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Ships actually can go over the land, you just can't tell them to move onto it. If you tell them to move to the opposite side of a landmass, they'll fly straight over. Edit: lovely snipe, update at the bottom of the last page.
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Oct 6, 2019 23:02
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Moving the thread to a new page is something to be proud of, not sneer at. I have noticed the moving over land thing though, I think I actually used it a few times. So land has an anti-hovering field property to it? Or something. Yeah, I know, I shouldn't try to fully understand it but I can't help myself with CW canon  .
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Oct 7, 2019 11:21
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Insanity (22:04)   Umm ... What's odd? That we are in a system?? That you were able to form a complete and coherent sentence???  Oh.     I think we need a new Chief Technology Officer.   In between the rest of it, Thoth had some impressively cogent and sensible things to say.  Under the 'start where it's not red' theorem, we'll begin in the lower-left here.  Plenty of energy crystals, new ship schematic, and hey I actually waited to get some storage, then built another lathe. You know, being sensible and all that crap.   I find it amusing that we know what a Cruiser is, but didn't build them before because ... we didn't have a license. Goodness knows that when you are traveling into a dangerous, forbidden part of the galaxy confronting whoknowswhat horrible things, you definitely don't want to build weapons you don't have precise beauracratic permission to.  Lower-right here. That's not good ...    You will do no such thing, you ignorant whelp of a usurper! Our ships will move at the precise moment, and not a second sooner, that I decide!! * To Fleet: do exactly what Ogun said.     There were a couple of them, and I decided to head upwards first as it was less of a reach from our starting zone. The cannon isn't particularly powerful thankfully, and as soon as the enemy mine went down we started building our replacement.  Then we moved to hit the next one, in the lower-middle. Quite a bit of land here, with a helpful omni to expand our collection of those.  Indeed. They seem to have included lots of land here to ensure energy wouldn't be an issue.  Pushing further to the right, resistance became more considerable.  I don't know if they told me this yet - if they did I forgot - but I discovered that enemy-mired locations can't be built on. Here, the energy source becomes available shortly, as our expanding mire from the omnis seizes the area.  The primary emitter had a full plasma perimeter and a band of particles, but as we've taken down the outlying emitters we've been whittling it down. Here I'm just pushing up the right edge, which has more emitters and plasma.  I realized I wanted to approach our final target from the left, where our operational area was closer to the target. Pathing this close to the enemy wasn't a real good idea though, and our shiny new Cruiser was lost. Which just meant a minute or so delay building another one. Apparently we have infinite sources of fully-trained manpower, fully rated in operating ships we weren't allowed to build five minutes ago.    NOT.THIS.AGAIN.  I legit LOL'd here.   This may be the most intelligent thing Ticon has said yet.  Down to less than 200 particles at this time, we're able to clear out the remaining resistance with a bit of sustained, focused fire.  Uh ... what 'valuable information'? The Cruiser?? Info Cache seemed particularly . .. not practical. Maybe the idea that the Particulate is learning and adapting? *shrug*  Looks like we a have a new ship type to look forward to. And also ... blue particulate?!?
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Oct 8, 2019 05:22
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The whole licenses thing is why my ticon lab map portrayed them as 200% incompetent. Like c'mon son, you are in Redacted Space, your rear end is literally fortfeit, why do you still obey those laws. Also afaik, much like in previous games, every unit that is not our command center is assumed to be a drone. In this case, our corporate HQ has our entire crew, and the rest of the stuff we build is remote-controlled.
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Oct 8, 2019 06:34
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I'm assuming the licenses are part of space-drm so you dont just download a ship. 
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Oct 8, 2019 09:39
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Synthbuttrange posted:I'm assuming the licenses are part of space-drm so you dont just download a ship. But would you download a cup of coffee?
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Oct 8, 2019 09:57
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Synthbuttrange posted:I'm assuming the licenses are part of space-drm so you dont just download a ship. This is literally the plot justification in the game Starsector; DRM on EVERYTHING and when the corpos collapsed nobody knew how to get around it, so pre-cracked single-use blueprints became worth their weight in space-gold. I like to think this is a variation on that.
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Oct 8, 2019 11:35
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Regallion posted:
This has been explicitly said in one of the first missions
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Oct 8, 2019 11:42
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General Revil posted:But would you download a cup of coffee? Yes, to a disposable Coff-ItTM-brand mug, equipped with a one-time license token.
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Oct 8, 2019 15:26
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Obviously Omnis can land on terrain because they're heat-shielded for reentry, while starships are not. 
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Oct 8, 2019 20:48
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Xarn posted:This has been explicitly said in one of the first missions What, you expect me to keep up with the game I'm LPing?!? … In that case I withdraw my snark on that point. There's plenty of room for it on the licenses side though, since IMO that just means there's even less justification for that aspect.
