My thoughts on PA thus far

Well, to be honest I did read you "thoughts" and suggestions. I have also read topics concerning those "thoughts" and suggestions, that are over 10pages long. Blinders, I've read a lot on this forum but you have read to far to little. You should read up first and then you could make a list. Then it would atleast be worthy of discussion.

For example in your main post point, 8e you have mentioned "shields." If you did minimal research you would know that there will be no shields in PA. However, the modding community might create a mod for it.

I admit my first post was very passive-agressive and it might have been a bit too much.

I do agree we need better ways of getting information to the player. A 2-d minimap may be reasonable. Consider, however, that you are projecting a sphere onto a 2-d plane. This is why pretty much every map of the world you've seen is either cut up or shows Greenland as being way bigger than it really is. See: Mercator projection.

No please.

Metal makers were key to the super-turtling of long running TA games and pretty much all SupCom games. Nosir; I don't like it. Keep metal extractors (and therefore map control) important.

Ehhhhh I'd almost rather go the other way and eliminate T2 metal extractors. I think part of the problem of the TA sub-genre is how, in the end, it devolves into 100+ T2 construction planes hovering around nuke launchers. Placing some kind of firm limit on metal production might actually make the game more about attrition and fun rather than "huddle in the base and mass produce nukes".

No no no no no no no. *breath* No no no. No. No no. No. .... No.

Energy shields ruined SupCom. It was nothing BUT a base defense game. There was often no point in even having an offense because defense was just that good. On a big map, it was just "build up until you can make one single strike that breaks through his shields and kills his commander instantly". I want to fight a war; not SimCity that ends when one of us suddenly explodes from a single overwhelming attack.

This was the reason, I believe, that SupCom largely devolved into people playing on tiny maps. At the time I quit, some months after launch, probably 95% of matches were tiny maps because the "base defense mode" was not widely regarded as very fun. But if one player played that way, the rest had no other choice.

Units need to be carefully balanced. They need to serve a specific purpose. Another big TA problem, especially after Core Contingency and the following free unit releases, was that there were a lot of "cool" units but not a lot of balance or playtesting of them. I'm not against new units, but they should be examined very carefully before release.

I think T2 metal extractors should be ditched simply to increase the value of high metal planets, as well as the fact that in a multi-planetary game they really shouldn't be necessary. They also don't fit the no upgrade model of this game.

As to nukes, neither TA nor SUPCOM let you assist or speed up nuke building. I think allowing assistance of nuke builds is a mistake.

Yes supreme commander was all about base building, it sounds to me as though you wish the game was more like all the other offence based rts's out there. I loved supcom for all the reasons you disliked it. I loved it because a single game can take hour's.

The strategy lies in finding easily defensible map locations. Obtaining good radar intel, probing you're enemies defences for weak spots. Whilst at the same time developing your killer strike, trying to counter you're enemies and skirmishing in the middle ground to try and gain mass advantage.

Supcom was never intended to be starcraft 2, I guess some people understood Chris Taylors vision but most didn't. Probably why sup com 2 failed. He tried to build a game that would please everyone, but in doing so lost the people who loved the original formula. (that and the cartoony art style....yuk!)

I and my friends used to play huge 80/80 lan games that sometimes lasted 3-4 hour's per game, these are my fondest memory's of pc gaming, and to me the strength of the pc platform.

That is it's able to also cater for the smaller minority community's that consol's just can't (or wont) deliver.

That said PA is a different from supcom, although it has similar elements the fact that we are on a spherical battlefield makes building defences much more challenging and forces you to play much more offensively right from the start. Also orbital play mixes things up considerably (in a good way).

In fact I believe Pa is a game that is able to balance between the two camps (macro verses micro) quite well as smaller planets seem to favour more aggressive skirmish play whilst in larger planets defensive play is more viable.

I also believe the ability to alter metal content will (when its implemented) give us even more choice between the two styles of play. If you also have the ability to remove certain unit's/buildings from the game (as per supcom) I don't really see the problem with having shields/transports ect.

Just my opinion at least.

Keep up the great work uber, still absolutely lovin' Pa Its all I'm playing atm, nothing else quite hits that spot!!

I would have said "I wish it was more like original Total Annihilation".

