Communication and Teamwork in Planetary Annihilation

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by exodusesports, March 16, 2015.

  1. exodusesports

    exodusesports Well-Known Member

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    c_t_sum_title1.png

    (P)Jonasmod of Promethean has written up an article on how to succeed in team games. It's all about communication and teamwork. Come learn from this veteran of the Clan Wars.

    http://exodusesports.com/article/planetary-annihilation-communication-teamwork/
    Zaphys, cmdrflop, squishypon3 and 6 others like this.
  2. zihuatanejo

    zihuatanejo Well-Known Member

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    Nice article, thanks for writing it :)
  3. Remy561

    Remy561 Post Master General

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    Great article indeed :)
  4. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    @Quitch you edited my part out, again :/
  5. Alpha2546

    Alpha2546 Post Master General

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    I don't agree with the article. You just need a Jonasmod that can Killand the enemy's.
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  6. exterminans

    exterminans Post Master General

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    IMHO, that doesn't sound like team play on an expert level, it's just basic rules for 1vs1 gameplay, spiced with a few conflict avoidance strategies, but no real synergy yet.

    Take the "produce all units you need yourself" part as an example. That's merely an conflict avoidance strategy, but it's no good as it means that you need to have redundant infrastructure. If you can, it's much better to synchronize your efforts beforehand, talk about who needs how many units of which kind, work out the build ratios and streamline your production. Or just have one player handle the micro aspect of the game, while the other player manages the economy, large scale logistics and fulfills requests.

    Keep in mind that the biggest difficulty in PA is the depth of the game, a single player can hardly adapt to all aspects in a sufficient way. Take the frequently used pattern of static build orders, it's never doing perfect, but it's "good enough" in most games as your opponent isn't doing any different. If you have a number cruncher in your team who can do the math in realtime, you can do much better.

    Or take complex patterns such as adaptive multi wave attacks, where you have to decide on the composition and to queue the second next wave, while you are still busy with managing the attack with the current wave. That's rather difficult to pull of as a single person, but becomes very efficient when pulled of as a team as one player can perform the eco managment and the situational analysis, while the other player can focus on controlling the army.

    Just think of all the other situations where PA becomes a war of attention span in 1vs1, and try to figure how to win that war by using the capacities you gain with 2 or more players. Don't try to avoid conflicts while doing the same work, try to achieve synergies by executing tasks in parallel which would otherwise be mutual exclusive. Both due to limited focus, such as when xecuting a joint maneuver, as well as when problems exceed the abstraction capabilities of your mind when you would have to deal with micro managment, eco managment and large scale strategy planing at the same time.
    wondible likes this.
  7. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    Jonas wrote this as an 'introduction' type piece. It's aimed at improving newer players abilities in 2 v 2 type games- not really aimed at telling the 'pro's' how to do things, although I'd point out that if *anyone* can teach people a thing or 2 about team play it's @jonasmod and @evilhands (aka, Killander / Mantower on PA:Stats currently).

    If you want some idea have a look at the 2 v 2 ladder:
    http://www.paladder.com/2on2

    Jonas and Killander in position #2 and #3.

    They also took out PAG_Pt4h and PAG_Matiz in clan wars (2 of PA's best). Neither Jonas or Killander are at these guys levels on the 1 v 1 ladder however the two of them together are *almost* unstoppable :)
    Alpha2546 likes this.
  8. Sleeser

    Sleeser Active Member

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    was it Jonas idea to make an ingame voice chat so people playing with randoms could communicate better?
  9. jonasmod

    jonasmod Active Member

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    First of all, many of your points are valid. I can, however, argue my points too:

    The "guide" is, as I stated in the beginning, merely me describing how I and Killander communicate. It is by no means a guide to the one and only way "how you *must* communicate and do teamwork". It is, as @cdrkf pointed out, aimed at newer players, and players who hasn't yet found a way for team games to "work like they should". My experience is also that a lot of otherwise good players *don't even do the "basic things"* in this "guide", so apparently pointing them out is a good thing.

    Regarding the redundant infrastructure, this is something me and Killander adjust to on the fly. If I know what units he is going for, and realize I can use them efficiently too, I ask him to build a bit more than he needs, because I might want to borrow them sometimes.

    Another pro of producing your own units is that you know exactly what units you have, and what backup will come. You can plan based on that. You might not have that information if you are microing three different battles and your partner is sending you three different unit combinations to each battle for backup.

    Another reason not to split macro/micro is that if the players have practiced 1v1s a bit, they are used to controlling a whole planet/system. If they only need to micro one half of the planet, they will have plenty of time to build their base while doing it (at least relatively).

    A reason not to primarily do coordinated strikes is that you want to assault both your opponents *everywhere* *always*, which is hard to achieve if you both have to attack both opponents from all angles. Then we will likely have the problem of both players unknowingly microing the same army. We like to split the planet into "our own areas" instead, where we operate separately on one target. Then we help each other if we happen to see an opportunity.

    As I said, I'm not trying to tell you how to play your game, I'm just trying to describe how I play mine, and why.

    Edit: Edited for clarity.
    Last edited: March 16, 2015
  10. jonasmod

    jonasmod Active Member

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    This was as much a joke as an idea, nothing I planned on making reality, but it would be sweet to have a voice-chat built into the game.

    An alternative would be if a modder managed to create a "Teamspeak-mod" that connected all team participants to the same teamspeak room on some community server automatically.
    davostheblack and Sleeser like this.
  11. Sleeser

    Sleeser Active Member

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    i didn't say you have to make it :p and yea the teamspeak mod sounds like a good idea, hope someone will make it.

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