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Oct 9, 2019 06:47
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Evidence (22:39)  Umm ... unlike in the Prologue, all our ships are still in subspace or whatever. We don't have to take evasive action, because technically none of us are even here yet. We're all still on the left-hand taskbar.   Gotta say one thing for us; we are apparently really good at simulations.  Introducing Benign Particulate, the transparent spiritual successor to Anti-Creeper. It's even the same color. To be fair, AC was a really good idea so this doesn't really bother me, but I find it amusing how it's just basically a direct feature port from the previous titles.   How does she know this then? I'm calling hogwash.  I'm not sure I buy this, but it would be interesting if another friendly faction did show up.   So we have a defensive plasma circle in the middle, surrounded by enemy emitters. Nearby tech on various islands, and more energy sources between us and the particulate.  Initial energy source has five instead of the typical three income, and I go about snagging energy crystals while the particulate approaches. There's a string of it coming from the southeast, that's new. The two benign emitters are producing a goodly amount it seems.  Soon I feel compelled to build up the fleet earlier than I would like. We have incoming. Lots of incoming. Our storage is at 600 and falling here. At the top can be seen the usual mutual annihilation society forming with the two brands of particulate.  After snagging the closest ship schematic.  It's a conspiracy!! Following the thread here, what corporation built the benign emitters then ... and why ... and what happened to them? Too many questions.  Stepping beyond his station once again, Ogun could care less about any of that and is just glad to have a new toy.  Introducing the very descriptively-named Grabber. I didn't tell it to send the blue particulate to the right, it just did it. It would take me a bit to figure out that basically they grab any benign particles in a modest range around them, and send them in whatever direction the Grabber is pointing. In this case, I happened to build the ship in this location so there was nothing strategic about the direction here.  The next schematic we get to.   Takes me a bit to get it adjusted - I find the 'click-and-drag' method to work the best, and after while I discover that 'choking up' by dragging the cursor away from the Grabber towards the target makes it easier to control - but I eventually get a steady stream sent out towards the southeast emitter. I didn't notice for a while that the particulate is actually creating plasma trails, which is interesting. At any rate, this gives us one less direction that requires defense.  From the island to the north. A preview of coming attractions, perhaps? I'm having issues with having overbuilt again - we still only have one energy source and the storage is spent. Basically I think I was supposed to start miring sooner ... but I'm finally doing it here.  The defensive perimeter isn't exactly secure.  Once I get a couple more omnis up and stop building like a drunken Associate the energy stabilizes ... and here we have it appears another grabber and the ever-important Info Cache.    Uhm .... ok so we are looking for specific measurable signatures of the origin world? And we know about such things in that level of detail how? I officially don't like these people I'm working for. I should have stayed on a freaking freighter or patrol craft on Earth (or wherever home is). It's also particularly delicious that they complain about GalCorp hiding things from them when they don't let their own fleet commander know what the french toast is going on. These people deserve to fail.  Wait just a minute. I'm sorry to keep doing this in a sense, but we came all the way out here looking for something we had no real evidence even exists? Where is the COMMIT IMMEDIATE MUTINY button?   No, we most definitely DID NOT ALL KNOW THE RISKS. I didn't know the risks, for one. Also, 'charging forward with all our might?' What did the other corps do, play tiddlywinks and go on a sight-seeing tour? I'm with Amicus on this, but I'm also not certain the Particulate are a greater threat than some of our own directors.    Two grabbers, two benign emitters. I'm sure that's just a fortuitious coincidence. I send this one off to the northwest, to oppose the emitter that is sending the bound clumps of particulate. It seems the greatest remaining threat. Also, the one in the southwest seems content to form a defensive belt and not come after us. After nine minutes in this mission, I finally feel prepared to go on the attack. We easily destroy the southeast emitter, the first one I sent the benign particulate after.  I then switch the flow and go after the other one on that side. As you can see here I'm keeping most of our ships in defense, but we have enough to take care of business here as it seems this isn't a particularly threatening area. I do soon add a couple more ships to the attack though.  Here's a good view of the benign particulate plowing through enemy plasma and defenses. Once our fleet joins in the fun, progress accelerates.  Further on, the enemy tries a counterattack but our steady stream of blue goodness keeps them at bay.  I spend a bit here at the final quadrant pounding their perimeter with all my ships, including both particulate streams. It doesn't take long to clear the way.   It did what? To who?? The nature of the threat is becoming more clear, but it's driving me insane the way they keep casually dropping things into conversation that I did not have the first foggy notion about.  I'd like to know this fabrication of history, since I don't know diddly squat about the just-mentioned Precursors.    I can't take this anymore. How could you hold the great House Abraxis in high regard, if all you know of them is childhood stories!?!? If Amicus really is a 'conspiracy nut', then that means he's probably the sanest director.   Well at least we got grabbers and benign particulate here, along with more omnis and another cruiser. Nice if predictable addition to the gameplay. Over 6k benign particles were destroyed, 7K+ on the red side. This was definitely the most violent encounter yet seen.  Our hint about the next step of the journey is that we have a new collectible, those small orangish things. It also looks, if you can see it, as if we now have bound benign particulate - that'd be an upgrade as well.
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Oct 10, 2019 09:17
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This game looks like it has some interesting opportunities for speedrun optimizations. Finding out how far you can stretch your energy and exactly how much damage a ship can take and survive a trip through enemy particulate.
