New expansion kinda sucks currently

[poliorcete]

I am going to have to quit playing for a bit until they can rebalance/unbug everything. The academy killer fleet is incredibly unbalanced, whomever gets it first automatically wins the war and gets a few planets (or even takes out AI home planet by invasion).
Whatever they did to espionage has made a mediocre side game into a disaster. I have been stun locked by AI just relentlessly targeting my home system for regime change. So I get anarchy for a few turns and then I am locked into some lousy system for 20 turns. And then a few turns later it happens again, and again, and again. The espionage defences aren't that good, and if you play on harder levels the AI is nearly invincible when you try to infiltrate but just blow through your defences.
New race is ok, though I just always put relics on research. Not very exciting.

[veiL`HK]

Im just waiting until they fix the achievements so I can just get everything, mess around with a custom faction for a game or two, then chill again

[BasiC]

Waiting till they decide to rebalance nekalim so they start on several systems and nerf to crazy academy fleets.

[Bozobub]

a) You can disable any given DLC.

b) If they can hack you, you can hack them.

c) You obviously don't understand how offensive hacks work.

[mourioche]

It's strange to see so many complain about espionnage.

Since this, in the game :
- At begining of a game I can upgrade my relationship with minor factions easilly
- At begining and middle i can take some ressource from pirates if i have no other targets
- At middle i can easily attack IA (playing with endless AI and pirates)
- If i can reach the capital of an IA, it's the fiesta...
-- First you can take technologies you have not found
-- You can put out of game its heroes
-- You can ease your invasion...

So, since espionnage, i have far more things i can do to win a game.

So, i do not understand all these complain about espionnage...

[Bozobub]

I personally like the hacking system a lot, BUT:

• It's a relatively complex additional layer to an already complex game.
  
  
• The learning curve is not trivial. Many necessary tactics and strategies — for example, making a hack stop at a few extra nodes, before "attacking" an enemy target, to negate any trace — aren't obvious enough to many players. A decent tutorial really needs to happen.
  
  
• It's a bit iffy for multiplayer, especially with unknown players, the griefing potential is limitless.
  
  
• If you're playing with the Umbral Choir active, they're pretty OP even if they don't use hostile hacks, much less if they do ^^'.
  
  
• The hacking UI is a bit clunky, especially how it's completely separated from the main play map, often necessitating constant flipping between the two layers when choosing targets. There also needs to be a way to multi-place offensive and defense programs, so you can just select a type and click on each target, instead of the current two clicks per =p.

...So I can see the point of folks who don't like it so much, even though I don't agree.

[Bermag]

The Academy fleet is only OP in early game. But yeah it might be a problem. Shoudl scale a bit better.

Hacking is annoying I only had a regime change happen once in my games. But happened at worst possible time though because it caused overcolonization so getting back to 50% approval to change back was hard.

I get hacked a lot in my current game but fortunaley only place sleepers (try to put up defenses). I have just killed UC so I hope it will be better.

[poliorcete]

The hacking seems poorly designed, it is currently just a random event generator. The player gets almost no feedback as to what happened or how to react. In every other part of the game you have extensive knowledge of what is going on, why you are winning or losing, and its very clear how what you do affects things (production, combat, etc).
But with Hacking there is
1. No % chance of success/failure given, you just pick a target and throw some poorly described programs on it and 5-15 turns later something happens.
2. The effects on you are overly obscured. I don't bother doing the "find the pixel" hunt on a system when it gets hacked. Whatever it is I can't do anything about it unless its just blatantly obvious subversives and I can do a spy hunt. It becomes just a random bad event.
3. Rewards are iffy, with the nefelim you can't even get tech until late game. And the payoff rarely is worth the extra effort in planning. Especially since the game was designed to be won without it.
4. Allowing revolution from hacking was an awful decision because it has huge consequences and there is literally no way to know it is coming or even how to defend against it. If it is going to have such game changing consequences, in a Strategy game, it needs to be a lot more obvious that you are in danger. Perhaps coloring compromised planets, warnings from advisors, some sort of mechanism to give the strategy player a chance to react to impending revolution.

[ashbery76]

You get a red enemy trace that shows on the UI..When you see that cancel the hack.All the aspects are told.The issue is you.

[mourioche]

Originally posted by ashbery76:

You get a red enemy trace that shows on the UI..When you see that cancel the hack.All the aspects are told.The issue is you.

Have you already cancel a hack ?
In all my games, i could never do this.
The game always told me "not enough points" as i try, always.

Hacking do not cause problem for me, IMO it is a big advantage;
But i could never cancel a hack, so that IMO it is impossible to do.
I can play without this, but if i can learn something to do this... i'm interested.

[ashbery76]

You need to cancel some programs you have running as you need space bandwidth.

[yautl]

Originally posted by poliorcete:

4. Allowing revolution from hacking was an awful decision because it has huge consequences and there is literally no way to know it is coming or even how to defend against it. If it is going to have such game changing consequences, in a Strategy game, it needs to be a lot more obvious that you are in danger. Perhaps coloring compromised planets, warnings from advisors, some sort of mechanism to give the strategy player a chance to react to impending revolution.

Or, you know, making revolution impossible if your happiness is above a certain level? Because your population likes the current government enough that simply throwing propaganda and messing with systems isn't enough to make them rebel?

It's just kind of stupid that I can have a maximum approval rating (which would be even higher if it could be) but some outside entity can just hack my government and suddenly everyone hates it and overthrows it.

[JC-Proton]

I just turn off all the DLCs, except sometimes Vaulters. Behemoths and Hacking both suck to me. I stopped buying DLCs after UC because Vaulters was meh and the other 2 sucked, imho, and this current one looks meh, at best.

[BlueAuran]

I have been trying to get BASIC information on this issue...if I have EVERYTHING turned to max...galaxy creation, ai, everything. How many turns is this going to play without error? I can test this myself obviously as I bought it and own all except the newest DLC...just that I have been waiting for this information FOR DAYS and yet everyone seems to shy off from ansewring...it's almost like they all work for the company or something, crazy eh?

[BlueAuran]

So behemoths and hacking both pretty much suck? I can turn them off for my first game too of coarse...yet would like information about the factions that come on those DLCs and how having THEM in the game at least is a good thing...variety and all. Is there any way I can have more fun playing with these enabled? Did they FIX any of the mechancics...I also heard they got rid of the super amazing FIDS display in order to replace it with the hacking one, anyone else feel that was a poor decision?

[Bozobub]

The only effect larger games have on the issue is that they simply take longer, thus making the end-turn bug more likely to appear. It has nothing to do with your PC's specs.

The reason you are getting so little feedback, BlueAuran, is your attitude on these forums. I DID warn you.