I was wondering where I knew the developers name from & now I remember - Heroes of the Revolution, I loved that game. Awesome devs, I think that more so now especially after reading the above sincerity and dedication to fixing any problems. Good luck with the game GNX, gonna go pick it up now.
Now that you tell me, HOTR was good as a game concept but the very weak AI ruined the experience. Later they adressed the A.I. And several bugs in updates but by then i forgot about the game. This time i will wait for a trustworthy review and impressions.
So, I watched the trailer, and checked out the discussion, have not bought yet, very on the fence. Got a few queations more so to the fan base, but if the devs would like to chime in as well that's cool. They're more gameplay mechanism questions in order of importance, so thanks in advance: 1. From the look of the theater of war/sector map, there're just refineries and mines to occupy(?). I'm a seasoned 4x player, so to me, this looks like the 4x version of a tower d game. One base, multiple static resource points to vie for, send the fleet out in real time in order to win the numbers game. These are all staples of entry level strategy titles (no judgment here lol, just saying I'm not an entry level player). Is this the case, cause it'd be a huge buzzkill. 2. I like the story, very reminiscent of the language and general feel that the first 3 Dune books wanted to put out with the Landsaraad (the novel's political infrastructure). However, the impression I get is that the "send money to the other houses" acts both as a variable dnd artificial difficulty slider (again, like the send spice to the emperor in the original Dune adventure game) AND an x-com (new) style research tree mechanic that's there to make sure you keep up with the tech race.You can either save up money for what looks like ship repairs (since they can dock, I assume that's the point), OR send money to the other dukes and barons in exchange for research. That's a problem for me since it shoehorns me into one style. If I don't have plasma by day 64, I lose the attrition war to the AI that plays by different rules than the player. 3. That leads me to my next question: is there no other way to research technology? If my impressions are right, that means MY personal playstyle will eventually lead me to power game the meta game, which from a role playing perspective (and it seems this game's big on that angle) means the story won't matter, and I'll just say yea, I need the plasma cannon. 4. Finally, is this what the sales pitch in the description refers to as making no two games the same? This one and the map question are probably my biggest worries. I already have all the "deep" 4x games I'd like to own on my tablet, and I'm massively concerned that it looks like this is a well presented tower d. DON'T get me wrong, I'm not saying this is intentional or anything, since nothing led me to think this is a 4x aside from the visual presentation. but I'd like to double check that I'm not gonna buy a tower d game with JRPG turn based combat. I realize this post's full of long and tough questions, so thanks for the answer in advance. On a less analytic note, congrats to the devs on the art direction. It's got a real Dune (sorry, my fanboy's showing) space opera in the 50s vibe.
The game saves automatically. At regular intervals on the strategy map, and at the start of every battle. We don't have a 'return to main menu'/quit, mostly because we didn't feel it was necessary.
I'm absolutely in love with this game, so many interlocking systems and great variation on the standard turn based combat. And the UI and presentation are incredible, just fantastic all round.
I'd also love to hear what folks who have played the game think. I'll try to answer your questions for now from the dev/game design perspective. Our inspiration for the strategy map was definitely more XCom than tower defense. On the strategic level, there is a mining simulation that runs in real time. There are three types of installations you must protect, Sector Capitals, Mines, and Refineries. Four if you count your base of operations, the Sentinel space station. The enemy has six bases, one hidden in each of the six sectors, that they use to conduct raids against your mining infrastructure. If they raid an installation, they secure Neoplatinum and destroy the facility, affecting your own production of Neoplatinum. Mines and refineries will slowly be rebuilt by the sector capitals. As the enemy gains Neoplatinum, they become more powerful (better ships/weapons) and will eventually attack the sector capitals. If the sector capital is destroyed, then the sector is lost permanently. Your ultimate goal is to find and destroy the enemy bases before that happens. While in the strategic part of the game, you spend XP earned by your crew to unlock new abilities for them, refit your ships with improved weapons and equipment, and can check to see how the war is going (which grants passive bonuses to either you or your enemy). Which installation to defend, with which ships in your fleet, and when to attempt the risky base attack, are all strategic decisions that