My balance concerns - Not really about balance but how it's done.

This ... is ... exactly how i feel , you sir , nailed in this text exactly how i feel about the game in it's current state...
for games like this balance is everything! It just seems to me they should be concerned about balance at this point , even though half the unit aren't in there , if they can't make some kind of proper balance with a low number of unit's how will they do so when they added more units? I'd even go as far in saying that the T1 and T2 balance is the most important part to get right in terms of balance early on as these are the unit's that will be used the most, played many a games of FA where i beat the AI before i needed to go to T3 units, i only used T3 if i got into a stalemate situation.

Balance is such a tricky thing to get right, it takes a lot of time, sometimes they don't nail it at all. I know people hate it when someone mentions FA , but that's just THE perfect example ... the vanilla SupCom just doesn't cut it for me, the FA mod makes it top-notch (for me at least)

Doxes still at least loose out to Ants in large, direct engagements. They tear **** up in small numbers though.

I take it you're not a lover of the sorian 2.1.1 , otherwise you would only have the entire map folder from faf and nothing else,because the sever works with 2.1.2 (which never delivered on AI as much as 2.1.1) I can't even remember the exact reasons but trust me the super sorians on the 2.1.1 are lush with ai markers.

No upgrades in PA is Shocking why go from upgrade kings too Nothing. If the mission was to shock then wow.

To be honest, I've never used a AI (except for testing things), even less one of Sorian, and I don't know what the difference can be. But you are the first one to complain about it. You can open a thread on the forum and we will investigate that.

On FA(F) players play vs players thats the rule.
Ty to FA(F) team, now we also got Coop-Missions to SC FA and its amazing play with lot players togheter.
And Ower FA(F) comunity ty to the King Ze-Pilot,its bether then ever was.
Yes its true FA(F) top players are not really liking PA .
But its life or we like or we dont .

edit: Relocated my totally off-topic post to scale megathread:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/scale-megathread.48650/

Noticing a slight Derail from the topic at hand here into graphics but wanted to respond to this:

I'll disagree on the first point since there has been zero to little balance involved with the ghost in those two match ups ever since people stopped complaining of them in the professional level. There are a couple of units that have faded into obscurity in pro play and don't seem to get any balance attention needed to make them relevant.

I'll agree that pros are good at fixing glaring balance flaws but not the complete field of units and play. However, i'm not sure why you think there isn't a good amount of people getting good right now in PA. There has been quite a few casts showing the meta game.

I assume you mean me? There is still a lot of confusion around with people thinking Spring is a game. Spring is an engine for RTSs, many of the games made with it have nothing to do with TA. Most of these games have had someone work on the balance at some point. So there is a bit of balance experience around in the Spring community but I don't hold their skills in high regard. The biggest issue for small new games is gaining a playerbase large enough to actually test balance. 5 years ago we mostly had 'alphabet soup' mods for TA; AA, BA, XTA, NOTA etc.. which existed somewhat because different people had ideas about design and somewhat to fix balance.

Zero-K budded off BA 6 or so years ago. Since then nobody has 'solved' balance with further forks and we have enough of a competitive playerbase for me to claim that ZK is balanced. It hasn't been balanced the entire time but we also spent a while messing with large parts of the design. Balancing has been difficult and I wouldn't say we're done but we've got what I would call an applicable definition of balance. Battles are interesting with many different unit types used in each one and I can't think of a unit that I would never build. I think this is a good practical definition of balance.

I agree with thepilot about how to balance and who to ask (but not the bit saying he has the most experience). But I am not sure that PA is up to balance yet, I still think it needs a lot of work on design. We still have a clear tech progression and the design of orbital/interplanetary does not seem to be working at all. I don't think PA can be balanced in 2 months because it takes a while for changes to filter through and become apparent in the metagame. When balancing you have to act slow enough to ensure that your changes have been felt by the players and the game that they are playing the new game in a fairly optimal way. Looking at the activity of the 1v1 ladder this period is at least a few weeks so there are just not enough cycles to balance it in that time.

Personally I am not playing so much PA for a few reasons.

• The ZK UI has "spoiled me" with it's power such that for me the PA interface is really really bad. In PA (or FA) it is painful to set up the basic battle formation of arranging units along a line. There is so much makework in trying to prioritize construction.
• The PA UI is annoying in other ways. As mentioned earlier it requires a lot of commands to simply send a scout on an intelligent path around the planet.
• The economy is an obfuscated micromanagement nightmare. It takes quite a bit of analysis to figure out how to play well and then implementing it is next to impossible.
• Network speed limits. Units teleport around the place lategame which makes it very hard to manage anything.
• The current balance seems to be 'solved' to the extent that I would not be particularly helpful. By playing I would just be honing the mechanical skill required to wrestle the UI into submision, not exploring anything new or unknown.

To improve balance I think more people need to be encouraged to play 1v1 and then to listen to their feedback. The best way to encourage people is to fix the bugs which scare them away, improve the UI and convince them that bad balanced is temporary by providing fast responses to feedback.

Also I think devs can be reasonably good at their games, I can beat Godde about 25% of the time. I'm of the opinion that many issues arise when nobody in development is that good at the game.

