#planetary annihilation

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Planetary Annihilation

"The better you understand how a planet is made, the better you understand how one is unmade." —Ulix, Eumidian terrademolitionist

Artist: Cristi Balanescu TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[fleshengine]

Were you ever into any old school RTS games, like Command & Conquer or Age of Empires? I know it's all nostalgia bait, but so much of this genre is seeing remakes in the past few years and I gotta admit. Feels Pretty Nice. ✌🏽

Yes! I don't remember who gave it to be but I had a small collection of old disc games I could play on my old laptop. I played a bit of Starcraft but I didn't stick with it becaaauuuuse the other rts in those games was Total Annihilation!

I played a fuckload of TA. The campaigns, and a bunch of skirmish against bots. I didn't know how to play online, and I didn't need to. TA was on of those games I'd play on the ride to school and stuff. Some of my fondest memories of 7th grade was getting dropped off at my mom's work (she worked at a gardening store) and sitting in the sundappled shade, eating a lemon poppyseed muffin from the lil cafe her work had and obliterating my enemies with plasma artillery.

I lost the discs (campaign and skirmish were different discs) for TA and it made me really sad because it wasn't available online anywhere as far as I could tell. So it faded into memory for a while until I checked again in my late teens and saw there was a steam page for it.

I of course, bought the game, fucked around in skirmish a bit, and then immediately started recruiting my friends to play it with me. Playing TA these days is a huge pain in the ass. As far as I can tell the only reliable way for personal and unmodded games is to go through Game Ranger which is a positively RUNKcore utility. BUT it does work and once you're in a game together it runs really well. I also have this problem with RTS games where I am better at them than the friends I get to play them with, and I destroy my friends, and then they don't want to play it. Which... Is an issue.

Anyway my friends who I played TA with were poking around and found a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation called Planetary Annihilation! It's TA but has an additional layer to game in the form of orbit, maps are on balls because they are planets, and you can have multiple planets in a map. It's fucking awesome.

I really love PA, almost as well as TA. But PA is definitely better for modern audiences and my friends and I had a bunch of fun in it until I inevitably was better at it than them and they stopped wanting to play :/. The game is pretty laggy too when you get to the huge fights, but the huge fights are the point so like why. I think that might've contributed to my friends stopping playing. Also the skirmish mode in PA is pretty good, but I found a strategy for it that is unbeatable even by the hardest ai and it gets repetitive after a few full campaigns. I want to 100% PA someday but I need people to play with.

TA also has a spiritual successor in the form of Zero-K. It's bad. I played one game of it coop with a friend against some bots and it was insufferable.

Anyway Zero-K has a spiritual successor in the form of Beyond All Reason! It's pretty good! I haven't played very much BAR, but I do watch casts of the game on a youtube channel called Brightworks and it's fun! I want to play it more but again, don't really have anyone banging down my door for three hour RTS sessions.

Also a big reason I don't really want to get into BAR is that it doesn't have what I really loved about PA, that being the planets and orbital layer. There's apparently a mod in the works to try and get it working. But a mod to a game is never going to be as polished as if the game was designed with the mechanics in mind.

Anyway PA has a spiritual successor in the form of Industrial Annihilation.

It seems to be PA but on flat ground, not planets, and with a lean into the industry/basebuilding aspects of games like Satisfactory or Mindustry. It's in early access right now, and the reviews/ratings are ABYSMAL. I don't trust early access (I remember what happened to The Culling) so I'm not going to be trying it until it's released, which might be never idk.

So like yeah. I have a favorite old RTS, and it's many children that all kind of suck for various reasons. I love TA but it's old as balls. I love PA but it's unstable and unbalanced and all the work that could be given to it is poured into IA which sucks. I think BAR is pretty neat for effectively being (I think) effectively a fork of Zero-K, and also having an active developer and modding scene, but it lacks what I really loved about PA.

I'm pretty great at games like this, but I don't get to play them like at all because I don't have anyone to play them with and I don't know which one to try and play. BAR is probably the best bet but I will be sad not having orbital stuff. TA is great but who the fuck wants to install game ranger to play it with me. PA is really fun but it's probably never going to be balanced or stable. I'm sad now. I miss those lemon poppyseed muffins. They were really good.

[purified-zone]

THEY ARE COMING

[nirahsaooc]

The Age of Humanity has long passed. Scattered across the universe, agents of destruction lay dormant for millennia. Until, the awakening. Sentient War machines, relics of a universe in turmoil. Forged by their ancestors to complete one mission... Annihilate Everything. The endless conflict continues to march into the vast darkness of space. Battles rage across the cold void, devastating planets, moons, and asteroids. Cosmic obliteration for a purpose long forgotten. Technology has been captured, assimilated, refined and transformed into brutally efficient self-replicating mechanisms of WAR!

Planetary Annihilation Narrator

[looking-to-the-future]

Harbinger of Destruction by Julian Faylona

An entire planet retro fitted with giant thrust engines, powered by an exotic energy source, turning the fortress planet into a massive moving doomsday weapon. Inspired by the RTS game called: Planetary Annihilation.

[purified-zone]

i might have a problem

[dogmaiddoll]

Tides of Steel by Howard Mostrom

[dogmaiddoll]

Remember Who You Are by Howard Mostrom