Thank you for the reply, I bought the campaign and its been a blast, the recent update adds more much needed polish to the game, I love it. I am looking forward to more replayability to it.
Astray level is too hard @origin8 awesome job with the game. Really polished, great gameplay, well worth the price to unlock the full campaign. To echo another user's post, the Astray level is surprisingly difficult. Haven't managed to beat it despite following your earlier tips. I've redone all previous levels at Normal difficulty to earn more bucks and upgrade as much as possible. Still can't get over Astray at Easy difficulty One of the main problems is that the enemy waves keep increasing in size forever so I end up with 21+ enemies and multiple waves coming in quick succession which ends up breaking through my defenses before I have a chance to build enough offense to take down the enemy base. I hope you can consider rebalancing the difficulty or limiting the maximum size of the waves. Would love to see a video of how someone can beat it as Easy, let alone Normal+ Thanks in advance!
I gotta tell ya, I didn't know WHAT in-game upgrades did health/damage wise until you said it (the icon is not obvious). Sure, I had assumptions and guesses from testing on my end, but no hard numbers. I really wish the numbers behind the buildings were more transparent, it's hard to judge whether another generator and lvl1 buildings is better than upgraded buildings, for instance. That aside, that map IS very hard, even on easy - it could do with some tweaking towards enemy spawn times. It's a problem where you need EVERY type of building to fend off all types of waves, but then you're too weak for the standard scout/frigate waves to fend them off without losses.
I have beaten Astray I have beaten Astray but I did not take the video. I beaten it a week ago. Some tips I learnt, save around 100-20 credits for upgrading your tower in case of emergency, this restores the tower to full health, also have a few missile towers for swarms. Upgrade your generator''s power output in the engineering. I have one issue currently, the games sometimes crash when resuming from sleep mode, it can be frustrating as it only happens when you're in mid game. Not in the menus. I'm using iphone 6+ 64gb, running on version 10.1.1 if that helps.
May I please have some hints for the level "Crystal Clear?" I feel like the amount of crystal that needs to be harvested is far too large. I've upgraded most useful tech to level 4 or higher, and am favoring missile turrets mostly. Because of the amount of cash you harvest, you actually end up with every single building. I don't like the AI strategy of just adding a ship every wave... especially the larger missile ships that require the special turrets to counter them. I feel like the harvester building just doesn't matter as much as it should. It still takes forever to harvest. The generators for example make a gigantic difference... maybe I'm using it wrong? Thanks! Bought the campaign and left App Store reviews. Wish your game was more popular, I can't see why it isn't!
Crystal Clear I have completed all except for the random and the last map. For crystal clear, after harvesting the first two smallest asteroid, use the resource to spread to the refinery. Have two or three lasers between the refinery and space station. From there it should worked out. I have an issue for the developer, the radar tower doesnt seem to increase its area of effect when upgraded on the field, not at the engineering menu. Can anybody confirm this with me? I am pretty sure it doesn't!
Crystal Clear I have completed all except for the random and the last map. For crystal clear, after harvesting the first two smallest asteroid, use the resource to spread to the refinery. Have two or three lasers between the refinery and space station. From there it should worked out. I have an issue for the developer, the radar tower doesnt seem to increase its area of effect when upgraded on the field, not referring to the engineering menu. Can anybody confirm this with me? I am pretty sure it doesn't!
