We are monitoring the use of smurfs and player behaviour. That may result in some changes, some warnings, some season bans and some permanent bans (a number of which have already been applied).
Be respectful in chat (or don’t say anything at all if you can’t self moderate)
No smurfs (play on your primary account)
No impersonating other players
Avoid instant surrenders without communication and agreement from the other player
Avoid disconnects
High rates of instant surrenders or disconnects are NOT considered participation and will disqualify you from participation prizes.
We are monitoring the use of smurfs and player behaviour. That may result in some changes, some warnings, some season bans and some permanent bans (a number of which have already been applied).
Be respectful in chat (or don’t say anything at all if you can’t self moderate)
No smurfs (play on your primary account)
No impersonating other players
Avoid instant surrenders without communication and agreement from the other player
Avoid disconnects
High rates of instant surrenders or disconnects are NOT considered participation and will disqualify you from participation prizes.
It’s Halloween, and the appearance of the Pumpkin Commander marks the end of season 4. It was a season filled with drama, but we’re happy to announce that the Uber #1 spot was finally clinched by andreasg. We also have three winners of the activity prize in each league, so check below to see if your name is listed.
For season 5 we’re getting a little experimental, trying out some new ideas for maps. Some will work, some undoubtedly will not, but we hope it’ll be a fun ride either way. A breakdown of all the maps, both returning and new, has been prepared by WPMarshall.
The prize distribution for this season remains the same as before, with the three most activity players in each league, and the player that holds Uber #1, gaining a cash prize at both the mid-season and end-of-season points. See below for exact dates and times.
Good luck on the battlefield and may the best Commander triumph.
That’s the sound of the Horsefly exploding its way into Planetary Annihilation, the newest addition to your arsenal.
Found in the Advanced Air Factory and armed with rapid-fire cannons, it strafes targets to remove all the pesky AA (and fabbers) from the vicinity, while tanking return fire with its heavy armour. Conduct your bombing campaigns in peace once more. It will attack the land, it will attack the sea, and in a pinch it can even attack air.
For those of you running on Linux we have some good news: Planetary Annihilation will now work with Mesa when run within a Steam Proton environment. We continue to work with Coherent Labs on the native Linux issues.
We also have prizes to give out. The mid-season arrived, and with it the tightest contest for first yet. When the fires died down it was KillerKiwi who stood victorious among the wreckage. Congratulations to them, US$500 is on its way. We’ve also listed below the individuals from each league claiming the US$100 activity prizes, if you’re on that list and haven’t been contacted please raise a ticket with support. As ever, there will be further prizes issued at the end of the season (2019-10-25 00:00 UTC), so keep on fighting!
Some further adjustments to the air game have proven necessary, with Kestrel gunship damage slightly reduced. Flak has been adjusted to place greater emphasis on its splash, making it more of an anti-horde unit, while reducing its single target damage. The Storm mobile flak has also been given the ability to tilt its gun forwards and backwards to fire off a shot earlier against attacking bombers and to help it land shots in the middle of Kestrel gunship hordes, but it remains vulnerable when approached from the flank. The Angel advanced air support platform and Mend advanced combat fabricator can now auto reclaim the wreckage of your enemies or fallen comrades.
Finally, we’ve been improving various technical bits and bobs to continue enhancing performance, especially with loading of the UI and mods. SVG fonts are dead too. What’s an SVG font you ask? Look, it says SVG font in the technical notes, that’s all I know. Let’s mourn their passing together.
