Normal Mode vs. Fast and Dangerous

[Wingflier]

I was wondering how many people play regular mode and how many people play Fast and Dangerous.

I personally prefer Fast and Dangerous because regular mode just goes by so slow.  Especially if you have space tanks or frigates in your army, it can literally take 5-10 minutes just to move from one side of a planet to another in regular mode.

My friend and I played an 80 planet game yesterday that lasted 8 hours on F&D.  If it had been on normal, it might have taken 12 hours or even longer to complete.

I mean sure, regular might be more "tactical", but I would consider 8 hours of game time tactical either way.

What are you opinions?  Which mode do you play and why?

[rubikscube]

traditional grand strategy players like normal while rts fans like fast and dangerous

[Lancefighter]

most of the game revolves around the strategy, not the combat - you spend probably a good deal less time shooting at each other than you do building or managing this and that.

Of course, x4000 tries to manage stuff so that combat/strategy is more than microing stuff...


Of course, f&d also makes it a bit more interesting, keeps pressure on you through waves and such (waves have twice the alpha damage..) also makes forcefields go down twice as fast, meaning it takes less bombers to kill that command center..

[Ktoff]

actually (unless i missed an update) with f&d forcefields go down four times as fast (twice the damage and twice the firing rate) :-)

f&d is DANGEROUS ;-)

[superking]

normal

[Lancefighter]

actually (unless i missed an update) with f&d forcefields go down four times as fast (twice the damage and twice the firing rate) :-)

f&d is DANGEROUS ;-)

yeah 4x, was late last night >.>

[Ozymandiaz]

normal

[zebramatt]

I always used to play normal but now that in my recent game I've been playing F&D I can't imagine going back!

[Frozen Critical]

i play both F&D and Normal

[Wingflier]

i play both F&D and Normal

That's interesting.  I would think that once you chose one, you would stick with it. 

[rubikscube]

depends on the mood i guess, 

[Buttons840]

FRD and I use pause if I want the game to be slower.

I would suggest to X and other devs that speed be given negative values as well, similar to Supreme Commander where the game can be slowed down and speed up though a mechanic very similar to what is already in AI War.  Currently you can speed you AI War game by pressing + and it will say Speed +1, etc, and it would be nice to have the option to have negative values to be able to slow the game down - you know, for those especially critical attacks and such where you want to have a little more control.  With this mechanic you might also remove "normal" speed altogether and let players play at whatever speed they like.

Yes, I realize my description is redundant.  I stated the same thing twice hoping it would be more clear.

Final question:  Does Normal vs F&D have any effect on ships effectiveness?  IE, might a certain type of ship be more or less effective based on the game speed?

[Wingflier]

FRD and I use pause if I want the game to be slower.

I would suggest to X and other devs that speed be given negative values as well, similar to Supreme Commander where the game can be slowed down and speed up though a mechanic very similar to what is already in AI War.  Currently you can speed you AI War game by pressing + and it will say Speed +1, etc, and it would be nice to have the option to have negative values to be able to slow the game down - you know, for those especially critical attacks and such where you want to have a little more control.  With this mechanic you might also remove "normal" speed altogether and let players play at whatever speed they like.

Yes, I realize my description is redundant.  I stated the same thing twice hoping it would be more clear.

Final question:  Does Normal vs F&D have any effect on ships effectiveness?  IE, might a certain type of ship be more or less effective based on the game speed?

I agree a game slowdown feature would be nice to have.

On the topic of ship effectiveness in F&D, I would definitely have to say that there are certain ships that are more valuable in that mode.  Bombers in particular seem much more powerful because Force Fields literally die 4 times as fast as in normal mode.  Because of this, and because of the fact that defenses are also 4 times as powerful, it is important for the player to always have bombers in his fleet, in order to be able to deal with this threat and quickly neutralize shields.

Excessively powerful defenses also seem significantly more useful to me in F&D mode.  Specifically, defenses with a long range which also do large amounts of damage.  The ships that fit in this category are Ion Cannons, Heavy Beam Cannons, and Fortresses.  The reason that these ships are more effective is not because they are more powerful (because all ships are in F&D), but simply because their range allows them to kill a huge part of your force before you even reach them.  Since weapons are 4x as powerful (2x damage and 2x reload) and ships only move 2x as fast, this means that defenses with exceptionally long ranges are going to have an inherent advantage in that mode.

[superking]

Final question:  Does Normal vs F&D have any effect on ships effectiveness?  IE, might a certain type of ship be more or less effective based on the game speed?

it biases ships with high attack power and/or long range. 4x attack power is a much greater boon on eg teleport battlestations than it is on armour ships. makes attritional losses much higher and means you need to rebuild more

[rubikscube]

and lighting warheads do 500,000 damage