Finished the Easy Campaign Finally managed to finish all the levels on Easy but only by working around some of the game logic / cheating the AI. The game really has some serious issues that need to be addressed to make it playable for most people. I hope the devs chime in after the holidays. A few bugs starting from the most important ones: - Enemy waves increasing forever. This removes a lot of the fun from the game. Either you have to rush to finish the map asap, akin to a game with timers or you end up with multiple large waves of enemies in quick succession and the weapons available + power management is such that it seems almost impossible to fend of those attacks. Also because of the rush to finish before waves get to big, I never get enough time to upgrade all weapons to max which also reduces the appeal. So either limit those waves or increase the power of the weapons and upgrade. - Related to the first point, Engineering upgrades are underpowered. The waves get so powerful so quickly that the Engineering upgrades do little to change the balance. I have 2000 bucks to spend and don't really see an attractive option that would change anything since most upgrades are already at Level 5+. - Missiles continue to explode at a specific location even if no enemies there. When you build multiple missile launchers, they all fire at the same time and even if the enemy is gone, missiles keep exploding at that location, missing any other incoming enemy. - Weapons can't shoot at enemy bases. This would be useful for maps where you have to take down an enemy base. Weapons won't fire at the base even if within range. You have to use the fighter planes in attack mode or Nova. - Power generators seem underpowered. I have upgraded the power generation speed and capacity of generators to Level 5. And even if I build 7 of them, upgraded, I still don't have enough power to fend off large waves at Easy. - Ability to save game. Would be useful since some maps can take a while to finish.
Do you encounter an issue with the radar? It seems upgrading the radar on the field doesn't improve its radius at all. And yeah I have yet to beat the final stage but I agree the waves get too hard quickly, the game becomes a rush to mine all the resources. Even upgrading the generators also doesn't help, the power just runs out too fast. Missiles sometimes are wasted on the first few units in the swarm, it needs a better AOE.
You're right, upgrading the radar doesn't increase its area of effect. The good thing I guess is I didn't feel the need to upgrade the radar to finish the campaign. I just put a radar for each turret groupings and it already has a decent enough range to do the job. Also stealth fighter waves tend to be smaller and easier to destroy than other types of enemies. Btw, for the last stage, one trick you can use us to use the Nova weapon to damage and eventually destroy most enemy stations. Just make sure you have enough power since Nova takes like 1/3 of the reserve each time. For the remaining 2 stations, I had to use the fighter jets.
Damn! I didn't know about the nova trick, stealth waves are the easiest, provided you have the radar. What's the bonus you get for completing easy?
You get 5% bonus on bucks earned for completing easy. So now that I have Nova, I tried using it to destroy the enemy base in Astray, Normal difficulty. It works. But you still have to survive 10 minutes after that which is not so easy.
I'm still trying to complete the last stage on easy, I hate frigates which comes closely packed together and destroy your single turrent, even with missiles the first few shots are always wasted on the first few units of the pack, and the rest simply comes in and destroy your turret, making you waste money rebuilding them.
Hi, I only paid to unlock the campaign, I didn't buy any gems, it was worth it IMO. I havn't spend money on mobiles games for a while. I just completed the last mission on easy. At the last part it was literally a race against time as I have to nova the insane swarms of scouts and frigates and using laser towers as cheap pirate fodder while my 8 fighters fight the last pirate base, like rebels fighting the Deathstar. I got about 800 worth of credits upon completing, what's the best to upgrade? I already have max repair ships and fighters.
I completed the last mission on normal today, netting an additional 10% bonus for normal difficulty, total 15%. Some tips to add on, upgrading the miners helps to reduce the energy consumption as the asteroid is mined faster for less energy, I used all towers except refinery. My shipyard is level 4, but level 3 should be enough. You should have at least 4 repair ships or one level 4 repair station. By now your repair drones, fighters should be maxed out in engineering, beam tower should be fully upgraded hp wise.