First target priority changed to Air & (Bomber | Gunship)
Range increased to 120 from 100 (113929)
Storm advanced mobile flak vehicle
Health increased to 400 from 300
Changed to fire 4 projectiles
Damage decreased to 15 from 60
Splash damage decreased to 10 from 30
Velocity increased to 100 from 60
Added pitch of 60 with pitch rate of 360
Second stage duration decreased to 300 from 700
First target priority changed to Air & (Bomber | Gunship)
Range increased to 100 from 80 (113929)
Kestrel advanced gunship
Damage decreased to 15 from 20
Wyrm advanced heavy siege bomber
Added heavy unit type UNITTYPE_HEAVY
Speed increased to 30 from 20 (113945)
Angel advanced air support platform
Can now manually reclaim wreckage / features and will auto reclaim nearby wreckage if nothing to repair
Speed increased to 40 from 30 (113945)
Health increased to 1,200 from 1,000 (113945)
Mend advanced combat fabricator:
Will now auto reclaim nearby wreckage if nothing to repair
Can now build Laser Defense Turret, Flak Cannon and Radar (113929)
Stryker attack vehicle, Ares hover titan, Atlas seismic titan and Zeus air titan mesh bounds adjusted
Amphibious units moving on the seafloor which are near the water or above the water surface can now be targeted as surface units (see below)
Lob Dox launcher range decreased to effective range of 240 (no change to existing behaviour and range circle will now be correct)
Dox assault bot, Slammer advanced assault bot, Stryker attack vehicle, Ant tank, Drifter hover tank and Leveler advanced tank can no longer target sea floor (113929)
Gil-E advanced sniper bot
Velocity increased to 1000 from 600 (113929)
Can now target Stingray Tactical Missile (113945)
Spinner anti-air vehicle range increased to 130 from 120 (113929)
Leveler advanced tank
Range increased to 140 from 120 (113936)
Velocity increased to 160 from 140 (113936)
Turn rate increased to 60 from 50 (113936)
Vanguard advanced heavy tank radar increased to 260 from 150 (113936)
Pelter short range artillery velocity increased to 160 from 150 (113936)
Dox assault bot, Slammer advanced assault bot and Stryker attack vehicle can no longer target air (113945)
Hornet advanced tactical bomber (113953)
Speed increased to 40 from 30
Can no longer target seafloor
Note: patrol will not normally reclaim if economy is positive and metal storage is full. Auto reclaim units will always reclaim wreckage while patrolling.
Added simple DPS calculation using damage x rate of fire x projectiles per fire to build bar and unit hover
Added POV camera weapons aim tracking with smoother transitions
Coherent UI 2.6.8.x with faster rendering and macOS Catalina 10.15 64 bit support
New download manager with HTTP/2 and multiplexing for faster mod downloads and XHR
Improved UI caching and loading times
Improved readability of top economy bar in header
Improved readability of build bar hovers
Added radius to top right planet selector details
Client Fixes
Fixed memory leak in multi-threading async parallel for
Server / Sim Improvements
Improved saving and loading of saved game / replay times up to 2.5x faster
Added amphibious units moving on the seafloor which are near the water or above the water surface can now be targeted as surface units eg Atlas titan is now targetable by any unit that target surface layers. Kestrel advanced gunships and Horsefly advanced strafer aircraft can target any unit as they appear out of water.
Added auto reclaim of nearby wreckage
Added reclaim of nearby wreckage to patrol for auto reclaim units
Server / Sim Fixes
Fixed memory leak in multi-threading async parallel for
AI Improvements
Added splash damage to DPS calculations
Added Phoenix advanced fighter
Added Piranha gunboat
AI Fixes
Fixed average mobile health including structures in its calculations
Galactic War Fixes
Fixed Phoenix advanced fighter buffs not being applied
Toolchain
Updated software development toolchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toolchain
Visual Studio 2019 latest with 142 build tools / Windows 10 SDK latest
Xcode 11 / macOS 10.15.x latest for macOS Mavericks 10.9+
Latest steam linux runtime / GCC 6.2.0 (currently limited by Steam Linux runtime)
Steamworks SDK 146 with macOS Catalina 10.15 support for 64 bit only
Coherent UI 2.6.8.x with macOS Catalina 10.15 support for 64 bit only
Windows libcurl 7.66.0 with nghttp2 for HTTP/2 and multiplexing
Steam Proton compatibility
Fonts converted to WOFF and all UI html and css updated
Note: PA Launcher is not currently supported on macOS Catalina 10.15 and will be updated later this year.
