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Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / [Alpha Feedbag] K's AAR
« on: May 03, 2013, 03:31:26 PM »
Alright, i am writing the post as i am playing the game, constantly alt-tabbing between the two. Will probably do a TL;DR summary once im done. The main part will be my raw comments as i experience the game.
I am playing in 1600x900 fullscreen mode, 21 inch screen. It is very visible that the game was designed for smaller resolutions.
Start game:
The resolution makes brown(?) text on black backgrounds way too small, might have something to do with contrast though. Point is - small u's o's and n's are hard to read.
Alright, the game has started, stuff... well no, no stuff is happening yet.
As i understand right now, there is some sort of complex production system... kinda like in Settlers i guess? The problem is that i have no idea how it works and the only way to find out is to read the tooltips for all those buildings. I also have no idea how the game actually works, as in, what is supposed to be happening.
And yet i kinda want my towns not to be horribly inefficient. Ugh.
I think maybe for the tutorial it would be better to start in like round 1, with an already set up basic economy, with the tutorial explaining how it works, and then asking the player to enhance it here and there.
Or maybe let the player gradually build the economy from ground up somehow. I am at turn -1 now, and finally found out the requirements to build a soldier. Have 3 actions to try and get the production up now.
I just noticed, in resource production tab, the bottom row actually is not resources, but production buildings.Well, at least now i get what those 3 rows are.
Alright, played the first game for a few turns. Had to give up because apparently giving greeks a chimera on turn 0 was a bad idea.
Restarting the game with an enlighten me edict. Now i have a general idea what i am doing.
Time to have a proper set up.
Turn -4: 1 of each basic resource for each faction
Turn -3: Embassy+Barracks+Diplomat
Turn -2: 2 chapmen, pigfarm
Turn -1: mason, butcher, carpenter
Turn 0 : iron+smithy, this is enough to make marauders for norse, so i place more iron for steel production. For greeks, i still need bread, so its iron+smithy+wheat
Turn 1: In hindsight, i should have placed the basic resources this turn, not on -4. Oh well.
Uh, so is there a limit on how many units barracks can make per turn? Should i focus on increasing production, or build more barracks? Oh well, lets get archer production first instead.
Aha, so to compensate for a cheap marauder, greeks have lithovoloi. Oh wait, 4 attack. FOUR ATTACK? What the hell is this?
Alright, now that i got a hang of this, as an old fan of economical strategy games i want to find out how optimal is my production chain running. I mean, i have absolutely no idea how many of X supply buildings you need to supply Y manufacturing buildings, and how many chapmen are needed to support it all.
I would also like to be able to see at any time how much each specific building produced, and how much it has in stock, also indicators for when a production building is idle/not at 100% load. Seriously, as i see it now, this game is pretty much an economic strategy. I need the tools to play it like one!
Ideally i would want to see some gauge showing the current stock, and then an ability to see the average value for the last 10 turns.
As i understand, i dont need more than 1 manufacturing building? Given enough resources, the manufacturer can make as many products as there is demand for, right? Alright, thats 1 less possible bottleneck to worry about.
Alright, i just noticed chapmen can get encumbered, reducing their effective movement points from 14 to like 4. This needs an indication. Use 2-3 different icons for different encuberance levels?
Can units move diagonally? with how fast they move even at 1x, its not easy to tell.
So anyway, turn 8.
Since carrying resources is difficult, i need lots and lots of chapmen. The pathfinding looks kinda weird, as i swear i could see some chapman try to walk around other guys instead of walking through them. Or is he just so shy? Meanwhile, 2 chapmen got stuck, giving me the "Entity is already at the target tile" error. It got resolved the next turn.
Meanwhile, combat is happening between the cities, poor diplomats keep getting killed. Balancing it right now is not too hard, as the "level a unit up" works very well. Predicting which side is stronger isnt very easy though, as it very strongly depends on the unit AI (no idea how it works), and the unit action order.
You also can help one faction on the other's turn by placing ruins (or resources) a place thats easy for it to reach. Dunno if its intended, maybe we need a "must be placed closer to a friendly town than an enemy town" thing, or something?
Turn 10. The unit count is 25 now, so watching the turn is starting to get a little tedious. I wish i could watch all actions carried out simultaneously, but i guess that would mess up the current turn system.
I am still feeling i need more chapmen.
Lets take an iron mine for example: 10/t production, so you need 2 chapmen to visit it every turn if you want it to be 100% efficient. And every chapman will probably be able to take iron from it only once every 2 turns. So you need 4 chapmen to fully operate an iron mine. Wow. Good thing they are dirt cheap. 2 fish/rice is nothing, so its mostly action points you are spending.
Do we maybe want to scale them up a bit? I mean, up their cost to something like 5-10 fish/rice, but also increase their carrying capacity by 2x-3x.
Turn 12:
Yeah, something weird is going with chapmen. some can pass through other chapmen, while others seem to get blocked. Some walk just 1 square when encumbered, even though they could make 1-2 more steps easily. The hell is going on?
Just saw an archer one-shot an ekdromos. Wait what? Oh, a 5x modifier? Why does an archer have such huge modifier, when every other unit only has 1.1-1.3?
Also, the general combat seems weird. The health vs damage values seem too much in favor of damage. Most units can 2 shot each other. This means all those bonuses often go to waste, as they only change overkill, and maybe, MAYBE give the unit a chance to 1-shot the enemy instead of 2-shotting it.
I believe 2 infantry units should take 3-4 turns to murder each other, and archers should need 5-10.
Meanwhile, some other guy visited ruins and got immune to melee. Wow, this sounds imbalanced like hell, especially compared to the "all bonuses cubed" some other guy got. Yeah, cube all those 1.15's, see what you get. This is especially true since those stupid rock throwers deal only 4 damage.