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Oct 10, 2019 19:52
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Carbon dioxide posted:This game looks like it has some interesting opportunities for speedrun optimizations. Finding out how far you can stretch your energy and exactly how much damage a ship can take and survive a trip through enemy particulate. Yes, and dropping your command ship in range of an emitter at the start of the mission before particulate has built up, letting you take it out easily.
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Oct 12, 2019 18:05
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Does seem to particularly lend itself to that, though it isn't my cup of tea.
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Oct 13, 2019 10:44
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Stretch (30:51)   Wouldn't be a CW game if we weren't flagrantly violating the laws of physics, would it?        Pretty sizeable map. And I didn't get started well, beginnig right where the camera was centered in the middle. That plasma, energy crystals, etc. in the upper-left though, benign particulate, etc. all are begging for me to go that way. So I just relocate.  I feel I've got a decent handle on how to begin levels now; they all pretty much seem to be a case of getting an energy source and some storage going, then a Lathe to expand the economy more, then build whatever else you can afford. Also we can see that we have the 'bound' clumps of benign particles here.  Partly because of my initial fuddling about, a pretty thick band of enemy particles approaches from below before I'm ready.  This early battle is not without casualties - a lathe in this case and some of our energy reserves. If I'd waited any longer to get the cruisers up this could have gotten even more 'interesting'.  There are two of these - we've got one at this point. Here's the other:  The seemingly added-on text-box instructions continue.  We sure do like that rift space. Good thing it wasn't destroyed halfway through CW2.   Ogun may only have one note to play, but you have to hand it to him; he hits that note hard and consistently at the slighest provocation.  Here's our Cruiser, and the control panel shows the option for mounting a Graviton Energy Modulator.  And after it's on, they get a little orange indicator showing they have been so enhanced.  I decide to throw the other one on our Destroyer, but am rudely interrupted before I can acquire it. It seems that even civilian ships of use require a license? Uhhh ...  Hence why this mission is named Stretch.   A welcome lapse into sensible practicality.  Our initial area seems in hand and we've mired the land in the corner. I set up a Grabber and proceed to spend far too long fiddling with it to get a stream headed downwards to aid an expansion effort. I eventually figured out what I was doing wrong, but not before this level was over. Basically, you have to move it to a new position before adjusting where it's aimed - even if that just means setting it down in place again. I was trying to adjust it without moving and ... well, I don't think that's possible.  Knocked out the emitter in this area just fine, but had some issues with the range. I think maybe I was supposed to go to the right first. Anyway, hiding under the interface is the MicroTank and you can see it supplying a couple of ships here ... but the lathe is too far away. We'll get a clearer look at this later, but the bottom line is I piddled around with this for a while before grabbing the land at the bottom. I also managed to get myself into a nice big energy deficit at the same time by going nuts on Omnis.  Also down here is the Info Cache.  Well it appears we're going full Mass Effect Reapers, or Freespace Shivans, or whatever your favorite trope here is. At least our mission has been validated though. For the first time, over a third of the way into the Story, we are given a clear description of why the heck this whole endeavor is even necessary. Better late than never.  Apparently none of the directors are surprised by this - seems they already knew quite a bit about the true nature of the Particulate.  Here are the two ends of the whole rift wormhole thingy. I'm able to send particulate in the green opening and it comes out the blue one, though at the moment there's too much resistance for that to do a great deal of good. You may notice that mass of hostile particulate along that island that is doing it's best impression of Crete; I make for that next.  A clearer view of the map centre, as I have divided my fleet so that we have sufficient defense at the top as well.  Here's a better look at that MicroTank. Positioning it at the edge of our operational energy range is optimal, where it then extends further. Here I'm slowly moving in and peeling off groups of the enemy small enough to handle.  I discover that the benign particulate is especially useful in establishing beachheads of sorts, creating a safe-ish zone for omni deployment. By the time we finish off this island we have almost equalized the balance of mire on the map, but are still outnumbered roughly 2:1 in terms of particulate.  After knocking out the emitter down by the rift entrance, I redirect our particulate here and continue working on miring activities below. It'll take some time to plow through this plasma, but we're seizing control of the center here.  Eventually we work our way around to approach this passage, which leads to the final obstacles. There is considerable particulate and a few more emitters holed up back here. .  Using a combination of the rift to get our particulate in place and the microtank to push combat ships through the opening, I'm able to gradually create a wedge. Once the mass of hostile particulate breaks up, it's soon over.  At the end, the last blob of it breaks off and ... floats away to the edge of the map instead of attacking. Uh, why?  Oh, they did notice.    That concludes your True Fairy Tale for the day.  More Amp Gems ... I'm sorry, Graviton Energy Modulators ... and what appears to be some kind of defensive construction?
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Oct 13, 2019 13:00
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i always thought that was a dumb line on Ticon's part, not all fairy tales being fiction. but then this IS a Creeper World game...
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Oct 15, 2019 04:42
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Ticon's Believe it...or Not!
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Oct 15, 2019 04:56
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AngryEd posted:Ticon's Believe it...or Not! So far the Nots have it I think by a considerable margin. Otherwhise I have nothing intelligent to add to your comments, I'm just shamelessly adding to the post count on this page.
