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CommissarMega posted:I think the changes to siege battles were for the better, personally. In AoW3, you might need to raise entirely new armies to siege a city, which either slows down your expansion if you're doing well or makes for a major and unnecessary hindrance if you're losing. You could try to get the best of both worlds by making armies that could do well in both field and siege battles, but that'd lock you into a playstyle that might not fit your faction's strengths or personal tastes. Sure the sieges are easier here, but it's a lot more user-friendly, and I think that's what counts. In terms of what I had already played, the end of the current map and a few turns into the next map, after which I was going to hold another vote. Considering the impact of the patch notes, especially to xenoplague, I'm thinking that I'll restart that map with the new patch active. In terms of total playtime, I have really only done a run-through of the campaign and a couple random maps. I'll try to get a couple games in in the background to digest the changes, but there may be an above average amount of fumbling around the next map due to the economy changes. It is a rather odd experience to be looking at patch notes that I largely feel are good for a game I like, and feeling frustrated that things I was planning on complaining about later in the LP have been fixed. Risks of LPing a game that isn't dead, I suppose.
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Feb 18, 2020 23:52
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| # ? May 7, 2024 11:12 |
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Update just dropped and the game has been hugely overhauled. Uhhh good luck writing the next update I guess!
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Feb 19, 2020 04:58
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mr_stibbons posted:It is a rather odd experience to be looking at patch notes that I largely feel are good for a game I like, and feeling frustrated that things I was planning on complaining about later in the LP have been fixed. Risks of LPing a game that isn't dead, I suppose. Don't let the patch hold you back, I love reading about funny and/or annoying bugs, even if only from a historical perspective 
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Feb 19, 2020 13:18
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 Time for the wrap-up. With no hostile factions left on the map, the only thing to do is complete the final quest, firstly be unleashing an earth crusher on the cloudbreaker mountains.  The way to the vault is clear. Follow me, and prepare for the worst. This place was clearly not meant to be uncovered and could contain additional measures for repelling intruders. Director Korvin Zhelezo! We’ve spotted Assembly nearby. We should be on alert in case they try to ambush us.Cracking the earth spawns a site, guarded by the last remnants of the redeemers. Though there’s no reason to immediately take them out, and I have my heroes do a quick sweep of any nearby marauder units, in search of better loot and exp that can carry over.  Doing this also lets us complete a few extra techs, though they aren’t going to be of much use. Advanced Launchers is the next explosives tech, adding a mod that improves the range and accuracy of explosive attacks.  We also get a tech that completely does not exist next mission. As part of the economy rework of the patch next week, eight techs were cut from the economy tech tree, all providing the ability to build city upgrades that upgrades sectors with a specific terrain type or climate. Now, these economic bonuses are partially available immediately, which will make proper city placement much more important early game, but slightly reduces the output of maximized cites. I may, at some point do an update on all the techs that were cut from the game, as some of flavour text on the cut techs was pretty interesting.  Anyway, after doing a reasonable amount of grinding, its time to clear out the final fight of this map. And yes, this is what’s left of the cloudbreaker mountains. That’s not even a special campaign ability, just one of the things an earth crusher can do. If you need to make certain areas of land completely valueless for some reason, one earth crusher will do the job. You don’t generally find goodies doing it though.  This final fight is probably not tough if you took the time to take out Mephilas, though if you’re trying to rush the mission it could be a little tough, as there are some high end assembly units here. But you still have a three to two advantage, and even moderately advanced troops with some mods can handle this easily, especially with the free earth crushers  Anyway, in one of those funny ironies, the day after I made a post complaining about how badly designed the earth crusher was, a giant patch dropped which fixed all my complaints. Considering how difficult it will be to get another one, we might as well discuss it now. The cannons got their absurd range cut down to five hexes, and the tractor beam became a single action, giving the crusher something to do on the turns it has to charge up the field  The grinders got made into a proper melee attack, letting them be used on large targets, and had the damage increased by 40%, making them much more of a proper attack if the instant kill check fails or can’t be used. The damage aura effect also moved to a more practical end of turn effect, and gained a chance to immobilize the targeted. The end result is the Crusher is no longer a gun platform, and now a melee bruiser with some secondary guns that it can use once it’s stuck in. Arguably, this is nerf, but it makes the crusher work the way it feels like it should work. The Vault’s guardians lie defeated, and the Redeemer’s assault along with it. Now none can question our claims to the treasures within. Today, the Zhelezo Dvar make their name! The hammer has fallen. We received the transmission this morning: the Zhelezo Consoritum and all of it’s associates have been exiled, any contact with them forbidden by the Admant Council. This is an outrage! Other Consortia have been forgiven for worse transgressions. No... it is clear that the Council fears our return. They fear their corruption getting exposed, and I am willing to bet by last filter that these “Redeemers” will lead me to it.Thus ends the first Dvar mission, as well as my playtime on V1.1 content. Since this wouldn’t be much of an update by itself, we are going to continue the adventures of the Zhelezo consortium, now under new management.  