Well Ekko and I just finnished our first Coop game. It was 40 planets and we finished in 7 hours. I have to say this game is just plain fun, one of the, if not the best RTS experience I'v had in a long time. Version 1.006D
Hey, thanks! So glad you guys like it so much, I think co-op is the most fun mode, too.
A few things I took note of... When typing messages to allies, all your hotkeys still go off when you hit them, heh.
Oh, whoops. That used to not be the case, but evidently in 1.005 when I switched the keyboard modes, it started doing that. Will be fixed shortly, thanks for reporting it -- I always use voice chat, so had not noticed it.
The HP/Shields on the final command posts are a bit too high, once you get to the point that you can kill them there's nothing really left in the area that could stop us anyway. We just kinda sat there for 15 or so minutes waiting on our fleets to bring the thing down with nothing but a trickle of ships coming from warps to stop us.
It goes a lot faster in Fast & Dangerous combat style, but also I think that likely you are running into a balance issue with the smaller maps. On an 80 planet map, by the time you take that you'll have a huge army of Mark III and Mark IV bombers, and they go down really quickly. The main reason the health is so high is to prevent flash raids into their territory with late-game ships. That's also part of why they are missile-proof. On Friday, near the end of a 13-hour, 80-planet , 4-player game, we had kind of a straggling fleet (we'd gotten beat to hell multiple times right near the end, heh), we still took it down in just about four or so minutes once we got right up to it. Maybe 80 Mark III bombers, and maybe 20 Mark IV ones.
If this seems to be an ongoing issue, I'll adjust it, but I think that's one of the things about the end of the game. You need to be prepared with tons of high level bombers to get through it, otherwise the AI has time to reinforce and potentially kick you off...
Some other things I noticed were heavy slowdown for both players when checking range(Z) on large groups of ships
Yeah, the matrix scaling for those is pretty rough on the graphics card, it seems. I have been aware of this since this was added a couple of releases ago, and it's much better than it once was, but I just thought of another optimization that will hopefully help.
a intense want for some kind of transport ship to stick my fighters on so they don't get blown away by ion cannons entering the area
Well, ion cannons only hit ships with a lower level than them. The idea is that you're supposed to bring higher-level ships to take out the ion cannons, then bring the rest of your stuff. Otherwise you can flood the ion cannon with loads of low-level ships, but you'll take heavy losses doing that. An armored transport ship is in the works, though, so this might be another use for that ship -- it will cost you knowledge to unlock, though, so that would still be something of a tradeoff. I might do multiple sizes of transport ships, at different knowledge costs, but I haven't figured all that out just yet. It's planned for the 1.007 DLC.
and some way to interact with my ally economically would of been nice.
Right now you can give ships between one another, including resource producers or even whole planets. Also, if one of you is at the cap (300k) of metal or crystal, the overflow goes to your partner. However, a way of giving specific resource amounts is also definitely planned for soon DLC, some other players also brought that up. Not sure if that will be 1.007 or 1.008 yet.
That's it for now, I may remember more later.
Great suggestions!
All in all it was a wonderful experience, really it felt more like an experience than just a game, and when something like that finally ends after 2 or 3 days it's almost sad.
Ha, I know what you mean. There's a map that my wife and I have been playing off and on since April, and the place names and such have taken on real significance for us, especially this one planet called Cuasnomas. I doubt anyone else will ever play that exact map in the start positions we were in, which makes it even cooler (even if this game has a million players at some point, there are so many billions of scenarios that repeats are somewhat unlikely unless people share the map seeds that are their favorite -- I've thought that would make a neat map thread at some point).
Anyhow, thanks for the great feedback, and I'm really glad that players are connecting with the game so strongly.
We'll likely be setting up another game soon, but we'd like to get maybe one or two more people in there with us who're willing to play a few hours a day, and skill level's not an issue, don't be afraid to give coop a try becuase you're new. This was actually my first finished game myself.
Yeah, even with a skill gap, if there is one, that can work well. The stronger players can take the more difficult positions and planets until the newer players get more up to speed. I've done that several times, and it was fun for all involved -- another advantage over the combative pvp, where skill differentials are a real negative thing.
