Message from Jon Mavor

execution however is part of realtime .. if you don´t execute in a timely manner your strategy is worthless ..
professionals or perfectionsts will almost always aim for that ... so it´s a mix of both ... especialy with the fastpaced nature of this particular game ..

of course ... but the biggest issue still remains peoples expectations vs a devs capabilities ... it comes always down to how much can the devs archive with what they have access to work with ..
what i am basicaly saying while uber may have (maybe yet) not archived what you may have wished for you may aswell apreciate what they archieved so far (not implying that you might be ungrateful btw.) .. because god knows how quick people are about shiting on a project missing x,y, and z and immidiately dismissing something as bad ..

the point will ultimately come were uber will leave support for PA be it in a couple months or years ..
they can do only so much before they have to move on .. you may consider PA unballanced but i personaly am ok with ballance for the most part and rather wait for what they may further add instead of just abbandoning hope prematurely and leave ..

You are assuming that there is anything to 'fix' in the current balance. I personally think the unit set is good. It's minimalist, to the point and yes there are a wide range of strategies that can be employed to win a game, a lot of which comes down to the map your playing on / what your opponent is doing. It's true that when two experienced players face off against each other you see the majority of the unit set in play, however that is down to the experience of the players rather than the game lacking options. To be clear if you have a game where a certain strategy invalidates half the units, surely that points to a serious in-balance in the game?

@emraldis I agree with you as much as *if* PA really does need more units, it only needs 1 or 2 (total). The unit set isn't full of duplicates and frankly that's a good thing.

That's a completely separate topic that frankly I don't see any point in discussing.

Mike

I think it's entirely on point. Jon Mavor has made a post on the KS thread commenting on where he see's PA now, in the past and what's still to come, and the thread has descended into a 'whats wrong with PA' session.

Expectations are a key to this, and I think many people had either totally misaligned or totally unreasonable expectations of what Uber could do with a pretty small budget and team on what constitutes a *very* complicated game.

Let's be crystal clear here- this thread has *nothing* to do with what Uber should or could have done. It was merely here to relay the message Jon Mavor posted to Kickstarter. All Jon / Uber have dared do is be openly proud about the work they've done, and frankly I find it very sad that people feel they don't have the right to do that. If anyone is off topic it's those who've decided to crawl out of the woodwork to stick the proverbial knife in. /rant.

PA is a game where execution is the only thing that matters. Being able to strategize on the fly and being able to execute your strategy should go hand in hand, while in PA all that matters is that you execute one of the three or so viable strategies. PA suffers from a problem called a lack of viable strategies, and it's hurting it as a game.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not stating that one should abandon hope and I highly doubt that we won't see more updates for PA. What I was saying is that if Uber lacks the resources to fix balance (And I by no means think that they lack them) then I don't really think that we'll see more from Uber for PA anyway and that all this discussion is mute.

Uber has the resources to fix the balance of PA. It might be somewhat difficult, but it isn't resource intensive. They won't even necessarily need to make new models if they decide that they need more units. Uber already has at least half a dozen models lying around for new units (And these aren't bad models either, no more than anything else that Uber produced prior to February 2014).

Yes, I assume that there is stuff to fix in the current balance because there is stuff to fix in the current balance.

Tell me the use case for bolos in the current balance vs infernodier please.
What about the use case for hornets?
Bluehawks? (Other than clearing anchors)
Catapults?
Stingrays?
Levelers?
Vanguards?

Correct me if I'm wrong, granted I don't play vanilla balance but this stuff has been useless for ages and I believe that it is still useless?

Minimalist? We've got some units that are more or less exact copies of other units. Slammers, Levellers, Vanguards. A minimalist unit roster is one where there are few units, but they all cover the major roles without too much overlap.

A wide range of strategies? Please inform me, good sir, as to what the viable strategies in a single planet 1v1 without water are. As I see it:

Bot first -> Spam dox and get as much raiding done as possible. After a couple minutes get vehicle factories up and build mainly infernos and grenadiers with a few ants/dox/spinners mixed in to counter anything else your opponent makes, gradually push forward, doing what you can to win the engagements until you've hit their com with oodles of grenadier shells and infernos and it pops.

PA is lacking in the most important thing for a strategy game to have, and that is depth. There is no depth of strategy and that is because the balance doesn't allow for it.

If experienced players only use a couple of strategies, then that is because those are the ONLY VIABLE STRATEGIES. I don't care if I see some bronze leaguer try some turret spam into nuke spam strategy because such a strategy would be absolutely useless. VIABLE STRATEGY doesn't mean that you see it used, or even that you see it used to win against some noob, but that IF A TOP PLAYER EMPLOYED IT against ANOTHER TOP PLAYER where both were playing their best, the strategy could be used to win.

And how many strategies in the game fit that criteria?

Options are irrelevant if a top player finds them useless. That's the illusion of an option, and, as I said in this thread from roughly a year ago, an illusion of an option is worse than no option at all.

If a certain strategy invalidates half of the units, that's fine IF AND ONLY IF that's not THE ONLY VIABLE STRATEGY and it can be countered through other strategies that DON'T INVALIDATE THOSE UNITS.

Can you say that this is the case in PA?

