Planetary Annihilation: what are YOUR thoughts, KSP Community?

[Souper]

OK, so I've been playing this game called "Planetary annihilation: (link here), and so far i find it absolutely incredible. It's this little game where massive 10 meter tall robots capable of militarizing entire solar systems duke it out, ripping entire planets to bits in the process. In my opinion, the single best RTS game ever constructed.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Unless, they fixed it with recent patched, your feelings will drift to "again the same rush thing?" in a week.

That's how I feel about it, the game simply fell short, very short. Among the things I don't like about it:

1) A lot of irrelevant aspects to it. Say naval units. What do you use them for? The whole orbital affair lasts pretty much nothing because after you build your first units you have to go build the next thing or you'll die.

2) Built units don't upgrade when you upgrade its class. In other strategy games, say Age Of Empires, if you upgrade from knights to paladins, your currently existing knights upgrade automatically to paladins. In PA, the 50 level 1 tanks you have will still be level 1 tanks after you upgrade your vehicle factory to produce better double turret tanks, so you end up having all these worthless units that are now outclasses by your enemy units and your only use for them is to send them to attack just because.

3) It's all about rushing. No other strategy is useful.

4) The galactic war campaign thingy is the same boring thing over and over: go to a planet, have a fight, get some tech, go to a planet, have a fight, get some tech... No story, no real progression.

Again, I stopped playing after a couple of updates after launch, don't know if they got it better but I doubt it considering that the problems are with the core ideas of the game.

Also, early backers are still waiting to redeem some of the stuff they were promised back then...

No wonder why the kickstarter for their next game flopped due to lack of support.

So my vote is a "2 stars, it's rather bad", maybe mainly because how the devs hyped the thing. Otherwise it might have been a "meh".

Edit: Graphics are very very nice, I'll give them that.

[The Destroyer]

I rate it 4 stars, it's quite fun with friends, although it does lack real "strategy"

[Zamorakphat]

Never played it. Is it worth it?

[megatiger78]

Never played it. Is it worth it?

you can SMASH PLANETS! IT IS THE BEST!

[comham]

2) Built units don't upgrade when you upgrade its class. In other strategy games, say Age Of Empires, if you upgrade from knights to paladins, your currently existing knights upgrade automatically to paladins. In PA, the 50 level 1 tanks you have will still be level 1 tanks after you upgrade your vehicle factory to produce better double turret tanks, so you end up having all these worthless units that are now outclasses by your enemy units and your only use for them is to send them to attack just because.

Per resource cost, T1 units are supposed to be still useful against T2 units, or at least that was the design style they were going for a lá TA. It's not supposed to be a straight upgrade.

[Starwhip]

It looks pretty cool. I say 4.

[kenbobo]

kill it with fire

[Brethern]

Unless, they fixed it with recent patched, your feelings will drift to "again the same rush thing?" in a week.

That's how I feel about it, the game simply fell short, very short. Among the things I don't like about it:

1) A lot of irrelevant aspects to it. Say naval units. What do you use them for? The whole orbital affair lasts pretty much nothing because after you build your first units you have to go build the next thing or you'll die.

2) Built units don't upgrade when you upgrade its class. In other strategy games, say Age Of Empires, if you upgrade from knights to paladins, your currently existing knights upgrade automatically to paladins. In PA, the 50 level 1 tanks you have will still be level 1 tanks after you upgrade your vehicle factory to produce better double turret tanks, so you end up having all these worthless units that are now outclasses by your enemy units and your only use for them is to send them to attack just because.

3) It's all about rushing. No other strategy is useful.

4) The galactic war campaign thingy is the same boring thing over and over: go to a planet, have a fight, get some tech, go to a planet, have a fight, get some tech... No story, no real progression.

Again, I stopped playing after a couple of updates after launch, don't know if they got it better but I doubt it considering that the problems are with the core ideas of the game.

Also, early backers are still waiting to redeem some of the stuff they were promised back then...

