Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

[Faulty Logic]

It takes about 40-45 minutes for me (add ten for the new encounter) (25-30 with two champions). This is on 8/8.
Does AI difficulty affect the nebulae?

[keith.lamothe]

Does AI difficulty affect the nebulae?

No, not at all

[Eternaly_Lost]

Are you talking about 20 minutes at +10 or something?

No, I'm testing starting off at the beginning of a game with an offroad wormhole on my HW, and when the scenario is done the game-timer reads 25 to 30 minutes (the next scenario that I'm working on comes in considerably under that, but the first two are pretty similar time-wise).

The enemy group-spawns (not individual spawns) are a bit bigger for each scenario you've won previously, but the impression I'm getting from you is that this has been happening from all the scenarios.

I have yet to get to a second one, the first one is taking longer then Fallen Spire to complete. I am in route to my second city shard and the first nebula is still going on. That is with a ship design hack in the middle of that, so I am not moving that quickly on fallen spire.

Does AI difficulty affect the nebulae?

No, not at all

Why do I get the feeling that this is wrong? I am tempted to restart this at a 7/7 game to see if I can finish the first nebula.

[orzelek]

Until now I played only the first one and I think it was in 45-1h mark also. I died few times but it was next to HW so go back time was not significant.

Does ship cap setting affect this in some way? I'm playing on Ultra low.

[Eternaly_Lost]

Until now I played only the first one and I think it was in 45-1h mark also. I died few times but it was next to HW so go back time was not significant.

Does ship cap setting affect this in some way? I'm playing on Ultra low.

I am playing on low, and it very well might as I think keith plays on high caps as that is the standard balance level.

I love to play on high caps, but it tends to crash quite often due to out of heap issues as the wall time gets up there.

[Eternaly_Lost]

Until now I played only the first one and I think it was in 45-1h mark also. I died few times but it was next to HW so go back time was not significant.

Does ship cap setting affect this in some way? I'm playing on Ultra low.

I think I found the issue. I normally play on Epic, but I swapped it over to blitz and a nebula was done in about 30 minutes, and it only took less then a minute for the first damage to a starbase. Rather then the 15 minutes I had been seeing before.

At normal, things flowed quite evenly. I put it back to epic and things were crawling and I got back to the 2-4 hour mark for nebulas.

I think we should have nebula ignore speed options and run at a constant rate( Normal ) for nebulas, as I can tell you that Epic game play is what I like outside of nebula, but inside nebula they are quite literally there own game at several hours per nebula. Things just crawl and make me want to run it at +10, were as outside of them there is plenty to do to fill normal time.

Certainly not what I think was intended with the side missions.

[keith.lamothe]

I test on Normal-caps, Normal-combat-style (if I'm doing standard numbers I use High/Epic because those are the "native" numbers, but I don't generally do playtesting on that).

So yea, the Epic vs Normal difference would explain it, I think   I can set the movement speeds on the nebula stuff and the champion to ignore combat-style, but I can't really make the damage ignore it without creating very different balance for the champions.

[doctorfrog]

Does the champion vessel make a special sound/message event when it respawns? Because if it has, I haven't noticed it.

Someone second the motion that I'm not merely inattentive, and I'll construct a Mantis for it.

[Faulty Logic]

I haven't heard or seen anything special when the Shadow vessel respawns. It just silently appears back at Home Command.

[keith.lamothe]

No, there's no special announcement or whatever of the respawn, that could get spammy.  If you want to reselect it just hit Ctrl+H

If folks really want it to I suppose I could have it put an entry in the chat log.

[TechSY730]

No, there's no special announcement or whatever of the respawn, that could get spammy.  If you want to reselect it just hit Ctrl+H

If folks really want it to I suppose I could have it put an entry in the chat log.

Make it an option somewhere?

[doctorfrog]

No, there's no special announcement or whatever of the respawn, that could get spammy.  If you want to reselect it just hit Ctrl+H

If folks really want it to I suppose I could have it put an entry in the chat log.

Didn't know this; this is helpful. Thanks.

I'd still like a sound event and/or alert thingi, personally, but then again I kinda wish we had an event + sound editor that let you make the intel log as verbose and spammy as you like. Common sense has restrained me from asking for it, though

[LaughingThesaurus]

It could be set up so that only the owner of the champion receives the message. That way people aren't swarmed with messages about how 'Player4's champion has teleported to planet Murdoch after suffering critical damage (click to view).'

[Nodor]

I have a VERY suicidal champion.  But playing just a champion in multi-player ...  if I died.. I'm cognizant.

For solo play - Homeworld + Champion, I would prefer the champion ship be part of the filters in the lower left.   Since that's what I use to locate everything else.

Spamming me about the death, is less useful imo.

[Trandrin]

The new expansion enticed me back to ai war after a long break. Gotta say the champion is a nice addition to the roster. Played around with a few of the objective missions you can find and came up with a request/question.
One, is it normal for the ships on your side in the nebula to leave it after winning and decimate ai until their deaths and two, could perhaps we see a Warp gate for the production of the special ships we are allowed to build after we best the enemy? We have them for fabricators/docks and such would be nice to send the special ships aswell. Helpfull if there is enemy world(s) between the wormhole and your front lines.
The first one comes up because my last game had the struggle between pirate and miner. After winning the mass swarm of allied ships then went back out into normal space and carved through entire mark 4 world like butter. They cleaned it fully then camped right on top of the command center murdering anything that got close to them.