Gratuitous Tank Battles

[Wanderer]

EDIT: This post was edited to be accurate instead of accusatory.  The problems were with the player, not the software.

A warning if you pick this up:

If you're playing this via Steam, do not set yourself to windowed mode without making sure your drivers are up to date...

[chemical_art]

On the one the hand, all the reviews I've read made it clear you have no direct control.

On the other hand, balance is a mess. There is none. There are 2 designs that can win you the whole game. The expansions only modify the best design, but do not change them.

The game concept itself is neat, but so very messy.

Are you talking GSB or GTB?

GSB.

With two relatively generic designs (faction specific defensive gear being the only unique flavor) you can win 90% of battles.

It's fun when you deviate from the designs, but the brutal effectiveness of them win so many games.

[keith.lamothe]

A warning if you pick this up:

If you're playing this via Steam, do not set yourself to windowed mode... the screen doesn't scale and you can't return to the button and the settings persist so you can't uninstall/reinstall.  I dropped a note onto the forums but apparently I don't have access to the support forums (wha?) even after registering and I doubt I'll see feedback before tomorrow.

I'm quickly becoming less enamoured of the bug/beta testing that occurred for this game.

You probably already saw this, but his reply to you:

just delete this file
\my documents\my games\gratuitous tank battles\prefs.ini

[Hearteater]

My biggest issue with GSB is the balance issues caused by how damage is dealt.  That and making gun-platforms instead of actual moving ships (engines, screw engines, I need more guns!)  I feel like a few more good balance passes that didn't mind changing some basic formula could have done it a world of good.  I still enjoy it, but I could enjoy it so much more.

[keith.lamothe]

I also wish GSB had been balanced more.  Definitely got my money's worth of fun with it, but that particular point (balance) did make a lot of the possible designs basically "fluff" instead of important to gameplay.

[chemical_art]

I also wish GSB had been balanced more.  Definitely got my money's worth of fun with it, but that particular point (balance) did make a lot of the possible designs basically "fluff" instead of important to gameplay.

Exactly.

It was fun experimenting what was the fluff and what was not, but once you do the matches become slash fests. There is no incentive for fighters, for example, because in skirmishes there are no restrictions on a pilot count, which is the only thing that fighters excel in (having a good pilot count vs. damage ratio)

There is very very little benefit in speed, so the best solution to make fortresses with long range guns.

[Cyborg]

I play them game when I'm drunk and think:

Says it all about GSB.

[keith.lamothe]

Nothing goes together quite like Alcohol and Admiralty.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Nothing goes together quite like Alcohol and Admiralty.

Wasn't the Admiral in Starcraft: Brood War cutscene drunk drinking? 

King

[chemical_art]

I really wish the game fleshed out weapons so that they give direct damage bonuses.

So that single pilot craft got a massive boost against cursiers, while frigates got more buffed against fighters, so you would have a rock paper scissors of fighters<frigates<cruisers<fighters thing going on.

[Wanderer]

You probably already saw this, but his reply to you:

just delete this file
\my documents\my games\gratuitous tank battles\prefs.ini

EDIT: This post was modified for accuracy due to player malfunction instead of interface malfunction.

Caught it, haven't gone back yet.  There's a number of minor things I can forgive pretty easily. 

There's twitches and minor things I can ignore, and for an Indie I can even push over a few major items (major in my mind anyway). 

My own stupidity in not keeping my drivers up to date caused some strangeness however and I couldn't nail down the cause inside the original software, and caused me to over-react in annoyance after a long day.

Sorry Cliff.

[keith.lamothe]

Caught it, haven't gone back yet.  There's a number of minor things I can forgive pretty easily.  Making everything disappear and unavailable in a windowed mode is one of those 'check this' things I'd think that'd be first in a list of adding an option... you know, actually using it?

There's twitches and minor things I can ignore, and for an Indie I can even push over a few major items (major in my mind anyway).  That, however, is like a wrecking ball to my senses.  It's like turning on an option and 'crash on load'.  Didn't someone actually try the thing out?  Ever?!  I certainly don't code everything right on first try but most of my work professionally is alpha and wait for feedback.  I certainly don't crash things on my alpha in dev test and let 'er rip.

Sorry, bit grumpy about that.

Haha, yea.

The game did go through an open beta; it may really be that no one tried resizing in that particular way.  But maybe there's a bunch of posts in the beta forum screaming about it too

[chemical_art]

I remember windowed mode in GSB causes all sorts of havoc.

And the game spazzed out the first time I tried playing the game on a big television screen. I had to go into the .ini files to manually set the correct resolution so the game would play.

[Volatar]

Mmmm, I really liked GSB (it helped that I don't try very hard and play a lot of variety in my designs). However, I bought it after it had been vetted and DLC'ed out fully. I think I will wait until this GTB has the bugs ironed out before I give it a first look.

I tend to wait a long time on games, so this is far from uncommon. I am only just playing through Portal 2 this week after getting it from the sale, and still waiting on some of the big names to come down in price before I get to them. Most notably DX:HR and Mass Effect 3. Managed to stay spoiler free thus far.

[Wanderer]

I should publically renounce my frustration with GTB's interface issue.  The entire episode was caused by user malfunction.

1) My drivers were woefully out of date and I didn't realize it until I was crashing the heck out of Diablo III.
2) I didn't pick a widescreen option when I'd set the windowed size.

Yeaaaaah.... that wasn't Cliff's fault, and he did respond in a timely manner.  I'm going to edit my previous responses so they don't pop up as a negative hit in case they're googled.