TLF is not ready for an expansion.

[ElOhTeeBee]

Soon after the release of TLF, I stopped playing it, because I got sick and tired of chasing around enemy ships that could outrun my shots. I figured I'd come back to it later, when it'd been refined further. Now, here I am, and it's later - the expansion is, if I recall correctly, set to go on sale next week. I started playing TLF again, both because I never really gave it a thorough typo-checking and to get used to how it works again.

My gameplay experience was not positive.


TLF's tutorials were awful on release. I'd been hoping they'd have been improved. Instead, they are now even worse, because they weren't even updated to account for patches changing the information. I'm sure we all recall how the tutorial telling you to do some dispatches to earn credits is now utterly invalid because most of the dispatches available from the start now cost credits, but were you aware that the game's advice to start by delivering spacefaring tech to the Andors, Skylaxians, or Peltians is actually terrible, because races that come in later get more free fleets to start with than the initial races will be able to build in that time, and the warlike races will absolutely run over the more peaceful ones if they start with that advantage?

This is, as a reminder, the first thing the game tells you to do once you're done on the solar map. And I learned that it was a bad idea from a Google search.

Oh, or here's another good one. That highly visible option for improving relations between races on the friendly actions screen? Yeah, that's absolutely terrible. Takes way too long, costs way too much. It's better to incite a war against the two by a third race, so they get an enemy-of-my-enemy thing going on. (The game never tells you about this unless you poke around in the diplomacy breakdown and happen to spot it, which requires that the conditions already be present to begin with.) Alternately, you can start a trade route between the two, for a constant boost to relations. (Again, the game never tells you about this - and, while the option to impose or remove tariffs on trade routes can be found by looking at government options, the option to start a trade route doesn't even appear unless you first have a race colonize a moon, an action with no immediate benefit as far as I could tell.)

After watching the Peltians hopelessly die, with no clue of what I could have possibly done to change their fate (since I couldn't try a solo defense for some reason, and I couldn't assist in the defense since there were no defense armadas to assist, and I had no idea why they were being so badly crushed when I went out of my way to give them all the defensive and ship-building techs I could get and, by the time the Thoraxians attacked, it was too late to tell them to make some fleets), I restarted armed with new knowledge. Destroy some Acutians, go deliver spacefaring tech to the Peltians to see if I can somehow overcome that whole 'warlike races will get a big army for free' thing, do some anti-piracy since that seems to be a decent option to improve my bank account and my influence with them...

Second mission had me trying to destroy a pirate ship that ran away from me faster than my shots went after it. I quit after sixty turns of futile chasing, and uninstalled.

The Last Federation is full of wonderful ideas and good concepts, but why are you making an expansion when the base game is still so hostile to its players?

[x4000]

I think a lot of it boils down to taste.  It's a complicated and unusual game, and isn't something that everyone is going to be able to get into easily.  But in terms of the general nature of the game, that's not really something we're looking to change.  Re various points:

1. Dispatches for credits not being updated in the tutorial, good point.  Definitely an oversight.

2. Tutorials in general, I don't think that they are bad.  They teach you how to do things, and tell you your goal, and let you have at it.  Some people don't like this -- they want to know strategy tips and have some direction on how to use the tools to go about reaching their end goal.  But that's not really the tack taken with most games of this stripe, where experimentation is pretty key, you know?

3. I agree that the improve relations option is terrible, and should be taken out or altered.  We put it in there as a "let's give people flexible options" item, and the result wasn't great.  That was a case of simply adding a new gameplay tool for players to be able to experiment with, but it leads new players astray.

4. Good point on the colonize moons needing a better explanation on it.  It's not required for trade routes, but it does help.  Trade routes require a certain excess of resources on the part of one race and a certain need on the other.

5. In terms of not being able to do a solo defense, if you ever wind up with a case like that, a bug report would be helpful.  We've had some rare reports of that, and I think it has to do with ships sometimes not being fully docked but still attacking.  Or something.  Anyway, it's a sneaky little bugger that isn't very common, and without a way to reproduce it there's not anything we can do.

6. Regarding a pirate ship that fleets faster than your shots chase it, I'd be interested to know what the ship is, and have a save.  That sort of thing we can't really do anything with unless someone actually tells us about it, and I have a feeling that there was a solution since I don't have a bunch of other reports of that.  THAT said, watching Misery play a different SHMUP the other day, it struck me how much faster his bullets were than the enemies' and so I've applied that same effect here.  It feels notably more fun!


