faq//manual?

[Oewyn]

One thing to note about the artillery golem:  It's shots ignore shields, but they don't ignore force fields.  Since I have never seen an AI home station w/out 2-3 Core force fields (~ 68M health i think), this thing is fairly useless against AI home command stations.  The best use I've seen for it is to kill an Ion cannon across the map on an enemy homeworld, after the orbital mass driver was taken out of course.

Ah, you must be playing on difficulty 8 or something.  Generally on Diff 7 and down there is just one such forcefield, and the artillery golem can thus take out all of the above with a couple of shots.

Considering that the golem has 50M health, and each shot does 10M to the target and itself.  This gives it 5 shots fully loaded.  That wouldn't even take out 1 core force field which has 88M health.

[x4000]

Unless you pop off an EMP first.   But yes, point taken.

[Oewyn]

Unless you pop off an EMP first.   But yes, point taken.

Core FFs, like all core ships are immune to EMPs.  But good try :-P

[x4000]

Unless you pop off an EMP first.   But yes, point taken.

Core FFs, like all core ships are immune to EMPs.  But good try :-P

Blah!  Well, then -- good point.  If you can clear the forcefield first, that artillery golem can 6-shot the force field.  As I recall, I put all of those safeguards in place specifically to prevent players from just rushing the artillery golem and then rushing one then the other home station and ending the game while repairing the golem in between.  So, that does create the challenges noted throughout here.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

I, also, expected a manual for the expansion. I was on the fence about buying this game until the expansion came out, and it mentioned capturable golems. Then I started to play, realized that I had no idea what I was doing, and started googling.

However, having gotten used to the game and some insights on the development and community, I think that it is just as appropriate to have a wiki. The only manuals that have ever been worth reading were blizzard game manuals. The tutorial is far more effective in this situation, complemented by the wiki and forum.

I think that this game does have a bit of a learning curve, which is a barrier of entry to the product. I'm not suggesting it be made simpler, because I don't like to play simple games, but perhaps the mechanics of the game, statistics even, could be written down. I have been spreading the word about this game to my friends, and I think confusion is their biggest hesitation.

Oh, and to reply to the person that was mentioning thinking about the game being almost as fun as playing it, that's very true. To any chess player club level or above, theory craft about the game can be just as amusing and occupying as implementation. Many of us lead lives during the day that do not include ai war, are not easily amused by human social drama, and would much prefer thinking about statistics and strategies. It is the same thing for Dungeons & Dragons players involved in campaigns.

[x4000]

Great post, TheMachineIsSentient.  Regarding the statistics and mechanics... the mechanics are generally available on the wiki, or in the case of the statistics (which tend to change frequently in the betas), can easily be exported with Ctrl+Alt+F8.  For a while those were also being maintained by Revenantus on the community wiki, but he's less available now.  Am I missing something else, mechanics-or-statistics-wise that you'd like to see?