The great thing about original TA, to me, was that it was usually a war of attrition. Defenses were never so good that you couldn't send in something to destroy, say, a fusion reactor or three. In a good matchup, you'd build 3 fusion reactors and I'd destroy 2. You'd build 2 more and I'd destroy 1. And you were doing the same thing to me. It wasn't PURELY a race of constructing stuff -- it was also a question of who could sneak stuff in to set back his opponent a little bit.

That was unique. SupCom doesn't play like that because defenses are too strong. Starcraft doesn't play like that because the game is meant to spur micro-managed unit battles between the bases. PA plays like that pretty well right now but introducing shields and energy->metal converters will turn it into SupCom 2.

Turtles will turtle regardless of the RTS they're playing. Good players will crush them with aggressive strategies, even if that RTS is SupCom. There's hundreds of examples of this on YouTube.

You can do this in supcom also. None of the turrets in supcom were so powerful that a super unit couldn't put a large dent in allowing you to punch a hole to get to the enemy's commander.

To me, it all boils down to what sort of rts's you like. Either you enjoy long games lasting 2-3 hours where investing in a well planned base is worth it, or you prefer short skirmish based games lasting maybe 1/2 hour 40 mins. In this type defensive structures are mostly a waist of time as having more units in play will give you the upper hand.

However all these arguments are countered by having a setting in match options which allows you to turn off different building type's.

I agree with you PA plays pretty well, however most games turn into "who can build the most t1 bot's the fastest."

I noticed whilst playing recently (custom map 1v1 online) that whenever I occupied player slot 1 I lost and whenever I occupied player slot 2 I won. When I went back and analysed the games, I noticed that player slot 1's spawns had a maximum of 3-5 mas spots whilst player slot 2 had 5-7.

This ment the player in slot 2 could build more bot factory's without stalling and was able to dominate the map.

PA will never be the same as supcom or supcom2 (please don't mention supcom2 lets just pretend they didn't make it), even if you included shields, the very nature of a spherical map prevents this as there are no corners where you can dig in (turtle).

Tbh I don't know how shields or energy converter's would change the gameplay in PA. Maybe they would make choosing a spawn with little mass a viable strategy, maybe it won't matter and you still get crushed buy that t1 bot rush.

I don't know, and won't know for sure until either uber tries it or somebody mods it.

I don't find T1 bot rushes to be a problem unless you're playing on small scale planets -- that was true of TA and SupCom as well. The smaller the map, the bigger deal T1 is. On the really small planets, it also seems like defenses lose their potency because they can't handle the curve of the planet. I prefer scale 4 for starter worlds. It doesn't take a whole lot to stop a large T1 bot rush, but you need a little time.

I came back a bit too hard also. I apologize for taking it too strongly as well. I am a fan of shields because I like base defense. If I wanted quick twitch strategy, I could play a MOBA, or Command and Conquer or Starcraft. I've like TA and SupCom specifically because it's not about unit rushing and micromanagement. It's about the big picture: Bases, planets, enormous maps, huge battles. I want to see that even more in PA. It has to be different from those other RTS games, incorporate more strategies and more techniques than simply rush.

I agree. I like to vest my time in a good game. A single 2-3 hour game is often better than 3-5 25 minute games. I want to feel like I'm really part of the game, that I have an interest since I've put my dedication to it. I like that, if my army loses, I can trust my well-created base defense to stop my demise. In starcraft, you lose your army, it's over. That's always saddened me, because I like the balance of bases vs armies. Too few games look at that these days.

A single 25 minute game is better than a 2-3 hour game that ends after 25 minutes because someone had to leave, DCed, crashed or surrenders.

I know exactly how you feel, and sadly few games really give you that at the moment. So far Pa has delivered it on the odd occasion, when I've been matched evenly on a large planet with a good spawn points for both player's.

Unfortunately 70% of games at the moment either end with me crushing them after 10 mins or so, or them crushing me in a similar time =( Still there are many things which can be done to fix this so I'm not that worried.

I used to lan mainly with my friends and never once experienced any crashes (in supcom) anyway that already happens in Pa and it hasn't stopped me enjoying it. ; )

I admit it suck's when someone quits out early, but that's no reason to not put something in. If it breaks the game, that's when you think about removing/tweaking a unit or building.

I admit I may be in a minority with my view's, and that all this has been gone over a hundred times before, but just wanted to add my opinion somewhere.