Planetary Annihilation

Cosmic War

Strategy

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Unread postby icycalm » 24 Sep 2017 07:58

The Nosebreaker called me on Discord for a three-hour voice chat lol (and yes, he talks like a normal -- Australian -- person). Among the many things he said is that he looked into our POVs and was astonished at our teammwork. He described theirs as a clusterfuck where three-four well-coordinated guys have to put up with half a dozen other guys grabbing whatever units they want, changing build orders arbitrarily, or screaming at each other for touching "their" units, etc. It is basically next to impossible for them to form a coherent strategy, and that's why they keep failing to leverage their numbers (on top of getting ganged up on, of course).

He gave me many tips for improvement, and said that we already have the best teammwork in the game, and that if we focused on our 1v1 and basic understanding of tactics we could dominate the game...

I wish I had recorded this stuff. He basically convinced me, and we have video proof of it with us almost beating BSE on our planet earlier. By the way, exceptional work there by recoil and Nigh. I had no idea how much ass you guys were kicking until I looked at the video.

It's 8AM here and I haven't slept a wink, so I'll post more during the week at some point. But congratulations all around.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 24 Sep 2017 12:01

Some notes about the second League game:

-Should have transitioned to T2 metal earlier. I think that this is actually the key reason that we lost. I have been noticing people do this much faster than me in ranked games recently and am trying to work on it. The advantage from advanced mex gives you almost 3x the metal, meaning you could control 3x the area as someone and still have the same economy as them... BSE knew this and focused on upgrading their metal straightaway. There was a tipping point where we were thrashing them on expansion - we maybe even had 2x the metal spots - but were only just ahead on eco, thanks to their T2 mex. They were able to tip the game back to their advantage from their weaker position mainly thanks to this. T2 metal should be as great a priority as expansion.

-Should have thought to start building T2 vehicles at about the point where it became apparent we were beating them on the air game. Of course, it's difficult to realise things like this and adapt our tactics on the fly when we've said at the beginning e.g. "We'll focus bots".

-Should get better at building forward bases. When recoil accidentally sent a bunch of air fabbers into their pond, I thought: "Yes! They're going to establish a naval base and kick them out!" But alas.

-Tactic for expansion on Elysium-style maps: Send out a bunch of bot fabbers building mex in a line, then behind them two more building laser turrets protecting the mex, then behind them two more building anti-air. Repeat in different directions. Preferably scout ahead of each line with air so you get advanced warning of dox raids, but you are securing the territory you've already covered so it doesn't even matter if you drop the ball in one area and your forward fabbers get killed. I started doing this in the brief time that I played before I crashed and it worked well to halt their raiding.

-Suggestion for build order for Elysium-style maps: First bot factory builds nothing but fabbers. T2 bots goes up immediately and produces nothing but T2 fabbers for a while, to focus on getting T2 mex. T2 mex upgrades fall under the jurisdiction of whoever is building the main base. Everything else remains the same as whatever icy was doing in the last game which worked very well. Heavy focus on air, plus remembering to pivot to T2 vehicles when we gain a territory advantage to help drive in the knife.

I realise I might sound like a bit of a dick giving all this advice, despite not actually playing in the game lol. So I will add: Well done team for an extremely impressive game against Uber ranked players! It was awesome to watch, so much so that it almost made up for my computer crashing.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 24 Sep 2017 13:08

Some other tactical tips I've picked up from playing ranked recently:

-Just a single piece of wall in front of a laser turret is extremely effective. Obviously it can be countered with a little micro, but it's annoying to deal with and costs more time, which is really the purpose of turrets.

-Vanguards (T2 flame tanks) are effective when put at the front of an attacking force as a means of soaking up damage. I guess this explains their name. A T2 force using this micro tactic will obliterate an opposing force of similar size that's not using it. It's also effective at storming defences.

-Levelers are weak to flanking due to the slow turn speed of their turret. If you can pincer an invading T2 stack you will deal a lot more damage than if you meet them head on as the Levelers waste time hauling their turrets around to face multiple threats. This also means that Levelers are very vulnerable when retreating, as their chassis rotates faster than the turret causing them to be unable to shoot at what was in front of them for a few crucial moments. So you can't micro Levelers like Ants, and should be much more cautious when deciding to pull them back from an engagement - often your best bet in a losing battle is to 'suicide' them and press forwards, doing as much damage as you can, rather than to save what's left, since you will lose so many of them during the withdrawal.

