Starting again - Whats new?

[Garthor]

I understand why one can't destroy CSGs until the planet has been captured... but why don't they just automatically blow up once your comm station's finished? Is there a reason you might want to hang on to them for a while...?

It's so that you can't just  jump in with barely enough forces to get up the command station in some corner of the planet, then drop and run as soon as it's done.  You actually have to pretty much control the planet at least for a bit.

It seems like a more elegant solution would be to give them something like "self-attrition on human-controlled worlds only", and then be completely immune to damage otherwise.

[zoutzakje]

hmm I actually like that idea. Means you'll have to hold that planet for a certain amount of time at least. It could make things more difficult in some cases, but I'm all for making things more difficult

[zebramatt]

That would certainly solve my problem of capturing planets and forgetting to blow up the CSGs!

[superking]

It seems like a more elegant solution would be to give them something like "self-attrition on human-controlled worlds only", and then be completely immune to damage otherwise.

Expanding on this, if you made them take eg. 10 minutes to degrade, during which they behave like a warpgate with a 2x wave modifier...

[zebramatt]

It seems like a more elegant solution would be to give them something like "self-attrition on human-controlled worlds only", and then be completely immune to damage otherwise.

Expanding on this, if you made them take eg. 10 minutes to degrade, during which they behave like a warpgate with a 2x wave modifier...

I doubt we'll be going back there any time soon!

[Phyrex]

Have been playing the game a bit more now and I'm loving the changes so far.

Two more questions:
- Regarding the galaxy map layout; since there is no editor, is there a way to influence it even slightly by knowing how the numerical code works? If so: how does it work? 

- Also, I'm using Steam to run the game. I would like to try out the expansions in trial mode (mostly the new ships) so when me and my friend run a full campaign I can inform him a bit on the new things. However I don't see a way to enable/download the expansions through Steam itself. How can I make it work?

Thanks.

[BobTheJanitor]

The map generator works by voodoo magic. If you want to get a planet with a good starting location and a good starting ship, I suggest sacrificing a chicken first.

And you should be able to turn on the trials for all the expansions just by going to the expansion list from the main menu and turning them on. Shouldn't matter if it's the Steam version or not. There's not actually a separate download for them, they're already tucked away in the main game download. (Just not the music, so if when you do buy them be sure to grab the full download off the home page)

[x4000]

The map generator works by voodoo magic. If you want to get a planet with a good starting location and a good starting ship, I suggest sacrificing a chicken first.

Or a goat.

And you should be able to turn on the trials for all the expansions just by going to the expansion list from the main menu and turning them on. Shouldn't matter if it's the Steam version or not. There's not actually a separate download for them, they're already tucked away in the main game download. (Just not the music, so if when you do buy them be sure to grab the full download off the home page)

That's mostly correct.  The art and music actually are not sent down with the official releases, so you're missing both, and the expansion won't show up as installed in the Expansions list unless you use an installer to put them in.  You're thinking of while an expansion is in beta, when we send down the art in the betas, but that's not something we normally do.

Anyway, simply installing the expansions into the folder that your steam copy of the game is installed in (not into their default installation folder, that's important) will turn on the expansions just fine so that you can try them out.

[TechSY730]

The map generator works by voodoo magic. If you want to get a planet with a good starting location and a good starting ship, I suggest sacrificing a chicken first.

Or a goat.

The random number god is very capricious. A simple prayer may work on some days, on other days, one sacrifice might not be enough...

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, like in a rougelike's first level generation when a monster just happens to spawn 10 squares away with a clear shot.
And that monster just happens to be a goblin wizard.
And that wizard just happens to have a wand.
And that wand just happens to be a wand of insta-death

[TechSY730]

Yea, like in a rougelike's first level generation when a monster just happens to spawn 10 squares away with a clear shot.
And that monster just happens to be a goblin wizard.
And that wizard just happens to have a wand.
And that wand just happens to be a wand of insta-death

I've have heard of games in NetHack where if you choose a particularly slow class, in rare cases, you spawn next to a decently strong monster and die before you even get your first chance to act.

[Sunshine!]

I sincerely doubt that, and I was a Nethack addict for a while.  Never actually managed to ascend though...  That's probably why I have a tolerance for losing all my AI war games

[Red Spot]

Losing is much more fun than winning. Its just that it has to be a border-case and not so that you get pummeled to death

I just love my mad-bomber experience, have been beaten by them several times, always around 12-15 planets. Getting better though

[keith.lamothe]

Losing is much more fun than winning. Its just that it has to be a border-case and not so that you get pummeled to death

This is one of the key things I've found about games being fun for me: it needs to be a close fight.  Not a brutal I-win steamroll, nor a brutal I-lose steamroll.  Achieving and maintaining that kind of balance is very difficult for open-ended strategy-oriented (as opposed to tactical-oriented) games like MoO, MoM, etc.  And it doesn't feel as fulfilling in games where it just hands you a pre-made tactical situation where it's a close fight, etc.  Because one of the other keys for me is caring about the people (or at least cities/planets/etc) involved because I've been with them for a while.

So I tend to I like strategy RPGs with mild-to-severe overwhelming odds with optional handicaps (i.e. an "easy" difficulty level) for the first playthrough, and so lets me build up from just barely scraping by on survival to eventually trouncing the computer to an improbable degree   So far I've only found 1, maybe 2 such games

[Red Spot]

Perhaps you will like Battlezone I & II, if you can find copies. Awesome games.
Those, a few others and now also AIW are my favs

However the only AI that can really beat me is the AI in AIW