Planetary Annihilation (Spiritual Successor to Total Annihilation) - In Beta Now

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bho

Bronze Knight of the Realm
207
7
Is anyone playing this? Surprised it hasnt been mentioned since Total Annihilation was such a great RTS. Its not out yet but you can buy it on steam ($45 today i think) and get immediate access to Beta.

Planetary Annihilation
 
Fadaar

Fadaar

That guy
10,473
11,411
TA is the game that got me into online gaming. Hell I still fire it up every now and then with some of the massive unit packs and huge maps.

TA > SC
 
Grimsark

Grimsark

Avatar of War Slayer
3,262
24,518
Early Access has dropped to $30.

They just added the single player campaign.

I am tempted to buy... Resisting.
 
T

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
I gave in and bought it. I'll probably play some today and can give some opinion.
 
T

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
Played for maybe an hour or so. As some background I never got into Supreme Commander but like RTS games like Starcraft.

First off the UI, for an early access game, is pretty decent. It is a bit cluttered with stuff going on but it is easy to navigate and find stuff. I didn't care for it forcing me to make an account and log-in and have a separate friends list from Steam.

I haven't played MP so this is all from the SP "campaign."

Basically you start out with nothing. You have your commander and you build your basic stuff and you want to kill the other commander. As you jump around the galaxy you find various techs that you can socket. These techs basically unlock more of the tech tree. It is a nice concept but feels a bit restrictive. The way it seems you won't have the full tech tree at your disposal. But there are techs that you find that increase your tech deck. I think I'm at like 7 or 8 now. I've found techs to unlock advanced factory, nukes, sub-commanders (AI controlled ally faction), improved defenses and the like.

You "jump" from galaxy to galaxy somewhat akin to FTL. When you jump you either land on an empty galaxy you are free to "explore" to find tech [note: this happens automatically there isn't a Mass Effec-eque minigame or anything] or an enemy commander is in the galaxy and you fight. The difficulty of the commanders seems to scale based upon their color. It appears orange = super easy, red = easy, purple = medium. At least that is what I've found so far.

As for the gameplay it self it seems pretty stable and good. It is much more like Supreme Commander than Starcraft where you have absolute hordes of units you just toss at the enemy. I haven't encountered an AI that has really survived my initial rush. The economy of the game seems to be a teeter-totter you try and balance between Minerals (steel, I think) and Power. I haven't fully figured out how the economy works but basically you "pay-as-you-go" instead of Starcraft where you pay up front. So if something costs 15,000 Minerals (you can only bank like 1000 at a time) it will just be a drain on your mineral income. This is where the teeter-totter comes in. If you have a slow mineral income it will quickly drain your reserves and you need to halt construction on the building to get back enough minerals to continue. Power (which I have yet to figure out exactly how it is drained and at what rate) measures your effeciency. So if you lack power to construct something it will construct at 25% the rate. But if you have +500 mineral income and the stucture costs you -200 minerals per cycle you will still net +300. So you can build more shit. But if you try and build 5 things at once chances are you don't have the mineral efficiency to do that. So you'll try and make 5 things at once which will take 1000x longer than just making them one after another. Generally I have three "teams" making stuff. I have yet to really figure out the ratio of extractors
tongue.png
ower plants:factories.

Overall I think the game has potential. I haven't really gone into different planets or launched nukes yet.
 
Regime

Regime

LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
16,426
37,821
Tenks_sl said:
Played for maybe an hour or so. As some background I never got into Supreme Commander but like RTS games like Starcraft.

First off the UI, for an early access game, is pretty decent. It is a bit cluttered with stuff going on but it is easy to navigate and find stuff. I didn't care for it forcing me to make an account and log-in and have a separate friends list from Steam.

I haven't played MP so this is all from the SP "campaign."

Basically you start out with nothing. You have your commander and you build your basic stuff and you want to kill the other commander. As you jump around the galaxy you find various techs that you can socket. These techs basically unlock more of the tech tree. It is a nice concept but feels a bit restrictive. The way it seems you won't have the full tech tree at your disposal. But there are techs that you find that increase your tech deck. I think I'm at like 7 or 8 now. I've found techs to unlock advanced factory, nukes, sub-commanders (AI controlled ally faction), improved defenses and the like.

You "jump" from galaxy to galaxy somewhat akin to FTL. When you jump you either land on an empty galaxy you are free to "explore" to find tech [note: this happens automatically there isn't a Mass Effec-eque minigame or anything] or an enemy commander is in the galaxy and you fight. The difficulty of the commanders seems to scale based upon their color. It appears orange = super easy, red = easy, purple = medium. At least that is what I've found so far.

