Metal Planet Death Stars Confirmed

I was hoping at least one possible "ancient tech" was a reuseable halley. Possibly make halleys one-time-burn, but make metal planet activation give you a permanently moveable full-size-planet capable of either ridiculous damage collision or a moving weapons platform.

From the Kickstarter update for stretch goals.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ihilation-a-next-generation-rts/posts?page=13

"That’s no moon. It’s a space station! Metal planets are wandering relics of wars long past, giant artificial battle stations that can be recycled or reactivated to bring a new level of destruction. Harness the lost knowledge and brute power of the ancients by repairing their installations. Then take over the control structures and rain destruction on your opponents."

Dunno bout you but that sounds like a Death Star to me...
Also, you seem to be speculating quite a bit on this feature, no-one has said it will be more game ending than smashing planets.

Personally, I would like a planet to be split up after being shot by this thing, still being able to play on a slice or two of that planet. Then maybe while the shard of a planet is hurling through one's solar system, they have a limited amount of time to build A transport to take the commander to safety before the shard leaves the system... Maybe not but planet splitting would be cool. I realise that would be quite hard to code.

Have faith, I'm sure Uber know just what they are doing.

Perhaps you will have to move the 'Death Star' planet into orbit around the planet you want to destroy? Currently I like metal planets as an amazing super weapon, as long as it's properly balanced, which I'm sure it will be.

Well.. I like the idea of a "Death Star" kinda weapon.. would like to see something like ION cannon or a beam weapon that will just shoot at planet - cannon would have nuke impact effects and beam.. well.. think laser satellite but with longer and broader beam

Cheers!

Ninja edit: And yes, planet would have to get in orbit to target planet so no sniping from other side of the sun

So if i make a system with 10 metal planets they arent game enders anymore? Since things being common place cant be game enders by your own logic.

That sounds unlogical. A game ender is something that can easily end the game. Therefor nukes and halleys and the way you envision metal planets all fit into said description.

How common they appear is irrelevant.

Your also assuming aloot on how metal planets will function. They could easily have a long loadup phase for the weapon or its not a insta kill world weapon or it has slow movements to target another planet (giving the opponent a time to fight back or at least sabotage said metal planet).

"in the correct situations"

By your logic, a lone dox is a game ender.

Just because something ends a game does not make a game ender.

And you're wrong. Halleys and Nukes are engineered by the game to be commonplace. The game is built under that premise. PA is not built under the premise to have tons of one planet type. It's meant to have lots of variety. Having a bunch of planets of one type is not variety, and therefore not how the game was built, and not commonplace.

"In the correct situations" isent included in my post.

And you're wrong.

How common something is isent relevant to if its a game ender or not. A game ender is something that can easily end the game (in most situations). A halley controlled astroid and nukes fit the description (A "swarm of unit x" isent a single unit/object/etc and thus arent included).

For example look at supcom, experimentals are seen as game enders and they are as commonplace as anything can be. Nukes are also seen as game enders and they are as common as in PA.

Even if you accepted the "commonplace things are not game enders" theory i would say this:
How do you know metal planets wont be common place? The standard system could have 4 of them for all we know. Your just assuming things.

Systems are randomized. Metal planets cannot be commonplace unless we have a ton of planets in a system.

And I'm not saying because it's commonplace, it's not a game ender. I'm saying the game was built so nukes and planet smashing is used all the time multiple times in a match. So they are built to not be insta-win.

And maybe I should rephrase.

Re-read everything I said and replace "game ender" with "insta win."

Either way. I don't have time to haggle over terms like these.

I've made my stance. I do not like the idea of a death star that can blow up entire plants and be re-used over and over.

We'll see how it ends up being implemented.

People complain of a lack of planet variety yet they complain about this mechanic. It'll work out everyone! Quit worrying!

I think you have lost scope of what the game is. This is not a 4x sim tbs or empire builder rts like Age of Empires. There is no tech tree to research, a econ that has two resources, and more importantly no pause or save game feature. This is a fast pace rts that has a vary large scope and scale. we are fighting not only over one map but over multiple planets that each is the size of your average map. And what I feel is the thing to keep in mind is that this game is meant to be played in 30 to 60 minuets.


This game is meant to be fast and fluid. You have to be aggressive and think about more than one thing at once and your fortunes can turn for good or bad very quickly. Yes at a higher level there is some grand planning. But there is really only one goal. Find and kill the enemy comm before he does the same to you, and I think the game should be able to be a pick up and play kind of game without having to worry about making sure you set aside your afternoon so you could play one match. I want the game to be almost serendipitous in its level of destruction and a key part of that is the annihilation of planets.

Maybe you've lost scope of what the game is.

This is a strategy game. That means planning or "grand planning" is required at all stages of the game.

I don't see a single reason in your post about why we should have planet destroying death stars.

The point I was trying to make is that PA is more casual than other strategy games. I have more fun with this game than I have had in some time and I want it to get past the point where it seems to be a game of numbers and attrition. Who built more factory’s and who's going to give first and other points where it can deadlock.


There is one goal and that is kill one unit and I dont see PA as a game where a diplomatic victory condition will come into play.


But as others have said we know very little at this point and I dont think that this direction is necessarily a bad one.

I'd disagree with you on that.

There's a quickly growing competitive scene in PA. We have tournaments every two weeks now! At least!

And there's tons of spectator features in the works, which are critical for a competitive game.

PA is well on its way to being an eSport.

We're getting off topic though.

Just because a game is casual doesn't mean there should be an unbalanced feature added.

We'll see how Uber ends up balancing this feature.

Brian, you're obviously a sharp guy, so I really don't understand your insistence on viewing this topic with such pessimism. As has been pointed out ovary and ovary again, there hasn't even been a confirmation that the metal planet weapon will destroy planets. It could simply be a reusable asteroid, right? Anything else is pure conjecture. This horse collapsed a while ago, however, and I promised myself I'd stop beating dead animals, sooo...

So wait, when did the game change to make it so that halleys don't one shot commanders?

Halleys are game enders. You hit you win, always.

Why is it being in beam form worse?

As I have said over and over again on multiple threads...

"We'll see how Uber ends up balancing this feature."

Because Halleys aren't in their final form. They won't destroy an entire planet when they are finished.

I just had an idea/suggestion for how metal planets should function and though I should post it here.
My idea would be to have multiple prebuilt structures scattered on the metal planet (Large power plants specific to the metal planet) that can be found in a ruined state (these power plants can't be destroyed, but once they are below a certain health value they become non functional). In order for a player to utilise the metal planet to destroy other planets they would have to fully repair a certain number of these power plants (Think of this being a capture mechanic of sorts) Once the metal planet fires, the power plants would return to their original ruined state and would have to be repaired again in order to use the metal planets weapon. This mechanic would prevent the metal planet from being any more op that an asteroid with halleys on it, and would make it difficult for one player to gain control of the metal planet in the first place. I am aware that some people would not like this capture mechanic, but it should alleviate any concerns of metal planets being super OP.

Let me know what you guys think of this suggestion.

(Sorry about the wall of text )

That's a pretty nifty idea.

We don't know much about the plans for metal planets, but this sounds similar to what I imagined all along. If these planets can be balanced at all (and I'm sure they can), I really want to see them in the game. What you described sounds really close to what I eventually expect to get.

Let's face it.

One Death Star had a pretty severe design flaw.

The other wasn't complete.