Beta Feedback, what felt right, what felt wrong (Terran viewpoint)

xNaquada

Join Date 10/2007

Beta Feedback, what felt right, what felt wrong (Terran viewpoint)

Keep the flames at bay please.

Okay so I just played one of the best games I ever played, and it was a TA game. I played a tiny map, 3 player, myself as Terrans (one of many games played as them so far). Ended up with all of us having 4 planets of similar value,and I knew that right off the start this game was gonna be a challenge. I was playing on tough in case anyone wants to know.

Here's what I like/love.
-I dont know if the AI was reworked, or if its just how all the weapon technologies are setup/custom tech trees etc, BUT I found myself having to use fleets a lot more throughly... no i don't mean spamming 1-2 ships together until the logistics limit, but I mean having a Capital ship (with the +Bonus for first attack) was absolutely essential. I found that the little (1st level) armored plating was balanced perfectly. 5hp reasonably expensive enough not to spam, but cheap enough to build it, (love putting 2 of them on fighters (small hull) with a +30%hp bonus .... mmmm 25hp fighters). I found that myself and the AI spent much time trying to get through the beginning of the tech tree before any of us had any sort of ships that could pose a threat if cobbled together. I also noticed that both AI's chose different weapon branches (or I suppose they have to, its probably not really a choice anymore) which is great, because I cannot count how many 6-8player DA games and every AI uses the same weapons tech [thats kinda boring]. Then the fighting started, and with 2 military starbases from the opposing force (Drengin) giving them support, they sent wave after wave of crappy 2-4attack missle fighters, however after the SB bonuses, well started to hurt ALOT. So again, using fleets and thinking things through was great, and this game required much more then DA (no matter galaxy size). I didn't have a chance to see TerrorStars, although I did see that there is a TON of research for them, so Im not sure if I will ever see it because my games usually dont tech up that far. I think that besides some minor tweaks that need to be done, (more on that), I liked the terran side, and nothing really seemed spamable and cheap. (love the sensor arrays too!). Also loved the new building artwork and UI.

Now what I don't particularly like.

The beginning game has way to many garbage "branching" techs. Starting off with 4 techs that branches off into some crazy number is not totally necessary, and I felt that it slowed down the start of the game a lot compared to DA/DL, especially since Terran do not get Stellar Cartography (I think this is way too far down the early tree, but thats my opinion). Another thing, it is not explained really how the fleet defense works, and I did not see any components to add to a ship (unlike say the warp bubbles [which need to be tweaked a bit since they all take the same space]. Does this happen automatically, and if it does, some sort of indication needs to be present(defense values changed in fleet, etc). How much % each level, does it stack, etc.

Lastly for now, since I want to get back to playing, the title screen has a black box that seems to outline what I would assume is the video animation on the title screen(starting from top left corner, encompassing maybe 60-70%, definitely looks like a placeholder.). They are narrow blacklines, but they are not invisible and look very unprofessional. Not too sure how that got missed. (1680x1050 resolution). Also had a crash to desktop, but that has all been e-mailed in along with the debug.err)

What does everyone else think so far? I'm curious to see other peoples perspectives....

Good game so far! And since my metaverse is now working (yay) I cant wait untill you enable metaverse support... (Im guessing launch but who knows).

back to TA I go.

EDIT: some spacing... my keyboard sucks

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I can't wait to play with those animations... first I've heard of them, but they look freaking sweet. To top it off, the sound effects aren't annoying!

Good to hear the AI got another kick the in the pants politically. Damnit, I can't wait for this game to be activated for me in SDC!

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A couple of notes. All races use the same base tech tree arranged differently, with modifications to flavor text/names here and there, along with new techs thrown in.

I-mod productions is a fan-group whose weapon animations were going to be officially added into the DA 1.7 patch first, but later it was decided to put them in TA first. I doubt they have gotten around to adding them yet.