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Oct 16, 2019 07:09
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Brute (25:30)     As names go, I think 'struc' - they've said it twice now - is particularly lazy.  We can use some of our weapons on it but not others. That should make things interesting.  Somebody take Ogun shopping, and don't come back until he's been outfitted with a personality. Seriously.  As much as I'd like to mock the first thing Danu said here, this is an important strategic point worth remembering.    Here's what we're looking at - rather fortified positions on the right, the benign-surrounded energy sources next, and then the clear starting location for us on the left side.  On that side, the middle Energy Source is more lucrative than the other two (5 to 3). That's as good a reason as any to start there. And it's also where our benign emitter is. One Lathe eventually heads to each of the others.  Particulate copying our technology. AGAIN. Lack of originality may be their greatest crime.  She's talking about those little red 'spoked' thingies, I assume the 4 above it is just the miring power or whatever of it. The game's messaging system calls these 'Strange Mire Structures'.     What a collection of Directors we have on this mission. They're a bunch of dumb animals to be sure, aren't they folks?  I finagle with the Grabber a bit and get a stream of particles being sent out towards the central enemy emitter, there on the right. I also discover that we can use lathes to repair our own struct, which as you can see here our initial defensive 'wall' or whatever is virtually gone. Meanwhile we have a couple of omnis on the two large islands flanking this, so on 'our' end of the map we're soon fully engaged and fighting back. I also am doing something here that unfortunately will become a pattern, at least for a while. We carry over the Amp Gems from previous missions, and I am exceptionally good so far even after I figured out that was a thing at totally forgetting to equip them when starting a new level. That's a new CW concept - in all of the previous games you had to research or whatever fresh at the start of each new scenario.  Not sure what triggers this, but we're nowhere near what she's talking about - it's on the far end of the map. The messaging system lists them as 'derelict structure', in full possession of it's powerful Captain Obvious capabilities.   I say chill out Dir. Ogun. We're nowhere near those energy sources and there's still hostility between us and them.    Takes a blunt instrument to know one ...   And I thought the movie Thor had moments of bad jokes ...  Another feature of the Mire that I didn't realize right away. Some enemy emplacements, not all but some, are automatically destroyed by it's advance. When it blows, we're told it's called a 'Mire Spawner'. Their Energy Mines can be destroyed the same way.  How many is that now? (six)  Kami, go ahead and explain what it is that you think you mean by 'large parity redundancy'. I bet you can't do it. In fact, I double dog dare you.    Ahh, so now we are going to go on a mini-quest to learn how to build a better mousetrap.  SHUT.UP.  Ticon is a more patient man than I. It remains to be seen whether that's a good thing.  Next, I seize the energy sources on the leading edge of each island. That allows us to get close to that central emitter, and also grab a new pair of amp gems. Light dawns on marble cranium and I figure, about nine minutes into the mission, that it might be a good idea to mount the existing pair we already had as well.  Next stage is seizing those further energy sources. Time to get our MicroTank to work. Significant particle reinforcements are coming from those big struc complexes on the far end still. We've actually only knocked out one emitter I think at this point.  Here's a zoomed-out view of the scene and what those emitters do - they basically pulse out a nice sizable blob of hostility at us every so often. A fair amount of fleet concentration is necessary to seize the energy sources and extend our range, after which rebuilding the benign struc certainly seems useful. Note that I've built our new ship but not done a single darn thing with it, because I'm that kind of awesome.  Ok so notice the structure in the upper-right here as I expand to the other energy sources and gain control of them. We're activating that ... thing, which is clearly copied off the Glider facilities from CW3. This is known as 'Great Moments in Tunnel Vision', because I'm to preoccupied with what I'm doing with the fleet to notice. I do notice it a bit afterwards, but then get distracted by other shiny things happening.  After powering up, it self-destructs, sending this blue thingy through the enemy struc towards one of the emitters. I don't notice.  Totally miss this fireworks show when it reaches the target and eats through the struc like crazy as well. I was busy trying to secure the third energy source.  I get a better view though when the second one (on the bottom) blows and does exactly the same thing. A bunch of its particles hang around a while, harassing the enemy, and a large part of the fortification is now gone. Also noteworthy is how the enemy particles go in a strict path from one emitter to the other.  I still need to make an entranceway though, and I do deploy the Hammer for its actual intended purpose at this point. When that thing wants to go somewhere ... well, it's coming.  They do eventually blow it up though, and then ... look at our HQ here. Some of the weapons, including it's Lathe (normally in that big circular port at the front of the ship), get taken down while the ship is still active. That's a nice detail! I end up having to bring in more firepower to get this done.  Now, I just need to do it two more times. Here in the middle, you can see we basically have half of a hammer at this point. Our particle stream has gradually made another entrance, and also the remains of what was another 'Glider' structure ... that ruin has been there since mission start. Strangely, the ones we used didn't leave such wreckage ... Anyway, I basically use the hammer to absorb damage - it gets blown up more, but who cares - and microtank my way into range. The predictable particle path the enemy is using makes the kills pretty routine.  Here's a fun example at the very end of that technique.   *Sigh*. If there really is some massive gun at the end of whatever trail lies ahead here, I'm going to be seriously annoyed.  There are no super-obvious clues to what new toys Potential might have in store. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Oct 17, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 09:39
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The Hammer is a neat little idea, in that a "tank" ship is actually pretty useful in this game. It just tends to die a lot and very quickly unless it's constantly supported, and all its armour plates make it take forever to build, so it's a pain to use for any direct offensive actions.
