My impressions and questions.

[festa_freak]

When this game first came out I was kind of interested but not enough to buy it.  I  had other RTS's going on at the time like supreme commander 1 + 2.  During the steam summer sale I missed the crazy daily deal because of holidays and then couldn't bring myself to buy the game at the very 'expensive' price point of 14.99. 

So, instead I installed the demo (which is quite generous I might add) and had great fun with it.  I have played many RTS's and complex games before so the learning curve wasn't very difficult to overcome.  Let's just say I am the proud new owner of a $30 bundle straight from the arcen games website.  I am growing increasingly impatient with steam's offline mode, it doesn't always work for me.  So I chose your version based solely on DRM-free.

That aside, I will explain a little of my first game.  Only the highlights of course.

I started on #5 difficulty with a easy fortress baron AI and a tank AI.  I choose (EDIT:50) planets.  I knew to take planets strategically and that's what I did.  I skipped low resource planets and hit anything above 4 unless it was an extremely important bottleneck.  I dealt with waves fine and destroyed a few warp gates to ease the pressure.  I eventually had a cross planet attack of about 600 ships.  THESE ARE SCARY!!!  I split my forces between my 10 or so planets and lost a couple of them but managed to hold off.
I captured a bomber V fab which was great but maybe 20 min later the AI sent only fighters to that planet and they killed it even though I had FRD'd units there.  They had a goal to take it down.

I just got over the second cross planet attack of 1700 ships, wow.  Again, they took a few planets but i now have recaptured them. 

I was starting to go for one AI MkIV core system next to their home planet with 2000 ships when all of a sudden about 400 MkIV ships were loosed from who knows where.  This is where I am in my game now, trying to get rid of this strong menace.  They have destroyed 3 planets so far but now they are all really slow (spider turrets) and are funneling through a few at a time into a huge fleet I have.

I have 2 MkIV factories and a couple special fabs.

Now for my questions:

1)  How on earth do I build a riot starship?  I've designed both a MkI and MkII to suit my needs and they don't appear in the starship factory.  I'm an idiot   I have the game open and just looked for the 10th time at my starship factory and saw the 'RIOT' tab at the bottom.  How could I have missed that lol.

That was really my biggest question because it bugged me so much!  I spend a couple thousand knowledge on it and I couldn't use it.  They seem to be very powerful too.

My game has been going on for 12 hours now, is that normal?  My AIP is at 430 and again it's (EDIT:50) planets and I hold 23 of them.  the next AIP threshold is 750 in my game so I'm a safe distance away.

Oh, maybe I have another question.

2)  I think on this playthrough I'm going to ignore the Zenith and spire starships but are they worth the knowledge instead of say a couple more MkIII ship caps?  The spire looks like it has very strong stats but you can only build two of them.  Maybe my next game I will get them and let you all know!

Anyways, I just want to thank Arcen for a cool little game and this community for being nice and courteous. 

[Coppermantis]

Yeah, AI War games take a long time, especially on larger maps. Yours is relatively small compared to the 80-some maps, but it can still take quite a while depending on your playstyle.

Secondly, I really like the Zenith/Spire Starships, but they are expensive in terms of Knowledge. In the early game I would reccomend getting Fleet ships, but as you go on and encounter increasingly heavy opponents (The AI will use Spire and Zenith starships and other mk. III starships on it's core planets) I would reccomend getting some of your own. The firepower boost is useful too. Of course, this is just my preference, and others may say differently.

[festa_freak]

Cool.  It is my first game so I guess I'm going a little slow to make sure I learn as I go but I think I have a difficult map.  I don't have any connection between all my worlds so transports are a must.

I guess the better starships aren't as important on this playthrough for me.  One of the adv. research stations had munitions boosters which are pretty good by themselves but also boost my attacks by up to 2.4 now, but AI has them too so fights are over really fast!
If these little guys weren't available to me then yes, the starships would be very important.  I would really only use them as mobile little fortresses.   When I play an RTS I like to be the few but strong type of unit guy, really tanky.

