Planetary Annihilation

**malkara** · 2012-08-20, 02:09 PM

So I didn't see a thread on this game yet but I reckon it deserves one!

One of the designers of Total Annihilation has decided to make a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, funded through kickstarter!

A few quotes from their kickstarter page:

We all know that the RTS genre has taken a hit. There just aren’t that many quality original RTS games coming out. If you love to play games like Total Annihilation your options are pretty limited. This is where Planetary Annihilation comes in. It is meant to be a truly innovative spin on what RTS games can and should be.

Expand your empire to harness the resources of entire solar systems to create vast armies with which to annihilate enemy planets, destroy rival systems and win the Galactic War!

Let’s face it, game publishers today want sequels in very restrictive genres. In many cases game publisher overhead makes small projects not interesting to them.

A list of requested and confirmed/denied features:

{B} = Suggestion
{R} = Will not be present
{O} = Acknowledged, but unconfirmed
{Y} = Stretch goal
{G} = Confirmed

Paramount:
{G} Jon Mavor crunching for a solid year: #1

Essential:
{G} Order queueing: #1
{G} Planetary annihilation, KEW: #1 #2
{G} Zoom support (extensive strategic zoom, etc): #1 #2

Important:
{G} AI for skirmishes, with different types: #1 #2
{G} Assassination game mode: #1
{G} Asynchronous network model: #1 #2 #3
{G} Gravity wells, and modelled planet gravity: #1 #2
{G} Joining games mid-way (saves / mega-games / etc): #1
{G} LAN play: #1
{G} Mapmaking support (and saving procedurally generated planets): #1 #2 #3
{G} Matchmaking: #1 #2
{G} Mega-games (40 player event matches, etc): #1
{G} Mod support: #1 #2
{G} Multi-threading, multi-core support: #1
{G} Offline play: #1
{G} Rate based (streaming) resource system: #1 #2
{G} Reconnection: #1
{G} Spectator/replay UI: #1
{G} Teleportation and long distance travel: #1
{O} Saving and loading in multiplayer games: #1
{O} Transports: #1 #2
{B} Chat lobbies in-game

Would be nice:
{G} Announcer (original Total Annihilation announcer): #1
{G} D-Gun: #1 #2
{G} Defensive structures: #1
{G} Large/huge planets: #1 #2
{G} Linux support: #1 #2
{G} Mac OS X support: #1
{G} Multiple monitor support (with multiple viewports): #1
{G} Orchestral soundtrack: #1 #2
{G} Pathfinding (advanced, flow based, etc): #1
{G} Procedural planet generation: #1
{G} Realtime bullet simulation: #1
{G} Scalability (huge maps and LOD depending on computer power): #1 #2 #3
{G} Shared unit control: #1 #2
{G} Starting units still useful in lategame: #1
{G} Terrain deformation, burning trees: #1 #2 #3
{G} Walls: #1
{G} Wind generators: #1
{G} Wreckage (reclaimable): #1
{Y} Gas giants: #1
{Y} Lava planets: #1
{Y} Metal planets: #1
{Y} Naval: #1 #2
{Y} Single player campaign: #1 #2
{Y} Water planets: #1
{O} Adding orders to the beginning of the order queue (see here): #1
{O} Amphibious transports: #1
{O} Area commands, e.g. per here and here: #1
{O} Day/night cycle for solar power (depending on local stars) as per here: #1
{O} Mining/exploiting planets for resources: #1
{O} Mouse-panning as per here: #1
{O} No fly zones (see here): #1
{O} Orbital simulation of planet motion (which can be affected by player): #1 #2 #3
{O} Plans (reusable unit behaviour and waypointing): #1
{O} Satellites (espionage, etc): #1
{O} Steam support: #1
{O} Terraforming: #1
{O} Tutorial: #1
{B} Astronomical formations (black holes, twin stars, even wormholes)
{B} Automated unit behaviours, with icons, as per here
{B} Clan support
{B} Cinematic camera (for observing, replays, or making machinima)
{B} Co-op campaign
{B} Custom campaigns and missions
{B} Custom formations, see e.g. here
{B} Exhausting planets by exploitation
{B} Extra non-skirmish game-modes (e.g. survive AI waves, sandbox)
{B} Ferrying controls for transports as in SupCom
{B} FFA game-type with player discoverability as per here
{B} Friends system, with tournaments and other events (e.g. planned mega-game events)
{B} Fog of war done properly (no unit pop-in like SupCom)
{B} Live TV/replay function (e.g. for tournaments)
{B} Markers (pinging, drawing on the map for teammates, etc)
{B} Orbital constructions
{B} Production tab, as per here
{B} Rotating buildings before construction
{B} Rendering tools (to make max detail screenshots or high quality recordings of replays)
{B} Templates for base-building (see also here for more automated construction)
{B} Unit selector in skirmishes
{B} Underwater base construction

Debatable:
{G} Two unit tech tiers: #1 #2
{O} Artillery warfare: #1
{O} Auto-repair for damaged buildings: #1
{O} Experimentals: #1
{O} Rare resource types for specific uses: #1
{R} Research tree/tech tree: #1
{R} Shields: #1 #2
{R} Space combat: #1 #2 #3 #4
{R} Multiple factions: #1 #2
{R} Unit veterancy: #1
{B} Army painter (e.g. as in Dawn of War games, see this post)
{B} Automated unit micro and focusing
{B} Commander upgrades
{B} Economy priority system
{B} Limited unit fuel, ammo, energy, etc
{B} Neutral, native civilizations (see here)
{B} Non-global, per-planet economy (with possible resource transport)
{B} Radar jamming
{B} Stealth/cloak

Up-to-date list & source at: Uberent forum thread

All in all this game looks like it could be pretty awesome!