-I always make a point of building AA turrets by my air factories now, since it reduces the chance of them getting camped by a barely-dominant airforce and locking down the air war for the rest of the game. This happened in the last Clan League match. Usually I like to assign a couple of fabbers to build AA all over the rest of my base anyway, but right next to your air factories is most important for this reason.

-Barracudas (T1 subs) are like the fighter planes of naval. If you want to push someone out of a sea, go all subs. Then when you control the waves, you can start building battleships to bombard their shores. Leviathans have almost as much range as the Holkins for this. Subs can be bombed by air though. They also cannot hit Kaijus (and vice versa). I think this must mean Kaijus are also immune to Torpedo Launchers, but I'm only 90% sure.
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Unread postby recoil » 24 Sep 2017 15:28

icycalm wrote:He gave me many tips for improvement, and said that we already have the best teammwork in the game, and that if we focused on our 1v1 and basic understanding of tactics we could dominate the game...

I wish I had recorded this stuff. He basically convinced me, and we have video proof of it with us almost beating BSE on our planet earlier. By the way, exceptional work there by recoil and Nigh. I had no idea how much ass you guys were kicking until I looked at the video.


I was surprised once the skies were clear, but their T2 forces and micro skills eventually got the best of me, plus I was a bit lost on what to do afterwards, it seems I should have let my army build up and asked for more T2. Assigning me and Nigh to air force and ground forces, respectively, did wonders for this situation. An air layer player just needs to dog fight, collect intel on enemy army composition and provide targets/support for ground forces. It can be difficult to juggle so you'll need another player to help and/or know all the macros and shortcuts for managing armies.

Robomoo wrote:-Should get better at building forward bases. When recoil accidentally sent a bunch of air fabbers into their pond, I thought: "Yes! They're going to establish a naval base and kick them out!" But alas.


Stop bringing up my mistakes, lol. They could have been better leveraged, but the team needs to know beforehand when it happens and they need to agree to it, otherwise, it will be a half-assed effort like how I accidentally left them there in the first place. The air fabbers would have been great for a flanking maneuver via teleporter. Like the Nosebreaker said our teamwork is there, but our 1v1 tactics need to improve.
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Unread postby NighAligned » 24 Sep 2017 17:34

icycalm wrote:I wish I had recorded this stuff. He basically convinced me, and we have video proof of it with us almost beating BSE on our planet earlier. By the way, exceptional work there by recoil and Nigh. I had no idea how much ass you guys were kicking until I looked at the video.


Thanks! I was pretty surprised too how much damage we were doing to them early on lol.

And thanks for the tips Robo! I'll try to incorporate them into my play next time. I've also been doing some ranked matches and thinking about the game, so I have some thoughts on strategy as well. But yeah, definitely early T2 economy (around 6-7 mex, it seems) is a big one since you can focus on a fewer points to protect and break the opponent with the much more effective T2 combat units.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 May 2018 18:09

I metagamed by watching flubb's latest video on the ladder and getting his starting build order. Sue me.

Commander build order: factory, mex, pgen, factory, 2x pgen, factory, 2x pgen, factory

The first factory was bots, and it churned out 3 fabbers, all of which were put on mex duty, first together, and later split into one group of two and a lone fabber to get to more metal spots more efficiently.

Note that this was on a hybrid land/water map (roughly 75% land and 25% water), so it could be that he has somewhat different build orders for other maps. Note also that he was making quite a lot of those zappy bots that use power, so maybe that's why he was making so many pgens.
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Unread postby icycalm » 02 Aug 2018 15:14

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how- ... st-1147818

Clopse wrote:Defend your base with an atlas, attack theirs with an ares? You happy to camp and let them come at you with spam use an atlas, control a choke.

Short distances between bases and proper support is vital. They have air? Build flak. They have catapults? Build gil e. They have orbital build bluehawks.

That just leaves holkins ares and nukes as hard counters.
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Unread postby icycalm » 29 Dec 2020 18:15

So I watched recoil's stream of what was happening on the water planet in Clan Wars #23, and I have some comments to make. Then I'll talk a bit about some issues I had with Agentx on the lava planet, and finally I'll explain how we'll manage large teams of players spread among different planets in the future, if we get more games like this (which we may not, more on which soon).

So first things first, I really enjoyed watching the war from recoil's perspective in his stream:

Insomnia Clan Wars #23 with recoil and The Cult
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE6kLP4gPOw

Now I have a complete picture of what happened, at least from our side. It's a shame the other clans don't stream. I am guessing they are afraid of being cheated, so there's nothing more to say on the subject. I am a 42-year-old man and I don't cheat in videogames, and neither do my clan mates. But to each their own. I would advise them to give streaming a chance though, especially if they want to build large, long-lasting clans like mine. Streaming is a fantastic way to bring a bunch of people together and focus their attention on whatever games the clan is playing. Clans that stream together stay together. Just sayin'. Not to mention it's great advertising for the events, and if you want to play in big events you should maybe think of doing your part to promote them. Again, just sayin'.

