Is there any documentation about how to play? I can't find it. What keys do what? What mouse buttons do what in what contexts? A list of what units are available and what builds them and what they cost and what their attributes are and what you need to have to get access to building them would be good. I've seen "getting started" videos of people doing stuff but they don't say what keys they're pressing or which mouse buttons they're using to do those things, so they're close to useless. The only thing I've gleamed from the videos is you can hold down shift to build multiple things in sequence. Hopefully I just haven't seen the docs, but if that's the case, they're far too well hidden. Finally, is there really no save function in a galactic war? If I leave a session, I lose all progress. Thanks for your help.
http://pamatches.com/ has some great tutorials and a unit wiki For keymaps just look at your settings, the keyboard. It has an overview of all map able functions and you can change your hotkeys. and finally, no there is no way to save a live match as it runs on a server, we will get that feature when it is working but that will take a while. It's pretty complex to program. However Galactic war saves between matches. And exiting a match with Alt-F4 will make the game assume it crashed and allows you to replay that match (prevents losing the GW)
Thanks. I've watched a few more tutorials, and they are somewhat helpful. For example, in "Two and a Half Minutes to Becoming a Better Planetary Annihilation Player", one of the suggestions is "Scout your Opponents Early, and he says "The area patrol command is also very helpful for early scouting", without saying how to actually do area patrol. I looked in the keyboard settings (the only thing coming close to a manual in the game) and there's nothing listed for area patrol, just patrol. So I searched on YouTube for "planetary annhilation area patrol" and found a video "Planetary Annihilation Area Commands". He shows how to build a bunch of metal extractors by clicking on one metal area and then dragging to create a circle around it to build extractors in all metal areas in the covered radius. Cool, got it, thanks. (I'll assume he used the left mouse button and had no keys held down while dragging) Then he said "There is also mine build" (line build?) and shows dragging out a line of buildings, but doesn't say how he did that. I've already figured out you hold down shift to do that from another video, but if I didn't know that it would be very frustrating to find out there's even more cool stuff that I know exists and I have no idea how to do. "And there's also this area build which is used for energy storage and metal storage", and I see a grid of buildings being built, but again, no indication of how he just did that. Was he holding a key like shift or control or alt? Was he using the left or right or middle button? Was he holding the mouse button down while dragging? Are these tutorials made by Uber or by the community? I can forgive the community if they're doing it for free, but if this is produced by Uber, they need to step back and stop assuming their users already have knowledge of how the presenter is doing the things he's showing while watching the videos. He then shows area patrol! He selects a unit (I'm assuming with left click) then clicks on Patrol on the toolbar on the right (I'm assuming with left click) then clicks and (I'm assuming) drags from a spot near the unit (I'm assuming with the left mouse button). That's a whole lot of assumptions but I think I can figure it out from there on my own. A manual would really help clear that up. He then said you could do "area transport" without mentioning what transporting was. I then searched on YouTube for "planetary annihilation transport" and found another tutorial explaining what transporting was and how to do it. That video was actually pretty clear too, he said which mouse buttons he was clicking, each time. This is a ridiculously inefficient but more importantly, very frustrating way to learn how to play a game. Planetary Annihilation clearly cost millions of dollars to produce so it's disappointing a manual wasn't a priority for them. I can skim (and search!) through a PDF a thousand times faster than I can find and watch a bunch of incomplete videos. Looking at the Keyboard Settings... While some of it is obvious or self-explanatory to me, I have no idea what the following commands do... additionally, since most of the following are not bound to a key, I'm not sure how I would use them without first binding a key to them: - Special Move - Alt Fire - Maneuver - Roam - Toggle Move Orders - Energy On / Off / Toggle Energy Orders I figured out capture and recall from a YouTube tutorial about keyboard shortcuts. I'm really confused about the "Build Items" shortcuts. They're bound to 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, but those keys are also bound to Recall Group 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Uber, this is your new user experience. It's absolutely horrific.
I won't lie it isn't good. I have to teach new players how to play all the time. Their introductary material isn't great, it was probably never destined to be a strong point.
- Special move: moves transports between the orbital and air layer - Alt fire: used to fire the commanders UberCannon, a very powerfull weapon that uses your energy, (can kill like 10 tanks in one shot) - Maneuver - Roam used to switch between moving in formation and moving at max speed - Toggle Move Orders toggles the visibility of orders, game will show color coded lines from units to destination if enabled - Energy On / Off you can use this to pause factory's and other power consuming buildings as for the build items keys 1-5, they are contextual and only work when you first press the key of the unit family first: so if you want to built a leveler you press [Z] for tanks then [W] for leveler and when having advanced fabricators selected pressing [C][5] will build a nuke
