Campaign is insanely hard

[☠Sun-Eater☠]

It's fun, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, even on normal I lose more than I win, especially in big missions. That one where you have to get the data and warp out? I get it, then he somehow denies me the data, burns out and warps and I cant possibly catch up to him even under full ahead right near him it was impossible. I mean I am all for a challenge but Normal should not be this difficult, I have only won 1 out of the 5 deployments I have been on...

[Baron Von Boom]

I just purchased this because I read that its actually difficult, most games these days are far too easy & I for one look forward to getting smashed an then working towards beating it again.

Risk > Reward an all that.

[Zav]

Originally posted by SlenderSpoon:

this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. i have it on easy and played about 5 mission and only won one. so im not playing it untill they fix it.

And I played on Normal, losing 5-6 missions in 16 Turns, so it's sounds like you need to be fixed :P Seriously, it's not that hard, just hang on instead of maybe.. posting a negative review or anything.

[George The Ork]

Originally posted by Zav:

Originally posted by SlenderSpoon:

this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. i have it on easy and played about 5 mission and only won one. so im not playing it untill they fix it.

And I played on Normal, losing 5-6 missions in 16 Turns, so it's sounds like you need to be fixed :P Seriously, it's not that hard, just hang on instead of maybe.. posting a negative review or anything.

Thats a thought....how many missions can you lose before the gothic sector is lost?

Like, can you play a entire campain losing every mission?

[Wrath_Of_Deadguy]

Have definitely noticed that enemy ships in data retrieval/assassination missions seem to warp out in *less* than 15s from when they begin charging. I can even hear a difference in the jump charge sound effect... it builds in pitch much faster than normal. Would love to know what's going on there... and for it to be fixed ASAP. Those mission types are irritating enough against fast enemies already without the AI getting a hidden bonus. I think I'm going to start timing them every time those missions come up to see whether there's any variation, and to verify that it's not just my imagination.

I ran into another stumbling block that I can only describe as a bug: on the third mission (the Ork pirate intro), I got failed twice despite meeting the victory conditions. It seems that the game can flunk you if you kill all of the Ork ships before your transports reach the escape line- I actually got a defeat screen, with the Orks gloating over their "victory", splashed over a slow-mo of the very last Ork ship in the scenario going kaboom (this was with two transports still alive *and* well beyond the remaining enemy's engagement range). I alt+f4'd the game to avoid having the erroneous result recorded and tried again; same result even though *all three* transports survived. I played the mission a third time, simply making a run for it, and succeeded due to a lucky enemy spawn (mass escorts with a lone cruiser halfway across the map). I was *only* able to win when there were enemies alive at the end of the mission; both times when I killed them all I failed even though I had two or more transports still alive. I want to say that the mission fails if the transports haven't actually reached the escape zone when the mission ends- even if there are no enemies to stop them. Can anyone confirm this? I haven't had that issue anywhere except that mission of the campaign so far; I can't get it to happen in skirmish.

[Captain Dynomite]

The campaign missions themselves are unfair. I swear some of these are just set up as "Supposed to lose" missions for the story. It's not even that it's difficult, it's unfairly difficult.

For example, assassinating the eldar. No matter how I pin the eldar target into a corner, I cannot, and I repeat CANNOT manage to kill him in time. Those holofields are ridiculous, and their speed is a joke.

The planetary assault missions are just unfair because the random spawn points of the bombardments mixed with the slow speed of imperial ships means you will not be able to get to them in time.

The data recovery missions are only decent if you have Navagator crew upgraded and shield boosting skills/upgrades. Grab the data, get out before they can say anything about it.

Getting a convoy across is painful because no matter how you split them up, the enemy ships just manage to kill enough, and they're always faster than you thought they were.

This game doesn't require tactics, it requires meticilous planning of every element of your fleet and if you don't specialize properly you're gonna have a ball-crushingly bad time.


I'm all for FUN games, but jesus guys this game doesn't hurt us because it loves us, it hurts us because it's the grim darkness of the far future and ♥♥♥♥ you for coming here.

Still love it though.

