Internal Playtests – 3 in 1 – Bug Fixes, Performance Increases, Various Tweaks & Improvements – 2/14

http://youtu.be/nZYbcuAq1Vg

Meta’s Stream

• Meta started off on naval in an effort to continue to test and see if naval starts are valid starts compared to water starts. Very important testing.
• Pings!!! Love the pings and cannot wait to use them. No unique ping sound yet – it just makes the unit lost noise.
• Really annoying bug that results in the Astreus not being able to move after picking up a Commander. Probably won’t see a new build until that is fixed.
• Flak seems to have been nerfed. Either that or Gunships have more health or something.
• The Advanced Radar has been given a buff. Super cool. It has a direct line of sight, and a large vision radius.
• We can build the Holkins on water now.
• Gunships are super deadly and awesome.
• Still getting bugs where fighter missiles will hit buildings. Now they’ll hit buildings that air fabbers are building.
• Aircraft fly in formation and when bombers are in a selected group, the fighters will stay the same speed as the bombers. That’s a huge improvement to the air layer.
• Seems to be pathing bugs with fighters and bombers. When the target is destroyed, everything just stops.
• Something is different with the Deepspace Orbital Radar. It seems to not provide full vision to the planet’s orbital layer, just to a small area above the orbital radar. However, it still shows strategic icons for units that are transferring from planet to planet. Difficult to tell for sure, but that’s what it seems like.

Garat’s Stream

• The new Uber Cannon is awesome, but can fire even when you have no energy, which is a bad thing in my opinion. It should only be able to fire when you have spare energy stored.
• Looks like the Basic Radar does offer some direct line of sight. I’d guess something like 150 or 200 line of sight and 300 radar.
• (Someone should short sheet Garat’s bed for making such a large system.)
• The AI has more improvements and is better at being aggressive.
• Uber is focused pretty hard on optimizing Planetary Annihilation. Which is awesome.
• They’re dropping support for older versions of OS X. People should be updating their operating system anyways.
• Some OS X improvements to performance.
• The underwater layer has a pretty low priority right now. They’re trying to get the other layers working well first.
• Area patrol for ground units is still bugged right now.

Meta’s Test Environment Stream

• Advanced Radar Satellite has a direct line of site and a larger radar coverage. Which is nifty.
• Reclaiming Commanders to death now takes a lot longer
• The AI doesn’t know how to use the Uber Cannon yet.
  HOLY COW the Anchor kicks butt
• The Umbrella has been given a boost and will be more accurate. But doesn’t seem to be working properly – again.

YouTube will be here when it's done processing:

Cool. I'll splice that in when it's done processing.

I posted my YouTube versions in the game play videos section.

ITS SO AWESOME IT HURTS.

(thanks guys)

Good news, everyone! The Purkiss Report™ is in! And thanks for continuing the regular streams devs, awesome stuff.

Can I please point something out that has begun to creep into these posts, as well as dev commentary in the streams themselves.

There are features which keep on being reported as brand new in the new stream that are really old, they just have not been noticed before.

E.g. The commander has always been able to build torpedo launchers, I'm pretty (60%) sure the Holkins has always been floating etc. (I'm sure my first game of PA was pelter and holkins creep, our naval fort base had a holkins. I think. See my youtube comment on a video where this question came up for the the actual authoritative answer, or check in game)





Also, missiles hitting stuff and causing damage is not a bug, but a consequence of the physics model for weapons. It's perfectly possible to kill a fighter with a bomber

Correct. Except that's not mentioned here?
(was it mentioned in another post?)

Incorrect. The Holkins currently only has
spawn_layers: "WL_LandHorizontal"

Structures that can be built on land or sea have
spawn_layers: "WL_AnyHorizontalGroundOrWaterSurface"

The Pelter was previously able to be built on water.

LandHorizontal? does that mean LandVertical, embedded into cliffs, may be a thing at some point?

What role is the role of the torpedo launcher now that laser turrets can be built on water?
I also think that arty turrets should not be able to be built on water to protect a base, that is a role that ships should carry out.

To kill subs.

Could make the torp turrets into naval artillery with good range.

Laser turrets are outranged by every naval unit except maybe the scout boat. Torpedo launchers have excellent range as long as you have intel, and pretty good damage.

Agreed.

I asked this because i am sure laser towers now got a range increase in a recent test build to make them more effective.

The "Anti-ship laser" is completely pointless, because unless it is mounted on a ship,it doesn't have the range to engage most ships.

Yes, in the second most recent post.

Correct - in which case the youtube comments were the opposite - I think it was actually about the fact you couldn't build nuke launchers in the water, even though that was a long standing feature. My mistake, I stand corrected.

There was also a case where a dev said something like "oh yeah, the commander is now able to build metal extractors" in a stream. I can't think what it was exactly, and there are so many livestreams now, but basically it was some "added feature" that had actually been in the livebuild for months, the dev in particular had only just learned about it.

The Holkins being built on water is new – according to Meta at least. And I didn't mention torpedo launchers.

It is a bug when fighters can take out factories when shooting down a fabber.

If you don't like them, then do them yourself.

Torpedo launchers can kill subs along with ships, have sonar, and have longer range then laser towers.

Have to agree with Brian on this one. Although it's not a bug for stray shots to hit, it shouldn't be an exploitable way of overcoming target restrictions.

Ever seen ASFs in Sup Com used to rapidly take down shields with aircraft underneat, or Fatboys with docked aircraft?

Ever seen fighters in PA blow up aircraft factorys by shooting at aircraft being launched?

Torp turrets have the range of a pelter currently.

Its slightly more than the range of a bluebottle orca. Adv Torp launcher has an even greater range

I was looking for a more obvious scenario of the system being exploited, as opposed to something which could be seen as either accidental or exploitative.

Making fighters use missiles that home (but with a relatively slow turn rate, so you still get misses etc.) would eliminate much of the exploitability, as most of the missed shots in your example would try to veer up towards the aircraft, and miss the factory. You can't prevent it entirely of course, and nor should it be done. But steps could be taken to remove it as an exploit.