The Vanguard Newsletter - Issue 1

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Introduction
The point of the Vanguards is to give better communication between developers and community members. We are working on a few different ways we can do this, but the first we’d like to bring out is a (hopefully) regular newsletter.

In the newsletter we will mainly be talking about two things: stuff that you want to talk to the developers about, and stuff that the developers respond with. The idea is that whenever we have a meeting with an Uber developer, we will follow it up with a newsletter detailing what we asked, and what their responses were. However, the developers are very busy, and we won’t be able to have a meeting with them every week. If we've not had a meeting with them, we will take the time to do a round-up of the popular topics on the forums, and spotlight some of the most insightful discussion. The Vanguards keep a close eye on the forums, and if anything is particularly well read, well thought out, or well argued, we will be sure to let you know that we've seen it.

Like the Vanguard, this newsletter is in it’s very early stages. We want to develop it more in the future to be a great source of useful information about the ongoing development of Planetary Annihilation. We also want it to be a weekly publication. However, as we are still sorting things out, and formalising how we want to relay this information as clearly as possible, this publication is going to change as time goes by, and we might not be able to bring it out weekly to start off with. If you have any suggestions for the newsletter in the future, we’d love to hear them, and we would be very grateful if you could post them in this thread.

With that in mind, it’s time to move on to the main point of this week’s newsletter. We were lucky enough to have a chat with Jon Mavor (Neutrino) last week, and were able to discuss a number of things about Planetary Annihilation. We didn't have much time, but we had a look at some of the most viewed and replied to topics on the forums, and put some of the questions raised by them to Jon.

One final thing to remember. ALL INFORMATION RELAYED IN THIS NEWSLETTER MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Uber is actively developing the game, and may decide that some of these things don’t actually work when tried out.​

Orbital Units
There has been a lot of discussion on the forum about orbital units. Particularly, whether they should be earlier in the game, and how they compare with ground units. We brought this up with Jon, and he had a number of things to say.

Uber are currently undertaking a rework of the orbital gameplay. The current design of orbital units makes them appear and control similarly to ground units, and it can be hard to discern orbital fighters from among ground armies. The orbital units need to stand out and be different. This part of the “orbital rework” is what led to the change in the orbital camera. At the moment, orbital units are very expensive and only really appear very late in the game, and may be too late to influence multi-planet games. One of the main ideas that Uber are looking at is to make orbital units appear much earlier in the tech tree, possibly appearing somewhere between basic and advanced factories (or a “tech 1.5”). This would be a basic launcher, building basic functional units. Advanced orbital units would need to be built from an orbiting advanced factory, which would in-turn be built by a basic orbital fabber. There was also a bit of discussion about how this could make “commander hopping” easier. One possible solution being looked at is making it such that interplanetary transports can be nuked in transit. This is only a rough idea at the moment.

Planetary Invasions
Another topic, somewhat related to orbital unit function, is how planetary invasions will work; How will players be able and go about invading a planet an enemy is already defending?

Planetary invasions will be difficult. In order to launch a successful invasion an attacker has to secure the orbital space above the planet’s surface which will probably be defended by orbital units. And even after the attacker has secured a position above the surface, the attacker must send units down to the surface and fight the enemy’s surface units and turrets. One of the ideas that was discussed was some kind of deployable stargate, but this is far from firm.

If the defender has fortified an entire planet, an invasion may be impractical. The asteroid as a planet-killer represents the ultimate solution to a heavily fortified planet where an invasion is infeasible. Jon discussed with us that asteroids are a core mechanic to this game, and should be common to most games that players will play. Using asteroids as staging posts for further invasions is also important, and Jon has said that the developers are currently working on allowing players to move asteroids into orbits around planets (using Halleys), with a UI similar to how players can make moons in the system editor.

Commander Abilities
Another topic which has been discussed at length on the forums is commander abilities, and their role during the course of the game. Jon has a clear vision of the role that the Commander plays during a match. There is currently a strong emphasis on the Commander being an efficient early construction unit first, and not a primary combat unit.

The gameplay purpose of the Commander is to build your first base and to defend against rushes. The Commander’s abilities and weapons are there to defend itself against small numbers of units. In the mid or the late game however he is prone to being overwhelmed. The Commander is intended to be, to use a chess analogy, your “king.”

Jon discussed the concept of ‘commander abilities’ with us, and said that the commander’s abilities will probably take the form of various types of weapons. Initially, Jon wanted a more detailed system with selections of different passive and active abilities. However it looked like it would be difficult to balance, and there was a lot of concern from the community that this would lead to some commanders being more powerful than others. Instead, it was decided to simplify things.

Uber currently has three Commander weapons in mind; the Uber Cannon, the Uber Laser and Uber Missiles. These will be activated abilities and may be tied to a hotkey or UI element. It is also confirmed that the destructive power of such weapons will be more like Total Annihilation’s D-Gun than their current state.

Odds and Ends
It was a long conversation with Uber, and there were a few things which came out which didn't really fit into the main topics, but we thought you would like to hear about anyway:

• Uber knows that a lot of the game is still unbalanced, but it’s not really been the right time to balance them when there are still a lot of units and other features missing. However, Uber has been playing around with balance in internal builds. There will be some more experiments with balance in the future.
  
