3408

I certainly agree that it depends on the implementation and what you’re describing would not be a huge problem. It’s just a source of significant irritation in Planetfall, despite my overall affection for the game.

3409

I gave up on Civ in the early days of #5 so have no idea how 6 works

3410

This is a great idea, at least for non-hero units. And it might make it feasible to have the mods displayed visually on figures on the battle map so we wouldnt need to click on each one.

3411

One other way to reduce the need to click would be to let you see the enclopedia listing for a term by mousing over it, as in Old World.

3412

If they implement any variant on 3 or 4 mods per unit in AOW4 I won’t think twice about ignoring it entirely.

3413

I just learned that there is a way to set which operations the AI uses in autocombat. Was that there at release or has it been added since? Anyway this will make some races and techs more fun to play, like Amazon/xenonplague or any heritor trying for lots of drained.

3415

I didn’t and don’t want to bog things down/bore everyone with my I would envision an AoW4, but if we assume it is fantasy, I think the concept of “mods” transfers over into equipment very easily, and not just straight forward equipment upgrades like in PF (e.g. accelerated rail guns = longer range) but also taking advantage of all the existing unit enchantments.

Open up the Warlord spell list in AoW3, all of those unit enchantments would map easily onto mods, and with 3 mods per unit, and with mods having an upkeep cost, you would basically have a limit on how many enchantments you can put on a unit, and without the need to reapply them in every battle.

Changing the mechanic like this would mean you can introduce higher level enchantments, like what was in SM and before, for example windwalking or waterwalking.

Having those same 3 spaces compete with less magical (but cheaper, or easier to acquire, or with less upkeep) upgrades creates a new, delicious wrinkle.

Illustration:

A Dwarf axemen, which has a certain number of upgrades available due to it being a Dwarf (so from the technology tree tied to being a Dwarf) and some more from being a Sorcerer.

No matter what you put on it, it is still a Dwarf Axeman, so its primary identity, and identifier (i.e. visual references and understanding) is that of a Dwarf melee (axe) unit.

Imho, designing the game from the ground up with simple mechanics is the way forward, e.g.

  • melee units do x/y/z damage and gain a/b/c abilities (e.g. units with a shield get shield bash, hammers destroy armour, axes deal higher damage but have fewer hits per round, swords do baseline damage 3 hits per round, rapier and daggers do lower damage, can hit 4 times per round, Great swords/axes etc hit once per round but do great damage) --> the interplay between melee weapons having different intrinsic qualities relating to damage output and frequency is about as complicated as I would want the game to be.

  • Each sector (district) has x hexes

  • Structures (city or natural - the latter means things like mines, mana nodes, pre-existing landmarks) occupy hexes.

Hopefully the end result is something along the lines of:

  1. I see an army with 4 Axemen and 2 Crossbows ==> axe damage, shields, xbow damage @ medium range.

  2. I know they are led by a Warlord, and I can see they have lions courage as an enchantment ==> that’s a huge bit of extra damage (+5 iirc) ===> I need to avoid getting hit.

which is considerably easier imho than trying to remember all the (often fun, sometimes exhausting) craziness of PF.

It was added at player request.

3416

I know there’s a toggle to turn tactical operations on or off for autocombat but I was not aware that you could micromanage the tac ops used. How do you do this?

3417

He’s talking about the toggle.

3418

OK I figured it out. Piemax is referring to the individual ops toggles in the Operations screens. It turns out you CAN micro-manage your tactical ops, which is pretty awesome.

Basically if you hit “2” you get the Operations screen, with available operations on the left. It defaults to the Strategic Ops tab but there is a tactical ops tab also. If you click the tac ops tab, each tac op has an individual toggle for “use in autocombat”. So for example, for the Heritors you can disable everything but “Make Me Some Drained!!” ops, and let the autocombat AI become your little Drained-producing buddy. Similar techniques can be used for other “preferred” tac ops.

3419

I had no idea about that. Thanks for spelling it out!

3420

Wow, I didn’t know that either. I’d just been turning off ops altogether for auto-battles. Thanks for the help!

3421

My bad, I thought everyone knew about that!

It was brought in because of complaints about the heritor drained tactical op iirc.

3422

So I decided to try out the Oathbound/Heritor OP Cheese Combo, and the Baby Jesus is crying. Oh the tears of Min/Max Joy are flowing.

First off, I picked a Leader with the Paladin Marquis vehicle to start so I had a floating Hero on turn 1. I then researched the Drained Op and used it extensively both in manual combat and using the toggle, in autocombat, building up a floating stack by turn 12. I researched Siphoner and began feeding Siphoners into my Floating Hero Stack O Domination. It took a while to earn the XP for my second hero to learn Piloting and get a Marquis, but then I had 2 Floating Stacks O Domination. My third hero had enough XP out of the gate to get a Marquis and then it was just sick.

I modded up my Siphoners with the basic Essence-grabbing mod and then I cleared all the local stuff with floating stacks and had enough veteran Siphoners to start clearing sites and landmarks. I added in some crystal-things, got to friendly with the Paragon and started modding my dudes with Combat Protocol Implants which are pretty excellent on a wide range of units.

