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After seeing the newest video, and that the top of the line Flagship, the Kraken taking a "massive" 30-odd days to research... they're literally just reverse engineering and figuring out how to set up the factories to make the proper parts for these ships, aren't they? If I had to guess, every ship except the Leviathan had multiples of each ship in drydock/mothballed because they were too valuable to use, but too powerful to just scrap, and it's just now that they finally feel comfortable with actually taking the old ships apart to see how they actually worked and how to get the factories set up to actually produce each part. That's literally the only reason why I can figure you would need so many of each different type of research center to actually research bigger pew-pews. Either that, or the crew REALLY want their padded seats in the bar (and for that matter, a bar on warships).
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Apr 24, 2021 17:45
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| # ? May 2, 2024 01:16 |
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Don't underestimate the pioneering-spirit. That virgin soil will be colonized, no matter the distance, or the fire, or the dysentery, or the starvation, or the...you get the idea. Frankly, I'm amazed they've put a gun on that ship. Though the sight of a colonizer bravely charging at a warship was hilarious. Randalor posted:After seeing the newest video, and that the top of the line Flagship, the Kraken taking a "massive" 30-odd days to research... they're literally just reverse engineering and figuring out how to set up the factories to make the proper parts for these ships, aren't they? There is some evidence for that theory, I believe. At least for the early to midgame stuff. The cruiser 1 was also noted to be a low-tech left-over from the old empire, but still needed to be researched before it could be produced, even though Dante was already rolling around in one. The Destroyer 2 is first seen as a prototype before it can be researched, and is described as more of an extensive refit ala the Constitution class from Star Trek between the series and films, rather than a completely new design. (same thing with the cruiser 2 if I remember right) So that project is almost definitely more based around working out the kinks and streamlining the production plans. The flagships...well the Thorin never does return to production but it can't be completely lostech. The empire has no problems with refitting, repairing, maintaining etc. It's just building new ones that never happens. Building the "keel" of a beast that size must be one hell of a project, and it's probably more efficient to work on new smaller flagships instead though they do trend back upwards in size. Personally I think that given the trend, ships the size of the Thorin (but of a more modern design) will be built again at some point in the future, but that's beyond the timespan portrayed by the game. The cutscenes also play with the timeline. I believe I noted earlier in the thread that a cutscene showed some fighters that shouldn't exist in mass production at that point. And I think someone else pointed out that the station Dante goes to for his final promotions also technically doesn't exist at that point. But I don't think it goes for the high end stuff. The Destroyer 3 and Cruiser 3 are very different aesthetically from their predecessors. And while Strategic Sage has been ignoring fighters for the most part, if my memory serves me right, the last 2 fighters are described as having stealth technology. (Whether that's just flavor text or an actual effect in gameplay I really can't tell) And speaking in general, it feels weird to have 'how to set up production' plans for one thing, while simultaneously having plans ready to go for its immediate replacement and the replacement for the replacement etc. Then again, it wouldn't be the craziest thing these people do. As for the timeframe. It's crazy compressed as has been observed a few times. In a similar short timespan the galaxy has gone from empty to half-colonized, with some colonies in the magellanic clouds and even a peekaboo in the Andromeda galaxy for good measure. Population-growth is insane to the point it makes me wonder if the real truth is that plan robo-Jesus went Skynet long ago and everyone is actually an android being spat out by the
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Apr 24, 2021 20:06
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The more I see you play this game, the more I want to see you tackle Haegemonia: Legions of Iron.
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Apr 24, 2021 20:20
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 Dancing With Dargslan in the Pale Starlight (19:58) Well let's catch up the thread with the video we are talking about already. For those who didn't see it yet, we finish expansion and get into the industrial buildup for the final war. Said war will probably start by the end of the next episode, so we're definitely progressing towards the last struggle.
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Apr 24, 2021 21:32
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my dad posted:The more I see you play this game, the more I want to see you tackle Haegemonia: Legions of Iron. I always like good ideas. I've never played Haegemonia, but adding it to the list of possible future projects.
