trust me its not as bad as warfare's Inc. lack of attack while moving. The pathfinding doesnt affect this that bad. But enough for me to notice.
You mean FreeForAll? No, it's me playing as Red against two Blue AIs. The AIs are in the same team... What i found nice is that when I attacked the first one, the other one came to help him, so I had problems because I was attacked by TWO armies from BOTH sides... well, I won To me, a good way of attacking with superior tactics is having 5 Battleships, 2 Carriers and the base. battleship line in front, behind them place the two Carriers, then the base between the carriers... Then set both carriers and the base to autobuild as many fighters as possible. Then spread the fighters between the Battleships to keep the battleships filled with fighter escorts... if I manage to press the two battleships from each side of my line into the enemy army and rip some ships out of it, toasting the whole army is easy even if they got 7 or 8 battleships...
John I cant help but think that the previous wallpaper the "chess" wallpaper was for me since I mentioned I play chess. Even if it wasnt I'm going to continue assuming it was for me I'm right here!!!! Hard to post on weeekends. I usually only post on weekdays and only during the day (PST)
Here's a link for my review It's my first review guys, so be gentle to be honest though. In My own personal opinion I'd rate this 10/5 i Love this game I'm even considering replacing my calendar on my dock with this game....decisions....
These wallpapers are beautiful. i know you didnt make them DLC. But as a thanks for the wallpapers I will buy blue attack and blue defense tonight. Thanks a lot
I love how there's the campaign and then challenges and then multiplayer. 3 play modes!!!! i cant get enough. And the challenge levels are....well....challenging . This has easily replaced all my RTS needs....and the load times are heavenly
the more I dig the more I love the control options has anyone else noticed the directional launch options in the build menu? This may help with pathfinding if the built unit starts on the correct side of your builder. also finally noticed the escort management tool? I was wondering why ships who cant build fighters were starting with less than a full compliment. very interesting... just keeps getting better
I showed the game to my brother on my iPhone. At first he said "Aww stupid controls", I explained to him a bit (I told him how to use the simple multimove, then I looked away and he was setting complicated and clever waypoint paths for his units lol ) and had him fight as Red vs one Blue AI on Donut... At furst it looked like an easy game (for the AI;D), but in the end he WON! His very first Close Range battle ended as a win Well, long story short, he ran to get his iTouch and bought the game too
So what's the advice for people put off by the apparent relentless difficulty level? Say for instance, someone who enjoys the C&C games but has never actually finished any of the campaigns and prefers to chillax in a skirmish... hope and pray for an update? Take the risk and read all the strategy posts?
Hold a finger on the normal Multimove Tool Button, then a submenu like button will appear above it. Slide your finger onto it, then release. Your now in Escort Move Mode. Drag from any unit to any other unit (when starting at a unit the game will show a maximum transfer range, you may have to pass the escorts along a few units ;D) to transfer one Escort. Simple ;D There is actually a second way to open the Escort Move Mode. Click on any unit to open the unit-menu. The unit menu also contains a button for escort move.
Reading through the strategy thread may be a good idea. Once you get the hang of it, you start developing your own way of fighting, experiment a bit, add a unit here or there, change the formation a bit etc. As I said, once you get the hang of it it will be VERY enjoyable.
