AI War: Fleet Command

Edleake said:
DLC and expansions will be good, perhaps even a players-versus-players system? I appreciate the premise of the game, AI being central but as an option I think this game would work well in 2v2 and 3v3 format.
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PVP is definitely under consideration, although it partly just depends on player support for this. It will be a pretty different sort of game in that context, and pvp is not something that I play myself much these days, but with such a huge game engine here it only makes sense to at least try to add pvp at some point down the line in an expansion.
 
It might be coming to Steam, but it's hard to say at this stage. They're waiting for our 2.0 release in a few months to make a final decision, I think. It's really a challenge to get indie games on that particular service...
 
So the goal is to have this be one of the largest, if not the largest, RTS around within a few years of that.
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I love this aspiration. If the game keeps improving that will certainly keep me interested. I'm still working through the campaign but it's starting to click. I've said that i'm impressed with x4000, I think he must have clones because as well as this forum I know he is as active in at least 3 others as well as his own forum and on top of that he has a big update planned

In beta - which is available to all (even demo players I believe) http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,898.0.html check out the release notes at the bottom.

Also with the talk of MP I thought i'd post what x4000 wrote in another forum re differences between SP and MP which I found interesting

The only differences in a multiplayer campaign versus one that is solo are:

1. There are more human players, obviously, so they can interact and work together, come to each other's aid, etc. It's important to use the flare key (F), and voice chat or text chat -- voice chat via an external program like Skype or Teamspeak is preferred.

2. You can give ships between players by selecting ships and clicking the little Give button at the bottom of the screen. You can only give ships that the other player has also unlocked, and that would not put them over their ship cap for that type.

3. There are twice as many simultaneous AI waves into your systems as there are human players. So when you play solo, you only have a wave or two at a time. With four players, you have four or eight coming in at any given time.

4. The AI planets have more ships, and get larger reinforcements.

5. The ship caps for human players are around 10 smaller per extra human player beyond the first. So in a 1 player game you can build 170 mark i fighters, in a four player game you can build 140. Your combined forces are much greater, though, of course.

6. Your team succeeds or fails as a group. No one is "out" early. So as long as one player has a home command station surviving, your team can still win. It's the same for the two AIs in all games, actually.

7. If a player hits the resource storage cap for metal or crystal (300k in 1.013, 600k in 1.014 prereleases), then the excess resources flow to allies instead of just being wasted.


So, as you can imagine with those few differences, the length of games is pretty much the same in either case. This game was designed around the concept of co-op from the ground up, so the single player game is just "co-op by yourself," which is also fun but therefore not as different from multiplayer in terms of mechanics as some other RTS games are.

Being able to finish a 7-hour game in one sitting is of course ludicrous for most people -- myself included -- so that's where the multiplayer save comes in. Like playing a game of CivIV in multiplayer, you can play off and on with a group over a period of days, weeks, or even months. At any given point I tend to be in the middle of around 7 different AI War campaigns: one with my wife, one by myself, and then around 5 others that are the various permutations of my alpha tester group of four players. So if someone is missing on a given week, or several someones, then the remaining ones of us just pick up where we left off with another campaign.

Sometimes that means a month or even several months has gone by since one of those side campaigns was last played, but with the Notes feature in the galaxy map we can always remind ourselves of what we were doing and what was going on. It can actually be pretty cool to come back to a cold campaign in a later version of the game, and see how the new DLC and options has impacted the options available and strategy for the older campaign.

Anyway, the length of time a game takes will vary greatly with your playstyle and how big of a map you choose, as well. Smaller maps are faster, but I feel like the strategy is really reduced below 40 planets or so. It's a very different game with 10 planets, for instance. I tend to play only at 80 planets, but those take more like 12-16 hours for me. The difficulty of the AI level you choose will also impact playtime -- if the AI is overmatching you a bit or is right at the tip of what you can handle, then the game will be way longer usually, since there is more back and forth. If you play where you are comfortably challenged, but not challenged to the edge of your skills, then the game will last a more average amount of time. Or if you want to crank the difficulty down and just steamroll the AI and play around with the mechanics, then those go very fast. There's such a wide range of possible difficulties in this game that you can find levels that your mom can play (or your senator), and there are levels that no one has actually beaten yet that I am aware of (a few expert players came close to beating a pair of 10s in past versions of the game, and some players have done okay against 10s when giving themselves a big handicap bonus, but that's it so far).

The new version 1.014, which is still in beta and so has some bugs and kinks at this point, also really speeds up the game because the economy of the players is so much stronger that it lets them do more stuff more quickly. But even that will only likely shave off a few hours from a big game, I think it would reduce a 13 hour game to maybe 10 or 11 hours, but I don't have a lot of data on that in practice yet.