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Apr 25, 2021 04:00
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Randalor posted:After seeing the newest video, and that the top of the line Flagship, the Kraken taking a "massive" 30-odd days to research... they're literally just reverse engineering and figuring out how to set up the factories to make the proper parts for these ships, aren't they? I'm just sort of used to the fact that everything happens absurdly fast at this stage. I also agree with what maninthesuit said, the later techs I don't think really fit with the reverse engineering idea. They're more new, modern designs. maninthesuit posted:the sight of a colonizer bravely charging at a warship was hilarious. It is quite the thing, particularly when you consider that the Empire isn't allowed to put weapons on our colony ships even if we wanted to.
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Apr 26, 2021 04:25
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The "Pro" experience level in the info box tipped me off, but the unarmed destroyer 1 run off by a colony ship was the Excalibur, Dante's very first command. Expect the elite crew are very bitter about it after being the scourge of pirates and Garthogs.
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Apr 26, 2021 17:28
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Galactic Color Tour (22:33) Take a bit of a diversion during this episode to look at the architecture of some of the alien races once we get some satellites in place. Primarily though, this step in the journey is about wrapping up the preparations to fight back, looking at the Kraken and how it makes the Leviathan not look all that super-special after all, and so forth. While we cannot yet take on fortified worlds, we are now ready to start grabbing the low-hanging fruit that is available and begin turning the great galactic war of our age around.
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Apr 29, 2021 18:35
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I'm curious. Since the Dargs strategy seems to be 'maxed out fleets of high-tech units', are you going beat them in the tech curve and actually get an advantage against them at some point, or is fighting them always going to be a matter of cheesing their fleets or simply throwing your maxed out fleets at their maxed out fleets and beating them by out-producing them?
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Apr 30, 2021 01:45
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Good question and one that I meant to talk in about here, I have some ground to cover at the start of the next episode. We can be equal to slightly better than the Dargslan when maxed out. Tech-wise already there; some things are just equal, others we have a slight advantage; obvious one is they move at 35 speed, with Hyperdrive 5 our ships can move at 36. A small difference but it's enough to eventually catch them or be able to run away. Mostly though I view it as 'ok, now we have enough tech to be able to face them straight-up; now we need to wear them down through attrition'. We aren't quite to that part yet of course with cruisers yet to equip and build, but that's where it's headed. There is also the aspect where we can fight somewhat smarter than they do and limit our losses that way as well, but with big fleets going up against each other there's only so much of that and we will take losses.
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Apr 30, 2021 05:00
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Strategic Sage you are *destroying* this game, in the best of ways! I used to have so much difficulty since I turtled a lot (3 space bases 3 and 5 meson guys with a shield could fight off any max Dargslan fleet), but going on the offensive was extremely difficult since I played slow and by then Dargslans had like half the galaxy.
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Apr 30, 2021 15:20
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Considering your rapid gameplay and early expansion through the universe, about how much would you say you knee capped the Dargslan by? I mean, it sounds like they're supposed to have at least 1/4 of the galaxy out of the gate, meanwhile you're sitting on (almost?) half of the galaxy now.
