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Aethernet posted:I read the forums because otherwise I'd miss hilarious e-drama like someone posting a link to a new review of the Enhanced Edition at Space Sector, Mecron having a pop at the reviewer, the reviewer stopping by to defend himself and then Erinys going absolutely mental at him, locking the thread and then deleting it. Just happened now. You are absolutely not allowed to say this without providing screenshots or something, goddamn.
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Dec 23, 2012 14:11
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Wait! I found it; it wasn't deleted, just moved to an obscure section of the forum, which is how they deal with all 'difficult' threads: http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=39925
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Dec 23, 2012 14:17
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Aethernet posted:Wait! I found it; it wasn't deleted, just moved to an obscure section of the forum, which is how they deal with all 'difficult' threads: http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=39925 This is fantastic.  I love how completely they ignore his reasonable tone and dismiss him as a troll.
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Dec 23, 2012 14:33
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You just don't appreciate the sublime flavour of SOTS and that's why you gave it six out of ten. The failing is clearly your taste. If you liked SOTS you would have rated it higher. It's great as the reviewer clearly likes the game and wants to rate it higher, if not for great big issues with the game.
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Dec 23, 2012 15:07
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Dumbo posted:Judging by your participation in the comment thread for your own review, in which you repeatedly browbeat your audience Look who's talking.  I also find it weird that they take his ratings way too personally, like by criticizing their work he's attacking them on a personal level or something. It's weird, you'd think if you were a middle-aged person who's been making products for decades that you'd be capable of taking criticism like an adult.
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Dec 23, 2012 15:11
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Tomn posted:Do let us know how that works out. I've been enjoying your posts about your game - kind of a mini-LP filled with frustration, requests for gameplay advice, colony-stealing Tarka, and swearing at Mecron. It may be a long time; there are lots of other games that I haven't played yet that promise actual fun instead of slogging along waiting loving forever to do anything. Far Cry 3 and Skyrim beckon particularly. I would also be down for an upkeep reduction mod. Once again, I'm not seeing what it adds to the game other than slowing down everything quite a lot. You might argue that it's to even out large empires with smaller ones, but then you'd be an idiot because it doesn't achieve that. It was however my first game; I probably shouldn't judge turn 250 too harshly as I didn't really know what I was doing until turn 150. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Dec 23, 2012 |
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Dec 23, 2012 16:03
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A reduction in upkeep costs would be good. It's just outrageous how variable your starting income can be.
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Dec 23, 2012 16:14
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Keisari posted:It's weird, you'd think if you were a middle-aged person who's been making products for decades that you'd be capable of taking criticism like an adult. At some point the groupthink takes over, and the relatively small pool of people start deluding themselves and controlling dissenting opinions in the name of harmony, because they believe that they're being unfairly persecuted. On the other hand, the technical support section is filled with CTDs and they had to throw open the beta section because they lost a critical mass of the diehards to beta the beta. I feel for them, but they have real lack of honesty that puts them firmly into the loving themselves over category, because like it or not, I'm one of the loving idiots that keep buying their products, and has kept beta-testing since they released the turd. Sure, it's getting better, but at some point they're going to have to start charging money rather than work for free, and it's going to be a hard sell. Also let's not forget that these guys really started in the modding scene. Edit: drat that review was pretty evenhanded and I agree with most of it. Hav fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Dec 23, 2012 |
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Dec 23, 2012 16:52
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Nuclearmonkee posted:You must be having issues with the texture. It's the proper red and white on my screen. It is red and white in the intro movie and on enemy planets (was white there, then changed while during the game), totally white on mine. Did a "verify files" and everything.  Demiurge4 posted:This is fantastic. Well, in fairness, they were trolling since they previously did not show the proper deference for Mecron and that crazy lady. Kind of like how they "do not care" about bad/accurate review scores then whine about ways to game the scores via a "re-review". I do find it kind of amusing though that I know this real jerk that got the mod for the Paradox SOTS II subforum banned on the Steam forums for a bit for calling everyone that had any criticism of the game a, uhm, gentleman that prefers the company of other gentlemen. In the rear. Sinister_Beekeeper fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Dec 23, 2012 |
