Some changes in how we use PTE

Yeah, nothing wrong with that. ^^

I'm hoping we can place ANY features, including any features not currently used in base generation. (Alpha plateau. <3 )

Yeah I do love the idea of plateaus though Some of my favorite maps from TA had big plateaus.

Make it so PA map designers

"Ashap Plateau" from TA.

Oh man, that was a hard map. You couldn't build on the rough terrain down below; only just a bit around the metal spots IIRC. A fun map though, I have memories of playing it with a friend and totally causing us to lose!

I think they said there might be terrain adjustments, like left click to raise, right to push down, etc... If so I'd either set up one huge plateau brush, or raise the ground and use some cliffside subtractive brushes.

I guess it was to test for stuff like bridges. If you have a flatter sloped brush you can easily place a bridge over a big crack

This, definitely this one. That "just" needs support vectors in the height map which are dominating the "natural" noise.

Brushes are all nice and stuff, but smoothening the slope into the base terrain is difficult.

I wish this feature was more widely used for advanced buildings. It was awesome in TA when nuclear reactors, big berthas and other energetic buildings and units were blowing up smaller close units when they were destroyed. It gives a bigger impression of a juicy weak spot in your base.

Also, do you think it would be feasible for the art team to make some modular 3d models to assemble in order to make a larger structure. (Like a very wide plateau with ramps for example)

To be honest I don't think this jig change is going to make much of a difference anyway. The default action will become to drag build jigs, that's all. @jables mentions how "if you want to try to be greedy, you can build them closer" but there will never actually be a reason to do so as far as I can tell, since Gas Giants are so massive anyway..there is really never any need at all to make more use of the surface. This is especially true with the ridiculous amount of metal and energy jigs bring in - there is never really any need to build many at all.

It might not make much difference with the first iteration of this change however that's why it's on the PTE and will be tweaked and changed to suit. I for one very much welcome the change. Because you won't want your avengers near the nuke explosion, even if no other jigs are close by.

There is not enough metal on that planet.

When a 1v1 gets exciting each player has 15 to twenty mex each.

This income allows for unit diversity and possible leaps in tech.

There is barely twenty mex on half the planet shown in the pic.

With this planet and mex I will simply com rush every single game as any player trying to obtain the sparse plus spaced out metal while building with com will lose to my aggression 95% of the time GUARANTEED.

Looks like there is barely 50 mex on entire planet QQ

I would rather metal be limited than energy to be honest, which is the opposite at the moment.

@jables
First off:


Second:

If you stick to giving balance changes to the community via the PTE before release, I will be ecstatic.
And also kind of annoyingly stubborn about what my feedback is for those changes. Per usual.

@wondible
Your comment - doesn't it make you think a long-range orbital attack vessel might be feasible?

still a far cry from http://www.uberent.com/pa/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/03/biome_05_1280.jpg

That's why randomly generated maps are better, and the fog of war should also hide the metal spots at the start of each match so that you need to scout.

So a sort of capital ship? Lots of things are feasible. With that as the terror of satellites, the role of fighters would change to attacking and defending the capital ships.

From photoshop? Yes.

Every time I see those biome pics it always makes me a bit sad. Planetary Annihilation: the game that could have been, but wasn't :-(

I didn't expect anything near that, but I expected terrain to play a greater role than it does currently, with just useless plateaus sprinkled across the map.
I say useless, but the example in the OP isn't as bad, since they were hand placed.

I think you will like this map editor, then.

Yeah that terrain would add some awesome gameplay, close up units would thrash tanks, bombers couldn't hit much, ranged defence would be useless without LOS.

Much better than those terrible 1 inch tall pathing errors we have now. Could take a long time to catch up on 17 year old TA technology?