Just bought game have a question or two...

[mavorspam]

Hello all, got a quick question for you as I just bought the game off Steam,

1) I see a stickied thread for the expansion beta? Is it out yet? I'm not really good at unzipping and moving folders so I would rather wait for an official release with an installer. Will it be out on Steam?

2) I was a huge fan of Supreme Commander and thought it was an amazing game. On the flip side, i really didn't like Sins of a Solar Empire. For you vets,which game is this more like?

3) How many engineers do you guys build? In Supcom I'd have several dozen running around.

Thx for any replies!

[carlosjuero]

1) Not yet, soon though I believe.

2) Neither really - it has some similarity to Sins (wormhole connected planets), and SupCom (engineers, massive unit battles) but is in its own niche.

3) Depends really - at my home base I will have around 10 usually [some in FRD, some at the main base to provide support there), then I will have a few with my incursion forces for support. Engineers are a bit different in this game from SupCom - Tier II engineers can teleport to destinations, great when you have them in FRD and are repelling attacks.

[Revenantus]

1) I see a stickied thread for the expansion beta? Is it out yet? I'm not really good at unzipping and moving folders so I would rather wait for an official release with an installer. Will it be out on Steam?

Yes, it will be available on Steam upon release. There's no final release date yet, but you can (probably) expect it to be available on Steam late January.

2) I was a huge fan of Supreme Commander and thought it was an amazing game. On the flip side, i really didn't like Sins of a Solar Empire. For you vets,which game is this more like?

The game is fundamentally different from both in a number of areas. Overall, I'd say it's probably closer to Supreme Commander than Sins of a Solar Empire, but I think that playing a campaign is the best way to answer this question.

3) How many engineers do you guys build? In Supcom I'd have several dozen running around.

Engineers are fairly expensive to maintain energy wise, so you'll never want to have more than you need. Their primary use is accelerating the production rate of space docks, and this is what most of your engineers will spend most of their time doing - the number of engineers you have accelerating will depend on your resource harvesting rate, as accelerating production rate consumes resources at a greater rate accordingly. You'll also use them to assist with construction and repairs. So really the answer is as many as you need, but definitely no more.

[Spikey00]

It will be out in January--for me, I thought it was a flavour of both, to be short and quick.  All you do is mass things in AI War, IMO and you will win.  Unfortunately, there's not an equivalent of ghetto gunships, though.  

Engineers?  I will usually increase my numbers after acquiring a few more planets before researching T2 for the teleporting--I keep the two in the beginning, and then perhaps increase the number to ~10.

Thanks for joining the community, Mavor!  Any another questions, or wanting coop via IRC/forums (IRC:  http://arcengames.com/irc/aiwar_irc.php) feel free to try and arrange one for yourself.  (:

[mavorspam]

Thx for the fast replies guys. Game looks great so far and I'm really impressed with the support. I'll be back soon to post news of my first butt kicking. Oh and Happy New Year!

[Revenantus]

Thx for the fast replies guys. Game looks great so far and I'm really impressed with the support. I'll be back soon to post news of my first butt kicking. Oh and Happy New Year!

Happy new year to you, too, and good luck!

[Spikey00]

All the same to you, Mavor.  (:

[Lancefighter]

1: cant really comment
2: sins is.. different. Certainly not the same. Honestly, I cant compare AI war and sins.
They have similar concepts, but so does almost any rts..
3: I build as many engineers as I can afford to maintain. Usually 1-2 at any 'top level' planet: homeworld, anything with important stuff on it..
Also I bring a group of 3-5 on hotkey as part of my main fleet
eventually I hit my engineer build cap, so then i tech up to mk3s and swap stuff out where needed.

Honestly, I hit my forcefield cap faster

[mavorspam]

One more question guys. Is there a pause button I can hit to survey a planet, just so I can read some of the tooltips? I didn't see one in the tutorial. Thx again.

[RCIX]

Just hit the P button any time you need to go to the bathroom, take a call, work some , survey a planet, etc. That will pause the game. In addition, there's a key list in the Key Bindings menu item on the Esc menu.

[mavorspam]

Just hit the P button any time you need to go to the bathroom, take a call, work some , survey a planet, etc. That will pause the game. In addition, there's a key list in the Key Bindings menu item on the Esc menu.

Thx RC.