Let's assume that Uber continues work on PA for many years...

I'm really looking forward to the competitive side of things. Ranking will be awesome!

If you change the lore, then the commanders don't make sense.

The commanders and spaceships are mutually exclusive.

Okay, that's the only counter-argument I've heard so far that I accept. Fittingly enough, I never liked the commanders in the first place. I appreciate the Herzog Zwei influence, but they get in the way of a grand scale RTS, which is what I really want.

Oh well. Let's see who picks up the ball of the genre from Uber and runs with it forward then.

I have a new item for my wish list, lol.


6. REMOVE OR AT LEAST MINIMIZE THE INFLUENCE OF THE COMMANDERS
They get in the way of the grand scale RTS that Jon Mavor's goal of a million units and no-size-limit planets and planetary systems is leading us to. See previous posts for details.

Spaceships are superior to having tanks.

You won't even need to have stuff on planets with spaceships, asteroid mining is easier, and planetary bombardment is easy.

Yeah. Tell that to all the strategy geniuses who think that space is useless.

And it is precisely because it is so useful that it should be balanced to be available only in the lategame, as I have described at length in several previous posts. It would be awesome!

RE: Spaceships:

Not sure if anyone is familiar with Halo lore, but this was entirely the reason the UNSC almost lost to the Covenant. Sure, the UNSC/Spartans won many major planetside battles, but what good is it winning on the land when your opponents can simply pull back to orbit and glass your forces/planet into oblivion?

So you want space fights to come down to balls of death made entirely out of experimental units?
You want games where once a player has multiple planets under their belt, they become neigh unbeatable?
They sound only fun for the person that can reach them first, regardless of balance.
Uber has said, on record, that Deep Space battles were never part of their vision.
I see where you are coming from as far as Lore goes, because Lore shouldn't limit game design. However, in the case of space battles, it doesn't limit game design, it simply redirects it. Space battles don't mean to much to the Commanders because Uber feels that Deep Space battling would make for very boring gameplay. From what I've considered and seen discussed, once Deep Space battling rolled around it would either totally invalidate on-planet play or would be exceptionally limited for the purpose of keeping on-planet battling competitive and useful. There is so little that Deep Space can do that Orbital could not, besides becoming a barrier against Orbital, and fighting other Deep Space units. The simple reason for that being that once Deep Space units leave Deep Space and start attacking a planet, they become the exact same as Orbital, and we already have Orbital units. Unless they don't have to leave Deep Space to attack a planet, which makes any and all battling on planets after Space play comes into effect worthless.


Personally, if Planetary Annihilation continues to be viable 5 or 10 years in the future, I'd like to see the emergence of a second "Faction" with totally new units. Honestly, this is also something that they've cut from the game for a very solid reason: not having the time or resources to balance multiple armies and still provide the intense depth that they want from each.

However, if Planetary Annihilation remains financially viable, after a period of time available unit roles on each tier for all five unit types will become saturated. At that point, why not introduce a second physical Faction? As far as I know, the Lore is the only breaking point there.
The Lore states that these commanders copy, amalgamate, and refine any new unit designs that perform any function they are incapable of and are destined to develop only the most efficient and brutal of armies, so there shouldn't be any variation from army to army. (and also bots should be useful and T2 shouldn't be overpowered, Lore says so)

However, Lore is a very weak arguing point and should never hinder creative design, only explain existing limitations and provide direction. If those limitations expand or fall away, editing the Lore is as simple as introducing a new idea, like a fatal flaw in a certain percentage of Commanders that causes unreliable results in their army building capabilities. That flaw, over centuries, could create a unique faction of Commanders that have amalgamated units that the bulk of Commanders have never seen.

Well... Perhaps simpler than that. But my idea is that if continuous development happens and remains financially viable for years to come, there is no reason for them to not make new factions.

Balanced?

Uhh no, spaceships are clearly superior, too superior, spaceships are clearly better then having anything on the ground, and with the nature of the game, there is zero reason not to burn the planets from orbit.

That's not PA, PA is about the commanders and their armys, orbital stuff is support to the stuff in the atmosphere and on the surface.

Spaceships are not support, spaceships are better.

Ooooh, new idea for future things, though this might be more reasonable to want shortly following a 1.0 release:
Eternal wars waging. Up to 40 players playing on a system with upwards of 17 planetary bodies, unlimited spawning locations, free to spawn in at any point in time for anyone, both army sharing multi-commander starts and the alliance mechanic allowed.

Spacecraft would not be "experimental" units. They would be normal units. They would just need a lot of buildings (imagine giant factories, etc.) and a lot of resources to be made, which could justify the huge solar systems and the large numbers of giants planets that Uber is aiming to make possible in the future. Otherwise you have all these resources come in... so you can make yet more robots that you've already been making since the beginning of the game. Boring. Don't forget that games are supposed to get up to 16 hours, eventually. This has been talked about at length. You need some new things coming into play to keep the game feeling fresh. T3 is a minimum. Space would be the next level.

Yes. Just as it is now with respect to T2, and in the future with T3. That's RTS and that's war. You stay behind you lose. It's a simple concept.

Does the person that can reach T2 first wins? No. But if you NEVER reach T2 you will probably lose, and that's how it should be. Otherwise why have anything more than bots?

You are either just making stuff up because you hate the idea of space and can't seem to bring yourself to rationally discuss it, or you can't visualize how an added layer could be balanced before someone actually balances it in front of your eyes and you have no choice but to agree.

Of course it wasn't, otherwise it would have been in the Kickstarter video. But I haven't seen them rule it out anywhere, and I have even seen them discuss what it would require for it to be implemented (a new UI).

Yes balanced. Read what I wrote. "Balance" doesn't mean everything is equal to everything else. You can balance the game so that it is impossible to build spacefleets until there are so many planets under player control that you HAVE to build spacefleets if you don't want the game to last 50 hours. Read my previous posts. I have explained all this in detail.

Unit's don't advance in PA, the forces you use are at the peak of technology when civilisation ended.

You don't advance.

Also in the current balance, the first who reaches T2 really does win.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yh7ss/this_game_absolutely_needs_to_happen/c5vqks1

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...d_on_planetary_annihilation/c62v0af?context=3

Asteroids are for that job, also what you describe is an experimental, and that isn't needed.

You advance from T1 to T2. Find another word if you don't like it. You understand exactly what I mean. Same for "experimentals". It's just a label from another game.

It's funny because players are already complaining of the problems that my solution solves.

I have seen plenty of players complaining of boring stalemates in games with many large planets. Some of them prefer to drop out of the game than continue with the boredom. And the number and size of the current planets are nothing compared to what is to come. If we even get 10% close to Uber's goals in terms of scale, I believe that spacefleets will become utterly necessary.

And I believe differently.

You probably play on tiny planets, etc., so none of this will affect you if it happens and you'll still be happy with the game. Really, the first truly scalable RTS. I can't wait.

So to sum up

"I don't like commanders"... "I want bigger scale and the only way to achieve that is SPACESHIPS".... therefore: "Uber please make a DIFFERENT GAME because I WANT SPACESHIPS"

No, that's not a good summary. Here's one of the many points you missed, just a couple of posts above yours too:

And this is how you would sum that point up:

"Uber NEEDS to add spacefleets if it doesn't want their game's ever-increasing scope to become a boring gimmick and the larger systems that are coming in the future to be practically unplayable."

But there were many other points too. Read the thread.

Asteroid belts are the solution.