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Oct 16, 2019 14:32
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Wha... the hammer is one of the best ships in the fleet and a key to winning the game quickly. Note that when you build a ship the majority of the time and energy cost is spent building the *core*, so as long as you pull out the Hammer before it gets completely destroyed you can get it back into action pretty fast.
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Oct 16, 2019 15:06
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The video link on top links to the wrong episode.
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Oct 17, 2019 18:47
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Sheesh, what a farging amateur. Fixed both for update and table of contents in the OP.
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Oct 17, 2019 21:10
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Thotimx posted:Sheesh, what a farging amateur. Fixed both for update and table of contents in the OP. Et tu, Brute?
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Oct 17, 2019 21:33
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Potential (36:45) We seem to have decisively passed the 'this will only take a moment' part of the campaign. The Story is officially half over as of this update - which means from now on we'll be moving closer to the end than the beginning. Whether that's something to lament or celebrate is something I leave to the reader.    You just can't get away from those darned Abraxians.    When are we not in the middle of a fight?    I was pretty disturbed here by the total lack of any real counter to the Stunners, which is our new Particulate threat for the mission.  The mission area is fairly significant once again. The lower-right is clearly safest to begin.  Attacks begin fairly early but we have a bunch of energy crystals to get the economy going, and some land to mire as well.   And yet you totally failed to mention it when discussing defense options because ... ?     In very Lia-esque fashion, Ticon teases us and then pointedly refuses to answer or even acknowledge the question.     Once again it is obvious that our CEO knows far more than he is saying. More questions than answers here but it appears that the adaptations of the Particulate are on a pretty short time-scale ... and also those of whoever (though I think we know darned well who) left these schematics here   Pushing up the right side of the map, we secure another energy source and some more land, along with a second 'license' for another Discharger. Not before we get hit with some stunners though - the Destroyer here has been tagged with one.  A Grabber directs the benign particles to better use and we snag another energy source. The Discharger is that strange-looking thing on the right here.  Once again our bluish buddies are vital in expanding to new territory, and therefore getting more energy up to get out of the initial economic crunch. On this map in particular there are a number of different asteroids and we need to move around a lot with the Omnis.  I spent a considerable amount of time being concerned about this passage here, which is mostly being fueled by the single emitter at the top of it. At various points such as here I threw a bunch of benign particulate up the channel, but didn't realize the 'right' way to deal with the threat until much later.  I realized I had perhaps too soon neglected the bottom of the map, where resistance seemed less significant but we could expand with a little concentrated effort - if I could afford the ships.  I noted later on in this level that I was using the Hammer more like a Shield than that thing Thor swings around. But my answer to many problems was simply to throw it in the path of most significant resistance and try to out-heal the damage. Which worked here, as it usually did.  Meanwhile this secondary task force essentially cleaned out much of the lower part of the map, getting a few more energy sources and eliminating pockets of resistance. This was the largest of them and didn't last long.  I'm finding that the equilibrium point in Particle Fleet generally happens around the stage of being able to build all of your ships and not run out of energy. Back at the top of the map, we've basically reached it now. Here we have almost no storage but a bit left, 30 coming in and going out, and haven't bothered to rebuild one ship at the moment (MicroTank) but everything else is up and running. So I'm bombarding another area with particulate and getting an omni beachhead near a Mire Spawner here. At this point Mire is 56-41 against us, particulate 1200+ to less than 300. So we have a lot of work to do yet.  Here you can see a bit of how spread out the fleet is - as a general pattern I'm finding I need to subdivide things more and more as we make our way through the story missions. Still looking to beachhead more landmasses at this stage.  Here's one of our dischargers taking out a Stunner. This whole concept seems very much to have been ripped from the CW2 'Phantoms'.  I get back to that passage I mentioned earlier, and get omnis into position for knocking out the offending Particle Emitter. This seems much easier than try to push ships up there with a microtank while also defending everywhere else. The ability of Mired land to absorb incoming particle attacks is something I definitely did not sufficiently appreciate prior to this level.  There are a couple of places that were particularly 'fun' to conquer, the land on the left of the screen here being one. I found it difficult to get benign particulate there, and I haven't totally worked out whether it was getting hung up due to distance or vestiges of enemy plasma - perhaps both - but in any case these were places where I did some omni-spamming and lost quite a few in the process. Even after eventually getting particles there. Also worth noting, mire destroys mire spawners, but NOT the Stunners themselves. They have to be lathed to death. After gradually pushing leftwards and sometimes even remembering to bring up rearguard ships after an area had been fully secured, I eventually reached the climax.  Info Cache in the map's upper-left, and right here I think there's just the lone emitter beyond this, and a stunner on either side. The rest of the resistance has been eliminated. Which means it's time for more   Kami, have you not yet figured out that odds haven't got the first thing to do with it?  Platius, says the wind. Skarsgard, say the stars.  In this area the enemy particulate writhes around in worm-like shapes and constructions. We slaughter it without mercy regardless.  Anecdotally, I find myself more often drawn to the opposite conclusion than not.  If I haven't mentioned it before, I object to this here. Stats are always interesting, but we didn't find Stunners till halfway through the story here. Doppels and Emergent are stuff we don't know about for sure, and we're also apparently being told that there will be enemy ships of some form at a later date? I'm don't like it when the interface unavoiably announces as-yet-unrevealed stuff like this.  Well, one of those mysteries will be revealed soon it appears. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 20, 2019 11:40
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Thotimx posted:
Something ain't quite right here
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Oct 20, 2019 14:12
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With the quality of this dialogue I don’t think we’re missing much. Is it just me or is it way worse than in the previous games?
