Competitive player

I wouldn't call it much of a "build order" if it's high level enough that you can adapt to just about anything and soft enough that it allows you to go for just about anything.

When most people hear "build order", what they understand is "build this building at X seconds, this building at Y seconds, then produce Z of this unit and time it so that A research is done at the exact second your troops are at the enemy base".

That's the kind of build order that I really hope won't be in the game. It makes perfect sense that there's a build order that says "build 2 energy generators and then a metal generator and a factory", but ideally even that requires the decisions of "but where do I put them?"

The problem I have with starcraft is exactly that it "features openings optimized to perfection, that is often played in a nearly automated, "machine-like" way"

I want to play, not just manually run a bot-script. If the game can be played by a bot, I'll let a bot play it and set an egg-timer for when it's time to make actual decisions. And that decision making is what I'm hoping PA will offer (and I'm pretty sure it will).

I'm not as sure as you are... yet.

Exactly that.

But I doubt Planetary Annihilation will have such a thing, to be honest, so all should be fine and dandy.

Not all of us have seen the light. Though. My light would run through a cloudy, rainy day if they said that 1 planet, 1-3 moons, and an asteroid belt is going to be the final form of all battles. But right now, if there are 4-9 planets and 1-3 moons for each and at least one asteroid belt, I'm pretty certain that this is a problem solved by the scale of the game.

Fun to read the arguments though. I feel like I'm learning the meta game of the meta games of RTS games vicariously. And just about last night, I found the light at the end of the tunnel that is PA. XD If it isn't that perfect, I'll still be happy.

Unless there is a secondary limiting factor on what you can build and when (beyond time spent teching to T2) then build orders still exist, regardless. There are just more build orders.

Not if Eco is no longer the end-all be-all of strategy
My fingers are quietly crossed.

Why wouldn't it be? I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that everything you build isn't reliant on just having enough Energy and Mass to build it.

Like I said. My fingers are quietly crossed.

one way to decrease the advantage from BOs definitely is not to have an exponential growth in resource gathering, so a good BO cannot give you such a huge advantage later in the game. But it doesn't "solve" the problem.

A game with a higher size actually rather requires more builds, because there are more resources to gather and there usually are few "perfect" ways to do so. Discovering that perfect way on the fly is practically impossible to the human mind, so it needs to be discovered in many games and memorized afterwards. The only way to get rid of this are random maps. They change it towards memorizing certain rules ("build 2 mex then 1 fac then 1 pgen, etc.) that are known to always work, no matter what the maplayout is. But even then a player who knows basic stuff like this by heart and plays it like a bot will have an advantage. In fact it will be a gigantic advantage, because that player will have far more time to think about all the other aspects of the game.

Oh and it is wrong that in FA generally BOs only went on for 3min. Back in the days of me active laddering my builds were more like 5 to 10 minutes long. I was halfway successful with it, so it definitely was not totally wrong how I did it. Ofc many of those builds forked at some points to deal with different types of opponents.

About the "players that play like machine in SC2"-thing: That a natural outcome of extreme competition. No RTS is save from it. A player who knows all meta-game stuff perfectly by heart without thinking about it (and therefore plays like a machine) is better than a player who has to think all the time about every little step taken. In SC2 it actually leads to better gameplay when people know their BO by heart and just play it automatically, because it gives them time to actually think about the greater picture of the game.

@apocatequil:
nanolathe already said it: a noob should not be able to beat a veteran, because it would defeat the whole point of competition. Why should I practice for 1000 games if a noob can still easily beat me afterwards?

That conversation went on a little further.
And that was not my intent.
I have problems with the rest of your post, but -shrugs- you defeated them yourself.
Non-exponential resources and random maps starts to boil down build orders to the point of being as simple as: "Oh, I need three factories, two pgens and three mexes in the beginning" That sort of thing has so little advantage because it COULD be done entirely by accident, or made with a minimal amount of forethought.