Now as for recoil's stream, let me just say that he picked the worst spawn point I have ever seen in my 600 hours of playing the game. He landed in the middle of nowhere, without a single metal point nearby. And when I say nearby, I mean RIGHT NEXT TO IT; right next to AT LEAST two, if not three or more of them. What's worse is that he landed in the water, with a naval factory first, and the naval fabbers being the slowest in the game. It's like he's deliberately trying to throttle our early-game production. If he had just moved his cursor a bit he could have landed right on a metal spot, and grabbed it right away. Check how decent players play the game: the first thing they make is a factory, and the next thing is a metal spot with the commander, without moving at all from the landing point (since the commander is the slowest unit in the game, so you want to move as little as possible with it, especially at the start when every second counts). recoil was SEVERAL MINUTES away from grabbing a metal spot the way he played. Several minutes away for no conceivable reason.

There were countless other errors in Bravo team's play, but we all make many of those errors, so I won't bother pointing them out right now. We can deal with all those errors, but not if the VERY LANDING is botched and we have no metal! If everyone had landed as badly as recoil, we wouldn't have lasted half the time we did last. Fix your landings recoil, please. This shit is unacceptable, it's like you've never played the game before.

Apart from that, the Bravo team co-operated beautifully, so I am really happy with that.

I can't say the same for Alpha team, however, on the lava planet. The main issue was Agentx, who appeared to be randomly building stuff with no rhyme or reason, without bothering to inform anyone to boot. It's like he was playing alone. I would look over his base and suddenly there'd be orbital factories there, super-expensive useless factories at that point in the game chocking our economy while we desperately wondered how to find some metal to build a couple of tanks so we wouldn't get booted out of the planet. I got really pissed at him for a while, and nothing much I said seemed to change anything, so I kinda exploded on stream. I even whined about it to the other team, when I switched over to their voice channel: that's how frustrated I was. So while I apologized later for my outburst via DM, the issue remains that Agentx can't play Clan Wars with us again unless he starts acting as being part of a team, and properly co-operating.

The reason I exploded btw was that I was under a lot of pressure last Saturday. I have been working on and off on getting these events restarted ever since the summer, and on top of spending over a thousand dollars in server fees (our server used to cost $230/month before I found one for $150), I've spent dozens of hours getting the server set up, working on the mod, building maps, updating forum threads, communicating back and forth with dozens of people to ensure adequate participation, and so on. Finally, it's game day, and I have 14 people in the game, many of whom have contributed hundreds of dollars to the effort (including Agentx himself), and I am trying to ensure that everyone has a good time, so they feel their investment was worthwhile, and come back so we can keep playing. And none of this can happen if our clan gets eliminated in half an hour because we can't coordinate worth a shit. So on top of the administrative workload, I also had to figure out how to coordinate a NINE-PERSON clan, spread across TWO PLANETS and TWO VOICE CHANNELS, all the while being under constant pressure from the NUMBER ONE CLAN AND PLAYERS IN THE GAME. So yes, when I see the most expensive factories in the game above Agentx's base for no reason whatsoever, while we spent the last half an hour begging for some metal to build two tanks, I exploded, and though I am sorry about it I am sure that if it happened again I would explode again, so we need to find a way to ensure it doesn't happen again.

To be sure, I made mistakes too. My main mistake was letting everyone make his little base, instead of going two megabases, one per planet. Then I would have taken over production completely, and recoil would have done the same on the other planet, and the rest of the players would have taken other roles, and I think we would have performed better. And Agentx wouldn't have had the opportunity to waste so many resources, which in the thick of the moment honestly felt like sabotage.

But you live and you learn, and if we play Clan Wars again this Saturday (which we may not, depending on what the other clans do; we may end up playing Clanless Wars instead, more on which soon), and we get a lot of people in our team again, we're definitely going megabase. That said, that doesn't mean that that would solve the Agentx problem completely, because the strict division of roles only helps in the early-game; by the time the mid-game rolls around, you have people colonizing planets or moons on their own, or setting up multiple advance bases on the same planet, so eventually everyone gets to build factories and order units and manage bases on their own.