After singlehandedly getting the entire consortium exiled, Korvin has stepped down as director, and Inessa is now taking control, free to make her own terrible space dwarf decisions.  The past few months have taken a toll on us all. Exiled by the council, the Zhelezo Dvar needed new impulses, and I was asked to take over as Director of our Consortium. I will not rest until the true motives of the Admant Council are uncovered and the Zhelezo name is restored. To this end I have followed the Redeemers to a planet called Zemestrian-4 Zemestrian-4 lies below us. The world is as beautiful as the old records claim.. and every bit as unstable. Since the Redeemers fled to this world, we can only presume they want to consult with their masters. We will track them down. We must find the root of this corruption and clear the name of the Zhelezo Dvar at any cost. We should give chase before the trail grows cold. If we are to find their contacts we must track them. First things first. Let’s establish a new base of operations to explore our surroundings. We should send out search parties to recover our allies. Their forces will bolster our position on this hostile world Our starting position isn’t as easy as the one from Chimera Glacias -we don’t have a nearby landmark, which is somewhat unusual, though we do have some cosmite within a few sectors. All of our nearby sectors are fungal forests, which are great for food production, and OK for production and research.  To compensate, I build a central production factory and send out prospectors as useful, then roll onto the second turn. Energy income is probably going to be a problem, but I find starting with a reactor core is too slow, even for Dvar. This world has the mildest climate I’ve ever seen. It is beautify in its way... If only we could experience this bountiful life with our own senses as others do...Director, our science divisions are settled in and ready to be set to work.Good... I sense that this may be the time; my research into the alpha strain may bear fruit on a world such as this. I should direct our scientists efforts towards it.This dialog gives us an objective to research the first technology of our secret tech tree, Alpha Strain Inception, which we do, along with Frontier Facilities for colonizers.  Director Inessa! We have encountered a sector almost overflowing with cosmite.Exploring towards the cosmite sector to the southwest, we are introduced to the primary gimmick of this map. Thankfully, it isn’t as soul crushing as some of the later missions gimmicks. There are a series of sectors exactly like this one across the map, with two cosmite nodes that are otherwise terrible sectors. Firstly, volcanic climate starts as an active detriment, but with research can be reduced to only strictly worse than any other sector. Secondly, there is a hazard in the sector, which is a significant problem not only for any city trying to use the sector but also for any troops in it. We’ll need more research, and a non-negligible investment to deal with that.  Advancing with our main army, we encounter another new feature from 1.2- the defenders will occasionally try to surrender if they feel they are very outmatched. Being merciful improves your reputation, but denies you experience for your troops. Since I need experience much more than I need goodwill right now, these guys are going to die. Though if they’re willing to just run away I can probably leave this to the auto combat...  Or not. Well, now is time to engage a feature that is either an immensely frustration relieving feature or something which fundamentally breaks the game. It’s time to use the manual override of the auto combat.  Much better. Auto combat is something of a necessary evil in these kinds of games. If the player has to fight every battle manually, late game is a monotonous slog. But if the auto combat is too effective, the player has no reason to even engage in the manual combat, which is a significant part of the gameplay loop. In theory, one could immediately auto-combat every fight, then redo whatever battles are not decided in an acceptable battle. Whether this is enough tactical combat to be interesting is a bit of an open question. I find it interesting enough to manual most fights anyway.  Which means you will need a test subject. I would volunteer but it sounds like this sort of experiment requires a younger subject.Indeed, I am compelled to volunteer myself, but as Director I cannot take such a risk. It seems we have no choice but find a volunteer within our own people.By turn four a new sector is established for research and we completed our quest tech. Lets take a look at it.  So, I’ve been dancing around it for half an update, but Inessa’s secret tech is the Xenoplague. This is obviously based off of various impossible science fiction plagues like the flood from halo, or the necrophage from Dead Space. Somewhat disappointingly, there isn’t a mechanic for letting plague get out of control and having your pet abominations turn against you, making the average planetfall xenoplague faction significantly more competent than their counterparts in other science fiction works. Alpha strain inception by itself doesn’t do much. The xenoplague parasite mod provides a modest bonus to resistance to status effects, immunity to bad morale and mind control, as well as an above average health boost than other tech 1 mods. All useful, but nothing gamechanging. The operation is more interesting with the changes in 1.2, as it is the most basic way start the xenoplague snowball, and spawn free units after battle. Sadly, there’s nothing in easy reach to test this new plague on, and on the next turn we get a strange transmission  Assembly? You seem amenable enough... Yes, we wish to see to the end of the Redeemers and their masters. What is it you propose. I serve the interests of CORE. I was chosen to create a proton coil weapon to defeat its greatest nemesis. I have come to this Abyss infected world to create and test the device. Your redeemers and their masters happen to be my lab rats. Help me finish my work, and I’ll help you dispatch the vermin And with that, I’m ending the update and opening up a vote. [] Sign up with Claudius Proton, and the pre-collapse AI CORE [] Handle this ourselves.
