State of the game

So it's almost 3 years since I Kickstarted this game (Aug 2012, $90) and I think the core game is great but every time I play it I'm left thinking it's only 70-80% finished. PA is till full of bugs, rough graphics and insanely unbalanced maps.

Here is some of the problems I've had while playing just over the last few days:

* Kicked from a match mid-game to join the lobby of a game I had declined an invite for an hour before. This was during a pivotal planet smash!!

* Catalyst fired at the same time as planet smashed on it and the laser continued to fire for the rest of the game.

* When you build teleporters you have no visible way of telling which side is in / out. I lost a match just now because I built one in the heat of battle to escape to another planet and then my com had to march around the entire structure - Boom, dead.

* Metal spots on starting points are totally random and makes for very unfair starting points. Feature or just lazy design? The latter I think!

* Orbital layer and gameplay is just crap, it's hard see and select units. This is never going to happen but I would love to just go back to rockets and units cannons like your original trailer showed. I think Uber failed to find the fun factor with orbital gameplay. End games I've seen (and done) lots is mass produce avengers and orbital lasers and snipe the enemy com in seconds.

I could rant for ages! It's so frustrating because at it's heart is a really fun game but it's just missing the mark on so many levels and I fear the game will die an early death if it's not sorted.

Does anyone know if Uber is still working on the game? What's the current plan for support? Are there plans to polish the game?

What orbital should have looked like...

Feature, random maps are random. Non random maps can be made to be totally symmetrical even, see the ranked map pool.

Uber is still working on the game, see the constant patches over the last few month. Current point of improvement is adding real asteroids and reworking the graphical effects when those hit a planet.

It could not be clearer, the side with the two sides and the ramp is the in side, and the other is the out side

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-strategic-filters.67954/

The teleporter is designed with the base like an 'arrow' when viewed from above. This was something updated based on community feedback. Also when placing, as you rotate the *entrance* to the gate is always facing the mouse pointer if that helps.

With respect to orbital, I agree that things could be better, although you can prevent orbital snipes quite easily with umbrellas as orbital units now have a 3 second cool down after transit where they can't do anything (I've seen players waste 20+ ssx lasers trying to snipe a well guarded com). Also remember that the t2 missile bots and the t2 missile launcher builds can shoot orbital stuff, trick is to have plenty of anti orbital around your commander and you should be safe.

I've not had so many bugs, although I mainly play smaller games that don't involve smashes or the anihilasor. I think by far the *buggiest* area of the game is planet smash though (the annihilasor usually works fine). I play lots of multi planet without planet smash as I prefer to invade using mass UC's, gates and so on. That is probably why your having more problems than me. As Colin mentions the planet smashing is going to get a major update very soon (next thing on hit list).

Out of interest recent updates since launch include:
- Unit cannon,
- Symmetrical planets and custom planet design (if you want a nice balanced planet try making one in updated map editor- you can force symmetry, manually place metal spots and even add in things like mountains, bridges and so on- all the keys are listed in the keyboard settings).
- Naval updates (they added in 2 new subs and rebalanced it all),
- Air fighter with orbital travel ability (the T2 air fighter can now fly between planets for invasions)
- Save / Load and 'Chrono Resume' (if you play games against AI you can rewind using Chrono Cam and then start playing from a different point to save a game you otherwise lost).
- The Galactic War has also been updated now allowing standard (can save and continue after a loss) and hardcore (perma death like last time) options along with a much better balanced tech drop system that wont duplicate things you already have.

Also where maps are concerned there are some fantastic hand built ones available from the community. To access them you need to download and install 'PA Mod Manager' (PAMM for short) https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pa-mod-manager-pamm-cross-platform.59992/#

Under UI mods install the 'system sharing' mod and then any of the various map packs that are available. You'll then be able to pull up many of the great hand built maps when you host games e.g. like this one:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/i-bring-you-hot-platforms.66831/

There are all sorts of other cool mods too, I'd recommend the 'More PEW PEW' mod as it spices up all the visual weapon effects:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-client-more-pew-pew-requesting-opinions.69025/

Also another mod you should install on PAMM is 'PA Stats Online'. This mod does 2 really helpful things- firstly it records proper statistics for your games, secondly it integrates a global chat room where you can arrange games and see who's online. Hope that helps

Edit: btw loving Twiki as your profile pic, haven't seen Buck Rodgers in ages

I reported this almost a year ago and Uber said they were going to look into it, guess it was forgotten then.

