Fallen Spire feedback

[keith.lamothe]

I've gotten a variety of feedback on the Fallen Spire campaign.  Mostly people are happy with it, but some have said it was so grindy that they wouldn't play it again.  I regret that I didn't realize the "grindy" feeling was still there for some folks until we were way too close to the official release for me to safely make any changes.

I'd like to hear specifically what folks would like to see changed as far as FS stuff, and why.  If many other players start chiming in saying "noooooo don't do that!" then I'll be probably let that discussion go on rather than implement anything hastily.  But if everyone's in favor of a particular thing and it's feasible technically and whatnot, it (or something like it) will probably happen.

Fire away!

[TechSY730]

Haven't made it very far in it actually. During the beta periods, I restart every time something that could influence seeding of the game happens. This beta cycle, that happened quite a bit. This, on top of the nasty event attacks slowing my progress by a good bit (dang, now I actually fear the AI  ), I never actually got to get the full feel of it. I'll comment more as I get further in this time.

[chemical_art]

Only 7 hours in for the 5.0 game. Admittedly, my "blitzes" have turned more into "slugfests" and some might consider that grindy. Or how I spent a good 3 hours with the goal of ultimately setting down fortress defenses.

The only thing that might feel "grindy" atm is the shield system. The almost require the use of MK IV scouts to ensure you get them all reasonably, and I was surprised that you can only destroy them by taking the planet for yourself with no other alternative. I know they are meant to prevent super low AIP games, but I could image they would be a real drag if you did not set out from the get-go prepared to take them down.

[TechSY730]

Only 7 hours in for the 5.0 game. Admittedly, my "blitzes" have turned more into "slugfests" and some might consider that grindy. Or how I spent a good 3 hours with the goal of ultimately setting down fortress defenses.

The only thing that might feel "grindy" atm is the shield system. The almost require the use of MK IV scouts to ensure you get them all reasonably, and I was surprised that you can only destroy them by taking the planet for yourself with no other alternative. I know they are meant to prevent super low AIP games, but I could image they would be a real drag if you did not set out from the get-go prepared to take them down.

And that is why they are optional.

Admittedly, aside from new players who are tempted to just rush the AI home without knowing what they are getting into, I don't really see who would want to play with these on.

For the most part though, at least the ones they are on are typically planets you would would want anyways.

[keith.lamothe]

For the Core Shield Generators, yea, those are optional so I wouldn't call them part of the Fallen Spire experience per se.

In fact, the alternate victory condition at the end of the Fallen Spire campaign doesn't require that you first take out the Core Shield Network.  Once you achieve it, that network is instantaneously vaporized

But you don't have to do the alternate-victory thing when playing FS.  In fact, sometimes it's considerably safer to try for a normal win using the extra FS goodies.

[Invelios]

I really wanted to try a FS game now that it's out, so I tried playing vs Diff 6 AIs, the highest I've beaten normally so far. I... didn't get far. Constructing that first city hub killed me. I didn't expect the force that came with building it. Up to then I enjoyed it, so  I decided to lower the difficulty a little bit. I went to Diff 4, and I beat it via alternate win, but I might have gone too far down. The attacks where way to easy, never even saw a golem in the counter attacks, just some spirecraft that my cities could vaporize easily at that point. My troubles finding the right difficulty aside, the campaign itself was pretty good. It did seem a little grindy towards the end, but that was mostly cause by then I could steamroll everything on Diff 4 by that point. It does feel a little repetitive once you go after the 3rd shard, though. And everything takes so long to build, which was especially annoying once I had chokepoints ready for all my cities, since I didn't really want to expand much after that, so most of the time spent in the last 1/4 of the game was waiting for stuff to build. Again, this could be to me playing on too low a difficulty, and also due to playing on an X style map (so easy to make chokepoints there). I'll try to play a Diff 5 game and see if that's a better balance between hard and too easy, or maybe I just need to try Diff 6 again, but be more careful. Before I tried to play without reading the Wiki article on FS, so that attack when I built the hub took me completely by suprise. The Fallen Spire campaign looks mostly ok, but if you could do something to make the last few shards more interesting, besides just more "chase forces", that would probably improve it a bit. If I can actually get through a game on a higher difficulty, I might be able to give better feedback.

[c4sc4]

Huh, core shield generators are optional, didn't know that, I thought they were just part of that game but really, a lot of things are technically optional in this game like you can turn off turrets and starships. Not to derail this further but I noticed on a game I'm playing that the A prime core shield generator planets have an advanced research station on them, is this intentional or a coincidence?

Oh yeah, fallen spire, I haven't actually tried it yet so I can't help you there.

[keith.lamothe]

Not to derail this further but I noticed on a game I'm playing that the A prime core shield generator planets have an advanced research station on them, is this intentional or a coincidence?

Was there also an ARS on the planet?

[c4sc4]

Not to derail this further but I noticed on a game I'm playing that the A prime core shield generator planets have an advanced research station on them, is this intentional or a coincidence?

Was there also an ARS on the planet?

I think I may have edited my post after you read it.

[keith.lamothe]

Not to derail this further but I noticed on a game I'm playing that the A prime core shield generator planets have an advanced research station on them, is this intentional or a coincidence?

Was there also an ARS on the planet?

I think I may have edited my post after you read it.

Ah, ok.

A-Gens are placed on all ARS planets, that's the definition.  So basically the only case where normal play would not result in breaking the A-ring is if you actually intended to leave more than one ARS uncaptured.

[c4sc4]

A-Gens are placed on all ARS planets, that's the definition.  So basically the only case where normal play would not result in breaking the A-ring is if you actually intended to leave more than one ARS uncaptured.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Now this thread can be about Fallen Spire again.