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Feb 24, 2020 02:22
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Join the AI, what could go wrong?
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Feb 24, 2020 03:08
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Machines can't be turned by the Xenoplague, so decline and destroy core like the rest of the machines
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Feb 24, 2020 05:19
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Decline. This guy's a creeper and trusting him to not turn the weapon on us afterwards doesn't strike me as the smartest option. Sticking you with Xenoplague is such a weird decision. There's barely any overlap in either direction- Xenoplague units use melee and bio weapons so they can't use any weapon lines and barely any Dvar mods, and their own mods are bio exclusive which means they can only be applied to Trenchers, Foremen, and the heroes. Skillwise, they're mostly good for melee and bio troops, and Inessa's set up as a sniper by default. I think it might be the single worst combination in the game, certainly the weakest in the campaign IMO.
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Feb 24, 2020 05:44
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Accept. I'm sorta playing along and definitely declined the sketchy cyborg. Time to see what could have been. Yea, there's not a lot of synergy. But if you treat it like a tutorial for xenoplague instead of dvar mission two it works out pretty smoothly. Xenoplague is pretty self-sufficient and the map seems pretty specifically chock full of organics to convert into snotbeasts. Blitzing the plague lord tech and the techs that up your operation count made it almost too easy.
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Feb 24, 2020 06:36
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The Dvar are not slaves!
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Feb 24, 2020 07:45
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Accept. Let's make some bad decisions.
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Feb 24, 2020 10:01
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As the votes are still tied, I will be flipping a coin in eight hours.
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Feb 25, 2020 14:23
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Decline
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Feb 25, 2020 14:28
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Accept, what harm can shady robots do?
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Feb 25, 2020 16:59
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Let's go along with the shady robot, what's the worst that could happen?
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Feb 25, 2020 17:05
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Accept. It's obviously a bad decision, and therefore entertaining.
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Feb 25, 2020 17:30
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SIGSEGV posted:Accept. It's obviously a bad decision, and therefore entertaining. Accept for that reason, and I want to find out more about CORE and what happened with the Star Union!
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Feb 25, 2020 22:01
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The votes have been tallied, and after a tight race, we’re being buddy buddy with the ancient AI I hope you have made the right choice, Inessa. CORE’s return could be bad news for all of us. Still its weapons may help us in battles to come.This gives us a quest to fork over one hundred cosmite to Claudius’ superweapon. Normally this would be a bit of an ask, with the selection of double cosmite node sectors on this map it won’t be that much a problem. In addition, our locally grown mad scientists are also making progress. We have a volunteer.  Baron Dragan Voss, I know who you are. Your clan has been with us since our oldest records, it is good to see that your dedication to the Consortium remains steadfast. Are you certain you wish to take this risk? The Xenoplague is dangerous, it may help us cure our dependency, but it will not be easy. Yes Director, my father fell on Chimera. But my belief in the Zhelezo cause is not shaken, nor is my decision to carry this burden. The Ancestors will watch over me, I am sure. As will you.I am honoured by your trust, Baron Voss. Let us begin then. The inception process should only take 1 cycle to complete. I can only hope this will give us answers in time...What a noble and patriotic soul. I’m sure everything will turn out fine.  Exploring west, we come across the first minor faction on this map, the spacers. These mad max rejects are the most common result of the collapse of the star union, degenerating into brutal warring tribes armed with scavenged weapons.  Not that they aren’t willing to cut deals with some visiting Dvar. Another gimmick to the spacers is they seem to have a hard time telling tales of pre-collapse video games from reality, and a ton of gaming slang gets added into their dialog. I feel like this is overplayed a bit, but it’s a cool concept. Anyway, this quest isn’t that far from our main force, so we’ll handle it quickly  We should ensure your new symbiont is guided along the correct path. And for that you must be brought into the crucible that forges the strongest Dvar: Battle.The next turn, Dragan voss joins us properly, spawning on Inessa’s location. We’ll get to him after today’s scouting reports To the west, Dvar have been found. Sadly, not the friendly kind.  Should have known you’d be the one to come find us... ever the council’s lapdog. Perhaps we should start our purification of the council with you. Try me. You cannot stop us.Zhanna immediately declares war on us when we meet, and considering how close she is to our capitol, she’ll be the first challenge on this map. That will involve turning around, our main army, but we'd probably be running into Claudius' territory if we kept going east. More friendly Dvar are found in the northeast.  Uncle! I’m glad you’ve arrived safely. Even without the full support of the Rassvet Consortium we will make do, your assistance is most welcome and will no doubt prove invaluable. Good, we have brought along a colonizer and plenty of troops. Direct us to where you need us.I’m not the kind of person who calls two trenchers and a bulwark “plenty of troops”, but I also don’t like looking a gift horse in the mouth. Valodny himself is an extra hero, which is always helpful.  