Originally Posted by sinilaid

Strech Goals:
1. Water planets and naval units(done)
2. Gas planets and orbital gameplay
3. Lava planets and Death Stars
4. Will not be planets, don't know more atm

We are almost at the first Strech Goal (water planets and naval units), according to kicktraq we will hit all 3 strech goals, and possebly the fourth.

But that doesn't mean that we can stop funding now guys, go go and fund fund fund!

^^ Couldn't agree more!

Planetary Annihilation site
Kickstarter

**Dakhath** · 2012-08-20, 02:12 PM

Yes Yes Yes Yes.

Thank you for posting this, time to get my wallet.

**flarecde** · 2012-08-20, 02:44 PM

Looks neat. But I think at this point I'm going to agree with someone else who posted somewhere recently: I'm going to avoid Kickstarters for products I can purchase normally. Particularly ones that don't deliver immediately.

**Guyv3r** · 2012-08-20, 03:58 PM

Very nice!

**matiasve** · 2012-08-20, 04:14 PM

Looks amazing.

**personn5** · 2012-08-20, 04:20 PM

I've never played Total Annihilation, but that does look amazing.
Only RTS I really have to play is Solar Empire, and don't know many people who have it or like playing it.

**Grantji** · 2012-08-20, 06:11 PM

Originally Posted by personn5

I've never played Total Annihilation, ...

you've missed one of the best rts games of all times.

it aged very well (supports almost every screen resolution, 1080p included) and is quite cheap at gog.com

**Nerraw** · 2012-08-20, 07:05 PM

Originally Posted by Grantji

you've missed one of the best rts games of all times.

it aged very well (supports almost every screen resolution, 1080p included) and is quite cheap at gog.com

Never played it either, mostly because I've only become aware of it's existence recently. But it's good to hear that it has aged well, might very well pick it up some time.

This one definitely looks awesome, even to the point where I've been considering sending some cash their way.

**malkara** · 2012-08-21, 12:55 PM

For anyone intent on trying TA, after you are done with the regular units there are plenty of awesome mods etc at tauniverse.com

OT: up to ~569,000 now

**Grantji** · 2012-08-21, 03:47 PM

Oooh ... almost forgot...

There is a (free!) remake of the original TA Game (plus multiple mods/conversions) in a - well, quite appealing - 3d Enigine

http://springrts.com/

http://springrts.com/wiki/Games -> http://balancedannihilation.org/ (Tutorials, guides, game dowload, etc.)

has a server browser and online map/mod database - last time I checked quite a lot people were playing multiplayer.

**Wolfsage** · 2012-09-01, 08:57 AM

The Kickstarter is doing great, hopefully they will be able to reach the 3rd stretch goal! Mechanical planets OMG!!!!

This is like the first project on kickstarter that has got me truly excited!

**Vellerix** · 2012-09-01, 09:04 AM

This looks and sounds amazing, I hope they can pull it off like they are making it sound, because if they do I may just have a new favorite RTS. TA was an absolute classic and I have many fond memories of playing it when I was younger with my school friends ^^

**Pwnasaurus Rex** · 2012-09-01, 09:54 AM

TA was YEARS before it's time and overshadowed by the new giants: Westwood Studios due to the sucess of cnc1 and the subsequent release of RA1.

Supreme commander had one of the TA guys working on it, and it certainly had a feel of TA about it, but i found i lost interest in it after a while, where-as i didn;t ever lose interest in TA. Supreme commander 2 was just too far from TA for me.

I've not looked for ward to a game for so long, and now that you've mentionned this: i'm VERY excited ^_^

i wonder how long it'll take that dude with the krogoth as his avatar to post? <3

EDIT: throwing money at them, this game needs to be released!

**Torched** · 2012-09-01, 12:37 PM

I will just leave this here.

**Wolfsage** · 2012-09-01, 01:12 PM

I'm so glad that we have seen a surge of creativity in recent years in the PC gaming world. This game's concepts are one more shining example.

**sinilaid** · 2012-09-02, 11:08 AM

Strech Goals:
1. Water planets and naval units(done)
2. Gas planets and orbital gameplay(done)
3. Lava planets and Death Stars(done)
4.Galactic War(done)
5.Full Orchestral Score
6.A Planetary Documentary

We are almost at the first Strech Goal (water planets and naval units), according to kicktraq we will hit all 3 strech goals, and possebly the fourth.

But that doesn't mean that we can stop funding now guys, go go and fund fund fund!

**Wolfsage** · 2012-09-02, 04:23 PM

Kicktraq? I guess this calculates what amount will be reached at the end, based on the current momentum, cool!

I'm more interested about the 3rd stretch goal, lava and metal planets(basically, deathstars), kind of skeptical if it will make it, but I sure hope it will. Of course, water and naval plus gas and orbital are more than welcome too.

**Tenhou** · 2012-09-02, 07:54 PM

Now this has gotten me interested. I used to play TA back in the days, and i loved it. The whole addition with planetary scale war and stuff seems even more interesting, cant wait for this game to get done.

**malkara** · 2012-09-02, 07:55 PM

Hmm, I shall edit the OP to include the new information!

**Wilian** · 2012-09-02, 08:15 PM

Thank The Big Electron from publisher free game developement.

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