You're the one who made the Obscura pattern? [Insert compliment here], they're quite good, even through fighting them 3vs1 is closer to "lunatic" than "nasty".
For the Burlusts warlords, I eagerly wait for an update, as they got massively nerfed (loss of the gravity lance), and mass driver can practically makes them unable to attack.
Oh, and thank you for explaining me how to use weapons, but rest assured I know how to read the ingame descriptions, so don't worry about that. Speaking about ingame descriptions, the spreadshot's projection is exagerrated, as it gives the maximum damage done if ALL bullets hit. And that doesn't happen unless you're at point blank, which is suicidal.
As for auto-resolve, well, allow me to laugh and explain that the Total War franchise taught me to never use it under any circumstance.
The main problem I have with fights is that bullets are going all over the place, which is somehow good. Except that some ships are extremely fast, leaving bullets absolutely everywhere, which means you cannot regen shields during a fight, as the small interceptors will make sure you're constantly taking small hits. Not much, but enough to disturb the regeneration. And I haven't found any option to give orders to the small summoned ships.
Speaking of interceptors, I still haven't understood how the scale work. Apparently, there are thingies that does stuff, and you only need one of these to upgrade the flagship.
I perfectly understand that flagships are supposed to withstand punishment, but when I'm looking for Hydral tech and am fighting a 7vs1 fight, I would enjoy it a lot more if I wasn't forced to bait the enemy while abusing my superior range.
I appreciate the idea of having pilots to save, it forces the player to stay close to the ships instead of sniping them from afar, but the problem is that getting too close to the enemies ship often means dying to the deadly gravitic lance (at least they were in my memories).
But yeah, I admit that I have a peculiar dislike for turn-based games, so TLF will probably never totally pleases me. But I really liked the sneaking missions, and I would like to have more of these "sneak in a minefield to get tech" or "sneak in an asteroid field filled with space monsters to recover minerals".
but I dunno, I think there's still a lot of potential in that game. I tried in my last post to put a Touhou picture depicting a giant laser taking 75% of the screen, but I also remember Diablo 3, where you have to fight the Butcher while avoiding being burned to death by the randomly burning floor. And I think that shooting down the orbital defenses of a planet while avoiding the ion cannon's shots would be epic, instead of said defenses being just "destroy this to make them lose 1m defenders".
In short : the fights are a bit boring, due to flagships all being bullet sponges (granted, it's explained by them being tough, but are Hydrals so scary that nobody wants to surrender?), and I find it lacking in immersion, as the descriptions often don't match what I see.
For example : a planet has 10 moons. It's written in its description. Except said moons never appear in the background, there's no mission to attack the freighters and isolate these moon bases. They're just ressources mines.
You might think I dislike TLF. You would be wrong. The fact that I'm criticizing means that I see potential in that game, and am frustrated by how badly it delivers. I want to see it being improved. I want to have fun when I play, instead of thinking "oh great, thoraxians and skylaxians started a war while I was researching something, now I have to restart everything because the peltians are doomed and the burlust hate me".
That's something sadly constant in Arcen games, they give off that "lack of polish" impression. Instead of feeling like I'm leading a human rebel army, I feel like I'm just playing chess with an AI who acts as if I wasn't here. Instead of feeling like a four-headed monster loathed by the one he's trying to unite, I feel like some guy visiting another guy living on a planet, said other guy just happens to be an alien hivemind.
I don't really know how to put it in words, but that's how I feel when I play The Last Federation. Maybe the still pictures are to blame. Planets feel empty. Like in that Hot Shots! movie where the general is looking at a photography and complains nobody's moving.
Hmm, the damage projection bit, yeah, I've found it's rather best not to pay too much attention to that. I actually think it should be changed up quite a bit. Heck, I was testing something with the Obscura earlier, and something I've noticed with them is that the "DPS" readout thing will say something like 22,000, when I know full well that if the player is in the wrong position, or just makes a bad move, it can deal WAY more than that if they smash into enough shots. And this goes to the normal ships as well.