This is actually a bit of a trap set by the developers. Valdony and his Rassavet buddies seem to be programmed to spawn near Claudius- you can see his boarders in teal to right of the shot. This means you’re likely to meet Claudius when searching for the Rassavet group. Also, you’re likely to drop the colonizer Valdony gives you close to where you get it, which will provoke Claudius if you haven’t sided with him. Since I have sided with him, I can probably get away with a bit of border friction, and scoop up that double cosmite node sector.  We pick up research development 1, which lets us upgrade research sectors and specialize them for military or society research. With the changes to the economy in the 1.2 update, this choice is much more immediately important, as you will often be sitting on a t3-t4 sector immediately, and can access the more powerful specialization bonuses. Like all sectors in this version of the game, one specialization provides a generic bonus to the output of the sector’s specialty and a development level above 3, and the other provides a bonus to all military units produced in the city. In this case, the military research institute will cause produced units to start with additional levels of veterancy.  I also have a colonizer made by our starting city, though finding a pirate camp and a hostile faction right outside makes me nervous. This colonizer will have to be settled a bit blindly before it gets picked off.  Anyway, lets deal with that quest. We’re here to kill another group of spacers, and it’s a good time to field test our mad science experiments.  Voss is an unmodable Baron unit with a unique mod that grants him extra HP when he takes hits. Our quest is for him to take damage in battle without dying. This is harder then it looks, as the AI refuses to co-operate with my plans, and attacks much less heavily armored units. However, if we get him damaged without dying in battle, we'll complete a quest, potentially granting him new mods.  Our new abominations move up and take a defensive position behind some boxes. Unfortunately, the barbarian helicopter lobs a rocket at them, leaving them exposed. For all I might whinge about the AI, on the tactical map it’s quite sharp.  Pustules are the first stage of the xenoplague virus, and are an archetypal fast melee unit-40 move speed, no stagger resistance and a repeating melee attack. They also have a short ranged jump attack to hit stuff a little out of their reach. The primary distinguishing factor on the battlefield is that they’re absolutely a pain in the rear end to hit. Small target gives them a 10% reduction to be hit at all times, and skitter grants them an additional 5% reduction to hit chances for every hex they moved on the previous turn, and they also can never be flanked. This means that pustules in defensive stance have a natural -60% chance to hit them, and this is after nerfs. Now the more interesting note about pustules is that you cannot build them. Rather, various xenoplague effects, like pustule melee attacks, can inflict the “parasitic infection” status effect on biological and cyborg units. This will slightly reduce the morale and damage resistance of the unit but when enough units with that status effect die in combat, new pustules will spawn after the battle. The actual formula behind this process is a bit arcane, but the general gist is that dead units contribute “biomass points” to a global pool. The larger this pool, the greater the chance of spawning a unit, but every unit spawned empties the pool. This means that if you don’t get a unit from one fight, the next one will have a very high chance of spawning a unit. If anyone knows the actual formulas, please post them in the thread.  Because pustules themselves spread parasitic infection, it’s important to keep your first few pustules safe, as you don’t have many alternatives to inflicting the status effect. Especially keep an eye on enemy melee units, which can ignore their ridiculous evasion. (I do not claim to be good at this game)  Now without pustules you have a few other options on inflicting infections. The primary one is your hero. Xenoplague heroes can pick up the parasitic spray skill, which can stun and infect targets.  The rest of our army falls on the spacers from the flank, and manage to cut them down without much effort. Sadly, the spacers seem unwilling to shoot at voss, and we don't complete the quest here.  Now, the loss of that free pustule unit is going to be a problem, and despite two units dying while infected, we don't get a new one. One option I could take would be to purchase a melee weapon, for them that inflicts the status effect, though that will require some upfront cosmite. I don’t want to do this, as it isn’t very good compared to the accumulated loot from chimera glacialis, but in a random map it can be useful.  The last option for early game infection is the parasitic strike operation, which will hit up to three targets with a bit of biochemical damage and can inflict the status effect. Since you have to pay energy every time you use this, its not an option you want to use freely, but if you’re lacking in other ways to inflict parasitic infections, it will do it’s job.  Now, there are several ways to get Voss damaged without the enemy having a say. For instance, having mega beetles explode on him on purpose. Still no pustules though. After completing the quest for the spacers, a prospector heads through the telelporter.  It looks like we have a new neighbour right on the other side.  And so more destroyers have come, just as Latisiak warned us you would. You will not defile Xa’Kir’Ko! This planet is our destined home and we will defend it with our lives. We have not come to destroy this world. But we have come to destroy something... We are following a trail of corruption, and has lead us here. I doubt you have anything to do with it, Kir’ko. Do not stand in our way.Yet corruption you bring. We watch with interest. Xa’Kir’Ko is the destiny of all Kir’ko. Treat her well during your stay, or else...Well, that’s at least an improvement to an immediate declaration of war. Our western prospector heads out to sea to stay away from Zhanna and the marauders, and picks up a piece of navigation data off the edge of a new landmass which seems important.  It’s value is not our concern at this time. The continued existence of the Consortia is in question and that “Communion” site may provide us the answer. We must capture it and find out who communes there.Agreed, but we should tread carefully. We say the power of these “Psynumbra’ ourselves on Chimera Glacialis. If this is there sacred sanctum, it will not be conquered easily. This site isn’t that far inland, but it appears another faction is already near it.  