Trying out, and getting destroyed by Planetary Annihilation

It started with a Kick

Back in September 2012 I backed the extremely successful project Planetary Annihilation on Kickstarter. I

loved and played Total Annihilation back in the day an was very excited by the idea of spiritual successor, as it is called Kickstarting lingo. I have been followed the project since then, I tried out the beta but could not play it on my computer and today I decided to give the gamma a try. As you can guess by the title, I got my as kicked, my robot armies were destroyed, my commander imprisoned and doomed to spend eternity in robot  :) Here is a short write up of my first visit to robot mayhem.

Computer Specs

I think I need a new... everything.

My computer is pretty good for working on, but it is not a gaming computer, I get by for the most time but when it comes to graphic heavy games like  

PA, it's probably not up to the challenge. But it is all I go for the moment so it'll have to do.

Dell Laptop 17" inch wide screen.

Intel Dual Core T9600 @ 2.80 GHz

4,00 GB of Ram

Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M

Commander RoboKeen

Commander RoboKeen.
May your victory be merciless

After starting up the game and signing in, you can enter the armory and pick a commander. There are several different commander classes. Not sure how different they really are or if it is just a visual thing. But they look great and I want to play them all. I picked this guy, a bi-pedal gun tooting maniac commander. I call him, Commander RoboKeen! 

Adventures of Commander RoboKeen: Operation Dirtball

Since I am new to this I picked the simplest ( or so I thought ) system possible. A single deserted planet, no moons, no lakes or mountains. No nothing. Turn out that maybe wasn't the best idea, cause it was really hard. I had to defend the base on all front since you never knew where the attack was going to come from. If you leave on flank unprotected be sure that the will find your weakness and use that to attack your base. 

I will not keep this post long, here is summary of my experiences.

Unlike the Beta, the Gamma was much more gentle on my system and very much playable. And very much enjoyable. But it was harder then a I thought. The interface or what you can do was not as easy and intuitive as I had hoped. Or maybe I just didn't have the chance to explore it since the AI was on me after only a few minutes. Sending his tanks to explore and try out my defenses. 

I tried to keep up a good pace of expansion and building troops, and defenses. But after only 20 minutes the AI's troops had me outnumbered and shortly after my base and commander were destroyed. 

Picking a starting point on the North Pole not only gives the AI an opportunity to attack you from all sides.
It also gives you a huge N in the way when playing.  

Here they come!
Commander AI did not wait long before sending his troops to my base.

And not long before my beautiful base was crumbling metal and dust. 

Zooming out it you can see how Commander AI's forces (brown) unnumbered mine.
My orange forces are by this stage mostly walls. 

Post game review

Commander AI, I bow to you.

 After the match the game gives you the option to review the match using a feature called chronomcam. It gives you an opportunity to pretend you are a Chess Grandmaster and analyse your match and learn from your mistakes.

Since I never got close to the AI base I never go to so see his commander. The review game me a close up of him. Look at that guy, how did I ever think I would stand a chance. If I had a chance to see him before the game I would have admitted defeat and happily joined his robot ranks as a Lieutenant Colonel or at the very least a Staff Sergeant. Perhaps he would let me oil his joints or polish his displays.  

I think that my biggest mistake, expect not knowing what the hell I was doing was to stop expanding, or at least not expanding fast enough. After 3 minutes our resources stats looked about the same. But 15 minutes into the game they looked something like this. Commander AI had more then 10 times as much metal extraction as me and about 8 times as much energy production going on. With those kind of numbers I would not stand a chance, even if I did know my left bot from a vehicle factory.

Verdict

I am happy and surprised that PA was playable on my machine. I really enjoyed it even if I got my but kicked. I will definitely give it many more chances and try to become a good player. Even if I never will be good enough to play online I still hope to be able to give the AI a bash or too. Or play in a co-op with some friend against the AI.

I hope to watch some games online, explore if there are easier AI settings to begin with. Learn the UI better and how to set up automation of defense, repair and production so I do not have to do so much micromanagement. And get a build order so I know better how to get started.

Thank you for reading, may be best Robot Overlord win!