The explosion animation is terrible! Charging - great! Firing - great! Hitting - great! Explosion - not so much... Make it something like this: (without these flying rocks at the end) Or this: Unfortunately I was not able to find exactly what I have in mind
The second one is meh.. the first one is pretty awesome though. I feel like this is far from the biggest issue of the annilaser though. Balance is pretty up there if you ask me.
Honestly, the annihilasor feels right in my mind, it's the final endgame solution that prevents interplanetary stalemates. As it stands, while a lot won't agree with it, I believe it's current iteration is almost perfect. It keeps people from being able to turtle indefinitely on a planet since the only counter to the annihilasor would be to prevent the catalysts from being constructed. It also encourages being aggressive for the planet, so those who like to just sit back and watch an enemy force be obliterated by a impenetrable orbital defense, will pay the price.
Hi @mabn, I don't think it's fair to call the planet explosion terrible. Like you said you really like the charging and firing components of the animation but aren't happy with the actual explosion. I think the explosion at the end suits the artistic direction of the game. It's very stylised however there's always room for improvement as things go on. Rather then re-doing it how would you suggest they improve it? Keeping in mind that it would probably be easier to add to instead of change completely. Cheers, -Todd