In general I have to say that I disagree with the premise that the base game is hostile to its players.  It does take a certain amount of learning, that's true.  And undoubtedly there are certain traps for new players, as with any complex game, and we try to fix those when we hear about them.  But as a general rule this game has sold very very well, and we've not been remotely deluged in complaints.  Not vaguely remotely.

Sweeping generalizations like "the tutorials are bad" really are never helpful, because there's no particular call to action in there.  "Make better tutorials" is a meaningless thing to say, because you're asking for me to give you some sort of information that the game doesn't already give, but I have no idea what it is you want to know.  Saying things like "on the colonize moon option, it doesn't make it clear that this is a way to open up more trade route possibilities" is definitely actionable and something we can do something about, though.  I'll take care of that today.

You had several good points above that are actionable things that I can do something about, really.  I think four in all.  But these are all things that are maybe 20 minutes to take care of in total.  They don't really get in the way of an expansion, nor does an expansion get in the way of them.  The main thing that gets in the way of them is people not bringing them up or us not thinking of them, or there not being a seeming severity to them, etc.

Anyway, hope that makes sense!

[x4000]

The new 1.042 version is now out and addresses all the things you mentioned that were specific enough for me to do something about: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,16363.0.html

Cheers!

[Eternaly_Lost]

Well it just saying that the tutorials are bad is not saying enough. The very fact that the tutorial give you advise that is outdated will no doubt confuse people.

I was confused when I started playing this game to be told to do a Dispatch, saw they cost money and figured out that it must have meant fight Pirates. So it was using a bit of a fancy way to say, do missions.

It was only when I got into the change log that I learned that tutorials never were updated when it was changed.

If we are talking about problems. I do have two problems that I personally keep running into.

The first is there is no good way to defend your bases from Space Pirates Armadas. They just float around outside of it and can't attack back without turning on Armada attack and clicking and fighting each of the hundreds of them one at a time with each battle being one ship. I feel differently if each battle was 20 or more ships. But a single ship each time is... sad to be honest.

No option to take them on in masses even though they are so dense it looks like I have planet around my Space station.

The other is that even when helping people to build Armada, they break and stop building. So as much as I might want to help my allies get 100 or more Armada they always stop midway, and no matter how much time passes or raw materials I give them, they will not build another ship.

You got a time traveling Hydra here, that you love so much that I likely could ask to be king and you just make me (Influence is over 3000), yet you will not follow my orders to build another ship?  You got cloning labs, you have crew for it, even if you don't right now.

[x4000]

Well it just saying that the tutorials are bad is not saying enough. The very fact that the tutorial give you advise that is outdated will no doubt confuse people.

I was confused when I started playing this game to be told to do a Dispatch, saw they cost money and figured out that it must have meant fight Pirates. So it was using a bit of a fancy way to say, do missions.

It was only when I got into the change log that I learned that tutorials never were updated when it was changed.

Well, there were still at least two paid dispatches even after that change, so the tutorial wasn't wrong.  You could mine for resources, for instance.  But there were a bunch of expense dispatches, too -- and they were neatly divided into those two categories.  So the tutorial never was actually incorrect, but the options that the tutorial was talking about were a lot more anemic than they once were.  Anyway, that's no longer the case.

The first is there is no good way to defend your bases from Space Pirates Armadas. They just float around outside of it and can't attack back without turning on Armada attack and clicking and fighting each of the hundreds of them one at a time with each battle being one ship. I feel differently if each battle was 20 or more ships. But a single ship each time is... sad to be honest.

No option to take them on in masses even though they are so dense it looks like I have planet around my Space station.

I'd like a save for that, if you have one.  And at any rate, typically you're expected to use Security Goons to keep your stations safe, for the most part.  You can do it alone, but it's hard to be a one-Hydral army in too many places at once, because time passes with each battle and so on.

The other is that even when helping people to build Armada, they break and stop building. So as much as I might want to help my allies get 100 or more Armada they always stop midway, and no matter how much time passes or raw materials I give them, they will not build another ship.

If you have an example of that in a save, that would be useful.  It's possible that they are building up their existing armadas, instead.  They are only allowed to build so many armadas before upgrading existing ones at that planet, and both fall under the banner of what you are helping them do.  Having armadas that are strong and plentiful are both good things.

It may be that there is some sort of critical shortage in their pipeline that is causing their budget to not include any armada stuff.  I can't really say without seeing a savegame with this in action, though.

[TheVampire100]

I cannot see why people are confused about the game. What makes it easy to learn TLF (easier than other Arcen Games) is that it hasn't unlocked every feature at the start. instead you get all the actions in little tutorialsso you can learn it step for step.