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Dec 23, 2012 19:14
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Hav posted:At some point the groupthink takes over, and the relatively small pool of people start deluding themselves and controlling dissenting opinions in the name of harmony, because they believe that they're being unfairly persecuted. On the other hand, the technical support section is filled with CTDs and they had to throw open the beta section because they lost a critical mass of the diehards to beta the beta. I liked the review as well and figured I would meander around their site to see if maybe there are some less frustrating games that might have slipped by without me noticing it. But I do think that the part about the steep learning curve really comes down to the lack of any decent documentation and the bad UI/lack of any feedback. It is simply bad design choices and laziness on Kerberos' part. Or aggressive stupidity and stubbornness on the latter part, since they could probably just get someone to write a functional manual for them. I played through most of a game last night (before repeated crashes made me give up) and had to look at the wiki on weapons because the interface is so bad that I really just can not tell what it is saying on the damage comparisons. Like I know what it is supposed to be, but it is so hard to visually see how the differences are (or I am getting some form of blindness that only manifests in this game's design screen). This could be an awesome game if they just put competent people in charge or even just let modders fix the remaining problems. However, we both know that they are too obstinate to do that, even with a year long record of failure on this product.
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Dec 23, 2012 19:39
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What determines how many combat rounds take place in a system on a given turn? Sometimes I get two rounds, even though I have one fleet and the enemies have one fleet and a station or something? edit: nevermind, it's in the manual after all. Specineff fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Dec 24, 2012 |
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Dec 23, 2012 20:43
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Sinister_Beekeeper posted:But I do think that the part about the steep learning curve really comes down to the lack of any decent documentation and the bad UI/lack of any feedback. It is simply bad design choices and laziness on Kerberos' part. Or aggressive stupidity and stubbornness on the latter part, since they could probably just get someone to write a functional manual for them. Yeah, I took a step back and started to evaluate some of the things that are problematic, and the majority come from the aggressive glomming that they've done to move it from utter poo poo to not quite so poo poo. In reading the forums, you get a sense for what's going wrong, so they didn't quite get all the language strings in for the release of End of Flesh, they've never fixed the padding on the section dropdowns, ship design took a step backwards from SotS I and they have numerous crashes that appear to come from edge cases throughout the code. The last time I inherited a codebase that had that level of fuckery, I called for a month long moritorium on features in favour of code quality, and it saved time, effort and manpower in the long run. There are UI tweaks that could be made; adding 'CE' to the end of the '6/9' string under the star name would at least supply a dimension for the figure given. Beefing up the weapon displays so you at least have some form of dimension on the popup for damage/range and angular speed would be a fuckton more useful that the test firing range, the list goes on. I can only think that they're snowed under the weight of tiny, bothersome poo poo that they're attempting 90% coverage and the 10% is slipping through. Daton, if you think any of these are unreasonable, just chime in. Lastly, having successfully built a viable economy in the game, I'm completely confused as to why trade wouldn't be a turn 0 unlock. Even microing the starting economy I end up in a situation where I have deficit payments that balloon alarmingly, which slows growth and I'm giving everyone at least 10 starting techs just to get over that first fifty turns of trying to survive; I'm assuming that the earlier timelines given to Argle tend to rely on Trade being a very early unlock. About the only thing that keeps me coming back is the tactical game, and as has been mentioned in this thread, if they split out the tactical and design into a separate 'game' (w/multiplayer), they could actually make some decent bank.
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Dec 23, 2012 21:47
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Stations could be easily fixed by simply removing the modules and just giving them more upgrade levels, maybe all the way to 10. So a level 1 trade station would be 2 docks for freighters, level 2 would be 4 docks and a small increase in overall trade and so on. Stations are ridiculously micro heavy and it needs to go. They could easily limit the ability to station spam by increasing the time needed to upgrade them, and by limiting their size to system development. A well developed system with 3 average size planets could host a few stations at decent levels, but to really create the largest stations they need to be placed in a province capital. This would elegantly solve station micro and elevate them to a useful level where they are an overall part of your infrastructure and increase the importance of provinces.