AI Modding
Added --al-debug for instrumentation
Dumps unit threat analysis on start for first AI (assumes all AIs are using the same unit list)Dumps per planet influence map on pause
Added --ai-log and --ai-debug to client which will pass through to local server
Added personality.ai_path to specify a different set of AI files for side by side testing of changes eg Test: { ai_path: '/pa/ai2/', display_name: '!LOC:Test,
Added AdvancedFighter, Strafer and Gunboat / SeaScout to AI unit maps
Added personality.percent_open_vehicle, percent_open_bot, percent_open_naval, percent_open_air and percent_open_orbital to specify first factory percentages
Modding
Added auto_reclaim to build arm specs (same task as auto_repair)
Added projectiles_per_fire and dps to unit specs, build bar info and unit hover info
Added ignore_overshoot to nav specs to disable distanceToStartBraking warning
Added leash_behavior and leash_distance to nav specs to control unit assist behaviour (113801)
Mods may break in the following scenes if they make assumptions about layout:
start
gw_play
live_game_econ
settings
Mods may also break in any scene if they make assumptions about the social bar position.
There are now two versions of Coherent UI / Chromium which can make UI testing challenging:
Coherent UI 2.6.8.x / Chromium 40 on Windows / macOS
Assumes always visible with individual scenes like gw play and live game controlling visibility and layout
Live game handling via main scene has been disabled
Reworked main:
New splash handling
Reworked armoury:
Responsive layout
Improved TITANS upgrades
Improved handling when steam overlay not available
Reworked replays browser:
Responsive layout
Added winner (from community mods)
113909
Fixed live streams not clickable
Added stop_clears_nearby_targets for Horsefly advanced heavy strafer aircraft
113932 / 113929
Restored Coherent UI 2.6.8.x for Linux with fixes for boringssl/openssl segfault and mesa transparency.
TITANS Balance Changes
Dox assault bot, Slammer advanced assault bot, Stryker attack vehicle, Ant tank, Drifter hover tank and Leveler advanced tank can no longer target sea floor
Mend advanced combat fabricator can now build Laser Defense Tower, Flak Cannon and Radar
Gil-E advanced sniper bot velocity increased to 1000 from 600
Storm advanced mobile flak vehicle range increased to 100 from 80
Flak Cannon advanced anti-air range increased to 120 from 100
Spinner anti-air vehicle range increased to 130 from 120
Slammer advanced assault bot can now target air – jk
Horsefly advanced heavy strafer aircraft assist removed
113939 / 113936
TITANS Balance Changes
Leveler advanced tank
Range increased to 140 from 120
Velocity increased to 160 from 140
Turn rate increased to 60 from 50
Vanguard advanced heavy tank radar increased to 260 from 150
Pelter short range artillery velocity increased to 160 from 150
113945
TITANS Balance Changes
Dox assault bot, Slammer advanced assault bot and Stryker attack vehicle can no longer target air
Wyrm advanced siege heavy bomber speed increased to 30 from 20
Hornet advanced tactical bomber speed increased to 40 from 30
Angel advanced air support platform:
Speed increased to 40 from 30
Health increased to 1,200 from 1,000
Gil-E advanced sniper bot can now target Stingray tactical missiles
Horsefly advanced heavy strafer aircraft health decreased to 1,500 from 1,800
113953
Hornet advanced tactical bomber can no longer target seafloor.
Known Issues
PA Launcher is not currently supported on macOS Catalina 10.15 and will be updated later this year
Some mods may break with the update from Chromium 28 to Chromium 40 in Coherent UI 2.6.8.x as a result of html, css, layout, rendering, js and font changes
Modern native Linux may black screen or corrupt (toggle full screen (alt+enter), resize or refresh (F5) may correct)
PA was built with modding in mind, and while we appreciate the contribution that mod authors make to our game, please remember that running mods can sometimes lead to unexpected defects and crashes, especially after a new update.
Before reporting any issues please ensure you test the game without mods enabled. Defects with mods should be reported to mod authors in the PA forums thread for each mod.
