57 replies to this topic

[wuffles]

Tried 1.2 yesterday doing the core worlds as I used to do with 1.1 since I do not like the larger galaxy. Restarted a couple of times as began to learn a few things about how the mod now plays.

Could do with some advice on the start of a core worlds since at the moment I just seem to be getting pounded by the AI at the start which seems to be sending fleets it could not possibly of built yet at me. Even on easy the AI is sending a fleet of 2 full size mon cal cruisers, 2 dreads, 2 carracks, 2 small mon cal + various small ships at my planets. It hit coruscant, week later corulag, week later coruscant again. Each time it was using one of these fleets, then it hit me with another fleet that was as big as my coruscant and corulag fleets combined.

How am I supposed to be able to build up to take planets if the AI can just get fleets like that so early on? Its not like the rebels had taken over the galaxy either there had been no droid messages saying a planet had been taken over on this game.

Some things I noticed while getting hammered was that Golan defense stations as currently implemented are completely worthless. They need a massive range boost on the weapons to have any value as at the moment on several maps the golans are at the back of the map and so cannot help at all with defending a planet. The other alternative would be to give them an unlimited complement of nasty fighter/bombers so that you cannot ignore them. As it stands I would much rather have a trade station than a golan as the trade station would offer more defense by increasing your cash supply so you can buy some ships which actually are useful.

Tried a couple of ground combats, got destroyed by trying to take a planet using manual control, but auto resolve took the planet with only the loss of an at-st unit. The AT-AT seem to have fairly poor pathing and so kept getting confused and destroyed by the towline things. The biggest problem with ground defense for me at the moment though is it takes a couple of minutes of the game hanging before it even tries to start ground combat (I am guessing its doing the autosave before battle).

Do not want to sound too negative but so far I enjoyed 1.0 and 1.1 more. Hopefully once I learn to adapt to playing 1.2 I will find it much more fun. It is clear you have put a LOT of time and effort into this mod and there is a lot of potential so will continue to try the mod out.

[evilbobthebob]

The issue with placement of Golan stations in battle is something we intend to fix. In terms of their utility, if you can get them to tractor pretty much any ship and then activate their power to weapons they can take out almost anything. It just takes a little time.

The strength of fleets in Core Worlds is mostly due to their ability to bypass hyperlanes and hit your planets directly. We're working on this kind of thing as well for a later version. I recommend you build as many dreadnaughts/bombers as possible, those things together can defend against most heavier threats.

The autosave before land combat isn't something we can fix unfortunately. The speed at which it saves is almost entirely based around your PC's performance.

Land combat itself is currently much, much better than it was in previous versions but we know it can be improved on. Pathfinding should be improved with larger maps and better AI.

Thanks for the critical feedback.

[Phoenix Rising]

There's little I can disagree with in your assessment. Since the new AI came online, CW has probably played the worst out of any of the campaigns. Unfortunately, not all overhauls can be done immediately and we decided to put that one off until v1.3 rather than delay v1.2 by months.

The best thing you can do to reduce the lag before a land battle is to use a hard drive with fast write speeds. For illustrative purposes, you can set your slot0 save file to read-only to see how much the engine's unnecessary auto-save is slowing us down, but I wouldn't keep it that way permanently (I think doing so eventually creates exceptions).

As always, bear in mind that we're not vanilla and don't play like it. Stang, we're hardly v1.1 anymore. You'll get used to it.

[Henry X]

Try the Thrawn Campaign. So good...

[Brashin]

Is that the best one. Which one is the best optimized?

[evilbobthebob]

Core Worlds is the fastest in terms of performance. Operation Skyhook is the smoothest "historical" campaign. Inner Rim isn't too bad. Operation Shadow Hand is the laggiest. So many super fleets!

[wuffles]

Played some more tonight and making some progress using infantry to raid a couple of neutral worlds leaving the powerful fleets above them as protection against the ai. At least this time the AI did not attack until week 5 at which point it attacked kuat which was handy as I had been building some heavy dread mark 4s which tend to be pretty strong vs unupgraded ships.

Hopefully as I learn my way around the mod life should get easier.