PA will not be balanced when it comes out. That's a given. This isn't meant as a slight to Uber.
Balancing takes competitive play with a larger population and it won't happen overnight.

Consider this, FAF is still getting balance tweaks, and even an unit production overhaul.
As a FAF player myself, I was very against the changes at first, but I'm one of those low-skill casual players
But the best players had their say, and I think FAF is better for it.


For PA even to get it moderately balanced will take some time.
I might be speaking out of turn here, but I think a lot of the FAF guys have really high hopes for this game.
They are hoping to get the ball rolling on balance so that on launch this game is actually a great success.
This means most units in the game ASAP so the balancing can begin.

Faf is not that good for the simple reason that the players always limit the size and scope of the maps and refuse to have ai teams in to keep gayboy rushing down to a minimum.

well said

The launch of the game is in December, apparently. Eventhough the Uber team has made so much of the game in such a short amount of time, I think don't think the game will be "ready" in time. When I say "ready" I mean: Well playable with an almost complete unit roster and ways to fight in orbit and interplantary, accross a divers solar system.

Everytime I see something new being added to the game, I'm very happy. But even at the current rate of development of the game I don't think there is enought time. Uber asks many questions on the forum, this helps them to make decisions. For example, "What units would you like to see" or "How would you like to see orbital". But the forum isn't the fastes medium out and there are many opinions and almost never a clear conclusion. So this is a very time consuming process.

I truly hope for a game that when compaired to the trailer I can say: "And that is just a sneak peek." But currently I'm worried that it wouldn't be finnished in time. Or that it will be rushed and it will not live up to my expectations. Then again I might expect or worry to much.

But it not just Beta, it's already Beta and in December the game will be released.

There are games of any size you want, from 5x5 to 81x81.

And AIs are trash and always lag the game, if you play with them you are just inviting a bad time.

I can understand the critic of the UI. I can understand the critic on thinking balance won't have time to happen. But I can't understand the critic on the level of strategy. To me this game has taken RTS' to a new level. You have randomly generated maps (close enough). You have strategic picking of initial placement. You have multiple layers of warfare. You have a spherical map ( you can be attacked from all sides and you can just go sit in a corner and know they can't hit you from the south or the east). You have multiple maps (more than one planet) to consider and play on at once. There is HUGE strategical depth here and its WAY ahead of all the other games imho.

The devs said there goal was December, however it is my hope that they will not release the game until it is done, also they have delivered things very fast up to this point. So to OP, your worries are not mine. The game is already fun and Massive in scale and size. The balance will come after we get all the units and layers completed and I expect like most of the game they will ask and give us opportunities to help with that balance.

Cheap ssd's like the agility is probably asking for trouble. Have you heard of trim support for win 7.

"gayboy rushing"

At last somebody who understands the need for ai teams. The random factor of ai teams within larger multiplier games is essential, not only does it stop the "gayboy rushing" element but it also keeps players honest, i.e people sitting in FA(F) building the experimental resource generator, but not having any shields or nuke defense.

As for makeing the game lag, yes of course it adds extra pressure on your rig, but if you love the game (which we all seem to do) buy/build a rig that won't lag... simples.

oh that's untrue, there's tons of people who host games like "noobs only" "vs ai" and i still love Alpha seven quarantine and zero point.

I'm positive that target leading is on the way.

FA(F) its not good ,its just awsome in every possible ways!
The best rts ever made.
Sry i just cant stay quiet ,when i see ppl talk bad about an rts, full off quality and gameplay .
Not talk about all team behind, that no 1 pay them, and they make FA(F) bether then GPG ever was.
You not find in any other game, all the surroundings on the battlefield, the epic proportions of all combat units, that provide to all lovers of the genre, an authentic feeling of being in paradise ,on an RTS scale world.
You got maps ,skills, mods to all kind taste.
You got one off the best Vault ,livereplay ,livecasts, GalatiWar,Coop-Missions to SC and FA
That we can only say Ty Ze-Pilot

I have to say I share a lot of Ze-Pilot's concerns about the game release time frame. There have been several posts here that outline the issues, but it all boils down to the fact that an RTS requires a TON of features to match up to the current best RTS games out there, and in order to pull the veterans across from those other games, PA needs to be BETTER.

Right now, PA simply doesn't have the feature set to compete, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who dips in once in a while to kick the tires, but doesn't play regularly because there is no point - if you want to play a fun RTS, you have to play FAF / Zero-K.

The Uber team has worked very hard to implement some of the seriously core pieces of the game, and I give them a full measure of respect for the amazing product they have accomplished in such a small amount of time. The fact remains though that PA is way behind the pack in terms of scale, playability and control, and until such times as that is updated / completed, I don't think you'll see many pro players jump on board. The UI in particular is an area I'm eagerly waiting for them to tackle, because as of now, as Googlefrog has said, the game is an exercise in wrestling with the UI, not fighting each other.

Now I'm quite confident that Uber is both capable and smart enough to see the issues, so the only concern I have is the time frame. Are they going to be able to get that UI polish and control done in time for a release? Or will financial constraints force their hand and make them release before they are ready? I sincerely hope not.