What's Right: Suggestions on how to the get the most out of PA

[Written on Release Build: 72996]

TL;DR: Play on only Moons, Lava worlds, and Gas Giants. Only one starting planet. Don't use SSX to attack the commander. Don't build more than one nuke. Help?

I've been playing PA on and off since Alpha and since it's official release, quite a bit more. From 1v1, to 10 Player Free-For-All brawls and I'd like to share my thought on what I find the most fun. Hopefully, this will help people enjoy themselves more and maybe (if I'm allowed to be egotistic) give Uber a few ideas and feel good about others.

For me, RTSes in general are always at their best when armies are interacting or trying not to collide in someway. This is, happily, quite true of Planetary Annihilation as well. When your army of tanks, doxes, or planes are clashing with the other guys, it feels great! Streams of units from your factories constantly filling in what's been lost, reinforcing a perpetually changing front line as they crash against each other like great waves of forces... It's better than any other RTS has managed to date.

Sending out a piece of your army to raid or flank their army likewise feels great. You're subverting either their army or defenses in some way, forcing them to either split their forces or lose part of their resources. The clash of powers here isn't direct, but it's more strategic. A gambit that makes you worse off in the short run in the hopes of being better off than your opponent later.

That whole thing works marvelously with the flowing economy; the philosophy of how I see the game when I'm having a ton of fun seems to revolve around a constantly flowing river of resources and units. When I'm not having fun, it's because PA isn't facilitating that as well as it could be.

Planets: Boxing all or part of an army and sending it off somewhere mostly feels good by itself, it's when those units get caught on terrain features that I get annoyed. I'm not certain how the pathfinding works, but it goes around buildings and other units nicely. So, right now, the only planets which are 'perfect' have been lava worlds without much to get caught on, 'moons' with nothing in the way, and gas giants which should go without saying.

Orbital: It's passable for a system that brings a third layer of attack and defense into mix. When everyone is on the same planet, it's good because that's simply another strategic layer to be aware of. Death from above and all that jazz. The real issues come in when fighting an interplanetary battle. If someone manages to lock a planet down, it's simply not fun to assault it. With the exception of using the Annihilaser, I've never taken a fully defended planet and felt good about it.

A hail of nukes is somewhat fun, but that's a show of economic prowess. The only interaction with your opponent and the only strategic element there is scouting to make sure you're aiming in the right direction. A barrage of interplanetary nukes just takes time to get up. There's rarely a battle involved, a defense to construct, or even a warning the same way there is for Catalysts and Hallies. Unless you love explosions more than anything else in the world, winning and losing that way just doesn't feel as nice as a good 'ole army fight.

For the same reason, SSX snipes aren't very fun. Like nukes, they're a balanced way to win resource wise, but there's very little interaction with that form of victory.

To that, I recommend trying to limit your SSX and nuke usage. If a single SSX launched from the planet you're standing on starts picking away your structures from space, that's your fault for letting them get what's essentially a tier 3 unit when tier 1 easily defends against it. A single nuke will open up a hole in someone's defense network which with picture-in-picture and queued up orders, can open a land assault that will be far more fun.

...

This is a long post and it was going to be longer, but the more I write, the less certain I am about what I've written. PA as is feels pretty well balanced at the moment (save for naval), but these are the main things I can't have fun with. I have suggestions in mind for how to make them better, but I don't want to make yet another "Suggestions!" post; the Uber team likely sees enough of those and fine tuning is one of the hardest things in game development already. So... Thoughts? Criticisms? Tell me I'm wrong?

What a nice constructive post. I agree with many of your experiences and tend to favor invasions over snipes for the simple fun factor you mention. Which I think is what Uber intended from the beginning. I would still like to see the creation (by mod) of t2 bot units that can go between planets to open up planetary raiding around the 10-15 minute mark.