you make. Plus how to distribute the Neoplatinum at the regular war councils, which I'll go over more in your next question. So it's definitely not a 4X game (I also love that genre and would love to make one), I don't think tower defense is quite accurate either. We wanted to keep the game tightly focused on the feeling that you are defending an established operation. You're very correct in that the war council and distribution of Neoplatinum is the 'tech tree' for Sentinel Command. There are two ways to get improve. One is by just having battles. Your crew earns experience that unlocks new abilities - this is really important because abilities give you options in the battles. The second way to improve is through better ships, weapons, and equipment. These are primarily earned through the war council. Your allies are fighting the same war along a massive global front. Each of their provinces specializes in a different type of industry. At the war council, some of them will ask for aid in pushing back the enemy. If you can send the aid, they liberate a portion of their province and thus some of their technology becomes liberated and available for your forces. If you can't send them aid, the enemy progresses a little bit in their province. If you decline requests for a province repeatedly, the enemy will advance in their province and a portion of it will fall permanently into enemy hands (the same way you lose a sector permanently if the enemy destroys one of your sector capitals). This means that a piece of technology, maybe a class of ship, or an upgraded shield generator, is no longer going to be available to you. The challenge is to protect enough of the mining operation to have sufficient Neoplatinum to aid your allies, with enough left over to then purchase technology that you have unlocked for use in your fleet. Yes there is a sense of pressure, and you could fall behind the enemy, in the similar way that you can start to fall behind in XCom if you lose a few too many battles. But the depth is in the battles themselves. Having superior weapons may grant an advantage, but it doesn't guarantee victory. Superior tactics can overcome even a heavy advantage in weapon strength. This is why the crew upgrades are completely independent of the Neoplatinum economy - win or lose, you will always be a little better in the next battle through your ship's crews gaining XP. The technology tree is unlocked solely through the war council. Your decision is, once unlocked, do i save the 2400 Neoplatinum for the next war council, or do I get the plasma cannon for one of my ships, or do I spend the 2400 on better damage control systems for three of my ships? It's a precious commodity. This came up in the upcoming games thread on TouchArcade also, so forgive me for paraphrasing from that thread. The board and initial starting conditions are the same each time. As the simulation runs, little decisions and outcomes shift the direction of events, so that as the game progresses the options you have as the player are different. Just as an example, which three provinces ask for aid are random each war council. As previously mentioned, different provinces each have different specializations. One produces weapons, while another produces capital starships. If you aid a province, they push back the enemy a little bit and secure more of their industry. So on different playthroughs, you may find yourself at the same point in the game with different capabilities - in one you have weaker ships with more powerful weapons, in another you have larger ships that can take a lot of hits but with weaker weapons. This will change the tactics you use in the battles. Thanks! That's what we were going for! Sorry for the lengthy response, I hope this answers your questions. Thank you for your interest in the game! john
John, Thanks for the lengthy reply, it seems the game's tailored to a very specific scenario setting rather than grand strategy. While I'm not a fan of scenario-based strategy games, I'm definitely going to vote with my wallet and buy it. The fact that there are more than just static resources to take care of on the strategy map was a big plus. I'm also excited about the many officer stats. The turn based battles are a fresh take on this genre, which is why I didn't mention them as a personal concern. If you and the thread will forgive my soapboxing, I think there's a lack of developers who are honest in their answers on this forum, and use the chance to talk to their customer base either to defend their game's art direction or faulty gameplay mechanics, or to conduct further marketing. A realistic, but insincere (in my opinion) approach to convincing new buyers to purchase a product. I'm happy to support a team that charges a premium price for a game and conducts honest arm's length business, kudos on that as well. Not a popular sentiment in today's mobile market, but there is a fan base for your approach. I'll post my impressions as soon as I can (release day must be stressful), hopefully it'll help others in my boat make a similar decision. To those who'd be interested in impressions, any area specifically that I could comment on?
