The Vanguard Newsletter - Issue 3

Hello everyone. We’ve recently had another meeting with Jon and Brad, meaning it’s time for another newsletter. It’s our job to try and best represent the concerns of the community. So that’s why our meeting this time was dominated by one main topic. This can be summed up as “Where’s my unit cannon?”. We had a very detailed chat with Jon about the role of the Unit cannon, how needed it is, the difficulties associated with it, and Uber’s development cycle. With this in mind, we really want to spend this issue drilling down on this subject.


The story from now until “Planetary Annihilation 1.0”
We all know that the Unit cannon is a much beloved feature. It played centre stage in the Kickstarter video, and it’s often touted by forum members as a key tool to help invade fortified planets. However, Uber have repeatedly stressed that it isn’t a priority at the moment, leading many people to become concerned about this feature. People want to know why it isn’t a priority, and does “not a priority” mean it has been cut? Well, the bad news is that it’s unlikely that it will be in version 1.0. Fundamentally, Uber only have so many developers, who are already working ludicrous hours on this game. The other fundamental cause is that one day, this game has to get shoved out the door from the cosy embrace of early access and into the bright sunlight of full general release. Uber have internal goals that they are attempting to hit and are still releasing “when it’s done”. From the player’s perspective, there are a number of advantages to the game being post-release, which we will discuss later.


So, the game has to come out. Furthermore, Uber are professionals. They want to release a solid polished experience. The thought of releasing a buggy mess of a game is the kind of thing that keeps Uber developers up at night, or at least it would do if they weren’t working on the game most nights. I’m sure we’ve all taken guilty pleasure in watching reviews of terrible unfinished games ladened with bugs, graphical glitches, half-baked features, and bewildering UI problems. Hopefully, we haven’t actually bought into them, but I’m sure some people have. PA cannot and will not be that kind of game. That’s the kind of professionalism which is absolutely vital to make a solid game.


Furthermore, there are still features left to put in. Is a solid replay/spectating system the kind of thing that gets people frothing at the mouth with excitement? Of course not. It’s such a standard feature in RTS games that we all kind of expect it. And that very attitude means it has to be there at release. Again, this is a matter of polish and professionalism. PA isn’t just aiming to be another RTS, it’s aiming to be the RTS. And it can’t do that if it doesn’t have some basic entry level features that everyone already takes for granted. Those features don’t just happen. They take a lot of time and effort by Uber employees.


So what does this mean? It means that on release this game will have a polished set of core features that have to be there for any modern RTS, with as many bugs as humanly possible being mercilessly squashed. Many existing features have work to be done on them too. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be new features either. Galactic War is something we haven’t seen a lot of in public builds, but the guys at Uber take it as something that they can get in at (or near) release. It’s a major feature that Uber feels is completely and absolutely necessary; many people are going to be playing Planetary Annihilation as a singleplayer experience and Uber wants to treat them as equal citizens to those that play Multiplayer.


There is still a heap of balancing to do (e.g. Scathis has mentioned that he hasn’t got round to balancing the economy yet), and even a couple of new units that are in the pipeline. Uber knows that the endgame is a little lacking at the moment, and has some plans as to how they can fix that before release, including changes to nukes. Not to mention the competitive ladders and social features to make browsing and choosing games more comfortable. A big part of the remaining work is the fact that there are over 100 custom commanders for the 1K backers which are still in the pipeline. Jon was enthusiastic that once these are out of the way, those artists and animators can be switched over to adding new units, which is something we can look forward to post release.


At the end of a day, it’s a choice of releasing a buggy incomplete mess with the unit cannon (and other similar features), or releasing a polished product without. Given that choice, there really is only one answer.


Hopefully, you guys now have a good idea what to expect from PA 1.0. However, that isn’t the end of the story. In fact, it’s barely even the beginning…


The story post-1.0
Jon has talked in the past about “PA is a platform”. We talked a lot more about exactly what that means. Just because something is “cut” from release, it doesn’t mean it is cut permanently. In fact, nothing has been cut permanently. The unit cannon will still be added post release, as will subs, gas giants, and all the other features that Uber simply haven’t had the manpower to do yet. Uber wants to be developing this game for a long time. This means that they need to have a long term plan for keeping developers paid to work on PA.


Uber plans to work extensively with the modding community in order to build the game further. The idea is that mods will be integrated into the game in the form of a mod marketplace, which makes downloading and installing them super easy. If you want to play on a modded server, the plan is that the game will be able to ask you if you want to download and install the mod all with a single confirmation click. This also opens the possibility to sell some of the high quality mods via the marketplace; a single unit wouldn’t qualify but a whole new faction probably would. Considering that modding has always been a major goal of PA, it’s important that work gets started on it soon and most of that can only happen post release.


There are still questions remaining about how curated this will be, but the idea is that the income from this (split with the mod creator) would allow Uber to keep adding content to the game without charge. If this works, then it means we don’t just get some hefty post release content, but that we get a steady trickle of new units and features over the long term. If that doesn’t work, Uber is perfectly willing to entertain the idea of doing paid expansion packs. Expect things more like Forged Alliance rather than piddly overpriced DLC that’s not much more than a reskin. This is all a bit speculative, but the idea is that Uber will get the remaining things done post release, then continue to work on the game long term as best as they are able to. Jon was confident that we would be “drowning in units” before too long.


So, there you have it. We hope that explains why things are the way they are. As Jon is fond of saying, games development is hard. We can look forward to a lot of polish and shine between now and release and a lot more cool features afterwards. We think a lot of people’s issues stem from the idea of viewing PA v1.0 as the final iteration of the game. Release needs to stand on it’s own two feet (hence the focus on polish), but it isn’t the end of PA. In fact, it’s not even close.


