Hero mods go into storage yes. Unit mods go poof, pretty sure.
Also, IIRC, hero mods (the kind that are items that you find) don’t have a cost to install. But I don’t think you ever get cosmite back when changing mods that you did pay for.
jpinard
3150
Even though every game has loads of unit variety, the best of any game ever! I wish I didn’t feel like every game didn’t feel so similar. I can’t put my finger on why AoW3 never ever felt this way, but this game does. Kind of devolves into repetition. I love Triumph and the team, so it frustrates me that my brain is thinking like this.
Sharpe
3151
I think it’s similar to the concept of “choice paralysis” - too many choices can shut down decision making. I also think too many choices can make all the choices seem “too much the same”.
I respect what the devs did with the amazing depth of Planetfall but I’m pretty firmly convinced now that the game would be better with half as many mod slots and half as many mods that cost twice as much and have twice the impact. Reduce the number of choices but make the choices higher impact. Also, tone down the special ability boot-strapping and synergy somewhat. The synergy is great but there’s SO MUCH of it! To the point where if you don’t understand many of the key interactions, it’s hard to play. I’m not saying eliminate special abilities and synergy, just tone it down, again by something like half.
Obviously they are not going to change this game at this point, but going forward, there is something to be said for elegant design. Less can be more if done right. And more is not always better.
It’s still a great game but loses a bit due to an exhausting level of choice and detail.
I wonder what the devs have planned for their next game?
I’ll give an example of what I think would be excellent: an AOW4 relying on the familiarity of fantasy tropes, but with a (very lean and streamlined) version of Planetfall Mods (in the form of items and enchantments) to add depth.
Mark_L
3152
I think I’ve legit lost the empire world I’m on, something that doesn’t happen too often. My Shakarn had a completely awesome 3 on 3 stack battle against the Dvar, which ended with a single stack of mine surviving. Our neighbor swept in and destroyed the Dvar before I could act, greatly increasing his strength and leaving me with nothing! I can’t fight him now and don’t see how I will be able to catch up later. Great game, though…the Dvar had two of his ultimate units in the final battle, it was incredible!
See, for my money the problem is that Planetfall introduces a level of not being able to trust your eyes. You always have to check mods, and half the time you have to go all the damn way to the unit detail window to figure out wtf a thing does.
In AOW3, you see a Goblin Swordsman and you know it’s going to do Swordsman things and Goblin things. There are some exceptions, like Draconian Pikemen are a pretty different unit than other Pikemen, but there aren’t so many that you can’t learn them pretty quickly. In Planetfall, a unit could have a freaking damage-and-stun retaliation or could proc a lose-your-turn status effect on attack! Those are massive, massive changes to the combat strength of a unit and if anyone tries to tell me that those tiny little mod icons in the unit card (not the details screen) tell me what I need to know I will have strong words for them.
AOW3 is just so much more readable than Planetfall is, even with 100+ hours into Planetfall at this point (granted, scattered across however long since it came out). I still find Planetfall exhausting to play.
Mark_L
3154
Man, we just play differently. After like 45 hours I still just sorta feel it out and muddle through based on what I know about the unit’s capabilities. I do watch out for stuff like arc defense, but a mouse over tells me that before I charge anyone in there.
I play on hard with hard-core world difficulty, fwiw. Impossible might require more finesse and patience.
Oh I wouldn’t consider myself any damn good at Planetfall, nor do I typically play on exceptionally difficult settings. I just compulsively obsess over really enjoy the optimization side of game systems like this, so I can’t be leaving any possible advantage on the table.
Myself and some of the others have been bouncing ideas around, and see a way to bring back more magic, relative to AoW3, and also keep the racial uniqueness of PF, and make the economic/city management side more interesting.
