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Post by fallen on Jun 15, 2014 20:55:28 GMT -5
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Post by ncdulo on Jun 15, 2014 21:18:54 GMT -5
I actually already have voted to greenlight this one. I don't have too many friends into this style of gaming but the ones who are into it have been pleasantly surprised by your games. I really would love to see 4X on pc. I downloaded bluestacks just to play on my computer and it's nice just not all there. A native port would be amazing! |
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Post by Cory Trese on Jun 15, 2014 23:28:52 GMT -5
Yeah, these games are just a bit too heavy computationally to run inside an ARM emulator.
If we can get enough votes on Steam, the native port will be released!
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Post by thalinor on Jun 16, 2014 2:21:29 GMT -5
They pay a lot more for ships, but build them faster. This becomes a problem late in the game; at least on normal difficulty with a player that does not go balls to the wall taking everything over immediately. I usually play where I expand as much as I need but do not thin myself early on until I am built up. In games where there are three players, I take 1/3 the map; with two players I take half. You can't play that way in this game, because the AI builds ships way too quick and once they have resources, it's game over. I just rage deleted an 8+ hour game where I had taken and fully upgraded planets on 1/3 the map, until both AI enemies were sending fleets of 10+ ships one fleet after another. Even with 50% of the tech tree finished, and some great ships they could not hold off a horde that could be made so quickly. I literally would just finish off 20 of them (10 each by the two AI's from different directions) when another 8+ would show up from each direction. Eventually it got to the point where I wouldn't have the ability to finish them off before more showed up, they just kept coming. I finally gave up and sent ships to the enemy AI area only to see them pumping out ships far faster than I could ever keep up. Again this was pretty far into the game, so they must have had a huge amount of resources. Whats worse is the enemy AI that's not supposed to be working with each other completely ignores each other and focuses on me. At one point a horde of 9 AI ships from one AI player went straight past three enemy planets and 8 enemy ships. I have had them sit in clumps together, each coming from different sides of the map into the center only to ignore each other and attack my ships. Once my ships were destroyed, they both turned around and went back to their own individual sides of the map. Then there is planetary defenses which are bugged or useless. My planet had a defense of 72/36 [no clue what that means] with a Level I Planetary Defense Thing in orbit, and a barracks on the ground that said it was 48 defense (or right around there). When ONE ship came to attack my planet, on the defend or pay to flee popup it then said I had a defense of 10. You can see this in the screen shots attached; I have no idea where my 72/36 defense end up, but they were not defending anything. I had one planet with no defenses made and the other with the setup in the screen shot, the end result was the same: Both planets lost 1 Population and 1 Quality; this continued until I destroyed both invading ships. It appears defenses do nothing and are a waste of precious space which is OVERLY limited on each planet. This is further complicated with the over population problems; even with Hab III's you are forced to have 1/3 your building space for the never ending and almost instantaneous population growth. Factor in you get one enemy ship that makes it through your lines and parks at one of your planets, its over just let the planet die. Once quality starts dropping it takes so long to come back the planet is useless; you must start destroying everything you have built or your people are pissed causing the planet to be nothing but a drain on your economy. By destroying everything, I mean everything but the huge amount of Hab units because if you destroy those your people get pissed and it's the same result as leaving too many buildings. In the end either way your screwed because the planet becomes a drain on your economy no matter what you do; if the people are pissed [too many buildings or too few Habs] it's a drain on the economy because nothing seems to get done when people are pissed; if you destroy the mines it's a drain on the economy because the planet is not supporting it's own costs; and if you destroy the factories nothing gets done. Destroying the factories is your best bet because at least the planet is still making