Mission Variation in Planetary Supremacy

[FailcopterWes]

Right now, the only variation in the battles is how much you need to kill. While others have covered the need for more interesting large scale map stuff, I think a big problem with this mode is that it does not utilise the game modes already available.

For example: strategic resource missions could be king of the hill style games, where you have to force the enemy off a fortified point and hold it for a while (maybe holding it long enough turns the defences on them, which would also make approaching more difficult). When defending them yourself, you hold the point in the middle of the map and get assaulted from all sides.

This is especially telling in the big base attacks, where there really should be more indication of the faction there. The run I did today had trenches and imperial ruins and fortifications on the Blood Angels base, but nothing to the extent that would appear to be an actual base of theirs. The Tyranid base was just an open area with what looked like Chaos ruins, which was hardly evocative of the Great Devourer. Instead, these base attacks could be collosal multi-stage assaults. The aggressor having to push through several lines of defence while the defender gets some reinforcements each turn.

If you want to be really odd with it, you could have some of the resource missions be capture the flag style things. Having to steal something and keep it away from the enemy long enough for it to power up and do...something (max out all your people's momentum, maybe?) so you can win.

One idea I have doesn't quite work with the game as it is, but if a simultaneous turns option for the world map became available then there could be some very interesting results for if several armies try to invade the same place at the same time. The first idea here would be three (or more) way battles, with everyone racing for the same objective. Imagine the chaos of the king of the hill objective with two other armies racing to get the Adepta Sororitas out of there too. But the other idea I had was to bring in the tabletop's dawn of war mode (not sure if it's still in the rulebooks, it's been a while since I played the tabletop version), which gave its name to the old RTS. In this mode, you start off with a few units and get a few more each turn until your full army is there. This mode could be for if two armies try to attack each other's territory and would cross paths on the way, catching each other off guard.

The point is, changing up the mission variety, even if just for the special results, would give this a lot more longevity. As it is, it's a nice start, but it does need more. I do appreciate that we're being involved in the improvement process, though. So yeah, good game, let's make it better.

[blacklab]

Thanks for your feedback Failcopter, we'll take this all on board.