This looks right up my alley. I always took my sweet and easy time with my battles in Homeworld to pause and observe the awesome chaos of those battles.
How open is the game to variation of strategy?
The strategy that really worked in the Demo was to pack as much oomph as possible in a small section of space. Then use the beefier ships near the centre where they'll draw all the fire and the rabble to the top of the screen where it will sort of swing around and mop up the field. I can expand on the strategy by making my cruisers retreat easily and give them repair modules while adding additional speed and short range fire power to my frigates.
I haven't found any other working strategy though. What did you folks come up with?
The "Dense Stack of Ships" strategy breaks down when one explodes and the resulting shockwave strips off the shields of all the nearby ships. Basically, you can come up with any number of crazy tactics (the Fighter Heavy Armada, Specialized Ship Armada, Heavy Hitters, Balanced, etc..)
It's tough to look at position as a "Deeper" strategy, as it's functionally a pretty game of sci-fi tower defence with turrets slowly moving towards one another. It's in the build designs and orders as well as armada makeups that tend to get deeper.
I just realized that I have been confusing GSB with AI War: Fleet Command somewhat in my head. That said, I am still more interested in GSB.
I just realized that I have been confusing GSB with AI War: Fleet Command somewhat in my head. That said, I am still more interested in GSB.
GSB > AI War, most definitely. No offense to AI War dev here in the forums..
Does anyone recall this going on sale recently? I've been wanting to pick it up and I know it's not even a month old, but, you know, it's the holiday season so why would I pay full price for anything?
And did anyone who bought the game through Steam pick up the expansion pack (which isn't on Steam yet, as far as I can tell)?
Does anyone recall this going on sale recently? I've been wanting to pick it up and I know it's not even a month old, but, you know, it's the holiday season so why would I pay full price for anything?
And did anyone who bought the game through Steam pick up the expansion pack (which isn't on Steam yet, as far as I can tell)?
The expansion pack is free unless I am very much mistaken, I am guessing that Steam would patch it in even if that's not what they call it in the store.
garion333 wrote:Does anyone recall this going on sale recently? I've been wanting to pick it up and I know it's not even a month old, but, you know, it's the holiday season so why would I pay full price for anything?
And did anyone who bought the game through Steam pick up the expansion pack (which isn't on Steam yet, as far as I can tell)?
The expansion pack is free unless I am very much mistaken, I am guessing that Steam would patch it in even if that's not what they call it in the store.
Expansion pack is $6 and is only available from his site at the moment.
Yonder wrote:garion333 wrote:Does anyone recall this going on sale recently? I've been wanting to pick it up and I know it's not even a month old, but, you know, it's the holiday season so why would I pay full price for anything?
And did anyone who bought the game through Steam pick up the expansion pack (which isn't on Steam yet, as far as I can tell)?
The expansion pack is free unless I am very much mistaken, I am guessing that Steam would patch it in even if that's not what they call it in the store.
Expansion pack is $6 and is only available from his site at the moment.
Aww, I hate being very much mistaken. I must be thinking of AI Wars.
Tamren, I'm with you. On a whim (and I guess your post) I picked it up from the Steam sale and here I am at 12:30am plugging away. Awesome game. Smart.
I didn't know you could speed it up, that's handy. And the feedback from the end screens is important, but consider also positioning and how that affected a ship's ability to engage.
I like this because it's a thinking game. Not only does ship config matter, but placement is important as well. I found that ships that could not win when spread out to deal with all enemy groups actually won when bunched together so that the enemy came to them. Also, the whole "rock paper scissors" aspect is important. If your enemy counts on shields, you must have lots of shield-breaking weapons, or you simply won't do enough damage to matter. That *seems* simple, but setting up ships to particular purposes is harder than it looks.
And that's not even considering the orders you can give.
Oddly, I'm about to pay more for "The Tribe" than I paid for the base game.
I love fighters and how they swarm.
That is all.
Oh, the fighters are great. I need to tweak mine so they wipe out the opposing fighters and then annoy the enemy cruisers.
The Tribe?! Sheee-it, more money for games!
So after buying the DLC, do I have to reinstall to get it?
There's only a $2 difference between Steam and the official website now. So you might just get it there to avoid any Steam issues.
I just lost 2 hours of my life to the demo. Hilarious, glorious hours.
It reminds me of the best times I had with an old game called Ascendancy. It simplified aspects of other, more complicated MOO-type games, and had great combat and ship assembly.
Fun game, but it's hard to get used to the scoring. You get the most "honor" for defeating the enemy fleet while using the fewest resources, not for trouncing them with as little casualties as possible. That part isn't clear at first, even from the manual.