So what I am trying to say is that people who play in Clan Wars in my clan need to be able to co-operate properly, or they can't play. You can't go T2 without telling anyone in a shared economy game: that is SABOTAGE, and if you do it I will get really cross at you, and eventually kick you out of my team. Agentx didn't just "go T2": he made HALF A DOZEN T2 factories without telling anyone over the course of the game, and what's worse half a dozen factories that had nothing at all to do with our strategic plan at the moment, pumping out super-expensive units we had no use for. He screwed us over real good! I don't mind inexperienced players in my team, and I don't mind people making mistakes—I make mistakes all the time—but I draw the line at sabotage, and Agentx pissed all over it.

Bottom line is everyone agrees that my Clan Wars are the best PA event ever, and produce the best PA games, but you have to be able to achieve some MODICUM of co-operation in order to be allowed to play in them. This is a STRATEGY game, and the people playing it want to DEVISE STRATEGIES, which is IMPOSSIBLE if every dude randomly clicks the buttons on the screen without telling anyone anything IN A NINE-PLAYER TEAM SPREAD OUT ACROSS TWO PLANETS FOR FUCK'S SAKES. We're on the verge of taking PA to a whole new level, with multiple Planetary Commanders coordinating with a Supreme Commander to devise the kind of complex strategies hitherto reserved for turn-based games, but not if the players refuse to talk to each other for christsake. I know some people are shy or whatever, some people don't like to talk, or they simply suck so bad at strategy that it just doesn't enter their heads that multiplayer strategy requires coordination, but I DON'T CARE. I do want everyone to be happy and have fun, but not if one person's fun comes at the expense of EVERYONE ELSE'S FUN, and utterly ruins the strategy in the strategy events I have been working for years to set up.

Bottom line is: coordinate properly, or be excluded from Clan Wars. It's your choice.

That said, we're only playing Clan Wars again if the clans continue to participate in our events, which is uncertain. If they don't, we're going back to Clanless Wars, which means our clan will be divided in several teams, which means the teams will be far smaller, with perhaps two or three people in each. Moreover, these teams will be random, so over the long run every team will have to play with Agentx, or with whoever else has trouble with coordination, so in the end the handicap will even out. So for Clanless Wars, I will allow people to take part who suck at coordination. That said, if you're in my team and refuse to coordinate your efforts with me, I might just give you my commander and log off and go play 1v1 Ranked. If I am playing alone, I may as well control all of my units. That's my thinking at any rate, and the other players are free to do what they see fit.

And of course, Agentx can still play in Battle Royale, and in King of the Planet, since there's very little if any coordination required for those events. And of course, he can try Clan Wars again with us, to see if things will improve, but I honestly doubt it. We had another person with the same issue some years ago, infernovia, and in the end we simply had to stop playing PA with him. None of the second chances I gave him worked, and he simply refused to coordinate with us in any way, shape or form. It's just not fun playing the most complex strategy game ever with such people, and they ruin all the fun of it, they take all the fun out of the damn game. And there's nothing I can do to change that. Thankfully, the vast majority of CULT players are not like that, so we're good. And btw, the vast majority of players in OTHER clans ARE like that. Even when they land together, they're like "don't touch my fabbers" and "don't touch my units", so for people who prefer this playstyle, you do have the option of joining another clan. I am just sayin'. At least only for PA, if you want. Think it over, and if you like the idea, talk to people and maybe we can make it happen. I want everyone to be happy, and I will do everything in my power to make this so, except destroy my fun. Because if I destroy my fun I won't run the events, and no one will be happy.

And finally, now that I am done with the whining, let's talk about something fun: the new Planetary Commander role that for the first time emerged from our 9-player team on Saturday. Btw, I don't think we've ever played with a 9-player team before. I think the most we've done in the past is 8 players, and we weren't starting on two planets. So that's why we had to use two voice channels for the first time. I don't think it's possible to use a single channel under such circumstances. And this means that each planet must get its own Planetary Commander, and that the two of them must try to coordinate their efforts as best they can, otherwise the economy will be permanently crashing, as it was for us, not to mention it will be impossible to focus attacks, draw up a strategy, and so on.

For a first attempt, I think we did decently last Saturday. recoil and I hopped back and forth across channels, and we had a general plan throughout, even though it lacked detail. What I want to try next time we have a similar setup (i.e. enough players in a large system in a large war), is try to establish a direct channel of communication between Planetary Commanders without having to switch voice channels. E.g. they could be in a Mumble server, or a Skype chat, and use push-to-talk to chat between themselves while staying put in Discord. Let me know if you think of any other solutions.

