PA Gameplay differences to TA

thought this would be an interesting discussion. at first i thought they were pretty much the same but now i've played a bit i notice some big differences that gives you a much better game in PA.

tier one laser towers are excellent early defence for a bot rush. in TA these were not used at all mainly due to expense.

tier 2 bots and tanks - many games in TA wouldn't even bother with tier 2 units, just spam tier 1s all game, but in PA tier 1s quickly become ineffective against decent defences and a tier 2 army will decimate you.

turtling - bad tactic in TA, your opponent will simply out resource you. in PA turtling appears to be viable, defences are very good and you can spam nukes.

anything else?

no turtleling is not viable in PA. not by any account. and this is already the case and balance hasn't even started.

You cold Turtle forever in TA if you knew how. Just set up an actual defensive line and build a lot of counter radar.

Turtling with Catapults is viable in PA because of how hilariously powerful they are.

Main difference?

Pace. TA was slow, methodical and gave you a chance to weigh your options before you committed to a decision.
PA, not so much.

Simple answer: TA is a finished game, PA not.

Btw. you can turtle until one side gets nukes, then its game over.

Major difference in TA was that you could actually use terrain in your tactics.
For example, trick an enemy army of Thuds on a plateau and attack them upwards. Easy game as they cant tilt their barrels to enough negative elevation to hit your units .
Or use it to increase range of your arty, use a mountain ridge to attack and retreat quickly, all kinds of stuff.

Doesnt look like PA will feature this.

Battles where so much more "alive" as the units, in most cases, where not one or two-shot kills but did survive a bit. This enabled a whole lot of tactics that are just about impossible in PA.

And units like Nike, Obliterator,.. made it fun to play even if they where not the most efficient way of dealing with things.

But most important: TA is finished, PA not

Don't catapults also track their targets?

Best answer I've seen so far.

yes. that is a difference. new mechanic is a welcome change but I think it needs to be changed further still to not be so efficient and spot on every single time

I just see why it should track its targets, as it currently completely replaced the other artillery's purpose.

I'm not so sure. They are very expensive and have to kill a lot of units to break even in cost. The reduced range makes them kinda balanced now. If anything they are more useful for offensive attacks on factories or the commander.

I personally loved this in TA with all my heart and am hoping to see more of it in PA, but TA's landscape tended to be extremely rocky, hilly, and just all around not flat. If you did have a flat map, it was flat for huge areas, and when it wasn't flat, it was almost always nothing but hills. PA doesn't have the rocky / hilly areas that TA had (yet?) because TA maps was hand built to have these.

I'm hoping to eventually see the scale of height advantages including line of sight changes (unlike SupCom) to really make terrain feel important. I don't know if Uber will manage to pull off the importance of terrain in PA like how it was in TA, but from the posts I've seen, we should get something similar, and that's something to be excited about.

While we are at it, is it known if there will be a REAL map editor for PA?

Probably not made by the developers, and certainly not for release in December.

Neutrino is keen to let people develop the ability to hand-craft maps, but Uber is not spending time to develop mapmaking software themselves during the development period.

Nice to hear that custom "made" maps will be possible. As long as it works and gets released somewhere in 2014 Im happy

hopefully elevation will get some attention, plateaus, canyons and such. TA had an incredible amount of map variation, atm PA seems like it only really has large open land maps or island type games. the 'sphere' of PA does seem to actually hamper innovative map design.