Lorian Level

[Walden]

After playing the new level about 4 times over, the first 2 in failure, the 3rd a success with 12,500 and the 4th success with a sore around 19,184, I'm a little disheartened.

5th try to optomize score; could be better:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=262218808

Going into the level, I was surprised by the difficulty especially with the meteors hitting one of my cities dead on and anther close enough to kill another city. Surprise is a good thing; it adds diversity to the campaign.

What I did have a problem with is how easy it is to take advantage of the story driven elements. For example, just don’t fix that research tile in the level and you will never get the meteor problem. I did this in my 4th attempt where I just cruised to victory. For that I think there should be a timer of some sort to force those elements into play.

Another problem I had follows in line with previous complaints of having to click money over and over again. I highly disliked the fact that I needed to constantly click my nuclear power plants over and over again instead of having an auto fix option. Oil power plants had this problem as well, but the environmental upgrade (green one) made doing so more bearable. Other than a similar upgrade to the oil power plant or an auto fix, I think that we should be able to set up external storage facilities for nuclear waste since it is so polluting. Until Congress killed the plan, the United States was going to set up a storage facility in a mountain in Arizona. We could have something similar where building such a facility would be expensive, but ultimately temporary. I’m not sure if the mechanics of the game allow this as the game is quite streamlined (aka building over fossil fuel does not deplete source). In essence, the nuclear option needs some way to make having more than 8 or so plants bearable to manage.

Other than that, this game is really good. However, I my last question out of curiosity is whether or not the leaderboards actually represent real people or not. If so, how often do they update? Thank you.

Edit: On my 5th try I found that the enviromental upgrade (green one) for the nuclear powerplant helps noticbly, but about only to that of an unupgraded oil powerplant which is still quite annoying. Recall that this is not annoyance is not because nuclaer powerplants create too much polution, but because all nuclear powerplants get hard to manage due to the crazy amount of clicking to maintain them. I find that I still spend a inconvient amount of time making sure that those plants don't blow up rather than focusing on acheiving the goals of th level. Also note that I don't have money problems keeping things in order.

[SeriousMartin]

Hi Walden, thanks a LOT for you feedback, it is really appreciated.

The nuclear power plant is a new building and definitely lacks some balance.

Avoiding the meteorites by not repairing the research district is a bug in the mission. We will fix this with a small update in the next days.

It's hard to find a good solution for the level of difficulty. We are thinking about an option for different levels to choose from. I would like to know what stopped you from succeeding in the mission. A lack of space for your buildings? Or the global pollution?

[Walden]

I only had 2 failures. I’ll also talk about my 3rd game which had a point that almost stopped me and another thing I would like to see in this game to make managing a planet much easier.

Since the demo for these game limited players to rushing to the finish line to avoid losing to global warming, my strategy highly reflected that (not entirely, but mostly). My first city that I placed was in that one space between the nuclear facility and the research lab where the meteor hits. I built a massive city there with most of my goods production and about half of my power production. That city died all at once. I did not understand at the time that you could bulldoze the immediate area around the hit zone to avoid losing everything. With the loss of that city, I found that I could still play, but barley make any money. Eventually that other meteor that lands near the start zone took out the two cities in that area other area and killed me. In essence, I just did not know one of those lifesaving mechanics.

My second game had a similar failure. Since the level does not give a good location to start in the nuclear, research lab area, I built my city in the same location with intent to move it over a few notches after the meteor hit. This time around, I learned to bulldoze my city. However, when it came time to building the lazar cannon, I chose to build in on that island which again, blew all of it up leading to supply problems. I had chosen that that island was going to be my goods production base since it was going to be polluted anyway. This killed me in that once that island was gone, I was losing money.
Out of both these games, I found that by consolidating my cities and goods facilities, I could limit pollution and both global warming. Neither of these two game had severe problems with either, although the first one had a few oil spills after the first loss of a city.

Now that I mention it, I’m surprised that if a city gets hit directly, there is no text from Mr. Bromberg and the blond lady. I’m assuming that this is either a bug or something not considered.

In my third game, I guess I almost lost due to pollution. I made the tiny island, after it got hit, a power center. In this game, I spread out my production areas between all of my islands besides power. Nevertheless, on that island, I did lose a nuclear plant. I did feel that it was a little buggy because everything didn’t blow up as it usually does. I did click the repair button, but I did not get any power from that specific plant. Nevertheless, I still had to maintain it or risk a full meltdown. A few other incidents like this, but mostly with oil and factories happened. Maintaining everything, since I decided to spread out all my stuff, was very problematic. Whenever the chime signaling a problem rang, I had to zoom out, find the error icon, and attempt to click on it or go to that location. In a few cases, I was too slow and thus bad stuff happened (I played between speeds 1 and 4). In the end, my progress was slow and the game got to the point that no more meteors were falling and I could mine some of the ones that fell. I managed pollution well enough and regularly decontaminated all of my stuff to avoid having to fix everything.