As for the gameplay it self it seems pretty stable and good. It is much more like Supreme Commander than Starcraft where you have absolute hordes of units you just toss at the enemy. I haven't encountered an AI that has really survived my initial rush. The economy of the game seems to be a teeter-totter you try and balance between Minerals (steel, I think) and Power. I haven't fully figured out how the economy works but basically you "pay-as-you-go" instead of Starcraft where you pay up front. So if something costs 15,000 Minerals (you can only bank like 1000 at a time) it will just be a drain on your mineral income. This is where the teeter-totter comes in. If you have a slow mineral income it will quickly drain your reserves and you need to halt construction on the building to get back enough minerals to continue. Power (which I have yet to figure out exactly how it is drained and at what rate) measures your effeciency. So if you lack power to construct something it will construct at 25% the rate. But if you have +500 mineral income and the stucture costs you -200 minerals per cycle you will still net +300. So you can build more shit. But if you try and build 5 things at once chances are you don't have the mineral efficiency to do that. So you'll try and make 5 things at once which will take 1000x longer than just making them one after another. Generally I have three "teams" making stuff. I have yet to really figure out the ratio of extractors
tongue.png
ower plants:factories.

Overall I think the game has potential. I haven't really gone into different planets or launched nukes yet.
Click to expand...
thanks I may buy it. I am horrible at RTS like...neverwin but if you want partner I'll pick it up if you think its worth it. Funny thing is I am a boss with Risk and Axis and Allies Tabletop.
 
T

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
If you find yourself pretty bad at RTS this game wouldn't be any different I don't think. It is pretty fast paced and you need to remember to be doing different things in different locations. If you want a slower paced RTS perhaps try Settlers7. That game is amazing and underrated IMO.
 
meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,383
4,655
I only played 1 game of it probably a montha go, did pretty well but was eventually overwhelmed by the lone AI left of the 6 or whatever I started against. I was really just playing to experience all of the units. I found the orbit-based units hard to really do much with, especially when shortly after being able to put anything in orbit he was killing them within seconds.
 
W

Wrathcaster

You just have to consistently outproduce the AI, and you do that by making absolutely sure you're always producing fabrication bots and new factories, harassing his fabricators who try to expand out into the map, and continually pushing outwards- or establishing outpost bases and growing them across the map to give your starting base some breathing room.

The main thing that really helped me was to avoid being a supreme turtle and building base defenses i didn't need, as well as no longer falling into the mindset of avoiding offense until I had a big army built up, and not attacking in one giant wave in a single spot.

The greatest thing about the orbitals is that if you can get them built early enough, you just need to land 1 fabber or your commander to a new planet/moon and you'll buy yourself a decent amount of time if you're a defensive player.

Or you can just zerg rush his commander. The AI commanders seem to be pretty dumb, so just throwing all of your units in a giant death ball early into the game will normally seal a victory, although it's a pretty lame way to play.

I'm really frustrated with it, though. I love to engage in long, epic games spanning across multiple planets and moons with ridiculous amounts of units built up, utilizing every offensive, defensive, and utility assets in my arsenal in conjunction. It seems like almost every time, just as I'm on the cusp of the final war-ending engagement, the server crashes and I can't reconnect to jump back into my game. Boom, 45 minutes gone, completely cock blocked because the thing's still fucking online only. Doesn't matter if it's AI or PvP. Everyone has the issue and Uber knows about it, but refuse to implement Offline mode until the game fully releases, which is currently slated for "when it's done." No DRM, no always online, nothing- but only once the entire thing is complete. Really pisses me off, because I really want to finish these games.
 
W

Wrathcaster

This is set for release in 3 days. I'd highly recommend anyone interested avoiding a purchase until there's an announcement that offline single player, LAN play, and player-hosted servers have been implemented. These were features promised to be in by launch, and 3 days before it goes retail Uber has been eerily silent on it. The last build before the retail release build has introduced horrific performance problems into the game that largely revolve around the Uber servers running the simulation, so no matter your machine, if there's a large amount of people concurrently playing, you're going to deal with a slideshow past a 15 minute game, usually less.

And I'm not even talking multiplayer here. Playing vs. AI (which the vast majority of PA players choose to do) is just as bad as playing against actual people because of the aforementioned serverside simulation design. Essentially, you're going to lag just as hard playing singleplayer as you would against five human opponents. This is a problem that's existed since alpha and has never really improved, and Uber is woefully short on resources to provide more or better servers to alleviate the strains that will accompany the retail release.

The game is basically unplayable past 10 minutes as it is, and if you've ever played SC or FA you'll understand how catastrophic that is for this game, especially when you consider that it's an RTS that includes dozens of battles consisting of hundreds or thousands of units spread over multiple planets. Combine that with the fact that Uber has bald-face lied to its backers about offline and DRM free play, and you'll understand why this isn't a game you should purchase until after reviews have come in and there are reports that the game actually functions.
 
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