The last ~10 many-player FFAs I've played have been really disappointing and I couldn't find any posts about the mechanic I disliked the most, so here we are. It seems like orbital expansion is very much a race to establish air presence on each planet via t1 bombers or gunships. If you can do so, you've successfully reserved a planet. Nukes don't help (and are many times not even possible), nor does establishing an orbital presence on the planet. What do people do about this? The only thing I can think of is to establish orbital control and mass-repair a teleporter, but that seems cost prohibitive (if your opponent is good, he'll take the time and metal advantage and use it to kill you). It's not that big of a deal in 1v1 play (winning race scenarios in 1v1 is just part of winning), but it makes larger FFAs competitively uninteresting. If a good player gets left alone, they'll get the jump on all other players in a way that practically guarantees a win or a draw. When I win this way, it's not satisfying. When I lose this way, it feels like a waste of time rather than a learning experience. Is there some strategy I'm missing? Or is this just a place where we're waiting for more balance? Should I just go back to my 1v1 hole?
A simple solution is to call a truce with all the guys on your planet and try kill the guy that left before he kills all of you 30 minutes later. You should always play FFA's by trying to not step on anyone's feet when possible. The guy that left prob stayed quiet and ran. Well played to him, now it's your move to make people realise this threat and what he has done. If you don't you guys killing each other deserve to lose. The best way I know of is to build up an invasion force as soon as you realise they have left. Build an orbital fabber and make a teleporter. He won't be able to control whole planet so quick. Or talk the other guys into nuking him.
i've won more games by fleeing the second the game starts. then i just find the nearest (and perhaps smallest) non-nuke-able body..... and watch... and wait... and build..... and scheme.... then when they least expect it.... 0:00 - "oh hi everybody! guess who's not dead!?" 0:05 - Anchors out of nowhere on the main planet. about 30 of them 0:20 - outlying moons suddenly swarming with booms and doxen, eventually tanks and air. 0:45 - **** just randomly blowing up blue. orbital lazers up yo ***! 0:55 - one guy just up and died. AND IS THAT A MOON I SEE HURTLING TOWARDS U- Anihilation Complete. Winner: Spynal Toad (my chosen in-game persona) moral of the story: never ignore the one you don't see. he will get you.... SOON.
Yes, ignoring a good player completely in an FFA is just another way of letting them win. That's true even on a single sufficiently large planet. I had intended for the thread to be about how disproportionately easy it is to remain safe after being ignored in a multi-planet game compared to a single-planet game because of the air vs. orbital thing. The air thing makes it purely about 'who got there first' and eliminates other factors like eco or space dominance. Is there anything you can do to invade a planet swarming with bombers, short of crashing another planet in to it? This is good advice, thanks. Unfortunately (for me) that doesn't sound like fun, so I'm just going to go back to my hole and play games where there are never more than two teams, often consisting of one player each
Right now if you control the air, you control the entire map and win the game. Peregrines are so stinkin good. Ground based anti-air has taken some major strides forward. And that's awesome. But air needs some balance. Uber has also tossed around the idea of adding a new missile satellite that shoots down aircraft.
Air is certainly over powered in its current incarnation. Some thoughts I had on the matter (very different then current game play and would require work). A single anti-land aircraft has the capacity to destroy an infinite number of tanks until a AA unit comes around. This advantage in the game is MASSIVE. And as of yet hasn't been fully balanced out. In the real world air is very powerful as well (look at air craft carries), but Air also has limitations. Each plane in the sky requires a crew on the ground to arm it, launch it, recover it, and then rearm it. In PA their is no such limitation, once Airborne aircraft can do their thing infinitely so one of the major disadvantages of Aircraft is completely avoided in PA. What PA currently uses are less of Aircraft and more of Killer Drones. Many people have comment about how close to the ground Aircraft in PA fly and this reinforces this idea of killer drones even more. Which is why I do wonder if perhaps everything should be able to fire back at these killer drones. Even with everything being able to fire back at them, they would still have large advantages over ground targets. The Slow projectile speed of ground targets would make hitting these killer drones difficult. These Drones still have vastly superior speed and maneuverability compared to their ground counter parts. From their we could add in "True" Aircraft. These would be a T2 Construction and couldn't be targeted by ground units (but could be targeted by the Drones). These Aircraft would require a large structure to operate from. The idea of a large B-52 carpet bombing comes to mind. This aircraft would be given orders to bomb from point A, to point B using the Patrol Command. The Aircraft would bomb that line until it used up its bomb counters. At which point it would return to it large base construction for recharging. At which point it could then be given a new bombing run command. Spaming them would be difficult as you need a home structure per Aircraft. Just a pope dream, I realize their would be lots of issues with changing current things. But figured I'd throw the idea out their.
