3028

Yes, there’s been a bit of conversation about the “Empire” mode earlier. I’m excited to try it out. Meta-layers/campaign modes on 4x games has a lot of room for creativity. This seems pretty fresh.

3029
3030

Ah, my bad. I guess I was just focused on the new faction. Seeing the new mode in action in the stream really sold it as a feature just as big as “Star Kings”, which clearly is all my eyes seemed to notice up until now.

3031

No worries, I only wanted you to see the link in that thread to the dev diary - I didn’t watch the stream so I wasn’t sure how much they touched on it, but they give it a lot of attention in the written form there.

3032

I’m looking forward to this too, but I wish I were better at the game! I just haven’t put in the time to grok the strengths and weaknesses of different units (not to mention their mods). I love the complexity, but it seems to require a certain level of commitment hat I have not yet mustered. Is there a must-read strategy guide somewhere?

3033

Also noted on the front page a few weeks ago:

-Tom

3034

Yep I’m really looking forward to it.

3035

It requires, but rewards time spent on it :D.

There is no must read strategy guide that I know off, just principles i think.

For example, from what I can gather, science seems very highly prized because it unlocks your toys faster, and sometimes considerably so, e.g. if you dedicate your first city to science, maybe your second, and rely on your starting stack for clearing, produce a few units along the way, and try and get your 3rd city to be a unit producing centre (i.e. production.)

The way the game works, you aren’t going to have very large armies, so you can leapfrog with science to unlock your better units and base your strategy around the mid game stuff/later early game stuff, for example researching cool laser mods and massing Vanguard cycles.

That’s general stuff. Now one, more specific , thing I have been doing is playing Vanguard and getting the rail gun accelerator very early on, and having had my troopers use the shock damage mod, half the bleeding damage mod, and massing troopers.

A few Pugs to help my leader, because they can reset once per battle abilities. My leader tends to rock an APC, so having multiples of the healing drone are pretty helpful.

I like to pair this with Void tech and have a few of their T1 melee unit, because they can split into 2 in battle, and work very very well at tying up the independent and the AI, allowing my longer range troopers to make a firing line.

Honestly, that alone would be enough to get you through half the game easily. :D

I haven’t played around much with Engineers, but a popular thing to do with them is to use Pugs to reset their summon turret ability, say for example 3 engineers and 3 Pugs, which will get you upto 6 turrets in a battle. Placed well, they can either be a great distraction or good damage dealers. Turrets also inherit some mod characteristics of the engineer iirc.

Walkers are basically tougher troopers, with a missile attack.
Vanguard tanks are one of my favourite units.

The Drone Carrier was lacklustre at release, and is harder to use than something like the Herald of Oblivion, but you can, if done right, just keep summoning drones in battle. They are a great distraction, but also deal damage in their own right.

3036

Thanks for that superb post, @BloodyBattleBrain! That’s very helpful. I will give it another shot.

3037

I haven’t touched this in quite a while. Did fliers ever get useful? I always had a hard time getting my money’s worth out of them.

3038

Hah, fliers were and are considered OP by many. Not me though, I think they are powerful but expensive enough.

Anyway, just me opinion, but yeah I think Fliers are definitely worth it.

You’ve got to be clever with them though because ranged combat is predominant.

3039

Huh, interesting. I never claimed to be great at Planetfall, heh. I’m much better at AoW3.

3040

Hey so was there a patch recently, in preparation for Star Kings tomorrow? B/C I fired up the game tonight to refresh my memory a bit before Star Kings and noticed some differences in the capability rankings screen (it seems to display differently than I remember) and some differences in the tech trees, particularly on the social tech side.

I searched a bit but didn’t see any patch notes but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a pre-Star Kings patch.

On the topic of getting a handle on this very deep game, I’ll say a couple of things:

One, there are “high K” and “low K” strategies for this game for most factions: you can go with a small number of highly modded higher tier units or you can go with larger swarms of cheaper lower tech units. Specifically, for most factions your vanilla tier 1 units, properly modded with selected cheap mods can carry you (in sufficient numbers) for much of the game. A specific example is the Rail Accelerators and the Vanguard Troopers - just slap some railguns on those cheap dudes, mass a couple stacks of em, and make the baby Jesus cry. On the other hand, higher tier units with properly selected high end mods are damn near unstoppable.

Two, one of the best ways to get started before you know all the ins and outs of the game is to take a look at your basic cheaply available units and then look at the tech tree to see if there’s good synergy with any cheap early mods - the Vanguard Trooper/Rail Accelerator is a good example and the Dvar basic infantry plus that fortification tech mod (I forget the name) is a another. A lot of times, just a few selected mobs properly applied can elevate cheap units, en masse, to powerhouse status. That’s a very solid way to get going while you learn the more advanced techs and units.

As to fliers, fliers pretty much require a well-curated selection of mods to do well, but if you gear up your fliers properly you can generate very mobile stacks of death-dealing domination. Also, don’t forget heroes with piloting can purchase a flying vehicle as a mod (in the weapon slot) to lead a flier stack.

This is all getting my interest revved up for 11/10. Good fun.

3041

How does the QT3 braintrust feel about mods that inflict damage-over-time effects? I’m often excited about them, but don’t get that many procs because I usually find I want to kill the target now-now-now.

3042

I like them when they proc at the start of the turn, before an afflicted unit gets an action, and less so when they proc after the units turn is over - which is it here, I’m drawing a blank?

3043

They proc at the start of the inflicting player’s turn. So they still get to move and shoot you on their turn, and then drop dead when it’s your move.

3044

Yeah, I don’t think that’s super useful on the face of things. It’s nice for incidental damage of course, if the main attack deals like 10 damage and then starts them burning, cool, but I don’t know if I’d try to build a strategy around it. Just my two cents without really seeing any numbers though.

3045

Well, usually these things are mods that add to the base attack, and inflict a status. The status usually has some immediate drawback (like easier to hit, or reduced accuracy) and also some damage over time. So it can still be useful even you don’t think much of the DoT aspect. I’m just finding that in actual gameplay I wouldn’t put much weight on the DoT.

3046

Two comments:

One, there was definitely a patch as my version is now up to 1.400 but I can’t find patch notes anywhere.

Two, on the issue of the status/DOT mods, I don’t put much weight on the DOT component but the status effects often synergize with other mods. For example, the Prometheans have weapons that inflict a Burning status and they also have a mod that increases hit chance and damage against Burning targets. Several of the special techs have similar synergies. I think both the Celestians and the (dark-psi?) tech have a ton of synergies flowing off of their signature status effects. This type of thing I consider to be the more advanced stage of the Planetfall learning curve, after you’ve figured how to use the basic units and mods.

3047

A little birdie told me the Oathbound Tier 4 is particularly scary.

They’re the sort of thing that can decide a close run battle.

Not yet mentioned is that being under an effect will also impact morale, iirc, and morale can make a big difference in a fight, making you miss things you should, or hit things too.

I believe they are being worked on, and should be available soon.