New Alpha Round For The Last Federation, Heavily Revised Combat

[jerith]

Briefly, sorry:
2. What are the problems with the debris?  The fact that it slows you down as much as it does getting frustrating, or the shot-blocking?  I'm really asking, it's not rhetorical.

I don't find the shot blocking to be as much of a problem. Or rather, it's a problem that feels like a natural part of the game -- kind of like enemy missiles.

The slowdown is a different matter. I'll be flying through a crowd of enemy ships and then I suddenly stop moving for a few seconds while I traverse some debris. In a battlefield with an extreme case of Kessler syndrome, this can be a major problem. Part of it is that when I'm being delayed by the corpse of a spaceship I just slew, it's underneath me where I can't see it and therefore can't shoot it or figure out which direction to move to try get off it.

Maybe debris should slow you down less. Maybe bigger chunks of debris should do damage and bounce off (knocking your ship back or sideways or whatever briefly, perhaps). Maybe shooting at debris should deflect it.

[x4000]

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.  Already in for the next version.

[orzelek]

I seem to be a little late to party but here's my feedback from few hours of playing.

Combat mode:
1. New variant - it's much better than it was - WSAD steering allows for some insane dodging - direct fire is much more fun.
2. Abilities - thats a bit more un-fun part.
From the ones I tested
- shockwave seemed to do nothing
- added squadrons are of low to medicore use due to varied firing speed with your minigun so you hit with their shots or it - choice is easy (minigun all the way)
- meteors main weapon - why use it? hard to hit enemy rockets even and dps is very low compared to minigun
- cloaking - not tested not my style really
3. Drawn out combat - noticed that esp on defensive help missions - you might need a lot of time to find enemies there
4. Movement speed variety/jittering - jitter is noticeable depending on direction - was quite easily visible around 45 degrees (compass direction). Ship speed varies heavily with direction - it looks strange not sure if it's a gravity well emulation or something else Jitter might be tied somehow to ship speed variations.

Main map - haven't spent much time there mainly due to attempts at getting some influence with defend missions that are long.
Already noted by you - it's not much to do there. Due to negative influences at start only way to gain influence seems to be space tech trading or defensive help missions (I didn't want to do 1st one).
And also things that you actually do don't seem to have that much effect. I did demolish few armadas for example and... nothing really changed. I was sitting on planet attempting to defend it and there was no defense aid mission while planed was invaded and captured by other race.
I tried to play around with planetary stuff after getting the influence. Reducing riots gave tendency but actual effect is hard to observe. Colonize moon costed a lot of BP but effect was.. hmm no idea what. It was still available in menu next time I checked.
Some heavy imbalance on planets/pops but I guess thats intended? (Evoks having almost no pop for quite long time for example).

[Cyborg]

3. For the jitter, do you have a way of reproing?

See the defect record.

[Histidine]

The current combat (I didn't get to play with the old RTS one) has a certain charm, but it feels awfully simple compared to something like Starsector - fly in straight lines, spray anything hostile with minigun till it explodes - although the special abilities that aren't "launch fleetships" do add some spice. It doesn't need to be as complex as Starsector, but more Things to Do would be nice.

I think a large part of it is the minigun being effective against pretty much anything that isn't a claymore. I'm imagining a scenario with a wide range of highly specialized weapon options (antiswarm, anti-armor, sniper, etc.) and the various ships are designed to create counter mechanics with these weapons. Then the player flagship can carry 1-2 primary weapons and use weapon or operational powers to further augment the ship's role or cover deficiencies; selecting and using an appropriate loadout is left to the player.

[x4000]

Yep, I hear that.  I think that is something that really does make a lot of sense to focus on, actually.

[Castruccio]

It looks like this is the direction the combat part of the game was always heading, its just that the specific weapons and counters havent been polished up quite yet. This would certainly give me a reason to pause combat and think (like in AI War). Sounds exciting.

[x4000]

Yep, it's one of those things where it's kind of "duh" now that you mention it, but I hadn't really thought that through yet.  Now I'm working on that as we speak, actually.

[Misery]

The current combat (I didn't get to play with the old RTS one) has a certain charm, but it feels awfully simple compared to something like Starsector - fly in straight lines, spray anything hostile with minigun till it explodes - although the special abilities that aren't "launch fleetships" do add some spice. It doesn't need to be as complex as Starsector, but more Things to Do would be nice.

I think a large part of it is the minigun being effective against pretty much anything that isn't a claymore. I'm imagining a scenario with a wide range of highly specialized weapon options (antiswarm, anti-armor, sniper, etc.) and the various ships are designed to create counter mechanics with these weapons. Then the player flagship can carry 1-2 primary weapons and use weapon or operational powers to further augment the ship's role or cover deficiencies; selecting and using an appropriate loadout is left to the player.

