Eurogamer "reviews" PA

This just means that the player is playing bad and could play better. And even then having more space is better to i.e. sustain nukes. You can never have enough fully sustainable bases(meaning they should have all infrastructure a main base has as well).
Once you have t2 energy it is reasonable to be able spent 1500 to 2000 metal a second. Yes I often waste resources at that level myself, but it is getting better and in reality if I reach 2k metal/s it usually means I already won anyway because I have 90% of the planet and my opponent has his base alone.
In doubt it is quite possible to put 3 to 4000 metal/s into spamming nukes out of multiple launchers with a row of factories next to it that spam engineers to support.
But really in a game between 2 players who understand the value of territory it is very hard to reach 1500 metal/s because people actually fight over territory. They have to or else they will end up with nothing but their starting area, which will be by far not enough to win.
The negative energy issue really is only a real problem during the t1 phase.

I feel currently we have a rather small number of people who seem to be crazy far ahead of the rest of the players and tbh I think the only reason this looks like this is because of this expansion issue. If you do not try to expand all over the plant you lose (yes that is a simplification, there are things like vanguard drops that can win even with less metal). But in general that's it.
The moment a player realizes it is good to randomly make bases (not just mex, also make t2 factories and t2 power and aa stuff) all around the planet his skill cap increases from "won't be good ever" to "can win vs anybody with a bit practice"

EDIT:
About the numerics: I don't care about them and I don't think they have anything to do with this issue.
About metal spot counts: The more the better. If you feel there is too much metal/s from them reduce the amount of metal per point. However I think I made clear I disagree with that. Metal spot counts are fine. Well they will be configurable soon, so we will be able to experiment.

so then how can you claim it is not respect worthy?
*sigh* whatever. Anyway, they reviewed PA. carry on.

Precisely, the scarcity or lack thereof is irrelevant. If I have more of the finite resource then I can build more things faster than you can.

I am not overconfident about this, but it is nice some recognition was given. They did appear to be understanding of the situation.

I wouldn't expect everyone to be as understanding. Doesn't matter as long as the release situation doesn't require empathy, the player can just buythedamngame and enjoy it as it is without any prior contact with it. At least that is the best case scenario, to leave as little for a newcomer to "misunderstand" as possible. Besides, you know, the difference between the game itself and familiar legacy RTS, that will cause enough misunderstanding (IE that refund thread that guy stated it was an entirely different beast than he is familiar with playing)

Score and review content don't necessarily match. It's not uncommon for a reviewer to be very gentle in the review (among other comments) and slap a 6-7 on the game as the score.

If the score at the end was a 6/10 would you still praise the review?

You still don't understand my point...
The resource most people struggle with managing is energy. You can have all the map control you want, however, you need to have a ridiculous amount of pgens to get in the positive. When people are low on energy (which is most of the game), they don't need to build mex. Its not a valuable or scarce resource in any sense.

There is no score in the review as eurogamer don't apply scores to their early access reviews, as they don't think it fair to judge an unfinished game. But yes, the review itself was generally positive.

Even if they would be wasting metal, the map control is still important for other reasons. you will have plenty of energy once you can start getting t2 energy up, so it is useful to just put down laser turrets all over and then follow up to claim the metal and build bases once you can afford to do it. If you have a big problem with balancing metal and energy, you're really just expanding your metal economy faster than your energy. I'm not saying it's easy; this is a mistake I make too. think of energy as a resource that limits the pace of your expansion but doesn't actually limit the need to expand.

You are misunderstanding my point and what I was commenting on.

Hm, fair play, sorry bout that. What was the point then?

You will both have noticed my war on the forums against such opinions.

It's because no one values time as a resource.

Webster, you have no idea. Fighting over resources involves asset denial. I agree that nukes are generally targeted at power, but in all of the top games expansions are destroyed. No they aren't always assimilated. But you've denied them to your opponent.

But that's the problem with the game mechanic I'm addressing. The fact that someone can rush t2 air with 6 base mex, but over 10 pgen is pretty telling that the balancing is really strange. All I would suggest is that 4-5 pgens would be enough to operate a couple t1 factories and the construction of a t2 factory, while you MUST expand to get metal. Basically, I want to stop people turtling, rushing t2 and actually make expanding more worthwhile - it's not like I'm saying expanding is useless, but it is typically overrated by people like Zaphod, who judges someone's chance to win just based on how many mex spots they have. It hurts the enjoyment of the game when the resource that is the most demanded is just line-built, rather than scavenged for, reclaimed, fought over etc. (Nothing personal against Zaphod)

Fair enough, spawns are annoying.

Honestly, I would put a lot more effort into improving myself if I enjoyed the metastrategies.

But I don't enjoy this turrets > t1 units, rush to t2, gameplay.

It's really emphasising how important APM is. And that's an area I'm generally quite poor in.

I do feel at least happy that I'm in the "can win vs anybody with enough practice" bracket.

It's just.. that's going to take a long time.

I really never see this happening, and I play a lot of games. Energy slows you down and limits the value you would get from just going crazy and taking full map control in just a few minutes. All of that extra metal would be wasted anyway, so you are better off making some more combat units while you expand than just claiming all the metal at once.

The actual problem is cheap turrets, which allow you to claim areas of the map before you have bothered to actually build extractors there. If turrets didn't negate t1 units, we would be seeing more early armies and less of a land grab. Obviously there is still balance to be done, but just making energy less important will result in people focusing even more on early eco and less on combat.

I think the opposite is true - the problem isn't necessarily cheap turrets (it's pretty nice to be able to plop them down to deny the enemy fabricators that area).

They also had their dps increased (to 90dps from 60dps) and the velocity speed was increased as well (500 from 250)

Plus SLDT gained splash.

I think cheap turrets are fine......... but static defences should be gaining you time to get mobile units there, and those mobile units should not be your army of fabbers.

LOL, we need a new update. Every thread in this forum now degenerates into an argument over T2 rushing. Anyway, reviews of PA = good?

I agree with the fact that energy is a damn annoying and appears to limit expansion. It does not at t2 once you realize you can build t2 pgens all over the place (assuming you have space for which you need expansions ^.^) , but before you are in the situation you do that you are indeed in trouble with those pesky t1 pgens. But even so it still is crazy important to expand while you rush t2. Once you are t2 the expansion you got during the short t1 phase suddenly matters a lot because with t2 pgens you can start using the metal. I disagree with 4-5 pgens to be enough for anything though. Make the pgens cheaper and let us have just as many or more. More stuff is always better.

EDIT:
As a balance experiment I really would love the following change:
t1 mex: 350 metal
t1 pgen: 150 metal

+ changes to t2 to adjust just like this.

websterx01 commented on how the positive attitude of the article is an indication of "good things to come." I commented on how "kind words" have been said by reviewers in other situations and they've still slammed it in the score, because the way they judge score and the way they judge their wording in the review are totally different beasts. And the score, sadly, will affect a lot more the image of the game. A 6/10 with pretty "positive" wording is still going to get interpreted as the game getting slammed.

Yes. Reviews of PA are good. PA is a solid game, it's still my preferred strategy game (it's more fast paced than Sins which is awesome, it's more modern than Rise of Nations/I've played that to death/it's science fictional and generally a good game.) And I definitely love it. Sessions that only last an hour are entirely satisfying too.
I like that it is a positive review.

For me. .. I am annoyed with video game reviews. I think that mostly they don't seem to be critical, just advertising.


For PA, I think this media attention is positive

Then how people should get to know about new titles and if they do worth their money? Feedback from users? Community forums? Just asking.