[Discuss] Total Annihilation's Spirit in Planetary Annihilation - Updated Page #6 05/08/14

Plink, the game has got a AI you know? And it will be having a Galactic War mode that also can be played with only the AI, so to say that PA is a multi-player only game is false.

And frankly if the game has to destroy it's single player experience in order to become a professional tournament based RTS, then I for one will drop it like its hot.

The game is supposed to support a competitive player, not cater only to the competitive side of the community in actual spite of us SP or CompStomper guys.

That would be horrific to lose a portion of the community, not to mention a stupid idea from a business stand point if they actually do want to have a competitive game.

Imagine if SC2 had no campaign, no custom maps and no skirmish, there wouldn't really be much of a community for the game at all, not to mention few new people to draw into the ladders.


SP RTS games are what gave birth to the genre, and while not everyone likes playing SP or against the AI, a significant portion of the community does, and an even greater number of people are extremely excited to see what PA's AI has in store for us, as well as the galactic war mode.

Without the casual base to a game, there is no shallow end of the pool to start in, meaning you either learn to swim, or drown.
And drowning on your first experience of a game is frustrating, particularly in games that don't even filter the skill sets of players, putting pros with first timers.

It has destroyed peoples experiences in the past, and frankly if you care about making PA a good community for all skill sets at all, is something you should be concerned about as well.

You might not like or even care about SP games, campaign missions, scenarios, AI and galactic war, but a whole lot of us do, and we do so without badmouthing your side of the game.

So no, PA ABSOLUTELY should not be Multi Player only.

I definitely don't want to see all of them.

But I definitely like a lot of those ideas. Some of them I'm not so sure about.

I like the ideas of more terrain variety and improvements. I like the idea of terrain effecting line of sight, Uber has commented on that and said they like the idea – but the development involved means it's a later addition thing.

I love the idea of improved wreckage - particularly when it comes to naval.

I love the idea of better economies and scarcer metal. Map control should be what's important to your economy, not your tech level. Not sure how I feel about tying energy to terrain locations... but I'm open to it.

I think the upcoming improvements to the Uber cannon will improve it. It probably does need a slight AOE reduction. The Commander is supposed to be a liability.

I do like the idea of fabbers being more vulnerable. I think that increasing the costs of defensive structures will be a huge help in making them more vulnerable. Right now I'd rather have 10 fabbers spamming out defensive structures than have 100 ants. And that's messed up.

I don't know how I feel about units having more health. I'm concerned about those changes making micro a lot more important – which I don't like.

I really like factories building faster without assisting. I want factories to be extremely energy efficient with a slow rolloff time. That means it would be better to build a bunch of factories rather than have 1 factory with tons of fabbers assisting it. We have the room for factories! I miss the days of early Beta.

The upcoming improvements to formations will be a big help.

Not sure how I feel about projectiles being slower. The game is about macro, not micro. I really do not like the idea of turning PA into Starcraft where whoever is better at clickfesting their army wins the engagement.

I really do not like the idea of deploying units. That introduces a ton of micro.

/fin

About that rolloff time. If i recall correctly, it was reduced significantly because it led to rolloff problems (like a unit receiving a command during rolloff and getting stuck because of it).

It was reduced for several reasons. That's one.

But I think that should be fixed by making units wait to act on commands until they finish rolling off. That's how other games.

Having longer rolloff time would be a big help to creating a need for lots of factories, rather than just one.

Having factories being extremely energy efficient would also be an excellent change. Probably be better of the two.

I disagree. Deploying, terrain height, movement speeds, health, energy differentiation, reclaiming and metal scarcity would have been in multiplayer - some were just overlooked because they weren't fully fleshed out enough and people went for the cheapest, easiest alternatives. Like rushing Fusion Generators and then Metal Generators. Or spamming AA Tanks.
If Fusion were extremely expensive, and other forms of high-energy such as Geothermal were tied to Lava/hotspots then high-energy would be harder to get. Furthermore we don't have Metal Generators.

I agree with your concerns over unit health, deploying and micro.
Remember the deploying is automatic, not like Starcraft's Tanks.
Also it's not like you can run in with bots, deploy and walk backwards while shooting shorter range units (kiting). Because projectiles miss, you can surround heavy-hitting slow units with a tonne of light units and take them down. Slow turning circles on artillery bots too.
Deploying could reduce micro in some cases, for example with Sniper-Balls. If they had to deploy (and remain fixed in place, like snipers do), there wouldn't be the constant back-and-forth kiting we have now. They'd need protection, or they'd get chased off by even the lightest bots.

If the deploying was all automatic, then that could work.

I just really don't want activatable abilities. Those have no place in a game like PA.

Well....they can work, but they can't really be all that complex, and are only usually good if units all have the same ability, or if you don't have many unit types.

+1 Agree.
I should have been more clear, sorry xD
edit: Fixed OP.

I know the benefits just pointing out that it's one of those "technical problems" changes that Uber implemented.

It may not be so simple to implement properly (i would imagine they tried other solutions first before cutting rolloff) but i'm no coding expert. not by far.

I'm sorry but you don't make much sense here... Are you saying a fusion was cheap and you could rush it in TA? Do you mean that if you played the game effectively it is to be considered a "cheap" or " easy" tactic? And are you saying things did not get implemened in PA because people played TA a certain way?

No, it was fairly expensive. However the ability to have a huge energy boon and then turn that into potentially unlimited metal is not something I'd like to see in PA. I'd also like such huge sources of energy to be Volatile.

