jackswift85

[quote who="davidabc66" reply="90" id="3170972"] The difference is that SOTS2 is actually released, for what, 8 months now? The reviews are out there, the game has been showing up for under $10 on Steam sales for quite some time, are they really going to spend the next year on a project that isn't likely to merit the expense? [/quote] I think their reasoning (and have probably convinced Paradox as well) was that SotS Prime never really took of

[quote who="TorinReborn" reply="81" id="3169216"]This game looks more like Sword of the Stars then MoO [/quote] lol, don't say that on the SotS boards, they'll take a strong disliking to you just like if anyone here compares Fallen Enchantress to Warlock:MotA. After playing through the newest beta, they have fixed & changed almost everything I disliked about the game (which was very little to begin with). It does play a lot more like MoO

Yep, the beta went live this week. Some more UI, AI, graphics and gameplay updates as well. That expansion disapproval is a killer. In one stroke the gameplay went from "colonize everything, build everything you can asap" to "Should I colonize that planet on the edge of my frontier? Do I have the resources to support and protect it for 30 turns? Should I use those resources instead to build up my military or improve my core planets? Maybe I should save up instead for another hero?"

Anyone looking for a much cheaper/better alternative to D3 should check out Titan's Quest: Immortal Throne (while waiting for Grim Dawn, Torchlight 2, etc.). I found it less tedious than D2 (not much less, but less... if you thought D2 was tedious you'll think TQ is as well), you have a greater depth of character customization, all sorts of great recipes and item generation, fun bosses (especially once you play past the normal mode - there's several ubermonsters out there lur

I was going to say Maxis but they merged with EA quite a while ago if I remember correctly.

[quote who="starkers" reply="39" id="3161593"] Quoting seanw3, reply 31 tiny desert island? Excuse me! Tiny? In landmass, Australia equals mainland USA. Furthermore! Not only is it an island... it is also a continent. [/quote] I blame the Mercator map projection most schools used when we were growing up. For the longest time a lot of my friends thought Greenland was just as big as Africa. Of course in that

[quote who="Krazikarl" reply="53" id="3157334"] I'm almost positive that they are going to release DLC fairly soon here that includes a ton of actually interesting items. There is no other explanation for the huge drop in the level of how interesting items are from D2 to D3. It'll probably cost $10-15 and include the 3rd crafter that they stripped late from the game.[/quote] After Blizzard's treatment of Starcraft II I would not be sur

I'm surprised we have one poster on here that thinks War of Magic is the superior game. Fallen Enchantress is better in every way than WoM (except the exclusion of the dynastic system, but mods will take care of that). You could have a small amount of fun with WoM, especially with the After the War mod, but maybe get bored/frustrated/sick of it after a week. FE in its beta state will keep you hooked for much longer.

KlaxXxon's reply was pretty on-point. The first couple of games I played the pacing was very very slow because of all the stuff to read and experience. Once you get the hang of what works, you can streamline your empire building to go pretty fast. There's also a pretty big difference between types and sizes of galaxies. Playing a small map with few "constellations" (clusters of stars separated by wormholes) will play out like some cage-fight skirmish whereas generating a large/huge ga

[quote who="seanw3" reply="69" id="3155838"]Just played the Alpha 2. They nerfed my repair strategy for the United Empire of Romney so now I am going for a tech-turtle with Sophons. [/quote] Don't you know that Sophons are the best race for the repair strategy? They get support modules at %50 off and get the special repair tech Adaptive Glue (way better than any other repair tech until the endgame). They're pretty much unstoppable unless you get hammered with 10 gadgillion mis

[quote who="onomastikon" reply="66" id="3155458"] Is, however, the AI poor? That's the $64,000 question to me. [/quote] Currently the AI has its quirks, but it's competent. On hard the AI can keep up with me economically and builds pretty decent sized fleets. It just needs to be able to use them. Many times I've seen the AI build up several huge fleets but let them sit at their homeworld instead of using them to crush and invade me. They also have

[quote who="Madcatter" reply="10" id="3155044"] Quoting Lord Xia, reply 4 Oh yea, it's a Diablo day today. Are there any other nerds out there that don't "get" all the Diablo love? I feel like I'm alone in this. The more I read about it the less interested I became. I was all about D2 and its multiplayer but this version stinks of exploitation and a lot of design choices that denigrate the gameplay I

Yeah, Kerberos took a lot longer than most of us thought it would take to "fix" the game (and it's still not done, just some UI optimization and AI left). When the all-clear flag does go up in ~1 month, this game will be a steal for the current prices it's at.