However, getting big text walls is not benefitical for the game but that has been always an issue with Arcen games. You should try to create an interactive tutorial instead of "now study all these pages and learn the game". For an example you could adress players at tehe first ballte "move your ship here. Use this attack. Okay, now play on your own" and so on. Would really help people.

The other issue, pirates too fast: Then just put your power in your engine. That's what this system is for otherwise it would be a totally waste. You can move across really long parts of the map.

[x4000]

Interactive tutorials tend to be really brittle and something that has to be revised constantly as a game evolves.  They're also bloody time consuming to create.  Generally speaking if people aren't willing to read a lot of text, they aren't going to have a lot of fun in our games anyhow, given that a lot of the game consists of parsing text and deciding what to do..

[Eternaly_Lost]

Save game is attached.

If you look over to the at the large ball of Pirates flying around my Space Station with 917 goons defending it and almost 1.9 Million power.

If you fly over to Rangi and try to assist with Armada construction nothing happens no longer how long you wait.

And yes, they have a -211948 relationship with me. It overflowed in my attempts to get them to build more ships. I might have one somewhere before it overflowed trying to help, but that one save does contain both the issues I was talking about.

[ElOhTeeBee]

well that was quick

I'll be sure to complain about more specific stuff when I have time, then - I can't actually play any more today anyway, I gotta get ready for some tabletop RPG-ing. Off the top of my head, though, it would be helpful to include some sort of preemptive warning that a race might be considering an attack of opportunity (or an attack in general) - possibly tie it to the presence of a diplomat or informant on a world?

And the tutorials don't necessarily have to be interactive, but I feel they really don't go into enough depth on how to get races to like (or hate) other races, not just you.

The other issue, pirates too fast: Then just put your power in your engine.

I had engine power at 7, and was still unable to close the distance enough for my shots to actually make contact. If I lowered my weapons power, I would still be unable to hit because the higher speed would be negated by my shorter range.

[x4000]

Save game is attached.

If you look over to the at the large ball of Pirates flying around my Space Station with 917 goons defending it and almost 1.9 Million power.

If you fly over to Rangi and try to assist with Armada construction nothing happens no longer how long you wait.

And yes, they have a -211948 relationship with me. It overflowed in my attempts to get them to build more ships. I might have one somewhere before it overflowed trying to help, but that one save does contain both the issues I was talking about.

Thanks, added to our internal list!

well that was quick

I'll be sure to complain about more specific stuff when I have time, then - I can't actually play any more today anyway, I gotta get ready for some tabletop RPG-ing.

No problem -- and have fun!

Off the top of my head, though, it would be helpful to include some sort of preemptive warning that a race might be considering an attack of opportunity (or an attack in general) - possibly tie it to the presence of a diplomat or informant on a world?

Maybe at some point, but that sort of warning in advance really isn't in the spirit of the game.

And the tutorials don't necessarily have to be interactive, but I feel they really don't go into enough depth on how to get races to like (or hate) other races, not just you.

Yep, understood.  It's mainly a matter of context, I think.  When you are actually going to be receptive to hearing that ("you" in the general sense), versus going "why are you telling me this, what do I do with this info?"  So I added that info in to three different areas of text where it isn't tutorials, but is places that one would reasonably look to try to improve relations.  And now it basically tells you when you go looking for it, which is one of the things that I try to aim for most of the time.

[FortunaDraken]

The other issue, pirates too fast: Then just put your power in your engine.

I had engine power at 7, and was still unable to close the distance enough for my shots to actually make contact. If I lowered my weapons power, I would still be unable to hit because the higher speed would be negated by my shorter range.

Lowering weapons power doesn't lessen the range, I've found? Either way, take power out of your shields and put engines to max. There's a lot of ships I've found that need that in order to catch up (Burlust Warlords and anything Acutian tends to be insanely fast), so generally you have to risk the lower shields in order to max out engines and have strong enough weapons to actually hurt them. It's annoying, certainly, but at the same time if everything was easily handled with the same power set-up, there'd be almost no point having it.

[x4000]

Also, for anyone who loves the larger space setting and whatnot but dislikes combat, there's the auto-resolve option.  That's basically how I play the Total War games.  I don't like the RTS part of them, but the grand strategic part is really fun for me.  Sure I'm missing out on part of the experience, but that part isn't for me and the part that remains is right up my alley.  I'm not advocating that per se, but I am saying that if combat just doesn't float your boat but the rest does, that's what auto-resolve is all about.

