I guess I am a theoretically minded gamer. Sometimes I spend more time thinking of how to play than actually playing. This is an important part of gaming for me. I have an ongoing game with a friend, we only play in the weekends, but we both think of our AIWar game every day of the week, analyzing, planning.
The kind of information I want is anything that contributes to this analyzing and planning.
The ultimate strategical goal is to find the winning doctrine, if there is such a thing in this game. If you, x, manage to create a game that can be beaten but has no winning doctrine, you win automatically, as you then have created something equivalent to chess. You are the real opponent, it is your AI that plays simultaneously against the whole world (including yourself). So I don't expect you to help us on the doctrine level, that would spoil the game.
Dear X4000, you are a man of many words. You are very generous with information. I have spent hours and hours with your update notes. There is very much indirect information in there. I read, for example, that some unit has been nerfed in a specific way, and this can sometimes tell me what your original intention with designing this specific ship was. Some units have some special abilities that are not documented, or that just escaped me, until I read about them being fixed or nerfed or boosted in some way. I consider this intelligence gathering, it is part of the fun. You have been most helpful on this level.
And the basic tutorials, the printable manual and the wiki are excellent. So in a way I got all the information I want.
The direct reason for my post was that I have heard a lot about golems, but I have never seen one in action. I am out of cash, so I cannot unlock the expansion before next week, and I don't want to play the trial version, I fear I might die of frustration when the three hour clock strikes. Better wait till I can play a full game, and I am still quite busy getting deeper into the basic game. But I thought I might benefit on checking up on what kind of thing a golem really is, and do some strategic thinking in advance. By reading announcements, update notes and other forum posts I had already gathered a lot of indirect and unfocused information about golems, creating a fuzzy concept in the process. What I wanted was some exact information, that could clear as much of this fuzziness as possible, before I run into a real, live golem. As an example, I would like to know beforehand if it is something I shall kill or capture or both (these possibilities has not been decided yet in my fuzzy concept).
What I expected, I guess, was just an official entry somewhere on golems. I mean, when you hear of the expansion, what you remember is the golems, so I thought that your public relations department (I guess that is also you) had provided some entry somewhere, where we customers are told some lore and given some hard information and maybe some instructions. I did several searches, first on the wiki, then on the forum. I was a bit surprised, when I found that what I thought was one of the main features of the expansion doesn't even have its own entry on the internet. Instead I got a ton of hits from all over the place, most of them from your update notes. So this is probably where you can find me the next few days, gathering intelligence on golems.
Your in-game approach of course is the one to follow, as you plan to change things continuously, and an in-depth printed manual, even a pdf manual, is probably not worth the trouble. And if I really want all the raw ship stats, I am sure that you have already provided an in-game hotkey for that purpose.
I am still a newbie, and as such I suggest that every time you release an expansion, you select certain key units (all your darlings) and show them off in the wiki, leaving all the rest in the 'fog of the game' to be explored by the players. When the next expansion comes out, I will probably not be using the wiki any more, or any printable manual, at that time being an experienced oldie, but there is always a newbie, every expansion you release will inevitable attract more people. And it is when you are a newbie that you get cinfused if the manual says one thing and the game does something else. Experienced players don't read the manual any more, and they tend to adapt quickly to changes (unless the change killed their particular darling).
All this is just my personal view on things, but it cannot just be me (thank you, deMangler)
Well then, it seems I am a man of many words too.
