Internal Playtest – New Visual Effects & Various Topics – 2/6

• More formation stuff added
• Graphics Engine Updates – Lots of improvements to the effects and animations
• Lots of AI fixes and improvements
• Lots of general bug fixes
• Tweaked art – didn’t notice any changes, but that’s what Garat said
• Lots of behind the scenes changes for stuff that we won’t really see for a while
• Improved wall building so bots can’t sneak through.
• Random side note: I’ve noticed that pretty much no one builds mines very much. Wonder why…
• The power generators look even cooler. Hopefully we’ll have an option to turn them off for computers with less power.
  
• Soon we’ll have a huge graphics increase. Effects will be rendered on the GPU rather than the CPU. So we’ll have more variety and improvements to the visuals along side performance improvements
• The Uber Cannon can fire even when you don’t have any energy. Hope that changes.
• Garat talks a lot about his development past. Kinda cool stuff. The Uber team really knows what they’re doing.
• Aircraft engines have a afterburner effect. Looks pretty cool.
• Pathing improvements on the way.
• Gunships look like they are extremely effective. Very fast and very effective in large groups. Easy to destroy though.
• We’re gonna have different personalities and behaviors for the AI so the AI won’t use the same strategies every time, so players will have to
• The Leviathans have a new firing effect. Looks INSANELY awesome. Much more like a super powerful battleship broadside that can demolish everything.
• Stingray’s missiles also lok cooler. The missiles seem to be larger and they have more of a missile trail, making them look a lot more like giant missiles of doom.
• Uber already supports building up to a size 3,000 planet, but the processing requirements are just… way too much.

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I saw one thing that you did not mention. orbital fighters now get pushed back a little when they fire, a cool effect.
at about 39:20 in video.

also there seems to be an overall improvement to orbital, such as turning to face targets.

Though sure many mentioned that interplanetary movements at end of game were extremely fast.

It was subtle, but I think the orbital layer was using unit icons and the shell was popping up much more consistently. It was much easier to see orbital units during the play test than when I play myself.

Yeah. Interplanetary movements have been sped up a lot. That was confirmed in the last playtest. Or was it the one before that? Something like that.

is the rocket commander available for everyone?

Rocket Commander?

In a different thread, one of the Uber guys stated that the Uber cannon is working as intended. I thought that it was broken too, but the cannon doesn't have an upfront cost to fire, but a charge cost. While it might look like there is no power to fire, your commander is siphoning power directly from your income and storing it internally. A power deficit won't prevent you from firing, it'll just slow down your fire rate. Effectively it works the same as the bomber ammo system.

I'm not completely sure about if that's was in previous stream or not.

I might be mistaken, I watch the video without sound (I am in the office now)... I guess that blue projectile is the so called uber cannon...

There's a Tanks Commander... but not a Rocket Commander.

It was actually 4 playtests ago: http://pamatches.com/news/internal-playtest-big-changes-to-orbital-and-more/

Is/was there any mention of formations with respect to air units? Many forumgoers, myself included, are anxiousfor news on that front.

P.s. shiny new power plants may help with certain forgetful macro woes. Can't resist building those pretties by the dozen.

Yes. Aircraft do have formations. I've only ever seen fighters do that.

Hopefully they'll change it so aircraft don't stack. We'll see.

This is awesome. Very good indeed.


About mines, I always forget to try them out. It is only the Combat fab that can build mines, right? In my experience, it is difficult to select a combat bot, together, or aside other combat/construction units. So I often forget to have them on the map.

It should be selectable as Idle Fab units, as well as in the pool of the Combat Ground Units. That way we could easily group with what it's supposed to support, and we could easily see if there are any around idling, for giving them more precise orders.

Combat fabs, basic and advanced, build mines.

I'm pretty sure the mine menu pops up whenever you have combat fabbers selected, no matter what other units you have selected.

Yes. My problem is, as I edited my previous post while you was already replying (you're too fast! ), that if I select Idle Fabbers, the Combat fabbers aren't there. And if I wish to quickly select all ground combat units, the Combat fabbers, once again, aren't there.

Those are the way I select units, and the way they distinguish themselves from others in my mind. So, I always forget to have Combat fabbers.

Instead, if I build Combat fabbers is likely for supporting my ground units. So it would be great to press the key associated with "Select All Ground Combat Unit" (on screen on in general), and having in the pool the Combat fabbers already. After all they're *Combat* for a reason.

Other note. The function "Select All ... Units", should be relative to the actual planet I'm on. It makes no sense selecting All Units in All Planets. It also gives you a false information about the size of your currently available army on that planet. You may think you're grouping 200 tanks, when 120 are on a Moon.

pleaseee Uber releaseeee it ,releaseeee it Can't wait.... Not fair too tease this way :/

hahaha. Yeah.

Gonna be next week though since they don't release it on Friday.

If they release it on Friday and there's a glitch then they have to work on a weekend to fix it, which sucks.

I like the concept of mines and crawling bombs in theory, but I never find myself using them much. Typically I don't feel like the time or resource investment is worth it over combat units.

Next weekend's planned tournament will be really interesting if a new patch drops a couple days before.