enough money to support its existence, but it's a useless planet and will probably never get a chance to recover as by the time it does another enemy ship will be breaking through your lines and starting the process over. Even with a thriving economy, the amount of ships you need to fill the 8 spaces around a planet to prevent an invasion becomes impossible on every planet, and as stated above defenses are useless you will still lose quality. I have yet to see third tier ground + 1st tier orbital defenses stop you from losing quality/people and they don't seem to damage enemy ships at all. I have attached some screen shots, this is the last wave before I gave up. Before this final wave, I had 14 capital ships [seven on each side] successfully fended off and destroyed three previous waves of about 20 ships (10 from each side) one right after another with no break in between; they just kept coming. I obviously lost most of my ships in those waves which is why I have only a few left. I was making more all along but has to switch to fighters because of the build times it took to replace the capitals I lost. Those center planets were my first colonized so they were the furthest along, but had been repeatedly attacked, losing quality and thus losing stuff I had built. You can't compete with enemies that make stuff far quicker than you do, especially as the game goes on and resources are more abundant. Eventually resources mean far less than build time, because everyone has far more resources then they need. All of my planets were at one point perfect balanced, 100% Factories / Mines with a bunch of other stuff. At one point I had 35,000 credits and was making 2000+ a turn. I could not go attack their planets because I did not have the required tech. I choose to build the tree out from the beginning working my way up on both sides; this was my mistake. Tips for new players. As of the time of this post, the game is still very new and is not balanced for different styles of game play. If you want to be successful, only one is going to work. Be aggressive. When you research, ignore everything and go straight for the one that gives you planetary invasion; its a bit far down the tech tree but that's your one goal and along the way you will pick up the ability to build colony ships. Act like a 16 yr old child and spread your seed on everything that can be colonized, especially the planet next to enemy AI's stating point. Don't care if your people get angry, **** them, all they are there to do is be a buffer to prevent an enemy from getting a planet and getting resources. Because the maps are not random and your starting place is always fixed in the exact same spot, you will figure out where each enemy is quickly and just gun for them immediately. Don't colonize the [barren] center of the map off the bat like it wants you to do, head for the upper left where there are an abundant amount of planets and no enemy. remember, the AI can makes ships way too fast, so your goal is to keep them to as few planets as possible and every ship they make pick off before they can swarm. Keep this up until you have planetary invasion, and then end it. Sure it will be a short boring game without much time to explore the tech tree, build your economy, enjoy a little exploration, etc, but until things get balanced if you don't keep enemy AI in check they will soon have enough resources to make far more ships than you can handle. You can take on a few waves, but they will just keep coming and destroy everything you have built before you can even replace the ships you have lost. Edit: Error: This forum has exceeded its attachment space limit. Your file cannot be uploaded. 1.jpg 511.20 KB 2.jpg 189.98 KB 3.jpg 230.66 KB Well isn't that some BS. |
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Post by nails on Jun 16, 2014 5:44:09 GMT -5
thalinorThose screenshots would be interesting, as would knowing what kind of weapons you have on those ships. If I have 5 ships at a planet, I can usually fend off any world killers that come. I can do it with 4, but it is way harder. You mention that in other games, ES in particular, you divvy the map by the number of players and settle your "half". my question to you is, are you choosing part of the xeno's "half"? It's pretty easy to do if you do not know that maps yet. I like playing on the big maps, always have going back to MOO. if you play the 150x50 and stay on the left side of the map, you can go into the 200+ turns and never see a xeno. Lots of reports about activity, but no actual xeno. And yes the planetary defenses are vague at best right now. I don't even bother to build them at this stage of game development. just save the maintenance costs and invest in a couple more sips.