[Im0Tek]

Originally posted by Desolator X:

The campaign is balanced like someone with 3 working braincells has been at it. It's SUPER unfriendly to people who've not played the TT and don't know all the stats / dps comparisons of the ships and their facings. I've got to the "defend the inquisitor" mission and just dropped the game. You have to defend a battleship that has no shields and engines, doesn't repair itself, and seems to do ♥♥♥♥ all damage from three waves of 2LC, 4LC, 1C and 4-6LC, all waves come with escorts equal to the amount of LC chaos fields. You get to field 300 points worth of ships.... That's all folks, oh and Chaos ignores your ships while hammering the battleship you need to protect. There's just no way you'll ever get that mission completed.

This mission is utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, ive reverted my save 15 times now. Horst ship blows up at the the start of wave 3 for me everytime. I even spent 45 minutes in the match running the tactical cogs almost nonstop, same result. I feel like this game has some serious balance issues. This is just as unbalanced and unforgiving as DOW dark crusades cam(pain)

[Eviscerador]

The game is a bit unforgiving, and the AI is really well designed, giving you a run for your money in most missions.

But it is doable. I'm currently playing in Hard difficulty, because I already have extensive knowledge of the TT and I've been playing a lot the beta, and I just lost 2 missions, one of them due to bad luck, and the other one due to very bad decisions.

It is not easy, but it is manageable.

Best tips for new players:
- Use the tactical cogitators a lot. They are great to just "pause" the game and watch what you have to do and chain several orders to your ships.

- Your escorts are expendable, just don't fear to use them, but don't field more than 1 or 2. They do really bad damage. The new Widowmaker is the way to go, since it is a GREAT scout, and the two torpedoes can also be a nasty surprise.

- Your cruiser firepower is mostly on the sides, try to use All Ahead Full to set broadside to your enemies. Usually eldar and chaos will try to run away.

- For starters set always the boarding action (the crossed swords) and the repair ability (the crossed spanners) in auto cast. That will lower the amount of micro needed. I also set the escort torpedoes in autocast. The AI is really good at firing torpedoes, much better than you at first. But it will fire at the first target that crosses the line.

- Don't be afraid of retreating if you have a ship half health and you can't save it because it is far from the main fleet. Usually the empire fleet has enough armour and HP to survive the warp out.

- Try to think like a battleship admiral. You need to set firing lines and stay together. In the TT, the imperial players usually deployed in one corner of the table and made a course to the opposite corner, so they cut the tabletop in two with their two broadsides, and used a lot of torpedo walls. In the game you can do the same, and torpedoes have nice reload times, usually you will be able to fire 2 before you identify your targets and close to combat range.

- Follow the objectives. The AI is really good at defending their capitals or convoys, and will send his fleet aggressively towards you so you waste your time while the objective retreats. Just burn through them and go for the objective. Ramming is a really effective way to kill small ships like transports, or soften assassination targets. Just don't ram ork ships :D

[Eviscerador]

Originally posted by Z0M:

Originally posted by Desolator X:

The campaign is balanced like someone with 3 working braincells has been at it. It's SUPER unfriendly to people who've not played the TT and don't know all the stats / dps comparisons of the ships and their facings. I've got to the "defend the inquisitor" mission and just dropped the game. You have to defend a battleship that has no shields and engines, doesn't repair itself, and seems to do ♥♥♥♥ all damage from three waves of 2LC, 4LC, 1C and 4-6LC, all waves come with escorts equal to the amount of LC chaos fields. You get to field 300 points worth of ships.... That's all folks, oh and Chaos ignores your ships while hammering the battleship you need to protect. There's just no way you'll ever get that mission completed.

This mission is utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, ive reverted my save 15 times now. Horst ship blows up at the the start of wave 3 for me everytime. I even spent 45 minutes in the match running the tactical cogs almost nonstop, same result. I feel like this game has some serious balance issues. This is just as unbalanced and unforgiving as DOW dark crusades cam(pain)

You have to fight the enemy at range, close on them. Just concentrate on the enemy cruisers. The escorts are usually killed by the battleship.

Remember that the Pilars of Truth is a full fledged Retribution battleship, and will fire at anything and use plasma bombs and stasis by herself.

Focus the cruisers and forget about the escorts and everything will go smooth.

I completed it in hard mode with the Retribution leaving with more than half health.

My ships were a Tyrant with taunt and MWJ, a Dauntless MK2 (the torpedo one) with Supercharged void shields and a Widowmaker.

