The Last Federation - First Alpha Footage (Combat!)

[x4000]

Original: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-last-federation-first-alpha-footage.html

The Last Federation is a really unique game in that it is a strategy/tactics game set inside a simulation game.  Check out our first sneak preview about it, or our preview discussing simulations in the game.  Also our recent podcast with Space Game Junkie with lots of other details, the description of your role as an independent agent in the solar system,  details on the alien races, information about the "butterfly effect" in the game, and the final scene art for all the alien races, some of the planetary art, and a written preview with info about combat.  Oh, and the forums for the game are filled with lots of other detailed tidbits, too.

Alpha Information! Private alpha testing with players is going to be starting the 28th of this month.  If you're interested in signing up, please see this forum post.  Right now we do have open spots still, but we may wind up needing to close signup past a certain point, because we definitely have a pretty huge list of people at this point (and there's only so much feedback we can process at any given time).

The Last Federation is an upcoming grand strategy + tactics hybrid strategy game from Arcen Games.  You play as a small mercenary fleet in a solar system teeming with eight alien races of various dispositions.  Your goal is to unify the survivors into a solar federation that will bring peace.  Doing so requires a lot of mercenary contracts, a lot of political deals and backstabbing, and occasionally strapping rockets to a moon.

This video shows some alpha footage with graphics that are about 90% complete, but missing some important things here and there.  Balance on the ships is also a work in progress, as is the enemy ship AI.  Even so, the game is already really fun and it is often hard for Keith and I to keep our "tests" to a strictly professional time limit. ;)  I actually had intended just to show you one quick skirmish here, but I wound up doing a longer video and showing three, anyhow.

By the way, apologies for the jerky framerate at the very start of the video.  It clears up after a bit; something was going on with my hard drive for some reason, and running FRAPS was causing extreme periodic lag for the first couple of minutes of the video.

[mrhanman]

That looks really fun.  The controls seem to be very intuitive, though I would suggest being able to drag and drop the queue as an alternate control method.  I really like the aesthetic you have going.  It all looks very pretty.  There seems to be a fair amount of unused space, but I don't think it's a big deal.

Anyway, looking good so far!   

[x4000]

Thanks!  In terms of the unused space in the bottom, some of that is meant for tooltips and later showing selected units; that part isn't really fully designed yet.  Also there are some specialty buttons for things like putting your craft into Escort, Fire At Will, or Wild Hunter modes.  Dragging and dropping to reorder queue items is probably something that will happen, too.

Anyway, we've really tried to KISS on the controls as much as possible, so I'm glad that's coming across.   This is definitely our best interface yet for a game I think; the way the solar map is coming along is really exciting for me.  We'll be showing that later this week.

[Teal_Blue]

This really, really looks polished and nice. It is easy to see a lot of work and thought has been put into this. I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of the game and wish you all well!

Really, really beautiful work!

-teal

[nas1m]

Will have a full look once I home from work, but I just have to get this off my chest:
This looks so awesome !

Congrats!

[Rekka]

I am joining everyone on this one. This looks very good! Nice work! Can't wait for round 2/3/4 of the alpha (depending on which one I'll get into) to come out.

[x4000]

Thanks so much, guys!

[Tridus]

It looks... fast. Really fast. I think I'd appreciate a slow motion button more than a fast forward one.

[Mick]

It looks pretty cool. I've been mostly ignoring descriptions on how the combat works up to this point because I wanted to have a fresh look with how it was presented by the game itself.

Will there be some type of tutorial that points to and explains the different parts of the interface/HUD? How the energy system worked was not very intuitive to me.

[x4000]

It looks... fast. Really fast. I think I'd appreciate a slow motion button more than a fast forward one.

Yeah, you can slow it down quite a bit if it's not your cup of tea at that speed.  Honestly the combat can be run at pretty much any speed, there's a slider in settings, so you can run it 5x that fast if you want, or at 1/4 that speed.  A slow-mo button is not a bad idea, though, honestly.

It looks pretty cool. I've been mostly ignoring descriptions on how the combat works up to this point because I wanted to have a fresh look with how it was presented by the game itself.

Will there be some type of tutorial that points to and explains the different parts of the interface/HUD? How the energy system worked was not very intuitive to me.

Yeah, there will have to be something, but right now I'm not sure what that will be.  It's one of those things where we'll be taking on board the feedback of the players in alpha, and trying to craft something as brief and clear as possible.  Too lengthy and people kind of check out and the message gets lost.

[Cyborg]

This looks good. Nice-looking battles. Can you desync the animations?  I think I might also see a combat exploit with the Lancers. What happens if you just send them in a beeline towards the flagship?

[x4000]

What do you mean by de-syncing the animations?  Turning off contrails, etc?  I believe we already have settings for that sort of thing, but if not it certainly is on the list.  Typically Keith adds those sorts of things automatically, heh, but if not we will.

For the lancers, I am not sure about that.  There are a lot of permutations, and that is one of many I have not tried.  I am sure there are 50 exploits at the moment, to be honest.  With various things we've been doing things like putting energy absorbers on certain hulls to make battleships not threaten them but make the battleships still have crazy dps in a spread on everything else, etc.

A lot of the balance will come to tuning numbers (the lancers look too powerful right now in general, given they are AOE), and then the other parts will come down to adding more specialized resistances, etc, to keep all the ships in roles that make sense.

[Apathetic]

It looks like it should be interesting to play.

I also noticed that all of the missiles flame trails were waving in sync with each other and it did look a bit off.

[x4000]

Yep, that's a minor detail that has been bugging me too, actually.

[mrhanman]

I think that's what Cyborg meant about desyncing the animations.  That would certainly look better, IMO.