how did you get intraduced to arcen?

[crazyroosterman]

I'm currently reading
From Paradise to Golgatha (Keyes)
Neuromancer (Gibson)
War and Peace (Tolstoi)
How Apollo Flew To The Moon (Woods)
Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students (Curtis)
Raufmahrtsysteme (Messerschmid & Fasoulas)
And a few others that I haven't actively read in the past week.
War and Peace I find highly overrated.Neuromancer, on the other hand, is excellent.

The others are educational.

I figured as much apart from paradise that one isn't obvious I've never read war and peace or neuromancer I've been meaning to take a look into neuromancer I've seen quite a few times in water stones but at the moment I've got to much on hand to get that after I've finished water ship down I intend to start reading room before this I was reading look who's back which was very interesting I would absolutely recommend so long as you understand narrative disanensence properly.

[Cyborg]

I figured as much apart from paradise that one isn't obvious I've never read war and peace or neuromancer I've been meaning to take a look into neuromancer I've seen quite a few times in water stones but at the moment I've got to much on hand to get that after I've finished water ship down I intend to start reading room before this I was reading look who's back which was very interesting I would absolutely recommend so long as you understand narrative disanensence properly.

This paragraph was hard to read.

[Shrugging Khan]

Cormack McCarthy says that unnecessary punctuation is, in fact, unnecessary.

Sometimes it is necessary after all

[Radiant Phoenix]

I was at college, and some guys I knew were playing an interesting-looking game. It turned out to be AI War. I was hooked from the moment I saw it, so I got the demo.

This was between AS and VotM, back when I needed to run AI War through WINE.

[crazyroosterman]

I was just looking at this thread again and it amuses me greatly have many times I said ,I most certainly will, in the last reply I put here but since I never really went detail on water ship down I may as well now

1 the writing was solid nothing exceptional but definitely pretty solid I could actually follow the book properly

2 I liked the authenticity despite the weird thing with the names and mythology's(which I still liked regardless)

3 I particularly liked the one scene were

Spoiler for Hiden:

the hazel and the rest of his group are trying to escape from the general that was pretty sick

.

4 I find it strange that people find the book depressing it gets pretty unpleasant at points sure but I didn't find anything particularly nialistic about it unless they are referring to the ending but I mean rabbits don't very long so that didn't surprise me at all I mean I suppose you would find this book depressing if you read as a wee lad I suppose though.

ps so there's my thoughts on water ship down on a 2 year old thread that hasn't been replied to in a year but I just had the urge I guess.

[chemical_art]

water ship down was my favorite book in highschool.

The movie rocks as well.

What is not to love about killer rabbits who act somewhat like what a rabbit really would be?

[tombik]

Offrail necroing, my favourite

My introduction to Arcen was via my cheapskateness. I paid something to get some games from a trader, tried to get as many games I could with the money I paid, and he added AI War 2014 collection to the "bundle" I was getting. Then I saw that AI war actually had decent reviews, so I checked the wiki. Design principles behind it really made sense, so I was hooked. And I liked how everything was well (even sometimes too) documented, since this scratches my obsessive itch. So I checked the other games that the company produced, and collected all. The only game I got via normal ways, (not from traders) was TLF. My favourite so far was Tidalis, since it is the only game where you don't have to tolerate missing things because it is an indie game. For me it is the one which feels most complete.

To turn back to AIWar, in my gameplay time of 4 hours, I did not even complete tutorial. It has too many micro elements in it, and I don't like this in RTS games. I am not saying this is the game's fault, since I also don't like Supreme Commander, which almost all adores.

I will always keep an eye for Arcen's games, even though I might not be a fan for their projects. I am also trying to design my games a bit, and unique ideas always helps in that. And seeing how attached are they to their work is amazing, and inspiring.

[Misery]

AI War has micro elements?

Or maybe I'm not quite understanding your definition of that.

[Pumpkin]

SupCom has micro elements?

[Misery]

That too is a good question.

I dunno about everyone else, but I cant freaking stand "microing" stuff in an RTS.   It doesn't feel like strategy to me.  It feels more like an action game.  The closest I ever get to "microing" is controlling the "champion" ships (I forget what they're called) in AI War, as I get a lot of use out of them and like their versatility, so they often lead the charge for me and I use their shield ability a lot.  I don't mind doing that because that's the *only* unit in the game that I control even somewhat directly like that (as opposed to, say, StarCraft, where you have to do advanced versions of that with EVERY unit), and you don't even HAVE to play with the champions active, you can turn them off if you don't like them (or not buy that expansion). The only other thing close to microing in AI War is selecting some huge blob of ships and pointing them at some specific structure to attack, or moving them near some enemy group I want them to attack.   And really, that's not microing to me.  That's ordering entire fleets around.  Strategic stuff.  No clicking on individual units and moving them back and forth and hitting a million hotkeys... I hate doing that.   The AI handles the individual interactions and movements with individual ships and groups on it's own just fine.  All I have to give it is extremely generalized (yet versatile) commands.

