in praise of MASSIVE scale - forget the explosions

I just heard about the Planetary Annihilation project and am SUPER thrilled to hear it! TA is my favourite game of all-time (I still play it now) and would LOVE to see a game in the same genre that can grow to far greater scale.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that scale (i.e. the number of units and the size of play area) is FAR more important to me than graphics. In fact, I would be happy to have stick figures with red flashes to indicate explosions. The quality of graphics in TA is more than sufficient for me. What I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want is SCALE!!!!!

What does "scale" mean? Well, it's three things:
- ability to create and use tens of thousands, or millions of units
- ability to manage masses of units with complex pre-programmed actions, etc (includes being able to monitor activity from high-level overview)
- massive maps that take hours to traverse, even in the fastest possible speed

The demo videos I watched for Planet Annihilation are very intriguing but they do seem to lack scale. The planets in the demos were pretty small and the numbers of units were in the hundreds. I seriously doubt you could stick 10,000 units on the planets in the demo. What we need are planets of a size where you can amass simply garguantuan armies and throw them at opponents in mega-battles.

A guy can dream...

Oh... I forgot to mention that it is important to be able to save these epic scale battles and play against AIs. I rarely play on-line and like saving my games and coming back to them. The ultimate dream game at mega scale could take months to complete.

You must be new here!

Keep in mind that the planet you're seeing in the alpha is on the smaller end, and it's only one planet in a solar system. Uber is just getting the basic game up and running. That means no (usable) moon, no other planets, no asteroids, etc.

Then, remember that there is no hard-coded finite limit to the size of a planet. So in 13 years when people are still playing Planetary Annihilation, you can play full scale earth planets on your Super Awesome Computer of the Future. The upper limit will supposedly depend mainly on whether you've got a computer to handle it. Likewise with other aspects of scale.

@Goodoak - Yes, I just heard about Planetary Annihilation and this forum today. I did search for threads on scale before starting this one. I see people talking about how the game scales well, but I wasn't sure of the details or what that really meant and the demos had me a little worried.

Earth scale planets are exactly what the doctor ordered!

I fully agree with you, and the best thing is; it's all possible! There's no limit, save for what your PC can handle - that goes for the amount of planets, the size of planets, the amount of players, the amount of units... So let's travel forward in tiem quickly.

You must have just about had a stroke! I don't spend much time at all playing games anymore, but the day I heard about PA (as a huge TA fan), I couldn't believe it. At least you didn't have to wait to start playing it.

Hey hey baby steps

10k units per planet or planets ten times the size can be for Planetary Annihilation 2 !!

I'm looking forward to the galaxy mode. I cant wait to send my ten planets' worth of robots on an unsuspecting planet just because it's in my way :3

how big exactly are current planets? earth would be like hundreds of not thousands of times bigger

that would just break my entire computer


i imagine a galaxy would have as much surface area though

or we can have Spring Engine 2 outfitted for PA

An earth sized planet would be massively impractical. Wars in real life on our huge map take YEARS.

This.

You will not believe how long it can take to find one of the 3 AI bases sometimes on those small planets. The surface area is HUGE. It just looks small on your monitor. On an earth-sized planet you could play a month before you see the first enemy unit.

There will be a map editor and you will be able to make much larger planets but I strongly recommend to start with a small one and get a feeling for PA first. The dimension of actual gameplay does not transfer well to video, you have to experience it for yourself.

Satellite recon would solve the issue of not being able to find crap.

The scale is already very impressive. It does take a while to find the enemy - even with a dozen scout planes patrolling in different directions...

It DOES take a long time to travel around the map... Especially giant swarms of the biggest slowest tank... I am guessing but it feels like around 5 mins to move them to the opposite side of the map. If you are sending a group in 3 different directions then it does seem like a lot of ground to cover!

In terms of unit numbers - I just played a game for well over an hour and couple of people died early. Ended up building over 1/2 the map and definitely had over a 1000 units. I think I had maybe 300+ units trapped accidentally in the water trying to swarm through a small gap between a crevasse and the sea to get to the enemy...

Once some of the early glitches are ironed out it will be amazing.

Units are struggling to actually attack things in late game. Often large groups are walking in and just getting mowed down without firing back.

Defense like laser towers and air defense towers (which also seem to hit ground vehicles) wipe out the low level guys SO easily. You need hundreds and hundreds of units for any attack and most likely multiple attack fronts to have any impact.

Very cool so far.