Factorio + Anihilation

= Industrial Annihilation

I guess someone read the train factory topics on ZK forum

I wouldn't put much hope up for it. Their landing page was broken (FAQ lead to some 404 error) when I checked it out and they have a big "Invest now!" button that works (unsurprisingly). Offering skins for $400+ investments into the company is just.. eeeehhh and doing early access release in 6 months screams "this is just a reskinned PA with slight adjustments". Likely that metal/energy is just a resource that you have to move to production lines (as seen in the trailer) and a handful of extra production chains with end game content being a bit lacking.

I don't see how factory building will be much fun in an RTS. You'll need a blueprint system (see: factorio) or simplified production chains for it to work with any pacing that isn't "spend 1 hour building then have it end suddenly". ZK works because you skip a lot of the build up. Now imagine if ZK was 'repeat this build chain for 30 minutes to get your first unit'. On top of this, it invites an NPE (new player experience) that is just "swallow dust repeatedly or download basic blueprints for competitive play". Additionally, they're aiming for 4 player max which means you're going to get, at best, 2v2 or FFA.

I just don't see this working out at all, but I welcome being surprised by a good game. We'll see in 6 months I guess.

quote: Me waiting for the Dyson sphere project combat update.

I also play DSP :P might be fun to try the multiplayer mod sometime together, if you're up for it.

While I would love to Shaman, my current skill level can best be described as failing to get past red research in any meaningful capacity as I run out of oil rapidly.
I did get onto a another planet to get some metals (after having to reload saves 3 times from navigation errors), but that is a very inefficient operation (no interstellar logistics, let alone the interplanetary one...)

quote: I don't see how factory building will be much fun in an RTS. You'll need a blueprint system (see: factorio) or simplified production chains for it to work with any pacing that isn't "spend 1 hour building then have it end suddenly". ZK works because you skip a lot of the build up. Now imagine if ZK was 'repeat this build chain for 30 minutes to get your first unit'. On top of this, it invites an NPE (new player experience) that is just "swallow dust repeatedly or download basic blueprints for competitive play".

try supreme commander or BAR sometime (make sure not to go front, but farm metalmakers instead)

quote: try supreme commander or BAR sometime (make sure not to go front, but farm metalmakers instead)

I'm not dealing with complicated supply lines in Supcom or BAR, though..

I'm cautiously optimistic. I had an absurd amount of fun playing Planetary Annihilation multiplayer many years ago and it's the first "Annihilation-Like" that got me into the competitive multiplayer of RTS. It's because of PA that I was even able to get into Zero-K, which is a superior game.

There were a few key foundational mistakes in PA's design that kept it from really flourishing.

1.
The interplanetary combat was unrefined. Despite being the marketing focus, multi-planet maps never played as well as single planet. Multi-planet should have been included, but treated like the 8-player Super Smash Brothers "party mode" that it was: a silly side feature to the core experience of the game. Sometimes 2 or 3 planet systems were fine if all the spawn locations were on a single planet.

2.
The game never directed players towards it's strongest features. Despite multi-planet being bad to play, the most common New Player Experience was playing on massive 7 planet systems for a tedious 2 hour match that ends in a blowout. The campaign was more of an extended tutorial and not especially fun, but was given equal prominence to the multiplayer. The only matchmaking was 1v1 ranked, without an especially interesting map pool. This means most of the options for a new player are traps. Most people would have enjoyed 2v2 or 3v3 on a balanced single planet map, but that required searching through random customs for someone hosting that exact setup with a community made map. Most people tried the game and quit before ever playing one of these goldilocks custom games because they didn't even know it's what they should probably be looking for.

3.
The spherical planets never really worked out. RTS already has a problem with disorienting players and the highest skill requirement at all levels is successfully interpreting the state of the game and maneuvering the map. Adding an extra layer of obfuscation of rotating a 3d object and losing the mini-map was a poor bargain. This also limited the variety of terrain on maps. The added novelty and strategic element of moving units in a 3d space was outweighed by how much more unwieldy this was combined with making the game less readable at a glance.


I'm really hoping this new game fixes these issues but I'll also like exploring whatever wacky mechanics they come up with here. The core of PA really was so strong that I can't wait to see what another bite at the apple looks like especially if these former mistakes have been sheared off.