[Discuss] Total Annihilation's Spirit in Planetary Annihilation - Updated Page #6 05/08/14

[Edit 1: Added a bunch of stuff, tune in next time for cityscapes and crystal planets ^^]
[Edit 2: Page #6 for 05/08/14 update]
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Hello guys and gals.
First of all let me say I think Planetary Annihilation is a great game, and thank you Uber for getting much closer to the spirit of Total Annihilation whilst expanding it into space with all its planet-smashing, death-star zapping glory.

I've been in a nostalgic torpor lately because I went and picked up a digital copy of Total Annihilation.

This is going to be a lengthy post, with updates as people discuss and more ideas emerge from the cheesy baked goo of minds run on Annihilation.
However, wherever possible, there will be pictures. (Click on them for larger images )

Broadly these are ruminations on where Total Annihilation is awesome, and where Planetary Annihilation (which is still awesome!) could learn from it.S
Sometimes with clear examples of game-fixing mechanics.
Sometimes from things which involve us in the gameplay more
... And Sometimes from things which just look bloody brilliant.


Terrain & Environmental Effects:
The terrain heavily affects game-play and unit behaviours in TA.

• Hills can be small dunes or huge inclines. There are cliffs, slopes and ramps.
  
  • Terrain Height was the most immediately noticeable difference whilst playing.

• Trees are much bigger. Forests are spread out, and interact with combat.

• Movement speed is affected. Units on ice move slower.
  • This affects tactics and involves us in the environment. War on an ice-world is different from war on a desert-world.

• Line of sight and Range are affected by terrain. Sometimes I couldn't even see what had just been fired at, or what was firing at me.

• Thick forest is obstructive, even to Commanders. But don’t worry, you can torch it easily. [Edit 3: This is in PA now! ]

• My Commander took damage when he tried to walk through a Forest Fire (which I started for gigs, sorry Smoky).

• Shoreline wrecks – amphibious tank wrecks partway out of the water, scout boats don’t sink in shallow water.

• Wreckage flew all over the place - note the Wind Turbine's blade flying off! Much awesome such wow.

• Water buildings can’t be built in shallow water, and large buildings are underwater, not floating.

Economy:
The Terrain and Economy are heavily interdependent.

• Metal is scarcer.
  • This made reclaiming vital as a metal source.
  • Metal Spots allowed you to build around them as well as on them, to receive a negligible amount of metal production.
  • Metal Spots had varying amounts of metal to be claimed. This decided what was worth fighting over. This would be awesome to have in PA's procedural generation.
    • Metal spots on Metal Planets could be consistently rich.
      • A standard quality and geometrically placement would fit in with them being artificial.

• Reclaiming is more important due to Metal scarcity.
  • Wrecks drop about 75% of their original cost.

• • Rolling over wreckage tells you how much Metal it is worth.
  • Wrecks are more durable, taking more damage before degrading into lower forms of wreckage.
    • It takes a lot to completely destroy wrecks, making them obstructive in battle and creating a battlefield.

• Reclaiming comes in a lump at the end rather than a stream. Not something I’d like in PA at all but worth noting for how PA is better.

​

• Energy doesn't come from a box; there's Solar, Wind, Tidal, Hydrothermal.

• Nuclear Energy goes Nuclear and explodes
• The wind-speed of the world you are about to land on to tells you whether Wind or Solar will be more valuable.
• You scout for hydrothermal spots.

• You can reclaim Trees and weird Alien Plants for Energy.

• Your Solar-Power is constant, but fragile and vulnerable. If you get attacked, it stops, and bunkers down automatically. See the four Solar Plants in the bottom left? That one didn't tell his friends.

• Defences are expensive. Note the drain building a single tower puts on my economy.

Continued below...

No thanks. If I want to play TA, I'll play TA. It's time for bigger and better things.

Units:

• The Commander is you throughout the game.
  • He defends your base, but the D-Cannon is a dangerous tool due to friendly fire. It has a cool-down like the Uber-Cannon.