EDIT: Also, if a noob can learn it after two games, then I don't give a damn about it either, because it's obviously simple and straightforward and doesn't even matter.

You have some very odd ideas on how Resources work in Planetary Annihilation apocatequil.

Money (Metal & Energy). Units. Time. That's what you've got to work with.

The best way to increase the two three, while reducing the last?
Build Orders are the answer to that question. If you don't want Build Orders you have to change the question.
I've seen no evidence that Uber has changed that question... yet.

I might have gone insane. But I think they have simply added a variable:
Positioning.

Once again, I may have gone insane.

That's not a resource. That is, as you've said, a variable.

A variable will favour a specific Build Order, not remove it, and be extension, them altogether.

Like apocatequil has also said, I hope the secondary limiting factor is "where". If where makes a difference, and the map is random, there won't be many solid build orders, because you won't be able to predict where the player is playing and how that will affect what he can do.

Once you have more than a dozen possible build orders, you might as well have no build orders, because you won't be able to remember and practice all of them anyway. I'm hoping the difference that "where" makes it big enough that it'll push the number of builds over a dozen.

Actually the opposite is true. Without a solid knowledge of where you are and where your enemy is you'll (as a competitive player) gravitate towards the "Safest" Build Order.

Decreasing map homogenisation increases Build Order homogenisation. (for the competitive)

What kind of level of detail would you think a "safest build order" would have? Instructions on what structures to build in which order, in roughly which location, and a focus on roughly what units?

If you can get that level of build order detail and have it work in any possible location, I'd say there's something wrong with the game. You should at least have a "safe build order" for any of the dozen starting locations that all differ widely from one another.

So. Do you prioritize getting off the planet? Or stopping your enemy from getting off the planet? How? Orbitals? Eco assault? Rush to lift off?

What happens if your opponent manages to set up an eco base on another planet in the first 5 minutes of the game? Was it safer to start building to keep them on the planet? Or are you now stuck fighting an effectively limitless army?

How do you get him off that planet? Asteroids? Interplanetary strike teams? What if he's set up an orbital network to keep you pinned on this planet?

Okay, so getting off the planet is safer. How do you protect your economy? How do you have any guarantee that he's not sending a kill-squad after you? Or hunkering down, and preparing to bombard you with asteroids?

Have you even started to think about what the planets you find are going to turn out to be? Barren moons? Waterlogged endless oceans? Lava pits and streams? A Gas Giant?

Oh, wait got the safest build order, Orbital defense and scouting as soon as possible. Won't matter a whole lot if they have half a dozen anti-orbitals already waiting for you... Will matter even less if they had an eco-optimizing plan in store and are rushing you with an army while you started scouting.

Have you even thought about the planet you are starting on yet?
Or, is that all you guys have been thinking about?

Variables. There are build orders to satisfy all those conditions.

What is the fastest way off the planet?
- T2 Gantry.

What is the fastest way to build a T2 Gantry? (without diminishing returns)
- A positive income of +50 Metal and +300 Energy.

What do I need for a positive income of +50 Metal and +300 Energy?
- 20 Metal Extractors (or eqiv) and 15 Energy Gens (or eqiv)

What is the fastest way to get 20 Metal Extractors and 15 Energy Gens?
- A Build Order.

Does the Planet alter this build order?
- Hardly.

---

Planet types alter timing based on abundance of resources.
They do not alter the inherent logical steps that make up a build order based on supply and demand of resources.

Would you say that the activities of your opponent alter the build order? And that they would do so significantly?

this.

a successful game should be approachable, easy to learn and difficult to master. that difficulty shouldn't be a result of tedium though. it's likely that isn't lost on anyone here but a reminder seems appropriate x)

indeed, if it's only a matter of adjusting whats in a factory loop it might not be entirely significant. however if your opponent can actively divide your attention, force a build up or entrenchment then gameplay becomes much more dynamic.