Spaceship customization is fairly straightforward. Basically you choose a hull type (Corvette, transport, destroyer, cruiser, battleship, dreadnaught... I'm not sure if there's more but usually by the time dreadnaughts are unlocked I've won the game), each of which have a certain amount of space/weight and special bonuses for certain types of modules (defenses, weapons, support, etc.). Then you select what modules you want on each ship hull. You aren't really

Alpha 2 is expected on Steam today, looks like they're already adding/fixing/balancing a ton of stuff. Full patch notes are here .

[quote who="Nimbin" reply="10" id="3151821"]Hasn't Apple been doing this for years?. Closed systems. Why when MS do it they get vilified but when Apple do it they get called forward thinking. I mean who cares?. People will still buy it because that's what people do. Instead of whining and bitching complain with your wallet. MS is allowed to do anything they want with the software *gasp* they develop. If you don't like it, then by hell don't bloody buy it, That's how you ex

Yeah, there still needs to be balance regarding the monsters out there. I felt the same way when playing SotS prime on a super slow research game and then all of a sudden one of their 'grand menaces' would pop out of nowhere and start eating all your planets. It made the game unfun and I would just usually turn them off in games where I knew it would be impossible to actually do something about them even if you planned for it. WHich was a shame, because doing that forced you to turn o

I have a lot of the same feelings as the OP, but I think it's just natural because I've been used to having a mega-sovereign from turn 1 for quite a while now. All of a sudden I can't just go rampaging, leveling and collecting loot and streamrolling the whole map. I also seem to get stuck starting in corners every time I start a new game and there's always some huge army blocking my only way out. It's a little frustrating but I know that these things will be balanced in th

Well, .914 showed up in my account, so on to the testing...

This conversation is remarkedly similar to the one on the Kerberos SotSII forums about Endless Space. In both situations the other game is different enough and caters to a different type of playstayle. There are some players that only want a deeper, more strategic experience and some players that want to be able to play a fun, strategic game that doesn't require a lot of investment to get enjoyment out of. And of course there's those players that want both types of game depending

After playing a few more rounds, the problems I had the first time around didn't seem as glaring. *After using and getting familiar with all the battle actions you get a good feel for what works and what doesn't. Especially since you're able to see what the enemy loadout is before a battle, so you can plan accordingly if they have overwhelming strength or weaknesses in any particular area. What I'd like to know now is if you play a successful "counter" card, if t

[quote who="LightStar" reply="7" id="3146040"]Doesn't bother me in the least bit, if you're not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about. Would you rather criminals get away with everything? [/quote] This. I know people love to throw around that Ben Franklin quote but this is basically just modernizing what the FBI has been doing forever to catch criminals. There's a fine (and fuzzy/murky) line between liberty/privacy and security but in my opinion this

[quote who="zigzag" reply="39" id="3145936"] Quoting mastroego, reply 32 I don't know why they keep designing tech trees this way. It's not like you can develop a high tech auto-homing missile without researching electronics and miniaturization first: knowledge is not sectorial in reality. Seems like meaningful tech trees can only be found in Civ and Alpha Centauri, still. I wouldn't worry about it too much. None of the specific technol

[quote who="Satrhan" reply="36" id="3145896"]Does anyone know what types of planets there are? I've seen quite a few rocky planets of different types, and an asteroid belt in one of the video's above, but what about gas giants? Doesn't seem right if these are ignored, just because the can't be settled doesn't mean they aren't full of useful resources. Or moons? Oh, and is combat only between capital ships? Or are there smaller ships, like fighters and

[quote who="Timmaigh" reply="24" id="3145201"]It has nice looking interface - i mean from purely aesthetic POV - but the ship design seem to be meh. Not really fan of this custom design approach, while it might be fun to "create" your own ships, its byproduct are almost always horribly looking spacecrafts...like in this game and its other competitors like Legend of Pegasus or obviously SotS. [/quote] You take that back! SotS's ship designs/graphics are some of the best ever (and p