Internal Playtest Recap – Drastic Balance Changes – 4/1

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by brianpurkiss, April 1, 2014.

  1. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    REMEMBER: This is an EXPERIMENTAL CHANGE and is subject to change.

    Even though today is April Fools, Garat said this is not an April Fools joke.

    • They’re looking into Basic Viability. PA had issues with Dox bot rushing being the best winning strategy.
    • The dox has been changed to a “grenadier” – it can now lob shots over the wall height. This also means it has a huge arc in its fire.
    • Anchors have had their health drastically reduced, along with their rate of fire. They also don’t have any vision of the ground. Anchors shoot the ground now. Anchors also consume energy to fire. I like that change direction – just needs some balance tweaks. Ignore orbital at your own peril!
    • Tank range is so that you can shoot at walls that are in front of towers without getting shot at by the defensive towers. That means tanks have had a range increase, or (more likely) laser defense towers have had a range decrease.
    • Very nice technique to use the follow unit view within PIP while scouting. I really gotta do that.
    • Very well played by Meta, and big mistakes made by Garat. lol
    • Orbital Fabrication bot model!
      [​IMG]
    • Looks like the economy changes from the economy balance changes are still in the game.
    • Advanced Air Fabricators are better at reclaiming stuff to death than many units are at shooting stuff to death. That smells like it has a lot of potential for abuse.
    • Everything in advanced costs three times as much.
      Personal note: I don’t like this. It means the barrier to advanced is so high, there is a huge advantage to the first player to step to advanced, and there is no possibility of recovering if you lowe your advanced factory.
    • There were quite a few lag spikes. Hopefully that was just Twitch lag – because other than that, the playtest was pretty smooth until late game, and even then, it was a very large system. Later in the playtest, they commented on the unusual amount of lag, so hopefully it’s just something quirky and they’ll fix it.
    • Anti-nukes are going to have a change – they just didn’t say what it was yet because it wasn’t implemented yet. Anti-nukes no longer come pre-loaded.
    • It’s still really easy to slaughter flak towers when microed properly.
    • Energy hasn’t changed for orbital.
    • Wow teleporters are built crazy fast.
    • Assisting with advanced fabbers is the way to win with anything since they build with so much metal.
    • Aaaannnddd… ended with a server crash. :-(
    • Uber can currently play replays, but they’re not ready yet.
    • Bandwidth optimizations are coming.
    • The purpose of the changes is to make it take longer to get to advanced, but very possible to spam out advanced when you get there. Personally, I think that’ll just make the game winner decided by who gets to advanced first and if you lose your advanced, you might as well self destruct. It’ll also mean spamming out nukes really quickly is even more powerful.
    • Steve thinks he’s onto a major memory performance optimization client side. That’s exciting!
    • There are plans to reduce the memory usage of planets.

    Remember to sign up for the PA Matches Weekly Newsletter and stay up to date on all of the latest PA news, cool videos, tutorials, and more!
    LavaSnake, tatsujb, ace63 and 11 others like this.
  2. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    I really dislike the current massive arc of artillery. I'd like to see some/all of them converted into a lower arc - eg. the grenadier changed so it only has enough arc to clear walls, but not larger terrain features for example. This actually opens up a second unit role as well.

    I agree with your thoughts on the T2 economy changes, too. But experimental is experimental, and they even listed all the known issues with it in the Uber Dev Streams thread, so they know it's currently broken somewhat.
    LavaSnake and tatsujb like this.
  3. Spriggan43

    Spriggan43 Active Member

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    Only part i am unsure of is
    • Tank range is so that you can shoot at walls that are in front of towers without getting shot at by the defensive towers.That means tanks have had a range increase, or (more likely) laser defense towers have had a range decrease.
    loussdale likes this.
  4. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    I really like that change. It's a big nerf to defensive towers.
    cdrkf and thelordofthenoobs like this.
  5. godde

    godde Well-Known Member

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    Since when were Dox spam a winning strategy? Doxes and especially Ants/basic tanks need a buff IMO if they are to compete with t2 and defense towers.
    ace63, tollman, shootall and 2 others like this.
  6. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    Agreed. It also tackles the problem without actually affecting the Tower vs Tank matchup directly.
  7. lapsedpacifist

    lapsedpacifist Post Master General

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    Hmm, this build seems to be comprised entirely of ideas I absolutely love and ideas I absolutely hate.

