About to buy, just want to make sure.

[Davor]

I am about to buy the game but I want to make sure exactly what I am getting into.

First thing is the most important thing for me. CAN I PAUSE THE GAME? This is a deal breaker for me. If no pause, I can't play these game because of my limitations. I only play single player games, so I understand there is no pause in multiplayer but can we pause in single player?

The second big issue for me is how fun is the combat. Is it pure RTS click fest game or is it more of an easy paced game? I like to pause and issue orders and take my time. So I can't do click fest games sadly

Now what I wnat to know before I am getting into, can we do these things?

Research technology?

Build units to what we like, say like in MOO or is it more like Civ and Starcraft where the units are pre made?

Diplomacy?

Espionage?

City/colony building?

Now I got some Steam money from Christmas, I am looking to buy a new game now. So just wondering if this is for me.

[Arkay]

Pause -
Yes you can pause the game.

Combat micromanagement -
Micro-management of units in PA is generally unnecessary. You might find yourself moving units towards/away from enemies to take advantage of range disparities, or on rare occasions put artillery/mortars on the opposite side of high geometry to take advantage of the enemy not having a line of sight to counter-attack, but other than that you won't be doing much specific unit placement.
PA is a fast paced game.



Tech Research -
The game has all of it's units and buildings divided by Basic/Advanced and factory types.
So, upon starting a game, your Commander has access to most basic tech, including the 4 main factories - Bot, Vehicle, Air and Naval.
Each of the factories has it's own Fabricator, which can build the Advanced version of it's own type.
(Basic Bot Fabs can build Advanced Bot Factories, which can in turn build Advanced Bot Fabbers, which can then build advanced structures.)
There's no research tree or anything.

Diplomacy -
Not in single player. Multiplayer lobbies do have a Dynamic Alliances setting, although it’s not very popular.
AI cannot use Dynamic Alliances.

Espionage –
No. No unit can be invisible as such, with the exception of mines and the Advanced Submarine, the Kraken which does not show a radar blip, but is still visible to regular vision-ranges.

City/Colonies –
Not sure what you mean. I’ll say no.

[Davor]

Thank you so much Ostler and Wiskers. By city/cities colony I ment do you build research buildings like librariers for fresearch, farms to get more units, mines to get minerals, maybe even walls for protection.

So glad I can play the game. Being fast paced as you say, i wouldn't be able to play at the game at all. Was going to buy Grey Goo years ago, but because of no pause, I stayed away from it. So good to see pause in Planetary Annihilations now.

[Arkay]

Originally posted by Davor:

Thank you so much Ostler and Wiskers. By city/cities colony I ment do you build research buildings like librariers for fresearch, farms to get more units, mines to get minerals, maybe even walls for protection.

No research buildings.
Instead of food and wood/stone like you'd have in other RTS settings, PA uses Metal and Energy in much the way you'd expect - Metal is mined from specific spots all over the planet, and controlling these spots is pretty much the deciding factor in whether you win or not, and Energy is produced from PGenerators that you can build wherever you like.
The game does have walls, but they're not exceptionally useful nor are they very complicated. You can't like... build things on top of them or have complex fortresses with ramps up onto walls you build, they're just shields that your faction can fire through, which the enemy needs to go around them or just brute force through.

[Lula Mae]

If you are only playing single player AI skirmishes, you can also control the pace of the game by selecting appropriate AI difficulty levels, fighting qualities/styles and adjusting their economy multiplier up or down. For your specific playing desires, I recommend that when you start the game, click the Community Mod Manager button and install the 'Queller AI" mod.

Read about this mod at https://exodusesports.com/guides/improving-planetary-annihilation-ai/

[blutooth]

In regards to single player. Please keep in mind PA dose not have traditional single player campaign.

For single player you can
Either setup a AI custom/skirmish game, where you can either select (there are lots of good map packs on the build in mod manager) the system/map from a tiny moon to large earth type planets in system with metal planets(think deathstar) moons and gas giants. Or design your own planet / system.
Or play Galactic war, this mod will spawn a set of connected system and you will start with a limited set of tech (types of units you and build) as you take controlof systems one at a time you cam unlock more tech and you get more powerful will end up fighting the three other faction leaders.
Sometimes depending you the settings/ difficultly and size of the galaxy map many systems can be just single planets, but there are some mods to help with that.

In terms of micro, although the best player will use a lot of micro it's not need to get to a half decent level of play.
The game has a UI with many macro features that allow you focus on the macro game, can be very important in multi-planet multiplayer games.
These include infinite build loop, to repeat build your unit queue, and way to build rush one of units from factories. And Area commands, this allow you area built metal points from a small cluster to cover the whole planet, and build lines of power of factories, you can of cause shift queue build orders. You can also you area commands for patrolling and attacking.
These will be covered in the tutorial.

One of the biggest learning curves for this game can be getting used to playing on a spherical map.

It may be worth watching some game play videos on youtube.

[Davor]

Thank you all, bought the game. Looking forward to try it out One of the reasons I got it, something different playing on a spherical world. Another reason I need pause. So I can enjoy the looks and learn how to play at my pace. :)