So I haven't tried it yet, but if I read it right you lose direct control over planets when you choose Federation government, right? That seems like removing half of the game (planet puzzle), which is.... an odd choice. And unfun.
Am I wrong about this? What's your experience with the governments?
Been experiencing slowdowns in game play I never had prior to dlc- anyone else notice this?
Btw, if you're reading this and haven't gotten it- highly recommend.
This is only arpg I've seen spin to win not follow mouse cursor even in WASD- is there a setting I'm missing?
3 3-star fleets within days of each other. Completely out of main cannon ammo for coils, no torpedoes left (expended in first battle to shorten engagement). Faced a third fleet on day 12 of operation with only coil batteries, lasers, plasma, and particles.
Total losses: 1 Fleet Command vessel, 1 Laser Titan, 1 Rail Titan, 1 Torpedo Battleship. Mission kills: 1 Rail titan (100%), 1 Particle Lancer (100%)
Two alien motherships survived inside a two-star fleet made up of survivors that's limping back for repairs. 78 alien ships destroyed.
Leadership neither confirms nor denies that they maybe should have looked at how many 3-star fleets were in orbit before deployment.
Am I missing something- minefield lays out mines in a straight line. That's not really what I had pictured... and not very useful either. Increased AOE only seemed to make a longer line.
I thought minefield would lay out a... minefield?
Things practically a massive nuclear reactor, most I'd seen before this was like 16. What's most fissiles or other resources you've ever seen in one location? Had a Ceres before this game with 120 water in one location.
No modifiers in custom settings btw, this is all vanilla.
Submission statement: Link is interview of Jesse Michels debating plausibility of UFOs with famous skeptic Michael Shermer. In this interview, Shermer lays out intellectually disingenuous standards of evidence which he helps adopt across media and academia through his Skeptic magazine- poisoning honest academic inquiry into the topic.
Shermer is the posterboy for everything wrong with the skeptic movement- and yes, I'm calling it a movement because skepticism has become a religion of blind faith, and like any good fundamentalist religion, they violently punish the heretics.
If you haven't seen it, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rr_nE65KkI&t=1301s
In first ten minutes he states that he has no problem accepting the Chinese spy balloon incident despite not seeing it himself because of the caliber of witnesses and officials involved in relaying the story- the President, SecDef, etc. etc., and then he says "nobody is questioning the credentials of the pilot (involved in the shoot down).
And yet, we have exactly this caliber of witness saying that the UFO phenomenon is real and not natural in both contemporary statements and historical records. Also, ironic that skeptics routinely disregard the eyewitness accounts of professional pilots- but Shermer has no problem with the F-22 pilot who shot down the Chinese spy balloon. Why? Because it's prosaic, it is already firmly within his established and rigid paradigm that a Chinese spy balloon can exist.
He doesn't think images of the balloon were manipulated, faked, or misidentification- but even the clearest UFO photo is defacto clearly manipulated, faked, or misidentified. For no other reason than one is prosaic, the other is not. This isn't science, it's bias.
Further, he compares the wreckage of the spy balloon with what he feels is needed for proof UFOs are non-contemporary human- because we have the physical wreckage, he can believe. This is where arguments like his become childish and utterly unscientific, because disregarding the phenomenon purely because of "where's the bodies?!" completely ignores several factors that are perfectly reasonable and could be at play:
-the phenomenon is intelligent and can mitigate discovery of its own wreckage/fatalities/survivors by being an agent capable of direct action and with obviously superior capabilities
-an alleged global coverup by the world's most powerful and resourceful governments also being agents capable of direct action to mitigate public discovery
Shermer's "Where's the bodies?!" argument relies on a simplistic and objectively silly assumption that physical proof should naturally end up in public hands, by ignoring the powerful agents within and without the phenomenon itself that could be extremely motivated to prevent just such an occurrence.
Basically, if we postulate for a moment that UFOs are the result of an advanced alien species, Shermer still thinks that we should have wreckage and bodies because they're too stupid to prevent us from getting our hands on either. Or rather, he actively ignores this factor because it complicates his simplistic and bias-friendly supposition. Not to mention the fact government forces could be just as motivated and have very good reason to keep this secret (literally world-dominating technology).
In short, Shermer creates a simplistic standard, ignores evidence he doesn't personally like, has no problem with authority when it backs a narrative he personally already embraces, but questions it past the point of credible skepticism when it doesn't.
This isn't skepticism- this is religion. He believes because he wants to believe UFOs aren't really NHI, not because he has a good counter-argument to the evidence. Which he is given plenty of opportunities to present and never does. On topic of UFO events at nuclear installations, he says "well these are the minority of events", as if that somehow makes the 167 personnel reporting UFO events in the book, UFOs and Nukes (of which I am one of those personnel) irrelevant.
Because it was the minority of events that occurred.
That's a grossly intellectually dishonest response and total hand-wave of the evidence, yet convenient because then he doesn't have to wrestle with it. The frequency of the events is completely irrelevant to the weight of the associated evidence- he would know this if he was a nuclear security professional taught to specifically be on the lookout for anomalous events. Because he's right about one, single thing: most nights nothing happens. But where he's wrong is that when something does happen, trust me it's a Very Big Deal.
