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Some takeaways from watching Ninjew vs Oragelex stream their first MP game: 1. Revealed monitoring stations need to be much more visible on the campaign map. As it is now you can barely see your own when you already know where they are - visually identifying hostile stations on the map during a timed multiplayer game is infeasible, and the vision war is an essential part of the game. 2. In a PvP fight, only the attacker has the choice of whether or not to use a combat card. If they choose to autoresolve the fight, the defender is bound by their decision and doesn't get the option to use a card themselves. This opens up a whole world of potential abuses and honestly might make the combat card system non-viable for multiplayer games, since it means the players can't have a manual battle unless the attacker has a card to spend. If possible, it would be good if players could mutually agree to PvP a battle without it consuming a card for anybody. 3. The anti-rush mechanics built into the game seem to be doing their job. Cassus Belli imposes modest penalties for an aggressor who doesn't take the time to fabricate justifications for war, but over the course of an entire game they can add up. Militia built into every colony and sector means that rapid harassment strategies require much more of a commitment than they did in AoW III, while longer raze timers gives the defenders a reasonable chance to respond if they aren't being completely outmaneuvered. There are only the first takeaways from watching one game, but it looks like the basic framework is doing a good job applying the lessons from AoW III, even if it's going to need some adjustments.
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Aug 10, 2019 21:23
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Voyager I posted:2. In a PvP fight, only the attacker has the choice of whether or not to use a combat card. If they choose to autoresolve the fight, the defender is bound by their decision and doesn't get the option to use a card themselves. This opens up a whole world of potential abuses and honestly might make the combat card system non-viable for multiplayer games, since it means the players can't have a manual battle unless the attacker has a card to spend. If possible, it would be good if players could mutually agree to PvP a battle without it consuming a card for anybody. The use case here sounds like a use case for not having combat cards - the whole point of them is to make you pick and choose which fights you want to manual. If you just want to use honor system and manual when both parties agree then just tick them off. The stuff with attacker vs defender could probably be tightened up though, yeah
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Aug 10, 2019 21:52
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psudonym55 posted:Also if you pick up research on the first turn before you are researching anything does it just get wasted? No, it's kept for the next turn, the same happens for research that's left over when you complete a piece of research. You can see how much research you have banked by mousing over the research income on the top bar. toasterwarrior posted:I think the last major thing escaping my understanding in this game is the sector exploitation system. Apparently, just because a bonus building gives a resource of a certain type in a sector, it doesn't necessarily mean the corresponding exploitation is the best pick because if you don't have the right kind of terrain in the sector, you can only level it up so much? Like, imagine a sector with Mountain and Fungal terrain. Mountain provides production, but Fungal isn't, so at best I can only level said exploitation and attached specialty building up to 3 in that sector? Is that right? That's right. You can always get a sector to level 2, but to get to 3 and 4 you need to match the terrain to the type of sector. Voyager I posted:Some takeaways from watching Ninjew vs Oragelex stream their first MP game: Interesting, we'll take it on board! Glad to hear it was at least a partial success 
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Aug 10, 2019 21:53
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 Spacers might need to rethink their strategy of sending melee people to fight the air force 
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Aug 10, 2019 22:18
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Another thing that just came up in Ninjew vs Orangelex. This one might be classified as a bug: when a commander gets dismounted, the game treats the dismounted survivor as a new unit and refreshes their single-use abilities. This is a pretty big deal when those abilities include a revive!
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Aug 10, 2019 22:27
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Conot posted:The use case here sounds like a use case for not having combat cards - the whole point of them is to make you pick and choose which fights you want to manual. If you just want to use honor system and manual when both parties agree then just tick them off. it's more like as the attacker i have the option to hit autobattle in a fight that the defender would very greatly benefit from having in manual combat. there were several times that this would've been the obvious "correct" play, and would've hosed orange right good, but i was nice and chose not to do it. but also part of it is that combat cards are meant to let you selectively choose that a fight is too risky to leave to autobattle, and manual it yourself. this is good at great for AI fights or scout fights or "hey i have 3 stacks and you just have 4 militia units," but kinda rear end if as the attacker i already spent my 3 combat cards on those situations, and now in a situation where both of us want to fight it manual (a big 3stack vs 3stack fight) i might actually be unable to pick manual - and the defender is forced into an autobattle as well.