[Misery]

I want to echo the bit that Chris said about tutorials and all.  For a game like this, the level of tutorials that this one has is pretty common.  Heck, there are those that are MUCH more harsh with their learning curve... ever tried one of Paradox's grand strategy games?  Which are just one example.  Alot of times though, you only really NEED so much, as experimentation can get you the rest of the way.  You get into it, you mess around for awhile, and then at a certain point something will just "click", and the rest comes much easier.  I know alot of players these days are used to comphrensive tutorials that give you 8 pages of info on how pressing "A" makes you jump, but plenty of games just dont go all that far with tutorials, and that's fine.

If there's any really specific part of the game that's kinda confusing or whatever though, this forum is definitely the right place to ask for assistance.  Though I personally cant think of anything that was quite THAT confusing, I could be missing something of course.


And stuff like this applies to things like the combat as well.  That just takes practice and getting used to it as well.  Ships moving real fast avoiding your shots, for instance.  Most ships dont move very fast, and for those that are somewhat quick, if you know how to deal with them, you're still gonna pop them pretty fast;  it's all about positioning.  Being at certain relative angles to them made it so that their speed didn't cause you to miss.  Alot of the combat is like that in an overall sense, and some of the expansion stuff is going to increase that aspect of "positioning = really important", well, when you're dealing with those particular additions, anyway.

6. Regarding a pirate ship that fleets faster than your shots chase it, I'd be interested to know what the ship is, and have a save.  That sort of thing we can't really do anything with unless someone actually tells us about it, and I have a feeling that there was a solution since I don't have a bunch of other reports of that.  THAT said, watching Misery play a different SHMUP the other day, it struck me how much faster his bullets were than the enemies' and so I've applied that same effect here.  It feels notably more fun!

Wait, what?

....ahhh, you're right, that is alot better.  Hmm, I hadnt thought of that at all, had gotten so used to the older speed that things moving fast enough to not get hit was just part of how things worked.  With the upcoming stuff, that's actually probably an important change.  Less frustration VS certain things.  And it does indeed have a better feel to it overall.  Balance stuff should be MOSTLY fine, though there's a couple of small things I can think of, but that's not so much about bullet speed, mostly damage values and such.  Overall though... yes, quite a bit better.  A grand idea.

[x4000]

6. Regarding a pirate ship that fleets faster than your shots chase it, I'd be interested to know what the ship is, and have a save.  That sort of thing we can't really do anything with unless someone actually tells us about it, and I have a feeling that there was a solution since I don't have a bunch of other reports of that.  THAT said, watching Misery play a different SHMUP the other day, it struck me how much faster his bullets were than the enemies' and so I've applied that same effect here.  It feels notably more fun!

Wait, what?

....ahhh, you're right, that is alot better.  Hmm, I hadnt thought of that at all, had gotten so used to the older speed that things moving fast enough to not get hit was just part of how things worked.  With the upcoming stuff, that's actually probably an important change.  Less frustration VS certain things.  And it does indeed have a better feel to it overall.  Balance stuff should be MOSTLY fine, though there's a couple of small things I can think of, but that's not so much about bullet speed, mostly damage values and such.  Overall though... yes, quite a bit better.  A grand idea.

For those who don't know -- well, that's pretty much everyone except Keith and I, I think, at the moment -- Misery has been helping out with the expansion by designing the SHMUP-style bullet patterns for the new ships, including in particular the Obscura ships.  It's like a whole other game when you're in those battles, it's really cool.  I just love the added variety, really, and that even applies to the simpler ships that are for in the main non-Obscura fleets, too.

Anyway, yeah -- Misery, I think that was kind of a three-person-storm that led to that idea.  ElOhTeeBee noted his frustration, I realized I had some low-level frustration of the same level when chasing your Obscura ship with "the road" pattern and missing him a lot, and seeing your video from that other game popped into my head.  So a very good confluence of events.

[Misery]

Yeah, I hadnt told anyone about it up till this point, aside from occaisional obscure comments about the Burlust Warlords getting tougher to deal with in the expansion.  That specific enemy type likely wont be COMPLETELY finished before the beta date, but it should still be at least functional enough to be usable for that battle.

As for everything else.... well, it should be interesting to see any reactions from those that run into the new stuff.  I guarantee everything is dodgeable with enough skill, even if some of it doesnt LOOK like it.

Any other details about the expansion and such arent mine to give, so that's all I'll say. 

It's been fun to do though, aside from the occaisional "grumble angrily at the screen for 20 minutes" bits that happen if I have like, ONE typo somewhere.  Blasted computers and their need to have everything be bloody perfect... 

It's impressive though what the combat part of the game engine is capable of.  It was very well put together, so working with it has been pretty easy.