Spock
3157
On tactical combat, I sometimes wonder if I should just hold my position and let the AI come to me. When I advance, I often regret it. Part of the issue is I consistently underestimate how far the AI can move and then attack. I do click on enemy units to see the range of their attacks. But I tend to underestimate how far they can move and still attack. Does the UI tell me this info in some easy-to-see way?
jpinard
3158
After a lot of hours in the game, this still happens to me all the time. I wish there was an option to check that would simply show a shadow of the range of enemy units on your turn instead of having to click each one individually.
Dejin
3159
In my experience, if you are the party that initiated combat on the strategic map, if you hold position so will your opponent. You’re going to have to go in and dig out the enemy unless you outrange them. If you have a hero with a Sniper Rifle, you may be able to draw them into your killing ground by taking pot shots at them. But if you don’t outrange them, they’ll just hunker down and will not move from their position to attack.
Spock
3160
Hmm, ok, good to know. Still, there seems no harm in holding one’s ground for a turn or two to see what the enemy does. I don’t recall any sort of time limit.
Also, in the fight I just played, I initiated combat on the strategic map. I did advance a little, but the enemy advanced a lot more, with two charging close and focus-firing one of my guys. But maybe it would have played out differently if I hadn’t advanced at all.
Sharpe
3161
So I was playing a random non-campaign, non-Galactic Conquest skirmish game and I was given a Grail Quest. Maybe it’s a new Empire Quest? Dunno, haven’t seen this before. I do a whole bunch of steps and then I have to go way across the map and do a 3 turn archeology style task. Finally, I get a battle, and I have to face a squad of “Apostates”. These are a mix of repurposed units (like some modded Psynumbra Initiates plus 3 units I have not seen before.
The Chaos Witch:
The “Blackguard Tyrant” which appears to an evil variant of the Tier 4 Oathbound behemoth:
Here’s a shot of that bad boy in scale:
After a tough fight with my busting out a couple of Valkyrie drops and some Synthetic healing, my squad of pipe-hittin’ max level heavily modded Gunships prevailed.
What did we win? Well, Bob, I’m glad you asked:
We won a map site that allows us to enact a doctrine that gives us +100% food income in all colonies as well as +8 hp per round regeneration in combat for all units. That brings a tear to my eye.
I had seen various “Blackguard” drops before, which mostly seem to be “evil” variations on the Paladin battlesuits. Of course the devs in this game didn’t leave it at that, they built in a Grail questline with boss fight. And it’s not even a bullet point feature, just apparently gratuitous content. Yay!
Pedro
3162
It used to be the case that you could activate your tactical op on turn 2 and that would stop the enemy digging in and get them moving towards you. So position your guys turn 1 and 2 and call in the op. Dunno if that still holds.
I seem to remember that the enemy movement range plus their weapon range was represented by two coloured sets of tiles when you hover over the unit but it’s been a while, I might be wrong.
This is an objectively right opinion.
The game is too complex now for its own good. It’s as big and complex as a decent wargame or Paradox Grand Strategy, but still uses tools and UI of a smaller scale TBS. Both combat and overworld map could work fine as separate games in their own right. It’s not abstracted enough so that you can make intuitive decisions a la GSG, but it has too many numbers for you to calculate all the best moves and enjoy system elegance.
Ahh yes, the grails, listed as a bulletpoint somewhere.
They unlock the best doctrines, meant to give you a significant edge in the late game.
The game could stand to lose some complexity, but imho this is actually quite easily done.
I’d redo how city/sector management is done, tweak the combat logs a bit.
If you read them (the logs, and it is no easy task reading them) you get loads of info.
jpinard
3166
I often want more mod slots because of decision lock lol. But I can see how fewer would streamline the game a lot.
Spock
3167
Can you all suggest a rough build order for cities in the first 10 turns or so? Should I be focusing on more units? I keep reading that I want a second army, and a colonizer, by turn 10, so that seems to imply building a unit at every opportunity – which would mean waiting to construct buildings. Or are there one or two crucial buildings that should be constructed first?