Please note that only CULT faced these issues last Saturday. If we had only had two or three players like the other clans, a single voice channel would have sufficed. Nine players bring a whole other level of complexity to the game, and we're the only clan that has ever faced this level, because we are the only clan with so many players (not to mention the only event that ALLOWS so many players in a single team). And note that I want ALL our players to try out the roles of Planetary Commander or even Supreme Commander in the long run, if they want. But it can't be someone who doesn't know the units, or how to pick a decent spawning point, or who doesn't like to talk, and is therefore incapable of coordinating a strategy. If you like the damn game, and want to try the tougher roles, play the game until you've got at least the basics down, and then I'll give you higher roles. So far, the only ones I deem qualified for Planetary Commander are me, recoil and ChevRage. Maybe Robomoo and Some guy could also qualify if they can demonstrate that they can take charge of a situation and manage people properly (which includes speaking LOUDLY and CLEARLY and OFTEN), we'll see. Everyone else needs to play A LOT MORE and learn how the game works, before I even consider taking a look at their leadership qualities. That said, some players will likely not want to command other players at all, and that's fine. But for those who want to, I need to see that you can get the job done at an adequate level so that you don't ruin everyone's fun, and ultimately the event itself, through sheer incompetence.

I am writing several articles that I'll be posting on the Cosmic War site soon, so look out for those. First I need to figure out how to log into it lol (I seem to have lost my password), then update the event schedule and leaderboards, and then I can finally properly resurrect the site with a bunch of cool new articles. Stay tuned.
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Unread postby Agentx » 30 Dec 2020 09:51

I'm really sorry about this. When I have some time I'll be reviewing my POV later, my problem is usually being T2 shy. I'm thinking I might spectate next time and cast instead.
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Dec 2020 15:46

It's also worth pointing out that all those expensive factories and units you made were paid for with metal other people grabbed and defended. You were staying in your base the whole time, playing city-builder off the back of other people's desperate efforts against Uber and Platinum players...

I've never heard you formulate a strategy in a big game. Never heard you say, "I am making Omegas in order to send them in that particular spot to punch through that player's defences". You just make them in order to have them I guess. And since you have no strategy, of course you have nothing to communicate to other people in the team. If you were at least spending just your own metal, you wouldn't be a drag to the team. But the way you're going about things it's like we have an extra enemy in our team. That's why I said you may as well try another clan. And that's why I think your problem has nothing to do with being "T2 shy". You are not shy at all when it comes to queuing up tons of stuff no one, not even you, has expressed any need for. All I am asking you to do is tell the rest of the 8 people in the voice channel what you are building and why, and you steadfastly refuse to, most probably I think because you yourself don't know why, because knowing why would require having a strategy.

This all can probably be solved quite easily by giving you roles that have nothing to do with building. You can take out air scouts, or grab metal with fabbers, or defend metal spots with defences (as long as the "defences" are actual defences and not a whole new base we don't need!), or raid the enemies' metal, or even take whole armies and push towards enemy bases. And remember, chances are we won't be playing a Clan War this Saturday, but a Clanless War between ourselves, in which case you're welcome to play normally if you want.

I think you are a great guy and an integral part of my clan, a real asset to the site. And I think we can figure out a way to keep you in all the PA events and having fun with the rest of us, if you just work with me to find a solution. That said, if you prefer to take a week off to try casting instead, let's do that. But you are definitely more needed in the game, especially if we play a Clanless War, in which case we'll need every player we can get to fill out the lobby and have a good time.
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Jan 2022 19:58

From the PA Discord:

Dreadnought wrote:T2 fabs are just not cost and time effective due to being half the buildrate of T1 for cost, and taking up space for T2 combat production. It is better to have a few T2 fabs assisted by a lot of T1 fabs. You can start a building with T2, and have it continue building with T1 and the T2 unit goes off and starts other blueprints. T2 fabs simply give you the plans
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Jan 2022 20:05

Again from PA Discord:

Dreadnought wrote:Required Mods - Hotbuild2 (Hotkeys), PewPewPew (You can see unit bullets)

~Commander at start
-Builds 1 factory, 1 metal, 1 factory.
-Then 2 energy, 1 factory on repeat
-You need 1 air factory as your 2nd or 3rd factory.

~First factory (SHOULD NOT BE AIR)
-build 3 fabricators, they spam metal, then build army as normal. Do not build more than 4 fabricators at start, build army, or you will not have economy to support those fabbers.
-Have your factories rallied to your expanding fabs to defend them.

~Every factory
-Builds 10-20 units and 1 fab on infinite build. New fabs go build metal

~Defenses
-Don't build defenses in your base. Your commander is your defense, build them in the middle of the map.

