There is no best time but it’s at a stage where it’s basically refinements on a great sandbox of a game with an unfinished campaign.
I would say, absolutely.
You can only get this on their website, correct?
Correct.
Do you have to specify which ships defend the targeted ship? It seems like how that should work, Can’t have everyone drop everything else to defend one ship.
It seems to just grab everything and give it the order, since you have to have the ship you want to defend selected.
I see dark green arrows from my fleet leading to the “defended” ship. Long, long arrows because they’re often several screens away fighting a random frigate if they aren’t sitting behind the target watching and doing nothing at all.
I’m just not going to use it anymore, it doesn’t seem to do anything of value. Escort was a lot better.
Though it’s entirely possible I misunderstand what it’s supposed to be doing or something, but that thing doesn’t seem to be anything remotely related to protecting the target.
Also @dbaum, I think there is a bug with the “Jailbreak” mission. I took the mission with 30 marines on hand, went to the planet with the prisoner, went to the bar and talked to the person there that ordered a “Prisoner”. They wanted 28,000 credits. I had 242,000 credits but the only option available was to bribe them with a story point (which I did not have). They were asking for credits so shouldn’t I have the option to give them the 28,000 they were requesting?
There’s been two hot fix releases for the 0-95-1a update so far so make sure you grab the latest one (RC5).
Hi! Alright, let me see if I can answer some questions:
Defend vs. Escort:
Escort assigns a fixed number of ships that don’t otherwise have explicit orders and which can match the speed of the escorted ship to defend the selected ship.
Defend pulls any otherwise unassigned ships from your fleet to defend the target, ie. attack enemies that are close to it. Defend (and orders like Engage and Eliminate) will (I think) equally split the pool of ships that have not been assigned explicit orders. So if you give one Defend and one Engage order, half of your otherwise unassigned fleet will be assigned to each task.
I’m not sure if a ship’s position on the battlefield is taken into consideration when being assigned to these tasks, I’ll ask Alex that one. I do know that a ship will very highly prioritize its own survival because it’s super frustrating when your ships get themselves killed by following orders too closely. Ship aggressiveness is of course modified by officer personality, if an officer is assigned. Ship behavior is also very much affected by loadout. So the range of weapons on a ship will determine what it thinks an optimal distance to the enemy (likewise loadout of the enemy, respective flux levels, ally positioning, etc.)
I think what’s going on here is there may be an expectation for an emergency “Defend this ship RIGHT NOW” order to give when ships are engaged in combat, but the current Defend order is more suited to being given at the start of a fight or when ships are re-engaging rather than in the midst of combat.
Maybe what we need an emergency Defend order that’s intended to be given when all the ships involved are engaged, that tips the scales a bit more toward getting there regardless of risk. I’ll pitch the idea.
(Regarding tactical battle orders in general: I imagine the experience here could use a bit of iteration to make everything more explicit. I’ve got some notes, we’ve talked about stuff, we’ll see what we come up with.)
TLDR: The best way to directly get ships X & Y to defend Z right now is to select X & Y then right-click on ship Z.
Jailbreak:
This is working as intended, it should cost both the credits and story point to avoid the raid. Essentially we’re offering a smaller mission reward for avoiding the risks and consequences of the marine raid.
It’s weird because the narrative runs into being upfront about the game mechanics. We want to introduce the idea of an alternate story-point option but we need to put all the costs upfront so a player doesn’t spend a storypoint then discover the credits cost, or vice versa.
I’m not sure if a ship’s position on the battlefield is taken into consideration when being assigned to these tasks, I’ll ask Alex that one.
Got an answer: the estimated time of arrival is considered rather than position as-such.
And regarding the Defend order, it’s
“vaguely hold the point this ship represents”, not “defend this ship”
… Which is something that hopefully can become more clear as we iterate on the system.
I guess what contributes to the issue is that these look like RTS controls and come with that set of expectations. But they’re more like a means of giving the algorithm driving the ships additional goals on top of “stay out of danger”, “cooperate with allies”, “manage flux and ammo levels”, etc. rather than something as direct as Starcraft or Company of Heroes.
I’m just here to say it’s glad to hear from @dbaum . I played the hell out of Dredmor and think I may have helped Beta test??? Maybe I just liked it so much I actually took the time to report things. :)
Got that over with…now time to check this out.
Does the game auto download the updates when you launch? Or do I have to go find the download on their website and install it?
You have to download and install.
Just download and install each version over the top of the last one. It will automatically uninstall the old files, install the new ones, and keep your save games and your game key.
Yeah, I guess I got confused by how the choice was worded. If it said something like ‘pay the requested 28,000 credits plus a story point to proceed’, it might be clearer. Thanks for the reply!
But don’t do this on Mac – this will wipe out your saves since unlike most apps it saves games into its own executable package.
I have Ludic Path cells infecting my colony and I think it must be a bug. I have one farm and one mine. No AIs anywhere. A colony like this should not have anything of interest to pathers yet there they are. I do have commerce. Will that cause them to take interest?
Also, it looks like the DOOM cruiser got nerfed hard because of the skills change (phase mastery is history). There are now two phase hull mods that are mutually exclusive so I’m not sure which one of those is best to use. Anyone using Dooms?
I think the tooltip for path cells tells you what’s interesting them. Full list is on the wiki here. An ore mine + tech mine on extensive ruins is enough, or a few installed items.
:D
… Ah, well if you haven’t played Starsector yet, I hope you enjoy it!
And I’m not sure if anyone ever noticed, but the molotov cocktails in Dungeons of Dredmor are called “Mosolov Cocktails” for Alex Mosolov, the creator of Starsector. ;)
Awesome. BTW I was so happy to see you’re involved with this game. Still wish Dungeons of Dredmor has an ipad port :)