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Dec 23, 2012 22:02
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The thing that really gets me with the tech is that this game is supposed to be starting in the Fusion-era equivalent of SOTS 1, which it both is and isn't. Trade should be a starting tech, not something that you get with the first 10.
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Dec 23, 2012 22:49
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Hav posted:Yeah, I took a step back and started to evaluate some of the things that are problematic, and the majority come from the aggressive glomming that they've done to move it from utter poo poo to not quite so poo poo. In reading the forums, you get a sense for what's going wrong, so they didn't quite get all the language strings in for the release of End of Flesh, they've never fixed the padding on the section dropdowns, ship design took a step backwards from SotS I and they have numerous crashes that appear to come from edge cases throughout the code. You're pretty much spot on. I'd also add that at the end of it, the upkeep is kind of insane (and should really scale on ship-cost, not ship type) and the old trade system would have been preferrable. At least back in SotS 1, we could mod it so it was no hassle at all (by increasing freighter count down to 1 per route with corresponding increases in profit). Max Research efficiency is also what the research times should be, instead of the current default, which is absurd. There's a reason everyone starts with 10 techs - they're hardcoded to be the ones you always get first anyway (and it's really odd plasma torps are gone, cutting off the not-super-deadly portion of the torp tree). They need to realize the only reason people are tolerating the issue-riddled 4X part is because their tactical combat engine and art department is amazing.
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Dec 24, 2012 00:07
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Demiurge4 posted:They could easily limit the ability to station spam by increasing the time needed to upgrade them, and by limiting their size to system development. A well developed system with 3 average size planets could host a few stations at decent levels, but to really create the largest stations they need to be placed in a province capital. This would make offensive warfare virtually impossible though. Plopping naval stations ASAP is 50% of a successful war. It sucks but that's how the supply system works.
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Dec 24, 2012 01:24
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Aethernet posted:Wait! I found it; it wasn't deleted, just moved to an obscure section of the forum, which is how they deal with all 'difficult' threads: http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=39925 Oh wow, that thread is magical. I'm having flashbacks to my times on the BC3000 forums, just with less expletives.
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Dec 25, 2012 09:59
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I still find myself playing this game for hours even while I curse at how slow it is. If they had taken the time to optimize, fix, and document everything with this game I think it would go a long way to dragging new people towards the 4x genre. I still remember finding out about the roll button in the original game a full two years after I bought it; and this one is full of 'features' like that that I am constantly figuring out.
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Dec 26, 2012 05:23
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Denari posted:I still find myself playing this game for hours even while I curse at how slow it is. I'm still not sure what purpose 'spin' solves, unless it's to bring your strafe section to bear.
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Dec 26, 2012 05:52
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I'm now playing a couple turns of SotS 2 while waiting for my computer to cool down so I can continue playing Far Cry 3. (GPU hardware problem) It's more enjoyable this way. It's going to take me forever just to research cloaking like this but I don't really care any more.
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Dec 26, 2012 06:01
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Hav posted:I'm still not sure what purpose 'spin' solves, unless it's to bring your strafe section to bear. Hrm, as far as I'm concerned it serves several purposes although I may be wrong about everything! 1. Rotate your weapons so guns that are on cooldown are not in the firing arc and the ones that are ready to shoot can do so. 2. Expose different armor belts to missiles and the like. I find that this helps my survivability when I'm running at a planet shooting missiles at me. Every armor belt takes some damage instead of one taking a ton and destroying a section or the getting a critical hit.
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Dec 26, 2012 08:44
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Denari posted:1. Rotate your weapons so guns that are on cooldown are not in the firing arc and the ones that are ready to shoot can do so. Classic roll; the thing is that I'm fairly sure that spinning stops the ship, but I, like you, could be wrong. Denari posted:2. Expose different armor belts to missiles and the like. I find that this helps my survivability when I'm running at a planet shooting missiles at me. Every armor belt takes some damage instead of one taking a ton and destroying a section or the getting a critical hit. It looks to me like the armor is arranged in blocks for the cardinal up/down/left right sides. Fire incoming from the front is allocated to the block intersected from the source to the destination, or so I thought. Am I insane?