As usual, if you have any questions please post them below, and if you have any suggestions on the format of this newsletter, please head over to the appropriate thread.

Back Issues of the Newsletter
Issue - 1
Issue - 2

I like this no bullshit approach things dosent allways happen as we want it too, Thumps up Uber.

One thing I wonder about: what's stopping Uber from creating a bunch of new orbital "units", each corresponding to a unit the Unit Cannon can launch, having them be spawned with orders to travel to the destination planet whenever the Unit Cannon fires, and then having them automatically replace themselves with the original unit (falling to the ground) as soon as they arrive. I know I might be missing something here, but I'm just curious.

WOO! GALACTIC WAR IN ON (or near) RELEASE!


Heh, but seriously, it's nice to get some dev feedback in this time of conspiracy and such.
Hopefully now all can go back to normal.

Hopefully this'll silence some of the conspiracy theorists.

Thanks!

I think it comes down to the idea that you can't just keep using band-aid solutions to fix problems. At some point you need to buckle down and actually solve problems instead of avoiding and/or hiding them.

I thought we knew for a bit now that GW was aimed for release more or less? Maybe I'm thinking of something else maybe.

Mike

I appreciate the roundup but I'd like to know if parts of this are information directly from Uber employees or your own personal opinion. If something is directly from Uber could you please quote (and source, if possible). It's a bit confusing trying to determine if this is you "reading between the lines", speculating or paraphrasing a direct quote.

Is this something Uber have stated directly, if so where, or is this your interpretation of what has previously been said.

Same for this, I wasnt aware that gas giants for example had specifically been removed from the roadmap for version 1.0 and are intended to be added later.

If this is right then are you essentially saying that the game as it stands at present is essentially feature locked for version 1.0, and that time is instead being spent entirely on fixing bugs, with further additions to come after 1.0?


Also, as far as paid expansion packs go, I wonder if Uber have given thought to the reality that people are likely to "mod" paid for units into the game for free, or the potential for paid DLC to fracture the community if DLC equipped players can only play against other players who have paid for new units.

Probably, but from what I've seen the only real confirmation of that was the mention of the test version in one of the livestreams.

The trouble is, most of us that were worried about the way the game was going, was not worried about support being dropped after 1.0 release, but infact more worried about the game flopping on release, getting bad press and no increase on the fan base. An early launch can damage developments and companies.

Since Uber overshot the release date, we have been told we're getting it "when its done." But now it sounds more like we are going to get it "when it works."

Of course, all of this remains to be seen. Very speculative. Just wanted to let you know though KNight, that I for one and a few others, aren't really worried about the games support getting dropped on 1.0 release, because we kinda feel Uber wouldn't do that.

Please read what your writing before posting, lets not get this thread locked because you don't agree with me.

Any information presented as factual by this newsletter should be considered as close to a quote from Jon Neutrino Mavor as you can get. We're adding very little in the way of personal opinion for these newsletters and when we do, we'll point it out specifically.

All of the information presented in this newsletter is true (at the present time).

Uber has stated several times that the Galactic war is being worked on and they have working playtests.

Because this is a Vanguard Newsletter, this is an Uber endorsed way of letting us know about some of this stuff. All of this information comes from a closed door meeting with Uber and The Vanguards.

However, it's been stated several times in some of the recent threads that the Uber cannon won't be in the release.

To add to this, there is a phrase used by Uber and other software developers called "technical debt". It means that although you may save some time by doing a quick and dirty approach, you have to "pay it back" later by spending a load of time fixing all the corners you cut. Uber is already in the process of paying back technical debt incurred earlier in the developmental cycle, and it's not a good time to drum up more now.

This is all answered in the newsletter. We had a meeting with Jon and Brad. We wrote up what was discussed. That is our source. We also go to some depth in outlining the new features you will be getting between now and release, and why Uber wants to prioritise those features.

We did discuss the PR angle with Jon. Overall, they are aware of how PR can effect the release (more so than we are I would say) and they believe that negative criticism will not be prevalent. I outlined the reasons for this in a post elsewhere, but I can go into this in more detail if necessary.

I don't doubt it is accurately researched, I just think it would be preferable to evidence this with direct quotes where appropriate to avoid ambiguity.

Thanks again for though, interesting read as always.

It's like you have never been on the internet

I don't think you understand yet, this information wasn't researched, this is taken directly from a closed meeting the Vanguards had with Uber last week. Everything presented in this Newsletter is taken from that meeting. It's hard to "quote" an hour(or how ever long it actually was) long meeting because so much gets said and there is a lot of back and forth to make sure we're as close to being on the same page Uber is. That's why we do the newsletters to present all the points to the rest of the community in as easily digestible format is possible while at the same time retaining as much information as possible.

Mike

lol

touché

I do understand, but you have to understand at the same time when you write "We had a very detailed chat with Jon about the role of the Unit cannon" and then dont actually quote this conversation at all then it is somewhat frustrating for the reader. personally I would love to hear their design thoughts and how the unit cannon would or would not fit into their current vision and gameplay requirements. I would love to read even en exert from a detailed conversation on this topic!

I mean, you obviously have permission to talk about the conversation as that is the purpose of the newsletter. I appreciate that you have to paraphrase generally but an absence of quotes on something as key as a feature being remomved for 1.0 is a pretty big deal and I for one would like to know exactly what Uber said, not your version of what they said.

Not that I dont trust your interpretation, I just think it is better to use a direct quote and then provide an analysis of said quote rather than replace the quote entirely with your own spin on it.

Thanks. A separate thread might be best.

We aren't allowed to provide much in the way of direct quotes for much the same reason as we're not allowed to record-to-file the meeting; Jon wouldn't speak openly to us if he knew his every word was going to be scrutinised down to the individual phonemes.