(Spoilers Inside) Is one of the endings potentially impossible? (Spoilers Inside)

[SkywalterDBZ]

So I'm sitting here with something like 5000+ enemy drones over my (Carmine's base) mere moments after being handed control. Presumably, because my base was armed to the teeth and had a ton of drone bays, stacks of 200 enemies came from all 360 degrees, even over the poles ... and wiped out the 300-400 or so drone they gave Carmine to start. I assumed this was intentional as the drones only leveled 50-60% of my base before bailing and NOT finishing me ... I figured it was a "rise from the ashes thing" so I overwrote my save and started to rebuild ... only to be attacked .. over and over and over by my 7000 drone army.

Did I just lose my entire 46 hours of play or am I missing somehing?

[cswiger]

Load a save or autosave from just before you join Carmine's side, and deconstruct all of your combat drone factories and hubs.

[SkywalterDBZ]

And how do people who manually saved after the choice supposed to keep playing? In 99.9% of all games ... and i'm not even joking, I only keep 1 manual save. I just do, and I see nothing wrong with it ... I'm sure the world thinks I'm mad ... but u don't design a game expecting a player to save scum.

Thankfully, in this case I saw there were two clear paths so my "after" save I actually put a " - C" at the end of my file name for Carmine so I could check the other path afterwards on my single save. Still if that's the ONLY answer, it kind of ruins the entire game for me.

[cswiger]

I'm content with you fighting things out against your old 5000+ drones if you like.
Tell us how that works out for you, especially if the aftermath is entertaining.

I'm also content with you losing the game entirely if you want to do so. It's really hard to actually lose in Per Aspera, but surplus stubborn determination can achieve a losing state.

PS: The sympathy department doesn't exist to help folks with self-inflicted problems.

[SkywalterDBZ]

I was literally looking for a legit way to beat the game. Basically rigging the game because I know whats coming is not a good game play experience or solution.

Also I still am fighting all 6800 drones. Unless theres a command I missed I can't delete the drones, only the buildings. So the AI still sends over armies to kill me. I'm still working at it even with your cheat and I've releaded 3 more times already to no avail.

I may just have to delete my entire base down to like 1 building, and that seems even less fun.

[cswiger]

500 drones is plenty to win the game when following any of the three endgame paths.

Spending all of the effort and resources to over-prepare by creating 7000+ drones in order to steamroll any opponent and then choosing the path which results in you facing your own steamroller is very literally a self-inflicted problem.

The only question I had was whether you blame yourself or whether you blame the game.
(If you blame yourself, you might then realize that you can become your own worst enemy, which is a useful insight to keep in mind outside of just playing Per Aspera....)

As for the comment about "your cheat", if a game offers manual saves and creates autosaves by default, then I wouldn't call reloading a save "cheating". But you can call reloading saves "cheating" if you like.

I prefer playing in ironman mode in games which offer that, and I regard save-scumming by repeatedly reloading a save to try and gain the perfect quest reward or suchlike to be a waste of time.

[mreed2]

Yeah, deleting drone hives doesn't kill defense drones -- it just prevents them from regenerating.

I think this is a no-win situation. Certainly, the only solution that I can come up with is to, as you said, destroy all but one building before, preposition the remaining drone swarms far away, and try to kill that last building before the swarms attack and destroy you. Even that's dubious, because while destroying the last building likely counts as a "win" for purposes of story progression, the swarms will remain and likely still attack your base.

I'm not even certain how the developers could fix this, assuming they are interested in doing so. You can't simply give the Carmine base 10k drones, because if you did that the other ending would be impossible. And even if you code the game so that there are no attacks against the Carmine base (if you choose the Carmine path), the player still might be unable to win because you have to destroy the base to advance the story but with enough attack drones (& drone hives) I can easily see the player running out of resources before they manage to kill all the drone hives (and associated swarms).

[mreed2]

Originally posted by cswiger:

500 drones is plenty to win the game when following any of the three endgame paths.

Absolutely, but someone playing blind wouldn't realize this. I certainly didn't, and built several thousand in my first play through. I didn't chose the Carmine ending, but if I had, I can see how it could be problamatic.

Spending all of the effort and resources to over-prepare by creating 7000+ drones in order to steamroll any opponent and then choosing the path which results in you facing your own steamroller is very literally a self-inflicted problem.

But you don't know (in advance) that you'll be facing them. Even if you assume that choosing to side with Carmine will result in you taking control of the Carmine base and losing control of your original base, its just as a reasonable to assume that your original base will die immediately. After all, by the story logic you are the vital force that allows the base to continue to exist, so the ability of the Earthers to summon an AI out of nowhere to keep things functioning isn't something that you could reasonably anticipate.