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Apr 30, 2021 20:54
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When I played the game, I rushed the missions a lot, but not as much as Strategic Sage, and the Dargslan had expanded enough that fighting them was a horrible grind that took forever. If you spend too much time in the middle ranks you are 1) completely hosed 2) completely hosed and 3) completely hosed
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Apr 30, 2021 23:09
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Randalor posted:Considering your rapid gameplay and early expansion through the universe, about how much would you say you knee capped the Dargslan by? I mean, it sounds like they're supposed to have at least 1/4 of the galaxy out of the gate, meanwhile you're sitting on (almost?) half of the galaxy now. This is a difficult one to answer. I tried looking at the other existing YouTube series by others, which are normal difficulty and involved reaching Grand Admiral rank much later than I did of course - one in May 3428, another was in a hurry and got there by late February. In both cases they knew less than I did, having scouted only half the galaxy or a little more. If I had to guess though, I would say I'm going to be dealing with roughly half the size of a Dargslan empire that I would have if I'd taken a more relaxed path, researched everything, not overly delayed but just not been in a particularly big hurry, and showed up at Grand Admiral rank around, say, late January or early February as opposed to late November. Carnafex posted:Strategic Sage you are *destroying* this game, in the best of ways! I used to have so much difficulty since I turtled a lot (3 space bases 3 and 5 meson guys with a shield could fight off any max Dargslan fleet), but going on the offensive was extremely difficult since I played slow and by then Dargslans had like half the galaxy. Thanks - this kind of feeds into Randalor's question but that fits with what I would have expected to happen handling it differently. I imagine in that scenario you probably had a longer building time and then also needed to grind through a lot of Dargslan fleets before you could push them back much. lol @ mydad's description - how subtle. But you're not wrong about the grind. I'm *still* going to have somewhat of an endgame grind plowing through everything the Great Green Goblins (or whatevs) have. Take your sweet time and that fun is definitely multiplied.
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May 1, 2021 00:35
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Those multi-head missiles look "fun". I wonder if they still explode if they get popped by defensive fire.
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May 1, 2021 11:20
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maninthesuit posted:Those multi-head missiles look "fun". I wonder if they still explode if they get popped by defensive fire. They most certainly do, and they are actually a great tool to shred your own ships when electronic counter-measures inevitably send some of them your way, and they explode in your formation.
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May 1, 2021 11:35
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Oh, joy. The one thing that's better/worse than pong with nukes. Pong with bigger nukes. But now I'm curious if ECM is a fleet-wide stat, or if it's every ship for themselves.
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May 2, 2021 11:13
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Every ship for themselves. That's another strike against late-game fighters, because they just are what they are. Can't boost their ECM, so they're a good target, and then the explosion damages nearby larger ships, and .... yeah. Might as well paint a bullseye.
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May 2, 2021 11:33
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Strategic Sage posted:Every ship for themselves. That's another strike against late-game fighters, because they just are what they are. Can't boost their ECM, so they're a good target, and then the explosion damages nearby larger ships, and .... yeah. Might as well paint a bullseye. Of course, that cuts both ways. I was wondering if Multihead Missiles were even worth using with the risk ECM has, but if you're able to strategically target enemies with weaker ECM in the middle of formations to increase your hit chance, that actually is kind of neat.
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May 2, 2021 11:35
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The Human Empire Strikes Back (27:41) We get to see the full extent of the Dargslan infestation, and start grabbing the planets they haven't yet put a Space Base up to defend. It's a little worse than I thought, but a lot better than it could be; they did end up with about a quarter of the galaxy at their greatest extent. By the end of this episode we've lowered that some and added a couple of cruisers to our flagship core with more on the way. Dante's last war has begun.
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May 6, 2021 14:14
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Considering how we owned roughly half of the galaxy when the Dargslan started their expansion efforts, I can't help but be reminded of this clip from Blackadder Goes Forth.
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May 6, 2021 14:25
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You know, given that your colonies are more profitable than alien colonies, at the point that one colony was at, wouldn't it have been better to starve it out and rebuild it with a new colony ship, rather than try and drag it back?
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May 12, 2021 03:15
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On a long enough timeline, yes. I don't think it's worth the expense at this point though, we're close enough to the end that I wouldn't see any benefit from that soon enough for it to matter.
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May 12, 2021 17:09
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Cahudri Rising (20:39) I make some tweaks to my buildup approach, working towards getting a second fleet going to accelerate the invasion. As we gradually move towards more fortified Dargslan planets, more and more bombs are needed to deal with their defenses which complicates that effort. The other races continue to come around to our way of thinking, but there is a surprising holdout, and a bit of a preview of how much 'fun' it's going to be to slog through the enemy's core worlds. Also take a closer look at the highly impressive Cahudri cruiser.
