Posted on: November 9, 2024

Early Access review

Ward.530

Games: 141 Reviews: 6

300 hours of misery

You know those games that you play, they suck, but you feel there is something hidden beneath the surface and so you persist, hoping to find the hidden gem, that you though was there? Well I am at around 300 hours of suffering with this game and quite frankly even if I finally found the gem there at this point, it's probably not going to be worth it. The concept looks very promising, but you are being constantly beaten down by game traps and unexplained concepts. The game is full of moments that are constructed to destroy your current playthrough. The sad part is that there is very little you can do to bounce off. I assume this is a deliberate developer's choice to force you to replay the game over and over until you learn all the traps. I don't like games like this. There is only one way to win - to do a specific series of decisions. (Or cheese) Spoilers, to explain on examples: - You "need" to grab one of the big nations to win. Otherwise you are in a very bad starting position and you may never catch up. To get a big nation, you sort of need to know what you are doing. Especially when you want it early. And you do. Second big trap is space race. You think you need to win Earth, and AI beats you to space race and eats all the best spaces on moon. Those bases are super-important. And in order to win early space race, you had to develop ceratin countries in a certain way and research certain tech(s). Then there is alien space landing which according to users on forums is usually dealt with by reloading until they lend where you want them to and / or nuking the hell out of them. Once you get to space race, there is this ever present hidden hard cap, after which aliens attack and erase you. If you don't know how exactly the hidden meter works and what to do you'll end up in unwinnable total war. Then you basically wait until you research endgame techs and only then you can start actually fighting aliens. HUGE trap in research. Especially engines and reactors.

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Posted on: August 23, 2023

Early Access review

StrykeSlammerII

Verified owner

Games: 31 Reviews: 1

Hard SF simulator in search of a game

[reviewed Summer '23, circa Early Access v 0.3.99; played since Fall '22] First, I *love* this game. I don't play many strategy games, and I dislike Early Access, but I have no regrets with TI. It is very forgiving. In some ways this is good, in others it's not. I've never lost a game, but I've only won one, with the "Easy Mode" faction, by avoiding space research and keeping everyone on Earth. The rest got abandoned when the AI is clearly taking over the solar system (or Earth) in the next 5-10 years. TI merely starts as a strategy game. Where it really shines is as a space exploration simulator. Getting to scroll through a to-scale model of the solar system (out to the Kuiper belt) is an amazing experience. Researching a wide variety of real-world theoretical space drives and power plants, then seeing how long they take to get from Earth to Mars... or Mercury to Pluto... or Neptune to Quaoar... gives a better sense of "Space is BIG" than anything else I've done. :mindblown: However, at this point the "game" starts to break down and logistics take over. There's a lot of waiting for tech to research, then ships to build, and still more waiting for fleets to arrive (Space Is Big!) There are space mines to build and space battles to fight, but those are minigames compared to the Earth Strategy portion. There are few points where the devs decided in favor of gameplay over reality. TI is a fun intro to orbital mechanics, but slogging through the end-game is not for everyone. Individual items: + The Earth strategy game is the most fleshed out section, but the game is 100% playable + Devs are very responsive; beta [Steam] branches get frequent updates ~ It's a *huge* game: there is still a lot of work and polish to do - UI needs a lot of love: too much info, not shown consistently - AI still does poorly (but is continually getting better!) - Earth is less important once you get to space, but you still have to manage your councilors every 2 weeks

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Posted on: February 1, 2024

Early Access review

menkaur

Verified owner

Games: 47 Reviews: 7

Underrated game, needs improving ui

One of the most underrated games in 2024. Compelling storyline and lots of interesting dynamics. Political system on earth is well thought through, I don't know who came up with this, but this is awesome, kudos. I'm going to let my kids play this to explain how the world really works That being said, there are several issues I have with this game: - I couldn't find event log, there probably isn't one, so you are forced to acknowledge every event in a popup. Developers, if you read this, please please please find a way to get rid of the popups. They are ruining the gameplay. Also, I may want to revisit individual events when, for example, enemy sends ships to my base and I want to find and assign fleet to intercept it or whatever - I find myself doing lots of annoying clicks that could be avoided with some sort of automation (research and asignments) - Ship autodesigner should have priority sliders (speed, firepower cost whatever, ship classes are hard to understand) - For whatever reason, there is no way to change ship's destination once it's on the way, even if it has plenty of delta v for this - automatic research please. I want to set priorities on technologies I get and let the game select what needs to be researched to get there

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Posted on: December 3, 2022

Early Access review

RedCommissar

Verified owner

Games: 24 Reviews: 2

Excellent culmination of X-Com series

Most realistic strategy game of defending Earth from Alien invasion. In X-Com series you started as a commander of fledging forces a base, with a special team of elite soldiers that deal with most dangerous missions and a small specialized air defense fleet, which culiminates with few more bases and double the size of units you work with. Contributions depend on "global panic" levels, research is more "field discovery", and that is that. This game goes one step above it, now that said X-Com commander is possibly just one of the organization's faces (most probably a commander with skills in investigation and combat) at your disposal who perform various tasks on bi-weekly basis. The ORGANIZATION is the player's scope, as individual bases are invisible and irrelevant and nations are field to be conquered by yours or others organizations. Now you command multiple faces of an organization (some skilled in combat, other in resarch, interdiction, diplomacy...etc) who you hire/turn/kill/capture/sack. You command nations you manage to win over (which can now you struggle for, try to control them, to rid of enemy influence within it), few nation armies but only those most elite with ability to maneuver across the globe, hunt alien agents across the globe who try to spread panic, poison planet and turn ppl one against others... all this constitutes 1st part of gameplay. But it slowly evolves into commanding new Earth space fleets, sending probes, interdicting enemy fleets, boarding stations, exploring and conqering Solar System with small bases that extract the sorely needed materials but all the best places are taken by endlessly superior aliens... which constitutes 2nd part of the gameplay! Definitely a great gamplay concept to be expanded and refined more, looking forward in seeing it mimicked and expanded.

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Posted on: October 7, 2022

Early Access review

schlenk

Verified owner

Games: 97 Reviews: 1

Feels like two games grown together

The game is basically split in two major parts that feel like totally different games in a way: - Earth - Space The Earth part has quite a boardgaming feel to it. The 14 day intervals for your concelours have a seriously round based feel, but the combat action for ground armys is pausable real time. It is a bit tedious to watch the time tick by, if you just want the next round of actions for your agents. The game mechanics are heavily RNG based, but it is manageable. Take opportunities when they arise. If the RNG tells you the chance is 1%, thats not a sign to try it 100 times. It is a sign to look elsewhere for the moment and return when prepared. This boardgamy base feels a bit like some risk or EU4, a lot of knobs to turn. And build the foundation for part two of the game, space. The space part is, where the developers obviously spent a ton of love. Newtonian mechanics for space flight, proper transfer orbits, lagrange points, good delta V mechanics. The tech tree also has a massive amount of small improvments to drive technologies and all popular hard sci fi drive techs included. Space combat is also pretty newtonian, weird but good. This mix has a few down sides. The tech tree is one. The low end drives make no real sense for the earth game mechanics. You basically need something to build a warship to challenge the alien invaders. And slow ion or chemical rockets just don't cut it there. So why have a dozend such technologies in the tech tree? You can develop a technology to deploy new bases/platforms in space. But you can already do that before, with the boost based earth mechanics, and by the time you get the tech, you have so much boost, that it doesn't matter anymore. This feels like it would need some balance pass. Earth based boost is too powerful and does not really fit in with the built ships thing. Let me build probes to send out, instead of just using boost to send them.

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