Highfleet (Microprose!) has a super cool interface

Oh, it says what that specific part is in the manual? I have…skimmed it.

Oh, with that i realized it was a jammer when i moused over it after putting the part down in the ship designer.

Any insights on the differences between the two fire control radars? The shipworks reeeaaally needs a copy function or some other way to place many of the same part. I managed to cobble together what I thought would be an insane battle barge of doom and it just gets annihilated in testing.

I can’t speak to the efficacy of which FCS is better other than the bigger one doubling as radar a bit better. You can hold shift to repeatedly put the same part down as long as it’s in a valid spot.

Oh, sweet.

I really should read the manual.

Oh, apparently FCS is what gives you the real time tracking- radar just gives you a directional look, once they’re in FCS range you see them moving in real time.

Thanks for your input on the “twitchiness” of the combat. It sounds like it might be manageable for me. (Autohotkeys might help me manage it, too.) I hope you all keep reporting your impressions here!

Ooh, what do you think you’d use AHK for? The combat is really very simple in practice. WSAD to thrust and left- (and sometimes right-, if you have more than one fire group…although I have not seen a way to assign these manually the computer assigned my big guns to left and small guns to right when I built my ill-fated battle barge) click to fire. Oh, and Shift to engage afterburners or whatever, but you can’t use them very much or you overheat. Best to save them for attempts to dodge (well telegraphed) enemy attacks.

Aaah, so the game does penalize ramming.

Pity, it was very effective to take out the enemy capital ship.

Oh, yes, certainly. I have also, actually, had already “killed” ships fall on me and destroy my own ship. Alas, victory!

You know what, it occurred to me when I should really have been thinking about nothing much at all that the old game this most resembles is probably Star Control 2.

I think the juxtaposition of the modern naval sim stuff to the FTL-ish gameplay really makes it stand out. The direct combat definitely has shades of Star Control 2.

Yeah, just thinking about the action combat married to the “strategic” map.

I killed an entire strike group using airplanes and cruise missiles before they could get to me. Hell yes. I agreed with Pyotr to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle…for now.

Also, maybe the rest of you desert dogs already knew this but I discovered by accident that you can use the Shift afterburners during landing as well. Makes perfect sense, I just never thought to try.

I appear to have hit some kind of run-ending…bug? It sure seems like a bug. I took a disk city and in the process the Sevastopol got pretty mangled. It was going to take 17.5 hours to fix, so I thought well, let’s set it down, even a 10% reduction of that would be good, but little did I realize that the ship cannot be landed in it’s current state, which is missing its landing gear. Even if extremely gently put down it crushes its own fuel tanks under its own weight and explodes, no avoiding it. Hitting cancel landing works but then when I open the hatch to hit the city the landing just starts again. Hitting Cancel while landing does nothing. Appears to be no way past it, and I need to access the city for fuel.

Probably just for mouse clicks, both right and left. I use AHK for mouseclicks almost all the time. Mousing hurts my hands.

I did love Star Control 3 back in the day. I think I could manage that level of ship control.

Oh, interesting. The aiming is done with the mouse, FYI.

So, it turns out there’s a good reason to not use nukes when you have them. Once I opened Pandora’s Box the enemy mercilessly nuked the shit out of me. All (four of) the missile attacks I suffered afterward were nukes, which not only wrecked my ships (they blow up even if you shoot them down) but also wrecked the cities they were sitting in, making the shipworks nonfunctional and removing the ability to repair. Harsh.

I am starting to worry that this game is just too hard to maintain my interest in the long run, though. The aimbot ships are just such a gigantic pain if you don’t thoroughly outclass them.

Oh, also:

How does my Archangel have 0 damage but is clearly missing bits.

lol

Yeah this is where I am too. You’re clearly expected to win battles on the strategy map, with the actual combat being almost an afterthought. But I’m sick of newly-arriving ships being half destroyed before I even figure out where on the screen I even am.

I so desperately want to like this game, but so far I kind of don’t. Not sure how much longer I can (or should) deal with it.

I’ve got 7 hours in. I can appreciate the strat map kills, absolutely, but combat should be tuned down some. I don’t mind being outnumbered, but there are a.) kind of too many missiles, b.) I’ve said it a dozen times so I won’t belabor it again. Even small enemy ships can take a good bit of punishment, but unlike them you can’t afford to really eat that damage. I’d be more likely to soften them up with aircraft if it didn’t trigger the alarm (which is understandable), because once you get going into a campaign you can’t really afford to sit still for the whole damn day the alarm lasts.

Back at it, playing cat and mouse. No idea what determines what munitions your airplanes get. With cannons they’re good for recon but not much else. Cruise missiles are worth their weight in gold. One strike group down. There’s what, five?