What is the point of this game? It already exists.

I still play Brood War at LAN communities. It is also where the SCAI dev scene is. But you're right that the population has greatly reduced. Still, a lot of people liked the old game better but had to pick up the new one because that's where the playerbase moved. I would love to still play Timesplitters if the servers didn't go down. I still think TS is one of the best FPSes of all time. The death of the community is a reason for not playing it.

@xterminator27

The value of your posts is zero until you post suggestions to improve the things you complain about. Until then, people will disregard you as a troll and will fight your ill-informed opinion with rudeness. In 8 pages of thread, you complain that you don't like PA because "it barely holds up as a mod for supreme commander" and fail to actually give any good suggestions on what Uber could do to fix that.

You say that the middle mouse button isn't used by anyone because in a lot of mice it is unusable, a dubious point backed by....nothing. It might be a problem with your mouse or you might just not like to use the middle mouse button. I do, doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong, but also doesn't mean you're right to assume no one uses it.

You complain about members who've been around for months posting worthy content and real suggestions. You say they "do everything to ensure shittiness" and they have accepted "mediocrity". Yet, in all your dozen posts you can't do better than that.

You say that the entire gameplay is copied from Supreme Commander. "Commander, economy, buildings, units, entire structure, entire gameplay." The pitch video sold this game as a successor to those games. So, to expect something completely different is not very smart. Then you say, again, that PA needs to be more than Supreme Commander in space. It needs to be its own game that can stand on its own two feet. However, your post ends there and your effort to give any suggestion is...zero.

You say you don't like the fundamental Mechanics are not improved, while agreeing that this is a spiritual successor to TA and Supreme Commander...and that's it. No suggestions that the Devs can use there either.

About the SC2 mod that you say beats PA in a few areas. Was the engine for the SC2 mod built by the mod team and for the mod like PA engine is being built for PA? How is it superior? Can you show us? Do you have suggestions to make the PA engine better? Where does the PA engine disappoints you?

You say the PA gameplay feels old and repetitive considering you've played TA and Supreme Commander. How does it compare to the SC2 mod? What does the SC2 mod gameplay does that PA doesn't? What can Uber do to PA to make it better than the SC2 mod? Is there something in the SC2 mod that you think PA could do and perhaps improve?

The only suggestion you give, in all of your posts, is for Uber to try to deviate from the SupCom cookie Cutter layout. So...how? Ideas?

My conclusion is that you spent 50 bucks on a game, now you don't like it, and regret your purchase. There's a refund button somewhere you can use. I suggest contacting Uber Support. Or you can hang around and give some real suggestions people can use. Until you write some serious suggestions people can't take you seriously.

At risk of perpetuating the echo in thread, @xterminator27 what did you envisage when you pledged for beta tier? You didn't just throw money at the game, you pledged much higher than you needed to so you must have had some vision that hasn't come to fruition.

Well the guy is right to a degree: PA is currently very current-gen. Most next-gen stuff like interplanetary warfare won't be as noticeable until the game can easily load systems of 5+ planets. Right now, getting off a planet is a pretty rare occasion in my games so far because the match has usually been decided by then.

To my mind he/she seems to be much more upset with the direction the project is headed than its current state. Whilst you aren't wrong, anybody evaluating the success of this project based on the latest build is a silly billy.

For the people that were just talking about interplanetary transport and warfare.

I still think the lander should be moved to an air factory unit, and move around like a plane transporting units and perhaps comnapping (if it can get past the AA) but then you load it into the orbital launcher and fire it at another planet where it would land where you told it to but also would then require another orbital factory to be launched again I think this would solve the lander problems people are having plus it gives us a air transport that we can use to bypass islands and mountains with our units, If they then allowed it to carry every land unit and added a ferry system we would be able to transport armies over the water or flank a player that's using a mountain wall but has no defenses there :3

then you just make all the other orbital units forced to stay orbiting the planet except for maybe the interceptor as it looks a little like a spaceship and never goes down into the atmosphere it would be good if it could move around and protect your commander or other forces as they move around. not to mention if they made the lander beable to carry normal units you could transport some AA units or just alot more builders so that when you land you can defend against an air force or quickly build defenses and a base for your beach head

So , 98% the same game... you mean like, every single RTS ever made. It's a lot like Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation, but SCI is a lot like SCII, yet people still wanted a SCII, lets not forget Command and Conquer 1 -3, Red Alert 1-3 and then of course Age of Empires and Rise of Nations. Why make new games with slightly different features and ideas.... because there is a market for RTS games that is currently not being satisfied.