~T2 Factory
-Build 8-16 T1 factories first, then put 2-5 fabs+Commander on it.
Do not build the same types of T2 factories. Get one of each type (Bot/Vehicle/Air), and Boost with fabbers instead what kind of T2 units you need.
-Build combat units first like at least 10 before you get your first T2 fab.
-Don't ever have more than 1-3 T2 fabbers in a game.


That's roughly what I do. I do about 70% of this, and I developed most of it on my own via 500 hours of playing. I will now try to get closer to 100% this.

Note that there will often need to be MASSIVE variations from this basic plan when you're playing large games and crazy games like we play. But you need to first learn the basic plan in order to be able later, via experience, to adjust it on the fly.

E.g. when he says don't have more than 1-3 T2 fabbers in a game, he means 1v1, not 20-player wars lol where you're spread across multiple planets.
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Late-game Strategy

Unread postby Ciaróg » 06 Feb 2022 10:57

A lot of people in the wars are quite good at building up a strong economy and have no idea what to do with all the metal they accumulate in the early-game, leading to stalemates. Once you have a T2 economy you want to transition from the early raiding on undefended metal spots to attacking the enemy bases or commanders. There are countless ways to do this and I will attempt to list the simplest ways to use up the metal you have been collecting below. Floating on metal is always bad and building something sub-optimal is always better than building nothing. You should always aim to use all of your metal. If you have too much, build some metal storage while you try to figure out what you want to build. When in doubt just lay a line of factories. You always need more factories. People who want to get more practice with this part of the game should try organise some 2v2s since they are more likely to last long enough for these mechanics to come into play.

T2 vehicles: This is as dumb as it is effective. A force consisting of Levelers (T2 tanks,) accompanied by Skitters (T1 scouts,) Shellers (T2 long-range artillery), and Vanguards (T2 flame-tanks) can bring down a lightly-defended enemy base pretty easily. Levellers can see much further than they can shoot which is why you need the scouts. The scouts can also spot mines which helps a lot. Defend your scouts or you are at the mercy of mines. You will want to send all of your T1 units to help out too to soak up some damage.

T2 bots: T2 bots are weaker than T2 vehicles to the point they aren't really for full frontal assaults; in a straight-up firefight vehicles will come out on top so use bots for precision strikes and raiding.

T2 naval: These are pretty much as strong as titans and attacking them head-on with land units is futile. Kaiju are also amphibious and more powerful than T2 vehicles. If you get naval dominance, the land within range of naval units almost becomes a no-go zone. You really don't want this, so if the other person has control of a body of water try clearing out a small section of the water and laying down some torpedo launchers and naval factories. The best counter to naval units is usually naval units.

T2 air: If you get air dominance and have a decent T2 air force you can start systematically destroying the enemy's less well-defended metal spots. A decent-sized group of Kestrals (T2 gunships) are more than capable of taking out a couple of T1 anti-air turrets and if your opponent has only been lighly defending their metal you can totally cripple their metal production with an air blob. Just make sure you have Hummingbirds (T1 fighters) and Phoenixes (T2 fighters) in the blob or you will lose all of them fast.

Nukes: Nukes are expensive to the point you need to aim them very carefully. It takes two nukes to kill a commander at full health. Remember you can make Manhattans in T2 vehicle factories and walk them to the enemy base if they have built too many anti-nukes for you to use the standard nuclear missile launcher.

Titans: Don't send these in undefended. They are extremely powerful but vulnerable in other ways. An Ares can easily be taken out with air, a Helios with Avengers etc. If you keep these alive they will destroy an enemy base sooner or later.

Orbital: A couple of Omegas (orbital battleships) can easily snipe enemy commanders as long as they aren't too well-defended.
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 27 Feb 2022 19:44

From the official PA Discord.


Marshall
What Nik is trying to say is that if the game is going to nukes, then you are not being aggressive enough in raiding expansions, encircling and preventing your opponent from getting resources.

If you are just playing for fun and like the big weapons like titans, and you and your friends aren't a high skill level, then I suppose the nukes won't have a big impact if you turn them off.

What it could mean, if you don't do things like raiding, is that turning the tide of battle and punching a hole in your opponent to find an opening will take much longer.

Also, interplanetary games often rely on nukes to clear an area of the planet for a beach head, or for sniping super weapons or commanders.

