Planetary Annihilation

[Uteunayr]

Anyone have this game and played it?

[lecompte]

I was staring at it on steam last night. what do you think?

[Uteunayr]

It is strange. There is play vs AI, and there are waygates you can build between planets in a solar system. However, what I am finding is that the game is insanely micro-management essential. Like, StarCraft has nothing on this.

You have a Commander to build Metal and Energy generators. You build other builders, to build more Metal and Energy Generators. Now, it doesn't come in bursts like in StarCraft, instead, it is a steady stream. So, you have +500, for example. It will build up until it hits 1000, or 5000, some number like that. You can build Metal and Energy Storage, to up the cap.

Now when you build something, it takes Metal, and as it builds, it gives -200 Metal (for example). So your +500 is now +300. If you build 3 at the same time, you're at -100, so you start going DOWN in metal, which is why you have the surplus. If you run out of stored metal and energy, then building slows down tremendously.

At the same time, you build Bots (soldiers), Vehicles (tanks), and Air (duh) unit factories. You queue up *TONS* of units, and you send them out. You need to make hordes of units like this (and queuing up units detracts from Mineral gain).

There is no max unit cap (as far as I can see). Your cap is how much you can build with your economy.

You can build AA turrets, anti ground turrets, walls, and all that. But the game is *very* fast, so you need to be able to not rely upon them like you would on Bunkers in SC, or Walls and Towers in AoE 2. These are stronger than units, so this encourages players who are on the offensive to attack different places in different directions, as an army can be stopped by these things.

Now because it is a planet, they can attack from any direction, but you can too. You want to knock out their resources, and knock out their bases.

You can build Orbital Facilities to launch builder units to other planets to start a base on that planet, adding to your resources, which you can use to build on the first planet, to fuel your army.

So you stretch your bases across a solar system of planets, each of which has minerals and energy, and you spam armies across each planet until you've out-swarmed the enemy.

If you can't seem to outswarm the enemy, you build up to Nuclear Weapons, or you can build on a Planet's Moon to and attach giant propulsion engines to the back of it, letting you aim it at the planet and destroy your opponent (hence, Planetary Annihilation).

ALL the while, the Solar System is in motion. So the moons do revolve, and rotate. So you can't always launch the moon at them, you need to time it. Some times, one planet will be closer to another planet, based on where they are in their year cycle. This happens quickly enough to see it happen a lot.

It's a lot like that old StarCraft Custom game, Golems.

What I think I need to do is find someone else with the game and play a friendly one for a bit to get a grip on the game's mechanics. The tutorials are helpful, but not hands on. There is no campaign to work yourself into the mechanics, so you need to grasp it all at once.

It is really fucking intense. You will cap your mental capacity for how much stuff you can manage. It is really crazy, and I believe this is just about the best RTS I have ever played. I have yet to win a game against bots, but I am getting closer, lol.

The devs have been very active in the game's development. While I haven't won a game yet, they just today added a patch that adds AI Difficulty, so maybe playing against Easy will make it possible for me to win one of these.

[lecompte]

Hrm, I have a pretty busy EQ week ahead I think but I'll pick it up and see what we can do.

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

The only planet I'm going to annihilate is Uranus.

Sorry - low hanging fruit

[Uteunayr]

Very low.

I just managed to beat a game, and I gotta say, for me, the hardest thing is really thinking about strategy in terms of the sphere, rather than the flat map. You can get flanked really easily until you adjust well to the spherical map nature.

Tons of fun though. Highly recommended to anyone.

[Colgate]

sorry but what you described sounds absolutely nothing like the custom game Golems

[Uteunayr]

Allow me to elaborate on that point to clarify, as there is a huge amount going on in this game:

You don't win by having the biggest units. There's really only Tier 1 and Tier 2 units. That's not what happens. The way you win is through holding more resource points, that let you have more factories to pump out more tanks, AA, Inferno Tanks, and so on.

You can build Vehicles (slow, powerful), Bots (medium speed, medium strength), or Air (high speed, low strength). Each has a variety of unit types that are balanced against one another. These are available immediately in the game. I believe the first type of structure you build (Vehicle/Bot/Air) is the one you are able to make an Advanced version of, which pumps out Tier 2 units. However, the majority of the fighting is with Tier 1 units.

The point is to build so many resource points so you can make 5, 10, 20 factories so you can pump out armies incredibly fast and rush them into combat to hold your ground and push your opponent back, destroying their base.

Combat begins within 2 minutes in the game, and it escalates from there forever. You *cannot* delay in building military units. You must spam the living shit out of your units, and somehow still be able to make it so your Anti-Ground fight ground, and Anti Air fight Air, and so on.

So, in that way, it is like Golems. You have huge armies being pumped out to smash against one another until one side is able to push the other back and destroy their spawner(s).

[Uteunayr]

So, I just threw a moon at a bot. I am feeling awesome about this fact.

You are able to build rocket engines to the side of moons, and launch it at the planet it is revolving around. Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4grPwAlWdc

This game really has been everything I've sought from an RTS since StarCraft.

[Gadwen]

I have wanted to play this for a while, the original early access price was a way beyond what I was willing to pay though. Looks like it is on sale on steam now, may have to pick it up.