I’m obliterating all kinds of silly things in my current game with Paragon Heavy Soldiers (almost identical to Vanguard Walkers) modded with Rail Accelerators, the mod that turns firearms into AOE fire damage, and the Paragon +hit/+dodge thing. They nasty.
The Paragon have two of the best mods in the game IMO, the Combat Protocol Implants you reference and the Smart Bullets for Firearms which are just nasty. I’m also a fan of the Self Repair Systems from the Autonom.
In terms of units from the NPC factions, I think I like the Plant dudes best b/c they have weird plant creatures (is that a thing?).
Those pictures warm my heart! I’m playing the Amazons with the biohazard secret weapon, so I’m all about green goo. I think one of my recently-developed techs uses a mysterious substance named Soilent Green.
So I can annex a sector that has an Orbital Defense Uplink that’s guarded by my “friends” the Autonom. The Uplink is described as a hazard, but will it hurt me if I annex the sector and let the Autonom continue to own it? Or am I better off just bypassing it?
Is the Orbital Defense Uplink the hazard that drops a missile every three turns? Because, yeah, it will totally attack your dudes and not the other dudes. What kind of crappy orbital defense uplink only targets the controller of the uplink? I have three letters for whoever designed that thing: I, F, and another F.
-Tom
The Autonom will be happy to vacate that space (which gives you some resources) in exchange for a payment of influence, typically in the 25-35 range, depending on the resource. I usually buy off those squatters when I want to develop a spot. Also, the Uplink may also add to the sector yield in terms of energy or something.
Has anyone heard of any patch on the horizon? I really don’t want to play any more until they fix the (And I know this word is overused, but sadly its true in my case) game stopping bugs, that has ended two of my empire planets so far?
This reminds me - how long does a game take for you guys? My games are in the 130’s turn-wise, and I suspect I am very slow and poor at the game, and thus seeing more errors than people who finish up a game quicker.
incoming patch will nerf this a bit.
Except the ones allied with you, if allied victory is on.
Doomsday is, for me, basically a way to end the game quicker, either because you are sure you’ve won, or because you think you can successfully defend. The AI in my experience will come after you most of the time. On some occasions it doesn’t.
fwiw, my victories are usually conquest or domination.
For troopers, get the nanite mod, then rail accelerator and then an ammunition mod, my preference is fireburst. That will form a solid core. With fireburst the cost is 25 cosmite iirc, so by mid to end game you can one turn these from your capital (or other production city) and do that every turn, or every other.
The Fliers are basically troopers that fly. So, map mobility, and more expensive to mod, and relatively fragile. But that mobility is great.
Ref bikes = they punch far above their weight, and if you mass them, they can do some horrible things to your enemies. To make full use of them, you need to go down the laser route.
I have had great success using the Engineer on my leader, for example being able to double the APC healing time.
Walkers are basically tougher troopers, with a free missile attack. Transition from troopers to Walkers, but transition is imho the wrong word, mix the 2 together. The missile is on a cooldown, so you can use it to draw out the enemy into your overwatch traps, and then flank with Bikes.
Tanks are just pure tankiness and damage, just plough through the enemy.
I usually play hard/extreme settings with large maps, so my games take a while too.
Yes, imminent. You can test the changes yourself by opting into the open beta.
I think my campaign game might be fucked. Spoilers for Assembly 2, if you’re somehow playing this for the story:
I signed an NAP with LOG3N, which locked me into one of the two victory paths. Welp, okay, I guess we’re doing that. Whatevs. So now I have to a) Ally with him and b) kill all the he other non-Assembly commanders.
Which is weird, because I’m at permanent war with the other Assembly factions (there are 4 I think) and the non-Assembly guys keep trying to be friends. But whatever, I can get my murder on with the aforementioned Heavy Soldiers and a bunch of Transcendants and such.
But now LOG3N has dropped out of the alliance with me because he’s mad that I’m at war with his Assembly buddies (sorry man, this scripted -999 to relations leaves me no choice) and now he’s mad at dropping out of alliance with me (wtf) and I’m struggling to keep him in the NAP zone.
I might grind out the other jerks to see if it’s possible and just find a cheat or something to move on, but it’s all pretty disappointing like the rest of the vanilla campaign :/
You could have dropped the NAP right? Or are there special rules in the campaign?
Yeah this is a campaign script thing. Signing the NAP failed a couple quests and triggered a bunch of dialogues and diplomatic states.
Yeah that kind of scripted stuff that doesn’t work when you go off-script a bit is why I never got far in the campaigns.
That’s the thing, though - I didn’t even go off-script! This was presented as one of two victory paths! It’s just a shitty and/or buggy script.
To be fair this is a campaign that was started many patches ago, but still.
I was just talking with an old AoW3 friend who bounced of PF.
I quoted him what you said and he agrees with you, but had the following to add:
I think the combat in PF is way better than in 3
the maps alone are just wow
The heights makes it wow
Its just … feels clunky
I dont like the overworld map game
it is so … many layers to it
for context, we were discussing how to make things better. I favour a rather different approach to city management :)
You madman!
I mean, shit man, you want me to start it over? That’d be the real insanity.
I suspected that I am a source of wisdom that people just quote to each other but now I finally have hard evidence to that.
But yeah, combat looks like it has all the fun. As Sid Meier said:
"The mistake I think I made in Covert Action is actually having two games in there kind of competing with each other. … "So I call it the ‘Covert Action Rule’. Don’t try to do too many games in one package. And that’s actually done me a lot of good.
In theory, Planetfall is trying to mesh the two games, tactical and strategic, by the use of mods. You need to research and install the mods at the strategic level, relying on strategic research and economy to provide for that, and then USE the mods at the tactical level. It’s actually a good theory IMO but the execution is off IMO in that the mod system is roughly twice as complicated as it needs to be, and that the special abilities / status effects / synergies are overwhelming.
I’d really like to see a mod system with half the mod slots, half the mod options, but twice the cost and twice the impact. I’d also like to see the status effect / synergy stuff toned down by half as well.
Right now the system is incredibly deep and complex but so baroque that even a TBS grognard like me is only able to come to grips with the easiest faction. I’m working on getting a handle on the Oathbound but man they have a lot of weird shit, and they are nothing compared to the weirdos like the Kir’Ko or Assembly.
On another topic, @BloodyBattleBrain can you expand on your thoughts on the economy? I like the economy as it is now (after that big patch roughly a year ago) - so what are your issues with it?