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Point 1: it's stated on cruiser they have no melee attack. You should never let the enemy get next to them - so 2 cruisers 1 drone is a bad idea and you always want more melee units than cruisers to zone enemies from them (Magneto frigates are perfect at this job).
Likewise, the description of special abilities include what conditions prevent them from refreshing (typically, taking damage and/or attacking). You want Guardian cruisers and Parasite drone to avoid damage so they refresh their abilities properly - which means cruisers should stay at the back and the drones flank, again a Magneto frigate ensures the enemy is locked onto it.
Spawing units on top of enemies is a strong defensive tactic, learn to use that property to your own advantage.
Point 2: I get that but surrender is only meant to avoid losses on your side in a close encounter.
Point 3: I guess emergency evac doesn't allow enough weight to lift away both loot and commandos and leftover assets are attacked by local fauna or sort, so you have to pick. Note there are upgrades that allow better evacs, albeit they aren't available to all ships.
Finally I don't think this counts as a RPG. It's an action roguelike with a strong narrative component, but don't expect your choices to make any difference in the story.
Ok, I appreciate your comments.
Is this, as of fact, or is this your opinion? Or is this what the game devs actually intended?
The explanation for point 3 could be literally anything - the game just doesn't bother to specify and, it's odd. It would be like if you sent someone to the grocery store, and they came back with half of the goods you wanted, and could go back and get the other half, but they'd never come back with the whole thing. - Why? There's no explanation given.
As for the Cruisers, I was only referring to that one fight. I did have a cruiser that does melee damage. It just, didn't do it. I see this off and on and I'm not sure what is causing troops to not auto-engage, or to auto-engage when I don't want them to. It just seems, odd, and what ever it is it isn't explained anywhere.
As with any other tactical game or RTS, not having control of your units is very frustrating, especially when there is no reason given for it. That's all I'm asking for; if this is what the game devs want, where's the clarity?
As for abilities; sometimes I have frigates, drones or cruisers, that have an ability but they don't use them. It seems random, and I have no idea why. For instance, that shield cruiser had a perfectly good cruiser sitting right next to it to shield, but it never did. And as in my example. it got mobbed to death by 2 drones, and although it HAD a melee attack, it never used it. I didn't understand what had happened or why.
Even a combat log, or a log in general for the ship would be nice to be able to look back and see what was going on or what happened.
I don't need to speak to much on the fact that the tactical / strategic combat style is different from most RTS games. I am sure you can see that for yourself.
I just wanted to be sure that I shared my frustrations as a 1st time player. There is a difference between "Novel" and "Iconic" when it comes to designing games. The tactical map is a bit maddening, and I am sure that if you've played this for a bit you are already used to it. It's just not very intuitive, and I think it could be a lot more accessible or easily understood. That is definitely what they were going for in a lot of the other GUI and layout choices in this game. It's just a wonder that the battle system is so unusual, and more like a board game that doesn't quite fit together so well.
It feels forced.
I can only tell you to persevere if you have a hard time grasping the combat system. It's a lot like FTL but with the tactical grid outside of the ship, meant to use the active pause feature a lot to optimize split-second shenanigans. Incidentally, I'm used to this type of games so I don't feel it being that unusual.
I don't know what cruiser can have a melee attack, except Aurora who has no litteral attack but an area effect that isn't very visually relatable. Can you remember the name of the unit?
Units with an ability have a cooldown indicator on top of them, if it's not filling, you should take mesures to allow it to. While I can't know what happened exactly in your example, I suspect something was damaging your Guardian cruiser, thus preventing it to shield its neighbors - or that neighbor was itself under attack and the shield bubble immediately disappeared.
That, or you are experiencing a bug - the expension was just released so it can be expected. A hotfix is coming soon.
As far as the melee cruiser, I'm not sure. Maybe it did not? If that's the gimmick of the Cruisers in this game is to have no ability to fight when close up then perhaps I'm mistaken.
The shield however, from the shielding cruiser, just sat there at 0.0 seconds and didn't shield the ranged Cruiser or the nearby Drone swarm. It just diddn't do anything. It wasn't being attacked, or harmed in any way.
So, a few more things about the combat that I've noticed:
Clicking on an enemy fleet that you actually want to attack, when they're all stacked on top of one another, or, if they are very close to your Battleship and you cannot see them in the stack (but you can in the HUD), is very difficult. Instead of clicking on the square that they are on, you have to click ON the actual unit. - If that's the case, you should be able to click on it from the HUD menu on the right side of the screen as well to tell ships to attack.