By his own standard, I would've never reported any anomalous security events, because they're "the minority of events" after all they mean so little if not flat-out nothing. Love to see how secure America's nuclear weapons are based off the Michael Shermer model of reporting and evidence.
Not gonna lie, I don't even know what the ship roles actually do when you let the AI take over- but I'd love the ability to slot in 'tactics' into ship classes for when AI takes over because I don't like micromanaging. If you've ever played Unicorn Overlord, you probably know what I'm going for.
Example- I'd like to be able to tell my torpedo boats to prioritize ships of X hull size or greater (or lesser if that floats your boat).
I don't like micromanaging- specially when the UI just sucks for it (I'd even settle for a button that autoselects all ships of x class)- and hate seeing missiles and torpedoes wasted on fast flankers when they could kill capitals.
If you've played latest Galactic Civilizations, they let you bake this into the ship design.
I have China and the pan-asian federation, but the AI used Thailand to found a different federation. Now it and Signapore are the only two nations in the old federation. I need Thailand and its strategic reserves of femboys, but despite a non-hostile claim I can't unify due to federation mismatch. Any way to disband a federation via the founding member, or do I have to use military force and thus endanger the very treasure I am seeking?
Edit: it's press V for everyone else lol. But the alphabetical sorting stands.
I like to let AI handle fleet combat, hate micromanaging. I'd love ability to remove velocity vectors, completely ruins the incredible light show.
Also, who at Pavonis do I have to make sweaty, salty, tender-but-firm love to in order to get option to organize things like nations alphabetically?
Is restarting a campaign because I didn't realize I hadn't clicked cinematic scaling for combat and now the ships are microscopic.
Just got into beef with local puppy yoga studio because I passionately advocate against them, but for whoever needed to hear this- puppy yoga is unethical. It encourages puppy mills to fulfill a constant need for new puppies, and while many studios push adoption the reality is not every puppy can be adopted when you're cranking them out at a steady rate. Those puppies end up at shelters where they're eventually put down.
Further, it can have a serious health effect on puppies who typically need long periods of rest- the constant disruption from each new class can be detrimental to their mental and physical health. Those puppies aren't falling asleep on you because it's cute, they're likely extremely exhausted after being exposed to the excitement of multiple classes in a row.
Puppy yoga is unethical and exploitative- feel free to look up many online takedowns of the industry. You shouldn't encourage these terrible businesses, they're literally killing puppies.
I always offered this tip to new players to the franchise- hop into a hotseat game, create one 'player' for each faction, pick a huge map, and play against yourself. No AI players, don't fight between heroes until you've fully explored the map, then have a battle royale tournament style clash at the end.
It's a great way to let you breathe and play each faction without pressure of AI, and by constantly swapping between factions the individual identities of each faction becomes more apparent over time. I do recommend you increase the strength of neutral enemies to compensate (I usually max them out to create lots of deadly fights).
As mentioned, this is probably the best HoMM has been in two decades, maybe ever when you remove nostalgia. In every way possible, the game's a triumph already and not even into full release. If you're on the fence, buy the game, you won't regret it.
But to be more critical, the game suffers in one area that HoMM has always suffered- hero skills are underwhelming, uninspiring, and boring. +10% and -10% melee damage. +1 attack, defense and spellpower. When enemy creature waits, friendly creatures gain initiative.
Faction skills aren't much better. Necromancy is probably implemented in the most balanced way it's ever been (refreshing). Righteousness and Murmuring are snooze fests. Triumvirate's strength is somehow even more boring. Communion is... so very passive and also boring. Summon Swarm is literally the only remotely exciting and interesting faction skill.
This isn't exactly out of line with previous HoMM titles, and that's the problem.
For comparison, look at Hero's Hour- which I can't recommend enough. Seriously, despite pixel graphics the game is amazing. Every time I roll random hero and faction I'm actually excited to see how different my game is going to play out, an excitement that does not exist in HoMM.
Look at the skills- Devour lets you eat a unit (even friendly ones) for permanent boosts to your hero. Warding gives units a chance to ignore attacks by larger units. A skill I can't remember makes it so war clowns rain down from the sky through a fight and random spells get cast.
Faction skills include ability to call animals onto the battlefield, another lets you collect various types of aether that you can use to cast empowered spells or trade in for stat bonuses, resources, or random creatures. Another lets you 'firegate' enemy creatures to anywhere on the battlefield, causing an explosion that sets them on fire on arrival.
And every major skill has 3-4 sub-skills that often have major effects, not small incremental bonuses. Learn water magic and you can get a subskill that gives your units a chance to encase enemy units in ice, freezing them in place temporarily. Learn earth magic and your units become heavier, more difficult to 'push', and gain increased defense.
Obviously being real-time, Hero's Hour can do more than HoMM ever could, but the point is HoMM has shown little to no creativity in skills since... well, last time I remember an interesting interaction was when your skill selection affected what type of class your hero became which did things like give them poison attacks or other combat abilities.
