Everytime I click "Play" It sits there for five minutes "checking manifest" and "updating" and "1 out of 15 packages downloaded." Is there a reason my computer is redownloading PA every time I want to play it?
That's a know issue. Try launching the PA.exe directly from your install directory after updating once through the launcher (\Games\Planetary Annihilation\stable\PA.exe).
I'm annoyed about the Launcher also. Altrough i do not redownload files each time, it takes 5 good mins to recheck the files at each launch... A nice p***.