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May 13, 2021 15:31
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Do you plan to ever actually have a major fleet battle? If not, it might be neat just to do a non-canon one to show off what the game expected gameplay at this stage to be like.
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May 13, 2021 23:18
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That's a good idea, I'll probably do that closer to the end. In terms of the canon timeline, not if I can help it and I probably can help it, so unlikely. I should mentioned this thread will be going on hiatus for probably a couple weeks, due to the upcoming second expansion for AI War 2.
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May 15, 2021 13:47
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Dargslan Resistance Stiffens (24:29) I learn more about clunkiness in space combat at planets, but it does help in conserving bombs. Just annoys me. Meanwhile, we pound through a few more Dargslan planets including our first of the core worlds, taking our first significant casualties of the war. Victory will not be won cheaply, but it will be won ... eventually.
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May 26, 2021 14:42
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This game looks like it would be a horrible, awful, unfun grind if you didn't know all of these tips and tricks. The endgame dance with the bombs must already be aggravating, I can't imagine how much worse it'd be if you didn't know what to do and were losing ships to the planetary defenses. The ground combat would drive me nuts too, given that if you give two rows of tanks to move forward the second row turns around because the pathfinding doesn't account for the first row moving.
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May 26, 2021 15:50
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I'm shocked that they don't let you select multiple ships and perform same action at once. The bombing runs look so tedious. Thoroughly enjoying the LP.
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May 26, 2021 19:26
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MightySteed posted:I'm shocked that they don't let you select multiple ships and perform same action at once. The bombing runs look so tedious. Oh, they are. Some people don't use missiles at all late-game for exactly that reason. This is why I think the rest of the bombing will be done off-screen, save for the last planet; I figure the final blow should be shown in its entirety. Lando131 posted:The endgame dance with the bombs must already be aggravating, I can't imagine how much worse it'd be if you didn't know what to do and were losing ships to the planetary defenses. The ground combat would drive me nuts too, given that if you give two rows of tanks to move forward the second row turns around because the pathfinding doesn't account for the first row moving. Don't disagree with a word of this either. Fun fact; the most fortified Dargslan planets have 3 Fortresses as of right now. They can go at least as high as 5 if you take longer. So not only do delays earlier in the game allow them more territory, but at a certain point they'll be strong enough to defeat your first wave of invaders, so you either have a second fleet or you go back and rebuild and come back and then they'll rebuilt some of their defenses, and ... yeah. Doing that a couple dozen times would get old real fast. To be fair, the pathfinding was par for the course in 1997. But compared to today's standards .... nope.
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May 26, 2021 19:54
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Why do you keep rocket sleds out of battle with Fortresses? High against against immobile targets seems like what they're made for. Also I've noticed that it seems like the enemy rocket sleds can fire from way further away than you. Do yours just suck compared to the AI's, or is there some trick to making them fire?
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May 26, 2021 22:27
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Gothsheep posted:Why do you keep rocket sleds out of battle with Fortresses? High against against immobile targets seems like what they're made for. Fortresses will target them as soon as they are in range even if tanks are in front, and they're more fragile so more of them will get destroyed than tanks will. They do more damage of course as well, but not enough to make up for that. I haven't noticed any range difference in the Dargslan rockets, they seem similar to me. Could be though, our technology isn't identical to theirs in all respects and they are supposed to have vaunted ground troops. We have nothing like their self-repairing tanks, so ... possible.
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May 27, 2021 00:43
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Slogging Through the Core (21:05) More Dargslan planets fall, complicated by how densely packed some of them are with buildings and the magical ability of Fortresses to fire through any buildings in their way, unlike the rockets. But there are small signs that we are making a denet in the enemy economy. For our part, Dante has now reached the point where it's no longer convenient for him to see to every whim and desire of the populace. To do so would slightly delay final victory, which of course cannot be countenanced.
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Jun 3, 2021 14:14
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I wonder how ahead of the game time curve you are, really.
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Jun 4, 2021 03:06
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Two months is my best guess.
