Kickstarter: It EATS YOUR BRAIN.

[theweaselking]

20 hours left on Planetary Annihilation, an RTS from the same people who did Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and C&C Generals - AKA "the only non-crap RTS games since 1999 1997[1]", which were also all pretty good individually.

They've already unlocked the "procedurally generated galaxy-spanning campaign" level, and, hey, this is $20 now for a $60 game from people with an AWESOME track record for producing good games.

[1]: dscotton points out below that I'd had the wrong year for Total Annihilation, and thus incorrectly excluded Starcraft from the category of "games with terrible interfaces that required twitchy micromanagement and who learned NOTHING from the far superior Total Annihilation."

Comments

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this! It made my boy very happy.

[xyzzysqrl]

I was about to protest and mention the Myth series, then I checked dates.

Carry on.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

First: Star Control 2 icons are love. Those suicidal little bastards were always COMPLETELY AWESOME, even if my main use for them was in taking out the defenses of their strongest ally. Canon be damned, if you use one of the rock robots you will SUCK TERRORIST RODENT. TO THE FACE.

Second: For a moment I thought you meant Myst and I was really confused.

But yeah. Total Annihilation was the first RTS to have a non-crap interface, and it was the ONLY RTS to not be stuck in insipid twitch-game micromanagement hell until Supreme Commander. For most of a decade, NOBODY wanted to learn from it's lessons, and instead they just kept making the same mistakes over and over and over again. C&C Generals was the first RTS to have a DIFFERENT non-crap interface.

So, yeah. I'm really looking forward to Planetary Annihilation.

[xyzzysqrl]

Oh. It's one of those ones that involve building, then. Not really interested, but hopefully it'll get funded anyway.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

And Sins of a Solar Empire! Though it's somewhat more of a protracted old-style wargame than an RTS, I guess.

[yendi]

Thanks -- I loved TA, and I'm happy to see that there's a Mac version in the queue.

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

Well, at least you didn't try to claim since 1998.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Starcraft is a different kind of twitch-game micromanagement (as mentioned above).

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I had the date on TA wrong. Those are the only RTS games with usable interfaces since 199*7*.

(Starcraft's UI sucked. They desperately tried to conceal how terrible a "strategy" game it was by introducing all kinds of arbitrary limits on control and queueing, and as a result it's a game where the fastest micromanager wins. And yes, there's like 5 million Korean people who love it - that's good for them. It's still got a terrible interface, compared to previous-and-far-superior games.)

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

I get that you don't like Starcraft, but claiming it's a terrible strategy game or that the fastest micromanager wins just reveal that you don't actually have a clue what you're talking about. Those are factually incorrect statements. Micromanaging is one aspect of the game, which is what makes it "real time" strategy. The other aspect, of course, is strategy. This is a game that was played at a professional level for 12 years, and over that time people continued to develop new strategies that shifted the way the game was played. It's not possible to hold up to that kind of scrutiny if the strategy aspect were bad.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Those are factually incorrect statements.

The first is an opinion. The second is an accurate statement of fact.

Micromanaging is one aspect of the game

Which is one of the reasons it's a bad STRATEGY game: You're forced to micromanage down to a tactical level to compete, and even the professional players will tell you that reaction speed is paramount, which is why they all retire very young.

In the mean time, a game with a non-terrible interface, like Total Annihilation, does not require that level of micromanagement and focuses on the "strategy" part.

Lots of people like Starcraft, and I'm happy for them. That doesn't change that it has an objectively worse interface than games that came before it, and that it quite deliberately shoots down the "strategy" portion of the game to try to make up for it. It can be a game people have fun with while still being a very bad "real-time strategy" game. Which it is.

over that time people continued to develop new strategies that shifted the way the game was played. It's not possible to hold up to that kind of scrutiny if the strategy aspect were bad.

Of course it is, since everyone is operating under the same handicaps.

"Finding a faster way to run backwards with one leg not able to straighten past 90 degrees" is perfectly possible to keep doing for a long time. It doesn't change that you'd be getting a better "race" if you just let people run any way they wanted.

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

Which is one of the reasons it's a bad STRATEGY game: You're forced to micromanage down to a tactical level to compete, and even the professional players will tell you that reaction speed is paramount, which is why they all retire very young.

Right. Can you show me one quote from a real pro gamer actually saying that? Like I said, speed is one important part of the game, but it's not the be all, end all. Players do compete and win against people significantly faster than themselves.

Also, I strongly suspect speed would be similarly important in TA if it were actually played on the same competitive level as Starcraft. Being able to attack simultaneously in more places than your opponent is able to defend is always going to be powerful in any RTS. Starcraft 2 automates a lot of things you had to do manually in SC1, and speed is still very relevant.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Being able to attack simultaneously in more places than your opponent is able to defend is always going to be powerful in any RTS

And if the reason you're able to do that is because you're issuing orders faster and the enemy's units are too stupid to react sensibly without orders and orders can't be placed in advance for how to react, that's a sign that you're playing a TWITCH GAME, not a STRATEGY GAME: Your ability to click faster is winning against an opponent's (theoretical) ability to think better.

Which is, I will point out, one of the major differences between Starcraft and actual strategy games.

I really don't think you understand the difference in UI, here. At all.

[the-trav.livejournal.com]

Sup Com allowed you to set up an order chain to move two battle groups from your base, via airlift to separate rally points and then coordinate a pincer attack on a target from different directions all in advance.

It also allowed you to set up EFFECTIVE defensive patrols along multiple perimeters exceptionally easily.


This actually leads to more attacks on more directions because the human players don't have to continuously manage each individual unit or even group of units involved in each attack.

You can even set up continual assaults where units will come out of some factories, jump in a ship, muster a big enough force to assault from a rally point, then launch continued offensives from that point.

This is all without human interference past the initial order chain setup.


Speed and micromanagement are important in TA and Sup com, but only for the very earliest parts of the game when there are only a few battle groups.

If the game goes for longer than 5 minutes it becomes far more about managing the exponential growth of your forces into workable strategies than about being aware of what every single unit/producer is doing.