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Dec 26, 2012 10:19
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Hav posted:Am I insane? You bought SotS 2.
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Dec 26, 2012 11:47
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Spinning does not stop your momentum. What it's good for is when you're running away and playing the kiting game, you can spin just before the missiles hit to make them impact the mission and command sections. Protect your running-away-engines.
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Dec 26, 2012 13:49
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Arglebargle III posted:You bought SotS 2. Pre-ordered  Been playing EE the last few days after a year of not touching the game out of disgust. Weirdly enjoying myself but christ, is the UI still slow as poo poo. Any tweaks/hacks that speed things up?
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Dec 26, 2012 14:10
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Space Pussy posted:Pre-ordered   After watching the Loa intro, i really wish the game was in a more player friendly state. Because god drat the combat is just wonderful to watch. If they ripped out the combat into its own beast, made the scale lower and focus fun gameplay over realistic gameplay, this game's combat could easily make it the spiritual successor to Homeworld. Might as well ask Mecron to not be such a sperglord while im at it huh?  The Loa are cool 'tho, i love the idea that they still feel a connection to their "Parents", even if the consensus is that they were abusive parents. Its a direction i've not seen AI take and i like it.
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Dec 26, 2012 14:22
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Arglebargle III posted:You bought SotS 2. ba-dum *tsch* 191 hours played, CTDing every fifteen turns and I'm still playing, so that's pretty conclusive. Space Pussy posted:Weirdly enjoying myself but christ, is the UI still slow as poo poo. Any tweaks/hacks that speed things up? Nope, just waiting on them unfucking the code somewhat. I was looking at trying to split the mars.exe for giggles, but they disabled the +console option. In fact, they've been quietly removing modding things. DatonKallandor posted:Spinning does not stop your momentum. What it's good for is when you're running away and playing the kiting game, you can spin just before the missiles hit to make them impact the mission and command sections. Protect your running-away-engines. Okay, that makes more sense.
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Dec 26, 2012 17:19
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Are research stations a worthwhile investment? They seem to take a ton of resources to build, upgrade and maintain for a minor boost in research. Yeah, by the time you've sunk millions into station development and maintenance you're getting a 50% bonus to research, but are you actually better off ignoring them in favor of more naval/trade stations and spending the money you would have spent on science stations on actual economy boosting technology?
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Dec 26, 2012 22:30
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Research Stations get better the more you have. You get general boosts to every discipline just from building the habitats and then more focused boost to specific branches on top of that. If you sink your money into research early, you get ahead of your opponent (or stay on par, if your opponent is Liir and you're Suul'ka) in terms of tech, but behind in terms of money (usually).
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Dec 26, 2012 22:49
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Research stations are effectively cash multipliers, so it depends whether you'd be able to make more money with another option. That being said, I find it helpful to have a couple in the early game, one focuses on biotechs and the other on a weapons tree.
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Dec 26, 2012 22:59
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A research station focused in Engineering is a great idea for everybody. Odds vary for getting good beams/ballistics/missiles/armors/biostuff/psis, but everyone is going to want to upgrade their IO and ship sizes eventually. The station's 'habitation' modules increase all research by 1% each, and a fully leveled station can have a bunch of them. Another big factor - the tier 1 Cybernetic tech 'cerebro archiving' makes every l5 science station give a 5% research bonus to everything, in addition to the ~10% they can already give to everything, and in addition to their discipline-specific bonus. Check to see if that's feasible. If yes, exploit madly.
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Dec 26, 2012 23:33
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I'm not sure I'd go hardcore into Level 5 Science Stations even if you can get Cerebro Archiving - they do have the usual crazy Station upkeep. A good rule of thumb seems to be one level 5 science per 4 trading planets. If you want to tech fast and hard that is.
