AndreasG has setup a Discord server for PA called the PA Community Centre. This is free for everyone to use so that you can have in-game voice, either with your friends or teammates.
Let’s keep it a friendly place. Hope to see you there.
AndreasG has setup a Discord server for PA called the PA Community Centre. This is free for everyone to use so that you can have in-game voice, either with your friends or teammates.
Let’s keep it a friendly place. Hope to see you there.
We’re continuing to process your reports, monitor your games, and just generally improve the polish of the faction. So there’s a lot of little balance improvements here to improve the viability of some of less common units, and also some potential minor disruption to existing metas.
The Stoke also has a new model. It’s mighty sexy.
Don’t know what we’re talking about? Check out the Legion Expansion article.
So yesterday we attempted to break the record for the largest tournament in Planetary Annihilation history, which was held by the Commander of March tournament at 53 participants, with the second largest being Clash of the TITANS, with 44.
Unfortunately we didn’t quite manage it. While we had 89 participants signed-up we only had 35 of them show up to play, giving us a no-show rate of 60%. I bring this up because this, amongst other things, caused some logistical issues which disrupted the event. Thankfully the feedback from players has still been incredibly positive, but I want to cover what we’re doing to address these issues in the future.
We have taken a mix of approaches to brackets in the past. Generally eXodus tournaments have marked no-shows as no-shows and given their opponent a bye, while non-eXodus tournaments trim the brackets, deleting the no-shows and recreating them, then reseeding. The line has become blurred these days to the point where every tournament is to some degree an eXodus tournament, but the divide in approaches remains between ones we stream ourselves and ones we don’t.
Yesterday I took the decision that we would just issues byes. I anticipated a no-show rate of around 30% and felt that while this would lead to some disruption in the first round, it would make it easier to get things started on time. It would also mean that late arrivals had a possibility of making it back into the tournament if their opponent hadn’t showed. While we ask that players arrive thirty minutes ahead of the starting time, the more casual the tournament the worse players are at doing this and we try to avoid unnecessarily penalising them. In addition I’ve seen numerous instances in past tournaments of a player being accidentally missed during bracket recreation and getting shut out from the tournament through no fault of their own.
In hindsight though this was a mistake. 60% no-show led to instances of players sitting around for long periods of time waiting for an opponent. If we did the tournament again I would trim the brackets. In the future we will likely adopt trims – and the risks that come with them – as a matter of course as player attendance at tournaments has proven too unreliable for byes to be a good system. This will also mean that late arrivals (those that arrive less than 30 minutes before start) are less likely to be allowed to participate.
There has been an intermittent global rollout of PA Chat to the Planetary Annihilation community. This has been great for fostering a feeling of community, but has led to us hitting the 100 player limit in the main chat room, after which point no one else can join. A new backend is being developed by mikeyh but was unfortunately not in place in time for the tournament due to external factors.
Anticipating the difficulties this would bring we updated our PA Chat guide, as well as the e-mail communication that went out to players, to provide an alternate recommend method for connecting to the patournaments room using the friends list.
PA Chat being full may have been a significant factor in the no show rate (or it might have been irrelevant), but beyond providing guides via our rules and e-mail communications highlighting workarounds there is not much more we can do here. The new backend will ultimately solve this problem.
60% no shows marks a record for eXodus eSports, and a personal disappointment for myself. The more no shows the greater the disruption and the later a tournament will start. While some players were kind enough to let us know they wouldn’t be attending through the withdrawal system, most did not. We will be reaching out to them to try and identify why they didn’t attend and see if we can do anything to improve attendance in the future.
We also have some players leave during the tournament. Sometimes life gets in the way, we understand. All we ask is that you try and ensure you’ve blocked out a window in accordance with the tournament’s estimated running time (we’re getting very good at these), and you let event staff know you have to leave before you go. It just makes our lives easier.
The clarity of the rules has also been tricky for us, trying to ensure they cover every situation while also being clear and concise. We think we’ve done a pretty good job, but we recognise that we need to do more. One area to be addressed is that we use a general set of rules across all 1v1 tournaments, but this is not necessarily suitable for our casual events which operate according to some slightly more relaxed rules in certain areas. We’ll be doing a pass over the rules to improve their alignment to the instructions given on the day.
In many instances though we find people have not read the rules at all, leading to questions like “What is Legion and how do I get it?”. We already highlight rules on the tournament page and in e-mail communications, but we’ll look to see if the sign-up page can highlight it too. At the end of the day if players don’t read the instructions we provide there’s not a lot we can do.
If you found any rules difficult to understand, confusing, or in conflict with the guidance provided during the tournament, we’d love to hear from you!
One area we overlooked was not accounting for numerous players not understanding that a double-elimination means that a loss does not mean the end of their tournament. In the future we’ll include a summary of the tournament type on the tournament page.