When you say effectively, you mean efficiently. I.e. the path with least wastage. Yes. The easy way. Not that that's at all a reflection on the characters of the players - people will always find the easiest, quickest and most effective way to victory. I myself employ the "build several hundred fabricators and churn out nukes" tactic which predominates gameplay in PA currently.

But at some point you need to ask yourself: "Is this fun? Is this what the spirit of the game is about?"

Perhaps? If tactics in Multiplayer took the most efficient routes, i.e. spamming AA tanks and Metal Fabricators, then nuances like Terrain affecting unit speeds, resource variations in Metal Spots and a need to reclaim might have been overlooked.

If you look at a game, break it down and figure out how to play it the most effective / efficient way, isn't that the same thing as finding out what the game is all about?

If we wanna find out what "fun" is, that is a whole different idea, and something that is very individual.

But how you play a game, TA or PA or whatever game, that is something we can look at and analyze. And that's why i object when you claim all these strange things about TA, because i don't think you understand what that game is or was. What you think is fun on the other hand, is completely up to you and something i will never argue.

I just had a thought about Planetary Annihilation, and our remake TA sentiments.

I made bunch of maps for UT2004 and UT3, including few remakes. And remakes are quite tricky to do.
If you make exact port of classic with tiny changes, you end with people complaining that there is no point because original is still better.
If you do big changes (like making new art-style or additional features) you get people complaining that it is no more a remake.
If you make a remake and don't call it remake of something, they complain that you copied layout/features of classic.

Uber is facing same problems, so I think they decided to not worry too much about this beaten horse. Priority here is fun and gameplay, and if that can be done with keeping some "feel" of TA its fine.

My boss once said: "do not worry when they complain, start worrying when there is silence on forums."

Is the game's spirit about being efficient? Not really. Not for me at least.
A game isn't just about winning, and increasingly the point with all this procedural generation is that there will be different ways to win every time. It's about having fun.

How and in which ways we win will alter and have altered during development as the balance of the units have changed.
If you say "Nuke spam is the spirit of Planetary Annihilation" or "AA Tank Spam is the spirit of Total Annihilation" then what is left when we alter those mechanics so that they aren't the most efficient strategies?
The spirit is about more than the most widely employed strategies and quickest ways to win.

Fun is subjective, yes. But we can agree on things, and ask what contributes to our fun and immersion in gameplay.

I never said aa tank spam was the spirit of TA though. It was just one of many efficient tactics discovered in the game. Just like you say, the spirit of the game is not the popular tactics. Here is where i'm trying to argue that the spirit of a game is not if some or other feature is fun, but rather if the game is well built and balanced. TA might not have been very well balanced, but it was a very well built game.

I'm just bringing up the different tactics used in TA to illustrate why i don't think you know or understand the game.

And if we are going to talk about a game and how it plays, we need to understand it first. And as i've shown thought my posts in this thread, you don't. You are not familiar with the basic ui functions of the game, nor the different trends or tactics, or the crucial bugs or core game functions.

I never claimed to have a complete understanding of TA. I am not a game developer.

It's been a long time since I played TA, and I admitted already I never played it competitively or in a multi-player environment.
I do play a lot of PA multi-player, and thus understand that people will always take the quick path to the win.
I never went for the most efficient paths in TA.
It wasn't about the win.
Needless to say, I had and have a lot of fun playing TA.
I am familiar with the UI(?) I don't understand what there is to miss here.

If a game's spirit lies in balance and build alone then how does TA have a spirit if, as you say, it had so many imbalances?

A lot of the things I pick out are aesthetic. Many would not have a drastic or damaging effect on base gameplay.

I do not argue for direct, thoughtless transposition of elements.

Nor do I believe these elements should be referred to as 'some or other feature' because for me, the way they interact and combined was what constituted the spirit of Total Annihilation - in addition to many things Planetary Annihilation already has in common and which I have not seen the need to include in my OP.

Having been a competitive TA and Spring player I can tell you the result of more unit health and its a type of micro but not perhapse in the sense people normally think (i.e. Starcraft click fest abilaties rubbish)...

The strong units result in what I'd call 'tactical micro'... where you end up kiting groups of units against each other. It's sorta hard to explain- a commonly played map in TA and Spring is 'Comet Catcher' which is basically a moon biome. It had increased unit movement speed and reduced gravity (longer range on cannons) for some pretty intense games. What would happen a little way into the game with 2 equal players is you'd wind up with opposing front lines. Due to the flat terrain tanks were always preferred- and in a reasonable group the light defences that get thrown up quickly weren't much opposition.

This meant that the 2 players then ended up testing each others defences looking for a point to run a group of tanks through and go kill the vulnerable eco behind- to ensure they can't get through you had to send units to reinforce where they're trying to break through. It resulted in lots of little skirmishes with tanks going in, fighting and retreating, and kiting each over using radar.

It's good fun- and doesn't require the starcraft type of per unit micro, the key was to prevent your opponent getting past you whilst trying to find a weak point yourself. I personally think that type of micro would be nice in PA. At the moment it is possible to do with this Gil-E, as they have enough range, health and speed to make it worth while. I'd like more of the units to fall into this category though. Also being able to run a group of units in, quickly kill a tower and run out without loosing all of them would be nice and again this isn't possible 90% of the time in PA (in the current built at least).

An example of what I'm on about:


Edit: Out of interest for anyone who watches the video- everything shown is T1.

I definitely need to get me some of them mods.

The video is of the free spring engine. Mod is balanced annihilation.

If your about one evening I'd be happy to give you a game or 2 on spring. Dunno what time zone u are, I'm utc +1 (uk)