Planetary Annihilation

Well I really don't want to derail this thread.

I've been playing WoT since closed beta.
Not a 57% er but not far short a bit under 56%.

Wehraboos complain that German tanks aren't insta-win.
They aren't, because tanks are tiered by capability so yes you will have a fair chance of losing to a same-tier US/Russian/Chinese/whatever.

Match Maker is not some horror stacked against the player because it doesn't always give them a win.
It is the absolute key to keeping the game fresh by making each battle unique.

WG practice rather than wringing maximum $$$ out of players, is to allow players to do pretty much everything without paying.
They have given out vast amounts of free premium time, premium tanks & slots, easy silver missions etc. Vast.

I played after launch all the way up to 2* T9 & a T8 Arty in garage + 1* T10 researched & a bunch of other tanks without paying a cent.

I've spent a fair bit more since then but still not much more than for a normal PC game or two.
I absolutely feel that I have had great value for money & I still mostly play non-premium.
 
So I apparently missed it but they officially went Launched on 5 Sept.
http://www.uberent.com/pa/2014/09/05/planetary-annihilation-officially-launched/
(which explains the Launch trailer)

Apparently they had a Launch livestream at http://www.twitch.tv/uberentertainment/b/565428322 but its not there, not in their replays & not on their Youtube.
Was no Announcement thread in their forums.
Kinda weird.

Going by the Steam patchnotes the 1.0 version went out on 3rd Sept.
Has already been a further patch on 10th.
 
RPS Wot I Think http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/17/planetary-annihilation-review/

Edit: Hmm, is actually kinda shite review.
But this from the comments I feel sums up nicely kinda compared to Starcraft2 (an age old debate! TA/SupCom vs Starcraft):
LionsPhil says:

So, the Starcraft click-frenzy claims the Total Annihilation lineage at last. Shame.
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17/09/2014 at 22:19 subedii says:

I’d actually have to disagree with that on both points.

For one, TA was actually a fairly fast paced game.

But more importantly, PA is very definitively a Macro game, and it doesn’t require ANYTHING like Starcraft’s obsessive clicking.

I’ll be blunt, I’ve always felt that Starcraft’s UI was built around forcing the player to do a ridiculous amount of additional micromanagement busy-work. The deliberate design of factories to only have a 5 unit queue, the way that funds are subtracted immediately upon ordering a unit / structure (meaning that in fact, you are literally NEVER supposed to queue anything if you can help it). Mechanics like Larval inject and chrono-boost (which are literally, click this button each time, every time, at 20-30 second intervals). Supply and the very idea of being “supply blocked” (one more deliberate design decision, one more thing to juggle). And then you get to the unit micromanagement, spell casting, ‘stutter-step’, it’s endless.

PA on the other hand has a UI evolved to allow you to implement your plans as easily as possible. Streaming economy puts the emphasis on constant production. Which factories oblige by having infinite-repeat build queues with easy one-off “priority” inserts into the queue with a simple ctrl-click.

Producing buildings or facilities en-mass is quite literally click-and-drag to queue. Want to build on all metal spots in an area (or the whole planet)? Click, drag. Want to have your units scout the entire planet? Click-drag. Want to give an area-attack command? You get the idea.

Without spell casting units, army attacks focus far less on individual unit micro, and instead on supply of units and composition, and attacking from the best front. Attacks tend to happen in large swathes as opposed to a back-and-forth of spell and ability slinging.

In SC2, I feel like if you’re clicking a lot it’s because you’re having to take care of a ridiculous amount of minutiae. In PA, I feel like it’s because the scope of the game has expanded. it’s because you’re trying to control large scale battles across different fronts on several different planets at the same time. And even then, I’ve never felt like I need the kind of crazy APM that a game of SC2 constantly tasks me with.

Basically I don’t need to click my command centre every 30 seconds on-the-dot to make one more worker. And that’s something I’m happy about. I realise there’s a whole argument to be had for SC2′s style of gameplay design, but I don’t think that school of thought has ever really appealed to me.
Click to expand...

Well it seems other reviewers aren't liking it much/don't get it/barely played & couldn't be assed to actually work out some of the basic commands...
http://au.ign.com/articles/2014/09/17/planetary-annihilation-review
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-16-planetary-annihilation-review
http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/09/12/wont-live-happily-ever-planetary-annihilation/
http://www.pcgamesn.com/planetary-annihilation/planetary-annihilation-review

I mean several of these refer to SupCom as if they played it but from the fact they have issues with PA being complex & actually complain about the focus on economic growth over specific unit abilities shows they simply haven't.

Honestly haven't played it that much so I haven't got into the hotkeys or messed too much with tweaking settings but someone who actually knows SupCom should be able to pretty much hop straight in & have fun.
If you let people who never played Starcraft or paid any attention to the betas etc review Starcraft2 you would probably get much the same shitty reviews too.
 