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Oct 20, 2019 15:49
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Missing Ticon blathering fixed. Kami is no longer stuck on repeat. synthbuttrange posted:I don’t think we’re missing much. Is it just me or is it way worse than in the previous games? Part of it I think is there is just so much more of it for whatever reason. Even CW2 didn't have this much back and forth between all these characters.
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Oct 20, 2019 21:05
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Fangz posted:Wha... the hammer is one of the best ships in the fleet and a key to winning the game quickly. just wanted to quote this and add a  the Hammer rules. don't let it blow up completely as Fangz says and it rebuilds fairly quickly. i frequently used multiple hammers to get through the campaign
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Oct 21, 2019 02:47
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The only emitters a tag team of hammer, lathe(s) and a tanker can't solve are those on land, or in places too small to fit the hammer. You can park hammer so that it just neighbour an emitter and lathes are protected, but can destroy the emitter... Also add amp gem for further damage reduction and you can rip through maps fairly quickly.
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Oct 21, 2019 07:39
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Emergent (40:31)       *Thud*. Ok, there's a rather stunning and totally casual throw-in of a reveal. All this time I've been assuming we're hunting the origin world of the Particulate. Nope, it's OUR origin world. And how does an ecological disaster bring about redacted space - nevermind that we don't even know what redacted space really IS - ? While I didn't even think of this while playing this level, it's also possible that everything Thoth is saying here is 100% nonsense, since we've already seen that GalCorp isn't exactly known for being straightforward and truthful.  Ticon has swerved into perceptiveness.   Yeah that's a pretty big ... whatever it is. The plasma, perimeter defenses, mire spawners - all of it says go away. We have more wormhole-thingies, and naturally there are goodies for us on the opposite side of the ... whatever this map represents. I'm just getting nicely started when ...    I'm getting the increasing sense that Ana's usefulness to this campaign has pretty much exhausted itself. But she's honest at least.   A new enemy type, drawing strength from a well-established mechanic. From a design point of view this isn't particularly complicated, but I still give it a seal of approval for being well-thought out.  Unfortunately Kami is not wrong here.     Clearly Ogun is not his usual self.  I set to miring the nearby asteroids and grabbing what we can.  I can't take this anymore. STILL depending on licenses to build valuable things that we already know about.      Driving home the melodrama with all the subtlety of a Hulk-Smash. Everyone but the one guy who wants a REAL.BIG.GUN(TM) is super-excited about a new ship with massive firepower. And they're not wrong about that part.  Things almost went bad here. 1:44 mission timer, I spent too much working on building up the economy and not enough on starting the fleet. Those yellowish things are the Emergent. They look like somebody was playing Snake and Centipede and sort of combined the two. And as warned, they can take one whale of a lot of punishment.  I lose a ship and an omni before I get things sorted. Here's our new Wolf ensuring that things get quieter in a hurry.  I'd just like to note for the record that I'm several missions in, plenty long enough to know better. Here I'm placing down more ships with zero storage and an attempted spending of 270. With 8.1 income. It didn't help that the particulate kept blowing up this energy source, but for whatever reason I find it much easier to forget about the economy when I building my fleet in this game than CW3. I think it might be because you have a finite number of units, so I go into 'Build Everything' mode instead of just building what I can afford. When I realized what I was doing - mostly by the fact that the ships didn't have enough energy to fire - I deactivated some things. Which didn't make much of a difference for a while, I was in way too deep for a quick fix. I ended up just forgetting about the lower area for a bit and just focusing on a defense fortified by the amp gems.  Here I have 11.4 incoming, 74 outgoing which is of course so much better and totally fine. But at least in this case I'm overbuilding in order to get more energy, micro-tanking my way onto this corner land area.  This is the upper-right. Cool, but basically pointless at the moment. Would have been better off probably just turning the Grabbers off for the energy until later.  I did soon have a better use for the benign particulate though. After clearing out the lower part of the map satisfactorily, I began a push here further up. The methodical advance stage was well under way. Mire is 59-40 against, so esp. with the emergent being created by it I still have a lot of work to do.  This is the map center, and it turns into a cauldron with some of the fiercest fighting yet seen. By now I'm energy-positive with a full fleet, but both emergent and particulate clumps are flying about. Also check out the previously-mentioned 'weapon pods'. In a way I have to cheer the totally shameless way they're just ripped from CW3 with no attempt at disguise. And they do what you might expect - shoot energy projectiles at anything that gets too close. By the way, that's a range that is longer than most our ships. Time for the Hammer.  