So your opinion is a fact and we can't argue about it?

OMG eight pages of troll food!!!!

Not sure about that. At the very least it's criticism and that in itself provides motivation that is often lost in the community echochamber. Sure it would be nice if OP could perfectly articulate with examples and suggestions what would please him but that's not his job as a consumer. It's the design department's job.

More than asking OP who likely has no RTS design experience what should be done, the design team should seek to understand why OP thinks what he thinks - and use that understanding to focus new design. A great example of Uber already doing that is how they reacted to the criticism that SupComs economy was overly complex. Instead of becoming dismissive they changed the underlying mechanics of build power.

I might be wrong but it sounds like OP was expecting even more conceptually refined mechanics, as opposed to emulation. Maybe he was expecting the refined UI of Spring RTS, or the unit class system from Zero-k. Ideas abound but maybe PA will suffer from the fact that it's a "spiritual successor" and has to prove its pedigree, rather than go for more fundamental changes.

The first rule of reading any forum is don't feed the troll. So, not worth commenting on what the OP said.

The feeling is mutual.

Now it exists, 6 years ago it didn't!

Seriously, most pointless post ever....

barley barley troll.

This is a good point, I would personally say that one of my other biggest gripes with the game as a whole is simply the UI and the controls (especially camera), or lack therefor of one. Everything seems to be cumbersome, and assigning tasks is a chore.

Now I know its beta so there is a lot of time to improve, but I am not talking about small changes, I really feel that the entire UI is my biggest barrier to enjoying this game. That and the lack of unit diversity, every game I play seems to run the same course. It all feels the same. Perhaps SC2 has simply spoiled me in terms of dynamic RTS experiences.

What about the camera would you change? I can rotate planets, zoom in and out. Unlock the camera and manually look around from a fixed position and track on specific units if I want to. My only need at this point is a way of switching quickly from one planet to the next, without needing to zoom right out to the solar view, then back in again. But I'm sure that will come with time.

Personally I find the UI quite nice and minimalist. The thing that I feel is, Starcraft is a RTT (Real-time tactical) game. It's all about the micro (with little focus on the economy), build orders early game and the whole rock-paper-scissors mechanic of unit counters. The one commandment of TA/PA is that "thou shalt not cripple thy economy" and while you might need a build order for the first few buildings, after that it's all up to your play style.

TA and similar games are on a completely different scale. In my matches I come across people who are obviously playing like it's Starcraft, tiny bases, one or two of each factory etc. At the same time, a good player is going to be constantly expanding their economy and rate of generating units in tandem. If you love the micro, toggling unit abilities and the like, then I can't help but feel that PA is never going to be a game that appeals to you.

Lets not forget that Starcraft 2 has innovated very little from SC1. It's a great game, but Blizzard knew they couldn't deviate much from what made the original game popular without completely alienating their playerbase. I'd argue that Uber is innovating on TA with this game, far more than Blizzard did with Starcraft 2.

I don't want to get too far into the PA vs SC2 discussion, as they are apples and oranges. But I suppose my main gripe is the lack of instant camera changes.


Perhaps this is just my inexperience in PA, but I have no figured out how to bind the camera to units, so say if I press a button, it instantly brings me to a designated area or group of units. Same goes with areas in the map itself.

Pick a unit. Assign it by pressing cntrl-1. Pressing 1 twice brings the camera to that unit? This what you want?

It is also possible to save the camera to locations like your base or the enemy's base. I'm not sure the keys off hand but they are in the keyboard settings in the game.