Another thing, I got into a ship battle where one of my drones could make another drone. - So, it did that. And then I noticed that I do not have a HUD indicator for this new drone. This makes controlling groups of units very difficult. I had to find the drone from the stack of drones that he was in (there were 2 others on top of him) in order to direct him. It was pretty annoying to spend several seconds to find this unit.
Unlike most RTS games, you cannot "click and drag" over an area to select units. There is also no button to "give command to all" units. These are pretty normal features and it would be great to see them in this game. As fleet fights get harder and harder as the game goes on, the number of units you need to see and target on the battlefield grows larger and becomes a lot more difficult with all of these stacking units.
Not to mention the fact that it's difficult to control your own fleet. Not only can you never really expect a ship type that you want to be on the same keybind on a frequent basis, but also after a ship is defeated, it is not automatically redeployed as the last ship in that slot.
This combined with the high real-time speed of the game engine makes it very hard to keep an eye on so much at the same time, because nothing is automated or obvious. Even your own fielded units do not stand out very strongly against the background. The combat sounds of fleets fighting are mild and without direction, so the sensation of what is going on is constantly the responsibility of the eyes to watch the playfield itself, instead of the HUD.
And the stopping and starting... Holy cow that is annoying. I honestly don't enjoy games that you have to stop and order around, and then start again, only to stop it a half-second later, for most of the match. That... isn't fun. How about just a slightly slower battle speed to not ruin the fun?
Again, I've been a game Dev before and the vast majority of the stuff in the game is really amazing. The pixel art and the plot, the management and strategy, the atmosphere, music -- all really amazing. The only thing that I think needs some brushing up on is the combat system.
It does not feel terribly impactful (aside from the ship weapons) when fighting fielded fleets. They last for such a short period of time, it hardly feels meaningful. There are so many units on the map at times, without any icons to associate them (my own or the enemy) that I cannot be sure of what I am ordering units to do. Units watch as other units fly by, just 2 squares away, and without my constant oversight they do nothing.
There are no "attack", "guard here", "hold position" commands, and occasionally the pathing does really awkward things when I tell units to move across the map (they always move in the same way, never avoiding danger - yet they avoid obstacles and danger when I tell them to move a moderate distance).
I've tried holding down "Alt" to direct waypoint commands (why not, "Shift", like every other game?) but I haven't gotten it to work yet. I don't know why they won't use an order que.
This combat system will likely take some getting used to; and that's kind of my point. It doesn't need to be this way. I'm just not exactly sure what the game dev was going for here. It seems, like it was put-on for another reason. Overly complicated and lacking certain details, for some other purpose. - It isn't as good as the rest of the game, I'll say. The underlying RPS, stats and modifiers are great. The control of the field and the visibility of the field, are lacking in a way I haven't seen a game lack, since Warcraft 1.
Was this combat system intended to annoy, or be obtuse, or for some other purpose intentionally?
Ok and that I've gathered from my most recent play through - so, it shields against 1 heavy attack. ... but I can't tell it when to use it. And it won't protect my Battleship.
So, just in general that isn't a very helpful unit is it? If I can't tell it what to do, and it will use an overpowered ability like that just when ever it feels like it, how does that make sense?
And, if 1 "heavy nuke" does the same damage as "1 drone laser pew", how does that make sense?
Like I said - this takes a bit too much getting used to. To say that this is a strategy game would be wrong. It's a tactical game... but you don't control as much as you would like. Some things you do! But, not always. And there's a lot of stop and start and go. And, sometimes you can't find units, or the enemy units! And sometimes, your ships decide to do things you don't want them to do. And, other times, they don't do what they should be doing, and you aren't sure why.
... Why? That's all I'll ask. Why is it this way? This is odd. I've never seen a game with this type of combat system, and that isn't exactly a compliment.
The only times my ships don't do what I want is because they are under the influence of the enemy - i.e. you can have Magneto frigates on the opposing side too and they will act the same, forcing your adjacent units to attack them.
And no, warship weapons do a lot more damage than drone lasers, but for shielding purpose they behave the same. For that reason, Guardian cruisers and Auto-shield units are mostly useful against opponents that are heavy on anti-squadron warship weapons, typically Church ships. Yet, in those situations they are extremely valuable.