Played a full game on Normal, here are my thoughts. If you appreciate strategy games at any level, jump right into Hard. Normal for me was a walk in the park, without a single battle loss and only one mine that I had to leave while my ships repaired. I enjoyed what I played although it offered little challenge. Things I loved: - Attention to detail. If a ship is close to destruction, captains will bring it to your attention. Captains have specific 'personalities' which affect what abilities they get access too. There is a tonne more attention to detail in the game, and I definitely noticed it... I don't want to spoil it all though. - The many interlocking parts seem fantastic in theory. Despite what the Galaxy map shows there seems to be very little you can do to help your galactic allies, which is a pity. Some more engagement there would be nice. There is a great vibe to the game, with all the houses at war with each other. - The vast array of abilities at your disposal, only a small handful of which seem useless. I can see ways to improve the less used abilities/useless ones, but overall compared to most RPG battle systems, there isn't a lot of superfluous drek there. - The game looked like a bit of an RTS in the trailer, and I was initially hesitant. It's actually Real Time with Pausing, which I'm quite a fan of. Battles are Turn Based RPG style, like mentioned in the description. - Soundtrack is fairly nice, especially the track playing through the intro. - There are moments of legitimate worry in the game even on normal. Combat is pretty brutal sometimes. The game concept is fantastic, and it's execution? Pretty good. There are some niggles here and there, but I want to wait until I've done a Hard play through to see if they still persist there. I will still list them here, but PLEASE take them with a grain of salt, as things MAY be much improved on hard. - While the array of abilities is nice, and many seem useful, there are a few overpowered ones. One ability in particular I used significantly more than any other as it essentially decimated anything I came across like a knife through butter. - Outside of two abilities, there is almost no reason to unlock the tier 1 and 2 abilities, just save your points for the big stuff... Not only are they amazingly more useful, they give you 30xp a use, allowing you to unlock the rest of the tree rapidly - I didn't get to see half the enemy units in the game. Perhaps this is due to the amount of victories I achieved, in that, like Pandemic, the game is easier the better start you have. - The AI is pretty bad. Only at bases do the enemy show any real sign of teamwork, but even then they target the wrong things sometimes (Especially since ships hit equally hard, so it makes sense to get the small ones out first). AI will sometimes just buff itself repeatedly while you blow up all his friends. - Like abilities, the usefulness of ship upgrades is very varied. Shield Generators merely increase the amount of shield you recharge each turn, rather than providing you with better shields. Weaponry upgrades are almost always vastly superior to anything else on offer. - It's extremely possible to leave the weakest ship alive while you "heal up" at the end of a battle like many RPG systems. I expect I will abuse this in hard. And finally some bugs. - Different volumes came from different ships with identical layouts. This was definitely noticeable with the ability that shoots both Primary and Secondary at once. I had one ship that was almost obnoxiously loud at Volume 1, especially compared to other ships with the same ability. - I somehow missed the reward for Base #3. When I defeated Base #5, I recieved the flavour text of "having defeated all the bases" I still needed to destroy the 6th for the victory to occur. Perhaps me not seeing the other half of the enemy fleet is tied up in this bug? --- Personally, I found the game much to my liking, and if Hard is actually Hard, I imagine this is a game I could see myself returning to many times. I can see a lot of update/DLC potential here also. I'd give it a 3 1/2 out of 5 (My scale, not TA scale) And I expect this will go up to 4 if Hard is a challenge but I still beat it first go, or 4.5 if Hard chews me up and spits me out. The reason for this increase is that many of the games most interesting subsystems are tied up in losses, and choosing almost like a surgeon what battles to fight, and what you have no hope of winning. I can see these systems there, but was unable to experience them on Normal. I will update here after Hard.
Maglor beat me to what I wanted to do, awesome. I only had time to play the intro battle, I got a lot of work to do today and can't sit down till later but wanted to chime in with similar positive impressions. Devs: - I was hesitant about the art direction, don't like 50s kitsch. I love the way the game looks and feels though. I think if you managed to make a game appealing to someone who went in not loving the look, you guys won. - I can't speak to any balancing issues, didn't play long enough. - Being a Europa Universalis fan, I love the amount of data presented, especially on the sector map. I think you guys struck a great balance between window dressing and information. I feel like I'm looking at a command display. - why do you have the green overlay of ship subsyetm health when the same info is displayed on the left side? Does that help at all later on? Since the damage calculations are numeric and the room health is percentage based, I can't imagine what the benefit it to having the overlay pop up when you touch a ship, especially under the command interface overlay, aside from frame rate slowdowns (ipad3) and screen clutter. - I love the command interface both because it gives lore info, and because it works well lol. - I love the soundtrack, campy in that grand poetic military sense. - intro was amazing - could y'all make the game speed dial touch boxes more responsive. I don't know if this is a valid complaint or something I need to get used too, but I fumbled around quite a bit - one final and very significant concern in my mind: are there any chances of adding a battle animation speed option? They're real nifty now but after 60+ hours of playing this game, I'd imagine they could become tedious ------------------ Potential customers: - + 1 to literally everything Maglor said, balancing notwithstanding (haven't played enough) - there are no empire management aspects aside from dealing with the other houses, which is cool (imo), because it lets you focus on your fleet management. Buy this game if you're looking for a seemingly very replayable tactical rpg. If the future dlc is handled well, it could be very worthwhile.
