So.. I've tried out Planetary a couple of times on and off during development, and every time (which is still the case, and this applies to both me and a friend) I barely get started building a couple of seemingly random things (because I don't know what does what), only to proceed to get COMPLETELY destroyed by the AI. Even if I feel like I spam.. "drones" or whatever, within 30 minutes the AI has an army of 3000 freakin' gunships of doom. So. Will there ever be a way to.. you know, learn how to play? Or set the difficulty? Or just, not play against anyone, exploratory? How about not having enemies on the starting planet at all, let me try stuff out and when I leave, bam. Battle. Or will this just forever be a strictly elitist title for hardcore StarCraft players who're bored?
Try PvP for learning the stuff. Not 1vs1, but shared army team matches. That's the best way to see how the game works as your teammates do whatever they know. Or playing against the AI on a SINGLE planet, lowest difficulty AND eco malus for the AI (e.g. set it to 0.5 or so).
A few helpful tips: Don't over build eco in the first minute of the game. Your com starts with enough to get out 1 or 2 factories and an early assault/scouting group. Find the enemy base early using said group to see where they are and where they are expanding. Killing off just a single expanding fabber at this stage can really throw the AI into a whirlwind Remember to be constantly expanding your production. Don't go T2 until you have at least 5-6 factories and a good sized army. Set production cues and forget them. Send out 2-3 fabbers early on to be getting metal and energy and then focus on raiding and production. If they get killed send out 2-3 more Make sure not to build too many fabbers. Early game more than 3 is going to totally tank your eco. Let your com do the majority of the building until you are sitting on a solid economy A strategic bomber or two tanking out enemy fabs can be devastating. Likewise, a well placed AA unit can prevent similar devastation Hold off on orbital and T2 until you are looking at a good sized T1 army and eco surplus Use camera short cuts. First thing in the game set shift + 1 to an overview of your main base. When you find the enemy set shift+2 to their base. Use alt + number to regularly keep an overview of both. If your opponent is expanding or teching up and you don't know it, your dead Above all, dont try to play sim city and deathball up at 20 minutes in. If you are even 10 minutes in and haven't made any aggressive moves, chances are you'velost Hope this helps.
While I do appreciate the help and input (rather than just being called noob) I still think it's borderline broken game-design if you can't pick it up and play as a newbie. Although I would not by any means consider myself a veteran strategy-game player, I do play my fair share of games in general, but I just didn't get this. I don't know what T1 or T2 is and I have no clue what "eco malus" means... But if you, as you say, can't go 10 minutes without making an offensive play I say that's pretty broken. I dunno, it STILL feels very beta to me, and all I wanted to do was fly around in space and smash planets. I guess I'll have to look for some difficulty-thing and give it another go. It just feels weird to go for PvP as a learning-thing, but maybe I could team up with a friend and just not... attack
if you are struggling then you can adjust the amount of economy the AI gets at the system setup screen. Try setting theirs to 0.5 and yours at 1.0 and you should be able to get a better feel for the game
Set ai to the lowest difficulty and set their economy multiplier to 0.5 or so, that means they have half the resources, and half the production. You can set to anything between 0 and 5. This game is also very far from Starcraft as with that you must micromanage your units like crazy, micro is a very small issue if even in PA. PA is all about being big, never stop expanding, never stop building factories, never stop building pgens, never stop building units. The game really isn't difficult to get into, and there are means of making it simpler.
You can handycap AI income and buff yours to 500% and 1% respectively, just to teh right of the player entry. That should give you time The main unit type agaisnt AI is vehicles. Especially Flame tanks are currently good at killing AI commanders and bases, and vehciles include a decent bot counter (bolo) and anti air (spinner) so you are covered against non-players who cannot properly abuse the weaknesses of both units types. One thing is that the AI just loves to raid, especially via air and bot's. Make 1-3 air factories on loop build (I choose 2:1 ration of Interceptors to bombers) and give the factories a "area patrol" order. That really cuts down on the raids on your Mex spots and let's you focus on being agressive. I often pick about half the planet as "mine", but I pick smaller sizes if tha means the base is closer to the center and I don't end up flying right into thier base (commander AA hurts agaisnt lone enemies). Vehicles are strong HP, ideal for main combat. Bots are low HP, raiding units. They can be 1-2 shotted by most units. Naval is quite strong and long ranged, but limited to water. Air is anti-air, anti-raid, raiding and scouting. You need a proper amount of power and Metal Extractors (Mex) to fuel your facotires and builders. Especially the fabircators eat lot's of power while in use, with one needing 2 T1 power generators to fully cover. After you figured out the trick you can kill most AI spawning near you in under 10 minutes.
http://pamatches.com/tutorials/ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVnRvGV9VmE3yJRhM4nuvzkXJDb82gwN8
It is about as borderline broken game design, as a lot of mobas are. I mean, your teammates have apparently no clue what a video game even is, they just give up tons of free points to the enemy team, the fat tubby enemy team throws all that extra weight against you, and it leaves you wondering what you did wrong, when in actuality it just isn't a newbie friendly game. Veterans who figured that out have been farming for an eternity from it. This game isn't new player friendly. You CAN play "unopposed" by setting the number next to the player/AI down to 0 it gives 0 economy meaning the enemy can build nothing. You can even play really lax casually if you set the number to .4. Point four is 40% normal economy, an enemy with that will barely get a C&C sized base up in the first 10 minutes. No real threat there. Play 10 matches against a 0.0-0.4 eco AI, you may learn a "build order", what factories followed by economy and additional builders and army units to build to get started fast each game. Bring it up to .6-.8 eco, maybe 1-3 enemy AI, if playing with a friend 4-5 enemy ai even. At .6 eco you will at least have a lot of enemies to kill. At .8 they may even get t2 or orbital coverage. You might enjoy this game at that point, i'd hope. A lot of players who got basics down and are fast and enjoy early army assault, say the 1.0 eco AI is actually easy. That is because they are already fighting them 2 minutes in the game though, and an AI suffocated in 2 minutes will have no base while you built the planet within 10 minutes.
I wrote a short guide on how I start my GW matches over here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/0/616187839202699357/
I mean, the OP has a point though. It's easy enough for those of us that have been used to watching at least a match a day over at PA matches, and haven't ever expected an in game tutorial while the game was in development, but the game is 1.0 now! A new player shouldn't have to jump over to a forum to obtain a (admittedly well done!) bulleted list of things they should be doing to get started. For every forum post, there are likely to be dozens of potential word-of-mouth advertisers out there without the drive to go to such lengths to obtain such foundational information on gameplay.
