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Planetary Annihilation

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gaslit at scale.
Does anyone else remember 1990's classic RTS game called Total Annihilation? The only RTS I ever had time for, telling the tale of an epic interplanetary and mindless war between The Arm and The Core fought with tanks and jets and battleships (but strangely... never really a proper heavy infantry unit imo)....

Well if you remember that and were into Total Annihilation you might be delighted to find out (as I was the other day) that the game has a 'spiritual successor' in Planetary Annihilation that's been out since 2014, and more recently Planetary Annihilation: Titans.

I've not really been "with it" game wise for ages, so while tempting myself again with the idea of buying Civilisation 6 (which is unfortunately not yet Steam-on-Linux-ready) I stumbled across PA: Titans. My laptop can just about play it, but I might fork out for a more capable games machine now, just to have a smoother more satisfying crash-whallop-crump-blast!!! on it.

iu


Rank upon rank of soulless mechanical robot troops marching forward beneath the resolute eye of a Titan. Who can I vote for to make sure that the future will look like this? I particularly like it when you build batteries of space-guns for shooting agents at other planets in an effort to establish a 'beachhead', (the planets actually orbit their stars and the shadows of everything on planetary surfaces are constantly in sun-dial motion as a result). The trajectories of objects snake around planets and moons and asteroids in loops and slingshots that look vaguely realistic. It's not exactly Kerbal Space Program but it's very satisfying, and a nice thing to stare at in anticipation while waiting to see how your next interplanetary assault plays out.

I mean, we've all dreamt of being a self-replicating robot overlord deploying mechanical armies in an unending desperate struggle against an opposing malicious equal across planetary system after planetary system that reduces world after world to scorched blastscapes and clouds of shattered radioactive rock and setting up teeming hives of busy busy busy machine activity in the grim mysteriously necessary work of interstellar confrontation.... well now you can do it for half an hour or twelve! and it's got giant great big war-robots called Titans in it, that you can build and have stomp! and smash! I mean, what else are you going to giggle maniacally at the screen over if not this sort of thing?

Looking forward to the multiplayer experience but will need a better machine first, no point bringing a Lenovo business machine from four years ago to an Alienware fight.
 
I'm not familiar with the setting, so I might be missing some crucial detail, but I have to ask... If they've got self-replicating technology, why do they even bother with materially costly and energetically expensive planetary assaults?

Why not just blockade and/or bomb them from orbit until they surrender? Though once they have "officially" surrendered, holding on to places in the face of political opposition and possible insurgency is the next challenge, but those kind of conflicts would be less like the Eastern Front and more like the occupation of Iraq.

I'm assuming the basis of the conflict as a whole is ideological, since self-replicating technology would also obviate any need for polities to conquer places for the acquisition of strategic resources. Galaxies are utterly fucking huge places, with about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. Not sure if that includes things like globular clusters and satellite galaxies. Even with FTL it would take hundreds of thousands of years at least for the entire galaxy to become properly claimed and occupied if some civilisation really set their minds to it.

Although maybe it was intentional on the part of the creators: for there to be a terrible kind of irony in which two galactic powers fight hugely destructive and ultimately pointless wars over insignificant little specks of rock that also become near-uninhabitable wastelands as a result of said conflicts.
 
NoXion said:
I'm not familiar with the setting, so I might be missing some crucial detail, but I have to ask... If they've got self-replicating technology, why do they even bother with materially costly and energetically expensive planetary assaults?

Why not just blockade and/or bomb them from orbit until they surrender? Though once they have "officially" surrendered, holding on to places in the face of political opposition and possible insurgency is the next challenge, but those kind of conflicts would be less like the Eastern Front and more like the occupation of Iraq.

I'm assuming the basis of the conflict as a whole is ideological, since self-replicating technology would also obviate any need for polities to conquer places for the acquisition of strategic resources. Galaxies are utterly fucking huge places, with about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. Not sure if that includes things like globular clusters and satellite galaxies. Even with FTL it would take hundreds of thousands of years at least for the entire galaxy to become properly claimed and occupied if some civilisation really set their minds to it.

Although maybe it was intentional on the part of the creators: for there to be a terrible kind of irony in which two galactic powers fight hugely destructive and ultimately pointless wars over insignificant little specks of rock that also become near-uninhabitable wastelands as a result of said conflicts.
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Unfortunately the plot's not the deepest and most well developed, the game mutters something about the machines ancient creators having gone away for some reason so the robots just mindlessly follow their ancient programs. In my opinion the only real reason for such a thing as an interstellar war would indeed be a matter of pure ideological hatred, a crusade of annihilation on principal alone. I mean if you're capable of having a proper space-war then you're capable of not needing to have a proper space war really. Even if the eggs of your greedy young are the size and mass of Jupiter there's probably no need to butt heads with others over territory, I mean it's space ffs, even a Jovian is just another small pebble on a very large beach. On a planet made of beaches. That's the size of Jupiter. bigger actually.