(note, my post ended up being so unbelievably long, it actually went over the 10,000 character limit, so I've split it into two parts, here's part one) I haven't posted at TouchArcade recently, but a few of you may recall my posts when Blue Attack was released and know that I am a huge fan of John's/Cat-in-a-Box's games. So when Conquest was released, it was a day one purchase for me. Let me preface my comments by saying that I am a HUGE RTS (real-time strategy) fan (Red Alert, Starcraft, Dawn of War, Age of Empires, Homeworld, etc etc all rank among my favourite PC games). With that in mind, here are my thoughts on Red Conquest: I love the size of the download and the speed with which the game loads, from the initial press of the game icon its only seconds until you are presented with a beautiful menu complete with an engaging battle taking place in the background. Missions load even faster. And speaking of speed, the game never slows down noticeably for me. The entire interface is smooth and responsive (which is a god-send after playing so many iPod touch games that have horrible, laggy interfaces that suck the fun right out of it, no matter how good the rest of the game is). This is probably one of my favourite thing about all of John's games so far, they just feel good and they just look good! They are clearly made for the device and work wonderfully on it, and Red Conquest continues this reputation perfectly. Anyways, back to Red Conquest specifically. Initially, as with many people here, I had difficulties with the controls. Much of this had to do with my preconceived ideas of how the controls should be. I posit that someone with very little RTS exposure will actually have an easier time learning the controls than an experienced played. Anyways, even after I had finished the campaign I still wasn't completely adept at the controls, but I could tell that they were in fact wonderfully suited to the interface. My main problem was that I didn't understand how best to select and move my units. I kept trying to select a unit, then hit the move icon, then direct my unit to where I wanted it to go, then get back to the main interface. All of this was slow, annoying, and as it turns out, completely unnecessary. So, I suppose this reveals my only complaint about the game, but in a way this is also indicative of a short-coming of how the App Store works. I want a manual for this game. This is truly the first game for my iPod touch that makes me want a manual. AND THIS MAKES ME HAPPY!!! Did I mention that I love RTS games? The best RTS games are not your typical iPod/phone game, they can not be picked up and mastered in 1 minute. They require a bit of involvement on your part to actually learn something. Please don't let this stop you from playing Red Conquest though, you would likely be depriving yourself of the best RTS game on this platform. It's not that Red Conquest is actually very hard to learn, but it is not your typical fair that you load up once, quickly blast through the first few level, get bored because it's the same as every other game out there, and then never touch again. This is a real game folks! It had depth, it has innovation, it presents you with something new, and it's VERY well done. The tutorial may not be the best or most clear tutorial ever, but PLEASE don't let this hamper your fun. Watch the Youtube video that outlines some of the controls, play around in multiplayer with some AI, or ask for help in this forum. Once you are comfortable with the controls, then everything opens up and you will see the rest of the game for what it is. Hopefully for most people this won't even be an issue, with the amazing graphics, fast-paced gameplay, cool units, and everything else being enough incentive to continue on. Wow, I haven't even really talked about the game itself yet, but I wanted to get some preliminary stuff out of the way first, so people would know that I'm not just ignoring certain things, or letting them slide. I talked about the interface/controls a lot, because people seem to get a little hung-up on them, but there's good reason for how the interface is done. It might not be perfect yet, but it's the best RTS interface/controls I've experienced for this device and is definitely many steps in the right direction. Anyways, onto the gameplay. Its the usual RTS affair, but with some interesting additions. For non-RTS players out there, let me explain: you need to make money to fuel your warmachine, so that you can crush your enemies. Depending what you enjoy, you can expand any part of that sentence. Starting with the money, you have harvesters and your base ship that collect the necessary resources from space debris (Asteroids and destroyed ships). This all happens automatically, all that is necessary is to position the resource collecting units (harvester or base ship) near said space debris. Added depth in this facet of game play comes from the fact that resources are limited and that resource collecting is MUCH faster when collecting from destroyed ship bits. In my experience it pays to keep your base ship (or maybe a few harvesters) close to your army to sweep up after battles. Doing this I have never been resource limited once battle ensues. Once you have income, which is likely pretty slow initially, you can begin to focus on strengthening your warmachine, that is building units for your army. With no static buildings (except for planets!!), all production of units is handled by other "builder" units: the base ship, the foundry, and carriers. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what you prefer best, but a few foundries can go a long way to increasing your chances of winning, simply because you can recover faster after losing units. So, you've built a few units and it's now time to Conquer! I love setting up a good economy and production facility, but the real excitement comes from battle. For me, this is one of areas where Red Conquest shines the brightest. Through the combination of good interface (once you learn it obviously), interesting units, smooth graphics, and some gameplay details that I will mention shortly, I feel that combat is engaging, interesting, and exciting. While you can simply amass 10 of your favourite ship and then point them at your enemy, this is neither efficient or rewarding... and will likely lead to failure, particularly against a human opponent. Perhaps in another post I'll go into detail, but micromanagement, formations, and unit mixing can help a vastly inferior army prevail against an otherwise stronger adversary. Just take a look at the challenge missions if you want to get a taste for this. It sounds simple and basic, but something as small as moving away damaged units can easily shift the balance. I've read a comment or two with concern over the lack of hard obstacles. To address this, just let me say that the asteroid belts that slow down ship movement can be devastating and provide plenty of incentive to move carefully around them, or to stage attacks so that your enemy must move through them to get to you.
