KickStarter Terra Invicta - sci-fi grand strategy from Long War mod creators - now available on Early Access

[MadMaxHellfire]

It's not hard to protect big countries.

it takes you centuries to get to china. alien magic powers need 2 turns. 1 if you're unlucky. all servants should hang.

 

[asfasdf]

It's not hard to protect big countries.

Who said anything about hard, the only hard part is enduring the endless boredom of doing the same thing again and again. The time you assassinate the 100th enemy agent who magically coup India at 0% unrest you just want to strangle the game devs.

 

[Jaedar]

It's not hard to protect big countries.

Who said anything about hard, the only hard part is enduring the endless boredom of doing the same thing again and again. The time you assassinate the 100th enemy agent who magically coup India at 0% unrest you just want to strangle the game devs.

I have never had a large country couped at 0% unrest.

I can't tell you why, it just never happened.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

your game probably bugged, because aliens regularly take china and india nodes through their magic. your only chance to win at any game *ever* is IF somehow they got tangled in europe or brazil where other ais can fight them over ownership. once they set foot in eastern asia it's game over, because you're the only one who can effectively fight them (the game has actually no idea how to play the game) and because whoever owns that area is unstoppable.
these guys have interesting ideas, it's just they haven't the slightest clue on how to make anything fun.

 

[asfasdf]

It doesn't matter, they will sit in china/india then send their army 1 by 1 to die somewhere. Only issue are the nukes but you can cheese that, then take over then deal with endless coups/recapture.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Game really tickled my autism

 

[Mortmal]

Just got a key for 20 euros; it has a lot going for it, but it's rough indeed. The tutorial is probably the worst I've ever seen to explain things. They give you a full tour of what you can figure out on your own, but the underlying mechanics, all the stuff that matters, they won't tell you. After 5 hours, I start to manage it, but then I see it's unforgiving, and you have to rush; otherwise, all the good mining spots on Mars are taken, and the asteroids take 2 years just to probe. Then I have trouble picking big countries; I surround India and China by controlling lesser nations, influencing the population there with a max persuasion evangelist, and it's still not enough, while the AI immediately gets in without controlling anything around. So, managing it with Uzbekistan and getting a nice space boost, then countries like Iran and Afghanistan, but it's not enough for the space race, and it's too late when you see it. I noticed the 'own a country with a nuclear weapon' achievement is reached by only 7% of the player base, and that's very early. So, I am pretty sure they lost already 93% of people at that stage of the game.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I noticed the 'own a country with a nuclear weapon' achievement is reached by only 7% of the player base

then i'd say at least 90% of the owners actually never played the game at all, because there's at least israel which can be taken from the get-go, france and uk are rather easy, and then there's the noob trap russia. my guess is that achievements have been added much later, too much later, when this game lost most of its naively enthusiastic starting playerbase.

 

[thesecret1]

So, I am pretty sure they lost already 93% of people at that stage of the game.

Probably added achievements late, and most people who bought it are waiting for full release to give it another spin (like me). The game has a solid core, but is bogged down by an incredible amount of tedium and questionable design decisions. Have they at least fixed the tech tree yet, or is it still 90% utter trash that's never gonna be useful for anything, and 10% absolutely crucial tech that you need to rush ASAP?

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Played a lot like 6 months ago, had a lot of fun, waiting for full release now

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dude, they released a barely working alpha, the kind which needs 3 patches every day and a total rework of half of its features, and in 15 months they managed to release... 12 bugfix patches.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

dude, they released a barely working alpha, the kind which needs 3 patches every day and a total rework of half of its features, and in 15 months they managed to release... 12 bugfix patches.

You are exaggerating as always

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1176470/announcements/detail/3896239307763777381 read the title, then go the fuck suck some dick out.

 

[thesheeep]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1176470/announcements/detail/3896239307763777381 read the title, then go the fuck suck some dick out.

There have been minor patches (hotfixes or "small patches") in-between that didn't increment the number.
Which is why that "patch no. X" system is horrible and misleading.

But anyway, it wasn't a ton of patches, that's true.

 

[thesheeep]

Have they at least fixed the tech tree yet, or is it still 90% utter trash that's never gonna be useful for anything, and 10% absolutely crucial tech that you need to rush ASAP?

As that is (together with the lack of a good tutorial) the biggest complaint in the game, and always has been since day one, the only reasonable assumption is:
They know and they don't care, or even worse, this is by design. They want players to figure out by themselves what is and isn't useful going forward.
Aka play-by-guide.

 

[Jaedar]

Have they at least fixed the tech tree yet, or is it still 90% utter trash that's never gonna be useful for anything, and 10% absolutely crucial tech that you need to rush ASAP?