Alright, gonna take a break now, will report more later.
I am playing in 1600x900 fullscreen mode, 21 inch screen. It is very visible that the game was designed for smaller resolutions.
Start game:
The resolution makes brown(?) text on black backgrounds way too small, might have something to do with contrast though. Point is - small u's o's and n's are hard to read.
Alright, the game has started, stuff... well no, no stuff is happening yet.
As i understand right now, there is some sort of complex production system... kinda like in Settlers i guess? The problem is that i have no idea how it works and the only way to find out is to read the tooltips for all those buildings. I also have no idea how the game actually works, as in, what is supposed to be happening.
And yet i kinda want my towns not to be horribly inefficient. Ugh.
I think maybe for the tutorial it would be better to start in like round 1, with an already set up basic economy, with the tutorial explaining how it works, and then asking the player to enhance it here and there.
Or maybe let the player gradually build the economy from ground up somehow. I am at turn -1 now, and finally found out the requirements to build a soldier. Have 3 actions to try and get the production up now.
I just noticed, in resource production tab, the bottom row actually is not resources, but production buildings.Well, at least now i get what those 3 rows are.
Alright, played the first game for a few turns. Had to give up because apparently giving greeks a chimera on turn 0 was a bad idea.
Restarting the game with an enlighten me edict. Now i have a general idea what i am doing.
Time to have a proper set up.
Turn -4: 1 of each basic resource for each faction
Turn -3: Embassy+Barracks+Diplomat
Turn -2: 2 chapmen, pigfarm
Turn -1: mason, butcher, carpenter
Turn 0 : iron+smithy, this is enough to make marauders for norse, so i place more iron for steel production. For greeks, i still need bread, so its iron+smithy+wheat
Turn 1: In hindsight, i should have placed the basic resources this turn, not on -4. Oh well.
Uh, so is there a limit on how many units barracks can make per turn? Should i focus on increasing production, or build more barracks? Oh well, lets get archer production first instead.
Aha, so to compensate for a cheap marauder, greeks have lithovoloi. Oh wait, 4 attack. FOUR ATTACK? What the hell is this?
Alright, now that i got a hang of this, as an old fan of economical strategy games i want to find out how optimal is my production chain running. I mean, i have absolutely no idea how many of X supply buildings you need to supply Y manufacturing buildings, and how many chapmen are needed to support it all.
I would also like to be able to see at any time how much each specific building produced, and how much it has in stock, also indicators for when a production building is idle/not at 100% load. Seriously, as i see it now, this game is pretty much an economic strategy. I need the tools to play it like one!
Ideally i would want to see some gauge showing the current stock, and then an ability to see the average value for the last 10 turns.
As i understand, i dont need more than 1 manufacturing building? Given enough resources, the manufacturer can make as many products as there is demand for, right? Alright, thats 1 less possible bottleneck to worry about.
Alright, i just noticed chapmen can get encumbered, reducing their effective movement points from 14 to like 4. This needs an indication. Use 2-3 different icons for different encuberance levels?
Can units move diagonally? with how fast they move even at 1x, its not easy to tell.
So anyway, turn 8.
Since carrying resources is difficult, i need lots and lots of chapmen. The pathfinding looks kinda weird, as i swear i could see some chapman try to walk around other guys instead of walking through them. Or is he just so shy? Meanwhile, 2 chapmen got stuck, giving me the "Entity is already at the target tile" error. It got resolved the next turn.
Meanwhile, combat is happening between the cities, poor diplomats keep getting killed. Balancing it right now is not too hard, as the "level a unit up" works very well. Predicting which side is stronger isnt very easy though, as it very strongly depends on the unit AI (no idea how it works), and the unit action order.
You also can help one faction on the other's turn by placing ruins (or resources) a place thats easy for it to reach. Dunno if its intended, maybe we need a "must be placed closer to a friendly town than an enemy town" thing, or something?
Turn 10. The unit count is 25 now, so watching the turn is starting to get a little tedious. I wish i could watch all actions carried out simultaneously, but i guess that would mess up the current turn system.
I am still feeling i need more chapmen.
Lets take an iron mine for example: 10/t production, so you need 2 chapmen to visit it every turn if you want it to be 100% efficient. And every chapman will probably be able to take iron from it only once every 2 turns. So you need 4 chapmen to fully operate an iron mine. Wow. Good thing they are dirt cheap. 2 fish/rice is nothing, so its mostly action points you are spending.
Do we maybe want to scale them up a bit? I mean, up their cost to something like 5-10 fish/rice, but also increase their carrying capacity by 2x-3x.
Turn 12:
Yeah, something weird is going with chapmen. some can pass through other chapmen, while others seem to get blocked. Some walk just 1 square when encumbered, even though they could make 1-2 more steps easily. The hell is going on?
Just saw an archer one-shot an ekdromos. Wait what? Oh, a 5x modifier? Why does an archer have such huge modifier, when every other unit only has 1.1-1.3?
Also, the general combat seems weird. The health vs damage values seem too much in favor of damage. Most units can 2 shot each other. This means all those bonuses often go to waste, as they only change overkill, and maybe, MAYBE give the unit a chance to 1-shot the enemy instead of 2-shotting it.
I believe 2 infantry units should take 3-4 turns to murder each other, and archers should need 5-10.
Meanwhile, some other guy visited ruins and got immune to melee. Wow, this sounds imbalanced like hell, especially compared to the "all bonuses cubed" some other guy got. Yeah, cube all those 1.15's, see what you get. This is especially true since those stupid rock throwers deal only 4 damage.
Alright, gonna take a break now, will report more later.