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So this should be good news for everybody. I seem to have been the only person that has cared about this game in months (at least on this forum). Thankfully most of the game is currently done last i checked besides some research and some stuff left for the full game. I haven't really used carriers too much or the dodge abilities the smaller ships can more easily do but they seem promising.

I do know some resources are mined with starbases and usually this becomes more important mid-game for warships usually. The more potent ships tend to need more rare resources. Basically it's stuff that de-buffs the enemy or buffs your own dudes. It seems to help a bit.

Sadly a lot of the tech tree was still grayed out in the trade/tourism/influence tree as well as some of the military tech.

My most looked for feature is the actual campaign.

The minor factions are also pretty hilarious too. You have some super fat infertile species, evil squirrels, spider people, dark yor and maybe one or two more. I'm curious if dark yor will make a greater impact later.

Has anybody else been paying attention to this game and noticed it's almost out?

The game is released now. You can customize practically anything in the game and play with some insane settings. The largest map has half a million hexes and can support 100 NPC factions. It was made for a 64 bit OS and uses as many cores as you can throw at it.

I was personally disappointed in the campaign and the crashes but the crashes at least seem to be fixed.

All i have to say about the campaign is 3 missions (not counting the tutorial) does not a campaign make. It was very much a last minute add in.

I'm interested in resource based weapons, structures and abilities though as well as some of the other newer things. Not sure how it impacts the game as in many ways it puts you in a corner when you make good ships which as it turns out can be countered easily enough if you see what resources an enemy has via scouting and such.

So, do you know if they have any plans to make the campaign more extensive? I've been reading your posts on the game, and I'm still going back and forth on buying it. I like a good campaign with my game.

Currently playing on an Insane sized map, thankfully have a large cluster to start with in a corner, so only going to get attacked from one general direction. Going full Malevolent, as the free defensive Overlord for each world is awesome, but doing some Pragmatic, to get the upgrades to Starbases.

Loving the game so far!

 toasteroven wrote:
So, do you know if they have any plans to make the campaign more extensive? I've been reading your posts on the game, and I'm still going back and forth on buying it. I like a good campaign with my game.

It depends how big of a deal the campaign is for you. If it'll make or break the game for you i'd say wait or don't get it. I have no idea if they'll add more content soon enough but they did mention DLC. I really hope the campaign doesn't go that route. Only 3 missions (not including tutorial) and hopefully they add more.

The resources are interesting and always happen in specific areas. Antimatter will always be found near black holes, durantium is always found in asteroid fields, a couple are found in solar systems (dunno the specifics of where) and another is found in a nebulae or something (elerium if i'm not mistaken). Durantium is for kinetic weapons and armor (as well as a factory structure and production booster), antimatter is for missiles and missile defense (as well as a power planet that boosts all types of structures) and elerium is for lasers and shields (as well as a planetary laser defense system or something to that effect). There's also promethium which usually gives ships speed boosts of different kinds (also used as a happiness and money boost for base income and it helps significantly) and thulium which boosts most other types of upgrades where a ship boosts other ships and similar (as well as making a tech boosting structure).

You also have ideologies which help somewhat and are mostly given when you take a new planet and choose an option (with a little negative and positives or plain nothing for a choice). There's a limit so you'll have to eventually get the buildings which grant ideology points at a super slow rate but also offer some nice boosts. Sometimes you are offered a good 20 points of ideology of your choice on random events but it only speeds things along slightly or prevents it from ending if there are no planets to colonize or buildings to increase ideology). Some ideology points are absolutely critical and infinitely useful whereas others are kinda meh. The big one for pragmatic (i.e. neutral) factions is the nobody can declare war on you for 50 turns. Super helpful when you meet malevolent factions who tend to war-monger as soon as possible. Extra constructors, colony ships and trade ships also tend to be nice as well though the ones they give you tend to be slower than some you might want. Some of the abilities are potent but it's often hard to put a concentrated effort into it.

Tourism which used to be godly is now often garbage (at least from what i've seen) but trade (if worked correctly and usually initiated by you from your trade capital) is godly and offers a lot of money (sometimes more than half your income even or at least with iridium corporation). In fact it seems to offer more money than tourism or often normal money gathering buildings which is pretty huge. I'm not sure if tourism increases or how it does. Normal money seems to increase somewhat depending on population i think but i'm not sure about industry or research (though the promethium improvement gives you a big boost to your base income which can make all those other buildings give a lot more money). The money gathering buildings seem to help the most for getting money obviously. Trade income increases over time due to the route's age and distance (in other words get good enough speed upgrades and life support and you can fly them off as far as possible to get the mega bucks) and it can help relations between you and other factions. It also gives more to the initiator and helps if you do it from your trade capital. Of course doing all this means your trade capital planet has to be protected very hard when crap goes down or you'll lose a lot of income by losing it. It's also worth knowing that trade income is dependent on the planet or planets involved with itself and sometimes i think some offer more income but i'm not entirely sure on the reasons for this. Sadly all that said money is still considered fairly weak in the game right now. Not sure if that's been patched or will be.

With the exception of resources and their effects and a good bunch of ships and abilities the game is mostly the same. There isn't even a battle viewer for ground invasions yet if there will be. It just sort of tells you right after if you won or lost. Each faction has some abilities. Thalans get a good bunch of free tech in the beginning and have production boosts and other stuff. Iconians seem to get self repairing ships i think. Krynn seem to get some influence boosts and every time they invade a planet they get ideology boosts.

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Personally i'd like to see some ideology points gained through other means. Basically invading a planet gets you a malevolent point, starbases give benevolent points and trading gives you pragmatic points.

Got it, and love it. It's not very often you see sequels after a decade has passed that hold true to the previous games, while still adding enough to feel like it's newer.

My only beef, the campaign was way to short.