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Planetary Annihilation on sale

I think it's okay thus far. From the very beginning I was not a fan of the extremely small and round planet/map design, and I still don't like it. I miss the old Supreme Commander minimap and being able to zoom all the way out and see the entire battlefield. Now you only see whatever side of the planet you're looking at.
 
Hmmm... Planetary Annihilation $40.19 33% off ?
That don't seem to be a good deal, since the reports are, it still isn't a finished product, and the AI is as bad s shortylickens said.

I would wait a year or so, and when they got all the bugs out, then buy it.
 
Just read this and I think the final version is going to be out soon -

Awesome news: starting today, Planetary Annihilation is just $29.99 across the Uber store, Steam, the Humble Bundle Store, and other providers.
 
I think it's decently fun, I'm hoping they keep updating it even after the "final" release to flesh the game out more.
 
Was reading that lots of people don't like it, it doesn't bring back that old school charm, and is (was?) full of bugs.
However, this was months ago... maybe they finally fixed everything, and everyone is happy now?

Forgot to mention, this project took almost 2 full years to finish.
 
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Yeah this is one of two kickstarter projects that I got burned on.

This game has zero soul. It's a bland mess with a poor user interface. It doesn't compare favorably with either Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander. In fact I enjoyed the much-maligned Supreme Commander 2 more than this PoS.

YMMV.
 
I picked up a copy for $16 during the summer sale. I have only played 2-3 times. The AI destoryed me, but I don't really know what most of the units or buildings do. And, at the time the build pics didn't differ enough for me to tell what I was building, so I had to read the description every time. I assume they are better now. Either way I am sure if I played it more it would help. I also didn't like having to rotate around the planet to view everything. Larger planets would have helped that by keeping most of the battle in view. Other than that maybe allow more than one view of the same planet. Since it is about to be finished I guess I should check it out again sometime.
 
CU said:
I also didn't like having to rotate around the planet to view everything. Larger planets would have helped that by keeping most of the battle in view.
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I didn't like it when I saw the first promo vids, and I still don't like it. Really don't know why they thought that was a good idea.
 
Been playing the single player Galactic War over the weekend. I like it. More story would be nice, but I like it. It is interesting not having all the techs and having to find it. That makes for a different game each time you play. I feel like I can now handle myself against a normal AI as long as I don't let him get off the planet. But once he does it is over for me. The computer can just manage more tasks at once than I can. Partly because you can not adjust the game speed. And, with him getting resources from 2+ planets I don't stand a change. It really is a resouce race as most of the units I have played with seem pretty weak, so numbers count. Turtling doesn't seem like a viable plan, which is sad as I really like building impenetrable bases. But, in this game you have to spread out everywhere to try and contain the AI.
 
I backed the kickstarter but don't know where to get my key haha. I guess I need to figure that out. Isn't there a campaign mode or something? Galactic War?
 
Played some more Galactic War. Decided to take on one of the AI's homeworlds. That was a mistake. It was me against 3 AI's and we all started on the same smallish metal plant. I got boxed in early. But, was pushing on one of them. Even got his commander down to 50% life before he grapped it from orbit, while I was pounding on him, and sent it to another planet. I continued to press on, but lost ground and the game once he started sending long range T2 units at me.

Come to find out 1 of the 3 commanders pretty much only built resource generators, while the other two produced units including orbital units. I assume they are sharing resources. If so not a bad move on their part. Also it was not just that one commander that I almost killed that left the planet. The other one that was producing units also left the planet. They went to another planet that required 6 engines to move it. I assume if I would have survived long enough I would have been killed by that planet smashing into me.

This reminds me of FTL in away. If you find some good techs you might do OK, but if don't, well lets just say it won't end well. It seems the AI has all the tech's, but I don't know for sure. They have more than I have that is for sure. With permadeath and limited techs this is one of the hardest RTS single player games I have played and this is on normal, which is the easiest setting. I think there are 4 difficulty settings overall. I may try a larger galaxy in hopes of finding more techs. But still 3 on 1, if that is normal, will be a tough fight and you have more than one homeworld to win over to controll the galaxy.
 
1 star game ?


"Why we won’t live happily ever after with Planetary Annihilation"
http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/09/12/wont-live-happily-ever-planetary-annihilation/

This is one of the biggest pitfalls of crowdfunding. You get a group of guys making a game for another group of guys who have paid upfront and have been playing all along, one group doling out alphas and betas, the other group gobbling them up along with the caveats about them being unfinished, all of them turned in on each other with their backs to a guy like me who totally wants to play their RTS when it’s done. I am the target audience for Planetary Annihilation, except that I didn’t play it before the release. I love real time strategy games and I’m willing to do the work to learn them, so long as the developer is willing to do the work to teach them, and hopefully do some of the work to make them playable. Uber has done none of this, leaving me standing here like a fool, trying to figure out how to get my units from one planet to another with the unit that’s supposed to do just that, according to the scant tooltips. Nope. It does no such thing. It goes up. It goes down. It highlights the units it’s going to load and then ignores them.
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Seems a bit overly harsh, although the guy has some kind of point. Which is mainly no tutorial. Although you could make an effort and try to figure out how stuff works by yourself before writing a review.

For me, problem is not so much no tutorial but rather essential features for competitive online play are missing. No ladder, no matchmaking, no lobby (yes, there is a community ladder mod, but you'll probably start off against the beta incrowd who'll beat you up playing with their eyes closed). Random generated planets also lead to badly balanced games.

Apart from that, the whole planet thing seems a bit gimmicky to me. Yes, it does open up new strategic possibilities (mainly attacking from all sides) but damn it's hard to have overview and keep track of all stuff going on. Maybe a flat map and a minimap are not such a bad idea for an rts. UI could use some work too, currently it's too hard to keep track of idle constrution units.
 
I wholeheartedly agree with that review. It's like Supreme Commander... but worse in every way. Less units, less factions, worse UI (and multi-planet matches that necessitated a better UI to begin with), worse graphics, less personality, less polish, etc.

I'm sure you can pick up Supreme Commander and the expansion for not a lot of money and have a lot more fun with that instead.
 
SharpHawk said:
I wholeheartedly agree with that review. It's like Supreme Commander... but worse in every way. Less units, less factions, worse UI (and multi-planet matches that necessitated a better UI to begin with), worse graphics, less personality, less polish, etc.

I'm sure you can pick up Supreme Commander and the expansion for not a lot of money and have a lot more fun with that instead.
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Well, to be fair, the goal was to have a less complex game than Supcom and not introduce needlessy complicated balancing by having different factions.

Original Supcom was balanced to death by the varies patches, so much so that they just had to abandon the game and basically start over with FA, which still doesn't quite get it right despite all the community efforts with FAF (it's good and very enjoyable but there's no denying there still is unbalanced stuff, shield spam and Seraphim T3 subs come to mind).

It's not a real excuse but also, the budget just wasn't big enough for multiple factions.

Very much agree with your comments on the UI though, Supcom had perfect UI, this feels like a step backwards (hoping it will improve with future patches).
 
coffeejunkee said:
UI could use some work too, currently it's too hard to keep track of idle constrution units.
Click to expand...

This really bothers me. I can never find the little guys. I usually just end building a new one. I have been meaning to see if their is a shortcut key to select constrution units. I did find out you can hold ctrl and it will insert a unit into the front of your build queue. Nice when I am pumping out tanks and decide I need something now like a contruction unit.
 
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