PorcelainUnicorns
or big macro maps like people in the discord tend to play
not unusual to see dozens of nukes thrown around in those FFAs

Chickenbeaver71
Nukes are nice because they can get rid of a small part of a turtle's base

obiwantoby
Just need 10 of em on a 1 minute rotating basis

ASMR Broom
If you disable nukes then you might have more fun. Just understand that nukes are very counterable

Chickenbeaver71
usually from what I see turtles like to stay small so you'll take on their econ

ASMR Broom
Turtling only has merit in free for all games and Even then, it's light turtling


Keep in mind that our Cosmic Wars and Clan Wars are essentially "team FFAs" when there are lots of teams, so that means that light turtling makes sense there under certain conditions (that the system is crowded, and there isn't much room for expansion).
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 16 Mar 2022 01:57

From the official PA Discord.


[ICARUS] nimzo
@Hartmann I’d say the easiest way to get better is to copy a build order of a better player and focus on aggressively sniping your opponent’s fabs. That should get you well into gold. From there, keep analyzing your own replays to see what you could have done better, and you’ll eventually have enough game sense to crack the upper ranks

Hartmann
good example of a lil discussion i had on skill and gernres
in FPS anyone can land a lucky headshot, 2 hour player can kill a 20000 H veteran
in Mobas you can maybe, sometimes, if youre lucky, kill someone with way more experience.
RTS? a new guy will die 99 of 100 times to someone with like 10 H experience, a mediocre player with game knowledge and all the good jazz will lose 1000 of 1000 to a masters lvl player
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 27 Mar 2022 20:44

Hartmann
tell me, how good are walls in this game?
i know towers are very eh so i wondered if its worth anything to wall off small chokes
mostly just to tell dox raiders to fuck off and take a route where i have military more regulary passing through

Dreadnought
I have a mod that spaces out wall placements when drawing a line. Also can double layer it

River
If used properly the walls are good. You use then to absobe dmg for turrent not to block of chokes

[ICARUS] billthebluebot
a few walls is pretty much always good at 50 metal for 1000 HP
you just need to resist the urge to build a giant age of empires fortress wall around everything
kinda like mines in that respect
theoretically extremely cost effective but tempting to overspend on

Hartmann
thats good to know
im playing a lot on the middle map in the default selection whose name ive yet to rememberand theres a few sections id like to wall to funnel agression into more easily supervised areas

ASMR Broom
Walls are insanely good when used correctly

FelipeHC
I have a very bad behavior of ignoring walls.. but whenever a turret has some walls around it, they become much more difficult to kill when you dont have granadiers

River
Genediers ofc are the reason people dont use both

ASMR Broom
Drifters feel left out now

[ICARUS] Quildtide
walling off chokes is generally not worth it; if you have a chokepoint you need to defend, throw mines down there
if you just want to delay people at a chokepoint and you know they have detection, put down 1 turret and 1-2 walls in front of it; this combo is actually really good against anything that doesn't outrange it
the 1 caveat is that, right now, most armies contain a large amount of Drifters and/or Grenadiers, which outrange the T1 turrets
For a bit more of an investment, 1 Pelter + frontal walls
So Walls in PA are less about blocking pathing and more about blocking projectiles
I guess it's better to think about them a bit like trenches than walls

FelipeHC
mines are very easy to counter.

[ICARUS] Quildtide
Walls let friendly projectiles through while blocking enemy ones

[ICARUS] Quildtide
hahahaha
you'd think
they are easy to counter on paper, but mines get value even at the highest level of play




Lazyb01
im just asking about do you know the numbers
how many you get out of a corpse
is it really worth it

[ICARUS] Quildtide
For the majority of mobile land units: 41% of their total metal value is in their corpse
For the majority of land structures: 50% of their total metal value is in their corpse
I don't think any other units leave wreckage
Zeus is 1/3rd
The specific value for mobile land units is .7/1.7
Some land units like walls, boombots, etc. don't leave wreckage




Nik
most important mod to get is infinite build, after that more pewpew, hotbuild2 (and set it up yourself. the way dread uses it is very suboptimal but every top player has their own custom setting)




Lazyb01
what is that command, when every unit moves with its individual speed?

[BRN]Ferretmaster
hold control when you issue a move order, useful for making sure your fighters are ahead of bombers/if you are chasing air
units will also go at individual speed with attack orders

FelipeHC
It was not long ago I discovered about this... completely changes how you play the game




ASMR Broom
you went bot power metal air
scout pelican scout out of the air factory
he went bot metal air and scout icarus out of the air factory
this results in him having an earlier raiding force than you and sniping your fab and scout before you were even set up
So if you're gonna build a metal and a power generator before your air factory, you should probably just make fighters first after a scout and play more defensively at first

Lazyb01
But I think the main mistake was leaving the fans alone

ASMR Broom
a pelican build can be done but it's safer if you go bot metal air for those, or wait until you have some fighters if you keep your build the same

Lazyb01
If I send two bots after them

ASMR Broom
nah this was the main mistake
you didn't have an air unit that could protect them




FelipeHC
It is actually a better way to play to have it off.. but you struggle at the begging

ASMR Broom
not actually better. I know some top players who use it

JuicyJuuce
what are the advantages to having it off?