- This is a fair point, but units can't be on the same hex for very long, so it's not dramatic either. Also you can take it as a tactical move from the AI to stack their ship so you can't target them properly - it's not obviously and it just happens by accident, but as the player it is definitely something you do on purpose, like to hit several of your units with a single target buff.
- In theory you may have a HUD icon for every unit, but you can spawn dozens of drones with Krafters so it would cease to be practical (I filled the entire grid once for fun).
I suspect you haven't played FTL before, have you?
This isn't like Warcraft, and it doesn't try to be. The stop-and-go design is intentional and a selling point - but I guess it can't appeal to everyone, just like the minimalist commands. There isn't much point in having multi-unit orders as high level play involves giving very specific invidualized orders using the active pause.
I didn't get the part about automatic redeployment. Unless you have very little squadrons and nothing else left, you always want to deploy a new one instead of waiting for the destroyed squadron to recover.
There is zero automation as, again, a good player will always micro-manage everything at split-second intervals anyway.
That said, the pathfinding could be improved if only in consistency.
No no, that's because you're new to it, but you can totally go through a fight and win it with your initial squadrons if you protect and heal them.
As for units doing nothing without input, as above.
Ahh ok, thanks for that tip. That's good to know.
Still, I'd like to reiterate, for a game that has such a solid basis in game math and effective game math, that went out of its way to describe in detail so many different backstories of the universe - it sure doesn't bother to fill in the gaps in some of the things like these that don't make a lot of practical sense.
That's fine if it shields for 1 hit, big or small. Describe why.
It's ok if you want to penalize players for bringing back scrap or choosing to leave Marines behind on a planet. Tell us why.
This and many other examples break the suspension of disbelief in an otherwise flawless game that does an excellent job at crafting a great game world.
As a player when I have to ask, "Ok, but that other part of the game doesn't do that. So why are we doing it now?", over and over again, that's frustrating. The game is challenging enough. Don't make it worse by making it arbitrarily difficult without good cause in an otherwise well described backstory. It misses the mark there.
I'm not sure what FTL is, but I have played many turn based strategy & tactical games.
My point is, if this character is supposed to be such an incredible commander, why is it so difficult or challenging to control your units? The control schemes scale poorly as the battles get bigger, leading to the understanding that either the developer did not want battles to get that large - or that battles are supposed to become lineally or logarithmicly more difficult to manage over time, eventually bordering on total hell.
This is a selling point?
It seems more like it was designed to be playable over mobile or as a table-top game, but it doesn't translate to those medias as well in this form due to the critiques listed above. Each format requires a different level of visibility, control, and challenges. And having them all merged as one can make for an experience that is only best enjoyed on one, and leaving the rest a watered-down version. The, "Trying to cater to too many" approach.
There are lots of ways to make this process more intuitive or easier to play, if modding was a possibility.
I get that this game is not at that stage any more, but I just wanted to point it out - it *IS* an amazing game, but the short comings listed here are what keep it from being exceptional. (I always hate it when I have to see games get this close to a 10/10). This game comes VERY close to it, and if it were still being worked on these ares of improvement are what I would recommend.
Some of the RPG or story elements about the game don't make rational sense, and are never explained, in an otherwise well explained world.
The same can be said for the battle system; I've played games similar to it but not quite like this. It drops the things modern gamers expect to see in order to keep it simple for cross-platform play, and yet makes you wish you had more control.
Unit composition and control in fleet battles is minimal at best, which is fine for the early game. However it's an absolute drudge if battles become exceptionally large. Not something you typically want in a space game with no limit on unit numbers.
The constant starting and stopping, and individual unit commands of the battle sim make you wish you were playing a game that was designed with its combat mechanics as its core gameplay mechanic. In this format it feels like an add-on, or a module that should likely be turn based instead of real time with pause (because it is essentially, turn based as the difficulty progresses in-game).
If this game could stand alone without its battle system, or with a DIFFERENT battle system, it would still be JUST as good of a game. - That's how hard the RPG/Roguelike/Strategic and Story elements of the game, carry this game upwards to greatness.
On the other hand, if the battle system was a stand-alone game, I'm not sure that it would be all that popular. It has "mobile game" written all over it, and not a deep, well designed system with great controls that you would want to come back to again and again. It floats & flirts around somewhere between small scale Mobile game, medium scale tactical game, large scale Space RTS, all with the same control scheme as your Atari 2600.
No offense to the designer who made this system! That is a HARD system to try and make!! Bravo! I just think it misses the mark as the arguably most important system of the game, and one that should be understandable, explained, well controlled and likable.
