Heh. I tried to land the Sevastapol once. Never again. Couldn’t even find a pad big enough for it!
Man. I do appreciate the need to “git gud” with some games, but the combat in this game is incredibly punishing. The enemy’s aim is just laser-like, and worse, if you lose a ship they instantly start shooting at your next ship before you’ve even got your bearings.
This is the kind of game where you can very easily enter a spiralling death loop quickly. However, having just lost my first game, I’ve noticed that the points I accumulated during the playthrough will be converted to bonus cash for my next. That’s definitely something. I’m not put off. In fact, if I ever survive a campaign long enough to make it worthwhile, I’m even half intending to write a proper AAR.
Yes, I’m kind of in love with this game. I would have been obsessed with it in high school, the MechWarrior 2 years.
After the Thrust allegations, this isn’t helping me resist!
Ha, I just noticed the jets handling on the mechwarriors were totally in the same spirit as those old games. I just loved cushioning landings.
I really like everything about this game except the goddamn combat, it’s just too brutal. I’m even a pretty good shot now, but it’s just far too hard to avoid being hit by the enemy. I guess I’ll try changing my strategy, maybe concentrate on heavier ships (since I’m getting hit anyway) with bigger weapons or something.
Also, does anyone else forget to set the range band of the signal interceptor every bloody time?
It blinks!
I actually enjoy the combat now. Getting pretty decent at it. The aimbot enemies are annoying, but you just have to accept that you’re gonna take some hits.
I really need to dig deeper into the systems with the manual and those articles, because sometimes I set my ships to be repaired and wait it out and yet the next time I hit port the ships are damaged again, even the ones that didn’t fight. Are they not repaired from lack of parts or something?
This one really gives the sense that you cannot possibly do everything you want to do.
I know, I know! And yet I forget every single time! :(
Yeah that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. I’m probably wrong for sending two Navarins against literally everything. It was working fine until I intercepted a convoy; the big guns made short work of my ships.
I suspect this is bugged because I’ve noticed the same thing. It wouldn’t be lack of parts because the manual says that if you lack the required parts they’ll be purchased as part of the repair process. I guess that explains why sometimes repairs cost gold, and sometimes they don’t.
Do all ports always have all parts necessary, though? My impression was that sometimes they just wouldn’t be available, like if a module (as opposed to just armor or whatever) was damaged or destroyed.
If you’re not boosting to dodge enemy fire, that is probably why you’re having trouble.
Also be sure to fly under enemy ships so you can hit them at their weak armor area.
Jeez, this hadn’t even occurred to me.
Patch 1.1 just hit. Widescreen users should be happy now.
Everybody bitched about mouse acceleration but I liked it better before.
My first campaign has ended.
Not good. The pursuing strike fleets have left me unable to fully repair my ships for some time, now. pressuring me into leaving before we were ready. They finally caught up to me.
Woo, pyrrhic victory. There was some faff after this, but.
LOL yes, I do. And then you have to press the spacebar - extra annoying.
I’m not that great at the combat either, but truthfully I haven’t varied my ship strategy much, so maybe it is not my reflexes but my brain which is the problem (wouldn’t be the first time).
I started a new campaign and tinkering with the ship designs to see if I can improve my odds. I do find the difficulty spikes in combat huge - and maybe it’s because I don’t really know how to tell how many ships are going to be lined up against me when I send my strike team in. Is there a way to do that ahead of time or you always go in blind?
I don’t see how you could know what defenses the enemy has ahead of time. Perhaps this is what the “TAC” option is when you capture a comms station? I have never selected it. I have some questions that are possibly answered in the materials I linked (they do not seem to be answered in the manual with any great detail), but so far I have spent my time playing instead of reading.
IRST: how the fuck do you use this. I assume this is how you find “hidden cities,” but even when I put the pie piece over the spike I never get anything to even display on the screen, let alone anything halfway intelligible.
When I’m selecting ships at the beginning of a campaign, the most severe limitation is not money but range, which always goes down and never up (even when selecting a tanker) and quite restrictively. I can only take one or two ships aside from the Sevastopol (which I am forced to take if I don’t roll my own command ship, I guess? I haven’t tried.) before I’m below the 2000km range the game tells me I have to maintain but doesn’t actually enforce (my latest campaign I just started with 1800km; let’s see if it comes back to bite me.).
How does installing modules on ships from inventory even work? Every time I have tried it, it costs the purchase price, even though I have looted it from wrecks and am not purchasing it. Should it really cost 4,000 sand rubles to install a little machinegun? Is this a bug?
I think you’re paying for people to install it for you. The whole shipyard interface totally sucks though. It’s so hard to find a component you want without filters, and you can’t easily compare one module with another either.
IRST: it’s almost useless as far as I can tell. You’re correct that you rotate it to where you see a spike, and then the hit should show on the waterfall display above the compass. It’s just a passive way of detecting a nearby ship without revealing your own location, I think.
And that price is exactly the same as the sell price?
Haha, I took this comment out of context and thought it was a literal statement. Paying people to install the game for you :)
That’s the whole concept behind Twitch :O
Speaking of which: highfleet stream when, Jason ¬_¬
Heh, dunno, I haven’t watched it closely enough. Maybe it is a bug.
I’ve had better luck in my new campaign by picking something other than Navarins. It helps that I’ve had a few game overs now so I can afford some better ships.
@Kolbex something just occurred to me with regard to the fleet range at the start of the game. I’m thinking you always have a finite total amount of fuel. so every ship you add to the fleet necessarily reduces its range as the fuel has to be shared amongst more ships. That assumes, of course, that tankers are only for increasing the range of strike fleets and not your whole fleet.
This game is amazeballs.
I was thinking to myself: this is not as hard as people made it seem.
But it was the tutorial.
But yes, I like all the small mini-games and sort of emergent tactic/strategy it allows. The balance is crazy off to start off and would benefit from a “very easy” mode and/or a “high attrition” mode with very cheap ships but crappy armor in general.
But it’s so unique and single minded I can’t help but love it.
But the building/repair interface is opaque/useless and buggy. Every other interface is great and to the point, but here it collapsed under the intensity. I think they could have done with a simpler one with less engineering options, just replace modules/hard points/repair and left the complex stuff to the standalone builder.