One reason I loved Total Annihilation (and don't much care for most modern RTS games) is that it was entirely possible to play defensively. You didn't have to dominate the map and try to hold as many resources as possible to be able to be competitive and win, and you could build defensive structures that would do a good job of keeping invaders out/destroying them. I'm wondering if you're planning to support the same sort of playstyle in Planetary Annihilation.
You could play defensively against the AI, but mostly because they didn't know how to use nukes properly. Playing defensively in TA never worked in competitive multiplayer. Expanding your map control and bringing in more resources was key to winning. If you didn't control the map, you didn't control the economy, and eventually you become outnumbered and lose. Granted, that could sometimes take awhile to happen, but sooner or later it would always happen.
Actually, that was just a relic of OTA's 3.1c patch, of which was never properly balanced, and wasn't a particularly good example of what the game's design should have been anyway. Samsons and Slashers were, by far, the most overpowered units in the game - much more powerful in terms of cost than even most T2 units. Defenders (Stationary Missile Turrets) were equally overpowered as defense. The implementation of continual community balance mods, starting at Uberhack and ending at Balanced Annihilation for the Spring RTS engine, made defensive strategies much more viable. I think defensive strategies were always intended to be a core element of the game, otherwise why have metal makers, big berthas, nukes, and doomsday machines? Offensive-based strategies always excelled early on, by giving the aggressive player (Octopus, they were called), LOADS OF MONEEYYYYYYYYYYY for a cheap price, but it made them vulnerable into the mid and lategame if they didn't capitalize on their advantage, because their base is so spread out, not concentrated into a single, well-defended spot like a defensive player. In other words, defensive strategies should be part of the game as well, in my opinion. Defensive strategies are lacking in modern-day RTS games, and I'd like to see them come back in force with Planetary Annihilation.
Indeed. And their viability is pretty much the determining factor for me in whether or not I support the project. It's the thing from Total Annihilation that I've missed. That said, I've no actual idea if it worked in multi-player. I don't play multi-player much, it's just not something I enjoy (in fact, I only recall playing one multi-player match, and it ended up a draw. My opponent couldn't overcome my defenses because I kept destroying his energy supply with bombers and I had to put so many resources into rebuilding defenses and bombers that I couldn't field a strong enough force to overrun him.) I played against the AI a lot, though. I still remember playing a game against 8 AI enemies with a 500 unit limit on a community map designed specifically for that purpose. I didn't start out in one of the safer starting areas, so I had to build up my base quickly, push out one of the AIs, relocate my entire base (letting the old one be overrun) and then finally get to work actually taking out the enemies. That game lasted literally days. It was awesome. And very, very laggy. Obviously, I'm hoping for a campaign, but even if there isn't one (I think I only played through the TA campaign once...though I did play the Krogoth Encounter a number of times) as long as there are AI enemies to fight, I'll be happy.
In Balanced Annihilation (which is, in my opinion, the best representation of what TA would have been like if they kept supporting and balancing it), defensive strategies are definitely viable. They work best in team games though. For example, in a 2v2, you can have 1 player that's very aggressive, expanding all over the map and assaulting the enemy with quick, cheap, and powerful T1 units; and another player that takes a relatively small area, and in a reasonable amount of time, makes a defensive, self-sustaining base, then rolls out with the more powerful T2 units and ends the game. One way of making defensive strategies more viable in BA (that didn't exist in OTA), is giving commanders expensive metal corpses. In BA you could sacrifice your own commander (assuming the settings were on "Commander Dies - Game Continues), giving you access to a huge source of metal, at the cost of your most precious unit. The metal gleaned from the commander's corpse could practically pay for a Tier 2 Factory on its own. Not to advertise another game or anything, I'm just trying to show that there are clever ways to make both offensive and defensive strategies viable in a Total Annihilation-esque RTS.
As someone who was apart of TAEC and participated in the internal discussions for Uberhack, I can tell you that we felt that players who expanded and controlled the map were supposed to ultimately win the game. While a lot of time was spent on tweaking defensive emplacements to be viable and useful, I don't think we ever felt that someone should be able to wall themselves up in a small corner of the map and win the game. We wanted expansion and harassment to _matter_. When Slashers (and other assorted rocket units) were changed to be true anti-air solutions to eliminate Slash rushes, we spent a lot of time looking at the Core L1 units to be sure Core had an answer to early game Flash harassment (IIRC the end result was giving Levelers "anti-EMG" armor). Defensive emplacements should have been used as a tool for maintaining map control after you worked to win an portion of the map, not for ultimate turtling. You might have been able to _prolong_ the fight, but the end result should have been the same. I can't speak for any Spring mods because I never liked the Spring engine. If it is possible to wall up in a small corner of a map and win in BA, that sounds like a failure in design to me. IMO, having a better economy should always result in a stronger force and controlling the map should always result in a stronger economy.
You can play defensively right up until someone drops a KEW on you. Seriously though, I love building giant turtle type bases but you aren't going to win that way.
So is this dev word of god (I apologize for not knowing exactly who you are beyond an employee, but I've only been here since someone pointed out the Kickstarter to me)? The game won't support a playstyle that involves building a fortified base, working through the tech tree, and then attacking once you've reached the top tiers of tech?
If you put it that way then of course it will. This is how I like to play personally actually. It's just that you can't stop someone from attacking you.
I agree, and I'm speaking as a pretty serious porc player. I wasn't a member of TAEC, but I was heavily involved in beta-testing Uberhack from 0.2 beta to 4.0, and I well remember a lot of the balance and defense-vs-territory debates. TA was different from a lot of RTS's in that a strong defense was possible, but unless you were matched to a roughly equal or inferior opponent, it was not a generally winning strategy without the Gods of Luck on your side (I did actually win a few games in my day that way... but it was much more common for my superbase to be overwhelmed or out of anti-nukes when I most needed them). In fact, a game I recorded with a couple of the SY's famously demonstrated the problem with several defense-vs-offense balancing decisions - I porced early, which let me survive against one of them until the other wiped him out, but when I launched my own major offensive and behind the lines raids, I had my entire heavy defensive line obliterated from the other side of the map by a mob of Thumpers - artillery units designed to provide fire support. I think that's balancing issue that should be a factor here as well - a solid defense should be possible (a lot of RTS's still have terrible or no significant static defenses at all), but the primary trade-off should be focused around the rate of expansion. Expand too slowly, and your opponent will take the resource edge and get in a position where they can take out your entire force with a single massive attack (I'm already giddy over KEWs). Expand too quickly, and your defenses will be spread too thin to ward off a raiding strategy. The fun is that the strategy get even more markedly interesting when you can use that balance, as in TA, to wage psychological warfare against your opponent - take out his scouts and use light raids to keep him from realizing how thin you're spread, or even let him take more territory so your concerted attack can sweep his scattered defenses from the field. Factor in some sort of approach to orbital mechanics - shifting your planet/moon, redirecting asteroids, or using kinetic impactors to possibly drive your opponent's major resource asteroid into the sun... there's some pretty awesome potential for strategic decisions in a game like this. Can't freaking wait.
As the devs are aware, the original Supreme Commander promoted turtling far too much, and the multiplayer game was dull as a result. The best strategy was to sit in your base and mass farm until you could afford an experimental. Forged Alliance fixed this by seriously nerfing mass fabricators and the game is much better as a result. Turtling should never be as viable as expanding.
I love(d) playing Warzone 2100. Great game with hunderds/thousands of options to defend with different turret designs and automated VTOL defenses. (free to download now, also great/hard a.i mods for skirmish)
