What I have observed about the Loa

[dukered79]

I decided to start this discussion so people can post what they have learned/experienced with the Loa since they are new and people new to the race can learn. I will be posting my oberservations after i have some more time with them.

[Llamedos]

their asses

[wolfenray73]

I love this new species. They are elementary in the way they work. Just build "cubes" and have profiles of their manifestation. Build your space highways and your good to go. Time to make ALL planets in the galaxy uninhabitable for anyone else but yourself. It is as easy as that. Somebody stop me when I am Loa, cause you are not making a comeback once I take from you. You world will be assimulated, resistance is futile!

[dukered79]

Resistance truly is futile, this new race is very unique from the other 6 yet also shares some interesting similarities. This review is jsut based off my personal observations so if i am wrong about something feel free to correct me. First of all their ship building can function in 2 aspects, one being the usual ship building and fleet creating but the second is where stuff gets intersting. The Loa have the ability to build 'cubes' which ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ as modular matter, this forms the secondary economy known as construction points, 'cubes' have a certain amount of contrusction points which you can adjust when you build them but this will increase the cost and time of construction. The construction points can be used to build stations, fleets and the Loa's special FTL acceleration gate which i will get to in a moment. Cubes can be used to create entire fleet 'profiles' these are saved combinations of ships that cubes can form into. For example: you have a fleet made up of just cubes and you want to survey a star, all you have to do is order your survey fleet to survey and then a list will come up and ask you what profile to create, this list will contain a few basic profiles such as construction, colonization, and survey. You can also create your own combination of ships in a profile so if you want to create the survey fleet of 3 combat ships 2 supply and a command you enter those in a new profile and select it. The cubes will now form into these ships and carry out the mission, upon returning the ships will deform back into cubes to be used again at least i think this is what happens since my fleet still says cubes when they return. Now then onto the Loa's FTL technology which i would say functions similarly to a hiver gate. The Loa use something called acceleration gates to move between planets but instead of instantly teleporting they accelerate ships into FTL to shorten their journey. Of course after a fleet accelerates to a new planet they will have to return at sub-light speed, that is why before missions you will want to deploy gates to the planet. Placing gates is the same as ordering a mission but it is at the bottom of the list when you right click. When you do there will be the option to deploy additional gates in between the planets which some have began to call 'highways'. Additional gates are not always neccessary if the planets are close together but if they are far apart you may need more gates to get efficiant travel time. Also i should mention that the fleet the places gates does not have to travel at sub-light speed since they are accelerated to the planet and back. Overall i really like the workings of this race and their individuality from the other 6 races. I have yet to form an oppinion on the whole 'cube' system, it does offer way more versitility to the other races, but is that versitility overpowered compared to the other fleet management system? I'll leave that answer to you guys. There is still a lot to cover from the new race but I will leave that to other players who wish to post their experiences

[wolfenray73]

In my war with the Suulka Horde, I hunt them like rabbits. They show up, I wipe them out, I go to them, I wipe them out. I always have the right ship for the round, even if the last one was destroyed. The nightside of a planet of Loa looks like absolute evil, if you are of the living. 3 Loa ships can easily disperse a fleet of six Suulka with ease. They seem to really like energy tech, as I got shields and heavy lasers with ease. Can a Loa even be boarded? Well, I am off to more cleaning the galaxy of the Suulka Horde!

[Llamedos]

the lore explains the energy tech thing as they liken kinetic rounds to throwing lumps of their own bodys.

[๖ۣۜKuz𝕚🔱๖ۣۜKan]

I have them as an ally in my game, i took a screenshot but the AI seems to be bugged with them, as all they do is cross the galaxy making NPG to every single system i have ever visited, and they colonize. they have zero warships and the enemy goes to their system and wipes them out and they do nothing to defend. not to mention the NPG's are causing a LOT of screen spam. i think they need to be much much smaller in the view.

[kinngrimm]

It has been mentioned that some players have problems with the max settings for cubes.
I found some notes onto changing some of the basic stats that in the kerberos forum mod section:

1. goto
\Steam\SteamApps\common\Sword of the Stars II\assets\base\
2. make a copy of
commonassets.xml
3. open that file and search/find "Loa"

to increase your cube building possibilites(no game balancing issue)
the higher the number the more problems you will have using the sliders, so don't go all out on this one! setting it to something arround 100k would be enough
"MaxLoaCubesOnBuild"
"MinLoaCubesOnBuild

to decrease costs(definetly a cheat!)
"LoaCubeCostPer"

increasing the max cubes sendable through gates, giving this a slight boost may be rectified
i setted it to default 100000
"LoaBaseMaxMass"

not quite sure what the following do, ANYONE any idears?
"LoaMassStandingPulseWavesMaxMass"
"LoaDistanceBetweenGates"
"LoaGateSystemMargin"
"LoaTechModMod"

the following was mentioned by sevaral people as being too low, so giving that a boost may be considered balancing
"LoaMassInductionProjectorsMaxMass"
i setted it to 700000, but as i haven't reached any limmits in my Loa games, this is jsut preventing those things mentoiend by others and i may reduce or increase it later again.

Also has anyone tested such a thing in Muliplayer does this work, if so that would be very troubling!