What We Should Expect in the Next Build

Transports


The new air transport is possibly one of the most anticipated Planetary Annihilation features. These new transports are fast, cheap, and can carry one unit at a time. Paired with the new area commands for transports, these new units will be excellent for raiding, flanking, and expanding.

Re-Worked Orbital
The Orbital Layer will be very different in this new build. Everything in the orbital layer moves faster, and radar satellites are significantly different. Radar Satellites have been given a buff since they move faster, and they provide a small direct line of sight as well as a large area of radar coverage. The Orbital Layer will be much more important after this release, even on single planet systems.

Improved Biomes
This will be a less noticeable change, but still pretty game altering. Uber has greatly improved Planetary Annihilation’s biome generation. Planets should now have more terrain features and move interesting and game altering planet surfaces. We’ll see.

Formations
It’s taken a while, but unit formations for air and ground units are finally here. The downside is that we don’t (yet) have formation options nor do units order themselves in an ideal formation.



New Uber Cannon
The Commander’s Uber Cannon has had a range boost, a decrease in damage, and an increase in it’s area of effect. It must be fired manually and now has a new fire mode for the Commander.

Pings
Players can now point to places on the map through “pings.” These pings make a noise and have an indicator to show where a player is pointing at. Pings show up to teammates and spectators. For now we have only one ping type.



Missile Defense Towers No Longer Shoot at Ground
This is a small change with big implications. Missile Defense Towers used to shoot at ground and air units will now only shoot at air units.

Balance Changes
There have been quite a few balance changes aside from the orbital changes.

Naval

Naval units have been given a buff. They move faster and have had damage changes made. We don’t know all of the specifics yet, just expect them to be more powerful.

Naval Fabricators have also been changed in an effort to make naval starts as viable as ground starts. Personally I still think there’s a few tweaks to be made, but it’s some big improvements nonetheless.

Air Fabricator

Air Fabricators have been given a buff to make them viable. Basic air fabricators now build at 9 metal per second and consume 1,100 energy per second. They’re still slower than bot and vehicle fabricators and consume more energy per second.

Improved AI
The AI is now more aggressive and expands further. Expect more of a challenge! Hopefully we’ll get the difficulty slider soon.

Uber has also said they want to give the AI different personalities so there will be variety to the strategies it employs. That will make for some very exciting gameplay when Galactic War is released.

Performance Improvements
Uber has made quite a few performance and stability improvements to Planetary Annihilation. Specifically, OS X users should see some nice improvements. The next update should see some even bigger improvements to performance.

New Models
This build will include quite a few new unit and building models to replace the temporary ones we’ve had.


Flak Cannon


Gunship


Combat Fabricators


Anchor


Inferno

Improved Visuals
There have been quite a few improvements to the visuals of the game. Lighting is cooler, power plants have cool electrical lighting/spark things on them, the Inferno spews fire, the Leviathan Broadside looks awesome, and more cool stuff.


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i am giddy with anticipation....

What the hell would we do without you @brianpurkiss

I think Air Fabricators also move a lot faster in the up coming build.

I want it NOW

Also:

Attack Behaviour
After a unit is given an attack command, it will not stop attacking that unit if given a move command (until it is unable to anymore).

Very nice write up indeed. Really curious to see how hard it will be to defend on all corners with the transports.

Edit: will half price mex be making it into this build too?

I'm pretty excited about that change. Almost included it in the list.

Nicely done, Brian. Now if Uber can just quash the last few bugs...

I'm a bit worried, this can be a dual edged sword. What will happen when I'm trying to manipulate my army of doxes though the enemy base and I click something I don't want them to attack? This will either be a great feature or a horrible one.

In today's playtest we saw the Astreus bug fixed. But the Umbrella bug was still there. And there's still the bug where aircraft just instantly stop when the target is destroyed, but that's not game breaking.

Hm... Be careful where you click?

I think the benefits outweigh the downsides.

I see we UberNet is coming along. You should be worried about doxes eventually going on strike or attacking you.

Clicking stop makes units lose their targeting - then just re-issue the move command.

Yes

can have please?

I... Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait.

Do you have a confirmation from the devs on that?

They mentioned it a little while ago. Whether that's changed since then is unknown. I'll be doing my usual detailed change notes, so it will come up there if it's changed.

Not a fan of the current meta, so looking forward to a patch that shakes it up

nice, actually... swwwweet.