You must be Mephilas’ contact. Did he come running to you with his tail between his legs? Mephilas returned to us. He is receiving his just rewards... I have no doubt you will be reunited soon. You are on our world now, and we outnumber you.Outnumbered but not outclassed. Each Zhelezo Dvar is twice the warrior you and your ilk are. You meddled with our affairs. We will repay you in kind. It will be our pleasure to defeat you. Unsurprisingly, Kelshana declares war on us immediately. That appears to be everyone. Two enemy factions with plot grudges against us, and a neutral faction with a distinctly unfriendly disposition. Our best bet is to rush the nearby Zhanna as soon as possible, since she is close by, on the same landmass, and the same race, which will make her cities easy to make use of.  As I mentioned, we will need to cross the water to complete this map, so we need to pick up the doing stuff with water technology. This will let us embark units, and also annex water sectors with cities. It’s cheap enough that it will never be a problem to pick up if you plan for it, but if you haven’t planned for using water you could end up in an embarrassing mess.  We’ll also pick up another xenoplague tech, Dispersion. This is a key early tech, as it gives us a pair of mods which can let basically any unit inflict parasitic infection. Plague pods, the subject of the lore quote which will sound really dated in a few years, can give any non-animal unit a plague grenade. The other mod actually was added to the game in a patch, makes a melee unit inflict parasitic infections and increases the stagger level with it’s melee attack. This is one of the earliest ways to access massive impact attacks, and makes it much easier for non stagger resistant pustules to handle heavy melee units which would otherwise toss them around. That done, we have to handle the next step of Voss' quest. A new vitality courses through my veins, I feel it. The pain of wounding was dulled somehow, lessened, yet after each blow I felt myself grow stronger... I can feel it pulling at me already; it needs more biomatter to evolve. While this update was pretty short in game time, I feel it’s long enough to ask for another vote. This is a multi part quest, and I will probably be finishing the next steps very quickly, so we’re going to have three options [] Stop now [] Keep going, but stop if Voss is in danger [] Don’t stop, whatever the consequences. mr_stibbons fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Mar 9, 2020 |
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Mar 1, 2020 19:17
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There's no way this can possibly go wrong. Don’t stop, whatever the consequences.
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Mar 1, 2020 20:04
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Maximum mutation. There's no point to stopping now, or ever.
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Mar 1, 2020 20:48
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Since we're siding with the obviously dangerous super-AI, might as well embrace our MAD SCIENCE! and go all the way.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:00
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One of my favorite builds with xenoplague dvar is to build a hero for melee, give them xenografted muscle mod, and the rocket hammer that all dvar get access to. The hammer isn't a repeating weapon, it does all its damage in one giant hit, and that means its odds of inflicting any status effects (like parasitic infection!) are huge. Once they hit level 3, Dvar heroes get access to the Stubborn ability which gives them stagger immunity, so you have one of the most powerful early game melee heroes possible, dealing big damage, massive stagger, and a practically guaranteed parasitic infection at full running distance. Also of course we're riding the bad decisions train all the way to the station and taking Voss to the bitter end.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:31
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Alumnus Post posted:There's no way this can possibly go wrong. Don’t stop, whatever the consequences. As if there was ever any other option.
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Mar 2, 2020 00:03
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Guys, maybe actively spreading a mutating semi-sapient virus by using it to kill our enemies and giving it access to our DNA profile is a bad idea? Stop Now
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Mar 2, 2020 05:22
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No one stops!
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Mar 2, 2020 05:55
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Never Stop
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Mar 2, 2020 21:12
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Don’t stop, whatever the consequences. Because as we all know, nothing could possibly go wrong!
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Mar 2, 2020 23:50
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Don't stop. Dig greedily. Dig deep.
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Mar 3, 2020 00:10
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[X] Keep going, but stop if Voss is in danger
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Mar 4, 2020 05:35
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mr_stibbons posted:If anyone knows the actual formulas, please post them in the thread. Killing an infected unit gives you a number of points based on its tier (i.e. a tier 1 unit gives 1 point, tier 2 = 2 points, etc). If you reach 10 points, then you are guaranteed a pustule. If you have over 5 points, then there's a random chance of getting a pustule, that scales with how close you are to 10 points. So 6 points = 60% chance, 8 points = 80% chance, and so on. If you have over 10 points, then it's possible to get multiple spawns. So, 17 points would be 1 guaranteed spawn and an 70% chance of another spawn. If you have points unspent (because you had less than 5, or you failed the roll to spawn) those points carry to the next battle. I guess this is a spoiler, since you haven't talked about this tech yet: If you have the right tech, and a pustule present in combat, then that pustule might evolve into a destroyer, instead of a new pustule spawning. The system favours evolution over spawning, I believe the chance of a unit evolving is twice that of a new unit spawning. Also, you can target ground with Foreman grenades by holding ALT 
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Mar 4, 2020 08:58
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Just so everyone knows, Gerblyn's one of the devs (or pretty close to them, I can't remember), so you can trust their calculations.
