Cause of the lackluster impression

Even the original CNC has this.

I am not saying it didn't exist, i'm saying I never saw it, and I like it. Age of empires and age of mythology did not have it, starcraft and DOW didn't have it, none of the RTS games I really played had something like that, or something on the scale of PA, which is what drew me to it.

Pretty sure CNC didn't have this. Units would just appear once complete (with maybe a door opening animation for vehicles, but you still don't see them being built).

Previous games that I'm aware of that did this were Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, which happen to also share the sub-genre that PA is in (and the former is what this game is based on)

Considering the age of that game, it's close enough.

Even now it's pretty rare though. Most games simply use animations etc. to hide the sudden creation of units, not many games show the units as they are constructed (mostly I think because it needs a somewhat accurate scale between structures and units, which is rarely the case especially in games involving "human" units).

Weither gameplay is influenced by grafic or animation design or not doesnt matter to me
bioshock infinite got praise for a greatlooking and seeminly alive world and very good story but its shooting which was actualy what was the genre about was almost so bad that it even impeded the storyprogression to the conclusion that it should have better been an third person adventure game ...
if you like something like that then by all means ... if animations as stuff feeling alive are your thing go play the sims or open world stuff like gta .. in an rts like planetary annihilation you are to busy controlling hundreds of units managing a multiplanetspawnning economy and armyproduction ... you dont have the time to watch on grafics and animations
That said effectwise aswell as animationwise there is a lot going on though the animationquality may not be like in dawn of war with its marines and humanoid troops but simply by the ammount of units that are fighting on the battlefield shooting at each other
Watching and listening to the fireworks when propper chaos unfolds
throw in the ammount of animmations of dow with the ammount of units pa wants to support on its planets ... are you even aware of the calculationpower that requiers that?
you probably dont even care ...

... and that said ... THIS GAME IS NOT FINISHED... effect and animation quality will change as most of the stuff is still first pass ... and no im not gonna stop saying that ...
why? Because you dont stop bragging about it though you know it ... if you dont then well you cant be helped ...
in that case i realy have to wonder why you are even here ... you havent spoken even one word weither you like the current gameplay or not ... weither you like playing with big armies around if you like the orbital units idea (not starwars like spacecraft) weither you like beeing able to capture asteroids refitting them either to planetkilllernukes or invasionunitcarriers
You didnt spoke of the potential this game even has ... and that does matter far more then some puny single bot animation which just is one amongs possible thousands of bots...

Do you know where animationquality matters? smallscale games like fightinggames like killer instinct or soulcalibur ... or in tps moba's such as (yes this one) super mondaynight combat
or specticalgames like dmc or god of war .... even though you are busy slaying millions of mobs but i let that pass ....
do you know were it almost doest matter at all? Yepp grand strategy like civilisation or europa universalis ... and guess what people like to play such games aswell ....

The most important thing in every game is to be able to read, react to and control what is going on, no matter if fighting fps rts citybuilder or statistical -game

If your overall grafic and animation design hampers with that it then doest matter how good it looks it is bad for gameplayquality

IMHO there should be emphasis on gameplay. I do like to be able to zoom in at times to see nice cool details and animations. As long as the game is as open as it is planned, there should be no end to the cool, fun things we will be able to do in PA.

Oh man, are you Nifty from the GasPowered forums?