Turns out the Pulse Cannons - I refuse to call them anything else from this point - are vulnerable to the Lathe.  Two things here. I switched back to using the wormholes as I cleared out the upper-right corner, last part of the map outside of that big ... whateveritis. Also, because I'm super-observant, I did not once notice while playing this map - even while CONSTANTLY checking the energy - that there's an Emergent counter up there. Which also spoils for us that apparently we'll get Emergent at some point? Anyway right now they have 25 of them, and mire has basically equalized. That appears to be the map limit BTW. I should be thankful it isn't higher.  Particulate makes quick work of pulse cannons also. And is generally safer.  Then it was time to force my way into the literal Particulate Fortress. You can see a bunch of particulate clumps that I'm about to deal with. There was a stalemate here for a while.  We got one of the glider pulse structures activated - completely by accident of course - but I wasn't aggressive enough in following it up for it to help much. Eventually all this friendly mire that resulted would be overtaken. My goal was to knock out the Mire Spawners, with which I was partially successful.  Forgetting that I can just build them in mid-air, I gathered up the omnis to try and overload their remaining defenses. I had been stuck in a loop for a while - emergent were highly annoying but I had to get rid of the mire to deal effectively with that problem, which wasn't easy to do without expanding more, which was hard to do because of all the Emergent ... Their movement patterns are such that they appear more dangerous when cornered. They aren't super-aggressive at attacking you across the map, but now there was little else for them to do but come straight at my fleet.  Just as the omnis were starting to get some momentum, we decided to pause and discuss the Info Cache. And probably why the price of wheat fell three cents last week.    Yep. Another 'oh by the way' thunderbolt.      I'm betting it can, but it requires the CyberKey of Ultimate Galactic Omniscience. Which will conveniently be located somewhere in the coming missions.  This one I actually triggered on purpose. With enemy Mire down to 26% after this, it was just enough to lower the amount of emergent slightly. So you've really gotten to knock them down for it to even matter, at least on this map. Not really a fan of that as I don't think it serves to feature the new mechanic very well.  Further omni-spamming and just plain cramming more ships down their throat got me to the Stunner, and soon the rest of the resistance melted away.  Something about 'charging' in a bunch of starships doesn't fill my mind with peace.    Add 'blatantly bad leadership style' to Ticons list of qualifications. Some won't be bothered by this I'm sure, but he didn't need to do this - he could have just expressed confidence in Ogun without the comparisons to the other directors. It's my job to run down the crew, not their CEO :P.  I confess that at this point I made the following horrible jab: "It all adds up to what? 42??"     Is it possible that Ticon isn't really who he appears to be? Tell me they aren't dipping into that well AGAIN.  Emergent are a pain, the Wolf makes lots of things go away, and Ogun is having issues with mysterious mystery number infinity-googol while we head off to somewhere very specific for unspecified reasons. All is as it should be, I'm sure.  Looks like lots of struc, more emergent, and in the lower-right it looks like more new things for us to collect. Emergent was a fairly good mission I thought, but I was somewhat annoyed with myself after playing it … and moreso after the replay. Here's hoping I'm not super-rusty by the time I get to Ties.
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Oct 26, 2019 07:51
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Many of you are aware of this I'm sure from reading the other threads or whatnot, but this LP is now temporarily suspended as I focus on the recent launch of AI War 2. It shouldn't be all that long until I start phasing back into a 'normal' schedule - it's been a wild few days for me but I think I'm starting to get a handle on how that's going to happen. I don't want to say 'ok I'll be back on this date' or whatever and then end up delaying it, so I'll just post back here when I'm ready to start working on Particle Fleet again so that I'm not jumping the gun there. As of now the thread is caught totally up to where I am … and I'm both excited and scared to see where the second half of the Story takes us.
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Oct 26, 2019 07:58
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Looks like all the Creeper World games and Particle Fleet are 50% off until Nov 1st for the Steam Halloween sale.
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Oct 29, 2019 07:35
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Emergent is the reason why an amped Wolf has been the mainstay of my fleet in all further maps.
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Oct 29, 2019 09:48
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I can't argue with that. It seemed nearly indispensable to me.
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Oct 30, 2019 06:20
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Planning on getting this rolling again in a couple weeks, sooner if I can.
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Nov 4, 2019 13:04
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Looking forward to it.
