy per second
It makes it hard to mass a lot of Boom Lords because the operating range of baby boom bots is small, and Boom Lords drain a lot of energy in large numbers and its hard to focus them on an area because they are unwieldy and very large, more surface area.

Unit deployment is important to me. Would like to see little support feets that stick out of the Sheller and make it so it can only fire while stationary.

Yes <3

Just copy everything TA did, including balance.

1-4 is a big yes from me. These are the things that made TA great. I still think some of the magic is missing from PA and it would be cool to make these changes to help bring it back.

I am strongly in favour of the potato. Potato is love, potato is life.



I think finals are getting to me. *continues drooling with a blank stare*

I am also strongly in favour of #1 #2 and #3. The rest seems like it would be hard to transmit clearly to a player.

#2 The rollover damage was a suggestion/adaptation - the wink was acknowledging the fact that pathing was why unit wrecks were removed. Rollover (ideally just with things which roll, like tanks) would mitigate this problem a bit.

#4 My mistake! The height changes in shallow water (which for some reason I took several months ago to be ice), particularly rivers, make it seem like it takes longer to traverse. I've amended the OP.

I think #1 can already be implemented with scaled-up CSGs and directly modifying .pas files to enable pathing. I'd expect the system editor to see more improvements over the coming couple of months anyway

#2 is asking for an obscenely micro-intensive features - in what possible situation is knowing the exact reclaim value of an individual tree worthwile or useful? I have a nightmare vision of a billion pop-ups appearing wherever my mouse rests. I'd agree to more reclaimables in general however

#3 is a mixed bag - I love the pace of PA and wouldn't want to interfere with that. Having said that, certain units already require time to set up properly (pelters/holkins to be precise). I can't see it adding much in the way of depth to the game

#4 Height advantage sounds excellent; not sure about surface advantages however.

#5 Yes please

Sorry - shallow water does make units move slower. I thought you meant surface terrain types only.

game was totaly imbalanced ... spam samsons all friggin day ...

Aha! Well then I shall re-amend. Thank you

unfortunately, this might be deemed as 'too much micro'

Also, i didn't see krogoth so i voted potato