But we shouldn't get away from what's important in a game like this, to blow shit the fuck up, to bombard planets with giant space-guns, to watch massive mushroom clouds rise into the sky and unleash swarms of ravenous nanomachines (yes- the game has them) to devour the hated enemy. What is best in life? To turn moons into armaments factories, to build giant engines on the side of planetoids, and to ram planets with them so that they go BOOOM!!! To make a monument of light itself across traumatized space/time. crazed stare, rictus grin.

at a certain point you have to bring your own imagination really.
 
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camouflage said:
Unfortunately the plot's not the deepest and most well developed, the game mutters something about the machines ancient creators having gone away for some reason so the robots just mindlessly follow their ancient programs. In my opinion the only real reason for such a thing as an interstellar war would indeed be a matter pure ideological hatred, a crusade of annihilation on principal alone. I mean if you're capable of having a proper space-war then you're capable of not needing to have a proper space war really. Even if the eggs of your greedy young are the size and mass of Jupiter there's probably no need to butt heads with others over territory, I mean it's space ffs, even a Jovian is just another small pebble on a very large beach. On a planet made of beaches. That's the size of Jupiter. bigger actually.

But we shouldn't get away from what's important in a game like this, to blow shit the fuck up, to bombard planets with giant space-guns, to watch massive mushroom clouds rise into the sky and unleash swarms of ravenous nanomachines (yes- the game has them) to devour the hated enemy. What is best in life? To turn moons into armaments factories, to build giant engines on the side of planetoids, and to ram planets with them so that they go BOOOM!!! To make a monument of light itself across traumatized space/time. crazed stare, rictus grin.

at a certain point you have to bring your own imagination really.
Click to expand...

I don't think genocidal hatred is necessary for an ideologically-motivated galactic war to occur. If there are multiple interstellar civilisations, and at least one of them has ambitions to politically dominate the entire galaxy, then there's your conflict right there, at least in potentia. Even if it would take the expansionist empires a million years to realise their ambitions, any other civilisation would notice the trends well before such a length of time passes, and would take action to protect their galactic interests, even if those interests only extend as far as not wanting to be ruled by aliens.

Tooting my own horn a bit here, but in the fictional future history I'm working on, that's basically the background of the Long War. A 2004-year galactic-scale conflict between the various civilisations tracing their roots from Earth, and the militaristic expansionist Fang Empire. Despite the Empire being on the other side of the Milky Way, some of the Terrans realise that sooner or later the Fang will conquer the entire galaxy if not opposed, and go to war in order to halt their expansion and break up the Empire into more controllable fragments, before it becomes too widespread and established.

But yeah, it sounds like a fun game. I just have this tendency to speculate and (over-)analyse things because I'm constantly on the lookout for inspiration.
 
camouflage said:
Does anyone else remember 1990's classic RTS game called Total Annihilation? The only RTS I ever had time for, telling the tale of an epic interplanetary and mindless war between The Arm and The Core fought with tanks and jets and battleships (but strangely... never really a proper heavy infantry unit imo)....

Well if you remember that and were into Total Annihilation you might be delighted to find out (as I was the other day) that the game has a 'spiritual successor' in Planetary Annihilation that's been out since 2014, and more recently Planetary Annihilation: Titans.

I've not really been "with it" game wise for ages, so while tempting myself again with the idea of buying Civilisation 6 (which is unfortunately not yet Steam-on-Linux-ready) I stumbled across PA: Titans. My laptop can just about play it, but I might fork out for a more capable games machine now, just to have a smoother more satisfying crash-whallop-crump-blast!!! on it.

iu


Rank upon rank of soulless mechanical robot troops marching forward beneath the resolute eye of a Titan. Who can I vote for to make sure that the future will look like this? I particularly like it when you build batteries of space-guns for shooting agents at other planets in an effort to establish a 'beachhead', (the planets actually orbit their stars and the shadows of everything on planetary surfaces are constantly in sun-dial motion as a result). The trajectories of objects snake around planets and moons and asteroids in loops and slingshots that look vaguely realistic. It's not exactly Kerbal Space Program but it's very satisfying, and a nice thing to stare at in anticipation while waiting to see how your next interplanetary assault plays out.