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Post by Officer Genious on Jun 16, 2014 7:59:30 GMT -5
Looking forward to actually completing a full game this time.  I just started a Hard on the Tutorial map using the Houses, and intrigued as I was by Thulun's bonuses (best of two worlds!!), I'm moving along very, VERY slowly in the beginning. still sitting at one pop for all but Thulun who started with two, so I only have 1 CP per planet per turn. Ahhhhhhh! x.x /end whining At the start of the game you should build hab units as fast as you can and use Subsidy I... totally knew that, I was just testing you!!! /ahem |
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Post by thalinor on Jun 16, 2014 16:13:30 GMT -5
thalinorThose screenshots would be interesting, as would knowing what kind of weapons you have on those ships. If I have 5 ships at a planet, I can usually fend off any world killers that come. I can do it with 4, but it is way harder. You mention that in other games, ES in particular, you divvy the map by the number of players and settle your "half". my question to you is, are you choosing part of the xeno's "half"? It's pretty easy to do if you do not know that maps yet. I like playing on the big maps, always have going back to MOO. if you play the 150x50 and stay on the left side of the map, you can go into the 200+ turns and never see a xeno. Lots of reports about activity, but no actual xeno. And yes the planetary defenses are vague at best right now. I don't even bother to build them at this stage of game development. just save the maintenance costs and invest in a couple more sips.     Ships were Level 3 + Large Cruiser/Carrier ones, I forgot their names. (They had Repair Ship, Precision, And Torpedo) I switched to fighters the last wave as I could not make the larger ones fast enough.  |
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Post by thalinor on Jun 16, 2014 16:26:51 GMT -5
 Here is where I was on the tech tree. Every ship was made with the max tech I had available above; I had just made a giant fleet when the never ending wave battle started and destroyed my huge fleet. Again, I crushed them the first few waves but eventually I could not repair and attack fast enough, they just kept coming from both sides. One more thing, for those who are saying don't go near them, I didn't in fact it wasn't until I gave up on the game that I decided to go see how many planets they had and went into their space. They came after me, not the other way around. I had no idea where they were until the waves started. Around the end of wave four, when I saw another 8+ ships from both sides showing up the same turn the last wave ended I decided to send ships out to see how far they had expanded. So, the theory that if you stick to yourself they will not attack is not true. You have to stay out of the center of the map. My aggressive strategy was NOT used in this play through, in fact I was a pacifist that focused on building an empire. I had not seen one enemy AI ship until they started to come in waves. Again, the center of the map I had a very large force of big expensive max tech (for my research level) ships, not small fighters. I would say at 8 up top and 7 down below. Over the course of those four waves I was able to pump out another 3-4 medium to large ships (the ones you see at the bottom of the center) and about 5 or so small fighters (at the top) which proved to be useless. By the end of wave four I was limping pretty hard but in wave 5 above (which the screen shots start about 3 turns into the wave attack) you can see it was over pretty fast. In wave 3 they sent 4 world destroyers (two from the top and two from the bottom) all at once so I had to focus on those while I got lit up from the rest of their fleet. I should have started taking screen shots from the start, but is was an endless battle that took place over about 25 turns without stopping; again right when I had them down to one ship left another wave would show up. I did some quick math, and Cori said their ships are made faster but cost a lot more; lets say it's four times more (we don't know as it was not stated). If both enemy AI has the same economy as I did they could each make about 30 capital ships or 60 smaller ones. That would make [With both AI's attacking me at once] me have to fend off 60 capitals or 120 fighters. Figure it's a mixture of both and round to around 25 capital and 60 fighters, which is about what I had been hit with over those five waves. They were produced insanely fast, which was the main issue. In fact, I would love for my ships to cost what their ships cost, but make them as quickly as they do; as I said before by mid->end game money means nothing if you have played correctly and built up your empire correctly. During the buildup there were some hard times, twice to be exact [Hab III and Starport IV upgrades for all planets) where I had to destroy ships to stay above water, but as soon as I got Mines III I was living the dream. |
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Post by nails on Jun 16, 2014 16:44:58 GMT -5
thalinortwo quick questions: what level are you playing this game on? which map is that? 32 x 64? with 44 worlds?
