Short version: Snakemaps untangle badly with nomad planets enabled. Also, capturing a nomad on a snake can cause all kinds of unpleasantnes, especially when those human rebel outposts are involved. They just "wake up" somewhere the nomad links and I am stuck at the other end of the universe. That is not a horrible, game-breaking problem, but it sure is painful with +100 (!!!) AIP for every wannabe-revolutionary shot down...
Rant: I pretty much hate the game with all its hard choices, no steamrolling, being the underdog and all, and yet it's so flexible a platform even I found a playstyle I really, really enjoy. Playing snakes against turtle AIs is something I really love, having a WWI-style stalemate-battle at the front, slowly advancing with minimal gains and massive cost... but still, advancing... whoo. And with the core starship coming to roll back the whole trenchline it's even more fun. I also just love gimmicks. I have pretty much every small faction enabled because I just want to be able to squeeze out that additional odd shipcap for my next push. Find a nebula wormhole? Awesome, beat it and I get another 7 ships to crack the next mark IV roadblock. Find a rebel station? Have to push faster to save it, so I can get those 50+ rebel bombers and frigates (Awesome!). Now because I love gimmicks I can't leave a cool feature like those roaming planets deactivated, it's just not possible, probably neurological damage or something. They seem to always be MK3 or MK4 planets, and more often than not turret controllers or even advanced factories are placed on there. So what do I do? Put a fatt-ass MK3 military command on there and feel awesome with the new per planet turret-cap (those translocator weapons are really, really nasty, love them). Now I have my cool roaming scout and surgical strike base moving along the endless frontline that is a snakemap, and suddenly my personal info-slave texts me that he heard someone saw the bad new terminator movies at urghlughughnowhat? and started an uprising. Like... at the other end of that snake. Or at least really, really far away from me. I'm like, dude, that is industrial grade stupid. Him: Bring down AI 2 (Turtle/Grav Driller!) our cruel oppressor, everyone stand with me! Me: Okay... do Your thing, never mind, I'll salvage Your wife when I find that place. Him: And if we cannot gain our freedom, to hell with all other resistance fighters, we'll give the AI a reason to feel threatened and all our strategic plans so it can make an abstract progress of lets say... 100 I-don't-care-about-Your-resistance-that-actually-stands-a-chance-points! To show our absolute commitment! Me... ah, fogg, give me that guy who found that "golem"-thingy...
If it was not for that small grime I'd still be totally happy losing game after game against the AI trying to push my way through to the end, but this makes me sad. Of course, that could just be called a new challenge, but I would love to be able to not experience it. Any idea on wether that is possible or will be done at some point? Like... excluding nomads from broadcasting terminator movies wherever they link? Or maybe have a revolution of the not braindead at the colonies, once the nomad unlinks, so they go back to sleep? Or... maybe warpgates for existing ships so I could move them from a to nomad b without having to win the game first? No? Totally complicated to implement on the code, I should just keep my grubby hands off those floating fortresses? Okay. Just wanted to... You know. Mention it. Also, I would like to suggest a torture chamber for especially annoying enemies and allies that reduces AI-progress while actively chewing on some hybrid hive, but might attract some humanitarian AI force to put an end to the atrocities of the terrorist operating under the poetic name Player One.
Also... a question... does my personal passing deathstar planet wake up the AI on the worlds it links to? I don't really know about this waking up thing, I only ever see one AI world and don't scout ahead (would ruin the surprise!) - but since the nomads are loose on my galaxies waves start piling up pretty darn high...
Finally... uhm. Untangling. Might there be an option, map generation-wise, to spawn the nomads after the base snake map is made? Things just get annoyingly hard to figure out with these things adding some strange sub-loops and glueing worlds together that should be really, really far apart...
Yeah. That's it. Also, if anyone wants to know, I only ever won one single game like that (right when ancient shadows was new) against two 7 AIs with a core starship plot. Life got easier with some of the new things, the new hacking mechanic and so on, but I got dumber so I never win. Arcen, You guys are awesome, making losing a game constantly still more fun than many other titles.