I mean, we've all dreamt of being a self-replicating robot overlord deploying mechanical armies in an unending desperate struggle against an opposing malicious equal across planetary system after planetary system that reduces world after world to scorched blastscapes and clouds of shattered radioactive rock and setting up teeming hives of busy busy busy machine activity in the grim mysteriously necessary work of interstellar confrontation.... well now you can do it for half an hour or twelve! and it's got giant great big war-robots called Titans in it, that you can build and have stomp! and smash! I mean, what else are you going to giggle maniacally at the screen over if not this sort of thing?

Looking forward to the multiplayer experience but will need a better machine first, no point bringing a Lenovo business machine from four years ago to an Alienware fight.
Click to expand...

Not a good game.
 
NoXion said:
I don't think genocidal hatred is necessary for an ideologically-motivated galactic war to occur. If there are multiple interstellar civilisations, and at least one of them has ambitions to politically dominate the entire galaxy, then there's your conflict right there, at least in potentia. Even if it would take the expansionist empires a million years to realise their ambitions, any other civilisation would notice the trends well before such a length of time passes, and would take action to protect their galactic interests, even if those interests only extend as far as not wanting to be ruled by aliens.

Tooting my own horn a bit here, but in the fictional future history I'm working on, that's basically the background of the Long War. A 2004-year galactic-scale conflict between the various civilisations tracing their roots from Earth, and the militaristic expansionist Fang Empire. Despite the Empire being on the other side of the Milky Way, some of the Terrans realise that sooner or later the Fang will conquer the entire galaxy if not opposed, and go to war in order to halt their expansion and break up the Empire into more controllable fragments, before it becomes too widespread and established.

But yeah, it sounds like a fun game. I just have this tendency to speculate and (over-)analyse things because I'm constantly on the lookout for inspiration.
Click to expand...

Well that looks interesting, will give it a read. But "interstellar politics"... doesn't sound like something like that could ever be a thing (well, artistic licence and suspended disbelief aside). Strikes me as a bit like looking for oar-brackets on a Nimitz Class carrier. Or looking to establish an anarcho-monarchy... actually that's what any attempt at an anarchy would most likely devolve into imo, a monarchy because in many respects the state is a cage for Power... but that's another thread.

As far as hoomunz are concerned though, even with some kind of long-range teleportation... nah, I don't see it. You're Fang empire looks like an interesting study of contemporary geopolitical anxieties by the sound of it. What skiffy is supposed to do really, reflect contemporary concerns.

The late great Iain Banks wrote an excellent essay on this sort of thing that I'm sure you're aware of, but if not you might find it interesting.
 
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Which essay is that? Really enjoyed the Culture novels. Shame there will be no more. Currently reading Against a Dark Background which is good, but no intelligent starships sadly :(
 
B.I.G said:
Well they re-released the game with only a few tweaks as PA:Titans as stated in the OP.

How good can a game be when its sold under a different name with only minor additions?
Click to expand...

If the original game was good, what does it matter? Especially since it was released 20 years ago.
 
NoXion said:
If the original game was good, what does it matter? Especially since it was released 20 years ago.
Click to expand...

TA was good. Then they had a Kickstarter for the new game. Didn't include some of the promised features. Then repackaged the game under a different name.

Supreme Commander the spritual sequel to TA was better.

And PA just wasn't that good a game.
 
B.I.G said:
TA was good. Then they had a Kickstarter for the new game. Didn't include some of the promised features. Then repackaged the game under a different name.

Supreme Commander the spritual sequel to TA was better.

And PA just wasn't that good a game.
Click to expand...

Features are often dropped during development of games, often for entirely legitimate reasons, such as not having the funds. I don't see what's so bad about changing the name.
 
NoXion said:
Features are often dropped during development of games, often for entirely legitimate reasons, such as not having the funds. I don't see what's so bad about changing the name.
Click to expand...

They released a game and then one year later released almost exactly the same game again under a different name rather than make additions to the game.

And dropping a feature especially due to not having the funds is a big no no when you only have the funds due to people backing you on the basis of promising that feature.
 
B.I.G said:
They released a game and then one year later released almost exactly the same game again under a different name rather than make additions to the game.

And dropping a feature especially due to not having the funds is a big no no when you only have the funds due to people backing you on the basis of promising that feature.
Click to expand...
To be fair to them, it was more of an expansion pack (people with the original release got it gratis) where they took the opportunity to re-promote it.

I also think, relative to most Kickstarters, that they delivered on what they promised. I certainly don't think badly of them. It just happened that the game is totally lacking something. Something that TA had, something that SC had. A soul, of sorts. It's just bland, even though all the bits are there on paper. Even though you can annihilate the opponent by crashing a moon onto them.
 
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