I agree with the rest except for teleporters:

The rings go from big to small in the direction of movement and there clearly are arrows on its base.

And for work on the game, I think Uber currently is aiming to be feature complete as in adding promised items on a 'most asked for' basis. So next up is asteroid fields and planet smash revamp. Afterwards most big missing features are implemented as far as I know, so I am hoping for a month or two of polish!

You can have symmetrical random maps.

right you can even have both of those things.

Try placing a TP - the white outline has no arrows and has a ramp on both sides. I tried taking a screen grab but it wouldn't show up the white outline. Another feature?

I know there are custom maps but if you're a casual player like me that just hits up a random game the chances are you'll be on some awful map with no balance. There should be a core set of *good* maps included with the game that people want to play.

Don't get me wrong I LOVE the core game and just want it to be more polished. It's good to know they are still working on it.

I launched my game just for you

As seen above, the extra thingy at the side pointed to by the red arrows indicate which side is in, the the side without the extra things at the side is the out.
Also, you can choose the direction of the teleporter by clicking and dragging your mouse to the desirable direction for the "in" side

Why can't teleporters work in such a way that you just lick to walk your units to another planet and they automatically know that there is an active teleporter there and make a path through it. The units could even active the teleporter.

This would mean that you could build a bunch of units, point them to a planet, then build a teleporter on your home planet and as soon as the teleporter is completed on the enemy planet all of the units rush through.

Much less clumsy than how you do it currently with flicking back between the two planets to link up teleporters.

Yeah we requested this way back when, from memory the explanation is that for speed, the navigation meshes for each planet are totally independent from one another (so a unit on planet A doesn't know / can't path on planet B). To be honest there is a middle ground- you can assign way points to teleporters (like a factory) that apply to all units when they exit. This allows you to set up the movement you'd like before sending the units through (although it does rely on either you leaving the gate open, or activating it before the units go through).

You can also rally factories to a teleporter (which when turned on they automatically go through) so you can automate the process reasonably well.

I think the other argument against it was "if you have more than 1 or 2 teleporters it can become really really weird because units behave in unexpected ways because they see way more teleporter-ways than you do".

Tech wise I would've thought that even if the nav system of planets are totally separate it would be possible to just mark teleporters as "point where units can go to planet X". And if you give a move command to planet X the unit will check if there is a teleporter for that. If there is the unit will move to the teleporter and through it and on the other side then decide the rest of the path. That way the nav meshes don't really need to connect. The downside is that units would happily decide to walk straight through a teleporter that on the other side potentially is on a small island with no connection to the actual target location, but imho that isnt so bad.

Actually it really isn't intuitive, and the OP has a legit issue. Should not need to read a forum, ask people, or learn from trial and error.

The in platform looks just as likely to be an out platform.

I remember having this problem for a while too.

I wonder if it would be possible to create a 'scrolling arrow' particle effect that runs along the base of the gate to show the direction through it? @dom314

Yeah that's possible (just make an arrow in Photoshop, convert to .papa and create an emitter with particle facing: axialZ) but it only happens when the teleporter is turned on. So noobs would only 100% know once the teleporter is activated.

But the particles already flow inside the front and out the back, so I think an arrow is overkill.

I think it would have to be visible from the white outline already. So before placing. And I don't think you can add effects to that? Though I suppose you could make an alternative model for the teleporter with a big whopping arrow floating above it as part of the model itself, not as a particle effect.

I never realized myself that there was an arrow structure in the current teleporter model. I've always just been dumping that thing wherever and hope for the best and I've been playing this game for years now.

I thought the direction of the teleporter was fairly intuitive myself. More intuitive than say, switching between global and team chat during a game, or launching one planet into another.