No wonder why the kickstarter for their next game flopped due to lack of support.

So my vote is a "2 stars, it's rather bad", maybe mainly because how the devs hyped the thing. Otherwise it might have been a "meh".

Edit: Graphics are very very nice, I'll give them that.

Most of these problems exist in every RTS game in existence, starcraft 2 included.

[NFUN]

Most of these problems exist in every RTS game in existence, starcraft 2 included.

1) A lot of irrelevant aspects to it. Say naval units. What do you use them for? The whole orbital affair lasts pretty much nothing because after you build your first units you have to go build the next thing or you'll die.

Starcraft has no naval units, just air and land units, both of which are useful in different situations. One does not have to upgrade to the next best thing quickly or at all either, spamming marines works alright in lower tiers for example, and as far as I know there is no strict building meta.

2) Built units don't upgrade when you upgrade its class. In other strategy games, say Age Of Empires, if you upgrade from knights to paladins, your currently existing knights upgrade automatically to paladins. In PA, the 50 level 1 tanks you have will still be level 1 tanks after you upgrade your vehicle factory to produce better double turret tanks, so you end up having all these worthless units that are now outclasses by your enemy units and your only use for them is to send them to attack just because.

All relevant units are upgraded when research is completed in Starcraft.

3) It's all about rushing. No other strategy is useful.

Pro players have cautious, back-and-forth battles all of the time in Starcraft, and turtling can also work in lower tiers.

4) The galactic war campaign thingy is the same boring thing over and over: go to a planet, have a fight, get some tech, go to a planet, have a fight, get some tech... No story, no real progression.

I don't know how it works in Planetary Annihilation, but the Starcraft campaign, while not being very interesting gameplay-wise, is fairly involved lore-wise and largely acts as an extended tutorial, with missions being based around using the new tech. RTSs almost always focus on multiplayer in any case.

I'm not a Starcraft fanboy (haven't played it for years and was awful) but these problems don't apply strongly to the game. I haven't really played other RTSs which is why I'm focusing on SCII, my limited experience in Command and Conquer not being enough to yield an opinion.

[Kinglet]

PA is a stressful game with not the slightest trace of fun. Plus, the whole planets trying does not matter whatsoever. They don't feel like planets, they don't work like planets.

[steve_v]

Fun for a while, but it's no Total Annihilation. Meh, about what I expected.

[KSK]

Not voting because I haven't played the game but this thread isn't selling it to me.

[Brethern]

1) A lot of irrelevant aspects to it. Say naval units. What do you use them for? The whole orbital affair lasts pretty much nothing because after you build your first units you have to go build the next thing or you'll die.

Starcraft has no naval units, just air and land units, both of which are useful in different situations. One does not have to upgrade to the next best thing quickly or at all either, spamming marines works alright in lower tiers for example, and as far as I know there is no strict building meta.

No it doesn't but you could remove everything except for marine marauders and medievac from the terran side and no one would even notice.

2) Built units don't upgrade when you upgrade its class. In other strategy games, say Age Of Empires, if you upgrade from knights to paladins, your currently existing knights upgrade automatically to paladins. In PA, the 50 level 1 tanks you have will still be level 1 tanks after you upgrade your vehicle factory to produce better double turret tanks, so you end up having all these worthless units that are now outclasses by your enemy units and your only use for them is to send them to attack just because.

All relevant units are upgraded when research is completed in Starcraft.

The game it was inspired by didn't do that either it had tier units and once you teched up you built those instead.

[ZedNova]

It's okay. There are some cool moments to it, but not worth $60 moments.

[Three1415]

snip

I have heard many of the same complaints from people I know who have played it...Just another in the current series of "Look at the pretty lights!" games, I suppose...

This particular example aside, the gaming industry really depresses me right now; if it were not from KSP, I would just have washed my hands of it completely...Almost every studio I know of, from indie to AAA, has run its games into the ground in recent years. SCII is a pale imitation of its predecessor; the FPS industry has probably passed the point of no return; another of my erstwhile favorite games, Robocraft, effectively committed suicide a few months back...The requiem list goes on and on; it is just sad at this point, because generally people are willing to buy things that look nice but have no depth, and so studios have essentially forgotten how to make good games.