Burlust Warlord fights, yeah, they're getting a ton of changes, but I cant guarantee you'll like them. They're meant to be sort of a "boss" fight, although not with a power level near what the Obscura are, and only one at a time. That being said, that one ship is still going to cover the screen in stuff, though the patterns it has are designed to LOOK scary, yet they're actually pretty easy (they actually may be TOO easy right now). The Warlords will also now move at the speed of a dead frog in sludge, as opposed to their crazy hyperactive dashing that they were doing before. Their hull/shield values are likely to still be quite off at first though; I didn't do anything with those yet, as I'd kinda like to see how they are when approached during normal gameplay with the changes intact, before I change those base numbers.
The Total War bit: Hah, yeah, I can see what you mean about the auto-resolve, heh. That, yeah, some fans of that series really dont like it. Though, it is at least there as an option. I think it's the sort of thing that's kinda difficult to get right though. Though I'm not super familiar with the series, so I'm not the best judge of it.
Now as far as having no time to regenerate, hmm, I'm not sure what to say on that one. I've not really had that problem too much. If you use an ability though,it'll give you a bit of regen during the flare effect. And of course there are shield-regen abilities that you can equip.
The bit about the 7 vs 1 fight, do you mean the one against the Hydral Golems? If so, well.... ahhh, here's where we get to the part that makes balancing things like this so difficult. See, I'd been thinking for a long time now that those missions were actually WAY too easy. Even on Misery, I tear through them in a small amount of turns, and they've no chance of stopping me. However, I've also played the game to death, as well as the fact that I'm *really* familiar with shmups as a whole, and can dodge basically everything while attacking at close range. Not every player can do that though, and it's difficult for me to judge where the difficulty level of any of this REALLY is. So any feedback on the battle stuff is definitely welcome. Kinda like the solar map stuff... I've mastered the battle part of the game, but the solar map? Haha... no. I still get really kinda lost there, though I'm learning at least... but there's players that can demolish it on the hardest strategic difficulty. And I imagine that is WAY more difficult to balance than any of the stuff I've been working on, heh. I dunno how the devs do it. Anyway though, I'm told that the Hydral Tech fight might be getting some changes, so any feedback about how it and similar things are NOW, is appreciated and will help in deciding how to approach it, if the devs decide to go forward with that idea. If it DOES get changed, it's not going to be Obscura-level stuff either, but likely more along the lines of the Warlord's difficulty. Or at least that's what I'd shoot for. Unless the devs think it needs to be tougher, of course (since those techs ARE really powerful and useful).
Lessee... you mentioned someone starting a war while you were in dispatch, yeah? Ahh... yeah, there's an issue with that; right now putting it at full speed when you're in a dispatch can make bad things happen FAST. The game really does need the ability to auto-pause, when something happens like a declaration of war, so that you can decide if you need to abort the dispatch and go fix it (fortunately, even for things like building construction, progress in a dispatch is never actually lost). Heck, I had one moment in my current game, early on, where I went to do a 6 month dispatch, right, so I started it up, hit full speed, and BAM, it was over.... and the Andors were over too, having been instantly eaten by the Thoraxians. I hadnt had the chance to do anything! So I've been using the much slower version of the fast forward, which takes awhile but it guarantees I dont miss anything. Even if it is bloody annoying to sit through.... But it has at least allowed me to jump in and put a stop to things that would evaporate any further races. The "things" I'm stopping typically being the Thoraxians each time, the jerks... I'll say, those guys are trouble when they start on a planet with really high compatibility.
Beyond all that though, all I can say is that I do think the game can take some time to really "click" with someone, as far as the strategic stuff goes. It took awhile for me... my early experiences with the solar map stuff were all of the "what in the heck am I supposed to be doing here?" sort. A problem would appear, and I wouldnt be sure how in the heck to deal with it, or IF it even could be dealt with at all. But it gets alot easier as you go along. Pretty high learning curve though, in my opinion, which can be a little... irritating. I do think it's worth it though.
You should mark down some of your ideas on Mantis, as some of the things you've mentioned here (like the bit with the moons and freighters) really sound like cool concepts.