There is one problem that occurs to me with this:  If the players weapons become too specialized instead of generalized, missions could take a really long time to finish, because the player will need lots of extra time in order to defeat targets that there current weapons dont do much against.  Particularly considering that in the vast majority of missions, the player pretty much has to do everything themselves.  Even if ally races are present, they dont tend to do much.

Not to mention that the current set of abilities wont go very far in making up for weak points in the offense.  There can be ALOT of enemy flagships, particularly on high difficulties, and most abilities not only have very low ammo, but are only good either against 1 target at a time, or just in a very small radius.  Once these run out.... which can happen very fast.... The player will be forced to very slowly kill everything else with weapons that dont really work against them.   

On top of that, you cant really pick and choose targets in this either... you have to fire at whatever is currently coming at you or whatever is nearby, and enemies tend to appear in massive heaps. 

Something like this:



All that specialized weapons are going to do against that (and "that" happens very frequently, and earlier in the battle there were way more than just that) is make it take absolutely forever.  It took me long enough to take them all down with the minigun (which I think is kinda bad) as it is.

It does occur to me though that many of the abilities in the game just dont have enough impact.  In theory abilities could speed up the destruction of such a fleet, but they really just dont do much in most cases.

[x4000]

Balance is ongoing as you've noted.  I am putting in the specialized abilities, but I've already thought of your objection there and have a method in place for fixing it.  Stay tuned.

[Castruccio]

Just out of curiosity while we are on the topic of combat variety, how many more mission types are planned. It was a big challenge getting sufficient mission variety in the valley games, but bionic seemed to me to have great variety. Will tlf have a similar variety?

[x4000]

We're not really in a place where we're adding a ton of content for the sake of content, if that makes sense -- in other words, we're adding things to shore up deficiencies, but a lot of that is in the solar map GUIs and in some of the options that you have there, etc.  As well as some new abilities for your flagship now that some of the changes in the next version are coming, yeah.

Overall my focus isn't particularly on mission variety per se, but instead on making the existing ones as varied as possible.  With things that come both into and out of the solar map as much as possible in terms of influences, and in making you have to use your tactical brain more, etc.

A great example is Final Fantasy Tactics.  There is practically only one mission type: kill all the other guys.  I guess there were a few others, but they were used rarely and not that different.  But that was constantly engaging because the actual combat itself was engaging, it matter to the larger story, and it kept your brain focused the whole time.  Versus something like Final Fantasy VI (my favorite game of all time, but still) where you basically just hold down the B button in most battles except bosses, most of the time.

But in terms of the solar map itself, adding more ways to affect things is definitely on my list.  With 200ish ways to do that already, you'd think that would be plenty, but in my opinion there are some definite holes that I see (and that others have commented on).

Does that make sense?  Is that disappointing?  I'm trying to gauge your feelings of if you're wearying of combat or what.  Right now it is a bit monotone and lasts too long, but that is changing in the next version (tonight!) with some key things.  Ideally no more than half your time is spent in combat in this game.  Bionic Dues and the Valley games were basically 90% combat or more, and that's not the case here or with AI War, for instance.

[Cyborg]

A great example is Final Fantasy Tactics.  There is practically only one mission type: kill all the other guys.  I guess there were a few others, but they were used rarely and not that different.  But that was constantly engaging because the actual combat itself was engaging, it matter to the larger story, and it kept your brain focused the whole time.  Versus something like Final Fantasy VI (my favorite game of all time, but still) where you basically just hold down the B button in most battles except bosses, most of the time.

My favorite game, also. As an aside, that game is far more exciting if you try to beat the game at progressively lower levels. Also, you should probably go pick a fight in a higher-level region. If you get bored, put in mog or gau and pick up the extra abilities. Lastly, go after the bosses with gau, mog, umaro, and a healer just to be fair. There are a lot of ways to make combat fun after you get the hang of things in that game!


To stay on topic here, I'm waiting for the next combat revision.

[Castruccio]

Does that make sense?  Is that disappointing?  I'm trying to gauge your feelings of if you're wearying of combat or what.  Right now it is a bit monotone and lasts too long, but that is changing in the next version (tonight!) with some key things.  Ideally no more than half your time is spent in combat in this game.  Bionic Dues and the Valley games were basically 90% combat or more, and that's not the case here or with AI War, for instance.

It does make sense.  It isn't disappointing if the promise about the combat being fun (like FFT) ends up being fulfilled.  I see what you are saying about FFT vs. FFVI. 

I am wearying of the combat, but let me try the new version and see if that's still the case.  If it gets better then you're right about variety not being a top priority.