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Post by thalinor on Jun 16, 2014 17:14:11 GMT -5
thalinortwo quick questions: what level are you playing this game on? which map is that? 32 x 64? with 44 worlds? It was normal difficulty, I own everything else this dev has made (accept for the RPG which I will buy when it's done) and always play their games on normal w/o issue. Map size was 64x64 42 Worlds, 2 Enemies, Resources Average. I wanted to start small, but not too small. I really hope a future update gives the option for a random location start, randomly generated planet position, and the ability to pick the number of enemies. For the record, I usually play Total War Games and Space Strategy Games (Sins of a Solar Empire, Endless Space, Star Ruler, Homeworld, Galactic Civ, etc) on Normal if I want to relax and the next setting up from Normal if I want to have to pay attention. I don't usually play strategies on max difficulty as it usually just stresses me out when the AI does something unrealistic and cheep. Balance is not an easy thing, even for a AAA dev that has millions of dollars and lost of people working on the title. Because AI is in its infancy, most games have to make AI players do shady things on max difficulty to keep up with humans; I don't find that fun or a challenge, it's just a low blow IMO. Not saying that's whats happening here, just why I don't play on max difficulty most of the time; just my experience with games. PS I think the last two worlds I had got cut off at the top of the screen shot, I believe I had 12 of the 42 that were mine [So a little more than 1/4 of my 1/3 goal before attacking the enemy] and they were again fully upgraded planets with very happy people and a great economy. In fact the economy was much better until the wave battle started and my planets started getting bombarded, when it tanked and leveled out to the level shown in the screen shots above. |
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Post by nails on Jun 16, 2014 17:59:52 GMT -5
thalinortwo quick questions: what level are you playing this game on? which map is that? 32 x 64? with 44 worlds? It was normal difficulty, I own everything else this dev has made (accept for the RPG which I will buy when it's done) and always play their games on normal w/o issue. Map size was 64x64 42 Worlds, 2 Enemies, Resources Average. I wanted to start small, but not too small. I really hope a future update gives the option for a random location start, randomly generated planet position, and the ability to pick the number of enemies. For the record, I usually play Total War Games and Space Strategy Games (Sins of a Solar Empire, Endless Space, Star Ruler, Homeworld, Galactic Civ, etc) on Normal if I want to relax and the next setting up from Normal if I want to have to pay attention. I don't usually play strategies on max difficulty as it usually just stresses me out when the AI does something unrealistic and cheep. Balance is not an easy thing, even for a AAA dev that has millions of dollars and lost of people working on the title. Because AI is in its infancy, most games have to make AI players do shady things on max difficulty to keep up with humans; I don't find that fun or a challenge, it's just a low blow IMO. Not saying that's whats happening here, just why I don't play on max difficulty most of the time; just my experience with games. PS I think the last two worlds I had got cut off at the top of the screen shot, I believe I had 12 of the 42 that were mine [So a little more than 1/4 of my 1/3 goal before attacking the enemy] and they were again fully upgraded planets with very happy people and a great economy. In fact the economy was much better until the wave battle started and my planets started getting bombarded, when it tanked and leveled out to the level shown in the screen shots above. personally, I find that map harder than what it says. you start in the middle and the non xeno infested areas are diagonally opposite each other and defending the middle is difficult because you do get surrounded. My experience has said on that map, I need to attack the bottom left earlier than I would like. there are less colonies there. The corners are decent places to colonize as there is a large gap of dead space from corner to corner. As for defenses....Corey or Fallen can speak to this better, but I don't bother with them right now. they just waste space to me. There was a lot of discussion about the xeno and their relation to each other and the humans. basically, they eat, sleep, and reproduce at a prolific rate and only have eyes for human flesh and once blood is in the water it becomes jihad. If you aren't prepared, its like those african ants on a lame wildebeest. And thats how the programing goes. |
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Post by nails on Jun 16, 2014 19:45:39 GMT -5
one other thing maybe....by 6.5AE, 6 ships is too few. 10-12 are probably in order.
And the Brothers have said a couple of times, if you present enough bristle and punch the xeno in the throat, they will back down for a bit.
