Going Offline
Unlike the average RTS game, the battle in Boundless Planet rages on even when you're not there. Resource collection and research continue as usual, with the game's artificial intellegence taking over your defensive operations in your absence. You are able to tweak it with a few settings before you leave, but this is unlikely to save you if someone decides to make a move while you're offline. You can, however, opt to receive email notifications whenever you're attacked, so that you can log on and take conflicts into your own hands.
This doesn't work too badly for players with big empires, because some of them have such enormous forces that it would take many hours of gameplay to smash them down. For players with smaller armies, a day or two off could well mean logging on to find that you have been eliminated and must start over.
Resources and Supply Lines
One element of Boundless Planet that really shines is the resource management and supply line system. Unlike most games of this kind that give you a pool of resources that can be spent anywhere, iron and oil in Boundless Planet must be moved around to where they are needed. Building a mine doesn't just start pumping iron into your coffers, you must send a transport to bring the iron to a base where it can be manufactured into weaponry. Transports can be given orders to maintain supply lines automatically.
Similarly, nothing can be built without having the requisite amount of iron at the building site. Transports, which come in land, sea, amphibious, and airborne varieties, can be filled with iron for use in remote locations.
In addition to this, vehicles and power plants in the game require fuel. The distance a vehicle can travel is subsequently limited, but transports have the ability to refuel other vehicles on long trips.
All of this gives Boundless Planet a compelling logistical layer, and makes strategies surrounding supply lines an enticing possibility. Unfortunately, the random terrain and the way resource points are spread almost evenly across the map tend to undermine the role of supply lines somewhat. If there were significant portions of the map where you couldn't build, or which lacked certain resources, supply lines would play a greater role.
The Tech Tree
In keeping with the RTS tradition, Boundless Planet requires you to research new technology to get the best units in the game, which include an assortment of aircraft, hoover tanks, and hoover transports. As you would expect, research takes a lot longer than in typical RTS games. It does, however, continue while you are offline, so all the research can be completed in several days without much difficulty.
Boundless Planet is a contest of vehicles as there are no infantry units in the game, and there are no super long-range nukes that allow you to devastate bases from great distances. You have to assemble a division of units, ensure that they have enough fuel to get the job done, and assault the enemy's defences directly.
Everyone gets access to the same types of units, but there is still likely some balancing to be done. One issue is that aircraft and amphibious hover units seem to render ships almost entirely useless. The top empires appear to concentrate on huge armadas of planes, which are much easier to manage on the wiggly maps.
Bottom Line
As much as I admire the effort that has gone into Boundless Planet, there are some fundamental flaws with the concept which may prove difficult to address. The most obvious of these is that players joining after the initial land grab have very few appealing prospects. They're likely to find their expansion severely curtailed by well-established players that have thousands of units, hundreds of mines, and weeks worth of production on the field. Being thrown into a match with no chance of winning is the furthest thing from fun, and it's also a game stopper. That said, players are making imaginative suggestions on the official forums, and the developers are listening, so solutions to these problems may still be found.
On a more positive note, playing a RTS game on this enormous scale is pretty awe-inspiring, and they've done a great job on the resource and supply systems. Boundless Planet is also quite affordable and there is a free trial available. It's not for people that need fancy graphics, and it does need quite a bit of work, but it's definitely a grand experiment that stands out from the usual RTS offerings.