And as for difficulty sake, I would like to see all the run down facilities on the map not to be so run down such that they don’t immediately need to be fixed (Soon, but not instantaneously). I got a pretty big amount of unnecessary pollution from expanding to these locations before I had the money to fix them.

As for a partial solution to my 3rd game, I think the information map (the one when you zoom all the way out), the game needs color coded pollution and breakdown maps similar to that of SimCity. For example, titles containing moderate pollution would display as yellow-orange in the pollution map. I think that this would be a good idea because it makes locating problematic zones much more obvious and thus faster to spot.

[SeriousMartin]

Hi Walden,
again this is an invaluable feedback that will help us a lot to improve episode II on Lorian.
Thank you!

PS: A colored map for the navigation mode is a nice idea.

[Walden]

:)

[Sunflower Cat]

How do you clean the oil slicks up in this level and the radiation? I did not see any building for it and there was no explaination by the npc. Also does building nuke plants around resreach station help after the first one explodes?

[Walden]

I haven't replayed the level since the update, but I think know this. You should be able to clean up oil spills by decontaminating them (blue water droplet icon), but you need to unlock that ability first through the tech tree-ish brown star coin system. And for the nuclear problem, I read on the official forums that it is a design decision to make nuclear problems a permanent or at least permanent-ish problem so you can’t clean them up or dismantle blown up nuclear power plants.

And as to the blown up building around the station, I have no idea if that that feature still applies. I've been playing too safe so I have not experiemnted with that since the patch. If nothing has changed, if there is a building adjacent to anything that explodes, it will also explode. As such, one meteor or nuclear disaster could destroy an entire development even if much of that is outside the fallout zone.

[SeriousMartin]

We reduced the explosion effect a bit, so a meteorite / nuclear power plant only destroys buildings next to it. Other buildings might be destroyed if they were damaged before, so it helps to repair all buildings in the area of a meteorite strike and destruct the building that will be hit directly.

[Annonymous]

I'm absolutely lost.

I can't get the laser upgrade. Keeps saying I need to Research it.... but NOTHING in the research panel indicates anything for 'laser'.

I've played through this level of the Campaign about 4 times now, and still can't build them. I've upgraded the Research communities, researched level 2 of the Housing (first 2, at least), and STILL nothing.

This is the point I toss a game and go back to Fallout 3, or solitaire, or anything else.

[Walden]

I wouldn't know exactly. I haven't played the game since about 2 updates ago. I'd assume that by reaserch, the game means that you need to upgrade the facility (either the green leaf or lightbulb option).

Also this post was made long ago before we even had Rounds as a playable planet. The game had much less in it at that time, and this topic's disucssion dosen't really accomidate your question. You might be better off creating a new post about this issue or finding a more suitable post as people probably won't come here to answer other people's problems. Sorry, I don't mean to sound ill intended about it.

[SeriousMartin]

Originally posted by edricbewley:

I'm absolutely lost.

I can't get the laser upgrade. Keeps saying I need to Research it.... but NOTHING in the research panel indicates anything for 'laser'.

I've played through this level of the Campaign about 4 times now, and still can't build them. I've upgraded the Research communities, researched level 2 of the Housing (first 2, at least), and STILL nothing.

Hi edricbewley. I found a bug that caused this. It is fixed now. You should be able to continue with a savegame - all you need is a development fund.

[Annonymous]

Hi edricbewley. I found a bug that caused this. It is fixed now. You should be able to continue with a savegame - all you need is a development fund.

Yes, wonderfully done. Thank you!

Noticed another 'error' in same campaign mission. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but the requirement to "Build 2 efficient Oil Platforms" doesn't seem to be updating correctly. I build one, the counter drops by 1, then immediately goes back up (increments up to 2).


Haven't found my issue with the cleaning up oil - but it doesn't seem to be updating correctly, either. I've cleaned up quite a few (4? 5?), but it seems the counter only dropped by 1.

Finally beat it. Couldn't get the 'Oil Platform' to succeed, but figured out the rest. Almost 12,000 score. :)

[Epicurius]

I believe I have found a bug, bu not sure as I am just getting into the game. But in the Lorian Level, if you have a full inventory of a product/s, and try to sell to one of the NPC trader companies (The ones that build on the planet), it will give you a message that you can not sell this item because your inventory is full, but you can buy such and such from us. (Obviously not word for word). But any way, you are unable to sell if you have full inventories.

[Walden]

Originally posted by Epicurius:

I believe I have found a bug, bu not sure as I am just getting into the game. But in the Lorian Level, if you have a full inventory of a product/s, and try to sell to one of the NPC trader companies (The ones that build on the planet), it will give you a message that you can not sell this item because your inventory is full, but you can buy such and such from us. (Obviously not word for word). But any way, you are unable to sell if you have full inventories.

This post was made years and many updates ago. I don't think trading was a feature when this post was originally made. Maybe start a new thread?

[martin]

Hi, do you have the latest version of the game? You can check by going in the credits. On the bottom left oft the screen it should say 1.9.6. I'm asking, because it's a known bug that was fixed two days ago.