Internal Playtest Recap – Commander Changes, Metal Extractors, & More – 1/27

Watch the playtest: http://www.twitch.tv/metabolical/b/498753459

• Experimenting with Metal Extractors being HALF the cost (300 metal down to 150 metal). This would be an interesting balance that would not only speed up the early game but would also drastically increase expansion speed.
• Naval is still slower than it used to be, but still very powerful due to its massive range and high damage.
• Units seem to prioritize walls higher than they aught to.
• Commander Changes:
  • Commander’s range is increased
  • The Uber Cannon now has an alternate fire button and can reach as far as it can shoot
  • The Uber cannon uses power to shoot
  • The death explosion is lessened – not sure if that’s in range, damage, or both
• Formations to apply to aircraft. Bombers don’t seem to change with their bombing runs, but fighters stick around in a grid formation
• The AI has been improved. Seems to expand and attack more
• Walls are still very prevalent. Uber seems to want us to use walls to turtle and to redirect enemy movement.
• Meta is saying that naval seems to be not viable, due to expense. We’ll likely see some changes to it, maybe in cost. If there’s a cost reduction, there’s a likelihood of unit strength reduction or something. Who knows. Too difficult to predict, but we’ll see some further changes at some point.
• “Navy is not balanced.” Of course, the entire unit roster is not very balanced. But now that they have a more flushed out unit roster, they are going to be focusing more on balancing.
• Their goal of today’s server test is to have a long game with a lot of units in it so they can analyze the server loads and make improvements to the server optimizations for large scale long games. Very exciting optimizations to be made here very soon. The match lasted for longer than an hour. So not an uber long game (see what I did there?). But with 8 players over the course of an hour and several planets, that’s definitely large scale.
• New Combat Fabricator Model
  
• Spectators can see pings now. Pings still sound like a planet smashing, but I imagine that won’t take too long.
• Pings are in the team player color.
• The Tank Commander was in the playtest – so that’ll probably be added in the next build.
• Formations are coming across great. They have a very nice balance between staying in formation and breaking formation to move around terrain
• Some bugs
  • Commanders still can’t hit doxes that stand right next to it
  • Units (seen doxes and bumblebees do this) will move around as wereckage even after they died. Can’t tell if they shoot, or just move around.
  • ChronoCam is broken! Again…
  • Hornets flew off into space.
  • No strat icons for interplanetary nukes.
• The new sniper bots are really good at taking out Commanders
• (Uber devs need to learn how to expand…)
• Formations don’t yet order units by strength. But they do have units all stick together based on the speed of the slowest unit. That’ll keep combat fabricators from running out in front of your tanks. Gonna be a nice addition.

http://pamatches.com/news/internal-...-metal-extractors-metal-cost-halved-and-more/

Poor Uber and their bad expansion abilities. I suppose we at least don't have to worry about them taking over the world.

I don't think it would be too much of a problem if they did though...

I wouldn't mind it at all to be honest.

Not sure If many people would. Maybe we'd get free copies of PA, and PA would be the global sport. I'd be cool with that.

thanks for this recap... i still hope, uber soons starts some kind of "balancing team" consisting of players. Like you note "need to expand", they dont play their game at top skill level

But nice to hear some of the changes. Metal extractors halfed sounds like more balanced like in FA, where you needed only a few seconds to get the mass you spent on a mex.

150/7 is a much better ration than 300/7. It now might even be usefull to claim mex spots that are not "safe", but if you hold them for just > 22 seconds, you get a win from it. On the other hand this weakens raiding of mex

Yeah. I really hope Uber gets the community more involved when the time comes for the fine tuning balancing right before launch.

The mex situation sounds like it will change the game a lot. For the worse I would think. unless the amount I spots are reduced and/ or hp halved too.

Any speed upgrade from the current naval is fine by me, as long as there's SOMETHING.

Bombers MUST follow formations/stop stacking if they're gonna be balanced. Fingers crossed.

That new model looks sexy.

Yeah. Not sure how I feel about the metal extractor price being halved.

Uber really wants us to have a crap ton of units on the field.

The price of pgens should be cut down to 50% instead and the price of t2 mex should go up by a factor of 2 or maybe 3.
We are starved on energy, not on metal. Kinda bad once reclaim is supposed to be useful.

Looks familiar.

Just get rid of the T2 mex already or nerf the hell out of it.

I don't like the way the models look for the Combat fabers at least not from that camera angle. But besides that I like the new editions and changes.

Halving the mex cost is interesting... going to see a lot more units quickly! Sure hope someones working on that LAG!

They need to either up the cost for t2 metal or reduce the production. I'm fine with cheaper mex - but what we really needed was cheaper energy.

As colin said

I think the moving wreckage bug is not new, i've seen it happen aswell in other builds. Also, since latest build it is smart to keep performance in check while your playing, or you wont be able to micro, laying your planes on the floor helps a lot, and putting factory's off aswell.

Aw, my friends are already a little wary playing this because they are used to nice slow, considerate RTS....halving the mex and encouraging rapid expansion is going to scare them right off. Oh well, they shouldn't be pansies.

Is this recorded from somebody else? Because I can't see it on twitch with phone/tablet. No flash player.

I think greed is the limiting factor in this game. We are all guilty of it, but nothing else works as good. This is just going to make us more greedy and early game stale. Won't pay off to defend mexes and won't pay off to harass them.

The only reason energy is such a limiting factor is because metal is not. At least for beginning of the game. Mid game,energy is easy and metal is the limiting factor.