Buried in the write up there. I loved AoW2, never played 3 as I only play on console. I was flipping through YouTube app on my TV earlier, and there was a trailer for this on the official Xbox channel. So that’s confirmed, and it makes me happy.
Some websites reported no controller, which seems odd.
I think a tbs game could work on console but I’m not entirely sure how.
I’m also worried that new people are going to go into this thinking it’s basically XCOM with a bethere strategy layer.
It’s really not, and half of people complaining about stuff is due to mismanaged expectations.
Eh. I played the shit out of Civ Rev on the 360. Sure this is more complex, but it should work well enough as long as they pot some effort into it.
It would be weird for them to program controller interfaces for console and then just leave them out on pc. Not to say that’s never happened before (I’m looking at you Morrowind/Oblivion, just off the top of my head), but controllers have become reasonably mainstream on pc now.
And you, Mass Effect 1, 2 and maybe 3. Bastards!
Fable (at least the original PC version) is the worst of those for me. No gamepad control whatsoever - it’s K&M or bust.
RPS has an interesting write-up by Fraser Brown with a few details I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
You’ve got grenades that can stagger and stun enemies, denying them action points; guns that let units use overwatch, locking areas down and forcing enemies to cower behind cover; and mechs that can pummel enemies from afar with their giant cannons.
With the area free of threats, a new outpost is established. These outposts protect the area, but its the colony that reaps the rewards. When you conquer territory, you essentially attach it to a colony, giving it the benefits of any resources or whatever else you find there. Roads also automatically appear, making travel between colonies and outposts quicker.
Every unit is essentially a simple template that you can customise with weapons, special ammo, jetpacks and even vehicles. Eventually, you’ll be able to cram your commander inside a mech or a tank, if you fancy it. Mods can give your unit a whole range of abilities at the higher tiers, so it affects a lot more than just the amount of damage you can dole out.
Before exterminating the insects, we take a moment to enhance one of our basic trooper units. It’s got two modding slots that can be filled. In one slot, new ammo is added, giving our troopers an advantage against organic enemies, which should help against the bugs. In the final slot, jetpacks are tossed into the mix, allowing our troopers to quickly flank the creepy crawlies. We name our new unit the Bug Killers and the battle kicks off.
Dev diary time.
I’m particularly interested in the expanded strategy layer and the engine upgrade. I hope this means that the multiplayer pain is gone and I’ll be able to play this with friends.
That sounds just amazing, honestly. I can’t wait to see it in action.
I’m really looking forward to this.
Sessions now play on wrapping planets
This sounds great!
Elaborate!
I am curious about this as well. @ShivaX and I have played several games with each other (usual 2v2 vs. the AI) and have had a lot of fun with it over the years.
Classic or simultaneous turns? 2 player is passable, any more than that gets pretty bad in simultaneous.
When you’re playing simultaneous turns, when any animation or action is taking place (one player ordered an army to move and is in motion, for example), everything on the UI becomes unresponsive for the other player. For instance if I’m trying to allocate skill points on a hero, I click on a skill and while the UI reacts with a “click”, nothing happens. Same with trying to queue up construction in a city. Sometimes it queues up every click and once the army stops moving, you’re now building 5 archers. Sometimes it queues half the clicks. Sometimes none at all.
Of course, you have no way of knowing if/when an army is moving or whatever so the UI is constantly becoming unresponsive or act in unpredictable ways. There’s no reason the other player should be locked out like that. I could see only one army being allowed to move at a time, but I should be able to queue up buildings and things like that since it won’t take effect until the turn is ended anyway.
With two players it’s manageable, but with more those issues start scaling almost exponentially. I found it incredibly annoying, and my gaming group refused to play it in MP anymore, except for me and one other guy.
I’m hoping a new engine means smarter netcode.
Oh sure, that all makes sense for sure. I would probably have recommended more than 2 players do a low player count and classic turns, with fast animations. Turn times are actually really fast in this game, and that’s a solid way to play I think.
Sim turns isn’t exactly simultaneous.
Every action gets queued up and resolved very quickly…
except combat.
However:
I’ve never seen this or even heard of this.
Well it seems like there’ll be QoL improvements all round.
Tell you what:
If the beta system is the same as last (closed beta) and I’m in it, I’ll let you know, in which case you prod me and I’ll try and trash the netcode.
Planetfall will support upto 12 players, so this will be worth sorting out methinks.
It’s a pretty commonly described problem (well, common for a niche game mode on a not massive install base :)).
The workaround is to play classic mode, but again with more players that starts adding more and more to the turn times. My gaming group just opted to play other 4x games which is a damn shame, because AoW3 is so good.
Really? It happens even during vs AI games. The AI always has priority. Have you never tried, once the turn starts, to move a single scout away from a hostile force and nothing happens at all, until the hostile force (with priority) pounces on said scout? Nothing you an do about it. And you can’t even really interact with anything while the AI is moving troops around.
That annoyance aside, simultaneous turns is awesome for vs. AI though, it works really well, especially once the mid game hits and I speed up the animations.
I think they did a great job with the combat model in AoW3 so I’m very much looking forward to their take on range-centric turn based combat.
It’s a subjective thing but I hope the each alien group has a really coherent character. I think sometimes creators want to get away from staid fantasy tropes and end up making things that are both weird and unmemorable.
I thought you were saying the game hung when things were being moved.
I think what’s happening is the actions are getting processed. When an action is being processed nothing else can happen.
The reason I rarely notice it I think is because my computer is pretty fast.
That said, and game large maps will slow down.
If I am right, and it is indeed the result of actions being processed one after the other, then there’s not much that can be done, other than hope the new game uses more of the CPU as it is 64bit.
I have a current gen i7, SSD, and a 1080Ti and I certainly notice it and have since launch, when I had a different rig. It’s because it’s a 32bit application, I suspect, and has little to do with processing power so much as how it was programmed to work. It usually doesn’t come up unless you are actively trying to beat someone to something, you can’t because the AI gets priority, and then after that it’s… random? I don’t play a lot of MP and never with more than one other person.
You are correct in that it is because the actions are being processed, but it’s unfortunate you can’t interact with the game while that’s happening (on screen - if actions happen in the fog of war or outside of your units vision range, it doesn’t cause any problems).
It doesn’t have anything to do with netcode though, as it happens when playing single player as well.
I’m honestly surprised you haven’t experience this issue? At one point i went back to classic turns because of it, though I found I prefer classic turns with the animations on normal.