Also, last year, DA was also supposed to be released in time for Christmas (and at first November too), but ended up being delayed until sometime after the new year. Now, there isn't supposed to be as much actual coding changes to be made for TA, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened with TA.

Lastly, new racial-specific weapons/animations doesn't have to mean that each race has an entirely different weapon tree with entirely different weapons, and probably won't either. The Drengin's weapon tree is pretty different than the Terran's from what I can see, yet similar at the same time. I suspect that will be the case for most races.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

I'm just disappointed I was led to believe by what the devs posted, the I-MOD trailer of TOTA, and all the previews and reviews about this expansion introducing new race specific weapons and it is obviously not happening.

Obviously, because it couldn't possibly be that they're just not included in beta 1, right?

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All races use the same base tech tree arranged differently, with modifications to flavor text/names here and there, along with new techs thrown in.

(Wanted to expand on this a bit in my post above, but can't edit the post, so I'll post it here...)

They are (and play!) certainly very, very different... but the key point here is to remember that they all derive from the same, basic tech tree. Tech Requirements in the XML files, at least in DA, use an internal name (which is the same for all races who have that tech unless they have a doppleganger-version of the tech, like War Rooms is to Space Militarization), not the display name (which may be different for all races who have that tech). This may have changed (or be changed later) in TA, but that doesn't seem to be the case right now from the limited XML-diving I've done.

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The template saving/ship designing bug is back, and is more frequent with TA. I just played as Drengin (lotsa work to be done here...) and yeah.

Cant wait for the next update, but I think I'm done playing this one.

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Colony Spam is the going to be the bomb with TofTheA. Now with 50% military costing only 4 points. The Drengin tech tree is awesome with all it's pop growth bonuses to fill up your population fast. With the addition of immense galaxies, Colony spam is going to be the most dominant strategy. You can make super fast colony ships using the drives and still build factories to get them built in two turns(if you have Navigation Centers you can have even faster ships! Too bad the game crashes when you try to trade for it).

So far Drengin is on top by a mile. Of course, the Terran Alliance should come into it's own when there's more races to play against and more planets to trade techs for.

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Heh, as much as I hate the terrans being crippled regarding Stellar Cartography...

It's simply not that big of a deal. I wouldnt use the term 'crippled". 1) If youre not "into" diplomacy for some reason, you're not playing as the Terrans, and 2) Stellar Cart isnt *that* big of a deal. It's not like it tells you were the habitable worlds are...just gives you a general clue as to where they "might" be. One way or another, you have to go out exploring, and you'll encounter another race about the same time you'd be able to tech up to it in DA.

As near as I can tell so far, the Drengin infrastructure "sucks"( their "factories" are really weak compared to the other races), they have anemic influence, couldnt trade for a bag of peanuts diplomatically...but they have a truly scary range of martial technology. Are they "crippled" because they're designed to conquest to improve themselves? Racial differentiation is the whole point of TA.

If one has a diplomacy/tech trading hangup, one probably shouldn't play the "super-diplomat" race.

A: Read my whole post (which was pretty much a compliment to the clever Terran crippling that nicely explains GC1) before you comment next time.

A-sub-1: I did mention I rarely played Terrans anyway, because I go for tech trading off most of the time. READ, then post.

B: Not everybody plays on worlds where most stars have planets. When I do a highly-random game, there are sometimes as few as 25% of stars having any planets whatsoever, but those planets are highly likely to be habitable (high star count, low planet count, high habitables count). In those games, stellar cart is indeed a huge deal.

C: Tech trading is off because I like the challenge of knowing I cannot get a tech if I don't devote research to it. Not sure where you decided I had a hangup.

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A: Read my whole post (which was pretty much a compliment to the clever Terran crippling that nicely explains GC1) before you comment next time.

I did read your whole post, but you led off with a comment that is wildly exagerrated and does no one any good. It needed to be corrected. The terrans are in no way crippled because of this one minor drawback. I dont think that word means what you think it means.

Choose you words more carefully before you comment next time, sir.

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