I've beaten Hard campaign, and 100% Random, no Outposts 1,2,3 on Easy. Tried to do 4 ... and then had THREE destroyer waves spawn in a row. Destroyer waves seem to be the real problem in this game - they're long range, they deal AOE, and they're SLOW, so other waves can spawn in while they're still moving into range (including other destroyers!), ending up with a very large fleet to deal with. Their AOE completely mangless your energy nodes. I've been favoring using nova spam over missiles, saving my money for lasers and generators, so it's possible more missiles might deal with the destroyers, but they're so energy heavy and missiles have their own problems. They also ignore fighters. You can cheese them - they will target the nearest building, so plopping a node right behind their group will cause them all to slooooowly turn around while still taking shots, but this doesn't feel like the "right" way to manage them. Beam Turret: What is even the point of this weapon? If it did AOE push, I'd be all for it. Anyone test the usefulness of this? "Fends off SWARMS of small craft" sure buddy. Railgun: Too expensive for what it does. If it was an ACTUAL railgun that fired straight through enemies, it'd be worth the price. Right now it's just a very expensive, energy demanding, less efficient battleship weapon over missiles that I build anyway because it specifically targets battleships. Shipyard: I have the fighters fully upgraded, it's not enough to justify the cost in-game. They either need higher upgrades, or have in-game upgrades also increase ship stats. Upgrading in-game is almost always worthless, as their primary use is to be cheap energy-based target fodder, but you want them IN range of your weapons, which increasing their range defeats. Miners: Do upgrades, in or out of game, increase their ENERGY drain? I would think yes, which is a problem. Repair stations: I'm really torn on whether they're useful - not because they're aren't useful, but because of the above destroyer problem: I don't lose games because of attrition, I lose them because 20 destroyers takes 5 interceptors to not have your entire power network get knocked out. Careful micro with upgrading tends to be better, since it fully heals. Their target priority is also wonky - they don't always target the lowest health unit, they seem to have a heirarchy rather than a weighted system: the almost dead turret is higher priority than a power node that just needs a top off, and it doesn't seem to take into account "Is building currently being targeted / attacked". I'm also not clear if any of the upgrades INCREASE overall power drain. Missile Turrets: SO MANY WASTED MISSILES JESUS. Please make a better targeting system! I've tried staggering, at a certain point and range upgrades, it just doesn't matter, and the enemy spawns ALWAYS have a wedge attack pattern which wastes missiles. Power Nodes: I'd love an upgrade to increase the number of hardpoints. Or health. Or range. Almost lost this post, apparently I got logged out before I finished it lol
At later waves I feel it easier to spam nova to clear the swarms, my tower is not strong enough to tank the damage, plus the other waves come in too quickly. The missile turret is just not reliable and economical compared to one nova wave. Also you didn't add that refinery gives one carrier per 200 upgrade when you can just build another which gives 4 carrier at 225, the only downside is that the refineries and the space station can't work concurrently from the same miner. Meaning the space station must be collecting from the west side while the refinery is collecting from the east. I just emailed the support regarding radar towers not upgrading their radius when upgraded in the field.. I can't believe it still hasn't been fixed yet.
Happy New Year from Origin8 Happy New Year everyone. It's great to see all the feedback about the gameplay. I'm currently finishing off the Android cloud saving systems to bring it on par with the latest iOS version with iCloud saving which you already have. Once that's out the door, I'll be working on a balance and bug fix update to work out some of these issues. The radar bug is fixed already and will be in the next update, thanks thymegatherion for letting us know about that one.
Damn, I didn't even think about the costs of the refinery. Although there is the cost of A) Time and B) Energy spent building it, energy being a precious resource, and it takes a long time to build. Next time I try randoms though, this will change my strategy. I've also been thinking of the worker efficiency problem, but apparently "Distance Load Balancing" is literally a topic people make Theses on, lol! Sounds like "Closest mining station only" is going to be the best solution for a while, especially considering the above regarding upgrades and cost. I do actually have a possible simple missile fix. If enemy ship is in range: A) If no target has been in range for the last 3 seconds, AND units on field is greater than X (5? SqRt(Elapsed Time)?): 1) Delay firing for Math.random seconds. 2) Determine ship type with most units on field, in range, with minimum number of ships greater than X 3) Target random ship from previous group B) Fire at nearest target in range It will still have wasted missiles, but this gives a better chance for getting a dense explosion, and likely to the weaker ships where missiles have the most value. I've seen the railgun ignore weakened targets of the same ship for a healthier target further away, so it's not a crazy idea to make smarter targeting code for the other turrets, but Big O cost is a consideration I'm sure. I actually had a more complicated, better solution than the above that was better than N^2 Big O (got it down to N + 2 * Log N or something), but the above is likely way less intensive and not much less effective.
