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1

General Discussion / Re: First impressions and play-through(s) of first mission

« on: March 04, 2012, 07:40:13 AM »

is beta, stop making such of fuss from it

I'm well aware it's beta (maybe even late-alpha). As such at this stage the product can be improved if constructive feedback is given.
Conversely, people who say "stop whinging" in about as many words aren't encouraging said constructive feedback.

Fortunately the rest of the threads repliers are much more open minded. Thanks for your replies guys.

2

General Discussion / Re: First impressions and play-through(s) of first mission

« on: March 03, 2012, 01:08:44 AM »

It's fine to question my skill, however this thread is now becoming a "my anecdote beats your anecdote". For my part I would re-iterate that I've stated exactly what I did on the first missions and why I expected it to work. I'm not just saying "I lose, its too hard", I'm saying /why/ I lose and pointing out how the game doesn't appear to work in the way I'd expect it to. Those expectations are driven both by the tutorial and decades of playing similar games.

If you don't enjoy challenging games that require learning anymore, maybe this game just isn't for you.  That's perfectly fine, but it you should acknowledge that before pointing out apparently poor design that may not actually be poor design.

You're right, I don't enjoy overly challenging games any more (used to). There are just too many good games out there now that its not worth my time spending hours trying to figure out how to actually win at a "bad"(over-difficult) one.
I'd also counter by pointing out that this game is sold to everyone of all skill levels. I don't remember a nice big warning saying "this game is difficult and you're unlikely to enjoy it if you don't want to work for your victory"; there isn't a demo after all.

t's sad to hear, because the game is actually really promising and i personally didn't find the learning curve to be very steep.
Interesting to hear would be what you mean with "purely tactical"?
Did you try flying the ship all by yourself?
also it would be necessary to know the details, which ship against which other ship

Purely-tactical = a mission where you only have one spaceship and fly it yourself. On the first campaign fight there was only one enemy (frigate) and I won. The second one there were some fighters and they utterly annihilated me.

i can only agree in one point you loose stuff too quickly in campaign mode, or simply don't gain enough money

Heh, I'm afraid you're not agreeing with me there because I never played the campaign long enough to experience either of them. ;-)

I figure at this point I'll just leave the game and come back when its at a later stage in development. The community is active enough they won't miss any bugs I might report.

3

General Discussion / Re: First impressions and play-through(s) of first mission

« on: February 28, 2012, 12:20:14 AM »

The Ctrl-A\D is interesting and may be useful.

Well, the visual indicator that the game is paused is that everything is frozen in space and not moving...it also says in the text combat log "game paused" and "game unpaused".  I don't mean to sound snide it just seems like a really odd complaint. 

Because everything not moving isn't sufficient when the only thing on the screen is the flagship. You can't tell if the game is paused/not without manually controlling it. You should be able to tell just by looking at a basic indicator. And yes, there is the text log, however that disappears quickly and doesn't always show.

As for why you are failing, just read around and keep trying, there is also a game manual stickied on this forum with all the basics you might need beyond the tutorial.  But this game is MEANT to be a challenge, it's not meant to be arcadey like SPAZ, and it delivers.  You need to expect to die a lot, but by practicing you will learn.

I'm afraid that's poor balance / game design. I realise its not SPAZ and I have no problem with complex games (my preference is for complex games actually!), its just that if a "easy" mission requires I actually read around to be able to win it, something is wrong with the game's design/balance or the level itself (a combination in this case IMHO). You should NOT expect to die lots, dying isn't fun in this game (some games make it fun an basically "free" - SF isn't one of them - it punishes you).

From reading the replies it seems that most players who have stuck around enjoy a painful learning curve, but what of the ones (like me) who don't? Ok, once upon a time I did, but no more. I've not played the game any further than a few minutes of campaign (I lost my second fight BADLY and that was purely tactical so am probably just giving up on the game until the balance is improved).

4

General Discussion / Re: First impressions and play-through(s) of first mission

« on: February 27, 2012, 01:07:26 AM »

You can hit space at any time, in tactical or in the combat screen to pause or play the game.

Thanks, I know. My problem is that there's no easy visual way to tell that the game is paused or not while on the combat screen. I have to press space several times to see what the state is.

This has been discussed at great length in the 'Fleet Control Feedback' thread, you're welcome to peruse it, but if I were to give a succinct response, I would ask how you feel your style of play is being 'punished'? If you're talking about not being able to play the game entirely from the tactical screen, then you are absolutely being discouraged with a gameplay mechanic. The computer isn't going to fly your ship, or prioritize your targets as well as you are.

