Spoiler I am a FPS player to begin with. I don't play Rpgs, Mobas, racing, TBS, puzzle, simulation, sandbox survival, slashers and most of other types of games you can imagine. But I always liked concept of RTS. You build a base, manage economy, build up army, make genius plan and execute it. But there was no RTS that I'd really like to play. Because I'm not the type of player who can be at ten places in ten seconds and select that one unit in the crowd to unleash it's special ability at exact spot needed. I've tried lots of RTS, and there always was at least one showstopping gameplay element that would make me quit it. Warcraft - too many unit abilities (oh man I remember when I first clicked on wizard in W2). Starcraft - same and even more. C&C (Tib wars 2007) - almost close to prefect for me, quick fun and fast paced, crazy stuff like movable construction yard, very little upgrades and abilities, but that infantry in buildings... C&C4 - why did I pay money for this? Majesty - hey, units live on their own! That's a game for me. Wait, but they don't do anything but kill rats in my town. Company of heroes - I can't even consider it RTS because of it's scale, more like real time tactics, same would go for Men of war. I tired fps/rts hybrids like Battlestations and Carrier Command, but those were bad both at FPS and RTS. Natural selection 2 does both awesome, but since your units are real players, you can hardly execute your genius plan, and mostly have to stick to general build orders. Finially, SupCom. I didn't like it for some reason as well, but it was close to what I wanted. Then, PA came along. Many people somehow consider these downsides, but for me it's why I play this game: - No upgrades - Almost no tech tree / really simple and straight forward tech tree (commander -> fabber -> advanced fabber, and there's a little branch after fabber that goes to orbital fabber -> orbital factory, and that's all you need to know to get access to all the tech) - No unit special abilities, save for commander, which you'd will probably not use all that much in a single match. - No unit veterancy There is so little stuff that makes my life complicated. I really like overall simplicity of the core mechanics. So, I'd like to thank Uber for making this game accessible for slow clicking people like me. But simplicity does not mean game is no dumbed down for consoles (C&C4). It's simple, but it has all the real time strategy elements needed, and none of real time tragedy elements. I can finally play a game in genre that I like, but had no option that suited me before. It has literally zero things that I consider total meh. Woot.
no shields no megaunits that are just a expensive version of a combo of unittypes the fact that PA stays true to the coregameplay of total annihilation is why i actualy like PA in the first place ... and i played TA AFTER supcom FA ... yes experimentals were cool, yes shields were freakin usefull (too usefull) ,upgrades and adjencencybonus ... all neat ideas ... but they added so much binarity to the game as in if you had nothing of it while your enemy did you had to keep up or you would be overpowered .. if you didn´t upgrade while your enemy did you are behind ... in PA this seem to not be much the case even if there are t2 units and structures in place ... for instance if your enemy controls a whole planet covered in basic and advanced mexxes .. you can still keep up either controlling more teritory like 2 planets or get a gasgiant with jigs on it ... your enemy goes T2 vehicle? you can still fight with more basic spam ... in supcom you were able to control much less territory techrush the crap out of it and become inpenetrable bringing in experimentals ending the game immidiatly ... here you still are on good footing with economic or production lead ...
I agree. For all it's fun, SupCom had it's downsides. Especialy the focus on T3/Experimentals and the long build up times. It is a good thing they got that idea out of thier system before going on to PA. Now all that is missing are offline mode, that Uber-save feature and the other 4/5 of the GW.
Different game is different! I'm totally with you man, I like the 'purity' of PA. Coming from an FPS comparison, it's rather like Quake 2/3 vs Unreal Tournament - I love the face paced movement and 'feel' of Quake, and the simple selection of weapons. Each weapon has a purpose, no alternate fire modes, just ten weapons to master. Sure UT was fun but for me, Quake was pure, and so is PA
I can safely conclude that PA wins the award for the most complicated simple game / the most simple complicated game.
I actually think this game does a lot of things better than SupComFA(haven't played TA) but I do think it would benefit from better unit identity and more, variation is too strong a word... diversity maybe?
