Metal Planet Death Stars Confirmed

So making assumptions based solely on what they're associated with is silly, that's what your saying?

That was kinda my whole point.

Mike

In all honesty the Death Star was pretty well protected. But the defences were focused on larger ships because the Empire didn't think anyone was crazy enough to attack it with teeny tiny starfighters. Also the port was two metres wide that's a tricky shot, even with the force.

Also the second Death Star was deliberately built to appear incomplete, but it was a fully armed and operational battle station. Also protected by a planet-based energy shield.

Basically the Empire just made the mistake of not treating the rebels as a serious threat.

just to clarify, this game will have a save and hopefully pause-sim feature. It will be fast paced compared to the old rts games that were new to their time, but its not by design, it is by "comfort" because rts aren't new and everyone is still learning to play, this is rts evolution, when they are more comfortable they can be faster, not ridiculous but more fast than once upon a time.

No. I'm saying that the second death star was not complete. It was designed to be a game ender. Had it been completed, it would have achieved that. Which is why the Rebels attacked the construction site as soon as it was completed, risking the great majority of their fleet to do so.

No. Know your Lore.

The second death star was incomplete during the battle of Endor. How do you think the Imperials are going move an entire planetary system every time they want the Death Star to move?

The planet-based energy shield was protecting the construction site.

The second Death Star was not complete. It was designed without the flaws of the first - it had enough firepower to withstand attacks by fleets of ships, and the structural integrity to also be protected against starfighters. The reason why the Millenium Falcon can fly inside the entire thing is because the superstructure isn't complete.

It was only the main armament that was fully operational. It lacked most of its superstructure.

Yeah, me too. It's not like they've been hiding this.

I wish people would stop misquoting star wars.

Ok, you're right. I'm remembering it wrong.

But remember, many Bothans died to bring us this information.

Yeah nah, understandable mistake.


I was never a fan of Bothans.

Been mentioned before, a LONG time ago. It was well-received at the time. Some kind of capturing system in combination with forcing the presence of a commander was best received (as it allows comm-nuking to ensure it's all-in for that army, and not a case of controlling a superweapon AND having your comm safe and hidden).

This game is called Planetary Annihilation.

If there is no way to completely destroy a planet or two in a lengthy game, it doesn't live up to its own title in the slightest.

Looking forward to see how this develops.

I think that it would make a great deal of sense to have deep space radar and orbital telemetry light up like a Christmas tree when the repairs on a Metal Planet pass certain benchmarks, and it's systems start to come back online. This would give other players ample warning, and since they haven't presumably been sinking resources into a still useless megastructure, they should be able to respond with Halleys, Nukes, and even teleporting in armies to throw a monkey wrench into your death-star construction site. The alerts might even tell you what systems have been restored-so you know if the command center is online, or if it's the primary weapon, or the main reactor, etc. You get the idea.

That makes several assumptions though-first, that the powering up takes a long *** time, even with abundant resources and construction units. Secondly, that it also consumes a lot of resources, which other people might be using to construct powerful 'conventional' armies and nuclear arsenals. And third, it assumes that the opposition is at least halfway-competent and able to build up and engage a recognizable threat, in a way that stands at least a chance of dealing with it.

Then let's stop arguing about how it will be when we have no information other than that it will exist. In fact Brian, this thread is actually a bit silly considering you've said this over and over again.

And what do you have against Bothans, @StormingKiwi ? They were very courageous creatures, were they not?

(By the way, I love you avatar and sig. Haha.)

It doesn't need to consume a ton of resources or time per se. It depends on how hotly it's fought over. It's also pretty obvious that once it's nearly done, it has to be held right down to the last second, while all other players look up and launch nukes and armies at it.

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

Brian,

They way I'd see this working would probably function quite a bit like an asteroid- the only difference being the metal planet is left intact after. The following is how I envisage it:

1: You capture and *hold* metal planet
2: You reactivate several 'control points' which takes time (to give opponents chance to counter attack)- the control points active are displayed like halley slots in celestial view
3: You *finally* get your death star up and running and engage its on board engine
4: Death star moves into orbit around its victim planet
5: You start up the weapon which fires at the planet destroying it
6: The death star has a lengthy cool down before it can be moved again.