[BRN]Ferretmaster
with it on, some maps that are not made with poles in mind are difficult to navigate, + general control issues near poles

Nik
Its better to learn to play without pole lock, it can handicap you a lot




JuicyJuuce
why does this Ares fire its main gun into the ground when an enemy army is approaching it?

JuicyJuuce
is it because it's on a small planet and the planet's curvature is too tight?

ASMR Broom
yes

[DICARUS] johndotsun
On the smallest and really small planet sizes, ares start to become really bad titans in general
You're better off not building them, and maybe building an atlas if you really need a titan in that close quarters
rare situations where an Atlas can sometimes be good




Hartmann
today i learned that if you blow up a planet, its moon becomes a neutral halley lmao
marshalls Artifice, we blew up the fire rock
the moon went into a new orbit
crashed into the next moon where the 4 leftover commanders were




Dreadnought
Its hard to say what faction is better, especially with future changes being tested
Atm I would give the edge to MLA simply because they can go straight into drifters which would counter lancer spam
Though Legion is stronger in all other aspects of air and T2
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 06 Apr 2022 07:02

Tip for Cosmic War events.

If you feel weak and that you’re always getting eliminated too early, find other players at your level and ally with them before the war even starts. Go in the same voice channel and even pick your landing spots together. You’ll last much longer this way, you’ll enjoy yourself more, and you’ll give the stronger guys a better challenge and therefore a better game too.
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 10 Apr 2022 03:08

Planetary Annihilation Titans Default Keyboard Cheat Sheet by PAgod
https://cheatography.com/pagod/cheat-sh ... t-keyboard

Image

Very useful to consult between games until you have it memorized. Note that these are MOSTLY default, but he's made some changes that you'll have to enter in the settings if you want to use what he uses.

PAgod wrote:Default layout for the game with some modifications on unit selection


You can download it as PDF: https://cheatography.com/pagod/cheat-sh ... yboard/pdf

The ideal would be a second screen, maybe a large tablet, next to your keyboard, with the PDF version on it. I will do this because I am getting a tablet soon for Syrinscape.
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 09 May 2022 19:55

MaréchalGryzzly wrote:Mass dox can be a pain to counter when we aren't familiar with it, and it's true that it is powerful rn.
Your tank army will always be stronger than dox army so why dox win?

It's mostly about stacking, dox are fast so when they go out of the factory they go faster on the front line and compose the main army which means that let' s say 80% of what you invested in metal in units is on the Frontline while with tank they are much much slower and on the Frontline you may have only 50% of your investment rdy to fight
stacking is why you loose the fight versus dox, a dox player will always wait to have mass before attacking

So how do we solution this? We break the stacking.
First of all once you detect the full dox spam get Intel, radars to know from where the attacks are coming and position well your low army number full of tank.
Then just stack your tank, do not be agressive try to avoid loosing small groups of tanks , it's all about optimizing how much tank you will not loose. The more you loose dumbly the bigger the gap is with the dox.
OK your tank are stacked now in order to break the dox stacking you're going to produce mass air and quickly. For me you're a bit wrong and you can always do more air than your dox player and that's mainly how you ez it BUT if you can't : just prepare a suicide bomber run with like 10 fighters and 15 bombers and you erase that dox army.
The better you are with that suicide bomber run the better the strat will work, so you need to bombs at a good timing when opponent's air isn't here is possible and when there is less aa in the army you also need to no be scouted, hide your air and bombers fake that you have nothing. It require also to micro well your bombers to destroy as much dox as you can

Once you bombed the dox, take your stacked army and go fight
Usually I use my bomber at the exact moment when my land army is engaging opponent's army
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Re: Strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 19 May 2022 06:25

Here's something I've wondered about for a while but only just now figured out. If you're wondering how they space those nukes perfectly in videos where they nuke entire planets, you do that via area attack. I've never seen any of us do this, we just target single buildings, which doesn't make sense if you have several nukes, even if you want them to hit the same target. It's much better to at least space them out around the target, so you'll hit more stuff, rather than all of your nukes hitting the exact same spot on the ground. So you basically select area attack and drag out an area, and the nukes will be evenly spaced inside it. If you drag out to the entire planet, it will evenly nuke it.

Looking forward to trying this out. It's a game-changer for me.
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