Why I dislike Planetary Annihilation

You edited your post after I started writing (edit: and I just saw you edited this one too, after I posted). But I don't see how it changes my argument. I wasn't disagreeing that lessons can't be learned. But I disagree that the solution is to start from an existing game. That actually precludes it from developing it's own balance and becoming it's own game (and that's not a contradiction with it being a successor to one of the others - after all, FA plays nothing like TA yet is still considered a successor).

Your T2 argument, for example. It assumes that because it's not perfect now, it can't be, with the implication that it should be changed to how FA (edit: or any other game) does it. But there's no proof of that. It's not an absolute that the current values can't work with other adjustments. Nor does it mean uber are committed to the current values. They are testing the waters, and that's ok.

You can't really be too specific when taking parts from other games, because they play totally differently, and the unit interactions are different. And it makes sense that things work in finished games but not yet in PA, that's why it's still under development.

Well in the new balance test (which may well be a public stable build very soon), they are 4 times less efficient than t1 mex which plays really well, in a similar way to FA.

Exactly what I'm saying. If they started from something that worked in the first place, they would have earn several months to reach the point they are now about them.

Exactly my points. Chances are that these adjustments will naturally go towards what it is in other games.

Perhaps they just wanted to make their own game and experiment rather than make TA/FA on planets. They've barely started balancing out the game, the unit roster isn't close to how it will end up. They need to finish the core features of the game first.

I've constantly reading that modders will eventually fix the game and make it playable for turtlers. That's highly doubtful, and I'll explain why. Vanilla SupCom was turtle-friendly from the beginning, mods only made it better. Turtle-friendliness consisted generally of three elements:

1. Full set of long-range protection: shields, anti-nukes and TMDs made it impossible to break properly constructed defense in any way except direct assault.
2. Heavy assault weapons: while normal units was the tools for raiding unprotected or weakly protected positions, experimentals was the tools of piercing main defensive line, being expensive but only possible to pack enough resilience and punch to do the trick.
3. Intensive economy: actually, the primary thing that made turtling even possible, is the ability to replace expansion with teching up by using mass fabricators.

SupCom FA, after devs given up to "pro players" pressure, was not turtle-friendly. Intensive economy was gone, experimentals and shields were nerfed. However, it was fixable by an unintended use of a mod: TVg had growing over time bonuses for mass extractors, fabricators and shields. Only an unexpected consequence of this mod's feature made epic fortress vs fortress matches even possible.

SupCom 2 wasn't initially playable for turtlers, but not for the same reason. This time, problem was caused by deeply flawed user interface and crippled economy induced excessive micromanagement, including notorious manual management of anti-nukes and mass converters, as well as inability of planning defensive line construction ahead of time. Also, heavy assault units won't quite cut it. In this case, however, that problems was directly addressed by modders. That's a rare occasion, probably caused by the fact that modders being turtlers themselves or generally support an idea of strategic diversity. It would be nice to have RVE guys in PA, but as far as I know, they're very busy and barely manage to get time to keep RVE development up to schedule.

In PA case, however, anti-turtling lobbyists were here from the start, quickly growing in influence over developers by convincing them that they represent majority's opinion. By now, it is safe to conclude that they're succeeded at pushing turtle-banning decisions far more than in FA. All three aspects of turtle-friendly balance were rooted out of the game. If some brave modder now decides to make an original SupCom-like mod, he'll be forced to implement balance from scratch. And server release delay also discourages modders by long wait. And we don't have any built-in mod management and distribution tools. We don't even know an extent to which the game will be moddable, or at least have no evidence of high moddability aside from devs' statements - and coding is cruel thing, every single software project is starting with intentions to be modular and extensible, but most of them end up being monolithic and unstable to any change. And to make things worse, most capable modders out there are against turtling-friendly balance. There's just too much odds are against turtling in PA.

Probably, but currently it's exactly that : TA/FA on planets. With awful balance and UI.
The latter is more a problem for me currently.

