General feedback

[AdusumDelphini]

I just want to give some feedback from playing the demo und the game. Mind that I havn't fully experienced everything but I have a first impression. I really like the game in general and think it's a fantastic concept. However some things I noticed.

- Training a single person can be quite repetitive. Especially when you have a lot of training points and don't want to train other people (because of stress/stamina).

- Sometimes I wanted to end the day but had training points left. Best method would be to take the recruit you like the least and only train him. But this takes a lot of time, so I trained more people although I knew there would be negative effects.

- Stress is quite good to handle in the early game. Later I had my problems. Guard house and cleaning can only sustain 2 recruits (dog is nice but not very effective). Therefore I had many people who where stressed to the maximum but I still needed to get rid of training points. I wonder If an option to end the day and an option for reducing stress for a group of people would help (maybe a cadence slow run or to have a day off for the recruits). In my eyes this could have a high prive or even have a malus. So something like "day off: 5 people capacity, costs 15 training points, 30 stress relieved per person, minus 5 discipline per person."

- Combat: I can't say that I fully figured out how to improve the chances of succes nor that I can assess the outcome of a fight. Feels a bit obscure most of the times. But it is too early for me to judge.

[Krazy Ivan]

if a recruit spends the week without training, she gains +20 endurance and -10 stress, it's not exceptional, but with a rotation the others can avoid disaster.

[Krazy Ivan]

I also saw toillets in the research tree, but I probably missed something. Is there a way to get recruits higher than level 1? I'm in my 3rd year and I always have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ recruits who are limited to level 1 max

[AdusumDelphini]

Yeah, you can skip training. But it doesn't really help a lot regarding stress in my experience (I think it's -5). But nevertheless it leads to micro intensive play: You hand pick your training recruits and let them do the same thing over and over again, while the majority of the group has to rest. I think for the early game this is totally fine, but later I had 9 recruits and 27 training points. So maybe you want to train 2-3 men a day. It gets very iterative. And only 1 person can train with log hurdles :( It's not so much about training a group but mostly about an extremely careful stress management. So in the early game you have a fantastic short day with a unit run and later you drag and drop the same soldier ten times in a row...

By the way, Krazy Ivan, you can get higher levels in combat. I think for training the ceiling is level 1. But combat is still a big mystery to me. I had a team which I thought was very capable (2 paratroopers, 1 machine gunner, 1 mortar, 1 assault, 1 anti tank). Everyone had at least two traits with 100 points and the lowest number of points in a trait was 63 (exept for the melee cap of 1 for mortar/machine gun/anti tank of course). I failed in mission 4. I guess the team needs more experience and levels. But when I engage in fights to level, someone dies even in what seems like a low level engagements to me. So still a lot to figure out. Does someone have tips for combat?

[Flaick]

Thank you for the feedback!

Yes Stress is easy to handle at first but then it requires more attention.

Did you buy the automated training program to avoid dragging a recruit too often?

About combat, I don't want to spoil too much...just a little hint: ask yourself which class benefits most from being in the front row? Maybe resisting more hits.

Try the Easy Mode, there is no shame in that . Then once you finished, start it again at normal level.

[Geruhn]

More feedback, waiting for training and running to end is boring, could you add the possibility to time-skip?

[AdusumDelphini]

Thanks for your reply, Flaick! I finally managed to beat the game.
I write a bit more about stress and stuff later in spoilers.
Easy mode could have been an option. But for one thing I had basicially a fully developed training camp with every facility, which I didn't want to give up since the training part of the game was more or less figured out (although at the cost a of very dragging and dull gameplay). And for another thing I wouldn't want to switch to easy mode because I didn't feel it was a question of skill but of guesswork. Have 6 trained to the max soldiers and send them to combat. They fail. Why? I don't really know. So maybe try a group of 6 different M.O.D.? But before that you must go through training again...

How I managed stress:
I think the worst situation was after 6 cycles or so, when all the angry people (and other hard to handle traits) came to the camp. This was probably a lost generation. Later there were more recruits again who had traits which were not to bad. Trained 1-3 recruits at a time. The next day reduced stress by cleaning/guard house with 2 recruits and trained 1-3 different ones. A lot of clicking. Very iterative. Is there an alternative? I couldn't find one because you can't reduce stress from a group of soldiers. And right now it's better to have 1 recruit at stress 80 and 1 at stress 1 than two recruits with 40 stress each.

Opinion on automated training system:
Does not really help because it does nothing what you want effectively. It saves time and clicks but can lead to catastrophic results. Right now I don't see a way around to micromanage the soldiers one by one. Let's assume you want to have a sniper, a diver and a paratrooper in your team. That's 60 drag and drops regardless (without assistants). A system where you could dictate "Take this recruit and put him ten times in a row at the shooting range" (ideally 1 animation cycle but stat gains like 10 trainings) would be far better.

How I trained my men in the lategame:
Later (camp fully developed) I just cherry-picked 6 men from my 9 possible with traits easy to remove and ignored the rest completely. I removed traits from my six chosen ones and trained them to level 1 (so I could distinguish them from the white shirts I wanted to ignore). This is necessary for better clicking management. Then train 1-3 and relieve stress with 2. Repeat ad infinitum till you have 6 recruits who have more or less 100 in every stat (intelligence and discipline are harder to train so it was more around 90).

How I managed combat:
I probably failed twice or three times with a nearly stat maxed squad. Then I used 5 assaulters and 1 paratrooper and succeded. I fought probably 6-7 engagements against yellow enemys and 1-2 engagements against orange enemys to level besides the sector objectives. 3 men survived til lthe end. I can't recall exactly where the others have died. Probably 1 died at the stage 4 boss and 2 at the stage 5 boss. It is beyond me why snipers, machine gunners, mortars etc. are quite underwhelming. I think hitpoints are probably more important than anything else.