As that is (together with the lack of a good tutorial) the biggest complaint in the game, and always has been since day one, the only reasonable assumption is:
They know and they don't care, or even worse, this is by design. They want players to figure out by themselves what is and isn't useful going forward.
Aka play-by-guide.

I think they just spent a lot of time researching all proposed future propulsion research paths, and didn't want that to go to waste so they put it all in the game. Alternatively the quantity is balanced around the idea that each faction only unlocks 20% of potential techs, but at least during initial EA that wasn't the case.

 

[thesecret1]

Have they at least fixed the tech tree yet, or is it still 90% utter trash that's never gonna be useful for anything, and 10% absolutely crucial tech that you need to rush ASAP?

As that is (together with the lack of a good tutorial) the biggest complaint in the game, and always has been since day one, the only reasonable assumption is:
They know and they don't care, or even worse, this is by design. They want players to figure out by themselves what is and isn't useful going forward.
Aka play-by-guide.

I think they just spent a lot of time researching all proposed future propulsion research paths, and didn't want that to go to waste so they put it all in the game. Alternatively the quantity is balanced around the idea that each faction only unlocks 20% of potential techs, but at least during initial EA that wasn't the case.

The problem wasn't even the quantity, but that entire branches of the tree were useless dogshit, while other branches (costing the same) actually pull their weight. They're basically noob traps, as any player that actually knows what he's doing would never waste time with them. And the majority of the tree was filled with that (especially propulsion tech. Other areas suffered from it too, but nothing more than propulsion). I mean you have branches there that take you to the edge of the solar system... and branches that will struggle to take you to Mars. It'll just result in play by guide, like thesheeep says.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1176470/announcements/detail/3896239307763777381 read the title, then go the fuck suck some dick out.

How rude

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Tbh the game has a lot of problems and tedium, but saying its an alpha IS an exaggeration. Dunno if noobtraps in propulsion research will ever get fixed tbh...

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I think they just spent a lot of time researching all proposed future propulsion research paths, and didn't want that to go to waste so they put it all in the game.

what's worse, several of them are outright retarded. take for example the one item which radiates through ejecting and recollecting metallic dust. first of all, that's just retarded, as a concept itself and because radiating to lose heat is possibly the least effective way in space, we still use it through panels because we're just apes who happen to have accidentally invented flight five minutes ago and know no better. second, no dust can be better than any fluid at anything other than clogging mechanisms. third, cold welding. so facepalming i can't even.

 

[Jaedar]

I think they just spent a lot of time researching all proposed future propulsion research paths, and didn't want that to go to waste so they put it all in the game.

what's worse, several of them are outright retarded. take for example the one item which radiates through ejecting and recollecting metallic dust. first of all, that's just retarded, as a concept itself and because radiating to lose heat is possibly the least effective way in space, we still use it through panels because we're just apes who happen to have accidentally invented flight five minutes ago and know no better. second, no dust can be better than any fluid at anything other than clogging mechanisms. third, cold welding. so facepalming i can't even.

Iirc, it's not metallic dust, it was liquid metal drops or something ? I agree it's completely nonsensical though. I don't see how a cloud of metal particles could ever have better radiation properties than any other structure with the same area, and since the particles leave a lot of gaps they don't do a good job of utilizing the actual surface area.

Please elaborate on this about radiating heat. Afaik it is the only method to get rid of heat in space, with the alternative being storing it?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it's cobalt dust. if they haven't changed it. i even made a thread on their reddit and discovered the marvels of the echo chamber.

radiation heat dissipation is made through physical contact. the average density of deep space is 3 atoms per cubic metre. you're only radiating through infrared, which is absolutely inefficient but also the only means we know that can afford.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

A neat thing on the latest patch notes:

We're also getting underway adding a number of new features to the game for our 0.4 builds. First up is a number of additional regions and nation on the world map to provide a richer simulation of geopolitics during the alien arrival. We've got some other fun things we'll show off on our Discord as we get them working in our internal builds.

Neat, their map sucked.

I really hope they go back to Earth features later on. I would love to see, for example, a demographic mechanic - imagine people fleeing countries at war (especially countries invaded by aliens), demographics behaving according to their faction support, etc.

 

[asfasdf]

Really, is it the useless propulsion things that bother you? Nonsense tech trees are the staple of 4x games since time immemorial. What this game needs are things like better ui, less insane space battles, ways to get rid of factions permanently and performance improvements. There are other things that they could improve like better space travel, but these are deeper issues. Really, things like selecting multiple units by dragging a rectangle with the mouse then right clicking to move/stop were solved by games like tiberian dawn and wc2 30 years ago, it is not rocket science. Even somewhat clunky homeworld ui had a simple way to tell ships to go from A to B. You could even select several ships and tell to move in formation. Unthinkable I know.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

wait, people really *play* space battles? i was dead sure they were just a practical prank pulled on players. no one in his sane mind would consider that "a game", let alone enjoyable.