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pack.wolf

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  1. This is a game I certainly could get into, but I don't like the way the reward tiers are set up. To get all mission & ship types you have to pledge a quite significant amount. I'll have to think about that. Just got me the basic founder package for Mech Warrior Online, my gaming budget is pretty much used up... Also I've got FTL to keep me busy and Star Command once that is finished. So many games, so little time and money ^^
  2. It was a pretty nice game back then. I really should play it again some time since I stupidly set the difficulty settings to the highest level which caused me to not see a lot of the generated events on the map, so I missed out on quite a few missions. It did have some weaknesses though, like the sniper class being overpowered, grenades being near useless and the mini-mechs being annoying and imo too steam-punk-y for this kind of game. It had it's moments of awesome though. Like once the stairs to the room with an item I had to pick up as a mission objective were destroyed in the fight and I couldn't get to it. So I blasted away with everything I had until basically the whole floor of the room was gone and it dropped down
  3. Steam actually has a pretty good offline mode. The only quirk is that you have to activate it while you are online. As soon as it's activated you can play without an internet connection. I don't know if Desura has an offline mode since I'm basically never offline. Both Steam and Desura are in fact DRM by themselves, since neither allows you to re-sell your copy. Steam has a lot of community features I'm quite fond of and cloud storage for saves and settings of certain games, Desura is associated with ModDB and allows you to install a decent selection of mods in a very easy way (even for games you don't own on Desura). Both update your games automatically. Personally I'll choose a Steam key for my copy when Xenonauts comes out, since I really like the program. I'd recommend you try both (the clients and accounts are free, both offer demos for a lot of games) and see for yourself if they offer features you want or have annoyances you don't want. At the moment you can get a completely DRM free version of Xenonauts or a Desura version. There is no Steam version as of yet, but there will be once the game is finished.
  4. Yeah, that's probably what I'll end up doing. Drifter's already funded, so that will be out anyway. Maybe I'll throw a bit of money towards Kinetic Void, since it seems most likely to be the kind of game I want. Even if it turns out to be just filler for when I don't want to think too hard in between X³ sessions $10 is probably worth that. And maybe it's the lucky choice and turns out awesome edit: I just remembered I bought both Ensign-1 and Honor in Vengeance II like two days ago, so maybe not ^^
  5. Skyjacker relaunching its kickstarter actually made it harder for me to decide, since before I'd just have had to decide between Drifter and Kinetic Void, since splitting the full game up between reward tiers was a really *censored* move. I've got some gripes with each of them. Skyjacker certainly looks best right now, but that's not surprising with it being made by a 3D art studio. And looks don't translate into 'fun to play'. It also seems the most limited in scope. There's no mention of an economic system or building. They never produced a whole game which is very different from doing art assets. They are basically a family company, which might be bad for QA. Drifter is probably the least ambitious. It's not trying to be Far Cry in space, it's an evolution of an existing (iOS) game. But 2D movement in a space game is kind of lame. I wanna be in a cockpit and buzz around shooting lazorz in ALL directions . Also it's really similar to Starfarer which I already alpha fund. Kinetic Void is really interesting with its custom ship designs. The development team is three times as big as Drifters. The updates they release show real progress (basic combat). It has the concept most appealing to me as an ex-EVE player with ship classes going from fighter to super-capitals. But I really wish it would have multiplayer from the get go. And three people living far apart making a game might be quite indie, but is it good for the quality of the product? And it doesn't seem to have any kind of story or campaign. It's not so much that I would not have the money to buy three games even if they were full price titles. It's much more a case of already owning X³ and still not having finished its campaign or started its addons once, just having downloaded the 0.52 release of Starfarer, looking forward to my copy of FTL, still not having played Flotilla enough and don't even get me started on all the non-space flight games (just bought the UFO: After... trilogy in the gamersgate sale, Terraria, 40k Space Marine, AvP, ...) and mods (DayZ, JA2 UC for 1.13). If there was a way to buy more time to play games along with them I'd have no problem. But as there isn't (at least without collapsing the space-time continuum and getting told off by the Q or eaten by those Doctor Who-monsters) it's at least as much a question of 'is it worth my time' as it is of 'is it worth my money'. I really wish I could be sure about any of them, because I desperately want another Starlancer or FreeSpace or heck, even Freelancer if publishers are to afraid of going back to that kind of gameplay. If I just knew which one of them is worth supporting I'd throw money at them no problem. Wow, it's really a category-10 first world problem. 'Can't decide which of three somewhat similar video games I'd like to buy.' ^^
  6. Just posted practically the same text in the Skyjacker thread. It's on my 'Remind me' list, but I haven't pledged to it yet since it seems quite (and perhaps overly) ambitious to me. Then there's also the similar Drifter and Skyjacker. If I back them all that's at least $35. I'm unsure as of yet if I should do that or back one of them at a higher level. Or one at a level that gets me beta access and one at a $10/$15. The main problem I have is that I've never heard about any of the studios/people making these games. I gladly backed Shadowrun and Wasteland because they are pretty 'safe' investments. I backed FTL because there was an awesome demo of a nearly finished game available. I went out on a limb for Republique because I liked the concept. But choosing one of three similar games with little to go on, I'm kind of troubled.
  7. pack.wolf