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Post by thalinor on Jun 16, 2014 21:10:49 GMT -5
one other thing maybe....by 6.5AE, 6 ships is too few. 10-12 are probably in order. And the Brothers have said a couple of times, if you present enough bristle and punch the xeno in the throat, they will back down for a bit. Ya I wrote a novel there so I don't expect anyone to read it but I actually had about 14 ships all capital class when the first wave started. Those you see in the screen shots are what I had left during wave 5, or about 60 Enemy ships later. They came in two packs each wave, 8-10 from the top and the bottom at once. Those ~12 [split into two groups] took on ~40+ ships and destroyed them so it was not that I was underpowered [ I was actually peeing myself with glee at the effectiveness of my capital ships; man they are badass when upgraded]. It just became a war of attrition; I was trying to build more capitals until switching over to fighters mid-wave 3 to speed things up. The repair option was amazing and I had just been repairing each ship when possible, but again eventually it got to be too much. The fighters proved to be useless when outnumbered and (as expected, rightfully so) were not able to soak the damage like the capitals. I figured they would back down after 40 of their ships went down, but alas they saw I was limping and took the opportunity to finish me off. I get it, it's what I would have done. It was a pretty epic battle, and wave after wave made it fun until I got tired of clicking end turn only to see single ships coming in replacing the ship I just blew up last turn, which occurred during wave 5; they were no longer giving me a turn or so break in between waves anymore. I get the AI working together; they are bugs hellbent on destruction. I am good with everything in fact, but really think they make ships way too fast. As I said before, high costs of ships may keep them from going crazy in the beginning of the game, but fast build rates make them a problem late in the game when resources matter far less as they are abundant. It was also my mistake colonizing the center of the map, but that's where ya start so I decided it was as good of place as any. Bad idea. As you can see in the screen shots, there were only those ships left, so it looks like I took on everything and probably gave up right at the last wave. That's how it goes I guess. I posted it here not to **tch but to let the dev know what was going on; I figured this was the thread to do it in because of the poll. I will be putting up an entire suggestion list in a thread I start at some point in the future. Nothing major, just menu tweaks to make micro-management more smooth, etc. The only major things I still see are an issue is the xeno's ship build speed in normal mode, and the population growth still needs to be a little toned down; that or drop Hab II in the skill tree to something you get quicker. It seems populations grow very quickly at the start of the game and then become stagnant mid game forward. Just needs to be evened out. I get it plot wise though, so maybe that's whats going on. |
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Post by Cory Trese on Jun 17, 2014 10:03:17 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback. It was a novel but I read it all. Whew! Took a while to read all these posts and I'm not sure I have time today to sort out all the different sub-threads to respond to them individually. What we have here is a mix of game bugs, some strategy mistakes and a developing difficulty system. 1) The AI does not work together, share information or "cheat" but they also do not fight each other. They will compete for Worlds and territory control (ie, they cannot both get money from a sector) 2) If you can share screenshots, one of the most important screens for me right now is the Xeno Team Summary screen, which would help me figure out what they were doing to get so many ships. 3) There was a bug in Defense ratings, I fixed it for next. You should not build 72/36 defense, that is not going to help. 4) Ideal Strategy keeps your Spice and Defense at X/X and no more. Going above 100% yields rapidly diminishing returns that are not worth it (aside from padding for future expansion.) 5) That map is probably one of the hardest ones currently in the game and should have a warning on it. That map has many worlds tucked in odd spots, that makes it a big difficult to expand rapidly enough. At the turn in your screenshots, you didn't really stand a chance with so few colonies. 6) Please do post your suggestion list, I will be happy to fold it into mine. We've getting about 60 e-mails a day, many of them are bullet lists of ideas for improvements and expansions. Now is the time to get into the roadmap. Build order here will resolve that, you should use a strong mining infrastructure to offset the income dips caused by your Idle CP dropping. Many details on this in the Library section of the game. nails said I would strongly advise you to disregard this advice. Defenses had a display bug, but are far from vague or unnecessary. I have not yet been able to win a game without using them extensively on my border worlds. --------------- 1) Fixed defense display for next update 2) Added a page to the library about how Defenses work 3) working on a solution where you can control the number of AI on a map. 4) working on adding political solutions that will help you get intelligence on AI operations, power levels and activities 5) and of course, balancing the AI. I do note that 0% of the respondents to the poll found the game "too easy" and 50% found the game "too hard." This doesn't necessarily worry me that much, the game was just released and people are still learning to play, but the AI improvement plan includes a number of variations and additional features to make more of it's behaviors and logic loops difficulty dependent. |
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Post by nails on Jun 17, 2014 12:25:11 GMT -5
Cory Tresereally? I guess I don't get enough world killers through to have a problem. Maybe more of a need at higher levels? or I'm lucky?
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I just started a Hard on the Tutorial map using the Houses, and intrigued as I was by Thulun's bonuses (best of two worlds!!), I'm moving along very, VERY slowly in the beginning. still sitting at one pop for all but Thulun who started with two, so I only have 1 CP per planet per turn. Ahhhhhhh! x.x