The sun sets on season 3 and the close fought contest for Uber #1. Only in the closing hours did a clear victor emerge. Allow us to offer our congratulations to AndreasG who took the title this time around. He walks away with US$1,000.
The winners of the prizes of US$100 for the three most active players in each league have also been determined and can be found below. If you’re on the list, you should be contacted shortly to arrange payment of your prize.
Now, let us enter season four without hesitation. The format remains the same, with prizes for Uber #1 and most active players awarded at both the mid-season and end of the season. All ladder ratings have been reset to create a level playing field, so fight well and fight often!
We have got 16 maps in the pool this time around, with 8 returning classics and 8 which are completely new. All of these maps will only be available in ranked for the duration of the season. A list of the maps can be found below.
We would like to draw your attention to Shackle. This is our first multi-planet ranked map. Both players start on a planet together, but both an Annihilaser metal world and a smashable planet await you among the stars. Think of this as us experimenting with the possibilities of 1v1, as well as just injecting a little additional variety into the pool.
There are also two naval maps this time. Yes, two. Some will cheer, some will cry, but we’re committed making the naval experience the equal of land, so watch this space. Backbone returns from season 3, and we’re adding Diahyrdi with two spawns for you to choose from.
As per previous seasons, we’ll monitor the maps to see what works and what doesn’t, and any necessary changes will be made at the mid-season point. Keep that (constructive) feedback rolling in, but more importantly, go blow up a planet… we mean have fun. Though blowing up a planet sounds pretty fun, right?
The mid-season has passed but is not forgotten. You’ll find all the prize winners below, with a couple of extra players securing activity awards due to cosmic rays interfering with our computations. All winners will be contacted shortly.
One of the eternal struggles is the balance between basic (T1) and advanced (T2) units. It has become clear recently that this is still weighed too heavily in favour of T2, primarily because of the explosive nature of T2 MEXs. To combat that we’ve made T2 MEXs more expensive and reduced their income. Let the Ant hordes terrorise the battlefield!
Grenadiers also got a range increase to help against the number of turrets the modern Commander finds on the battlefield.
The AI got smarter. Again. Now when its giant force is reduced to one Dox while en route to a target, it will give thought to whether that’s really enough to eliminate your entire base and win the game. Then when it retreats the Dox it will use a safe path rather than the most direct one. It’s also looking for more opportunities to combine its forces into ultra mega death platoons. A real thing, let us assure you; check the lore.
The mod Cover the Line had become “must have” for many players, allowing them to easily split up units to dodge AoE and put troops into optimal formations for maximising firepower. It was also responsible for a lot of crashes. Now, let it not be said that we are not merciful, so rather than executing an immediate SXX strike upon this mod and all those who use it, we have instead added custom line formations to the game. Select some troops and get to right-click dragging that mouse to unleash the power of custom line formations.
Basic Discord support has also been implemented for ranked. Amaze your friends, not only with your skills, but also the amount of time your profile shows you as playing ranked mode. They’ll be left wondering why you haven’t hit Uber yet.
This, and more, can be found in the patch notes below. Feast your eyes.
range increased from 125 to 135 (will out range turrets)
Advanced Metal Extractor (slowing the T2 rush in favour of expansion, map control and T1 units)
cost increased from 1,500 to 2,000
production rate decreased from 20 to 15
AI Improvements
Land, Fighter, and Bomber platoons will now path safely back to base to disband instead of taking a direct path
Land, Fighter, and Bomber platoons that lose enough of their units while enroute to their destination will re-evaluate whether they should change targets or disband
Platoons will now merge faster
AI will now retask platoons if they are enroute to an area that has already been cleared of targets, rather than wait for the platoon to arrive first
AI Fixes
Fix for AI platoons getting stuck if they attempt to path and fail after a previous successful path
Fix for amphibious units that cannot attack while underwater getting stuck
Fix for AI controlled orbital fighters/ships/railguns not targeting orbital structures
Client Improvements
Added client side custom line formations for move, attack and unload (replaces Cover the Line mod)
Added basic Discord activity support with 1v1 ranked info (macOS / Windows only with current Discord SDK)
Added check for multiple copies of PA running to avoid local storage corruption (Windows only)
Added startpa: custom protocol handler (currently macOS / windows only with no parameter support)
Changed landing zones default rules max to 32 players
Added automatic mapping of extra mouse buttons to middle mouse camera pan and rotate (113462)
Added basic Steam rich presence support (113462)
Note: Custom line formations will move server side in a future update with support for factory rally to custom line formation.