[Krazy Ivan]

Thank you very much for your return, I didn't know that we could only have a maximum of 6 men and only one squad (with or without bonus / malus) I only did some tests but all failed. I wanted to test the sniper/machine gun combo but I don't really understand how the bonus shield works I think I'm going to do like you and take paratroopers (which I haven't tested yet)

Maybe add in the official guild that you can only have 6 men in combat and only one squad.

[Pepski]

can i just suggest an easy way to win. clear traits, train shooting. set everyone to the first option so they gain 1hp each level. first level of mission explore all squares and kill as many as possible. exit after you finish first level and promote one of your guys to assistant. then carry on training everyone as shooting, you should max out the second shooting exercise so they gain +6 each shooting session. again set everyone to +1hp each level. should be able to do level 2 or 3 easily. end it promote another. same again and you should be close to maxing stats after another set of 12 weeks or 24 weeks. then job done. you can recruit the cook and someone else and have 5 soldiers. with max shooting mission is easy. set your people to behind barriers or as close to enemy as possible. enemies die before your men without issue due to health gains.

[Krazy Ivan]

I have just succeeded in 3 consecutive campaign wins for a total of 75 recruits promoted approximately and although the beginning was difficult after several failed campaigns. In general the game remains super cool and I'm happy to have bought it I give my quick opinion on the game

after following the advice I changed my strategy to have as much life as possible. The game becomes much easier and practically without tactics. we kill everyone on the map to have a maximum of xp / life. No need for a scout when we know we're going to kill everyone anyway. The sniper/machine gun combo lacks life and is sensitive to rng. the strategy is to choose one of the classes with the life bonus.

The diver is the only class without hp which was really cool to take which gives a massive supply bonus but I never managed to fight on a swamp to know its value in combat.

I would have liked to have a +5 pratrooper instructor but the promotion gives a stats bonus instead. in my opinion, riding a paratrooper is much too long. With the building we have to take the first training (the 2nd gives no bonus jump) and the arrival time has 100 paratrooper our soldier has 200 agility

As I said at the beginning I had a lot of fun in the game with training my slugs, too bad there is no advantage to having 9 or 12 soldiers fully trained.

ps: maybe i used the wrong words, english is not my first language.

[AdusumDelphini]

Originally posted by Pepski:

can i just suggest an easy way to win. [...]

I tried this in easy mode (I wasn't really keen on another long detailed playthrough yet). I deviated a bit and went for 6 recruits. Then I removed traits, trained the important stats and made them infantry. What can I tell you - it worked out in combat. I think only 1 or 2 soldiers survived till the very end of the mission. So I am not sure this method works everytime (not to mention everytime in normal mode). I guess rng can kill a run. But this definitety seems to be the strategy for a speedrun.

Originally posted by Krazy Ivan:

after following the advice I changed my strategy to have as much life as possible. The game becomes much easier and practically without tactics. [...] the strategy is to choose one of the classes with the life bonus.

Yeah, I agree. I think the M.O.D. system is not in a very good place right now. +HP is certainly the strongest property a soldier can have. Therefore infantry is one of the superior options. Because it can be choosen from the start, this more or less breaks with the common principle that later options in a tree are more powerful than earlier choices.

Originally posted by Krazy Ivan:

The diver is the only class without hp which was really cool to take which gives a massive supply bonus but I never managed to fight on a swamp to know its value in combat.

Well in my eyes all of the supporting M.O.D.s bring next to nothing to the table. And non +HP combat M.O.D.s don't live long enough. I even tried 6 assaulters once. These guys have a supply malus so they really should fail. But after a short while even this team could gather only just enough supplies through encounters and such. So why bother with a supporting soldier at all?

Originally posted by Krazy Ivan:

I would have liked to have a +5 pratrooper instructor but the promotion gives a stats bonus instead. in my opinion, riding a paratrooper is much too long. With the building we have to take the first training (the 2nd gives no bonus jump) and the arrival time has 100 paratrooper our soldier has 200 agility

True. This is too long. Even doing it once is not very appealing but year after year... I think even + 10 through a basic training (most of the time there are 2 training methods for a facility any way; 1 for good stats and 1 for profession seems fair) and another + 10 from an instructor would be fine for every profession.

I think there is a lot room for improvement for the M.O.D.-system and combat:
- Remove infantry +HP bonus. This should be the worst class of soldiers. Maybe even worsen them more.
- Soldiers with less than 3 HP die to early in my opinion. Sometimes I didn't really find out how a specialist influences your combat team. The poor guy just didn't make it through a leveling encounter.
- Buff every class exept infantry, assaulter, paratrooper. Mid game M.O.D.s should be better than early game M.O.D.s and late game M.O.D.s should be best. I would suggest to set HP to 3 for most of the specialists.
- There should be a lot more benefit for bringing support soldiers to your team (or you shouldn't be able to complete the mission without them).
- Some more tactical deepth to combat would be fantastic.
- It would be absolutely great if the strength of a divers/balanced team is bigger than a mono specialised team. So 6 snipers, 6 divers, 6 machine guns etc. should lead to a catastrophic result (or at least should fail the mission at 1 point). Like in the real world (as far as i can tell) a good combat squad should be a mix. I really liked the design for the final fight in sector 4 where you can only deploy 1 paratrooper behind enemy lines. I think this is a clever bottleneck.