Without any automation the game speed is just a little too quick for most players as the difficulty ramps up, even with my 180+ APM. And since there is no knowledge base for how these units interact, the person that I can think of who would enjoy this system the most is the actual game developer. If you designed all of these units, and you know what they all do, that makes the game very enjoyable! But that learning curve as a new player is,... well it's not fun. I can say that. And that should have been the intention, to hook players into playing it more.
It tries to be too many things at once and fails to be good at any one thing, other than testing peoples patience. These are my opinions on my first few hours. (And just as an aside, I played my first 400+ hours in "Dwarf Fortress" without any help or guides at all! So I know how crazy and tedious that new player experience can be. Hopefully that says enough!)
Crying Suns is a great game. *GREAT*, game. But the battle system fails and falls short for new players. Which is a shame, as most of the rest of the game hits the mark on every other aspect.
APM are irrelevant, it's meant to be played using and abusing pause. It's not uncommon to press space twice or more in quick succession to perfectly time things like your weapon shots or squadron deployment. I wouldn't play a RTS that lacks an active pause feature, because I don't want to (or can, let's admit it) develop the mechanical skills required to perform at them, as opposed to strategical skills. Conversely, it allows for more granularity, flexibility and simultaneity than turn-based systems.
Also the battles aren't meant to scale, unless you are using Krafter drones which are a niche build. Apart from these, the maximum number of units on the battlefield is 10 counting both sides, which is unlikely and anyway completely manageable without control groups and whatnot. Again, you want to give specific individual orders to each squadron and group orders would be suboptimal so there's little reasons to allow them in the first place.
The pause feature and individual orders are the core gameplay as designed, and it has nothing to do with mobile portability, but facing tactical challenges with precise micro-management. It may not cater to everyone, hell no, but I like this format as is.
I think that having a game with these novel ideas, makes it less approachable, harder to play, less intuitive, and certainly not "better" than other tactical or strategy games out there.
The battle system cannot stand on it's own as easily as the rest of the game, and that's all there is to it. It's PRETTY good, but clunky at times as well.
This is a great example of, "if you know what you're doing, it's fine.". They skipped a few classic tropes here and it does, unarguably, seem tailored with the Mobile game market in mind from the get-go.
There are games with similar mathematical systems at the game core, and like those games this game is very good at it. The constant pausing, I guess is a necessity for this game as there is no other way to really play it. - Honestly I'd hate to play this on mobile. I can see that it would be a bit of a hassle to pause and unpause over and over to do the same thing on PC.
- I saw the game reviews and videos prior to purchase. I knew what I was getting into. I just didn't expect it to be THIS much pausing over and over again. It's pretty excessive, but I play on the hard difficulty and that's typically where I stay at.
A Hexagonal battle board makes a ton of sense. If the distances were further apart, that would also make a lot more sense, and would move from a "tactical" game to a "strategic" game. IMHO Strategy is where you have to make long-term planning to accomplish a goal, with limited resources and insight & depth into what you are deciding to do as the best possible path to victory. Tactics is just what you do when you have no other choice, and you're trying to find the best route towards a goal.
This game is a tactical game, as far as the battle-board. The strategy element comes before the battle, but you have no clue who you're going to run into. But, that space bar is sure to get a great workout.
It seems off-putitng, hard to get into, or understand what is going on from what you SHOULD be doing vs. what you are currently doing. The game is abrasively abrupt at times when turning the tide of battle to either side, (which could be a great thing in a tactical game, very exciting!) which is just as abrasively abrupt when you're just having to que orders. And very painful when you COULD HAVE SWORE you told a unit to go and attack another unit, but oh, no they just moved to the square that unit USED to occupy. Great work, fighter craft.
Tactfully, it would be better to give a group of ships an order to gang up on one enemy ship. That would ensure the highest chance of survival for your ships, and the lowest chance for their ship. Individualized orders would be LESS optimal, outside of solo-need circumstances, to win a fleet battle.
It's just the game style they went for. If people like it, great. That's what matters. All I'm saying is, it's not a popular battle system for a lot of good reasons, and it doesn't stand alone well. (but the math basics behind it sure does)
But you can totally gang up on one enemy. Still, you want that drone to switch target one half second before your frigate, because you have that weapon that is on 1.4 sec cooldown and don't want to lose damage on an overkill, or you want that stealth fighter to stop for 0.7 seconds so it finishes cloaking before the engagement, etc.
Group orders are pointless at this level of micro the game is designed for.