PS: The game will deduct the 175 points that the retribution cost from the renown earnings, so you better kill a lot of ships :D

[Mowerman]

Unfortunately it appears the devs in their haste to release the game have introduced a plethora of bugs and it feels to compensate for it, the AI is given a randomised chance of "cheat mode enabled." The most common bugs so far:

- Unfair enemy deployments - The enemy AI seems to reliably drop the main body of its fleet directly across from you on the map the majority of the time, apart from the 1 occasion its placed its fleet in the opposite corner. This tends to happen more on cruiser clash inducing a boring minute of 2 whilst you wait for your ships to crawl across the map.

- On the flip side the enemies ships seem to forget how to navigate in space when faced with asteroid fields. On numerous occasions I have seen enemy ships fly to the edge of asteroid fields and just stop. I wish it were Eldar, but alas it was Chaos and Orks who seem to have forgotten how to traverse space. Orks I can understand maybe a funny 5 minutes the greenskins have never been renowned for intellectual prowess, but to drive to an asteroid and sit there for half the game whilst their ship falls apart feels more like an online battle where your opponent has diarrohoea and is spending half their time trying to play from the toilet.

- In the "Protect Inquisitor Horst" mission, I can see why poeple have issues with it. The last wave is just bonkers, instead of 2 ships and escorts, no I have to face a cruiser and 3 light cruisers, time to get my game face on. Well actually no because my main line ship will lose its deck within the first shots being traded and this happened 3 times in a row. The first 2 waves are a joke, the enemy decided to deploy bombs and stasis fields against me, ooh tricky I thought. Until after checking the screen the only thing the enemy was doing was shooting itself. My ships were no where near yet every bomb dropped in the first 2 waves only hit enemy ships. The third wave, I'm informed that the techpriests have managed to remove their mechanical appendages out of their collective backsides and have started charging the warp engines. Only to watch the ship get lightning spammed by all enemy ships and watch wave after wave of assault boats get launched at the ship. Cancelling the warp to never get restarted, I can only sit there with impotent fury as my ships have all decided to take a detour via Edinburgh and Inquisitor Horst becomes intimately familiar with the effects of vacuum exposure.

- In the Inquisitor Horst mission, how is it justified that the final spawn has enemy ships, with favours equipped yet I'm not allowed them despite having the RP's in the bank? At least place us on an equal footing with the enemy. Don't expect us to fight in a completely different league where the AI can change the rules when it feels like it.

- The imperials feel woefully underpowered, the weapons just don't have the visceral crunch they used to with lances barely registering any damage at all.

- Setting your engagement controls so your Imperial ships dutifully orbit the targeted ship, just feels like the helmsman has started indulging his purple crayon addiction as you watch your ship you just lined up to orbit the fleet correctly by going round the target one way sees your ship stop, laboriously turn and go the other. Only to take itself so far out of range, it might as well be on a different map.

- Enemy ships are able to turn and burn out of a ram, despite your ship practically climbing down their throat. With less than quarter of a square to go, checking the angles, relative speeds of the ships and their headings, the ram looks good, thrust is full, all hands "Brace for Impact". Only to look to see the enemy ship static rotating on its axis and then moving just outside being rammed. How the hell did they get out that I ask myself in confusion, only to see the next few ramming encounters miss as well. Really? over 150 hours of playtime all spent testing every race to destruction and honing my skills, getting a feel for each race, learning their strengths and weaknesses, remembering all ship and weapons data. For what? to be trolled by a lacklustre AI and poor controls. I don't remember the game playing like this.

- So many missions feel incomplete or bugged that it would be easier to roll a dice to see whether I win or not instead of playing each fight and feel increasingly frustrated by the plethora of bugs or an AI that goes from being a few neurons short of a synapse to Gandalf "You shall not pass" mode.

All in all I think all of us are deeply frustrated at the way the game has been released. Yes I accept that some people may have difficulty especially if they are new to the game. But as an experienced player the game feels broken. Why do we have to adopt 1 specific set of tactics and loadout to complete a mission? I thought the whole purpose of the game and the Imperials especially was that there is no certain route to success, dependant on style of play, how your fleets are managed to cater to their strengths and minimise their weaknesses, all of the important things a player brings to the game suddenly feel secondary. Yes depending on a mission type certain loadouts are more viable, but only a single way to complete a mission and if you don't have those skills then your stuffed? Sorry but that doesn't feel right to me.

