one of the things I have always found RTS do poorly is give you enough feed back to improve your game play, while I get that much of the game relies on the meta game their should be some metrix that could be provided to the players. A decent example of this maybe average unused mass/energy or wasted mass/energy (anything beyond your storage)
Yeah definitely install PA stats...and one thing I have noticed is the community around PA is phenomenal! If you have a question everyone is willing to pitch in and help answer it, and I've had a lot of help since I started playing from friends and fellow PA users. So don't be afraid to ask for help or anything. I'm always up for 1v1 practice if you want any tips or help improving. The best way to learn more and to get better is to keep playing
Yeah ive played a lot of Starcraft 2. But in Planetary Annihilation. i find its really hard to find out what i do wrong, or even just what i can do to improve. I guess its because there is less structure. There isnt like tiers of progression and you branch out. in PA you do everything and you do it at once more or less lol.
This style of RTS is quite different to starcraft / warcraft (the RTS!) style game-play. Those focus on fast 'combos', I almost think it's like mortal combat but with an army (select type of unit A, activate ability X, cast on enemy unit B, then select you're unit B's and so on). TA / PA style game-play is about tactics, expansion and squad control: There is no fixed amount of units, pre defined base location or such like. In my experience there are usually a few good indicators of a 'good' player of this type of game: 1: Energy economy- having a good energy foundation was very important in TA and the same is true in PA. The amount of energy generation directly limits you're maximum build power in both games. It's important to have proportionately *more* energy than you need as it allows you to capitalise on a situation. A good example is in a FFA you defeat the player next to you leaving allot of wreckage, however you're much smaller than another opponent, if you have a strong energy economy behind you then it's possible to reclaim the wreckage field and pump all of that into production of either T2, or a large T1 army to give you a chance to attack your larger opponent. 2: Build efficiency and metal use: Ideally you should be running in a slight metal deficit, but as above with some surplus energy. You probably want your efficiency at about 80% to avoid stalling too badly, then when you get wreckage to reclaim you get an efficiency boost and you have plenty of storage to fill rather than wasting metal. 3: Expansion- in a close fight sometimes it's more important to raid and be aggressive, however wherever possible you should be expanding quickly. Newer players tend to sit in a small base, or expand a bit then start building walls. This isn't the way to win unfortunately- you're aim should always be to build extractors on every point on the map (and then find a way to use all the metal). 4: Raiding- another thing newer players don't do is raid. They tend to want to build up a huge death ball of units and attack in a large force however this isn't the best way to play. Constantly attacking your opponent with small groups of units is usually far more effective. Also using a mix of unit types is highly beneficial. If you attack early with a handful of bombers your opponent is going to waste time and resources producing AA turrets- allowing you time to get ahead. Similarly when you raid with small groups of light ground units (attacking from all directions), your opponent will tend to slow their expansion and build point defences. All of these things ensure you end up ahead both in economic and military terms. Essentially this game is about balancing the above- and when done well you'll find your the on controlling the direction of the game. If you spend the game reacting to what your opponent is doing then your probably going to loose.
I found from my days playing TA that the best way to learn was to watch and replicate the best players. You could spend on maths figuring out new and interesting ideas, or you could just build on the shoulders of what the best guys have already done for you. On TA I watched a 2v4 game on a moon map which blew my mind. The 2 players dominated early with map control that worked on fear. If the 4 players had understood what they were up against and worked together, then they would have won. The 2 player team knew much more about the game though, and so presented an image of themselves that seemed much larger than it was. I made my most fun games on TA because of the slow back and forth nature of it, something which PA retains. With SupCom2, I mainly got taught by a guy called Fejedelem, the greatest tactician I have ever seen. For a while he seemed impossible to beat, multiple 1v1s later and some tips on where I went wrong and I was well on my way to knowing how to play. In conclusion, I would advise that you play against the best people, anything less and you will pick up bad habits. I would suggest you analyse the game after you have lost and analyse what you could have done better. SupCom2 would often come down to unit control with 2 opposing players building exactly the same things in exactly the same order. I'm not sure how some of the guys, like Commander Z do it... for that you would probably need them to upload live action replays so can follow their process.
Easiest ways to learn PA: 1) Join a Clan. 2) Watch a good player on youtube or twitch. 3) Go in multiplayer and play as good as you can and when you get smacked watch the replay, copy them closely the next time you play. 4) Go in singleplayer or GW and practice on AI trying to kill their beginning economy (very first mex/pgens/factory/fabbers) and spread your economy over 1/3 the planet surface and create 100 units before your enemy has 2 factories up. Practice that until you can sufficiently threaten another player with same strategy.