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Aug 10, 2019 22:38
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+1 to everything Voyager posted so I didn't have to. My only additional feedback is that monitoring stations are probably too good, if only because it forces players to spend Cosmite for detection. For one-time 40 gold, that's really powerful. They probably should have an upkeep?
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Aug 10, 2019 22:40
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big big deal though: now that lethality is high, you no longer have the aow3 situation where the winner of a fight 90% of the time loses 3 units vs the other guy losing 18. this is very very good, games aren't decided by a single battle anymore, and that's more fun. games also definitely take longer though, especially since rushing is a much less viable tactic
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Aug 10, 2019 22:40
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Oddly, I think that although the map is bigger than AOW3, we actually started closer together. Finding each other wasn't a problem, we both had a scout on each other's cap by turn... 10? Maybe 15?
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Aug 10, 2019 22:44
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toasterwarrior posted:I think the last major thing escaping my understanding in this game is the sector exploitation system. Apparently, just because a bonus building gives a resource of a certain type in a sector, it doesn't necessarily mean the corresponding exploitation is the best pick because if you don't have the right kind of terrain in the sector, you can only level it up so much? Like, imagine a sector with Mountain and Fungal terrain. Mountain provides production, but Fungal isn't, so at best I can only level said exploitation and attached specialty building up to 3 in that sector? Is that right? Bonus buildings that aren't pre-built exploitations (which are generally like monuments/dungeons), give 10 in any sector and 5 more for the right sector, and an extra 5 is nice but not so nice that you want to add something totally incompatible, one matching terrain type is plenty, though if a level 5 is possible in that sector i'd weigh the value of that 5 production/research/energy vs the benefits of level 5. However, sometimes you just need a resource and there are no sectors that can support level 5 for the lacking resource in question nearby in which case you just gotta settle for level 4. No food, energy, or research sectors at all tends to end poorly. Sometimes you get dumb stuff like every single zone around you being a perfect food or production zone and just having no good research spots anywhere - it's better to have a mediocre research spot than way too much food and no research. The base level of a sector is 1. In your situation, researching Production 1 will knock it to level 2. Production 2 will knock it to level 3. Researching Mountain will knock it to level 4, and since fungal is incompatible the highest you can get is 4. 3 is the cap for a zone with zero matches at all.
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Aug 10, 2019 22:49
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orangelex44 posted:+1 to everything Voyager posted so I didn't have to. Detector is something you'll probably end up having in most stacks anyway though. The detector mods are pretty good, generally.
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Aug 10, 2019 22:58
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i like the voice actor for synth who reads off "H4X0R" one letter at a time
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Aug 10, 2019 23:06
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I found a bug: when you go to look at rankings, you can use a slider bar to see the progress of the game. If you leave this bar at some time in the past, the game will stop showing you domain borders until you go back into rankings to reset the time to the present. It still shows your faction coloured section pins and colony names, just not the borders. On a different issue, I feel like most flyers have way too large hitboxes (for when you click them) for their model sizes. On many units the hitbox extends way outside the visual model, selecting or targeting units under a bunch of fliers can be extremely fiddly.
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Aug 10, 2019 23:14
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Is there any way to remove the voicing from the tutorial? It's so loving distracting, just let me read what it says! I've disabled speech entirely for now but that feels a bit extreme, I dunno. Taear fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Aug 10, 2019 |
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Aug 10, 2019 23:24
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https://clips.twitch.tv/PopularBumblingCockroachOhMyDog
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Aug 10, 2019 23:35
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I like the game so far. Even though I am boring and prefer generic fantasy settings this is still interesting. I have played Thea 2: The Shattering recently and this game really needs a feature from that game. It is the option to fight battles manually after you have seen the result of the autocombat. Autocombat is supposed to be a timesaver for battles where you are totally superior, and this would save the hassle of reloading when the autocombat is not doing its job of keeping your units alive in easy fights. Or maybe I am the only one who is doing that?
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Aug 10, 2019 23:36
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that sniper was clutch never missed a concussive proc
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Aug 10, 2019 23:41
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My only real critique so far is that some of the random drop weapons/mods are vastly more powerful than the others. Like if I'm choosing between a tier 4 sniper that shoots once a turn and has a chance to debuff, or a repeat-fire grenade launcher that can delete a unit every turn and severely hurt + stagger its neighbors, I'm going for the latter every time. Also it'd be real nice if zooming out to the strategic map to double check sector buffs didn't unselect your current unit.