The PA balance might only need one or two units. The RCBM only added three to five back in the day, and a couple of those (the torpedo bomber especially) had very niche uses so that you'd hardly ever see them. I'd rather add more because I don't think that the unit roster is very crowded right now to the point where any new units will be duplicates and because I think that will open up more strategies, but PA probably doesn't NEED them. Doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a better game with them.

disagreed

Would you elaborate?

I don't even understand why you would get the idea it is like that unless you look at the most tiny ranked maps possible. I am not feeling like going into yet another of these weird talks on strategy vs tactics blabla again as well, I simply tell you I disagree on this highly subjective matter.

so basicaly all i need to do is i just build bolo´s and expand like a maniac?

I don't play vanilla balance so everything I get is from reading the forums and watching videos, but my impression is that you:

Learn the infernodier strat.

Follow the infernodier strat with precise execution.

Win.

built defenses and go air and dox .. harass the crap out of the opponent and that strat will be useless long term since the enemy will severly lack in metal ..
infernodier + aa is VERY slow and on large maps takes a ton of time to get anywere ..

if you go tankdier that means you have more ranged firepower against infernodier
even if you have only grenadiers long range fire power is still on your side ..
use dox .. better flanking capabilities ..
booms shredd grenblobs and infernos

Doesn't infernodier begin with dox raiding like every other strat in existence?

Infernodier+aa is no slower than any other land unit composition (other than pure dox, pure grenadier, and dox/grenadier).

Aren't the infernos for shredding the booms?

Grenadiers outrange tanks. Infernos tank more damage than tanks. Tankadier is worse unit comp, no?

Doesnt a terran in SC2 almost always start with a little reaper harras? Jeez stuart. play the game really. infernodier. gets killed by antdier. why? more damage out put. It is about unit compositions now how much of what to counter his composition. T2 tanks and bots are all usefull. T2 air can use some love. There is so much unexplored purely by the fact that there is no reason to explore. Ranked play is dead with a ladder that doesn't work. If there would be a ladder that worked and gave rewards to for example the top 3 players of every rank. I can garantee you that the overal skill level of PA players will increase dramatically. As people are forces to come up with different strats and train them to perfection.

dox are generally the more effective counter against booms ... booms can still flank infernos


its more the case of micro
bolo´s may not tank damage but still they dish it out
similar case with grenadiers only basicaly you want split up and deal out more consistend damage while your enemy misses and is less mobile ..

I wasn't sure if you were talking about Reddit's hate machine from before.. or now.. then I looked at the thread and see the hate is still alive and well..

Nope. Reapers require you to spend some money on upgrading your barracks and are fairly easy to counter.

I play what's fun to me.

Does damage output matter if you can't get in range to output it? I really can't see how antadier works over infernodier between top level players.

What is the usecase of:
A bluehawk (other than clearing anchors)
A leveler
A vanguard

I asked you this along with a few other questions in another thread and am still waiting on the questions.

Understatement of the year.

It remains to be seen whether any other viable strats could conceivably emerge.

Sorry Stuart I stopped reading after your first sentence. Crawl out of your cave man. Reapers are being able to be build without a techlab since the beginning of HOTS which was released 12 march 2013!!

Which roughly coincides with when I stopped caring about StarCraft because it actually isn't a very good game.

extremely subjective. And even then.. you, the person who is the most vocal about balance, should take that game as an example. Why? because starcraft as a game both 1 and 2 are amongst the best balanced rts games ever.

No it's not nessesary for PA to go rock paper scissor style balance. But examine and study how they do it and why. escpecially why. For all balance changes they make they write blogs about it why they are doing it and how they came up with it. Read it.

Also there is a reason why Blizzard asks top starcraft players for feedback very regularly. It's because they know the game best. They play it everyday to train and come up with new stuff to improve on to get an edge over their opponents. How small and insignificant it might seem. Here in PA.. We haven't even scratched the surface of this balance because there is no incentive to do so on a regular basis. The tournaments from exodusesport help a little with that but they can do it alone and thus is an improved ranked ladder so incredibly important.

To get back to your previous post. You play what you find fun... Sure that's more than natural.. however when you enter the life of a game designer you should also play games you don't like and you should ask yourself whats good and whats bad and WHY. Always WHY. Also keep looking at how other games do it.

About the inferno grenadier vs Ant grenadier.. Inferno's are in the front. grenadiers in the back. inferno's come into range of ants, kite antdier back until most inferno's are dead and you have the upperhand. This is more a micro thing which favors ants over inferno's. However there is nothing wrong with having a few meatshields infront as it gives you the pushing power. It's purely how its being used by the player.

Bluehawk.. well Tactical missiles as a whole can recieve some love. either range, velocity or something else. Air in general needs some love with their movement and their love for waiting for each other needs to go. The leveler is infact one of the most powerful units in the game. It hits like a train and iirc deals small splash damage. It WRECKS.
The vanguard is an issue on its own and really never gets used indeed.

I'd add that many of the 'useless' units aren't so useless in game modes other than 1 v 1.

For example- I've seen vanguard used to devastating effect in ffa games where players creep their lines close to each other. T2 air is also devastating on large maps, with the t2 fighter being essential for interplanetary play. The hornet even has is uses due to long range, though requires a lot of baby sitting compared to other units.