Yup its an all or nothing deal. I like that system because it becomes important for every single ship to pull its weight.
Theres just one annoying thing about it, it doesn't tell you how much honour there is "left" in a given scenario that you can still score. Like if I beat it using 50% resources I get 50% of the total possible honour in the level. But then if I try again it makes no mention of this and I have to guess.
The manual mentions that you only get the highest score for a difficulty level. So if you beat it with 5,000 honor to spare, you get 5,000 that first time. If you remove a ship and play it again for 4,700, you only receive the extra 300 difference. At least that's how I perceive it (I'm pretty sure it does tell you when you're fiddling around though.)
I try and get an "ideal" fleet that crushes them. Then I slowly remove ships, make cheaper versions, or raise the difficulty until I'm getting my ass kicked. So far I'm really bad at having multiple ship types, I keep editing the half of dozen models I've come to like as the situation requires.
Good tips on the fighters, I had no idea motion played such a role, and I wasn't quite sure why tractor beams were useful. I've basically turned my fleet into a deathstar.
My favorite combo right now is ships with mega-tough shields and EMP weapons, with some hull busters to back them up. But that's why every one of my battles is a slugfest. Pewpew! BOOSH!
I'm almost done with the included maps playing as the Federation. Is playing "challenge" maps self-explanatory? The manual isn't entirely clear on whether or not I have to specifically challenge someone, or whether I can play fleets people have issued as a general challenge.
I picked this up in the Steam holiday sale. I loved the demo, and I'm really looking forward to playing it.
I picked this up in the Steam holiday sale. I loved the demo, and I'm really looking forward to playing it.
I started my first game via the demo when I got home from work last night. Next thing I know I've forked over my credit card number and I'm plugging away at aliens in the 2 of the a.m.
I'm inches away from buying the expansion pack, but I think I'll play through with the other two races first.
I really don't get how shields work, especially when they're stacked. Even after reading the manual and doing some Googling.
Trial and error it is!
Grabbed Tribes. Still fiddling with Rebel ships and nothing but missiles and more missiles. Why is this game not getting more press? It's awesome.
I really don't get how shields work, especially when they're stacked. Even after reading the manual and doing some Googling.
Trial and error it is!
As I understand it:
Shields have a strength, a reflection rating, and a recharge rate. If the damage is under the reflection rating (mostly fighter attacks) the shield will ignore it - it "bounces off". Otherwise, the shield strength goes down when hit. Recharge rate is what you would expect, it's how fast the shield strength goes up. Damage to the shield generators reduces recharge rate (and possibly strength, I'm not sure on that). If the shield strength ever goes to zero, then your shield is gone for good, even if the shield generator is still functioning.
With multiple shield generators, the hits are spread out across all of them (sometimes unevenly). However, an individual shield generator can still fail if it goes to zero, permanently reducing your total shield strength (you'll see ships recharge their shield to 75% and then stop, for example, when a generator is out). Shield generators can also be destroyed independently, reducing shield strength (by fighters inside the shield, for example). Also, shield reflection rating does not go up with more generators, but rather remains the same.
Grabbed Tribes. Still fiddling with Rebel ships and nothing but missiles and more missiles. Why is this game not getting more press? It's awesome.
The best fleet I've been able to design so far has been extremely missile heavy. I have a couple of shield tank cruisers that have good point defense to take out incoming missiles, and laser designators to mark enemy ships (I experimented with fighters for marking, but they die too easily). Behind those ships I have a rank of anti-fighter frigates (one tractor beam and a bunch of anti-fighter missiles each). Behind them, I have a swarm (usually 10-16) of missile frigates firing a combination of torpedoes and fast missiles. I also usually have a couple squadrons of ultra-fast fighters (3.0+) armed with one or two rockets leashed to the shield tanks.
Basically, the way it works is the cruisers generally designate the closest target, and all the frigates more or less unload their missiles at once on the same target (cooperative mode). It puts in really high shock damage, overloading shields before they get a chance to recharge and just stripping away armor. Target goes boom, move on to the next one. With the designators, none of the missiles, torpedoes, or rockets miss, so the applied firepower is somewhat extreme. Even the anti-fighter frigates will get into it when there are no more fighters to shoot at, and they benefit from the designator as well.
The downside are that it can be inefficient - enemy frigates tend to get immediately vaporized, and all missiles targeted at that ship then poof without doing damage so many are wasted. Also, missiles are very slow, and if the fire of the swarm gets split, things tend to degrade (although they are still quite effective).
Also, if you weight the board by putting your ships at the top or the bottom, you can usually deal with the closer enemies before the further enemies get into range.
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