I shall take a look when I have a moment.
However, on the matter of punished, its the simple fact that the game is very difficult to complete with just tactical. I would disagree this is a gameplay mechanic that's discouraging because it offers no feedback as to why you fail, you just fail repeatedly (albeit in a different way each time). For all I know maybe my tactics just don't work. Yes I appreciate the AI won't be as good as me, but the AI is also less lazy than me; I don't want to have to manage /both/ tactical and fleet simultaneously. Thats just my take anyway.

5

General Discussion / Re: First impressions and play-through(s) of first mission

« on: February 26, 2012, 10:04:24 AM »

Thanks for the replies folks. Don't worry, I'm quite familiar with development cycles (I've done a little myself). The post was meant as a "these are first impressions" as usually people using a product have gotton used to it.

4 when your IN combat and not on the map there are a play and pause icon on the left side or at least i think there are these light up accordingly.

I've not seen this myself. There are play/pause icons on the map view, but not on the combat view.




Some interesting thoughts there. I've put my thoughts on autofire and autopilot in the bugs thread. The other things are useful to know but I think there are two take-home messages here:
1) The tutorials could use some work. (might be on the todo list)
2) Due to the game design, I'm guessing there's going to be a spectrum of game player types:

Fleet: Control the fleet from the map, don't participate in actual combat. Aka, the strategist

Ship: Control the flagship, ignore the fleet, go around blowing stuff up. I.e. a Tactician

Every player is likely to be on the spectrum between those two somewhere. Myself, I'm very towards the Fleet end. I'd suggest the game shouldn't punish any valid play styles that it allows. If a play style isn't valid then it should be discouraged somehow with a gameplay mechanic and not just by "failing" the mission.

6

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Numerous bugs - 0.5a

« on: February 26, 2012, 09:40:34 AM »

a) I was in the weapons group. The tutorial says nothing about this and its not even slightly self evident. I'd suggest that they should remain on autofire until its disabled with the same key-combo or the player manually fires them (an OR trigger).

b) Zooming to text that's part of the map-interface? I think you mis-understand the problem. This text is part of the interface, you can't zoom in/out on it.

I don't really see any reason it should be one way or the other actually.

c) I suspect that's because you're used to it. As a new player this makes zilch sense. Why would I give a ship an order and not have it action them until I give the ship (and only this one particular ship) /another/ order telling it to follow the first order?

7

Bug Reports & Support / Numerous bugs - 0.5a

« on: February 26, 2012, 05:31:56 AM »

Hi,

After some initial play-throughs of the tutorials and first mission, I've come across the following:


Combat Tutorial:
a)   The tutorial tells me Shift-3 autofires, but I can't see it doing anything. I still have to manually target with my mouse. The box next to the word "autofire" flashes but thats it.
   On my THIRD play through of the combat tutorial they actually autofired as I'd expect, though the info box is identical.
   
Fleet tutorial
b)    I'm playing 1024*768 windowed (so I can write this at the same time).
   I've just deployed my drone wing and been told to assign orders. I move my mouse and and pan it over the fighter icons. Up pops a nice page full of information and stats about the fighters, BUT, much of this information is off-screen (to the right), at least when I enter the fighter-box from the right side.
   

c)   After completion of the tutorial I stuck around and gave orders to capture the Nav Buoy Alpha that had appeared. This was assigned to the hammerhead. Fine. Except it never actioned them. There was no movement on its part (the game wasn't paused). I believe this is because the ship needed to be set to "autopilot", but I put it to you that if I am giving the ship orders I clearly want it to autopilot and shouldn't need to manually set that order.

d) If i give my command ship "autopilot" orders, the "autopilot" order does not grey out. This means I can give it the order multiple times. Not sure what the effect of this is, but I'd expect the order to grey out if autopilot is active.


e) For some reason pressing "+" results in it going to the map page (despite not being on the "controls" list).

f) As noted, the game is windowed (Windows 7 64bit). I'm at the main menu and click the windows "x" icon which typically closes a window. But this doesn't do anything!

8

General Discussion / First impressions and play-through(s) of first mission

« on: February 26, 2012, 05:27:26 AM »

Hi.
I've just bought the pre-order and figured I'd post my first-thoughts. Before I get into a rather long winded account of my issues with the game I figured I'd start by saying fundamentally it looks quite funky and has a lot of prospective. There's lots of polish here already (i.e. mission descriptions and general lore).

That said, following is a big wall of text. This probably includes some bugs. I've split off the obvious ones I could find and put them in the bugs forum:

This is 0.5a


Combat tutorial:
   The mouse movement system is horrible. I hate how the screen moves to where the mouse /was/ in relation to the background. I've played countless games in my time but few have had a look-around system that grates as much as this does. Maybe I'll get used to it.
   