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Mar 4, 2020 11:09
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CommissarMega posted:Just so everyone knows, Gerblyn's one of the devs (or pretty close to them, I can't remember), so you can trust their calculations. I am! I'll probably only post if someone directly asks me somethign though.This is Mr Stibbons thread, and I don't want to get in the way of that!
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Mar 4, 2020 12:25
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Thanks Gerblyn! The information is appreciated and helps me feel a bit better about trying Xenoplague again
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Mar 4, 2020 23:11
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Gerblyn posted:Killing an infected unit gives you a number of points based on its tier (i.e. a tier 1 unit gives 1 point, tier 2 = 2 points, etc). If you reach 10 points, then you are guaranteed a pustule. Thanks for the insight Gerblyn. I hope I'm not making your game look bad. And thank you very, very much for the tip about foremen.
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Mar 5, 2020 05:33
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 As you command, DirectorWelcome back. The thread has decided that we clearly need to double down on our dangerous xenoplague experiments, despite Inessa’s doubts.  We also finally get our first pustule spawn as Valdony clears the area around our new settlement  Our primary army is has turned around and headed west, to deal with the adamant council forces and marauding animals and bandits. On the way, they’re showing the wildlife no mercy. I need that precious infectable biomass.  At the start of the next turn, a hero offers to join, a melee specialist named Antav. We pay his fee and swap his starting blades with a xenoplague version.  The spacers have some further requests of us, asking for Dvar construction expertise. With the amount of production we have, this will take barely a turn. We also meet the best minor faction. Anyone with other opinions is wrong. Fight me.   This planet. Spherical. This plane. Foreign. Tastes of danger, smells of unfamiliarity. Task... physical. Acceptance? The glowing purple floating jellyfish are the best. Not from a strict mechanical perspective, but because they’re cool and adorable and pretty and I love them. It would not be incorrect to call the Psi-Fish extra-dimensional brain eating tentacled eldritch horrors. But that doesn't make them evil. They’re just, well, a little confused about how reality works, and that can lead to some misunderstandings that lead to peoples brains being eaten. Everyone makes mistakes, y’know.  Economically, were breaking out the Dvar unique building. Though it’s defensive effect is pretty minor, it lets Dvar empires exploit volcanic sectors, while other factions have to research a technology much, much higher on the tech tree, which means that like with mountain sectors, the Dvar have a greater ability to make use of marginal land then other factions. The presence of this building is probably giving us a significant advantage on this map-it doesn’t appear that there is any cosmite out side of these specific volcanic sectors, which means the AI is either suffering happiness penalties or being starved of cosmite.  The pile of enemy spawners to our west start to get annoying, as wild animals start attacking both our new city and our primary army. Thankfully we have some garrisoned troops keeping an eye on the marauding wildlife, and Voss gets his kill. Such power! I can scarce contain the energy within me, yet I seem as bound as ever to the prison of my suit... The strain feels like it grows within me... I do now know if I can control it much longer... As the vote was Not Stopping, no matter what, Voss will have to hold on a bit longer. We cannot stop now, we are so close.. the strain must feed more, that might stabilize it from taking him over entirely. Yes director... I must endure for my kin... I...I can control it... I must....The Strain guides my senses... Sense... Prey... Must grow... Feed.The alpha strain grows in strength with proximity to more of its kind. We must let the Voss’ strain spread itself, when that is done I think I might finally be able to get a sample potent enough to guide our cure...This is such a bad idea. I hope you all are happy. Our final quest on this chain is to spawn six new xenoplague units.  Completing the spacer production quest doesn’t take any time, giving us some free troops and enough cred with the spacers to start buying stuff from them.  However, there are consequences to making friends with the barbarians. When you help one NPC faction, the others will get mad at you. Your standard quest gives you 10 approval with the faction who gave it to you, but all but the first quest per faction loses you 5 approval with every other faction. You also gain approval when you buy items from the factions. This means you can keep gaining approval with two factions just through quests, abet slowly. To appease more factions you’ll need to devote research and doctrine slots to additional influence and approval gain.  This triggers a new mechanic which was disabled for the tutorial map, completion of an empire task. These are three sets of quests which, when completed, grants us a generic doctrine, and a small resource bonus if you’re the first player to complete them. Being the first player to complete two quests for a minor faction gives us a doctrine that doubles influence income from quests and a small amount of influence. I’ll be honest, I think I probably missed a few of these. They generally aren’t very impactful, as the generic doctrines aren’t as good as a researchable doctrine available around the same time.  We also pick up the tech with the best flavour text. Just really drive in how much of a late stage capitalist hellhole the old star union was. This lets us clear hazards, increases the food income from sectors with rivers, and give you the second tier happiness building. Happiness isn’t terribly valuable in the current patch, so this tech really only matters if you need to clear some hazards.  For instance, if you need to take two cosmite nodes without eating penalties, which I can now do. Or could, if I had the money. The lack of good energy terrain on this map is becoming annoying.  