Arcen Games

General Category => AI War II => : Astilious November 10, 2019, 08:21:17 PM

: AIWC Player First Impressions
: Astilious November 10, 2019, 08:21:17 PM
So, while I was a kickstarter backer for AIW2 I didn't end up playing it before release. Now that I'm some hours into my first campaign I thought I'd talk about my initial thoughts, both in terms of the game and strategy.

For context I played quite a bit of AIWC and had reached the point where I could routinely beat diff 9 and was pushing diff 10 (though I never actually beat the latter). I decided my first AIW2 campaign would be a diff 7 full ensemble, with just player and AI factions. I'm now a few hours in with 5 planets taken, AIP ~50 and enough fleet strength to easily clear mkV worlds.

So, thoughts:

Looking forward to getting into the later parts of the game and seeing how they unfold.
: Re: AIWC Player First Impressions
: I-KP November 11, 2019, 05:19:26 AM
  • You still need to split out parts of your fleet when attacking something that counters them (i.e. heavy vs pike), but the UI makes this fiddly (i.e. box select, scroll through every unit checking armour, select unit with high armour, order them away, repeat). I feel like I need a "everything not weak to the enemy I'm clicking attack" button, or something.
I encounter the same difficulty; exacerbated by reinforcements charging headlong into their doom. It's a constant box-select, cat herding nightmare.

It feels like the game has been designed to discourage such levels of micro. AIW2 is a decidedly 'more accessible' game than AIW so this may have been a deliberate choice.
: Re: AIWC Player First Impressions
: ZeroTheHero November 11, 2019, 02:01:24 PM
You still need to split out parts of your fleet when attacking something that counters them (i.e. heavy vs pike), but the UI makes this fiddly (i.e. box select, scroll through every unit checking armour, select unit with high armour, order them away, repeat). I feel like I need a "everything not weak to the enemy I'm clicking attack" button, or something.

I had a suggestion for this: https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-ii/feature-request-do-not-unload/
: Re: AIWC Player First Impressions
: I-KP November 11, 2019, 02:56:35 PM
There's another suggestion floating around that does this and more; being able to set Standing Orders by ship line.
: Re: AIWC Player First Impressions
: Astilious November 11, 2019, 04:07:36 PM
I had a suggestion for this: https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-ii/feature-request-do-not-unload/
There's another suggestion floating around that does this and more; being able to set Standing Orders by ship line.

Hmm. Both of these would probably help, maybe bring it back to the number of clicks you need in AIWC. A couple of "one click" solutions might be:
How hard is it to mod that kind of thing? I'm a programmer, so I could give it a shot if it's viable.

A few more thoughts so far.
: Re: AIWC Player First Impressions
: zeusalmighty November 11, 2019, 04:23:19 PM
Frigates feel underwhelming.

in the galaxy setup, you can actually modify the multiplers of health/damage of frigates (and turrets and strikecraft)


this affects you and the AI
: Re: AIWC Player First Impressions
: I-KP November 12, 2019, 05:59:58 AM
  • Frigates feel underwhelming. There are so many guns that counter large ships out there I almost always find myself leaving them all behind. Bulldozer excepted of course: the shield frigate might be my favorite ship, other than transports.
Depends on the frigate. The frigates that have to get close to engage invariably suck; frigates that engage from afar, or shove stuff around, or provide shielding, are good. (Essentially, frigates are only good if they act as a force multiplier for ship lines.) The ones that do low damage but slow targets down are terrible; the range of the weapon is so small that they get auto-wiped by the targets they're trying to affect. All of the stealth frigates aren't worth not having a line of stealth ships either.
: Re: AIWC Player First Impressions
: Astilious November 13, 2019, 05:02:03 PM
frigates that engage from afar, or shove stuff around, or provide shielding, are good.

I do have a few sniper frigates I could mess with more. And yeah, shoving the enemy fleet around is great. It feels like there's less crowd control stuff available in AIW2 than AIWC, which makes anything that can do it super valuable.

So I'm at what seems like late mid game now. I'm sitting on the AIP floor at 86 AIP with 246 earned and 195 reduction. I can see most of the map now, but no sign of the AI HW yet. Mobile fleet of about 300 strength. So, thoughts:

Edit:
Game won! AIP floored at 96 when I began the HW assault. 205 after. Obviously would have been much trickier if I'd had more than 1 AI to deal with. HW seemed appropriately tough for diff 7. Ended up hacking a GCA so that I wasn't stuck with all planets at only 2 strength worth of turrets. Also hacked the spire archive... a super long hack forcing you to dedicate forces for ages while maintaining your defense elsewhere? Not sure how I feel about that. It's interesting.

Later Edit:
I created a mod to do the kind of careful attack I mentioned earlier. You can find it here: https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-ii-modding/astilious-interface-tweaks/