[Buttons840]

I have two perspectives on games:

1) Games are meant to trigger the imagination which is fun. In this sense, Planetary Annihilation looks successful.

2) Games are a computer interface that should be fun to interact with. In this sense, Planetary Annihilation looks like an extreme failure. Managing battles on multiple planets in real-time sounds incredibly frustrating and the often overlooked aspect of actually interacting with the game would be horrible.

I always found StarCraft limiting, it didn't excite my imagination. I couldn't understand why Starcraft 2 was (and still is?) the most successful RTS game. You fight with 10s of units and you can't zoom out; where's the spectacle to trigger my imagination? Then I realized StarCraft was an game about user interface, and the user interface is pretty good. Select units, click them around, watch and click the mini-map, keep it simple and responsive. It's under appreciated how fun it is to simply select a few units and click them across the screen.

StarCraft isn't my favorite, but the subtle user interactions in the game are limited but not frustrating. Whereas Planetary Annihilation always looked like a game where user interactions have fewer limits, but a lot of frustration.

[rcxdude]

One thing that SC2 gets right which is endlessly frustrating when trying to play most other RTS games is how the units react to repeated similar commands: if you click a destination and then adjust that command slightly, the units don't miss a beat in their movement, and just adjust their course slightly (SC2 being the kind of game that it is, SC2 players will often just spam that command with only minor adjustments). In most other RTs games I've played, that second command will often recalculate the movement of the selected units sufficiently differently that it at least slows them down, and spam clicking will just cause them to derp out completely, making unit movement a frustrating task.

(To say nothing of Supcom's annoying habit of units setting off in the opposite direction. Especially irritating for your ACU when trying to beat a hasty retreat, which arguably shouldn't even have the vehicle movement mechanics which causes this)

[chainingsolid]

"where's the spectacle to trigger my imagination" Please see Supreme Commander. Its a regular 3D rts map so its easy to navigate, you get ALL the zoom, and most stuff gets bigger (in size & qty) as the match goes on till either someone wins or no one in the map can mentally manage it all!

[Buttons840]

I've played it. I prefer the open-source game Beyond All Reason which runs better on my computer.

And yeah, that was an implicit comparison I was making, I would look at games like SupCom and wonder why StarCraft was more popular, and thus my previous comment.