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Jun 6, 2021 17:20
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Closing In (27:08) More conquering, including our first three-fortress planet which demonstrates that our greatest enemy is not the Dargslan; it is the tank pathfinding, which has begun to get on my last nerve at this stage. We also discover a minor but important use for our second fleet. Next week's episode will conclude this LP; it'll be longer than usual but I've decided to put it all in one. After doing an anti-climactic bit of showing a battle with the Dargslan fleet, we will see the assault on the final and toughest Dargslan stronghold in it's entirety, and how the game wraps itself up. Both of those should be ... really something.
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Jun 10, 2021 14:15
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The ground combat in this game seems like it's deliberately designed to inflict harm on the player.
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Jun 10, 2021 15:05
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I will say that's one area that is much better in the sequel; urban warfare is not nearly as punishing. As an experiment, I tried just selecting all my tanks once and sent them after a fortress 'enclosed' in such a way. It went horribly.
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Jun 10, 2021 15:22
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Conclusion (48:39) The Dargslan flex a bit here, but they can't hold us off for long. Also showed a bit of the fleet combat, such as it is. I recommend turning volume up for the final cutscene - I increased it quite a bit from the game playing it but it's still quite faint. Useful timestamps for the uncut final battle: 0:00 - Intro + Fleet Combat Alternate Timeline 6:04 - Primary timeline resumes with attack on Outer 10 7:09 - Bombardment 14:35 - Landing Tanks for Ground Attack 19:48 - Regrouping & Rebuilding 21:07 - Landing for Second Attempt 24:04 - Stupidly long period of reorganizing for Fortess Assault 35:20 - Attack orders given 39:30 - Actually getting close enough to start attacking 43:00 - Final victory, followed by Imperium Galactica's conclusion Thanks to everyone who stuck with the series. Dante had quite a few months there, and his future is ambiguous but this tale has come to it's end. Distant Worlds begins in a couple of days.
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Jun 17, 2021 14:15
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To be fair with all your criticism of how the Empire was handled before Dante takes the reigns that might not be such a crazy thing for historians to assume. Okay, the higher power bit might be a bit crazy, but assuming that an AI was put in charge? When you look at what actually happened the Empire was run into the ground by complacent fools, was making no progress in a war with the Garthogs... and then all of a sudden became brutally efficient, cutting every corner possible and miraculously devising how to squeeze every last penny of tax from the populace without causing riots, researched exactly enough to win the war against an extragalactic threat and then gutted the research infrastructure in order to build fleets. Found ways to completely eschew normal space combat and trivialize orbital defenses to the tune of never losing a single ship in who knows how many ground invasions, and effectively went from a mediocre power to one that utterly dominates the Galaxy. And what goes unspoken is that Dante, after achieving all of this, probably does not go 'Ok, thanks for all the power, I'm now Emperor of Everything forever,' because if he had historians wouldn't need to guess anything; the history would be 'And then God-King Dante appeared and saved us from ourselves.' I like to think that he steps down from power and immediately after the Empire goes back to it's old, inefficient ways. Which isn't all bad; a hyper efficient war economy isn't strictly necessary after the war's been won. But imagine how it'd look to historians if this was true. A long descent from a great empire into stagnation and decay, unable to end a war with another modest power, to in a matter of five months ballooning out to expand across the entire galaxy and defeating the greatest threat Humanity has ever known... only to immediately go back to business as usual. Imagine if this time next year the British Empire once again was as powerful as it was in it's heyday after successfully fighting off an alien invasion almost singlehandedly. You're darn right historians looking back on it would be getting whiplash and pulling at straws as to how THAT happened. Which I think is actually pretty fun, considering Dante appearing and fixing everything is actually what happens in universe, even if it would normally take a player a lot longer and with more muddling about to win. I have to say though that is one of the most lowkey victories I've ever seen in a game, especially one that sets the stakes so high. For all the hype the game itself gives about control of the galaxy being in your grasp it's strange it doesn't tell you what happens to Dante.
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Jun 17, 2021 15:26
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