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Aug 10, 2019 23:57
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@Gerblyn, quicksave hotkey please.
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Aug 11, 2019 00:02
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Yeah, I'm finding sniper-type weapons to be a major letdown, since they take up a whole turn just to shoot, and enemies are great at using cover so you're not really accurate even then.
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Aug 11, 2019 00:03
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Cynic Jester posted:@Gerblyn, quicksave hotkey please. ctrl-s
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Aug 11, 2019 00:26
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Game's good, but I had a fight over that flame weapon vault end so explosively it crashed the game. Crashes aside, tactical combat is a lot of fun in this.
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Aug 11, 2019 00:58
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I wish there was a tactical-only skirmish mode, like each player gets resources to spend buying/modding 1-3 stacks of units then you duke it out in a giant battle
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Aug 11, 2019 01:46
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah, I'm finding sniper-type weapons to be a major letdown, since they take up a whole turn just to shoot, and enemies are great at using cover so you're not really accurate even then. Once you get the +accuracy skills and maybe an accuracy mod I find that they are basically guaranteed to land. I'm still a bit iffy on them though, largely because getting even one action point staggered off you means you can't shoot next turn. There are a LOT of units in this game with a long range staggering aoe and it fucks over snipers so badly.
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Aug 11, 2019 03:35
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah, I'm finding sniper-type weapons to be a major letdown, since they take up a whole turn just to shoot, and enemies are great at using cover so you're not really accurate even then. A hero sniper can do big damage from downtown and can be specced for higher accuracy/crit chance with Deadeye and the like, plus mods depending on the weapon's channel. Psi rifles can be equipped with the Mantra of Guidance or whatever if you have the psi channel, which gives +20% accuracy against anything you shoot with it once you land at least a graze on it (and if you have access to Psi-fish dwellings you can equip them with the Chimera focus to just dump DoTs and debuffs on them. If you have Paragon access then they have Smart Rounds for kinetic weapons that let you ignore anything between you and the target, while a Voidtech hero can pick up Phasing Rounds to bypass half of the penalty from things in the way. You can also just blow up whatever is in the way if you have demolisher on an attack or have a unit with Juggernaut to walk through the target. Set-up can sometimes be an issue in the starting round, but there are a couple of ways around it. You can always move 1 square and shoot without any problem, so it's feasible to start the fight by just moving and either sniping or going into overwatch because nothing is going to get you from the other side of the battlefield, especially if you boost your range. If you have a large unit like a Kirko Ravager or a tank of some kind you can just park the thing in front of your sniper and use it as cover that way. You can also take a turn to just move to your designated killing position and accept you won't do much the first round, but if you have Agile Overwatch (something Syndicate heroes can pick up and some sniper units like the Kirko Hidden have it natively) then you can get a full sniper overwatch as long as you end the move with at least one AP. Syndicate heroes can make excellent snipers with Agile Overwatch and Flanker if you can take out cover, Amazon heroes can pick up Visual Acuity for a range boost while in cover (which stacks with other range boosts). Voidtech heroes can get phasing bullets for ignoring some of the obstacle problems and have access to a teleport for getting into high ground (or away from a melee foe). Psyumbra heroes can pick up Sadism if you have some way of inflicting lower morale. Celestial stack leaders can hand out a general accuracy boost for everyone, admittedly. Sniper heroes with some levels and mods under their belts are just incredible X-COM level problem solvers since their range lets them make incredibly favorable trades that force the enemy to come to you. Personally, the heroic weapon category I have the most trouble with is the single-action short range weapons like shot-guns since they rarely feel all that worth it compared to either a repeating weapon or a full-round one like the sniper rifle. AoW3 had a similar problem where stuff like the dwarf heavy crossbow wasn't that hot compared to some of the other archers. It worked on some things like militia since they were just dedicated flanking chaff and it could work on a hero since you could make it one of the half-dozen weapons you had in your belt pocket and could always run up and smack something (but even then you usually wanted to dump the crossbow in favor of a better ranged weapon). But on a PF hero having it take the primary weapon spot means you're committing to it, and it doesn't really feel like it's worth that much. If you're running up within 5 squares of the enemy and thus entering rifle range you're probably going to be built in such a way that you'd also make a terrific melee hero (and the single-action melee weapons don't feel as rough because you're eating AP by running up to many foes to begin with and it seems like you only get 1 melee overwatch attack no matter what so a higher-damage one is great). I'm not sure if they could use some sprucing up as primary weapons with more things like cleaving/piercing or something to give them a more defined design space or if they could also function as secondary weapons with something like a damage/range penalty or a cooldown if they're secondary (preferably the cooldown- launchers are great secondary weapons for brawlers and if I could get a one-turn cooldown on some of these shot-guns they'd work very well for the gap-closing phase, and being able to ride shotgun with a pilot hero sounds interesting). It's just strange that when the game gives me a tier 3 shotgun I keep thinking "I should stick with my starting laser rifle" instead of "oh wow, I can't wait to use this thing."