We all know machines are superior to organics, yet they’re only as good as the hardware underpinning them. You know this, we know this, which is why upgrading the game’s server infrastructure has been such an important goal for us. The road has been long, the struggle real, and we are finally migrated to (drum roll please)… PAnet. Oooooo, literal chills. Uh, I mean, bleep bloop, fellow machine.
PAnet (Planetary Annihilation Network) is our replacement for UberNet and provides all the backend infrastructure for managing game servers and player accounts. It has faster servers for better sim speed, more regions for lower latency, and higher capacity servers.
TITANS 1v1 ranked season 2 came to a close at the end of April. It was hard fought for a while with Uber #1 changing hands multiple times. But as the dust settled a clear victor emerged in NikolaMX, a good 100 points clear of the nearest competition. Should the Progenitors return we know who they will want as their leader.
With season 2 over we surprised everyone with a transition to a season that was one digit higher. Four maps from season 2 have returned, along with 12 entirely new maps, courtesy of WPMarshall. The lessons of season 2 have been applied and we think you’ll find these maps a big upgrade. Ranks were wiped clean and it’s anyone’s game to win once more.
AI performance has been improved and its impact on the server decreased. In addition, we have again put a big focus on eliminating known sources of client and server crashes. We even did a thing with the updating of the toolchain so they have higher version numbers, and we all know higher version numbers are better, right?
PAnet Features
New features in PAnet:
modern servers with faster CPUs, more memory and increased bandwidth
new regions (see below)
New Regions:
USWest (Oregon)
USCentral (Ohio) – this was USEast (Virginia) on UberNet since March 2018
USEast (Virginia)
APSouthEast (Singapore)
APNorthEast (Japan)
The following regions have higher capacity servers for bigger games:
UPDATE: We have expanded the participation prizes to include the three most active players in each of the five leagues for a total prize pool of US$4,500 this season.
Hello Commanders,
Season one of 1v1 ranked has ended, so let us give our congratulations to [TNC] [Nik] NikolaMX, a player so humble he put his own name in a clan tag.
Fighting off many worthy opponents he has dominated the Uber league, holding the #1 position for most of the season. An Invictus statue will be on its way to our deserving season 1 winner.
Season 2 – 2019-01-25 to 2019-04-25
It’s season 2!
All ranks have been reset; everything is up for grabs again.
A new season needs new maps. As you know we introduced four new maps mid-way through the previous season, and they’ll be carrying over to season two. But the rest of the maps have been taken out back and… retired. Sleep well old maps, you’ve served your time. Replacing them are eleven brand new maps.
Season 2 Map Pool (15)
Aquilaris (WPMarshall)
Bulkhead (WPMarshall)
Canyon (WPMarshall)
Centax-3 (Grand Homie)
Disparity (WPMarshall)
Enfer (Grand Homie)
Geonosis (Grand Homie)
Lost Temple (WPMarshall)
Lugaan (WPMarshall)
Niflhel (Grand Homie)
Riddler (WPMarshall)
Singe (WPMarshall)
Tartarus (Grand Homie)
The Ardennes (Grand Homie)
The Marne (Grand Homie)
New maps mean new strategies, and everyone is on an even footing because no one has had a chance to practice these before. We look forward to seeing what you make of them and hearing your thoughts on how they play. These maps will also be made available to play in custom lobbies in the near future.
Prizes!
Of course, what season is complete without prizes? And what could possibly top an Invictus Commander statue? Like that relative that doesn’t know what to get you as a present, we opted for cold, hard cash. Nice.