[LintMan]

I've gotten a variety of feedback on the Fallen Spire campaign.  Mostly people are happy with it, but some have said it was so grindy that they wouldn't play it again.  I regret that I didn't realize the "grindy" feeling was still there for some folks until we were way too close to the official release for me to safely make any changes.

I'd like to hear specifically what folks would like to see changed as far as FS stuff, and why.  If many other players start chiming in saying "noooooo don't do that!" then I'll be probably let that discussion go on rather than implement anything hastily.  But if everyone's in favor of a particular thing and it's feasible technically and whatnot, it (or something like it) will probably happen.

Fire away!

I love story-based campaigns, but I admit this one felt kinda grindy to me (though not so much that I wouldn't play it again).

I'd say it felt like that for a few reasons:
1) It was largely the same cycle of steps repeated numerous times: fight your way deep into AI territory, flee back to your territory with the shard, fight off angry waves, build hub, fight off angry waves, rinse, repeat.  After the 4th or 5th one of those, it felt pretty "samey".  8 or 9 of these same type of missions is too many.

2) Since each shard mission forces you to go deep into enemy space and then pounds you afterwards, it seemed to me that doing any regular expansion (ie: actually taking planets) while also doing the shard missions was self defeating since I'd have to heavily defend those planets.  So after the 4th or 5th shard, I ended up halting almost all expansion while doing the missions almost exclusively when I could.  So the mission structure seemed very "either do one or the other" with the regular gameplay, when "do one while also working towards the other" might have felt less repetitive.

My suggestion: Eliminate som of the deep-territory shard recovery missions (or make some of the actual shard retrievals trivial), replace with a variety of other mission types, and some increased challenge in other aspects.  Some ideas:
- mission: city hub (not shard) discovered on (nearby, not too deep) planet, must be rescued and defended in place (like a Human Colony Rebellion) since it cannot be moved.
- mission: knowledge-raid a particular AI planet to learn the location of a shard (or shards) the AI has hidden somewhere (perhaps even on a player-owned planet).
- mission: take out a series of special structures on one or more AI planets that are masking the detection of the shards or preventing the building of city hubs, etc.
- mission: AI has a captured spire artifact that allows it to warp gate in waves of ships directly to ANY spire city hub.  Capture (or destroy) this artifact.
- mission: AI sets up a massive ambush on the player using a fake shard signal as a lure (with something like a hidden black hole gen to prevent player fleet escape).
- when the Capital is built, the AI sends a half-strength Avenger (no planet nuke, though) directly towards it.

[hullu]

Soem gripes I think I aired somewhere else earlier too...

The shard-recovering missions feel the same, I only did the five that is minimum for the galactic capital. Although it seems you can do more if you fancy more hubs.

Actually I think the last three shards I recovered from the very same planet since after the 3rd I stopped all expansion since it felt pointless. Maybe this algorithm is bugged if you don't expand? Also, that made it very easy to take the shards since I had already neutered everything (three systems on the way) to the shard planet.

But the Biggest problem with LotS campaign was that I actually had to intentionally NOT finish the game normally and just wait for the last two shards so I could get a LotS victory, and no, this wasn't some low diff game, something 7-7.6 or so harder and easier AI - I could've finished the game at least five hours earlier with my spire fleet had I not wanted to see what the LotS campaign endgame has to offer. Well, it didn't really offer anything I hadn't seen before except a different way to pound the AI homeworlds. That's by far the biggest problem, that my offensive fleet became so powerful relatively early on that I could've ended the game whenever. The LotS waves were insanely tough (say 100 massive ships + escort, ugh, even with defense in depth I could never stop them before my homworld since I had three fronts (X map started from center)), but the 'normal' AI planets were basically just throw in my spire cruisers/destroyers and golems and they take care of anything even on a mark IV world <- and I could even keep spire frigates (lots of them) in defense.

not sure if I'll play again, the campaign, but haven't yet. Probably will try a 'conquer it all' -type of game with LotS enabled =)

Oh, and my AIP was somewhere around 800 and the normal waves/normal AI behaviour was laughable comparted to LotS waves, spire frigates alone destroyed any wave.


Oh, and while I'm at it. The spire starships are so powerful that in the end I noticed that building regualr fleets is pointless, the very endgame I don't think I had any fleet ships left, just spire starships. Nothing else could survive for too many seconds against those LotS waves - nor have any measurable firepower compared. I also didn't care too much about my two armored golems towards the end, since they felt underpowered  compared to the spire fleet.

[TechSY730]

(Snipped, read post above you really want to see it again)

Agreed with almost everything here, especially about how the 5 (or more if you want) shard recovery missions are the same, and the game breakingly OPness of the Spire ships. (Yea, they are supposed to be OP, but when they can replace everything else, you have gone too far)

The one thing I take exception to is your complaint that the AI waves to you are much smaller than the LotS event waves. I've always looked at it that the AI is considering the Spire completely different than the human. As such, the way the AI responds to the Spire is as if they Spire have their own AIP that is separate than the AIP the AI gives to humans. (Yea, I know its not like that in the code, but it is a nifty way to think about it in story terms). Because it is hinted that the Spire have already given the AI so much greif, you could say that the AIP for the Spire race is MUCH higher than the AIP for the human race. As such, the disproportionate difficulty of the waves due to humans and the waves due to Spire makes perfect sense.

[hullu]

I do want to emphasize that even said all of the above I had fun playing the campaign. And I think the expansion is well worth the price even if you don't even touch the LotS campaign.