Defensive style player

Hi, I played the game for a while and I found it is too difficult for me. Actually, I like playing RTS but I am a bit different from most people that like RTS. I am a defensive style player, I always building towers and wall, and tends to attack after I have a very good defending army/facilities.

In fact, after trying this game for a while, I can tell this game is not matched with my style and I want to give it up. But suddenly, I found this game is still in development, I think it is good to suggest something so that the game can become suitable for people like me.

So, I suggest the game to cater for player that is less aggressive, I suggest to have some 'slider' in the game options that can affect the bonus against defensive and aggressive player, for example:
- hp bonus of towers/wall.
- bonus for repairing efficiency.
- adjustment of time needed to create unit/tower. (If one can create new unit or tower very quickly, it will tends to keep creating and attacking, because it is too easy to create new one after it die/destroyed)
- penalty/upkeep for armies (or large army)
- adjustment for how many mountains and gaps each planet will have.
And some functions that may improve the balance as well:
- builder unit new action: patrol for repair (seek for things to repair in the defined area)

A good defence is a means to an end, what's your offence?

If you patrol your fabbers or combat fabbers they will auto heal your stuff in that area. Combat fabbers are good to use in your situation. They have a very long repair range and auto heal stuff in range without having to send them on a patrol (I'm pretty sure they do, but not 100%)

one more suggestion:
- material (mine) is too scattered , maybe, one more slider to adjust the scatter/intensive ratio of material.

Planetary Annihilation is not a defensive game. Going extremely defensive simply doesn't work for one simple reason. If a player builds a hardened defensive line, we can just go around it. If a player builds a hardened defensive line around their entire base, they have no map control and will be overwhelmed and there's so much metal investment into things that don't move, even if we have the same amount of map control I can punch through one section of the defensive line and ignore the rest.

We used to have stats like that. Walls had a lot more health and defensive structures were cheaper and stronger.

What happened was no one built armies. A group of 5 fabricators could quickly build out some laser defense towers that could kill hundreds of units.

It was so bad that I would rather have 5 fabricators than 100 T1 units.

No. Very very much no no no. PA is build around the concept of massive armies. Anything that limits your ability to field large armies should not be in the game.

That's already in the game. They repair things during the default patrol command (in addition to assist construction), or you can use the repair command so they only repair.

I do not think that the default metal should be increased. There's even a lot of discussion in the community that there may be too much as it currently stands.

If you want more metal, than you can create custom maps and increase the metal quantities.

PA is one of those games where you need to change the way you think in order to play. In every RTS, playing defensively also means securing the resources you need to build your defenses. In many RTSes, you can find your resources in a relatively small area. You can play defensively in PA, but it is different. You *must* expand to control half of the planet, or leave for a moon, so you can control at the very least a similar amount of territory in order to get the resources you need. This is about planetary annihilation, and you should create an anthill so big that it envelops an entire hemisphere. Don't be content with defending a modest base, turn your moon into an unassailable death star. This is planetary annihilation, think big.

Try a few different things. Try building a ring around the planet first (not a straight ring, you should still be conscious of mex, and defend that. Then have your fabricators build the mex on the safe side. To do this, you might consider starting with an air factory to scout out the AI from the get go so you know which side to defend and start building things on the opposite side of the planet immediately.

Also try rushing orbital. Get some energy and mex together after your first factory (ideally not an air factory), and send your first orbital fabricator to put a teleporter on the moon so you can start covering that in mex and defensive structures. Make sure to move your commander to to the moon. Your second orbital fabricator can build you some anchors which you can use to turtle and creep against the AI on the main planet. You don't want to forget avengers, but that won't be needed until a bit later on (a deepspace radar will tell you when that becomes important). Make sure to build at least one factory fully devoted to swarming the moon in air units (mostly bombers, but in a human match you'd want AA as well). You can expect to have to defend your moon around 8 minutes in, but that will be from 3 units at most, so your bomber swarm will have no problem as long as you can detect the AI's moon landing.

Also, you'll need to figure out how to turn your telepoter off, otherwise it will drain your energy pool and obstruct your economy. I'm not sure how to do that myself short of self destructing one of the two teleporters.

I think you may find defensive success in one of these two strategies. Give it a try and tell us/me if that is works for you!

^^^ Seconded. If you want to turtle in PA, the best thing to do is get a small moon and cover it in Avengers and Umbrellas. A small moon covered in T2 mex has a pretty significant economic income.

But if you're hoping to claim 10% of the available resources and win, it's just not going to happen. Remember that nobody can be everywhere at once, so you can quite happily send out 5 pairs of fabbers in different directions to make undefended mexes, and most of them will remain unmolested.

Hit K with the teleporters selected. Or, you could look for the Energy icon in the Ui, bottom of the right portion.

If you put a combat fabber around your tower/walls, you stand a pretty good defense.

The real problem, is that any ranged unit, like shellers, are too strong even to pelters, and render towers wasted metal. No solution to that one, aside from defensive gil-e.

I sympathize with the OP. A simple fix is more adjusters, that way everyone is happy. Speed, unit caps, etc. The simple fact is that there are no RTS games out there with the genius of Command & Conquer. Yes you could play defensively and everything worked just fine. This game is entirely geared to grind units fast, rush, repeat in as little time as possible. Surely the developers who've made such an ambitiously awesome game like this have the ability to go beyond ADHD play. Those who say this game is not about playing defensive at the start of battles are those who love the way things are because they are that type of player. To each his own. All we solo players ask is a few simple adjusters to play with in game settings. Not like ypu'd hav to change what's already done. Just give us a few more things to adjust in settings.

probably Nuke, or, if PA had one, a EXP unit

Lobbing nukes is good at opening a door, but unless you get lucky and have good scouting, they are just as likely to be shot down by anti-nuke defences.

