Hello everyone,
Last week I picked up LF, and have been oscillating between extreme enjoyment and deep frustration. The game reminds me of Guild 2, in that it has immense potential obscured by poorly-documented mechanics and bugs/inconsistencies that prevent players from documenting the nature of those mechanics.
The premise is unique. Like most of Arcen's games, this is one thinks way outside-the-box - a rarity in today's money-churning FPS world. I find the graphics and music more than adequate, and even the menu systems are sufficient. My problem is the layers upon layers of "stuff" that even with good trial and error I am unable to figure out. This leads to extreme SLOG - whereby my advancement to higher difficulties is not "harder" it just involves more time-consuming activities. I'm fairly certain that a deeper understanding of the mechanics (and some bug fixes) might dial this in quite a bit. But I worry that many of the numbers have no meaning given the underlying design.
Just for reference, my games tend to go:
* build initial funds and pacify aggressive races as they become space faring
* outpost rush
* influence/laud/tech rush
* form fed
* slog getting final few races into fed or bigger slog killing them
Let me try to give some examples...
1). AI and Player Influence
Each race has different priorities and personalities. This is usually a good thing - but in LF it leads to scenarios that are cookie-cutter and offer little flexibility.
The Peltians have no ground troops. The Thoraxians or Burlusts pick on them immediately. So you wipe out the Thoraxian armada immediately when they become space-capable, get 1 race to attack them and they are "locked down" all game. If you don't - they die instantly from a sneeze of a ground invasion.
A deeper game would provide us with the tools to SHAPE each race a bit. In most of my games there are 2 or 3 planets that refuse to build armadas. These are usually the Boarines and Peltians for obvious reason. Giving them 3 military outposts, building multiple beneficial buildings, terraforming their world up close to 1 (if it was lower), influencing an Armada event and Dispatching myself to aid their armada building is practically worthless and a gigantic waste of resources.
Even with 50 years of trying some race/planet combos seem incapable of functional AI. And the AI seems to turn-off on some races as time goes on. Like the Burlusts will be extremely aggressive early game, and then just kind of sit there forever once I do a round of Lauding everyone.
2). Calculation Imbalances
Armada and Ground force power numbers seem unbalanced. Last game I had the Evucks with 300 million population and 2,500 Trillion ground power and couldn't figure out why. The Thoraxians had 8 billion pop, and only 50 billion ground power with similar technology. And with the lack of tools to manage a ground invasion, it usually takes me an hour+ to kill off the Thoraxians. Using every technology, queen assassination, orbital bombardment, ferrying in rebels, dumping waste on their planet and more have only token impact. Races just don't invade with sufficient troops and orbital bombardment is slow.
So I guess what I am saying is the calculations appear unbalanced. Invading the Thoraxians should take 15-20 minutes and not an hour. Invading the Peltians should take 5 minutes, not 0.1 seconds.
3). Political Holes
Another gripe is how handicapped some of the races are politically. The Boarines have some leaders that just outright prevents 90% of what some of the other races do. And it never, ever, seems to change. Maybe I am missing something here. I usually pick them as my starting bad-race because they are useless as an ally.
Some races like the Peltians lack options for bringing other races into the Fed or forming a Fed. Others like the Burlust seem really unique, but also seem to lack some depth or understanding. Why would I ever bribe the sub-warlords? I spent 100k on bribe materials on shot them all way up... but no new options seemed to unlock. Bribing the head warlord always seemed most-efficient.
Many of the racial differences ARE awesome. I get the direction they were headed and many of the races do work well. The Thoraxian Queen is great. The Acutians and Endorans and Ewucks seem good too. There are just a few discordant mechanics wrapped up in some of the races that continue to frustrate me.
And a lot of this is wrapped up in mysterious mechanics. Like last game I discovered the Boarines could join the fed if they were facing an overwhelming invasion force. Maybe a spreadsheet needs to exist showing how each race can form a fed or join a fed would help? Perhaps a second list of methods for increasing cross-race relations would help too.
4). Weapons
In my opinion, the weapon choices are imbalanced. Energy blaster appears superior to all-else for taking down shields in 90% of cases. Mass Driver is superior to all-else for destroying hulls in 90% of cases, and is the go-to weapon for pirate base decimation in 100% of cases. I keep testing/mouse-overing in hopes of seeing some added complexity here.. but so far I have not.
The exception being Warlord duels where they have absorption shields. Energy blaster + Piercing seems best. And even against swarms, energy blaster or the mini gun seem better/faster than the scatter shot.
I'm also finding the offensive power ups to be lackluster. I hardly ever use them, because doing so penalizes me more than just shooting that round. This is even with superior tech vs the enemies. The little ships die quickly and I can only call them once so it is kind of pointless? Combat is rather unique and I want it to be fun. But it can become a grind if you fall behind on the tech tree or use sub-optimal weapons.
5). Quests
These start off strong, and perhaps a bit exploitable... and then kind of become meaningless. Some of them are still buggy, and the combat ones' effects seem minimal. Perhaps at higher tech levels (which I tend to win before hitting) unlock more complexity here? This mechanic can really enhance the game if further developed.
6). Disaster frequency
By the time mid-game hits, most planets have one stat that is tanked to -500 or below. This would be fine and make the game more interesting, though when combined with the broken AI or buggy production.. often leads to my spending a ton of time "fixing" the planet - only to have it fail to thrive. Its like ok.. you have ever building, every tech, multiple outputs and your RCI is at or above 0 - plllease thrive! Anymore I just ignore it as it doesn't really matter so long as one of my alliance members can field a military to keep the Thoraxians in check.
Some planets lack moons, and if the races have no capability for trade (like the boarines) they can get stuck without any means for building outposts and many of the RCI buildings. So when I save up and build them, it is annoying for disasters to blow up the outputs a few turns later. I mean cmon, last game my federation lost 8 outposts in just an hour!
In Review
I wouldn't be posting so many thoughts and criticisms if I didn't enjoy the game and want it to become much better. It is highly intriguing. As a fan of Majesty, Guild 2 and strategy games in general... this fills a completely new niche. But the mechanics seem too easy to Grok once you discover that the only "strong" tools available to you are killing aggressive enemy armadas to keep them from attacking and lauding all races so they are nice and peaceful while you slog through the tech/influence/more lauding phase.
Please continue to develop LF. I am looking forward to the expansion and patches, and hope that once some of these quirks are ironed out that it will continue to occupy my interest for some time to come!
