Gameplay Basics

Spawning

This is the first thing you’ll see when entering a game: a full view of the system. Note that two planets have a numbered arrow pointing to them and that in the top right system list three of the planets have a green icon. The green icons represent planets players can start on, while the numbered arrows represent the spawn options you have been assigned.

You then zoom in on the planets either by positioning your mouse over them and using the scroll wheel, or by clicking the planet in the system list.

To select a spawn location you click. Where you click within the spawn location determines where you land. Once you have selected your spawn location click Start Annihilation. After every player has made their selection, or after two minutes have passed, the game will start.

When playing with shared armies all players on the team see the same spawn locations, in all other modes every player gets unique spawn options. The AI selects spawns in the same way as you, if you have instructed it to spawn off-planet it will only do this if it has a spawn available on another planet.

Commander

The first thing we see when we spawn is our Commander. This is the key unit in Planetary Annihilation; lose your Commander, or in shared army mode lose all your Commanders, and you are out of the game. It doesn’t matter how big your base is, if the Commander dies everything else dies too.

Players

In the top left is a count of the players and if we click it on we can see a list of who is playing. Any names in red indicate annihilated opponents.

Shared armies are represented by a single icon with multiple names listed next to it. Unshared teams have their icons placed adjacent to one another in the list.

System

The system name and a list of planets can be found in the top right. Clicking on a planet switches your view to that planet.

Under some planets you may see little engine icons, this indicates that this planet is a smashable. Build as many engines, or “Halleys”, on the planet as are indicated by the icons and you will be able to select another planet to annihilate, destroying everything on both worlds.

Economy

At the top of the screen is one of the most important parts of the game: the economy bar. On the left is your metal and the right your energy. The coloured bar and the numbers underneath represent the amount of the resource in storage against your total storage. The numbers to the right represent your incoming and outgoing amount of that resource, the top green number being income and the bottom red number spending. The large number on the right is the result of income minus spending.

In the centre is your overall efficiency which impacts the speed at which you build units and buildings. At 50% efficiency two fabricators or factories are building at the same rate as one fabricator or factory would at 100% efficiency. Fabricators are the construction units of the game.

Issue an order to the Commander to build something and you will see the number and colour of the bars change. Blue means you are earning more than you’re spending and your storage is full. Red means you’re spending more than you’re earning and your storage is empty or about to run out. Green is in-between the two and the colour they should ideally be most of the time.

Hovering over any unit which is currently building will show you how much it is costing you. The cost is always the same, regardless of what is being built. Likewise, buildings which generate metal or energy will show you how much they’re making. The green bar represents the health of the unit.

Planetary Annihilation operates using a flow economy, meaning that all units and structures are built over time and cost your economy the whole time they’re being built. For example, let us take a standard Fabricator Vehicle which builds at 10 metal a second for a cost of 1000 energy per second. It can build a Missile Defence Tower, which costs 300 metal. This means for an economy operating at 100% efficiency it would take the fabricator 30 seconds as 300 metal divided by 10 metal a second is 30. The total energy cost would be 30,000, that’s 1000 energy a second for 30 seconds. If your economy were operating at only 50% efficiency then the fabricator would only be building at 5 metal a second, but this would still cost you 1000 energy every second resulting in a total cost of 300 metal and 60,000 energy over 60 seconds. The higher the metal output of a fabricator or factory the faster it builds things.