1808

I’m enjoying the campaigns but i think it’s going to take me 300 or so hours to get through them all, and by the time I do i’ll be done with the game. At a crossroads if I want to invest any more time in the campaigns i have going - i mean, i’m still not even through the 2nd map of the Vanguard campaign and have some time with the Dwarf and Bug starting missions.

1809

If I understand what you are saying, there is an option for the number of autosaves.

Try the open beta if you can’t see it.

I imagine if enough people ask then yes.

1810

I must say, Paradox has been advertising the absolute hell out of this game on the Xbox console. It’s always promoted on my homepage. I also see it all over the net, but I just assumed those are Google AdSense targeted ads or something.

I hope the ads are paying off and sales are meeting their expectations.

1811

I’ve played around with most of the options, and melee is inferior pretty much across the board in my experience, and I don’t think I can be accused of being “bad” at any 4X game.

The only upside of melee - the free overwatch attack. If you can get your melee guys stagger immune so they don’t lose this instantly, this is a pretty decent upside, as the majority of units are ranged.

The downsides of melee -

  • The melee-exclusive mods are strictly inferior to their range counterparts. Melee doesn’t have anything as game-changing as Rail Accelerators or Fire Burst Ammo.
  • You have to actually get in melee, and will generally lose an entire extra turn or only get a single attack action on turn 2. This can be mitigated by jetpacks, but range units can benefit from them just as much, or alternatively use the slot to up their damage by 30% rather than the mediocre +1 armor jetpack gives.
  • Forced melee proximity also means you are going to be extremely vulnerable to attack as range is one of the accuracy checks. You will often have trouble finding meaningful cover from which to melee attack from. Yes, there are mods and skills that help with the melee issues with getting destroyed, but ranged units can just take them as well with the same effect, or just take a bunch of +% damage stuff the melee character won’t have access to out of survivability concerns.
  • You need a sidearm to do anything to air, and it will generally be pretty sub-optimal.
  • The t3 melee weapons are so incredibly sad and dull that with most factions you probably want to invest an early 15 points into advanced piloting so you can get in one of the melee vehicles and actually hurt things.

I don’t personally value the overwatch attack more than those things.

All that being said, you could make a full on melee comp and still win the game on hard. They are ok. But I don’t think they are optimal, not when you can get t1 vanguard soldiers doing like 23 per shot and capable of firing twice on turn 1, in the full knowledge they’ll still be too far away to get anything but nicked in round 2.

I feel the same way about melee as I do about the speed 24(or 26? whatever it is, the slow one) stuff… yes you can play and win using them, but it’s really just an extra and somewhat tedious step.

1812

I think you’re confusing having a higher ceiling with being flatly better across the board.

1813

Could be I’m just rubbish at using them and this will change as I figure things out, but right now when given a choice I take range units (or heroes) over melee under almost any circumstance.

1814

I, on the other hand, am on my third game after losing the first 2 on normal difficulty. As a clear super expert, I have to assert that charging in on raptors swinging electro-spears in melee and making void clones next to every enemy before their turn starts is really fun and that’s what I’m all about.

I’ll probably end up losing this game at some point, but I’m riding this melee high as long as its delivering!

1815

Hey, I’m all for people playing how they want to play! You can get great results with melee. If you haven’t tried a melee Commander with the Military Heritage background so that they refill to full energy after a kill once per turn, I’d recommend you do so, it’s a lot of fun! It’s fun with range too, but melee really benefits from the extra movement.

1816

Yeah, that sounds awesome! Will try for my next game.

1817

The one more turn effect in this one for me is so strong. I’ve nothing more to add tactically or strategically because I’m really quite awful at this game so far, but I just can’t stop playing it.

1818

Does regeneration / Healing stack? Suppose you have a unit with a mod that heals for 15% of its health a turn, but that unit is in an AoE effect that heals for 20% per turn. Does the unit heal for 35% per turn? Also, if said unit has two healing mods that heal for 15% each, and is also in a 20% healing aoe, does it heal for 50% per turn?

1819

I’m not sure but I don’t think it does.

1820

I’m finally just getting started (completed tutorial stuff) and am a bit overwhelmed by how different everything is vs. std AoW, and the number of choices to make considering I don’t know their effects long-term.

Any generalized suggestions for helping a new person along? I could really use some guidance on what’s important to focus on in the beginning like research, should I upgrade/outfit units every single chance I get or save up? Is there a downside to expanding too fast (besides defending a larger territory). Should I restart main campaign outside of the tutorial? Also what to focus on for base upgrades.

Thanks and cheers!

1821

You can start as Vanguard + Promethean and kill everything with fire. Bug? Fire. Cyborg? Fire. Plant things? Definitely fire.

Campaigns are dumb in strategy games (fight me!), I just play random maps.

Upgrade all the units as your Cosmite will support. You won’t have enough to do everything you want, so I make sure to prioritize heroes and highly experienced units. There are some mods in particular that I really like and fit on certain units only (Mantra of Clarity for psi units, for example).

Expanding too fast doesn’t hurt you, not like it does in a Civ game. Expand as much as you can protect. Expanding more gives you a better economy which means you can make more troops to stomp more bugs.

1822

Are there any preferred upgrade routes for Commanders?

1823

Not for me. Vitality, Deadeye, and ranged/melee specialist are staples. Other than that, different heroes get different abilities and I pick them based on whatever I need at the moment.

1824

Agree with the above, with the caveat that I tend to prioritize Deadeye before pretty much any other upgrade, at least Deadeye II, as increasing the chance to hit and crit seems more powerful than just increasing damage dealt, but specializing in ranged or melee for the extra damage bonus is important as well.

1825

OK cool - thanks.

1826

When you throw a grenade is there an AoE damage effect? When I’ve use the outside perimeter to try and damage enemies I haven’t seen much if any effect.

1827

The UI will indicate who is going to be taking damge, and how much, when you move the overlay around and have the grenade action selected. Note that grenades big power comes not from damage, which is lowish, but rather the high impact chance to cause Stagger, which removes an action point from the target for their next turn as well as takes them out of defensive stances (such as Overwatch) and cancels many ongoing effects they may have active.