Our primary army has split up to clear out the enemy spawners, and by selling the loot from these pirates we should have enough cash to clear the void storm. It’s also a good chance to talk about some new units.  Xenoplague destroyers are the second stage of the xenoplague virus. Like pustules they are not produced, rather once the destroyer mutation technology has been researched instead of spawning a new pustule the xenoplague RNG engine can evolve a pustule that was present in the battle to one of these. I don’t actually have that technology, this was a reward for advancing Voss’ quest. Compared to the basic pustule, these trade the small target evasion for more health, armour, and a heal when they kill something in melee, and trade their jump attack for more damage and a range 5 single action acid spit which melts a point of armour on hit. They keep the high speed, skitter evasion, and amphibious nature of the pustule. They’re a well rounded unit, and with the ability to shoot flying units unlike pustules, they can easily be the core of xenoplague army. While these are no longer in the embarrassing spot of being a downgrade to the pustule they evolved from, they aren’t quite as good as the pustule they evolved from and the pustule you could have spawned from the accumulated biomass. Its often best to hold off on researching the destroyer tech until you’re running out of space in your expansion forces, or you’ve noticed an opponent spamming air units to cheese your pustules.  Psychos are the basic spacer unit, drugged up berserkers with clubs. They’re a light melee unit with no frills, the only special is a once per battle buff to damage and speed for two turns. When buffed, they outdamage other t1 light melee units, but need the speed buff to keep up. This also means they don’t have the enhanced movement speed on the strategic map that many comparable units have, which is always an annoyance. In addition, without a secondary ranged attack or a jump ability, they suffer in sieges and dense terrain. Now, that’s a pretty critical overview, but psychos can do work if you can mod away their flaws. Plague pods for instance, give them a backup ranged attack, and any way to teleport would be even better. Unfortunately as I’m currently playing xenoplague, I get better light melee units for free.  A more palatable spacer offering is the truck, functioning much like a trencher with a more damaging melee attack, and a self destruct button. Trucks are clearly designed to die, as they will always explode when they die, but also drop an effigy on death, which will randomly buff the damage of a random unit every turn. Like a lot of suicidal units, these tend to be more annoying when on the enemy side, where it’s hard to keep them from exploding on you, but there are a few ways to resurrect these units after blowing themselves up, one of which is within my reach this game, and I’d like to experiment with. These units bug me because the way they work is a bit counter-intuitive. They have machine guns, but this is a single action. While that does make sense if you think about it for a bit, a vehicle like this should be able to move and shoot relatively freely, the second issue makes less sense. Somehow, these units aren’t fast, and get outrun by drugged up psychos. Really doesn't make much sense.  With all these new units, it doesn’t take long to overwhelm the pirate camp  Next turn, while our troops re-converge on Zhanna’s borders, we pick up the first xenoplague doctrine tech. This provides one doctrine, biomatter preparation training which provides an unclear increase in xenoplague unit spawning, and biomatter scavenging which heals units on winning battles. That second doctrine is quite attractive at the moment, since I can’t lean on purification modules to fix my lack of healing, just as soon as I can scrounge up the energy.  Valdony is still cleaning up the north east wilderness, finishing up the first psi-fish quest.  They immediately offer us a second quest, this one creating a pirate spawner just outside our capital.  The pirates will have to wait, and hopefully not cause too much trouble, while we move to crush our fellow Dvar. Crush them very slowly. Dvar do not like slogging through forests. Why did the devs take my forest movement speed tech?  While advancing very slowly, we finally pick up the tech to make barons. Love the icon.  Anyway, lets do this. Zhanna appears to have invested in modded up prospectors, with purification modules, hazmat protections and flash payloads. Using scouts as a primary combat force is one of those things that I am aware is a fairly common strategy, but rubs me the wrong way aesthetically. It does deny me much potential biomass that a comparable force of trenchers, which is annoying.  I have a slight numbers advantage here, and a greater number of high tier units, but much of the enemy force has been heavily modded up I’ve also once again brought a few new units to talk about.  In our assaulting of various wildlife nests, we acquired as a random drop one of the murderous mantis monsters. Its a light melee unit with a short ranged jump attack, as well as an anti air jump attack. Like most of the wildlife, hopperhounds are deliberately a little underpowered, they exist primarily to get killed by the player in early expansion, not to be a competitive option. When you do get control of them they have the upside that if you can shepherd them up to the highest exp rank, they will grow up into a bigger version of themselves.  A step up from the barely functional trucks of the Spacers is the barely function helicopter, which is really a pretty impressive technical accomplishment. VTOL aircraft like this are pretty hard to make This is our first example of what a normal air unit looks like (because even the half sane barbarians aren’t crazy enough to conceive of the ramjet). It’s primary attack is a range 7 repeating attack which is fairly weak, but does more damage against other air units, and with a secondary attack which is some kind of AOE on cooldown. While this isn’t a great unit under objective standards, air units are inherently powerful, especially when spammed, and access to more flying units isn’t a bad significant Have you noticed I’m not a great fan of the Spacers? I’m not a great fan of the Spacers. All of their units are bit generic and under powered. I understand that you can't really have a post-apocalyptic setting without the mad max inspired raiders, but their units could stand out a little more.  