I had secured pretty complete dominance of my part of the continent by turn 35 or so and spent a few turns getting my stacks organized, etc. Around turn 40, opportunity arose - one of the stupid bugs built right up against my territory, repeatedly, giving me a nice fat Causus Belli.

He fielded a good number of bugs but it just didn’t matter. Siphoners with Combat Protocol, backed by Crystals for healing, and led by leaders in floating vehicles, with by now 3 or 4 full stacks of Drained as fully expendable fodder meant I rolled those bugs like punks.

During the carnage, I researched the Champion and also some good arc mods and then fielded several of these:

20201231192016_1
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Yes, that’s a Champion with Combat Protocol (good for all infantry and battlesuit dudes!), the Autonom Self Repair mod, and Arc Stun.

Then, one of my fellow Oathbound and some silly Vanguard decided I was on the way to planetary domination and they also objected to my extermination of the bugs, so they declared war. They were on opposite sides of me which would normally be problematic but with floating stacks and the fast road research, I handled it pretty well, splitting my forces to whomp both at the same time.

Then, as I was grinding towards a domination win, I researched the Paladin Exemplar, which I had not previously built. So I built one, and modded it up. Purely gratuitous at this point, but LOOK at this dude: it’s practically unkillable:

20201231221742_1
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Self repair, 8 armor, 10 shields, and 10 status effect resistance. I got that bad boy into a couple of fights and it was kind of funny. I was going to win anyhow but it was amusing to me to just enter a fight, let everyone else hang back and use the Exemplar to crush a bunch of dudes. I was fighting Vanguard and they just couldn’t hurt it. I suspect enemy Oathbound might pose more of a threat but the poor Vanguard…

Anyhow that combo is OP. Floating heroes, floating stacks, some high-efficiency early game mods, some nasty mid to late game mod/unit combos. On top of that I got the Ur-combo of Autonom/Paragon and befriended both, to yield yet more mod goodness.

And that was my New Year’s Eve.

3423

So, when you say you researched something, is that because you are very specific about what to research? I just research everything…In order more or less.

3424

I tend to have goals - like I knew I wanted Siphoners so I went up that tree first, then I went for Champions and the Arc Stun mod, and then near the end I went to the top of the Paladin tree for Exemplars.

When I first try a faction, I tend to do what you describe and research everything. But then, once I have some clue as to which mods work well with which units, I become more focused. I knew about Arc Stun from prior plays as Syndicate and Assembly, and I knew about Siphoners from a couple of prior plays as the Heritors. Also, I knew about Champions from my prior attempts with the Oathbound.

It’s a good example of the density and depth of Planetfall: initially the density is overwhelming but once you understand enough of the factions/techs/etc. then you push through the density and start seeing the depths of the design.

It’s the blessing and curse of Planetfall: it requires a large investment of playtime and brainpower to learn the game, but the game rewards that investment pretty massively.

3425

With your permission is like to forward this to the devs.

By the time I play a new faction it feels pretty new to me (lots of mileage out of any one faction) so what I do is take a good long look at the core units, i.e. The ones that only need barracks, no research, then I think of the synergies therein, then I look at mods to boost that.

The next level is to look at their researched units and see how I can fit them in, on the assumption half my forces will be the core Infantry.

For example, Amazon’s have Huntresses which are short range, but damage, ignore cover our and can faze bunches of troops.

Biomancers are easy healing, can sleep, also bio damage.

Then Lancers are available, tough, flanking, mobile, a bit more expensive, laser damage.

Those are the core units (only need barracks.)

Next, take a look at the initial (non secret) research options, i.e. The first column.

Doing this gives you a feel for how your first twenty turns will play.

Later you’ll develop a preference for particular unit and mod combo but the above assumes you don’t know the race.

3426

BBB, feel free to forward. But also I’m pretty sure similar sentiments were expressed upthread by @inactive_user and/or others.

Also, BBB that method of looking at a faction (look at the core units and the early techs) is how I do it too. I had a long post a few dozen posts upthread looking at the Vanguard in that way. There are exceptions of course - for both the Oathbound and the Assembly I don’t love the tier 1 infantry so I tend to look for the tier 2 including skirmishers and specialists for my core units.

3427

What I do is I take my starting stack and I run it into some bad guys. Anything that seems fun or makes me giggle, I find something shiny in the tech tree that matches and shoot for that.

Part of this is my preferred learning style - I’m very much a learn-by-doing kind of person - but also I just don’t know that you can really get a faction, specialization, or combination thereof until you get in and play through a bunch of combats against different threats.

3428

Indeed. I also expressed similar sentiments, and many others besides, but your 2 sentence summation is gold.

A valid point.

My way of looking at a faction, as outlined above, is leaning more onto how that factions feels, which is something much more possible and fun in PF than in preceding games, because the factions here are imho much better designed.

One thing I definitely want for a future game is a battles mode, where you pick an army, pick your opponent and your battlefield (or have it all randomised) and just have at it.