   Combining the way that manually aiming PD lasers works with the way that the mouse look works is very... unpleasant. (autofire didn't work for me on the first two playthroughts, see bug).
   
   Shift - A/D makes the ship strafe. Fine. But when I do this it ALSO makes the ship turn to point at my mouse. Arrrrg. I was already disliking the mouse-look and control scheme before this. :-(
   
Outcome of playing the combat tutorial: I really don't like combat in this game. :-( It's so much nice in SpacePiratesAndZombies or any other space game I've played. I anticipate just leaving battles to the autopilot.

Fleet tutorial
   I'm playing 1024*768 windowed (so I can write this at the same time).
   I've just deployed my drone wing and been told to assign orders. I move my mouse and and pan it over the fighter icons. Up pops a nice page full of information and stats about the fighters, BUT, much of this information is off-screen (to the right), at least when I enter the fighter-box from the right side.
   
   Is there a way to speed up the game? For some reason pressing "+" results in it going to the map page (despite not being on the "controls" list).
   
   It's never really clear when the game is paused when you're on the combat-view. It does occasionally say "game paused/unpaused" in the top left, but that's not particualrly helpful when its disappeared and it doesn't always show.

   Outcome of playing the fleet tutorial: I like the possibilities of this, however its rather unwieldy at present, particularly the interface. I can't really offer more constructive feedback other than that its just a bit messy and cluttered and it doesn't help that the ships don't always do what you expect, despite having been given orders. Its also hard to tell what orders a ship/whatever currently has. I think you need to get input from people who haven't spent a long time getting used to the system


   
Mission: "Turning the Tables" - The game claims this is "easy".
   Attempt 1: I set capture orders on both points, the mining drones go off in each direction. I set "destroyer escort" on the Hamatsu. The destroyer does nothing whatsoever (I'm staying in map view at this point).
   I then manually took command of the destroyer and tried to kill the two close-support frigates. Yeah right. The things just kite out of my range. I can't catch them (too slow) and can't hit them. My fighters get destroyed doing whatever.
   Ok, So failed take 1.
   
   Attempt 2: I again set "destroyer escort" on the Hamatsu. Then then give each of the capitals a "light escort" order. I then just hit play and wait (in the map view, never having left it). My destroyer flies to the top of the map leaving the hamatsu to fend for itself. At the top of the map it then reverses and flies downward (backwards, hence reverses, rather than turns around).
   The Hamatsu gets destroyed. Failure number 2.
   
   So what am I doing wrong? Do I need to manually pilot the destroyer? Despite having given it escort orders? I've not given it "autopilot" orders, it follows those should be given automatically when its assigned a role. Also, surely if its not on autopilot it shouldn't be automatically accepting orders or classed as "in standby".
   
   Attempt 3:
   Same orders as take 2, but after issuing them I click "autopilot" on the destroyer. Things look up, it actually does stuff this time!
   
   But for some reason the fighters escorting the hamatsu go flying far off to the left to attack fighters near nav alpha (left) while the combat and both fleets are going on towards Sensor alpha (right).
   I leave the battle on auto and the destroyer on autopilot much like me can't hit the support frigates which just kite it. It does take out the assault frigate though. Eventually the strike carrier is destroyed, the support frigates retreat and I get the score of 29%. Whooo.

   I get a "new high score of... previous high score of 0%" - you may not wish to show the "previous high score" if it is 0%. Seems kind of pointless.


   Attempt 4:
           Can I actually destroy those damnable support frigate? I decide this time to set the destroyer as escort again (plus manually autopilot), but give the fighters an "intercept" mission against the first support frigate I see. I have no idea what happens next, but one set of fighters disappears (turns out destroyed) and the other is miles away attacking some other fighters despite having a nice big arrow pointing at the still surviving frigate which has 3/5 of its hull intact.
   Outcome: Defeat. The hamatsu is disabled. Oh well.
   
   Outcome of mission: It's pretty obvious the tutorials haven't prepared me for the game if I'm losing an "easy" mission multiple times despite years of playing these sorts of games. Typically these things are a cake-walk at this level.
   I appreciate that kiting is a valid tactic, but I don't expect it to be used against me to such effect on a an easy mission where I have no recourse against it (it's obvious the fighters are useless for this).

9

General Discussion / anti-spam

« on: February 26, 2012, 05:09:41 AM »

Just so you know, "how many ears do you have" has two answers:

"2"
"two"

One of these doesn't seem to work (two). Yes I got the wrong one on my first register attempt.