On the right flank, Zhanna charges into our lines with her own Spacer trucks and trenchers, starting a messy melee with my xenoplague monsters. One thing that I this fight handily demonstrates is the appearance of the fortified trenches mod. You can see how the lower left enemy trencher unit has a normal trench, but the other enemy trenchers have the much more solid fortified trenchers  In the centre, the enemy trenchers bunch up in the main gate, and are bombarded by air units, while the pustule brigade jumps up to the left battlement, snarling up the enemy bulwark.  One of the main downsides of trucks are that they can’t make opportunity attacks, which makes their explode on death effect much less annoying. This lets my pustules break off to engage the enemy trenchers while the destroyers advance up to the battlements. Meanwhile Inessa breaks off from the centre to kill the enemy truck.  To seal up the centre, we break out a brand new horrifying xenoplague weapon.  The drop spore pod operation spawns one of these on use, damaging and staggering everything around the new pustule. The only attack a bloated pustule can make is to explode on their enemies, and you can’t keep it with you.  With the battlements overrun, the remaining council forces advance into the open for clear firing lines, signing their own death warrants in the process.  Voss, or the xenoplague monster formerly known as Voss, doesn’t get much to do in this battle. His new mod makes all his attacks inflict parasitic infection and grants him resurgence, letting him respawn after battle like heroes. Also, his EMP attack has revived a buff in the big patch, now being a full stun to mechanical or cyborgs hit.  The left flank is the final source of resistance, and unfortunately a heavily damaged spacer truck is taken out before it can retreat outside the range of the enemy battlements. This is the only casualty of the battle on my side, and it will be replaced by two freshly spawned pustules. Another funny anecdote is that prospectors have an ability called eat dust, which blinds any adjacent units via spinning the car in circles. Because units have a limited set of animations, this animation gets re-used when the prospector uses the purification module, and thus prospectors heal units by hitting the nitro and kicking up dust clouds.  Zhanna herself, mounted in a command APC, has been hiding in the back and deploying buffs all battle, leaving her to be ripped apart by a pile of monsters.  And that is that. Without a last word or dramatic escape Zhanna is defeated. Sadly, it doesn’t look like she settled any other cities for us to pick up. Though we do have a new, pre-cleared cosmite sector that we can expand to. After that, it’s time to end the update for today. mr_stibbons fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Mar 9, 2020 |
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Mar 9, 2020 02:35
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Can you please elaborate about how Destroyers were a downgrade from Pustules? I never stuck with my Xenoplague games for too long before the current patch.
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Mar 9, 2020 03:13
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The Spacers are kind of a weird and underpowered faction, yes. I think the intent was to make them a versatile faction that can slot at least one unit into any gap since they cover four of the elemental types by themselves and their mods are element-agnostic, but they end up not really having any particular strengths in the process. The mod that induces hallucinating on hit is pretty good, especially for the Syndicate since one of their basic mods gives extra damage on flanking attacks, but I've never particularly been interested in using anything else of theirs. The Psi-Fish are completely bonkers, conversely. They do have some fairly significant weaknesses that can make them hard to use, but they more than compensate if you go heavy on them. I would take them over a couple of the primary factions if I could.
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Mar 9, 2020 03:29
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Anticheese posted:Can you please elaborate about how Destroyers were a downgrade from Pustules? I never stuck with my Xenoplague games for too long before the current patch. It was basically the loss of evasion. Pre 1.2, the small target ability was a -20% to hit chance instead of -10%, and the destroyers did not have skitter, the effect granting -5% chance to hit per hex moved last turn. So, in exchange for a bit of health armour and damage, destroyers lost an average -50% or more to hit chance. Not at all worth it. Now it's just a loss of -10% chance, and destroyers have even more armour than before, which is much more palatable.
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Mar 9, 2020 05:23
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As a Dvar player who likes his Bulwarks, the Autonom are my minor faction of choice- getting their self-repair mod is just so good, and they get some pretty good laser mods which helps give Dvar an extra damage channel too, though of course this has the most benefit if you're playing the Vanguard or Amazons.
CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Mar 9, 2020 |
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Mar 9, 2020 09:31
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If you can get an Assembly city and have a strong research team, the Assembly self-repair mod is better than the Autonom. My Assembly game ended with me popping out a ton of regen + esteq Bulwarks and surrounding the superweapon bases with them.
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Mar 10, 2020 00:08
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Hahah, dang, I never stuck with the game long enough to meet the psi-fish. Though for me they kinda have that feel where I wish they were more than a minor faction because just three units and some mods ain't enough. I want more weird brain-eating jelly boys.
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Mar 10, 2020 02:07
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