    I'll reserve serious judgement till we get a non 'experimental' build or playtest, but in general I agree with Brian on the T2 ideas.

    Would be interested to hear more specifically about the anchor's new role, and I'm just a bit bemused by the 'grenadiers', not sure what kind of impact that would have.
    cdrkf and brianpurkiss like this.
  8. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Back during beta I guess.

    It does, but I still think defensive towers should have a cost increase.
  9. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    I dislike the idea of losing Dox as they stand now because I enjoy their role as a raiding unit, and anti-wall feels like a role the Ant should be fulfilling. Seems to be a lot of effort going into providing changes to units to compensate for walls when it would seem more logical to adjust the walls themselves.

    Generally I feel the current balance is pretty awesome, barring laser towers being too cheap, walls being too cheap (or too many HP) and T2 eco being too accessible/powerful. So these sweeping changes make me nervous, but maybe it'll turn out to be amazing, interested to see what comes out of this.

    Also, making orbital more relevant even in a single-planet game... not sure how I feel about that. Right now I hate orbital because it's just painful to manage and so I go out of my way not to have to deal with it. Making it something I need to handle without providing me a better UI to do so is not something I'm looking forward to. At the very least I wish orbital would change to a small number of key units instead of swathes of icons mingling with my other swathes of icons, and all of it just getting in the way of my view.
  10. krakanu

    krakanu Well-Known Member

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    I am disappoint. I watched the whole video and there were no good shots of the anchors raining death and destruction down upon the meager peasants which inhabited their pitiful world. :eek:

    On a more serious note, if you're going to let anchors shoot the ground, they should be extremely inaccurate... like so inaccurate that you would only want to use them against bases or large armies (or as long term attrition damage). Otherwise, what is the point of the SXX? In fact, they should be so inaccurate, that they just spray lasers indiscriminately at everything underneath them within range, that way you can't specifically target anti-orbital defenses to snipe them. It would also make one hell of a light show...
    LavaSnake and websterx01 like this.
  11. godde

    godde Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, but not in the current version. Anyway. If t2 units will become more expensive in the next version, then t1 units will also perform much better for cost against them so I'll have to wait and see.
  12. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    This
    ORFJackal, shootall and Murcanic like this.
  13. Tontow

    Tontow Active Member

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    I wonder when someone will remember that its April fools day....
  14. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Uber has stated that they know Orbital is difficult to manage, and they're working to fix it.

    Source: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rethink-orbital.58426/page-2#post-907291

    I already got someone with an april fools joke, and Uber said this wasn't an april fools joke.
  15. wpmarshall

    wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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    *Sits in an armchair by a fireplace reading the news with ornate glasses*
    "Hmmmmm........Interesting......Very...Interesting...."

    That is all.
  16. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    I know, but I keep saying it to make sure they keep working :p
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  17. Spriggan43

    Spriggan43 Active Member

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    The idea of making towers
    I see this as a Nerf to walls, not towers. Note should state
    • Walls are no longer defended by towers. That means tanks can put holes in your walls and run away.
    I guess we will have to wait and see how this plays out. Just feels this may kill the turtle play.
  18. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Yeah maybe I should change imbawall to just wall with towers. xD
    If the tower/t1 unit balance is unchanged nothing really will change.
    A perfectly walled tower was stronger than a tower without walls, but even without walls tower as of now are waaaaay to strong to have any real use in direct attack t1 forces. That's why we still see dox: they can raid and run around towers.
    Quitch and Murcanic like this.
  19. carlorizzante

    carlorizzante Post Master General

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    Same feeling in here.
  20. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Agreed. Not sure why they're forcing walls so much.

    Just increase the cost of laser defense towers and walls! oy.
    zweistein000 and carlorizzante like this.

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