Despite all this, and an initial delay in getting things running, player feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We appreciate you all being incredibly patient during the initial delays, and we certainly don’t intend this to be the last casual. We’ll crack that 53 player barrier yet!
We’re less than four hours out from the largest tournament in Planetary Annihilation history, with 89 players signed up to the Andreas G Casual 5 Legion. We’ve got 96 slots and hopefully we’ll fill them all, and if you’re interested you can still sign-up. The Pro’s will be having their own event, but today it’s all about the Casual.
If you’re not playing then you can find links to the various streams that will be running on the tournament’s page.
We wanted to take this opportunity to draw your attention to a nifty little playlist g0hst has put together, which walks you through all the maps featured in today’s tournament. Check it out and perhaps it will give you the edge you need.
Good luck everyone!
Mmmm cookies. Who doesn’t like cookies? Your opponent. When it’s a cookie cutter build!
Nice.
With the Legion Expansion now well established we thought it time to dig into the world of builds to answer questions like: how should I open, and what method is best to grind my opponents into the dust?
AndreasG is here to help with the Cookie Cutter Legion Build Order guide. Let him walk you through a rock solid build that will have you crushing your enemies, driving them before you, and hearing the lamentations of their programmers. And if you’re an MLA player then use this to know what to expect to see in the future.
We recommend putting this guide to use in this weekend’s Andreas G Casual 5 Legion tournament, for gold rated players and lower only. If you’re higher ranked than that then check out the Pro version of the tournament.
The week has only just begun but we’re already looking ahead to Saturday, and it’s going to be a glorious day with not one but two tournaments. And I suspect every game will be higher quality than the Euro 2016 final just gone.
For those not familiar with the Casual/Pro format we host two sets of 1v1 double-elimination brackets. The Pro tournament is open only to players ranked Platinum or Uber, while the Casual tournament is for players ranked Gold or lower. The idea is to allow those of you who just want to have some fun games to come along and play in a tournament without worrying your first round opponent will be Qzipco. There’s no pressure, no stakes, it’s just all good fun. And because it’s double-elimination you’re guaranteed a minimum of two games. You might even get your game cast too!
We got some feedback following the last tournament that some casual players were intimidated by some of the players signing up. To fix that we’ve split the tournaments in two right from the start, rather than shuffling players around on the way.
Head over to the tournament page and submit your name now. We’ll see you on Saturday!
Another Monday and time for another update to the Legion Expansion. Hope you’re enjoying it so far! The big change here is that the Imperator has been updated; it now launches attack drones against surface targets rather than relying on direct fire weapons to get the job done. Try it out and see what you think, along with the other small balance tweaks and fixes implemented in this release.
Please continue to provide your feedback here, in the official thread, and through the beta feedback form. Remember, the more detail you provide the more useful your feedback is.
Unfortunately this has had to be disabled due to the 100 person limit on the PlayFab side.
As of Saturday morning (UTC), the global chat setup known as PA Chat is now enabled for all users. If you don’t have the mod PA Chat installed you will now see the JOIN PA CHAT button in the bottom-right of your main menu screen. Clicking this takes you to the global chat room, making it much easier to find other PA players to play with.
You can check out our PA Chat tournament guide for more information.
This is a weekend experiment, so let’s make it a successful one!
The Legion Expansion has been out for over a month now, and in that time we’ve been not only running internal playtests, but also watching your games and listening to your feedback.
This build focuses around many of the balance concerns people have had, from elements which made no sense like the Tyr not being able to hit things underwater, to the Comet proving to be too difficult to stop on multi-planet maps. There’s a lot of little changes here but it all adds up to make a big difference.
One area which has been highlighted is ease of use and knowing what to build. While we’re looking at what we can do about this, we urge you to check out the full Legion Expansion article. It has a breakdown of every unit, its strengths and weaknesses, and a video showing how it works.
So check out the latest version and please continue to provide your feedback here, in the official thread, and through the beta feedback form. Remember, the more detail you provide the more useful your feedback is.
Full unit stats – https://palobby.com/legion-expansion/units
UPDATE: a video demonstrating Com Reclaim Fix has been added to the article.
Over time every RTS develops a meta; units come into favour and fall out of it, people develop new tactics which defeat the old. An RTS doesn’t become stale until a strategy emerges that is so dominant is becomes required above all others.
In the article Commander Reclaim: How To Ruin PA, elodea makes the argument that Commander reclaim meets these criteria. A strategy which comes off the back of changes designed to make the Commander harder to repair or reclaim to death, earlier this year Qzipco discovered that it could be used as a means to jump start your economy.
Elodea walks you through what he sees as the problem and proposes some fixes for it. Check out the full article and let us know your thoughts.