In response to your thing about experimentals... I'm working on it already. I

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-megabot-help-wanted.58881/
All I need it a stupid rig for the model...

who said that? noone.

what FA is, is potentially PA's key to scratching years of balancing off.
This is what it looks like when you respond this way :


10 years of backing and love

That's because balance has barely started and UI is barely past first pass. So hardly surprising.

Agreed with OP.

To me PA battles feel massive but totally unepic. It looks almost like quantity does not mean quality.
Why to bother with any decent tactic if you can cover enemy with masses of any units. My current tactic for late game is to defend commander from nukes or sniping raids. Then make new factories when eco grows and put them on infinite loop, collect all those dots and send in direction of enemy dots. Does not matter if they survive, what counts is to keep pressure on enemy, before he kills my units i get next blob that i can send in from another side. In PA most valuable resource is players time.

I recently played some SUPCOM: FA and it feels more epic than pa.

Well I'll be pretty happy if this game isn't like FA. The tier system is horrible. (Well with the 6 games or so that I played) so I'm pretty much an expert. But as a beginner playing it, it was horrible. I didn't think it was balanced well at all. As t3 was much better than t2 which is much better than t1.

key word guys.

@nawrot hit the nail on the head in what was wrong with this game currently.

Not saying the developers don't have time to fix this or should have done it already, not saying it won't be done in time, just saying we're not idiots who don't know what we're talking about.

didn realize ACU were that big, i guess its all about Conveying scale. Yeah i really enjoyed the game.

I wonder how big the PA commander would be compared to the red robot.

The thing that makes me afraid though, is that the developers currently probably think that the entire community is highly against introducing something big. Because they've previously stated cons of having megabots, which most of fans have supported in debates here on the forum. Those of us who do support the idea of getting something more epic into the battlefield, needs to speak out. That is if there is enough people here beside me, which I hope, because for me something like this is essential.

Oh, it's definitely something a lot of people have wanted. Megabots are one of the most discussed topics on this forum, so the developers are definitely aware of it. Here are just some of the threads on this topic over the years;

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/poll-experimentals-tier-4-super-units.35496/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/experimentals-what-would-you-want-to-see.37304/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/for-backers-only-megabot-experiment.44543/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/experimental-units.49163/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/suggestion-a-new-way-to-handle-experimentals.50065/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/idea-for-experimentals-larger-units-ships.50532/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/reviving-the-megabot-discussion-in-light-of-recent-events.51057/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/suggestion-another-possible-pa-take-on-megabot.52231/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...mensional-can-we-get-a-megabot-already.55362/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/end-game-mega-units.55641/

A lot of those are in the Backers' forum, so not everyone will be able to read them I guess.

Nothing is essential if the game is balanced well.

i scaled them to the Trees and the map a ACU as as big as the walker

Uh what? It's the other way around. Everything is essential in some way if the game is balanced well. That's sort of the fundamental goal of good balance.

The topic of "remove the ability to turtle" is a sore subject with me. Its a RTS game, players should have the option to turtle if they want to, not be limited by set rules that a hand full of players whine about.

All this does is make a rts game that promotes players to play like this or else you lose...........thats not strategy, its expand, spam, repeat. Not epic at all.

What makes a rts epic and has made them epic for a decade now is games allowing players the option to play and strategize how they see fit. You want PA to be epic? Allow all gamers strategies into the game. The turtles, spammers, rushers, arms racers, expanders etc etc.

Whats wrong with having a fortified staging area that gives you a chance to reinforce your army that just took big loses. IE turtling.

I love PA, and right now there are only two things that bother me. The first being: theres no real attachment to your units. You mindlessly send them to die not caring if they make it back or not. Ive never liked this type of game play, there should be some risk and reward from sending your army out. Not just strenghth in numbers.

2nd:the spam nature of this game worries me, i hope it doesnt suffer from the horrible lag that sup com had in high unit games even with a high end machine.

Im personal glad shields are not in this game or experimentals, they made for some pretty bland game play.

End rant lol.

What I mean is, if you remove something, the game can easily be balanced with a unit or mechanics absence.

Nothing is actually required.