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Allegedly $14.99 on Steam right now. But I've recently seen links to five reviews that aren't too kind to the game... ;)
 
@hoom: Just because the game is like Supcom/TA doesnt mean it gets everything right (or atleast as much right as those games).
Several people from Supcom returned to it, plainly because PA is actually quite different in play stile

I played Supcom/FA till way past the time its player numbers got unhealthy low and I played PA during Alpha, Beta and Gamma (as they called it) - I havent catched enough time to dive into the release yet so read the rest of this post as hypothesis based on the game as it was still trying to figure out what it should become (my impression is that this was and likely is not entirely decided by the devs).

The playerbase in Supcom could be roughly divided into 2 groups, one which tried to adhere to the basics, learn and improve.
The other who just spend a good part of an hour (or hours) building up insane numbers or exp units and then typically just have one decisive battle (advantages just get bigger if unchecked).

I would argue that both are badly served with PA, as it was and likely still is.

The first group, the competitive players to which I count myself, except that your decision and timing makes a difference. And this is not going down to starcraft-levels of dumb stuff that a braindead timer could do - inject larva every x seconds, chrono boost if Energy >= xy. Its about having reasonable decisions to do, none being by default better than the other, and the UI helping you do this in a good manner (long ahead-queues, limitless zoom, automatic assist) - if you have to babysit anything of this then thats micro and I`d call it bad micro. And decisions should be fair and educated, means you shouldnt get an unfair advantage by default or by luck.

With PA, the issue is that this gets problematic upon a certain size. First your opening gets into a stone, paper, scissors type game, you could build lots of bots, air or eco. if your enemy is close the bots will waste him early, if hes somewhat far the air will cause him trouble, if he is far then eco will give you an advantage later. There was and think still is no way to make an educated guess or react to the (extreme) direction your opponent takes.

If the game goes further you will get into extreme turtles and extreme guesses to what to do next, compare that to Supcom where you nearly always had your fronts and fought back and forth. Now you can get units teleported and nukes from other planets. Such wars to me are just plain boring and bordering on business spreadsheets.

Further issue is the spherical map, while a nice idea (I actually wanted a game with spherical maps for long), this means a hard-to-manage mess on small planets and just sheer size on bigger ones.
Teleporters amplify this issue more. I think the scale is just unmanageable if you expect to "be on edge" for the whole duration, and the balancing will be a headache for decades.

Then there is the balancing, right now you can have really breaking and largely untested changes (I remember a video where bots just ran through water). This is ok in a early beta or in some optional mods but also tells that its far from finished.

Whats really needed and required before I make a further attempt is matchmaking. I really dont believe in learning a RTS in groups where the other player(s) eco pushes you up or down and half of the units will be skipped. Only then there can be reasonable attempts on balancing.

And to touch the other (supcom) group: they dont like unpredictable event much and they like building up for ages. in terms of badass-units there is nothing for them in PA, planets to smash will have to be fought over (rather dont believe they will do it early and later its pretty much game over if one wins this planet) and other planets will just be full of defenses.

So well, there you have a game that is released and has alot of unfinished work and still to prove that its viable fun for many (most ?) of the people that liked Supcom.

Eg. Some impressions from still active Supcom Players
 
I picked this up on Steam for the reduced price and I'm not very impressed from my brief play. I love SupCom, especially FA, but this seems to be a backwards step. The graphics are a bit pants to put it nicely, even on 'Uber'. The lack of colours, 1970's lego units and the whole blazing sun thing doesn't work IMHO.

The interface is pure s**t, making it differcult to distrguish units, it really gives the impression of a 15 year old game.

And finally the shortcut keys, wow, ctrl + this and ctrl + that for even basic commands. There are even ctrl + alt+other for some things! What were they thinking? Accessable it is not. It's almost like DOS Word Perfect with added on mouse control.

I guess I'll have to swat up on all the new shortcuts :(

The final thing I will mention is the fact it appears to still be a beta; it won't run with MSI Afterburner active and it's already crashed on me, I've only played it twice.
 
Why on earth wouldn't it run with afterburner active? How is that even possible...? I've never heard of such a thing before. What happens?
 
I think it's to do with Riva Tuner Stat Server thing Afterburner uses.

You load the game, hear the music but just get a blank screen, no error messages either. I googled it and found the reference to Afterburner, amongst all the other posts about PA crashing and burning in other ways I have yet to experience lol. Admittedly many of those may have been posts regarding much earlier versions.

I noticed someone else posted on the Steam forums a day after me, stating stopping the Riva stat server as a resolution.
 
I'm one of those casual turtling players that just liked to build experimentals and stomp on stuff. Right now PA doesn't do a whole lot for me.
 
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