Ravenous Shadow: WTF?

[Cinth]

I guess you don't want to hear that the RS is beatable with frigates loaded with missiles and lasers.
And no, I don't want to explain how I managed to waltz right into my third nebula without upgrading my hulls.

Basically the best stuff to use are the missiles, polarizers or IREs.  Spire weapons work really well. Bomber drones will work in a pinch but you will need to throw a shield over them so they can do more damage.

[Kahuna]

*stuff*

Understood

something to bump up the skill cap

Micromanagement =/= skill. Of course being able to micro efficiently (high effective apm) takes skill but it has nothing to with tactics or strategy. It's simply smacking the right buttons in right order as fast as possible. *insert "Starcraft besserwisser fan whining at me" here* Microing (and apm) is basically Stepmania with fingers ps.those idiots don't seem to understand the difference between apm and effective apm. The strategies and tactics in Starcraft are easy to learn and understand. Having to do everything so fast is the only hard thing in that game.

If someone wants to bump up the skill cap then that person should play vs 10/10 with these settings.

Also. Vengeance of the Machine does exactly this (bump up the skill cap (if the player wants it))

[Aklyon]

Sometimes, absurd apm succeeds. Sometimes it screws up all your control groups and leads your army and your workers and your economy to its ineffective demise.

[Kahuna]

APM =/= Effective APM.

selecting.. deselecting..selecting.. deselecting..selecting.. MovingMovingMovingMovingMoving.. deselecting..selecting.. deselecting..selecting.. ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick.. deselecting.. MovingMovingMovingMovingMoving.. ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick.. selecting.. deselecting..selecting.. MovingMovingMovingMovingMoving.. deselecting..selecting.. deselecting..selecting.. deselecting.. units and buildings over and over again is APM.
Effective APM is doing something usefull with those units and buildings.
If player has 3k APM and the player wins/succeeds it doesn't mean effective apm was 3k.
In this case..

Sometimes, absurd apm succeeds.

..effective APM was good.

[TechSY730]

Yes; most of the current nebulae encourage good strategic micro ("effective APM") that takes real strategic skill (if we put aside the sometimes...questionable decisions of the AI of the NPC ships in a mission, if any) in addition to speed. However, there are a few that don't really promote that so well, and thus need some tweaking.

The missions that effectively "equipment checks" being either way too hard or way too easy, depending on the circumstances, but are often not really fun either way, could be (partially) solved with a retooling and/or extension of the unlock (both what is availible to the user and how the user makes desisions of what to get from that set) and experience mechanisms. I think that would allievaite many of the complaints.

[MaxAstro]

Well, I tried again in a new game.  This time I was lucky enough to unlock zenith hulls and impulse reaction emitters.  Tried again at destroyer level with three zenith hulls carrying one shield, three missiles, and LOTS of IREs and I managed to kill the second shadow while it was attacking the main starbase.  So close call, but managed it.

So I can confirm that this is indeed ~possible~ with a destroyer hull, but it's definitely a gear check.  No IREs = no win.

[KDR_11k]

The Shadow mission really sucks, it has no player agency, it's like playing MoH: Warfighter. A big spectacle of units clashing but nothing you as a player can really do to influence it. Shields have little effect and you can't do more than tell your champs to go attack.

When you only have one unit you gotta make using it interesting and often that means having to dodge attacks and such. Would certainly be more fun than just clicking attack and waiting for the result.

[MaxAstro]

I actually got a fair amount of use out of shields in the shadow mission; you kinda have to guess where it's going, but you can get some decent coverage.  You're not going to be in range to block more than one salvo or so, but against that thing one salvo is substantial. 

Also, you can use shields to push it around by taking advantage of shadow shields "bumping" enemies out of their radius.  Which is fun to do to a giant world-devouring monster. 

[Kahuna]

MoH: Warfighter.

hahahahaha yeah that's true.
good one

[contingencyplan]

I know that dropping nebulae entirely is one of the suggested options, but since I kinda like them (yeah, they're grindy micro-fests, but their OUR grindy micro-fests), two quick questions / suggestions before I run off to bed (job interview tomorrow, wish me well!)

• Add a "wormhole anchor" unit, similar to the ARS hacker, that lets you select where the wormhole goes to based on the possible destinations right now. Are the nebulae chosen at mapgen? How hard would this be to add?
• I know that Arcen has said that y'all won't be opening the game up for modding, but allowing user-created scenarios would be an almost PERFECT fit for the nebulae. How hard would it be to support this? One option would be to put each scenario in a given directory and have the program read all scenarios in at runtime. This way, the community could tweak existing ones and come up with completely new ones, but you (hopefully) wouldn't have to completely rewrite the entire game to be mod-friendly.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I'm in total support of custom scenarios.

[MaxAstro]

I would buy an expansion if all it added were user-made scenarios. 

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well for a moment I entertained the idea of a 'final expansion' that added content as well as some kind of platform for custom content and workshop support with that. So, for instance...

Bonus Ship Workshop: Create a mark I ship of any specifications. Specify its list of immunities, abilities, and so on. Is this bonus ship available to the AI? If not, create the AI's modified version. Which statistics scale up with mark? Do higher marks introduce better abilities? Is this bonus ship a fleet ship or a starship? Custom Bonus Ships, if enabled, will disable achievements due to the possibility of creating massively powerful 197-cap fortress-like ships.

Galactic Jumper: Create the planets, names of planets, the layout (including base layouts) of a galaxy... and place any ships you want in each planet to create an entire campaign! Using the high technology humanity has acquired, they're bound to find that layout somewhere in the massive universe. If you so desire, you can even tie waves or other things to various events and put any timer/ships you desire on the wave. Or, of course, you can make it AIP/Difficulty dependent. This editor also includes scenario editing for Ancient Shadows. Any edited or custom scenarios can be easily abused, and will not count for achievements.

Tweaking Station: Create bits and bobs for regular campaign use. If these bits and bobs are allowed in a campaign, achievements are disabled. Bits and bobs may include things such as hacking or knowledge gathering structures, 'Data' structures, command stations, base structures that the human player can build by default, turrets, knowledge unlocks, modules, anything not covered by the 'bonus ship' category. Present ships cannot be removed or edited, but can be used as a 'base' for new things.

That expansion would not only like, blow everybody away in terms of regular content, and go out with a bang, but then anybody can just add ships and such to the game. If there's no desire to make custom art assets on the player's part, they can just use existing assets instead probably. I mean they're all already there and uncompressed.

[MaxAstro]

That sounds like... an insane amount of work to code. 

Honestly, even just a nebula scenario editor would probably be an entire expansion's worth of coding work, if not more.

[LaughingThesaurus]

The bonus ship stuff doesn't strike me as insanely hard, but the rest probably is.
But again that's like, some hypothetical super-expansion to go out with a bang.