Playing on the Fast & Dangerous combat style instead of the Normal combat style also makes a huge difference in game length. I play only on F&D, as do most other traditional-RTS fans, but the people who are more fans of TBS games, and new players to the game, tend to prefer the slower pace of Normal. F&D is around 30% to 40% faster in terms of total game time on average, I'd say. Somewhere around there.
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I think that will be my biggest issue, finding someone who can play with me at the appropriate times.

That aside I'll give the SP side of things a good running over first.
 
I'm hopping the AI gets smarter, larger.
Stared game with standard settings and so far taken over about 12 planets. With no resistance worth speaking about. Not against a 1000 ship armada any way. AI has only attacked my planets a few times and when they have. It's been 2-6 small ships. Which My teleport armada destroys in seconds. regardless of how many hops away they are.

Other than that pretty good. All though with such a small tech tree will probably make the game and combat repetitive.

Will the AI get harder? or is it better to restart the game on higher settings.
 
AcidHell2 said:
I'm hopping the AI gets smarter, larger.
Stared game with standard settings and so far taken over about 12 planets. With no resistance worth speaking about. Not against a 1000 ship armada any way. AI has only attacked my planets a few times and when they have. It's been 2-6 small ships. Which My teleport armada destroys in seconds. regardless of how many hops away they are.

Other than that pretty good. All though with such a small tech tree will probably make the game and combat repetitive.

Will the AI get harder? or is it better to restart the game on higher settings.
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With standard settings, you would be playing on difficulty 1 which is incredibly, almost laughably easy. It won't get any harder as you go, that's basically just the sandbox mode. I'd restart on somewhere in the 5 to 7 range, and the AI is like a whole different animal (especially on 7). Check out this thread to read about the experiences of some other people with that.

The tech tree is much larger than it seems, actually. You get 5 new bonus ship classes over the course of each game (in addition to the 1 you start with), out of a pool of 25 in general. So it takes around 4-5 games before you'll ever even see them all. Paired with all the AI types, you'll still be finding new stuff after 100 to 120 hours. Replay value is our forte. :)
 
AcidHell2 said:
cool, i will restart.
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Definitely restart!

I started on a 3 and 4lvl game, found it too easy after 4 hours so restarted.

I just did a 6 and 7lvl game, random moderate AI.

After 2 hours I had a few planets, some moderate defences and 3 armada for assault (200-500 ships) and 1 defending ~300 ships.

I pushed outwards destroying everything but not taking the planets, managed to push out a few planets in each direction and then all hell broke loose! Was the AI reacting to my aggression?

The level 7 Assassin sent some very quick crafts straight for my home world, it caught me by surprise as I was already in a battle against a few hundred craft in each sector, slightly stretched. I pulled my defence fleet in to play, jumping to counter these fast ships but he sent another fleet in close chase!

It was literally moments until my force field fell and the home station, nice effect... wondered what had happened at first! :D

Assassin by name, assassin by nature! Bast... :(

I'll start again, this time I won't be allowing an Assassin AI!

I also play 'Fast & Dangerous' combat as it seems more realistic, much faster pace too.
 
AcidHell2 said:
I'm hopping the AI gets smarter, larger.
Stared game with standard settings and so far taken over about 12 planets. With no resistance worth speaking about. Not against a 1000 ship armada any way. AI has only attacked my planets a few times and when they have. It's been 2-6 small ships. Which My teleport armada destroys in seconds. regardless of how many hops away they are.

Other than that pretty good. All though with such a small tech tree will probably make the game and combat repetitive.

Will the AI get harder? or is it better to restart the game on higher settings.
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Make sure you have 'complex' ships selected when you start a new campaign.

You can adjust the AI's attack frequency too, I actually set it to 1/2.
 
Windle said:
So people that have got this, is it worth it?
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I like it and I'm hard to please, it has a certain charm to it that's fore sure.

I'm sure the game will only improve when playing co-op with a friend or another forum member.

Perhaps once a few of us are up to scratch with this we arrange a night or two to play?
 
thedude23 said:
Impulse does'nt seem to updating,I get an error msg saying impulse cannot update :S,could this be why im not able to buy it?
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I had the same problem earlier. Only way I could find to fix that error was a steam reinstall, that let it update fine ¬_¬
 
Edleake said:
Perhaps once a few of us are up to scratch with this we arrange a night or two to play?
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Depend when people play - I tend to play +9pm usually +10pm then I would certainly be game. I'm just starting a test game with a friend to see how it plays in MP.

I'll give some impressions once we have played some rounds.

Regarding whether to buy it - the demo is so good, grab the demo and if you don't then like it you've only wasted the download not your money. if you give it a go past the initial OMG moment I think you're be in for a treat and with the devs enthusiasm for this product this could be a stayer :)
 
OK just played an hour and half of coop play - a little bit hasty as I haven't finished the tutorial campaign - then again my friend was a seasoned player and was really helping. Game setup is very clear and neat. Notes and priorities get shared as well as being able to highlight planets between you. Pace is frantic but at the same time having another player watching your tail and advising really does help.

Big thumbs up here for coop play - just need to find the time slots to play it :)
 
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