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| Re: Shareware Explosion Rough Draft by FABIO 07/29/2004, 10:59pm PDT | ||||
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Mischief Maker wrote: Eh, the AI is definately better than almost all 4X or Civ games, except when it comes to dealing with fighters and standoffs where it's totally incapable of dealing with them. They will not get more point defense as a response. They will charge straight into your standoffs to get to you. I just get standoffs and fighters and mop the floor with the computer (even at max difficulty) every single game. It’s no fun getting into a fight with a ship armed with standoffs (long range cruise missiles,) because the only viable strategy is to keep your distance and shoot down the standoffs as they come until the enemy is out of ammo, then swooping in and trying to kick his ass before he can run away. I think standoffs are going to be what eventually ruins this game for me. They're by far the most effective weapon in the game, but unfortunately they're also the most boring, on both the receiving and giving ends. They also suck any and all fun/challenge out of planet battles. What should be a massive slugfest as your task force rushes the world and tries to subdue planetary defenses before being shredded turns into a boring siege as you just sit back out of their range and launch standoffs until your cities are wiped out. Standoffs assure that planets are utterly helpless against even just one single ship (at least the computer's are, a human player would know to load up on point defense). Forget a high AI difficulty level, if you really want a ramp up in challenge then just impose a self-regulating rule and never research fighters and standoffs. If you don't want the difficulty completely broken in your favor, don't ever ever use the shield-ignoring assault pods artifact. The computer only uses shields, never armor. With this artifact any enemy ship that gets close to you is instantly yours. P.S.- Torpedos are completely fucking useless. But the biggest minus to the game is its weird interface. It’s not that hard to use once you get a hang of it and learn some essential keyboard hotkeys, but the curve for learning to use the thing is fucking steep. An HTML User’s Guide is included with the game and you will need to use it. I can attest to this. In fact, I'm positive it was the IM conversation with me where I declared "wtf does any of this stuff do?" before MM pointed me to the HTML guide that inspired him to include this tidbit. In addition to MM's advice on turning off AI combat, I'd like to throw in that in order to make the game more fun, on higher difficulty levels (anything past 3) you should set pirates to "less challenging". Unless you do this pirates will transform from interesting tactical element to completely frustrating chore. One-third to half your systems will quickly become infested with pirates. You must assign at least 2 ships to full time pirate patrols (which is a lot of fucking ships in a game where 4 or 5 are considered an armada) just to keep it under control and EVEN THEN as soon as you wipe out the last few more will instantly and automatically pop up somwhere else. To MM- Wtf is up with pirate ships? Half the games I play the pirate ships are toughter than most enemy ships. One game I was an age and a half ahead of everyone else in technology, yet pirate ships were sporting shit that was light years ahead of my enemies. How does this happen? |
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Shareware Explosion Rough Draft by 07/29/2004, 9:05am PDT  Re: Shareware Explosion Rough Draft by 07/29/2004, 10:44am PDT Re: Shareware Explosion Rough Draft by 07/29/2004, 10:59pm PDT Re: Shareware Explosion Rough Draft by 08/01/2004, 10:52am PDT Re: Shareware Explosion Rough Draft by 08/01/2004, 12:09pm PDT |
