TLF Alpha version .600 released!

[Hyfrydle]

Just completed my first battle and I have one little request please can we have the W,A,S and D keys also scroll the screen as well as the arrow keys. Love the space battle graphics and with suitably meaty sound it will be very immersive.

Found the deployment screen a little confusing so will need to experiment a bit more but it's early days and I like what I'm seeing so far.

Also when the battles actually mean something in the campaign some battles could be very tense.

Keep up the good work loving things so far 

[Misery]

Ok, so, the big thing that I'm not getting is the turrets.  Is there some magical trick to dealing with them?

Attacking them seems pointless.... nothing can beat them.   Even the Hydral Golem or whatever it is just melted in seconds when it got close to like 2 of the things. 

Attacking any enemy that's even remotely near them seems pointless, because the AI on individual ships is dumber than a sack of hammers (this always drives me crazy with ANY RTS, without exception, and is one reason why I dont play the genre much) and has a terrible attention span, so they like to fire a couple of times at whatever I told them to, and then fly around like idiots randomly.  I'm fairly certain that second bit is a glitch, them just losing the order I gave to target when the target is still there.   But that's a whole other topic.... I *think* I put that into Mantis already.

Trying to go between them is pointless, because it cant be done.

The only constellation I can deal with out of the ones I've tried is the half-ring.  Just go behind it.  But for the circle/triangle/whatever ones, I've not the foggiest clue how to possibly deal with them.

And naturally the enemy flagships just go sit on them the whole time....

So, yeah, getting the impression I'm missing something here.

[Hyfrydle]

I have to agree turrets are really tough to deal with, I did manage to take some out with snipers but it took ages and by the time the turrets had gone the enemy had no ships left.

I'm sure I'm missing something but I have no idea what.

[Misery]

I have to agree turrets are really tough to deal with, I did manage to take some out with snipers but it took ages and by the time the turrets had gone the enemy had no ships left.

I'm sure I'm missing something but I have no idea what.

Yeah, I tried that with the snipers as well, couldnt think of what else to do.   As I typically only bring one sniper fleet in.... since they do their job pretty well (not useless after all.... I had the wrong pilot for them before.... ugh) I usually dont need more than 1.  But just 1 fleet of them takes about a billionty years to pop one turret.



On another note, certain situations lead to Hydral tech being perhaps too easy to activate?   I had that golem thing appear behind a half-ring of turrets, and at the start of the fight, after spawning interceptors, I just rushed the flagship (a Thoraxian Whatever) touched the golem thing, and then rushed back out, which did the trick before the enemy could really respond.  Granted, I suppose that's a tactic in and of itself, and a potentially risky one (not sure), but I figured I'd mention it.


Also, abilities are fun.  They can have quite the impact.  My interceptors can accomplish something now!  By violently exploding!

And those backgrounds are just wonderful. 

And facing more than 1 enemy flagship at a time is much more interesting than fighting one at a time!  Enemy flagships are still very vulnerable to rush-down tactics.... but it's situational and depends on what you have.  Certain tactics seem like they might be outright exploits.  But I'll post about those later when I have more time.

[GrimerX]

Ok, so, the big thing that I'm not getting is the turrets.  Is there some magical trick to dealing with them?

Attacking them seems pointless.... nothing can beat them.   Even the Hydral Golem or whatever it is just melted in seconds when it got close to like 2 of the things. 

Attacking any enemy that's even remotely near them seems pointless, because the AI on individual ships is dumber than a sack of hammers (this always drives me crazy with ANY RTS, without exception, and is one reason why I dont play the genre much) and has a terrible attention span, so they like to fire a couple of times at whatever I told them to, and then fly around like idiots randomly.  I'm fairly certain that second bit is a glitch, them just losing the order I gave to target when the target is still there.   But that's a whole other topic.... I *think* I put that into Mantis already.

Trying to go between them is pointless, because it cant be done.

The only constellation I can deal with out of the ones I've tried is the half-ring.  Just go behind it.  But for the circle/triangle/whatever ones, I've not the foggiest clue how to possibly deal with them.

And naturally the enemy flagships just go sit on them the whole time....

So, yeah, getting the impression I'm missing something here.

The only thing I've found to work so far is using the Battle Carrier flagship solo, with the recharge shields ability.   It can punch holes through the turrets for your ship to follow.  It also tends not to circle so much so you can sit in between the rings.  I've played about 12 games so far.

Couple of feedback items:
1) I can't consistently select my own flagship.  Not sure why, maybe the hit target is too small compared to the graphic.
2) Using the flagship as above, it would be *really* good to know when the place you have selected to fly to will cause your ship to loop around.  I've taken a lot of unnecessary damage that way.
3) I could use a way to say 'stop deploying'.  I would expect the build queue to hold at 'complete' but not launch the squadron.  I find myself dropping squadrons at bad times -- either too close to turrets or too far away from anything because I can't control the timing.

 

[GrimerX]

Couple of feedback items:
1) I can't consistently select my own flagship.  Not sure why, maybe the hit target is too small compared to the graphic.
2) Using the flagship as above, it would be *really* good to know when the place you have selected to fly to will cause your ship to loop around.  I've taken a lot of unnecessary damage that way.
3) I could use a way to say 'stop deploying'.  I would expect the build queue to hold at 'complete' but not launch the squadron.  I find myself dropping squadrons at bad times -- either too close to turrets or too far away from anything because I can't control the timing.

One more -- I'm not grokking the RPS mechanic of the squadron types.  From the descriptions it seems like there should be one, but right now I don't feel the need to pick my squadrons in any way.  'Random' is good enough.
Order of importance for me right now:
1) Special Abilities -- Which you choose definitely makes a huge difference right now
2) Flagship type -- Useful yes, though of the 8 options I only have an opinion about the Battle Cruiser and Tusker
3) Squadron types -- meh
4) Squadron abilities -- aside from playing with 'sniper' to deal with turrets (didn't work), doesn't seem to have any significant effect on the outcome.

And another -- I have too much time to set up and deploy, which waters down any deployment related mechanic.  AI needs to rush the QB more when constellations are deployed.

I need to play more and I know more stuff is coming in, so this is mostly FYI at the moment. 

-Ian

[waylon531]

So far I've been able to take out 5 enemy flagships with the max amount of troops with 5 constellations and 5 squadrons for me with the Thoraxian, Skylaxian, and Burlust ships. Because my squadrons usually get instantly obliterated I rush through some of the weaker turrets (Ones that aren't gravity lance or taser) to get the hydral relic. Usually the relic helps me significantly to kill the enemy flagship sitting in that constellation. The Thoraxian, Skylaxian, and Burlust ships have enough attack power to kill the enemy ship while sitting out of range of its weapons. Enemy flagships will not move into range of their weapons, even if they are getting shot and are really close to you.