It's a pity that the A.I. again proves to be weak after the same serious flaw in Heroes of the Revolution. Probably the devs will do their best to fix it with an update but by then the patched version will not be reviewed anymore and i don't wonna make the same mistake twice. Sorry.
I think I'm going to have to potentially agree with the AI. I hope I eat my hat later on for saying this, but I've played two fights now on hard, and I'm pretty sure most of the difficulty came from the fact that the enemy ships just dodged everything, but never really fired back all that much. I also have to add that there're too many loading screens. As I always say when making this kind of criticism, I'm not a programmer so I don't know how legit my gripe is, but there're loading screens before the battles, after the battles, when touching the galactic report (cool feature btw, but I hate using it). The loading screens for me on an iPad3 take at least 7 seconds to disappear, maybe more. I might start a game on the hardest setting of the next 5 fights are going to be the same. Not sure yet. Still liking the game a lot, but it sends mixed messages. Some aspects of the UI are make poor use of screen real estate, but it's insanely hard to lob that as a legitimate criticism considering how much attention to detail went into the atmosphere, which in turn is going to be a turn off for people who don't care about the story and see it as just window dressing, and is going to make people like me appreciate the lore more. If I could only get to the menus without looking out the window for a bit until they load. My only other point before I stop posting for a bit is that the strategic map interface is unresponsive. I don't know if it's my hardware or not. Hope I'm sounding constructive, would hate to give the opposite impression.
Thanks for the detailed impression of the game, Maglor. Glad to hear you enjoyed the game! Picking out a few of your observations: This is similar feedback to what Owen gave on PT. I readily admit some of the abilities (primarily the tactical officer's) are going to be used more than others, but there are times and situations where the other abilities are useful. 'Heal All' by the Science Officer, for example, you probably rarely need. But if your security officer is badly injured and you've got a ship full of intruders, it's a terrific option. So my takeaway is we need to look at buffing the lesser used abilities, and also doing a better job at communicating their usefulness when the situation calls for it. Can you believe the composer is a teenager! I'm really proud of him and think he has real talent. This is exactly the case. My experience is that hardcore strategy gamers should find normal challenging at times but overall manageable. Hard should be a bit more what you're looking for, I can't wait to hear what you think after giving it a go. It's a fine line, keeping the AI aggressive without giving them Terminator like killing precision. The AI has some room to make 'mistakes' to try to keep it fair. I'll move the dial up a little in the next version, especially on the Hard setting. Totally agree - we tried to compensate for this by adjusting the price for the equipment. A tier 4 shield generator is much cheaper than a tier 4 weapon. Good feedback. I'll do a pass and address this in the next version, this is easily fixed. This is a known bug that I've been trying to reproduce. I believe you still get the reward, but the text post battle is wrong. It's more confusing than anything else. I'll keep investigating and hopefully fix this in the next version. Again, spot on. While it's fun to roll on the enemy, for some of us that like a challenge, the real fun is feeling the pressure of having your back against the wall in a desperate fight. Looking forward to your thoughts after playing Hard.
Hey Calin, Thanks for playing the game and for the detailed post. Love the feedback and thank you for the many positive comments! Let me respond to some of your questions: The subsystem health is important, as it indicates vulnerabilities in the enemy ship. A badly damaged armory, for example, means that ship is ripe for a boarding party. The left panel only indicates the status of the current active friendly ship. It's actually a swipe gesture to change the game speed. At the last minute we realized that may not be intuitive but we ran out of time and didn't change it. Tapping works, but is less effective. Offhand, I think this is probably a fairly big work item. Not impossible, but probably not something we would take on before addressing some of the other feedback we've gotten. Thanks!