    Skyjacker

    It's on my 'Remind me' list, but I haven't pledged to it yet since it seems quite (and perhaps overly) ambitious to me. Then there's also the similar Drifter and Kinetic Void. If I back them all that's at least $35. I'm unsure as of yet if I should do that or back one of them at a higher level. Or one at a level that gets me beta access and one at a $10/$15. The main problem I have is that I've never heard about any of the studios/people making these games. I gladly backed Shadowrun and Wasteland because they are pretty 'safe' investments. I backed FTL because there was an awesome demo of a nearly finished game available. I went out on a limb for Republique because I liked the concept. But choosing one of three similar games with little to go on, I'm kind of troubled.
  8. wow, talk of inflation ^^ to make my comment less spam-y so I can walk away with a clear conscience: the main problem I have with UFO:AI's engine is that it doesn't allow for destroyable terrain. It's not even that this isn't possible in 3D games (Silent Storm did it), but it's just a really bad engine by today's standards. And the AI was terribly simplistic the last time I played it. At least with that they are on par with the current build of Xenonauts ^^
  9. This is one of the things I'd like to be added most. Complete support for this! I think it would be quite appropriate for those types of missions to show up later in a campaign when the aliens already have set up bases and you are dealing with a full blown invasion (i.e. including ground forces).
  10. Well then, in order of preference I'd like to see: - additional mission objectives / mission types (protect person x/equipment/building y, evac z civilians, ...) - "survive till rescue arrives"-missions for downed transports - soldiers to have a file with their deeds during service (killed x aliens during investigation of crash site y, saved private newguy from bleeding to death in defense of Moscow during terror raid z, died to a grenade when squaddie lowmorale dropped it during the nth attack on base somewhere) - more tilesets (nuclear powerplant, airport/train station/freight harbor) and in case the kickstarter ends up raising a ton of money (as I sure hope it will ) I wouldn't mind if you feel like pushing back the release date so you can put all this money to good use. Especially since we have access to the dev builds anyway Good luck! Alex
  11. Hi Daiky, Since I started another JA2 campaign just 3 days ago it'll be a while before I'll actually get around to try your binary, but would you mind answering a few questions? Are you planning on adding UFO Extender-esque stats information to the soldier equipment screen? I really like that feature. Do base defense missions still have the 80 item limit? Because while that made sense when deploying via a Skyranger/Avenger/whatsthethirdoneineverbuild, it was really annoying in base defense, especially since the game didn't use any kind of sense in choosing that 80 items for you. Does it work with the Steam version? Because my floppy drive hasn't worked in years and I don't know where my CD-ROM version is. Keep up the good work! Cheers, Alex
  12. With suppression being added (and having recently started my ~2mio'th JA2 campaign (v113 + custom maps to be precise )) I would appreciate crouched and prone movement too! At least for the humans. I could totally live with aliens anatomically incapable of crouching Sprinting isn't really necessary I think since someone already put that very eloquently (I'm paraphrasing here) "in an abstract turn based environment, a soldier using all his AP for movement is already sprinting". Forgot who said that, but it's a very valid point. Burst we already have, don't we? Aiming at body parts isn't necessary either imo and it would require a lot of additional work (possibly including reworking the armor system, the user interface and creating lots of new assets). Plus, who the hell knows where to aim at the giant flying octopus from space? btw, is your link for vanilla JA2 or v113? Cause headrock is the creator of HAM, an awesome former v113 extension (meanwhile folded into the main mod).
  13. That's what I meant to say. Since a turn based approximation of the real world can never be a perfect model the necessary simplifications can make it difficult to distinguish between concepts that are easily separable in a real time environment. Suppression fire has to affect the enemies turn. Do you shoot before that and have the effects carry over from your turn? Do you just give the order and see it executed during the enemies turn? In the later case if not all enemies move simultaneously during their turn, how do you handle that? The Ufo: After* series and various JA wannabe-titles try to handle all these problems with their pausable realtime combat systems. Frozen Synapse and Flotilla attempt the same with having simultaneous turns. Some titles are closer to original XCOM and JA like Silent Storm and use interrupts/RF. But I have to disagree with the assessment in your PS though. Cover and suppression serve the exact same purpose (stop the enemy from killing you). They just achieve it in different ways. Basically suppression (or "cover fire") creates cover out of thin air by sending a hail of bullets towards anything that wants to off you. It's one of the basic concepts in small scale infantry combat. When an enemy force is encountered the first thing to do is deploy the MG and keep them down while the rest of the group fans out, finds cover and waits for the sergeant to tell them which flanks to attack from. Lining up a shot is something that is hardly ever done and has a very limited scope, i.e. when defending a position with designated FOFs. At least that's what I remember from infantry school
  14. I agree with IceVamp that all projectiles (and probably explosions?) should have an effect on suppression. But either the algorithm behind it should benefit certain (kinds of) weapons, i.e. MGs and other rapid fire weapons over ARs over plasma rifles, or the weapons should get different bonuses to suppression if that is easier to implement. So say a single MG is enough to suppress area X while if you only have ARs with you you will need to spend the APs of 3 or 4 guys to achieve the same effect.
  15. It is quite similar. Since both suppression and reaction fire basically simulate real-time behavior in a turn based environment that isn't all that surprising imo. Both serve a similar purpose gameplay-wise too (deny the enemy the chance to kill you). Maybe the two systems shouldn't be separate at all but instead have reaction fire sap AP in addition to health and also on misses. But then again there is the problem of aliens not moving at the same time, so the first one that triggers RF gets suppressed, the group that follows doesn't. If you split it into two separate mechanics that problem can be avoided but it gets less intuitive. If you use suppression to just AP drain or accuracy drain you get a less believable simulation. Since the real world isn't turnbased there's always going to be compromises that have to be made. If you really break it down it's all about striking the best balance to get a system that is intuitive to use, fun to play, and a reasonable approximation of reality. It's difficult to find that sweet spot. I'm quite happy it's Chris' job and not mine
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