Most of these problems exist in every RTS game in existence, starcraft 2 included.

From a more theory-based perspective, I became largely disillusioned with strategy games in general a long time ago, starting with chess and progressing through the RTS industry, because to me they all suffer from a single, critical flaw: Repeatability. The problem with the strategy genre in general is not so much how games are played but with their unchanging sameness. In almost all members of this category, every match starts the same way, or at least largely so (i.e, there may be different maps in Starcraft, but the pool is limited, and in any case they still involve the same six matchups), which leads to the rise of builds--certain ways of playing a race or color or whatever distinguishes your team from another, and the strategy begins to leach out of the game to be replaced by technical skill or memorization.

In chess, for example, beyond a certain level, the game stops being about playing well and becomes one player trying to outmemorize the other; I got to this point in my early years, became quickly disillusioned, and simply quit. In Starcraft, for example, I quit after I saw enough of the game to realize that regardless of one's strategic ability victory is basically guaranteed for the player better at pushing buttons at the right times than the other, and there is no real strategy in that.

As such, a true "strategy game" is one wherein a player must rely on their intellect, rather than their memory of a build or technical ability, to claim victory over the opponent, and the only true way to do that is to randomize everything, and then one must deal with the problems of balance...Alas, creating one of these may be impossible.

[NFUN]

I have heard many of the same complaints from people I know who have played it...Just another in the current series of "Look at the pretty lights!" games, I suppose...

This particular example aside, the gaming industry really depresses me right now; if it were not from KSP, I would just have washed my hands of it completely...Almost every studio I know of, from indie to AAA, has run its games into the ground in recent years. SCII is a pale imitation of its predecessor; the FPS industry has probably passed the point of no return; another of my erstwhile favorite games, Robocraft, effectively committed suicide a few months back...The requiem list goes on and on; it is just sad at this point, because generally people are willing to buy things that look nice but have no depth, and so studios have essentially forgotten how to make good games.

From a more theory-based perspective, I became largely disillusioned with strategy games in general a long time ago, starting with chess and progressing through the RTS industry, because to me they all suffer from a single, critical flaw: Repeatability. The problem with the strategy genre in general is not so much how games are played but with their unchanging sameness. In almost all members of this category, every match starts the same way, or at least largely so (i.e, there may be different maps in Starcraft, but the pool is limited, and in any case they still involve the same six matchups), which leads to the rise of builds--certain ways of playing a race or color or whatever distinguishes your team from another, and the strategy begins to leach out of the game to be replaced by technical skill or memorization.

In chess, for example, beyond a certain level, the game stops being about playing well and becomes one player trying to outmemorize the other; I got to this point in my early years, became quickly disillusioned, and simply quit. In Starcraft, for example, I quit after I saw enough of the game to realize that regardless of one's strategic ability victory is basically guaranteed for the player better at pushing buttons at the right times than the other, and there is no real strategy in that.

As such, a true "strategy game" is one wherein a player must rely on their intellect, rather than their memory of a build or technical ability, to claim victory over the opponent, and the only true way to do that is to randomize everything, and then one must deal with the problems of balance...Alas, creating one of these may be impossible.

At some point, you are correct, and PvP matches become stale and dominated by a metagame of hard techniques almost required for victory. You may want to play games less competitively, and play more against the improving AIs where you are free to set the difficulty of the opponent and care less about the results of the match. Civilization, for example, may get old after a while, and people generally find one strategy that they like and stick with it. You might have more fun choosing different leaders and using strange, unique techniques just to see how they work to extend the lifetime of the game and minimize memorization of tactics. In KSP, certain rocket designs are common and work well, but that doesn't stop players from making outlandish craft for poops and giggles. Try playing a noncompetitive game of Starcraft with a build mainly of roaches and corrupters, or play chess using pieces only on one side of the board. When games with too much choice end up being too restrictive, use self-imposed challenges to break free of the meta.