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Nov 4, 2019 17:56
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A couple of interesting bits of news on discord recently - people digging into 4RPL (the scripting language for CW4). Also … knucklecracker posted:I'm working towards release. Every game has a "peak experimentation" moment and that passed some time ago. So I spend most of my time currently on the things necessary to release the game, not things that are experiments/discovery. I'm still sticking with second half of 2020 as my predicted timeframe, but this is the most detail I've seen in a while and gives a pretty good picture. And if it really does ended up being that much 'bigger' of a game than CW3 . .. I may need to set aside a decade for it.
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Nov 12, 2019 00:36
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 19:42 |
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Ties (47:56)  Amazing! Unbelievable!! Inconceivable!!!  In other words, the Pulse Cannons got a new paint job.      We've got a clear left-to-right thing going on, with the upper-left being our starting location. The string of bluish emplacements are the weapons they were talking about, near the vertical median in the middle of the map. We'll get to those later.  With such a good defensive position complete with struc, a benign emitter, land for omnis, and numerous energy storage pods available, the start was not difficult. And then we get this.   Soon energy supply became an issue though, even with everything mired we could get our omnis on. Finding a good way to expand could be tricky. Here I'm preparing to try and move downwards, with 20 income ... and 79 expenses.          Ogun's command of the telegraphed obviousness here is starkly contrasted with the oblivioiusness of the others, be it feigned or genuine.      Is he really using a pet name that merely removes one letter, or did he forget how to spell?   I guess it wasn't faked. They really all are this dense.            The title of this game really should be Too Many Secrets. If you've managed to recover from that massive wall of , the main takeaway is that we can now use Amp Gems to upgrade various tech categories.  It takes a bit of time for them to ramp up - efficiency starts at 0%, escalating to 100%. You can release an amp gem from these at any time, but that resets to 0. This rewards planning without being overly restrictive IMO. I also like the fact that you have to choose what to do with your amp gems now; enhance a specific ship or invest in a tech category. I'll try to get to all of these eventually.  Here's what I go with initially. I really liked the idea of Benign Emergent ... there must be benign everything apparently because symmetry ... Omni Reactors allow the omni to produce it's own energy, and Land Production Increase boosts the production of mired land. The red Release button does what it says, ? brings up an image and description of what each option has going for it. Sometime I will get off my arse and make screenshots of those. But not today.  Searching for a way to get the benign particulate out there to help with our advance, I came up with this. Then I took off the benign emergent amp gem, throwing it into Energy Range Increase. The gap is just too big, and I want help crossing it.  Combined with our new Tanker, that did enough to get us down there and in possession of a new Energy Source. Now we were starting to make progress, but there is yet a lot of annoying enemy struc about.  New Tanker is the ship on the bottom here. A lot of other ships are gone because we underestimated these block-shaped particulate formations coming off the nearby emitter. A Cruiser, Joven, and Lathe all paid for this hubris. The energy source also went down, and the Discharger was badly damaged. It, uh, was not exactly a smooth operation.  Once we were back in position, I used the 'Grabber Relay' technique to pacify that hostile emitter and start reclaiming land and eliminating more struc down here. Also notice the energy mine - I've put an amp gem into boosting mine production, and that is gradually cycling up to give us more supply.  I should have done more of it, but the Omnis started becoming stars as their lathes accelerating the struc-clearing operation.  Then there was this interesting battle of particulate between ours and theirs. We fight for control of the median, which I'd switched to as my next target, without ever actually coming into direct contact. Also the Wolf busily keeps the enemy emergent at bay.  Three omnis made the landing, but only one survived ... the others were easily rebuilt. Gradually expanding our mire was one goal here, and I switched the mine production upgrade back into benign emergent. Eventually this would allow us to reach the new weapons further down the strip.  Getting this energy source in the middle of the median strip was key, allowing energy range to supply one free gun. Then it turned it's fire on the enemy mire nearby, freeing up the others. Of course, by this point I'd really eliminated most resistance in the area so they guns didn't do that much good, but they are still cool and after they fully charge, you can see they can unleash a significant barrage.  This should look familiar - we saw something a lot like it a few levels back. One thing the median does is completely block off our supply of benign particulate, so that would be no further use to us. The resistance from the first emitter here was considerable; the Hammer was destroyed once and almost a second time before we knocked the thing out. Getting to the last emitter on the far right of the map was way past the limit of our energy + Tanker extension of the range. I ended up doing a few raiding runs forward with a few ships to absorb most of the particulate, then went in for the kill. That worked, but it was pointed out to me that you can actually chain the Tanker and Micro-Tanker together to reach further with more energy supply. I was not at all aware that was a thing, and I don't think I would have figured it out on my own.  Notice the benign emergent clustered here. We've got new buttons on the left taskbar to set and clear a rally point for the buggers. That proved useful as well in helping to clear the way, and the emergent could care less about our energy range.  Of course YOU did. Now if you'd just stop screwing around and stop projecting such a finite existence ...      Everything you know is wrong, left is right up is down and short is long. JUST FORGET THE WORDS AND SING ALONG!!! ... umm, where was I again ...  Oh yeah, I was double-facepalming at this cliffhanger ex machina.  Make it so!  I'm not sure how many more Secrets I can take. And what is our enemy protecting with all that struc? Stay tuned for that ... if you dare.
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Nov 19, 2019 09:29
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