Not to mention one of the biggest things about it: the fact that I can pause at any time, and still give orders and do everything.  THAT is what really sold me on the game.  It said to me "This game is going to be the direct opposite of StarCraft".  Which to me, it is.  And that's a great thing.


SupCom was the same way (without the pause bit).  I *loved* the first SupCom.   It was great!  It was everything I wanted an RTS to be, yet I could never find games like that (this was looooong before I ever found AI War).  Has a lot of the same appeal to me as AI War does though there's not nearly as much to it.   But it's still very good, and has that total lack of microing that I want.

So I don't know where this dislike of SupCom or AI War for their micro comes from...  I is confuse.


This is making me want to play some more AI War here.  Was playing it a few days ago but the last couple of days have been filled with owning a new dog so I've been a tad distracted.  Maybe I'll fire up the game after I have my meal here.

[tombik]

AI War has micro elements?

Or maybe I'm not quite understanding your definition of that.

Maybe I am a bit confused myself, but what I tried to say is ClicksPerSecond or simply multitasking is a virtue in both games. I know in AI War there is also time slider to slow things down, but deciding between different 100 almost same ships, or trying to outgame the game's mechanics by local optimizations is not part of fun for my understanding.

Maybe I sounded casual, and maybe I should not be ashamed about being one But the thing is, there are some RTS games I enjoyed, but when things get more like rock papers scissors (hard counters), I just find maneuvring things around just to show my rock, papers or scissors each time, a chore.

[Pumpkin]

This game is going to be the direct opposite of StarCraft

Totally agree.
And +1 for SupCom.

Maybe I'll fire up the dog game before after I have my meal here.

When I first read this sentence, I thought you'll eat your dog. Poor dog. Sorry.

maneuvring things around just to show my rock, papers or scissors each time, a chore.

This kind of micro far from needed at 7/7. It's more a question of hacking and K-upgrading ships to generally counter the AI's ship types. I often look at what it has when I want to upgrade my turrets. Lightning turret MkIV (+tachyon) against the stealth master, for instance.

[tombik]

maneuvring things around just to show my rock, papers or scissors each time, a chore.

This kind of micro far from needed at 7/7. It's more a question of hacking and K-upgrading ships to generally counter the AI's ship types. I often look at what it has when I want to upgrade my turrets. Lightning turret MkIV (+tachyon) against the stealth master, for instance.

Well, it happened more than a few times that I lost my ships to some towers which one shot the ships, since I forgot to first use some other ships, before their enthusiasm to jump to their death (autoattack) reached its target.

[Pumpkin]

maneuvring things around just to show my rock, papers or scissors each time, a chore.

This kind of micro far from needed at 7/7. It's more a question of hacking and K-upgrading ships to generally counter the AI's ship types. I often look at what it has when I want to upgrade my turrets. Lightning turret MkIV (+tachyon) against the stealth master, for instance.

Well, it happened more than a few times that I lost my ships to some towers which one shot the ships, since I forgot to first use some other ships, before their enthusiasm to jump to their death (autoattack) reached its target.

Oh, yeah, and that. Guard Posts hit hard when they have their hull bonus. But as they are immobile, it sounds less micro to select the right kind of ships (one click on the right-hand panel) and attack the static target. And fleet ships with the hull bonus can wreak the GPost faster.

Also, what you call autoattack is in fact autodefense mode (V-click), the "intercept" order that you should use only on your controlled systems. The true autoattack mode is X-click. Only use V-click on attack when you are overconfident, like when you clean threatfleet on a neutered planet with an overwhelming fleet. X-click is perfect for attacking a GPost with minimal micro: select the right type of ships and X-click behind the target, provided there is a clear path toward it.

While I disagree on the topic of AIW being too micro, I would totally agree it has a big learning curve, including for the UI and controls.

I'm a bit sad when I hear someone pushed away from AIW by it's apparent complexity. I hope you'll give it another chance, try harder, and finally find the beauty behind inside the difficulty.

Just to let you know, when I first launched my first AIW game (after the tuto), I read about difficulty and thought "7/7 if you already played RTS? Sure I played RTS! It's my favorite genre, and it's only because I don't know you, stupid game, and out of courtesy that I don't begin at 9/9 right off!" Then it took me hours of pain and a good chunk of modesty to progressively scale down to 5/5, make my first win, and slowly climb back to 7/7 and recently (after more than 1,000 hours of game) to 8/8 (I tried 9/9 and got toasted).