And experimental work in much a similar way, a weapon of surprise, either by snaking up to an opponent who didn't scout the construction site, or by covering the unit's approach by some crafty radar snipes/ accompanying stealth systems.

Both are easily countered by even minimal scouting, so if that's the only offence you are bringing, don't expect to actually win any games.

Defensive strategy's work early on to protect your eco from raining and rushes, but only really extends on in a way to protect against outright assaults, or by providing fire support for forces in the field.


A good defensive strategy needs to be baked up by a mobile army in-order to provide a rapid counter attack against an enemy attack, hit back after enemy forces have expended themselves on your favourable and fortified ground, hitting them with a force before they can rebuild theirs.

And with fabbers, setting up bases in the field can even compliment a more aggressive strategy, giving you an advantage by drawing possibly superior enemy troops into your army supported by turrets and artillery.

Giving you the edge, as well as moving the front line away from your resources and production.


Fabbers provide that edge which static defences don't have, movement, so a utilisation of engineers behind your army to provide repairs, radar, artillery, walls and turrets and even factory's can really prevent an opponent from pushing you back if your forces die, suddenly the open ground between your bases becomes a literal mine field of turrets radar, production and even mines from combat fabbers.


Engineers are your key here as a defensive player, giving movement to your turrets.

Mobile forces to kill the siege, fabbers to build radar and defences.

Don't sit in your base and expect to win, pick up your base and use it to crush theirs.

Well I like to play very agressive, and kill the enemy as fast as possible...
but if consider shields, you can turtle until get an EXP...
I saw this on a FAF match, but the agressive player feed his enemy, instead of teching and making a good army, he keep thorwing mass as T-1 unit... even if the turtler didn't get the mass, the agressive player lose a lot of mass.

For me the best way to make a defense is:
-make the base on a place w/ lots of choke points, and next to natural cover(mountains)
- then get air to "harass" enemy units
- pick some long range weapons and put then next to choke points
- and a bit of land units to destroy every unit that is out of Towers range(like artys)
- put some mines on less/main points
and things like AA everywhere

Unless you're 'turtling' on at least 50% of the metal spots or more, your defeat is almost guaranteed provided your opponent isn't totally noobing it. using a turtle strategy, you automatically are sacrificing a huge amount of map control and resources to your opponent.

You can try and 'rush' endgame stuff as much as you like, but the other player is straight up gonna have more economy than you. Whatever you can afford to build one of, he can afford to build 3 or 4 of.

Turtling is a fundamentally flawed strategy, and not just in PA.

Well said! Defending can still be fun and very useful, but only if you do it strategically. If you are losing on one planet you can go expand on another while defending what is left of your original base, for example.

Play FFA, towers are very useful in FFA.

I've had a lot of fun in FFA games where I've realised I've lost all of my expansions so am essentially screwed but then build T2 Vanguards and fought off the enemy's constant T1 advance then shortly after killed their commander.

I like FFA because you get rewarded for both attack and defence.

What? If anything, FFA is even more punishing for a turtling player. The competition for map control and ressources is much more fierce than in team games. And since attacks can come at any time from any direction (and even from multiple enemies at once), a highly mobile defense (read: an army ready to intercept) is paramount.

I'm actually glad every time I see a turtling player in an FFA game - one less enemy to take seriously, to be rounded up once I'm finished with the "real" threats.

Maybe we play different types of FFA. I like to play close quarters with lots of players, and in that case building a point defence next to a mex expansion, and then solidifying that defence over time is a valid tactic. Being overly offensive is a bad idea because it will get you into conflicts, being overly defensive can get you too but if you manage to rush T2 before you get killed then you are in a great position for clearing out your neighbours.

Lets play.

Apparently we do play different FFAs .

I rarely encounter games with enemies passive enough to actually build some impressive defensive position. And even if I could - why bind my resources at a certain position when I could just as well build some (mobile) units? A laser tower is easily avoided and is completely useless if the enemy decides to attack elsewhere. It can't harass, it can't defend beyond its range, and it requires attention from a fabber to construct and maintain.

The only defensive buildings I consider useful are AA towers, catapults and nukes. T2 units will simply roll over most static defenses except for the latter two (if used correctly).

Yeah, but good luck with that T2 rush if an aggressive neighbour is raiding what little eco you have and is going for an early attack. Even the infamous 2:45 T2 rush won't help you against a small vehicle army attacking you at that point, and whoever took you out can easily recoup his losses by claiming your portion of the map and mexes.

But I agree: Let's play . I play a lot of FFAs when I'm online, so maybe we'll meet on the battlefield!

I'm also a big fan of defence-style playing - but I must consider that it works only in the first part of the game (I'm talking about 1-3 planet FFAs with 6+ players)

Walls, AA and towers are effective against T1-rush and let you build your economy without involving your army into neighbour conflicts. Because neighbours prefer to fight each other rather to crush the deffensive line with unexpected result.

But with T2 units the static deffense is useless.
Walls - what's is a wall against a Vanguard... pfff...
AA-towers - have a little damage area and are useless against T2 Missile-Aircrafts.
Laser Towers - are only effective against bots...
Catapult is good - but you need a enormous battery - and Shellers are very effective against them.

I believe we need an "Advanced wall" =)