The player who holds Uber #1 at the mid-season point (2019-03-08 00:00 UTC) will be awarded US$500. The player who is Uber #1 at the end of the season (2019-04-26 00:00 UTC) will receive US$1,000.
But what about those of you playing in Bronze reading this and thinking, I’m never going to hit Uber so what do I care? Well we’ve got you covered too.
We will be awarding US$100 to the three most active players in each of the five leagues, both mid-season and at the end of the season. Doesn’t matter where you rank in the league, only how much you play. (UPDATED)
Summary of Prizes
Mid-season at 2019-03-08:00:00 UTC
Uber #1 – US$500
Three most active Bronze players – US$100 each
Three most active Silver players – US$100 each
Three most active Gold players – US$100 each
Three most active Platinum players – US$100 each
Three most active Uber players – US$100 each
End of season 2 at 2019-04-26:00:00 UTC
Uber #1 – US$1,000
Three most active Bronze players – US$100 each
Three most active Silver players – US$100 each
Three most active Gold players – US$100 each
Three most active Platinum players – US$100 each
Three most active Uber players – US$100 each
Maximum annual winnings for Uber #1 is US$6,800 if you hold the position all year and play the most!
All prizes are awarded at the discretion of Planetary Annihilation Inc. Players in breach of the Planetary Annihilation Community Rules and Guidelines may be disqualified. The decision of Planetary Annihilation Inc is final.
tl;dr
Seriously? We spent a lot of time writing all that. Millennials are ruining the patch note industry.
Our ladder uses a tried and tested ranking algorithm, with numerous best practices for implementation. To oversimplify, all players have two scores: stable and volatile. The former is a rating which the system has a high confidence in and should be used for ranking, avoiding placing a player too highly based on a few good games. The latter is a lower confidence rating, but looks at the potential of the player.
Volatile and stable are used for matchmaking to find opponents of the right difficulty. Think of stable as reflecting how good we know you are, while volatile is how good you might be. Over time these two ratings will converge.
During work to migrate to PAnet we have been examining the code underpinning the ladder and identified an issue. Rather than using the stable rating for ranks the ladder had been implemented using the volatile rating, leading to wild swings in position and players being placed in high level leagues far too easily. This runs counter to the goal of the ranking system: rewarding consistency of play over time.
A fix for this has been deployed and players have had their position on the ladder updated accordingly. All games played this season remain valid, none of your results have been lost or invalidated as a result of this change. The only change is to leaderboard ranks. This does not impact the result of season 1, we reviewed the data and [TNC] [Nik] NikolaMX was the clear winner.
Players with few games in ranked will likely find they have dropped to a lower rank, or even league. The key to your rank now is consistency over a large number of games. You will no longer be able to obtain Uber status with only a few games.
We debated leaving the ranking system unchanged for season 2, but decided as it was still very early in the season it was best for the health and integrity of the ladder that an immediate fix be deployed. This will lead to a better experience for everyone, avoiding the issue of players with a small number of games camping high ranking positions, allowing players who continue to play to see an improvement over time.
You will see a significant change in the number of players within each league at first. These numbers should change over time as players play more games. Thresholds for each league have not changed and we will be reviewing the season 2 data for possible adjustments in season 3.
Accompanying this change are three much requested features. Everyone’s stable score is now visible on the leaderboard, along with the number of games played, and you can view the top 500 of every league instead of just the top 10 both in-game and on the web at: https://palobby.com/leaderboards/
We hope this improved transparency, in combination with the leaderboard correction, will make for a more satisfying ranked experience.
Finally, players new to the ladder must complete 10 games before being assigned a rank. This allows the system to ensure a more accurate rating before adding people to a league.
Bulkhead has also been updated with a fix for missing metal spots that were identified.
tl;dr
The ladder has been updated to use the correct value for ranking players
The ladder UI has been updated to display your rank, games played, and 500 players per league
Players need to complete 10 games before being assigned a rank
For season 2 we are monitoring the use of smurfs and player behaviour. That may result in some changes, some warnings, some season bans and some permanent bans (a number of which have already been applied).