[Eviscerador]

Originally posted by Mowerman:

Wall o' text

I never found anything you are talking about.

By the way, in the inquisitor mission, the enemy was not killing themselves, those are the abilities of the Battleship you are protecting. She also fires upon the enemy in case you haven't noticed.

[Desolator]

Originally posted by Z0M:

Originally posted by Desolator X:

The campaign is balanced like someone with 3 working braincells has been at it. It's SUPER unfriendly to people who've not played the TT and don't know all the stats / dps comparisons of the ships and their facings. I've got to the "defend the inquisitor" mission and just dropped the game. You have to defend a battleship that has no shields and engines, doesn't repair itself, and seems to do ♥♥♥♥ all damage from three waves of 2LC, 4LC, 1C and 4-6LC, all waves come with escorts equal to the amount of LC chaos fields. You get to field 300 points worth of ships.... That's all folks, oh and Chaos ignores your ships while hammering the battleship you need to protect. There's just no way you'll ever get that mission completed.

This mission is utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, ive reverted my save 15 times now. Horst ship blows up at the the start of wave 3 for me everytime. I even spent 45 minutes in the match running the tactical cogs almost nonstop, same result. I feel like this game has some serious balance issues. This is just as unbalanced and unforgiving as DOW dark crusades cam(pain)

Never had issues with the DOW campaigns. The problem with this game is the fact that you don't get the #1 tactic explained to you properly, namely ramming the ♥♥♥♥ out of everything you see. I've tried playing bumperships the game and it works miracles. Sadly, it doesn't tell you anywhere that this is even a thing, let alone a viable tactic for IN. I played the game more like a tactical RTS with positioning / firing arcs and the like and it's got ♥♥♥♥ all on just ramming everything in sight...

[Eviscerador]

Originally posted by Desolator X:

Originally posted by Z0M:

This mission is utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, ive reverted my save 15 times now. Horst ship blows up at the the start of wave 3 for me everytime. I even spent 45 minutes in the match running the tactical cogs almost nonstop, same result. I feel like this game has some serious balance issues. This is just as unbalanced and unforgiving as DOW dark crusades cam(pain)

Never had issues with the DOW campaigns. The problem with this game is the fact that you don't get the #1 tactic explained to you properly, namely ramming the ♥♥♥♥ out of everything you see. I've tried playing bumperships the game and it works miracles. Sadly, it doesn't tell you anywhere that this is even a thing, let alone a viable tactic for IN. I played the game more like a tactical RTS with positioning / firing arcs and the like and it's got ♥♥♥♥ all on just ramming everything in sight...

While it is true nobody say that ramming is an option, you have the launch trailer, the ork trailer, and a nice upgrade in the IN for ramming attacks buff.

So hints are there :D

[Mowerman]

After subsequent play throughs, I did realise the battleship was in fact dropping abilities, it is rather indisciminate though about who gets hit by them having been torpedoed several times by the good Inquisitor and suffered plasma spam more than once, hence the confusion about the enemy dropping it.

I did complete the mission but only after the AI commited so many silly mistakes that things went in my favour. An asteroid field was in the way of the inquisitors ship and the enemy dutifully drove straight though it which was thoughtful. It did this on each wave.

On previous play throughs, the sneaky sods always approached from the stern of the ship, rendering the battleship impotent able to only deploy bombs which it had no compunction about hitting me with. This time the bulk of the enemy spawned in front of the battleship, and quite happily sat there swallowing torpedo spreads.

Trying to protect the battleship from the front is awkward as god old Inquisitor Horst will just as happily shoot you with tordpedoes as the enemy.

They fortunately closed quicker and mis-used their lightning strikes too early allowing the warp engines to charge for what feels like eternity.

My advice is keep trying until the AI falls over.

[Zav]

Originally posted by Private White:

Originally posted by Zav:

And I played on Normal, losing 5-6 missions in 16 Turns, so it's sounds like you need to be fixed :P Seriously, it's not that hard, just hang on instead of maybe.. posting a negative review or anything.

Thats a thought....how many missions can you lose before the gothic sector is lost?

Like, can you play a entire campain losing every mission?

I don't know, but what I know is that failing a priority mission will bring is own "bad" curscene and consequences!

[Erikkustrife]

Iv been going through on heroic