[Brethern]

I have heard many of the same complaints from people I know who have played it...Just another in the current series of "Look at the pretty lights!" games, I suppose...

This particular example aside, the gaming industry really depresses me right now; if it were not from KSP, I would just have washed my hands of it completely...Almost every studio I know of, from indie to AAA, has run its games into the ground in recent years. SCII is a pale imitation of its predecessor; the FPS industry has probably passed the point of no return; another of my erstwhile favorite games, Robocraft, effectively committed suicide a few months back...The requiem list goes on and on; it is just sad at this point, because generally people are willing to buy things that look nice but have no depth, and so studios have essentially forgotten how to make good games.

From a more theory-based perspective, I became largely disillusioned with strategy games in general a long time ago, starting with chess and progressing through the RTS industry, because to me they all suffer from a single, critical flaw: Repeatability. The problem with the strategy genre in general is not so much how games are played but with their unchanging sameness. In almost all members of this category, every match starts the same way, or at least largely so (i.e, there may be different maps in Starcraft, but the pool is limited, and in any case they still involve the same six matchups), which leads to the rise of builds--certain ways of playing a race or color or whatever distinguishes your team from another, and the strategy begins to leach out of the game to be replaced by technical skill or memorization.

In chess, for example, beyond a certain level, the game stops being about playing well and becomes one player trying to outmemorize the other; I got to this point in my early years, became quickly disillusioned, and simply quit. In Starcraft, for example, I quit after I saw enough of the game to realize that regardless of one's strategic ability victory is basically guaranteed for the player better at pushing buttons at the right times than the other, and there is no real strategy in that.

As such, a true "strategy game" is one wherein a player must rely on their intellect, rather than their memory of a build or technical ability, to claim victory over the opponent, and the only true way to do that is to randomize everything, and then one must deal with the problems of balance...Alas, creating one of these may be impossible.

Yeah that's why I like low level starcraft macro might be a thing but the ability to multitask isn't there. You can have fun in those levels. Instead of it being work.

[Souper]

I don't think you know what type of mentality you're supposed to have in PA. Because, from experience, that adds a whole world of fun into it.

You should be:

-Greedy.

-Evil.

-Insane.

[Kinglet]

I don't think you know what type of mentality you're supposed to have in PA. Because, from experience, that adds a whole world of fun into it.

You should be:

-Greedy.

-Evil.

-Insane.

There is no room for strategy or mentality in PA. Who rushes more, wins more.

[Souper]

There is no room for strategy or mentality in PA. Who rushes more, wins more.

Absolutely untrue, I've played PA for a long time, and strategy is the only way to the top. More specifically, deciphering the enemy's strategy, owning the map, and coming up with a counter-strategy is the best way to go.

Seriously, thinking like an evil super-villain wanting to take over everything really, REALLY makes it fun. You get to swim in arrogance, pride, evil, and awesome ownage at the same time.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Souper

[Kinglet]

Absolutely untrue, I've played PA for a long time, and strategy is the only way to the top. More specifically, deciphering the enemy's strategy, owning the map, and coming up with a counter-strategy is the best way to go.

Seriously, thinking like an evil super-villain wanting to take over everything really, REALLY makes it fun. You get to swim in arrogance, pride, evil, and awesome ownage at the same time.

In my experience the guy who first starts constantly spewing out units always wins. If your enemy's base is litterally covered in units, you can't have any strategy.

[Souper]

Well, if they waste their economy on all those units... they certainly wouldn't have any Anti-Nuke launchers now would they? Muahahahaha!

[The Destroyer]

kill it with fire

You hate RTS games and didn't even play 2 minutes of the game, and you built two structures and then quit, so you really shouldn't have voted.

[1of6Billion]

I am glad I bought it on sale....

Not intuitive controls where my biggest let down

Edited July 9, 2015 by 1of6Billion