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Aug 11, 2019 03:44
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Thanks for all the comments way back about how powerful tier 1's can be with mods - my first few games i tried to advance to later units asap. I played vanguard mission 2 today and my mvp by far was the rifle guys modded with fire rounds, + 1 range, and the impact barrels that can concuss. the guys carried alot of weight for me. I'm looking forward to digging into other races.
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Aug 11, 2019 03:47
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That link wraps to a new line at a real awkward place. I’m going to have to name my next sniper the Popular Bumbling Cock. On the battle itself: That’s definitely rubbing in all the X-Com comparisons people have been making. LordSloth fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Aug 11, 2019 |
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Aug 11, 2019 03:54
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What do you guys think about the vices, are any of them worth the points?
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Aug 11, 2019 04:01
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LightWarden posted:
I had a tier 3 'crystal shotgun' iirc in my last game. It did 2 bounces on hit, so a flanking hit would bounce and you could get 60+ damage on one action point, easy, even without mods or good skills. You can also get overwatch on the single actions via hero skills. It's not as good as agile overwatch with a repeater but still pretty good for 1 action point TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Aug 11, 2019 |
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Aug 11, 2019 04:06
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OctaMurk posted:What do you guys think about the vices, are any of them worth the points? The ten energy points one is good and can give you tier-III mods!
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Aug 11, 2019 04:09
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OctaMurk posted:What do you guys think about the vices, are any of them worth the points? yes klepto is almost free points
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Aug 11, 2019 04:17
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Hey Gerblyn any chance ya'll will do more than 3 expansions? Asking for me.
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Aug 11, 2019 04:37
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The shotgun heroes I often treat like vanguard bikes, going in for the flanking shot. While I prefer a repeating gun, they can still help things get dead.
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Aug 11, 2019 04:40
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OctaMurk posted:What do you guys think about the vices, are any of them worth the points? Kleptomaniac is almost a must pick. 10 energy per turn is nothing and you get a free mod, some of which are absolutely ridiculously good.
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Aug 11, 2019 05:10
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I've seen some complaints about weapon sounds and so forth. 1 - Turn your unit sounds up to 100%. 2 - The lovely sounds are somewhat intentional; they only sound like that on basic units. The sounds change and get beefier as you add mods to the unit. 
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Aug 11, 2019 05:22
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Gerblyn posted:2. All units heal 6hp per turn out of combat, with an additional 6hp if they're in friendly territory. There are certain hero skills that speed it up too. If you open the unit panel, and mouse over the HP display top left, the tooltip will tell you a unit's current regeneration rate. If an army has units with healing abilities, then they will also automatically heal units in the army at the start of each strategic turn as well, but you can't see that in the tooltip breakdown.  so is this bugged? i had noticed myself that it seemed like units in stacks with healers were healing suspiciously slowly between turns, but someone actually went and tested it
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Aug 11, 2019 06:24
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ninjewtsu posted:
Okay so I’m not going insane
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Aug 11, 2019 06:41
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im pretty sure its supposed to work like that many healer units have a trait that grants +healing to the whole stack ********** amazons hard counter syndicate hilariously hard they get one mod for everything that's +5 arc resist and a animal/mounted mod thats +5 psi resist. So you can have Arborians or Lancers with +5 Arc and Psi resist for pretty cheap.
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Aug 11, 2019 06:49
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ninjewtsu posted:
The Dvar Foreman is bugged, I found it last week. The other healers do give healing (at least, the Biomancer and MULE do, which are the ones I checked)
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Aug 11, 2019 06:56
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Gerblyn posted:The Dvar Foreman is bugged, I found it last week. The other healers do give healing (at least, the Biomancer and MULE do, which are the ones I checked) do healing abilities granted by mods apply the heal as well?
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Aug 11, 2019 06:57
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