• The Commander is the ALPHA BUILDER, BRAH:

• Fabricators (Engineers) are adorable bundling dunces who can't be trusted to erect a tent without getting blown to smithereens.
  • They move slow.
    • (Slower than the Commander, who marches smoothly. In TA, the engineers move at the pace the Commander does in PA, while the Commander moves at the pace of a T1 Tank.)
  • They build slow.
  • They're (relatively) weak.
  • They're expensive.
    • Hence expanding is not easy. It's a constant struggle to get more resources, which again increases Reclaiming's role.
  • The Engineer hides his magic wand in his hat before Deploying it. This delays the activity of Engineers, making them more slow and vulnurable.

"Metal is scarce, and this Engineer is a very special boy, lads! Look after him."

• Units are tough! It takes a lot to blow something up in comparison to PA.
  • Therefore, Combat lasts longer - we have a force left halfway through a battle to retreat with.
    • We spend more time fighting, and less time tending to the base.
    • Units are not expendable.
  • A single Destroyer can stand the heat for a few seconds before dying.

• Ground Units move quickly across the map. It is possible to encroach on the enemy base without getting annihilated by Nukes/Artillery/Missile Launchers.

• Factories build quickly without Assisting.
  • Engineers being so expensive/inefficient means this wouldn't be sensible anyway.

• Units spread out rather than blobbing together (formations are a work in progress, but by comparison, TA units formations spread 2-3 times what they do in PA). Again - units aren't expendable or weak. Here is an army heading off:

• • It must be noted here that PA's path-finding and grid formations, as well as units moving at the same pace in groups are far superior to TA's.
    • I'm only picking out the 'spreading' of TA's units as interesting here because of the way it leads to hostile formations overlapping and making for more engaging combat (see below).

• Units miss.
  • Projectiles are much slower. You can pick out the individual bullets. Which is awesome!
  • Making it important to command your armies! You can make your enemy miss.
    
  • This, coupled with unit formations spreading out means fights get close and personal as hostile formations overlap in a chaotic brawl:

• Missile Launcher Bots!
  • Why are we considering changing the basic Dox into a Grenadier when we don't have Missile Launcher Bots? (I think the Dox should fire Energy Balls like the 'Peewee' which can miss their target.) Edit 2: PA has these now!
  • Missiles look way cooler than Artillery, and are a good balance - just out of range of that tower, but easily chased down:

• • They require direct line of sight. You can't shoot what you can't see.

• Units like Spiderbots are better suited to some terrains than others.

• Units prioritise attacks. They save hostile economy buildings for capturing.

• Units deploy automatically.
  • Some part folds out, or flaps up, before certain units can do their thing.
  • The Hammer (basically two giant cannons with legs), has flaps which pop up before it fires. This delays the effect of heavy-hitting units so that early-game cheap units have a chance. Hammers, bottom-right of the group, with their blue flaps up:

• • This could be a good balance for the Slammer Vs. Doxen and not having T2 be a straight upgrade from T1. Their arms could fold into their fat bodies to make them near-spherical. They could even be completely spherical, rolling and deploying like these guys: (No shields, of course!)

• • Electric Bots with deployable arms like Desert Eagle Commandos (Zeus’) also looked pretty cool!

• Buildings have Faction insignias on them. This might be useful in Planetary Annihilation, as without unit distinctions the individual ideologies of the Factions may be forgotten.

• Almost all units can shoot at Air. Most miss – I lost this level due to a bombing run.
  • Perhaps a useful mechanic, but units would need to prioritise targets so that even if they weren’t in range of an enemy land force, they wouldn’t all have their cannons pointed skywards and backwards if that enemy land force made a move.
  • [To be clear on this particularly touchy topic, this was added after my first major edit, so the Poll is not necessarily indicative of peoples’ views here. I just thought I’d mention this mechanic – I personally think it’s not necessary for your Cannon/Artillery Bot to shoot at a scout if it’s going to miss anyway. All in all, more effort than it’s worth for some units.]

There are some things, like Unit Veterancy and Metal Makers, which are not on this list because I'm biased and don't think they should be in PA.