A few more questions from Calin As I mentioned to Maglor, AI 'precision' is something we can control. I'll move the dial up just a little - the game can get merciless if we overcompensate here. Sadly, we have to operate within the bounds of the hardware. On a PC, no problem, we could load the whole game easy. But the game has to run on relatively older devices (iPad 2, iPad Mini 1) which means we have to chunk up what is in memory at any given time. The Galactic report only changes after War Councils and Kernwall base/sector capital battles and so we thought would be less frequently accessed. Do you mean the panning/zoom behavior? It may be a little slower on the newest generation iPad (higher screen resolution). This is something we could adjust in the code. Totally constructive.
TLDR for players: devs have their sh*t together on this one and already anticipated some of the balancing issues. - Difficulty Balancing: Played a bit more on hard, I'm in the same boat as Maglor, the challenge comes from the fact that enemies boost passive abilities ad nauseum, but I have to play more because when they do hit, they hit really hard. I personally, would not be super opposed to the hard difficulty getting cranked up a little bit, or leaving it the same. I do think however, that cranking up the difficulty on hard wood alienate other players in between casual and hard-core gamers. If the next five or four battles go as smoothly as the ones so far have on hard, I'll just switch to playing on the hardest setting and be happy as a clam. I always found it a little disheartening that I've never beaten the game of FTL on what they call "normal" lol. - Abilities Balancing I'm excited to see some of the secondary abilities later on in the game, because I can already tell that boarding would be an efficient alternative to taking down a ship with high evasion boosts. It'd be cool if the secondary abilities like "diver to Shields" would actually tell you how much engine evasion you're sacrificing for shield boost, but I'm not sure most players would want to know that information. Someone else said in the post before, there's absolutely no reason why you wouldn't always take a turn to make sure your shields or boosted, because there's no downside to that. Arguendo, diverging that much power to boost the shields would necessarily take away from the weapon strength, or anything else that relies on energy to achieve an effect. I guess I'm rambling a bit, but I very rarely see any downside to using a secondary ability aside from not attacking that turn. I think if you guys play around with the concept, it'll solve the problem of the tactical officer getting a lot of experience because they're always attacking. Adding some kind of a harsher penalty for stuff like that wouldn't scare away casual strategy fans, or beginners so I don't sound derogatory, because I remember when I first started playing strategy games, it was a simple defend/attack approach. I think the difficulty allows entry level players to do that, but on the harder settings, the secondary skills should present tactical risk/reward choices for those that want them. But I feel like I'm again getting into that area of recoding which would take a lot of work. - Map UI I feel silly about the map dial now, because as soon as you said it's a swipe, it made total sense. I think it's not intuitive because it's the only swipe gesture in the game that I'm aware of so far. To clarify my galaxy map responsiveness comment, on my device there's a bit of lag between when I push the go to fleet button, and when the menu actually pops up. It doesn't get in the way of the gameplay now that I've played a bit more and learned the "rules" of the game engine, so that's no longer an issue for me. I definitely understand the hardware limitations, I'm a PC gamer primarily myself. - Soundtrack I'm also very surprised to find out the score is done by a teenager, because it shows a definite familiarity with some old-school sci-fi music tropes. At this point, the only thing else that I can offer, is the hair splitting suggestion that the music track in the battle have one more measure added to it at the end so that it loops naturally instead of coming to a halt and replaying. -------------- Just something to think about down the line, I would totally pay for an expansion pack for different ship visuals, or customization as far as names or colors go. That's one of those things that would turn the game into a sandbox though, and take away from the story. Case in point, I especially liked the description of one of the houses that supported the enemy during the second war of whatever and their bio mentions the dreaded "Red Fleet". I think it's pretty funny that the player color is red instead of that other house. Cannot wait to see what you guys do with the lore, and hopefully future expansions, should profits justify them. It's a great mix of campy sci-fi and more grown-up political intrigue space opera sci-fi.
Reading all this, I have the impression that most of the people here (even Owen, who had a few remarks on PT) were having fun playing this game. I like the fact that using the right combo can crush the enemy. So I'll give it a try. I am convinced that even if the game is not perfect for the moment, devs are listening to their customers and will update this game to it's full potential. So okay, you've got my support.