In the above scenario it would be entirely possible to counter at a number of points- including with interplanetary nukes, orbital, unit cannon or even an asteroid of your own. It would be very powerful as essentially it becomes a multi-use asteroid, but it's by no means unstoppable and will become a target for all other players in the game. I agree with you that if it could simply sit there and destroy anything in system it would ruin the game, however if they make it that you have to orbit your target that alleviates allot of that- and using a series of control points would give you nuke-able targets with which to disable it.

Yeah I'm thinking about a capture-hold style gameplay in order to fire off some sort of doomsday device/weapon as the mental planet turns and fires towards another planet. It makes sense because the mental planets have a giant hole going all through the middle of it top-to-bottom. Either that or a rush to discover some sort of artifact that gives the own control over firing it once before another artifact is spawned randomly for another shot.... Sort of works similar to how C&C does with their randomly spawning crates on the battlefield just with PA its not a chunk of money you get from em, its a 1 time death star weapon.

Meh! All of these ideas to nerf this feature right out of the gate are indicitive on unigmaginitave folks IMO. Uber would do well to not heed them, at least initially. It reminds me of an old DM I used to play with in D&D. Story time:

This DM (aka Luke) was not a very imaginative fellow, but being 1 of the few people willing to take on the mantle of DM we let him give it a try. He was decent for low levels because the inherent limitations of being low level characters made it easy to railroad (allow only 1 path the group can take) the group. Monsters always posed a challenge because our gear was crap (and he was notorious for nerfing loot rolls to keep it that way), Dungeons lent themselves well to his "1 correct direction" style and he borrowed heavily from source material without adding any flavour of his own.

Fast foreword to a game where we started at level 25 (post end game for D&D). Suddenly players had a lot more tools at their disposal! +10 weapons, ability to teleport / planeshift etc. His solution? Massive continent sized anti-magic field and a literal bridge that spanned for 2 whole play sessions (days in game of walking...)! As a mage the game was unbelievably boring and stale. Anything from our racial choices to our weapon choices were nerfed beyond even what game rules allowed in order to preserve his 1 track "railroad" and make conventional monsters challenging. The group crumbled after only 2 game sessions.

By comparison I (jealously) overheard my friend richard talking about his play group (around level 15) where he was a vampire captain of a pirate ship, sailing where ever he wanted and fighting super cool unique bad guys and monsters. He had a ring that allowed him to cast "Darkness" so he could fight during the day etc. His DM's solution to powerful players was to make even more powerful enemies (instead of nerfing the players) and it facilitated everyone having more fun!

TL;DR: Nerfing things to facilitate balance screams "lack of imagination" and hurts everybody's chances of having fun. It's boring to constantly nerf. A better solution is to continually add bigger challenges, better opponents and more powerful weapons to keep the game balanced, fresh, interesting and fun. No 1 likes something getting taken away, but things getting added usually have a way better approval rating and can serve the same purpose.

I made a really big metal planet and scrolled around, taking a careful look at it. At the equator, there was one spot with a recessed area and a few ramps that let your units get down there. (now that I look at it, I remember my units accidentally pathing through here a couple times, but I never cared to really look at it before).

There's a stamp inside of it, about the size of a factory. I wonder if something will need to be built here to activate the metal planet goodness?

If you read the suggestion I made above it's not about nerfing anything. We don't actually *know* how it's going to work although given how other mechanics work in PA that was my best guess at a workable implementation.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's quite different however, either way I'm sure Uber will do a good job of it (they have with everything else IMO).

I do think that having to hold some control points is a good way to do it though- as the whole point of PA is to have something to fight over. Those control points would make juicy targets for orbital lasers and nukes for starters- and it would make *holding* a metal planet a challenge in itself. Should the metal planet be able to destroy a whole planet in one shot- absolutely! I'd like the effect to be as over the top as possible, this is what PA is all about. I do however think that as with any 'super weapon' it should be difficult to do and be a real achievement to pull it off otherwise it'l feel 'cheap' if you follow me.

Predicts systems being created with planets named ALderan.

I really need to get this back on my computer.. (I formated my comp a couple weeks ago.. insanely aggresive maleware wtf pwned me hard)