This list is not prescriptive, nor is it suggesting every element from TA be cloned and implemented in PA. Some of the aesthetic elements might be feasibly brought out more in PA, and some of TA's mechanics might be used to solve some of PA's problems.

This list is designed to offer points of inspiration and development for Uber, and visually display what was awesome in TA whilst offering the community a say on what they like.

Hope you enjoyed the read folks. Be sure to check back, as this thread will continue to grow as I update it following discussions and more Total Annihilation.

Keep being awesome Uber

Yeah, like boring power generators, broken economy's and ignoring the promises of actually being a spiritual successor to a game whitest being very little like it!

... I don't even?
This is the kind of response which led me to question whether or not I should put a poll on this thread.
You clearly haven't read my post.

Planetary Annihilation is the Spiritual Successor to Total Annihilation. That was the whole point.
The Commander, the Factories, the UBER Cannon, the green Fabrication steams, the whole thing about Robots...
Why emulate a game so closely and then ignore many of its defining qualities?

It has done bigger and better things, however in some respects it falls short.
I have pointed to these in this thread, and I get the feeling if you'd actually read the constructive original post I made you'd probably see that I'm not simply saying that PA should be a clone of TA, but that it should expand upon and learn from the progresses it made. I did this on numerous occasions. I even suggested ways in which certain behaviours could help current imbalances in PA.

It's supposed to be the next step in the genre, not taking the first step all over again!
*puts kettle on*

You know the game isn't finished yet. This kind of features mostly need to change some stats and numbers.
They are exploring other directions for the game.

Some of these features aren't confirmed.
Some haven't been discussed.
Some may have been overlooked.

Total Annihilation was a well balanced game.
We should look at it for solutions to Planetary Annihilation's current issues.

My post was not an attack on UBER, as the opening should intimate.
This thread is for constructive feedback, nostalgia and gauging community interest.

I appreciate your meticulous thought and time put into compiling this list. I also think it's important to appreciate the existence of a list like this as a tool for inspiring further thought combined with fruitful action, rather than a fulcrum in which to spout judgement combined with fruitless inaction.

i think eroticburrito is one of the people who knows this best.

EDIT:

the one problem is the increase of scale of Supcom over TotalA and PA over Supcom. A lot of thing will be, well, "lost in translation".


That doesn't mean i don't agree with the spirit of the post. The two features i miss in PA are Fun and Soul. It plays good, it's just missing that slightly bit extra that makes you truly crave more.

It's important to hunt those two down and figure out why it's missing (for me).

I appreciate your grammar and syntax.
Also you're beautiful in every single way.

For me fun comes from longer combat and soul comes from interaction with terrain, as you bond with the 'boots on the ground'.
The chaos of all my tanks and bots rolling up the hill, past the enemy lines, formations shooting through each-other, trees burning, things exploding gloriously left right and centre ^^
Having a few seconds to witness destruction before you might need to retreat is fun.

I like all the parts. Units have more soul when they all do their own pre-fire thingy. Terrain in PA does indeed need some more height. Finally I'd love to see variable metal spots and more variable energy generation.

I feel obligated to point out that THIS IS NOT TOTAL ANNIHILATION!

I feel obligated to quote myself.

because THIS IS SPARTA!

That's nice and all but you have to remember Uber is making a new game, not remastering an old one. Copying TA isn't the right thing to do.

Neither is ignoring the things it did right and the things it did wrong, in a game claiming to be a spiritual successor.

Ignoring good game mechanics because you don't want them to be a copy is like ignoring previous scientific discovery's when trying to invent something new.

Don't go reinventing the wheel.

They've already copied TA. SupCom copied TA. PA has copied SupCom (unfortunately, in the case of Energy). That's what genre is.
In that quote I said I didn't want or expect a clone.
In my OP I praised and thanked UBER for expanding the genre.
Looking to TA for the mechanics which made it such an awesome game is the right thing to do.
PA is not a copy, it's a successor.

Too late

PA is more like building a car, then building a part of the car (Like the wheel).