Off topic: How are games failing you? - Page 15

Trumanator · #1 February 15th, 2009, 12:38 AM

Portal is pretty good as well, heck the whole Orange Box is pretty good.

rdonj · #2 February 15th, 2009, 12:52 AM

Hmm... I kind of like sword of the stars actually. I had the misfortune of getting it at around the same time as I got dominions though, and I've not played terribly much else of my own volition since I started playing dominions :P There are definitely things I dislike about sword of the stars, but I thought it had some good ideas.

JimMorrison · #3 February 15th, 2009, 01:07 AM

Oh it certainly has some good ideas. In fact there were a number of things that I did like about it. But there are enormous, and I mean "can fly a battlecruiser through them" enormous flaws in the tactical combat. Also, the expansion introduces a race that plays a little like Ermor, and they are completely obnoxious, they make the game non-fun.

I started out kind of liking it. Then I started to not like it much. Then I learned some of the more advanced concepts in the game, and I started to like it a lot more. Then I hit the wall.

rdonj · #4 February 15th, 2009, 02:40 AM

I never got born of blood, but I can certainly see them making the game a lot less fun. I'd heard about the issues with the heavy beams, but I never really had much opportunity to test them. I never got past playing easy mode, so I never had to fight enemy dreadnaughts or even many cruisers :P. So I never really got acquainted well acquainted with the bad parts I guess.

NKIcan · #5 February 15th, 2009, 03:12 AM

I love the Sword of the Stars series. I think it does a great job in many different areas. The designing your own ships is fun, and every technology is useful...as well, I enjoy the whole random tech tree as it eliminates the blandness of builds to an extent.

That being said, the game goes on WAY too long after you pretty much know You Won.

The random encounters are also cool

Puppet Master...whew

JimMorrison · #6 February 15th, 2009, 04:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NKIcan

I love the Sword of the Stars series. I think it does a great job in many different areas. The designing your own ships is fun, and every technology is useful...as well, I enjoy the whole random tech tree as it eliminates the blandness of builds to an extent.

That being said, the game goes on WAY too long after you pretty much know You Won.

The random encounters are also cool

Puppet Master...whew

Haha. Well I agree, there were a lot of cool aspects, and I love how even though the tech tree is somewhat small, it isn't burdened by fluff, and it just feels like there's enough content - just slimmed down for a faster paced game. And yes, I liked all the wasp things, and the crazy asteroid battle stations and whatnot. What I didn't like was how hard it was to give meaningful orders in combat half the time, and how unintelligent my ships were about facing and ranging, yet the computer, using the same AI, could cause me terrible attrition with inferior ships. And the expansion race (can't remember their name) just pushed it over the top, with their whole "yay, 1 shot and half your fleet is gone" weaponry.

rdonj · #7 February 15th, 2009, 05:38 AM

There is no fleet, there is only Zuul?

NKIcan · #8 February 15th, 2009, 10:04 PM

I guess it just takes practice, and knowing which orders to use.

Zuul just give you problems early game...but after that they become managable. Heck if you can hold em off they will eventually run out of steam as they auto-overharvest all their planets.

I enjoy the Tarkas the best.

Either way, SotS is another example of a lot of things done right, but annoying enough in the few small things to drive many away.

JimMorrison · #9 February 15th, 2009, 10:19 PM

I really liked The Hive, just because as the game progressed, and more and more AI empires wanted to launch fleets at me from god knows where, I could do the gate dance and block each fleet with minimal attrition for the most part. Then yeah, here comes a Zuul fleet, and *pop* goes my defensive armada.

I felt like I was getting pretty handy at controlling my ships, such as the controls were. But they would still bind up, and IIRC I had huge problems with ships that had weapons of multiple ranges not wanting to close to use all weapons, and if they did, they would try to stack on top of eachother and get stuck while the enemy sailed back to take out my gate ships, and my command ships.

I don't know, as bad as all that was, it was most definitely the Zuul bastards with their imba weapons that drove me away. I have a very high BS threshold, and generally consider it a challenge to make faulty controls, bad pathing, and awkward AI do what I want them to do.

But when someone can throw a fleet full of garbage at me, and do horrible damage just because one ship can fire the dreaded God Fart Torpedo, it's a sour sour day. You're actually making me want to install and play it again, and disable the Zuul from AI selection. <3

rdonj · #10 February 15th, 2009, 11:42 PM

Space Dolphins forever! I only tried the hivers once or twice briefly, never finished a game with them. I realized recently (yesterday) just how horribly incorrect I was playing them the same way I played the Liir, but with gate ships. The Liir pretty much perfectly fit my natural playstyle tendencies, the Hivers, not so much.

God fart torpedo, huh? The Zuul certainly sound like absolute jerks, leaving them disabled sounds like a good idea to me. I would say play as them to exact retribution, but they also don't completely sound like the most fun to play. I certainly would be terrible with them. I actually am somewhat wanting to play SotS also, and Rebellion! But I only have so many brain cells I can devote to games that require lots of thinking at once and dominions is pretty much maxing me out right now. Maybe when I'm done with most of my multiplayer games, but I'm not so sure that's happening any time soon....