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Dec 27, 2012 00:27
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I just bought SotS2:Enhanced Edition on steam, will singleplayer be really unenjoyable for me?
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Dec 27, 2012 01:03
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Are civilians capable of building their own civilian stations? I'm trying to figure out how to streamline out the ~2 million I pay in upkeep every turn. I'm decommissioning all fusion fleets, the dreadnoughts I'm stockpiling for the war with the Tarka all go straight to reserves, I have 4 front line antimatter combat fleets involved with the Human war, 2 invasion fleets on that front as well, and about 8 colony fleets and construction fleets together most of which are busy every turn. Oh and I have one support fleet that I'm probably going to scrap when I realized you can't share fuel between fleets even though repair is still kosher (another step backward). I have a bunch of defenses and police ships as well, but no large defense concentrations in systems that don't get attacked often by the humans' ridiculously low-tech fleets. I'm considering scrapping all my diplomatic stations, considering that no empire has ever agreed to any treaty I proposed in the last 150 turns. My income is about 5-6 million per turn depending on tax rate. Honestly I don't know when I'm going to give enough of a poo poo to play through the 8 turns cloaking will take to research. Or the 8 turns after that researching dreadnought command and building prototypes of cloaking command, repair, and supply ships. I've finally figured out that refitting all my ships to have as many camels as possible will make attacking the humans a lot easier, but it's still a slog and there's always the risk of the Tarka swooping in before I can colonize. Hopefully cloaked assault shuttles will enable genocide just as well as they did in the previous game. Eventually in SotS1 I just gave up using them because it made the game too easy. I imagine the new satellite placement and the way time works will make it more difficult. Maybe it will give me a chance against the Tarka menace.
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Dec 27, 2012 03:04
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I find that by the time you reach dreads shuttles are about at the limit of their usefulness. By this time a fully loaded dread is pounding a planet hard enough that the loss of fire power from using shuttles is no longer worth the damage they do.
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Dec 27, 2012 08:24
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One of my frontline naval systems just got warned about a Supernova brewing and that I should get on with that emergency research (for ~2 turns), but there's no special project to research. Kerberos
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Dec 27, 2012 08:57
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Denari posted:I find that by the time you reach dreads shuttles are about at the limit of their usefulness. I'm into energy weapons pretty hard at this point. I know antimatter does way more damage to planets than fusion but still. Besides, cloaked assault shuttle cruisers are cloaked. The idea is to wipe out enemy planets with no warning and no chance of resistance, then send in the real fleets to mop up space assets. In SotS 1 it was absolutely crippling; so I'm hoping it will be at least somewhat effective in this game. This is against the AI, so I'm not expecting any deep scan coverage. Do those little sensor towers on space stations detect cloaked ships on the tactical map?
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Dec 27, 2012 09:02
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There should be under the special projects button in the research menu. It's really easy to miss so you might not have seen it. Not that it matters, really! I've gotten the supernova even several times and it always blasts my homeworld.
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Dec 27, 2012 09:03
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Denari posted:There should be under the special projects button in the research menu. It's really easy to miss so you might not have seen it. Nope, it's not there, or under salvage projects. I'll fire up the game save again tomorrow and recheck (sometimes they update the DB, but forget to pull state back into the UI, hence the ships moving when you come back from the battle manager). Swarm Hives aren't the paragons of death they once were, unless I'm remembering my destroyer fleets being crushed. Surely most enlightened races in the whatever century would tend to gas the queen before she nested.
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Dec 27, 2012 09:16
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Hav posted:Nope, it's not there, or under salvage projects. I'll fire up the game save again tomorrow and recheck (sometimes they update the DB, but forget to pull state back into the UI, hence the ships moving when you come back from the battle manager). Sorry then, don't know what to tell you. Maybe you could broadcast a message to your soon to be dead populations. "While your deaths may seem meaningless and simply the result of laziness on the part of your government; know that the loss of your revenue will partially impact the construction of my next ship."
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Dec 27, 2012 09:46
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