[keith.lamothe]

Let's just say I am the proud new owner of a $30 bundle straight from the arcen games website.  I am growing increasingly impatient with steam's offline mode, it doesn't always work for me.  So I chose your version based solely on DRM-free.

Thank you for your support!  But fyi if you get it from steam you can use the license key to activate a copy downloaded from us (or from anywhere), and vice versa.  So if you would like to have the usual steam perks associated with AIW you can add the game in there and they'll recognize the license key (unless a pirate has generated it with a keygen already, but steam support will generally help you if you provide proof of purchase, i.e. that you're the legitimate owner of the key).

And yea, offline mode flakiness is a pretty common complaint with that platform; I've run into it too.  But it's an awesome platform, and they definitely are cooperative with our no-significant-drm approach, the drm is more of a service they provide to publishers who aren't comfortable without it.  Though I'm not sure they think about it that way.  Anyway


Glad you're enjoying the game   Riots are a personal favorite of mine, they were the first brand new ship type I added (back in February '10, I think, or was it March), and the first modular ship.  They used to be far more fearsome and other balance changes have kind of left them behind (spider turrets are kind of king of that hill right now) but I think they're still pretty nice.  If you like modular ships and are more into smaller unit counts but much bigger units then I recommend you give the Fallen Spire minor faction a try sometime once you've won a normal game or two.  It can be quite challenging but I think you'll like it

And yea, if you already have munitions boosters then there are probably better places to spend knowledge than the Zenith and Spire starships; they're still pretty potent though.  It's more a question of how much knowledge you can get and if you're deficient in any areas.  You definitely want all the bombers you can get for those endgame AI forcefields.  Pity you lost the Bomber Starship V fab, but it's nice to have an opponent who cares

[Hearteater]

I don't have any connection between all my worlds so transports are a must.

If you aren't already, be sure to make sure to make liberal use of the warp gates to teleport your newly constructed units to your front lines.  I found them invaluable in removing a lot of tedium from the logistics.

[x4000]

Also of note: even if you buy directly from Steam, and something goes wrong with the offline mode, you can launch our game directly from the filesystem (unlike a lot of Steam games). You also get a license key of ours when you buy from Steam, so you can unlock the non-Steam version we or anyone else provides, too.

So it's pretty open all around, regardless of where you buy.

[festa_freak]

Cool, thanks for all the tips and responses.  I know the game keys provided to me are able to work on steam but the only reason I would do that is for achievements and I really don't care about those, I mean on my steam profile.  The achievements are already in the game and I've unlocked some of them!

I just found out about those warp gates in my game the other day and they are VERY helpful.  Right now I'm trying to crack a MkIII fortress behind two force fields.  I took one go at it with max Mk1-4 bombers and a couple bomber starships but I only got the fortress to 75%.  I had bombers continuously reinforcing but no luck.

Now I'm scared that because of my activity in a neighboring sector the homeworld has started reinforcing and I NEED to take it out asap.  I don't want to capture the outer core world, just neuter it and kill the fortress so I can move through easier.

Right now I've retreated and I'm going to take another run at it soon but it is very difficult.  Another problem is they have a lot of snipers and I don't.  I do use scout star ships for their counter sniper properties but they stay with my main fleet to protect it.  I tried to set up a beach head but the fortress just kills my mobile builder

I am playing with expansions disabled for now to not get overwhelmed with options but my next game will be with them enabled.  I will definitely give that spire faction a try!

[Gudamor]

No need to kill a fortress just to move ships safely through a system: transports take greatly reduced damage from fortresses.

[Coppermantis]

Remember, AI forts are dependent on supply, so if you can kill the command and all neighboring command stations then all the heavy defense will no longer be a threat. This might not be a viable option if there are more than, like, 2 neighbors though.