Ancient Shadows Newbie MP question

[Tridus]

Hi. I've got a friend who I'd like to try to get into AI War. He tends to like strategy games, but doesn't like managing bases or base defenses very much. So I read that Ancient Shadows has a Champion mode that someone can play, which gives them the champion unit but presumably no base to deal with (presumably he'd be using my base). Is that correct? I think that'd be perfect for him.

If so, how does that work in regards to resources and research? I've never gotten a chance to play AI War in MP, so I'm not really clear on how it would work. Does the AI treat it differently than if we both played in normal mode with two bases and such?

Thanks!

[RCIX]

There is a champion only mode. None of the resources or research matters for him, he'll get a champion tethered to your command station and that's basically all he'll have to care about (running around killing guard posts, doing nebula scenarios, supporting your fleet with his abilities, etc). The AI shouldn't treat it as a full two players either AFAIK, but will be a bit harder with the additional champion.

[Tridus]

Cool, thanks.

[LordSloth]

If you run with the last official release, then a champion only player will count for around one-fifth of a normal player in terms of wave multipliers and the like. Manageable.
If you run with the latest beta update, then wave increase is gone, but the AI will have a champion countermeasure of their, requiring you to pay a bit more attention to defense. The next version will delay that a bit further, but otherwise... If you've grabbed the latest update, use some of the extra starting resources you're given in order to make certain your HW is secure.

[keith.lamothe]

One of the design goals of the champion feature was indeed to let people join in on MP but only have to care about one unit

Btw, you could also just have the other player in the "Helper" role which means they have absolutely no units of their own and you can turn on team control and your friend can just grab whatever attack fleet is handy and go make trouble while you clean up the mess   But the champion approach means that your friend doesn't have to wait for the existence of said attack fleet, since it just respawns when it dies, etc.

[Tridus]

Interesting. Can you turn on team control if he's in the champion role? I'd have no problem giving him control of the offensive fleet and letting him go to town, and he'd have fun with that since actually building it is my problem.

[keith.lamothe]

Interesting. Can you turn on team control if he's in the champion role? I'd have no problem giving him control of the offensive fleet and letting him go to town, and he'd have fun with that since actually building it is my problem.

Yep, you can do team control with any role, "Helper" is just there for when you don't want anything else.

[Tridus]

Great, thanks a lot everyone! Hopefully my friend likes it.

[keith.lamothe]

Hopefully my friend likes it

Well, if not, there's also the brainwashing devi- oh, that's only in my dev version, right.

[chemical_art]

Hopefully my friend likes it

Well, if not, there's also the brainwashing devi- oh, that's only in my dev version, right.

Would explain the hints of subliminal messaging I felt sometimes.

Especially when that one part is played backward...was that a sound, or a line of program...