Internal Playtest – Mostly Debugging, New Models, and Lots of Questions Answered – 2/4

That is absolutely not something you need to be concerned about, for a number of reasons:

1. Scathis has balanced a lot of major RTS games. I'm not sure how he compares with others but I'm fairly sure he's one of the most experienced people in the world in this field. And along with that you have an entire office of very experienced RTS developers.
2. All of the developers watch community gameplay videos. We have a lot of people casting games by all and sundry, of varying skill levels. Uber are vary aware of their surroundings and limitations and do not allow themselves to be trapped in a bubble.
3. Uber are absolutely open to community suggestions on balance. We have an entire subforum for discussing it, which I've observed several devs reading through (via their 'current activity' log on the main forums page).
4. There will almost certainly be an 'accepted' community balance mod created after game release if the vanilla balance isn't deemed to be correct. And I strongly suspect that if it becomes accepted enough, Uber will just go ahead and integrate it into the core game.

Btw I am so happy they will implement the ability for units with multiple guns (Ships only at the moment) to target
different units per gun at the same time. This adds so much immersion to naval.

The wide variety of guns on a ship was one of the things I liked so much about SupCom naval.

Having ground units with multiple guns on it would also be a lot of fun.

I like those new flame effects.

The Gunship looks great , Also glad to hear about the performance Improvement Don't know about the Vanguard, it looks weird.

I have the opposite feeling about the Gunship. It looks delicious, but also like it has little to do with all the other unit designs. Not so critical anyway. I have to see them on my screen to better decide what I feel

Sincerely, sometimes it seems that the guys who're testing the game see it for the first time.

Like Garat ignoring the Red Alert Pop-Up about his Commander being under threat for a minute or so... for then expressing surprise that the Commander exploded. Hilarious.

Or Scathis building lines of walls straight on a Canyon... like anything that a wall could stop, could also transverse a canyon...

Those things are not *different playstyle*. Those things are just a bit dumb

But, hej, I like them 'cos they're human. And not afraid to expose themselves to harsh critics all the time. So, cheer up! You guys at Uber are doing a great job, and we love you the same even if you're not perfect or super human. Perhaps even more because that

niiiiiiiiiice.

That is good. Also, Uber does listen to balance, they have in the past.

That is not the point. Neutrino (or was it Scathis. Sorry, I am sleepy) did work on 8 RTS games and balance 5 of them. The point is, they have not balanced. Openly stated at that.

It is like this. Hypothetically, I work as a stocker at a store. To shelf items, you must first seperate items together, fill items on shelf, and straighten all items on shelf. You could do that any order of ways, including all at once in segments. If you do all simultaneously, and someone checks your work 1/2 the way through, it would look like you didn't really do anything yet. If you instead did seperate the items first, then start filling the shelf, then they would say you did a really crummy job straightening the items for sale presentation. They would claim that is a weak area for you, not because you are crummy at it, but because you had not done it, simply not done it at all, not even tried to do it, not considered it, not even sure which details to focus on about it. You had not done it or attempted to do it.

They have not balanced the game. They have not attempted to balance the game. If the game were balanced right now, it would not be their doing, it would be sheer luck and coincidence because it was the first numbers thrown at it. As they are now starting to focus on game balance, they are still finishing the engine in order to have access to all the balancing factors, most are there but more could be there. Ultimately, they will literally eventually have just that task in mind one day soon, and they will literally go into the game and systematically generate every single unit and consider a much better number for it. When they do that, the numbers will STILL be off because some player will extensively play with it and find something exploitable, however it will be a lot closer than you think.

Right now, besides the devs that stream, they probably have no idea what a good number is for damage of t2 bombers. They probably have no idea they are cheap. Then again, they are probably going to add new units and possible new air units, and that will devour the metal one would have for flagrant t2 bomber use, and even then the metal ingame might go down in availability leaving even less metal for t2 bombers. T2 bombers might be balanced in numbers right now should everything else change around it. However, nothing has been balanced around it, so it would be the worst choice for balancing very first. That is people's go to unit to balance, so that is why the game isn't balanced. It isn't intentionally, because it is an engine running RTS prototype features, not a fully created game. The units and their numbers are test units, possibly none of them the real release units we will play with. The metal as far as we know is probably intentionally over-abundant in order to more commonly stress test the engine with over-abundant unit-counts and nuke-renderings.

Thats my feelings on balance. Hundreds of thousands of players will always find more balance tricks with the game, combined they have hundreds of millions of hours more playtime. However, the game will probably be balanced fine and none of the in-game things are "snapshots" of the devs selecting poor balance choices, they weren't choices or even efforts at all. They were lack of efforts, which makes sense why a lot of it sucks. I am suprised there are so many viable techniques for playing in beta, given how guessed at the numbers are.

So for one last metaphor, Uber will balance the game better, but their initial numbers which the units are using, were generated with as much time spent on balance, as China has spent negotiating the ownership of disputed islands with the Japanese. To my knowledge, China has spent the time putting out a single disagreement statement, just like Uber took the time to fill the unit values with something (only because empty would cause units not to work).

ok ill use the term monitor then.

Will we be able to have different sized monitors? For example: I have a 1920x1080 and a 2560x1440 monitor. Will I be able to use both of them without changing the resolution of either of them?

I hope so, seeing as how I have a television and a monitor.

If you use the reply feature I'll get notifications. Otherwise I may not see your response.

Yes you will.

Yeah, there is something about the design of the gunship that is bothering me as well.. maybe it is because it looks too familiar and looks like it is designed for humans. Admittedly you could argue that other units in the game do this too to an extent but somehow the gunship design just seems a bit out of place, at least at first glance.

That gunship is a homage to the "Brawler" from Total Annihilation, which is something I quite like. It's not a direct copy, but it definitely has some similarities, in the same way that the Teleporters have a subtle resemblance to something from a popular Sci-Fi show that was on not long ago....

Am i the only one who noticed they added engine fx to all air units? The engines now emit a small flame.

Nice work brian as always.

Supcom naval is crap compared to TA naval.
You still have not played TA yet?

As I've mentioned on other threads, I'm actually avoiding playing TA for the time being so I can provide a different perspective without the "TA is perfect and anything other than TA is flawed" filter.

Your perspective is meaningless.

Not to the people that read what Brian writes...
Or to Brian.

Maybe what you meant to say is that his perspective is meaningless to you. That's fair, but you should realize that there are other people who enjoy reading opinions about the game that don't always compare it to TA or SupCom. All three are great games, but we can't go on living under the shadow of those games. People that want to play TA can still do that. This game is Planetary Annihilation, which is similar in some ways, and different in others. Sometimes I wonder if PA is too similar to TA and SupCom; If more things were different, debates about this game might be based more on the merit of an idea and less on how TA/SupCom/FAF did it.

Exactly.