(Part two) Hmm, what was I talking about... oh right. I don't want to bog this down too much in specific combat details, but there's one other little thing that people might not have noticed yet, and I certainly haven't heard much mention of. It's the fighter escorts. When zoomed in sufficiently to see ship health (the indicator on the right side of a ship), you also see the number of escort fighters (the indicator on the left side of the ship). A few things to note: escorts will die in battle, not all ships start with a full complement of escorts (battleships being the most notable example because of the next fact), not all ships are capable of building escorts, and escorts are transferable between any two ships as long as they are close enough. The implementation of escorts is a well thought out addition that enhances the gameplay to a deeper level for those that care to go that far, but also doesn't really require active attention for those that don't care about such things. On the fleet build screen, you can set all of your build-capable ships to auto-build escorts when idle. If that is as far as you want to go with that, then great, but to take it too the next level you should be actively involved in moving your escorts out to ships that have either lost their escorts in battle or don't start with a full compliment. This strengthens your fleet and better helps you overcome the enemy when the odds are against you. Anyways, just one small thing among many that make Red Conquest very enjoyable for me. John, if you are reading all of this, I have noticed something that may be of interest to you. There is some strange behaviour on the Fleet build screen concerning the auto-building of escort ships. Say you have a planet under your control, but no foundries and you set auto-build to 12 escorts. If you then build a foundry, it seems to reset the auto-build setting to 2 on the fleet screen. I haven't tested enough to see if this affects the actual setting on individual ships, but it is something that I obsessively check to make sure it is set to the max. Wow, this has gotten way too long, so I'll try to wrap it up quickly with some final thoughts. The campaign was interesting and a good introduction to a number of gameplay features, but sadly ended just when I was very REALLY into the story and excited about it. Not a bad thing, but even with the currently implemented game features, I would have loved to see more levels. I personally enjoyed the cut scenes. Strangely, I felt the clean style matched the game well and was very intrigued by the lack of dialogue and not explaining every little detail. The text dialogue in the actual missions was sufficient to give a clear understand of the plot, and I found my interest was piqued by non-typical presentation of the between mission cinematics. Overall thoughts: by far this game has impressed me more than any other iPod/phone game in the app store. Yes, it is complicated and not your typical fair for an iPod/phone games, but it suits the platform perfectly and is executed very well. My iPod touch was getting less and less play time recently because I couldn't find any game that gave even a weak chance of holding my interest for more than a few minutes at a time. Crap, I got sidetracked again. Red Conquest is something new and exciting that is not just another knock-off of a PC game or something that already exists a thousand times over in the App Store. Its beautiful presentation, smooth graphics, and interesting gameplay should keep any fan of strategy-type games entertained. Fast-paced combat with the possibility for meaningful micromanagement and the challenge levels, should keep the "twitch" gamers entertained. Finally, the knowledge that more is coming, that the developer has a reputation for continually improving and supporting is games, and that this is already a fantastic game, should convince anyone that for $4 this is a deal and would be at twice or three times the price. Even if you aren't a huge fan of the genre, you owe it to yourself to at least check out the videos of the gameplay and marvel. Thoughts/suggestions/comments (many of these have been mentioned by others, but I figured I'd add my vote to those as well): -I was a little confused by the advanced tutorial (the way they just keep saying their little hint over and over again, but didn't really give you an indication of what to do). I'd love to see a full on manual for this game, explaining all the different levels of the BEAUTIFUL interface, what the different icons mean in the build screen, and the basics of selection and movement in more detail. I hate to see people passing up such a wonderful game because they can't get used to it. The way Apple has setup the App store doesn't really provide a good system for distributing manuals outside of the game, but I feel this game could really use a full-page style manual. -I know there is promise of future additions with more missions and such, but I really was hoping for a few more levels to the campaign, even with no new core content (ships, graphics, sound, etc) a few more levels would have left me much more satisfied with the campaign. The challenges are fun (I've finished the Attack ones, and have dabbled in the others), but I was really getting into the story just as it said "to be continued". -Online multiplayer. I'm not sure my garbage internet in my apartment would even handle this, but this would add so much to the package. I would LOVE to play this game over wifi with a bunch of friends... sadly I don't know anyone that has an iPod/phone that I can play with, so playing over the internet would be a great solution to this. -Keep on making such awesome games! John (and the rest of the Cat-in-a-box team), I've loved everything you've done so far. I'm a bit of a programmer myself and obviously an avid gamer, and you guys make games that I wish I had the skill and experience to make myself. They are fun. They run perfectly on the device. The graphics are clean and beautiful. The gameplay and interface is always clearly designed with the limitations and strengths of the device in mind. Well done, and keep it up!! P.S. My apologies for the ridiculously long post and any spelling or grammar mistakes. I just started typing, and for some reason couldn't stop. Guess I'm just really passionate about this game and want others to see what I see in it. Sorry if I bored you