  
• Uber is putting a lot of behind the scenes work into making the game as moddable as possible. Uber really wants to support modders long term, and is hoping that post release, they will be able to add in hooks and API’s if requested by the modding community. Jon said that he was looking forwards to see what kind of crazy mods people would be able to come up with when the tools have been release, particularly things like total conversions, or even a Dota mod.
  
  
• Jon has had a play about with Valve’s new controller, and there’s no reason why it wouldn't work with Planetary Annihilation. Regardless if it catches on or not, the game should be fun with it

We hope this gives you an idea of what we talked about with Jon. However, it was a long conversation, and we quite simply don’t have room to say every little thing that was discussed. So we’d like to hand the rest of this thread over to you. If you have any questions about these topics, ask us here, and if it came up and we can answer it, we will.

We’d be very grateful if you kept your questions in this thread to the topics covered, and the content of this newsletter. If you want to suggest improvements to the format and style of the newsletter, we’d still love to hear them, but please post them in this thread.

Ask away.

I really like the mentioned ideas for orbital gameplay, nuking transits and commander upgrades. The commander should be efficient construction unit first, I agree to that, but it should also stay useful throughout the entire game imo.

And I also really like this newsletter format.

Thanks for sharing.

nuking commanders in transit

yes please.


Are the differences between the Uber Cannon, Uber Laser and Uber Missiles merely aesthetic or is there functional differences as well?

Both aesthetically and functionally they will behave differently but each serves the same gameplay purpose; to stop your Commander being overwhelmed in the early game.

Is this something the Community is keen to hear more about?

I would imagine, perhaps, that each Uber weapon is particularly good against a certain type of unit, eg. missiles good against a group of bombers, laser great against tank blob, and cannon disintegrates bots with ease....that's how I saw it, anyway...

I'm interested to hear Mavor's musings on the stargate. Are we to assume that teleport gates are actually still only a maybe, in regards to inclusion in the game??

LOL, that's a cool name for a weekly roundup...Mavor's Musings.

Are you sure it's for stopping your commander from being overwhelmed in the early game?
I don't see commanders having problems in the early game, but rather when facing smashers/levelers.

That's a conclusion based on the current balance and pace of PA. I wouldn't be so sure that such a pace and balance is set in stone, especially considering the changes that seem likely when talking about Orbital, wouldn't you agree?

Sure, but I'd rather see the commanders having more options for the mid- and lategame. I just don't see a reason to buff them early game. But hey what do I know, right?

Commanders are not supposed to be good in the late game. In fact they're supposed to be a liability. Making the Commander able to survive and fight in the late game, other than spamming their ability as fast as their economy (or ammo capacity or recharge or however it is decided to potentially restrict their weapons) to run away and get off-planet as quickly as possible is a good as you're going to get according to Jon.

I have a balance question that I think they may actually be able to answer. Is uber still committed to the original plan of making basic units be generic all-purpose units and advanced be more special purpose? Would this mean that advanced units won't be all-around better than basic units and may even be weaker in some cases? I know they want to see basic units used throughout the game, but I hope this isn't just done by making advanced more expensive. It would be very interesting if advanced units were very similar in cost, but extremely good at doing a single thing.

Well, you don't necessarily have to make them "good", just better than they are now. Like giving them a weapon with which they can fill a support role for your armies (supressing missile barrages with a high cooldown or something).

Because the problem that I see, is that you use your commander very actively in the early game, and then tend to forget about it, because it's becoming less and less useful the more the game progresses.

I agree that commanders should be a liability, or your "king" like in chess, but I'd really like to have potential uses for it throughout the whole game, and not only in the early stages.

Unless something goes very pear-shaped, we will be getting teleportation of some description. In fact, from a programming perspective, teleporting is in many ways easier to do than something like a transport or a unit-cannon. The only thing that's really up for grabs is the exact form that teleporting will take.

The problem I see with gates, is that they're probably not portable (pun not intended).
What I mean is that it will be a very difficult (most of the time impossible) task to set up a gate if you have to send fabbers first to build it.

Nice write up with lots of interesting info. Thanks!

yes I'd like to hear more and love the news letter.

Overall i was very satisfied with the newsletter. I agreed that everything said therein. Except with this.

now correct me if I'm wrong but you're hinting towards that they should whereas this was NOT a common agreement.

It was not intended to hint towards anything - Orbital's place in the game, and how soon it should be available, is a topic that has been discussed in a number of threads. I remember their was one called "Orbital: Air 2.0?" or something similar and I recall plenty of other threads where their place in game progression was discussed alongside their mechanics. Obviously the mechanics is 'settled' for now, but their place in the game is not - so we thought it prudent to seek some further clarification of their position on this.

I remember all those threads as well. I just went to have a look at both the "cheaper orbital, good or bad" and "orbital should be more accessible" threads again. It seemed clear to me that this was far from a settled debate.

If it's clear that we are not hinting at anything then there is no problem.

also question: what about the scale talk, I know it's not mentioned in the newsletter but it's obvious at least a word was dropped about it during your talk with Mavor.

What was said? I think many people would like to know what Uber's stance has become on the matter. That thread, on the other hand, is effectively a resolute matter and has been on standby.

I remember Jon Mavor hinting at it in the recent livestream. But it seemed like they weren't certain either.