hey all,
i think this is a VERY cool game, and am thoroughly enjoying my time with it.
barring a few little tweaks i have already logged on mantis i think the whole thing is extremely polished and great fun. Combat has a really unique feel aswell and works brilliantly with the turn-based bullet hell/terrain twist. I am extremely pleased with the game and am very hopeful that it will be a grand success for you Arcen folks. Further still, the linux version is completely stable and performs very well on my ageing laptop... even with hugely populated systems
i want to give some feeback to a game i played last night though....
just for testing purposes, i ran a game where i basically avoided combat missions of all kinds (bar 2 quests early on - 1 space-faring, one terraforming) and then used only dispatch missions and political requests for the rest of the game.
After the first quest i focused on just doing the improve relations dispatches as much as possible for all races, bringing them up to +50 relation with all other races ASAP (the delay in the later races becoming space-faring allowed me to get each race nice and happy with the others one at a time as they got into space and i could start to work with them).
despite having a +70 relation with the burlust, the thoraxians invaded there homeworld and wiped them out early on - which as far as i could tell was motivated by the burlust homeworld being ideal for thoraxians to thrive (planet/race comparability for new thoraxian planet somewhere near 9 i think). Now that was very cool - 'we like them well enough, but screw them we NEED that planet to thrive' - i love that the thoraxians were able to think like that!
I carried on getting all the other races on friendly terms in this way, which lead to a kind of snow-ball effect where they all kept improving their relations with each other, and i just busied myself with the odd RCI advice action and dispatches such as 'medical assistance/improve environment' where necessary in the system.
Despite the Thoraxians early show of viloence not a single war broke out throughout the rest of my game (i think a couple of outposts were destroyed but thats all).
so, i spent almost the entire game at super-fast forward speed, just working through dispatch missions and watched as the love-in progressed, slowly accumulating the necessary credits to broker the coming federation deals.
in the end (after around 40 years of game time) i completed the federation with all remaining 7 races and almost everyone's relation with everyone else well over 200+ (some much more).
this was my first 'victory', and it obviously wasn't how i would normally choose to play the game (combat being so fun and all, and so many interesting things happening in the system which i basically ignored and carried on my dispatch duties)..... but improving the relations early on seemed to set the game into a positive feedback loop which was not upset at any point by things happening in the system..... a unifying federation of all races felt rather inevitable rather quickly.
now this is obviously a very cheesy approach which i would not use normally, but the fact that it worked so very well was a little unsettling for me.
most of the problems in the system seemed to take care of themselves without requiring any real intervention on my part, and as a hydral diplomat/missionary flying around the galaxy for 40 years in a completely underpowered vessel (no further science upgrades to ship since the beginning) i was never forced into what would have been (most likely) a deadly combat situation.....
i think its possible that the
love-in approach through improve relations dispatches is too powerful (at least on normal difficulty)
...and that perhaps
space is too safe.
if i had been ambushed by some kind of AFA or pirate fleet at any point later in the game i would have been toast, but no-one stepped up to argue aggressively against the fedration by trying to kill its multi-headed architect..... if that had happened i would have been really quite pleased to see the game recognise that i had taken this approach, and that some anti-federation group had noticed that the could take out the severely underpowered-diplomat fairly easily as he skipped between worlds in his pathetic flagship - thereby inhibiting the rise of the federation.
i'm really hoping that the step up to hard dimplomatic difficulty will include responses like this from the game, more anti federation sentiment, and potentially other events that occur in the history of the system which require player involvement in terms of dangerous missions and don't simply take care of themselves (eventually) and allow this kind of 'dispatch only' approach to succeed. Will try to test this tonight, and post here tomorrow.
i think this game has fulfilled a lot of the dreams i had for Drox as it was developed, i tried to argue for a larger grand strategy layer plenty of times during the beta for that.... and what we have in TLF is fulfilling all of my dreams for that sort of thing in so many more ways than i imagined -
which is wonderful..... however, there was, regardless of your approach to the interplanetary 4x,
always personal danger in drox, always the chance of being caught off guard by some collection of pirate/alien ships and so you were always motivated to make sure you upgraded your vessel and make sure you could survive the current combat meta....... from what i can tell that seems to be missing in TLF and i'm a little concerned about that.
Flying from one planet to another across the system, again and again, just felt far too safe and without incident last night.... and i'm wondering if pirate fleets ambushing the player (perhaps this could happen early on - but in a very easy form - to get you used to the idea this could occur) or assassination attempts (even if you don't knock off the hive queen, perhaps a more aggressive and opportunistic AFA) couldn't be made part of the game to help with this.
If pirate fleets did ambush the payer on route from time to time (or on arrival at a new planet) then that would be a further motivation for taking out pirate bases withe the other races and it would certainly make the 'pirate exodus' event much more interesting/dangerous for the player (can't remember the exact name for that but its the event where most of a planets population goes pirate). If this was implemented, stamping on every pirate base would have more meaning and thereby eliminate the threat of pirate ambushes... and i guess if you got the races to destroy the p[irate bases on their own (through political bargaining) then the player could still avoid combat and therefore upgrading his/her ship.... but there would still always be the risk of a new base forming and catching you off guard with their first pirate action being an attempt to take you out.
and if the AFA were to mobilise more aggressively against a political/missionary player then this would also increase the danger factor for the player.... if, once the federation had begun to form the rebels/AFA would try (potentially) to take out the hydral diplomat as he moved from planet to planet brokering the federation, then the sort of cheesy approach i won with last night would be much more dangerous/maybe would no longer work, and the player would be required to take a broader approach to the game in order to succeed.
anyway, i have to get on, and i think you probably have some idea what i'm rambling on about by now
i'll have a test of the same approach on hard difficulty tonight and see how that goes... for all i know, all of these suggestions will probably be there already and I'll be crushed by the more aggressive pirates/AFA! all being well