...As for the comment about "your cheat", if a game offers manual saves and creates autosaves by default, then I wouldn't call reloading a save "cheating". But you can call reloading saves "cheating" if you like.

The issue isn't reloading a save game -- the issue is "reloading the save game and destroying your base before you choose a side." Simply reloading a save game isn't cheating, but performing actions that would otherwise be irrational because that's the only way to win is. Especially when even that isn't enough to win. :)

[cswiger]

Originally posted by mreed2:

Originally posted by cswiger:

500 drones is plenty to win the game when following any of the three endgame paths.

Absolutely, but someone playing blind wouldn't realize this. I certainly didn't, and built several thousand in my first play through. I didn't chose the Carmine ending, but if I had, I can see how it could be problamatic.

Fishel's Law and Epitaph: "Smart is Dumb : It is unwise to build too much intelligence into a self-replicating machine."

The storyline makes it pretty clear that you've gained military drones via extralegal measures and that you are in conflict with some part of yourself that you aren't consciously aware of. I was wary about building too many military drones because I was worried about them being subverted.

I wasn't expecting the complete swap, however, but in hindsight the Carmine path is well-plotted and sufficient hints are given to foreshadow the result.

Note that you can even pursue a path where you don't build any drones and use the rising sea level to take out the initial Carmine base.

The issue isn't reloading a save game -- the issue is "reloading the save game and destroying your base before you choose a side." Simply reloading a save game isn't cheating, but performing actions that would otherwise be irrational because that's the only way to win is. Especially when even that isn't enough to win. :)

OK, that's a fair distinction.

[SkywalterDBZ]

At each stage of combat in the game, I kept having enemies slip by and destroy things. Not really a fan of the drone controls, kinda finicky. So as I snaked my way across the map, I just plopped down a new tower with the standard 100 drones to make sure i had full coverage, same as Power and Maint (which later doubled to 200). I assumed that's what the game was teaching me, assuming perhaps a big conflict at the end. Didn't expect it to be vs myself, but without aid or some kind of story intervention.

It took me quite a few tries with the deleted towers, but I had to keep poking into the base and dipping out to shut down new tower builds by the AI. And then his stack would split into a few waves of 200+ dudes and I'd slowly whittle him down until all 6k were finally gone.

What's kinda a bummer now is I'm sitting here waiting for the elevatror/seedships now while watching a TV show and only periodically clicking the screen. Really not a good ending.

[mreed2]

Originally posted by cswiger:

...
Note that you can even pursue a path where you don't build any drones and use the rising sea level to take out the initial Carmine base.

1. This wasn't the original intention -- the developers added, after several players were stuck because they followed the instructions from Earth ["Don't take aggressive action"] rather than the explicit goals ["Destroy the enemy base"] that appears on the UI, the automatic destruction of the first enemy base. A proper fix (rather than the hack put into place) would have new dialog to reflect the fact that AMI didn't take aggressive action -- but that would require recording new voice over, and probably should have ramifications later in the story.
   
2. There isn't, as far as I know, such special case logic for the second base, so you'll be forced to build assault drones to destroy this base (if you want to finish the story, at least).
   
3. You still have to build drone hives -- and the (game) AI is capable enough to build attack drone factories to populate them once it is given control of the base.

Originally posted by SkywalterDBZ:

At each stage of combat in the game, I kept having enemies slip by and destroy things. Not really a fan of the drone controls, kinda finicky. So as I snaked my way across the map, I just plopped down a new tower with the standard 100 drones to make sure i had full coverage, same as Power and Maint (which later doubled to 200). I assumed that's what the game was teaching me, assuming perhaps a big conflict at the end. Didn't expect it to be vs myself, but without aid or some kind of story intervention.

It took me quite a few tries with the deleted towers, but I had to keep poking into the base and dipping out to shut down new tower builds by the AI. And then his stack would split into a few waves of 200+ dudes and I'd slowly whittle him down until all 6k were finally gone.

Glad you were able to get past the issue! :)

...What's kinda a bummer now is I'm sitting here waiting for the elevatror/seedships now while watching a TV show and only periodically clicking the screen. Really not a good ending.

Actually, count your blessings -- in both of the other endings, you have to import Nitrogen for 20+ in game years in addition to building a large number of a repeatable Space Elevator project. The net effect is that you spend even more time "twiddling your thumbs". The pacing throughout the game is dubious, but the endgame is really bad.

[mikeydsc]

You do have 1 way to win. Divide and conquer. Send in a 200 drones and attack something on t he corner to draw the chasing army away.
Before you do this position a big hit squad to go clean up that part of the base. You know where the key targets are. Send scouts in to get them to chase them swoop in behind and destroy power and the drone factories first strike. Retreat to another part after you do some damage or keep going if they still chasing your scouts.