Hi!

[athros]

So, I took the plunge yesterday and bought the whole collection from Steam. All of the expansions, everything. Just after I finished the Military portion of the Tutorials. It's that much fun to me. (An aside, I'm working through the Intermediate tutorial now.) I feel a little guilty since the main game was 50% off and there was a discount on the latest expansion, so I hope that Arcen Games still manages to make the same chunk of change from it.

Compared to the other RTS's, I really enjoy it's blend...and the fact that you can do little raids as well as big 'HULK SMASH' types of raids too. It something I miss in a lot of the RTS's..that level of strategic and tactical ability. I've played so many RTS's (and gotten bored with them just as fast) that it's refreshing to find something that has things off kilter enough that memorizing stats is either 1.) not very useful or 2.) a waste of time (now that I know I can look up ships in the game!) or 3.) Not very useful since not every ship is in every game.

I have a couple of friends who might pick it up. They want to see it in action first. I told them about the demo, but they're the more "I'll come over and drink your Guinness and watch you play" types

So, Hi! Thank you very much for making this game! I appreciate it!

[keith.lamothe]

Thank you for the support, welcome to the forums

And don't feel too guilty about getting it on discount, it sounds like you'll be paying the difference in Guinness

[BobTheJanitor]

Good taste in games, good taste in beers. You can stay. 

Welcome!

[Panopticon]

* Panopticon cracks a Guinness.

Cheer, and welcome. I feel pretty much the same way about the vast majority of RTS as you do, in that it lacks the S component of its genre acronym. AI War is the definite cure for that.

[Echo35]

Can I come over and drink your Guinness and play WITH you instead?

[athros]

Good taste in games, good taste in beers. You can stay. 

Welcome!

THanks for the welcome! I'm the unfortunate minority with Guinness around the people I know.

* Panopticon cracks a Guinness.

Cheer, and welcome. I feel pretty much the same way about the vast majority of RTS as you do, in that it lacks the S component of its genre acronym. AI War is the definite cure for that.

Thanks for the welcome! I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way about most RTS's. Glad this might be the cure.

Thank you for the support, welcome to the forums

And don't feel too guilty about getting it on discount, it sounds like you'll be paying the difference in Guinness

Thanks Yea..the 2 or 3 of them that are coming over will likely go through 9-12...and then complain that I don't have any "good" beer....like Coors Light or Bud Light. 

Can I come over and drink your Guinness and play WITH you instead?

Heh. I wish at this point. All of the people I talk to go "AI wha..?". It would help me learn Though I have to get through the tutorial first. So much depth that I need some kind of guide, or I'll be lost for a loooooooong time.

[athros]

So, on the plus side, I think 2 out of 3 are going to get it. Minus side - it cost me 20 Guinness.

I also just (like 10 minutes ago) finished the Intermediate tutorial. Freaking amazing. I haven't jumped out of my chair like that since I finished Starcraft 1.

Now, on to my first campaign. 80 planets, only the Zenith Expansion enabled

Difficulty 6 and Random Easiest AI's, no minor factions, no AI options

Planet pick nets me - Zenith Paralyzer

Top left corner of the map, 3 wormholes to the unknown

Thanks again for this amazing game!

[BobTheJanitor]

Yeah, first time I finished the little 10 planet pseudo full game tutorial and saw the 'YOU WIN' pop up, I actually cheered out loud, prompting my girlfriend to giggle at me. Few games give you as much of a sense of accomplishment upon winning like AI War. 

[zoutzakje]

welcome to the forums and welcome to a game that will really get you addicted
played AI war for about 150 hours now and I feel like I still got a whole bunch of stuff to learn lol. You should read the wiki, lot of usefull stuff there.
and yeah, winning in this game really does give you a good feeling lol. I just finished a 7/7 80 planet campaign succesfully and I shouted "yeahh I'm awesome!" when I finally won lol.

[Shrugging Khan]

I hate to win...winning means I have to start all over again.

[athros]

So...first game...I underestimated the difference between "Scripted Tutorial" and "Bastard AI with minimal limits"

So I restarted...and I think I might restart again, now that I have a better grasp on the technology that I can unlock. That's my only real gripe with the tutorial. Understanding the technology that is unlockable out the gate...like Command station Mk II and Mk III, and Engineers Mk II and Mk III, some of the turrets (other than the Tachyon), Riot Starships etc. More of an explanation, perhaps in a tutorial of it's own, something short with a load of Knowledge ready to go, and a basic explanation of "This is just a quick run through, every game is different, but here are some options". Minor, very very minor. Don't lose any sleep over it.

Out of everything though, this game is freaking awesome. In the game I'm about to restart out of, I was using small groups of Raptors to gate raid, whilst softening up a planet with an Adv. Lab on it.

It's amazing to me to find this level of strategy and tactics in a genre that's turned into BO Poker, Optimizing your BO, and APM of no less than 100.

Ok, I'm making it weird. I'll likely get something rolling in the After Action Reports, showing my progress.

[athros]

I do have a question though. Is it better to play with all of the expansions on to get used to the ships, and slowly turn on the minor factions, or limit it by expansions?

[BobTheJanitor]

I hate to win...winning means I have to start all over again.

Whatever, I can spend half an hour just setting up a new game. Easily 15 minutes of that is just deciding on a map type, then refreshing the map seed 20-30 times. It's great fun. Am I the only one that does this? I enjoy the potential and anticipation of a new game almost as much as I enjoy actually playing the game.

I do have a question though. Is it better to play with all of the expansions on to get used to the ships, and slowly turn on the minor factions, or limit it by expansions?

Up to you... 'better' is hard to quantify. They all interact in different ways, so a CoN/TZR game will be different than a LotS/CoN game, and so on. I usually just turn them all on, but you'll get a different experience out of them each time. None of the expansions will make the game harder, exactly, just more complex. The only problem you'll have with starting out with everything is that you'll probably be spending a lot more time looking at the ship reference or the wiki to figure out what's going on. If you don't mind the idea of pausing to research things every few minutes, then just turning on everything won't hurt.

[athros]

Up to you... 'better' is hard to quantify. They all interact in different ways, so a CoN/TZR game will be different than a LotS/CoN game, and so on. I usually just turn them all on, but you'll get a different experience out of them each time. None of the expansions will make the game harder, exactly, just more complex. The only problem you'll have with starting out with everything is that you'll probably be spending a lot more time looking at the ship reference or the wiki to figure out what's going on. If you don't mind the idea of pausing to research things every few minutes, then just turning on everything won't hurt.

Ship reference? The charts that are on the wiki with the amazingly shocking amount of information? Or is there another place I'm missing?

I think I might just go with All of the expansions + just Golems, and work my way up with all the mini factions. I want there to be more in the Galaxy. For some reason, it seemed empty with just Zenith and nothing else turned on, but I don't want to overload myself with too much.

So many decisions!

[keith.lamothe]

Ship reference? The charts that are on the wiki with the amazingly shocking amount of information? Or is there another place I'm missing?

If you click on the "Stats" button in the lower left hand corner of the screen, it brings up a window with a number of tabs, one of which is called "Reference" and has a fair bit of info on the ships in the game