Planetary Annihilation

During the first moments of the trailer you might have some soothing flashbacks of Total Annihilation. But it gets better! Keep watching the trailer.




Planetary Annihilation, the self-proclaimed spiritual successor to Total Annihilation.


The setup is similar as to how TA played. You start out with a single unit called the commander. It can build all structures and is a very good combat unit on his own. The downside is that you only get one of them. It is imperative to protect him. How do you do that? By creating legions of armoured robots and tanks that will do your bidding. Now send them towards the enemy commander. The best defence is a good offence, right? The only difference here is that the enemy commander might be on the moon or even a distant world. Creating city-sized engines to hurl said planet towards you.


Who needs nukes when you have asteroids?

In a regular RTS game, the game is restricted to a 2D playing field. There might be some verticality, like the high ground in SC2. In PA, you will be able to acquire others planets and asteroids. This opens up more strategic and tactical gameplay. For those who do not fancy big maps, fret not. You can change the map parameters to be small and located to a single planet. But most people will want to go the all-out total war route. To facilitate this, the player will be able to open up split-screens or multiple windows to order his units on different theaters or war.

As mentioned before, you are not bound to a single planet. The player is able to launch their commander or engineers to other bodies in the solar system to conquer for their own needs. Planets can be occupied for resources. Moons can be used similarly or used as a staging area for an attack onto its parent planet. Asteroids can be harnessed and fitted with engines to create devastating kinetic weapons of mass destruction. Like nukes in Supreme Commander, there will be counters to defend yourself against these attacks. Just pray you have built enough.

The music seems to be have a lot in the way of brass instruments. Inspired by traditional classic music combined with a bit of contemporary orchestra. Expect to hear epic orchestra with choir. The type of music that is synonymous with total war, planetary bombardment and giant hulking death robots. If you deem that undesirable, you can always opt to play over it with some Dubstep (read: wubwubwub) of your choice.

Planetary Annihilation is a very stylized game. The robots look very much inspired by the bots in TA. The animations are also very clean and might I say even awesome looking. The trailer shows the orange commander being picked up and launched into space. Then he gets dropped by a module that reminded me of the Curiosity's landing on Mars in August. Another example is the subtle transition of the engines on the asteroid.

Supreme economics

PA has the same economic system as TA or SC. You can build robots, even bigger robots, artillery canons and a space rocket. Mixed with some air units. To build these you need to extract metal and generate power. To do this you have to build metal extractors and power generators. Running out of both while constructing something big will have a huge effect on your output of units. It is still a numbers game. Factories need to keep pumping out units. The enemy commander will not build 10 units and call it a day. That production line will keep pumping robots to meet its production quota. Which is a lot. To summarize: A rate-based economy system.


Mod it!

The game will feature mod support. Allowing modders to change the gamemode. Design and implement units, make new and exciting planets or just create your own custom map. What is more interesting is that the game will have server support. Usually these types of games are handled in a matchmaking or a peer-to-peer system. The developers boast to be able to host a grand total of 40 people in a single game. If that is not awesome enough. There will be no DRM. The game will also be, but not restricted to, available through Steam. Which you can view as a type of DRM.

There are no set plans for SP. But if the company receives enough money there might be a strechgoal for one. At the time of writing, there are 8 000 backers worth 280 000 dollars in the first 2 days. Taking into account that there is kickstarter fatigue. Many people have already pledged money to various kickstarter campaigns. Hopefully we can see another successful kickstarter.
The company that is developing this game is called Uber entertainment. They have brought you Monday Night Combat and Super Monday Night Combat. They are industry veterans who have worked on other strategy games like Total Annihilation, Command & Conquer, Supreme Commander and Battle For Middle-Earth.

Website: http://planetaryannihilation.com/
Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts
The planned release period is summer 2013.



EDIT: The early bird 15 dollar tier has all been sold out. There were a total of 5 000 slots available.

Im getting this

So they haven't even started to develop this. Even if this does reach 900k, they're just starting with the game. It's gonna be a while..

I pledged money towards it.

TAKE MY MONEY NAO!

*cough*

I get quite excited by games that use orbital mechanics.

Soo... Command and Conquer: Generals 2 is going to be a F2P title now.
What. The. F*ck. EA.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts/posts/293648

Uber is celebrating reaching 2/3 of the way. Quite glad to see them getting this close to reaching their goal. They have also decided on showing us 2 stretch goals. The first stretch goal are naval units combined with oceanic planets. The second stretch goal are gas giants and more orbitals. And if that was not enough. Free keys for those who pledge! My pledge worth 50 dollars should get me 3 extra keys (read: complete game) and 1 beta key.

Now that I think about it. The more money people pledge the closer the kickstarter gets to critical mass for fans of the genre.

Get me more of this s**t Da-Fort!

Aaaaand the game has now been crowdsourced.

I will keep you posted when new stretch goals appear or have been reached.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts/posts/303555

The second stretch goal has been reached. The game will launch with naval units and water planets. But that was only the first stretch goal. The second one will launch the game with gas giants and enhanced orbitals.

Two new stretch goals have been announced. The third will introduce lava planets and metal planets. The fourth is kind of a big one, coming in at 1.8m dollars. This stretch goal will give us galactic wars. If that is somehow reached in the last 6 days we will be able to travel between systems on a SP or MP level! There was even a hint at multiple factions. Here are the features that are included in the fourth goal.

• Procedurally generated galaxy map, play a different galaxy every time!
  
• Single player and co-op for local play
  
• Online multiplayer mega-battles. Join a faction and plunder the universe!
  
• Clan wars servers for fighting the galactic war between clans
  
• Dynamic story system that logs your fight and generates exciting counter attacks and special missions that up the challenge level
  

The pessimist in me says that they might only reach the third goal. We will have to wait until next week to find out. If would not be bad to see the last couple of stretch goals in a paid for expansion pack. Say about 20-30 dollars?

EDIT: The third stretch goal has been reached. Lava planets and metal planets are confirmed.

Amazing. The Kickstarter actually made 2.07 million dollars with 6 hours left. Galactic War and Orchestral Score has been confirmed and that is without the Paypal pre-orders. How are they even going to clear this with Paypal to begin with?

EDIT: The Kickstarter has reached 2.1 million. That means that all the stretch goals have been reached.

Wow. Galactic wars here we come!

2.2 million on Kickstarter is not bad!

2.2 million ;_; Holy geeze how do people donate £10 000