Tried your suggestion of making slot 0 read only and sure enough it went to the loading part pretty much straight away. My save files are 50mb is this normal for this campaign?

Thanks for your help and glad to see you not too upset at my post as I know it sounds a bit negative but just wanted to provide some feedback. I can certainly understand not wanting to delay the mod anymore as it seems to be stable so far and there is a lot in it. Looking forward to making more progress anyway.

[Phoenix Rising]

40-70 MB saves seems to be the case. Of course, it depends on the campaign.

[Ghostrider]

My tip for Core Worlds: Be aggresive and build Planetary Cannon / Ion Cannon.

As Empire, take Kalist VI in Deep Core as that gives you a very nice bounty on Alliance forces.

You should have enough forces in the Core for a pre-emptive strike on a nearby Rebel World. Hit and fade. You'll take losses, but if you are careful you should do more damage than you take. This will force the AI to split it's resources.

I have had to sometimes hit an enemy world 4 or 5 times, each time taking out 2 or 3 ships and then retreating before taking too many losses. Watch out for Interdictors.

As Rebels, you should be able to move enough fleet assets to a combined force for a pre-emptive strike. This buys time. Build and look for weaknesses. Keep nibbling away at the enemy.

I managed to inflict serious damage to Imperial space forces this way. But DON'T try land invasions unless you are prepared to lose everything.
One of the testers flattened Imperial space forces and tried to assualt Coruscant with 10+ vehicles and lots of heroes.

It was going really well until Palpatine appeared and Force Corrupted all of the forces in the landing zone....

[Hanti]

(...)
The best thing you can do to reduce the lag before a land battle is to use a hard drive with fast write speeds. For illustrative purposes, you can set your slot0 save file to read-only to see how much the engine's unnecessary auto-save is slowing us down, but I wouldn't keep it that way permanently (I think doing so eventually creates exceptions).
(...)

Thanks for this tip. I set it to read-only and it works better. There's still a lot of lag like always in PR. But I like land combat very much
I've not played much yet, but it looks very promising.

[wuffles]

Thanks for the tip on Kalist VI. Think I had grabbed that the other night while playing and the bounty does make a big difference. In one failed attack on a strong rebel planet I made 18k in salvage which is very helpful for replacing losses. Most annoying loss was when I was trying to attack the rebel planet at the right of the map and attacked the top right corner neutral with a bulwark in it. I need dig out the old line that tilts the map a bit since I remember that helps a lot on core worlds for selecting the right planet.

Having made some progress in my easy game I am beginning to really enjoy the mod. Looking at other posts it looks like quite a few of us finding the start of core worlds somewhat punishing. I dont know if the starting fleets can be adjusted per difficulty level but if they could then possibly toning them down for the easier difficulty levels might help.

For ground combat at the moment I generally auto-resolve as I tend to suck at it and the AI just murders me, but most planet will succumb to repeated raiding by 3xstormtrooper groups. Been uprating them although dont know if that matters for auto resolving.

[Phoenix Rising]

Thanks. We don't have all the flash for ground combat yet, but I'm convinced that the mechanic is absolutely solid. If you want a challenge, invade Nal Hutta in OSH. One of the most brutal fights in the game, in my opinion.

[Ghostrider]

Having made some progress in my easy game I am beginning to really enjoy the mod. Looking at other posts it looks like quite a few of us finding the start of core worlds somewhat punishing. I dont know if the starting fleets can be adjusted per difficulty level but if they could then possibly toning them down for the easier difficulty levels might help.

The starting fleets are fixed, the difficultty level changes the AI and the cash. Core is really hard to balance becuase of the proximity of all the planets.
Remove just one Destroyer or Capital and it goes from hard to "not a challenge"

I plan to write a strategy guide to cover this soon - when real life lets me.

The problem is that I've tested Core and I can whip the opposition with the current starting forces.
The trick is to combine either the best of the Corulag/Coruscant fleet and smash Chandrila or combine the best of Ralltiir/Alderaan/Chandrila and flatten Corulag.

Wait for the AI to redistribute its ships to cover the now unguarded planet and repeat.

Don't rush into enemy space. Sit on the edge of the enemy map and pick ships off and retreat to a corner. Repeat.
As soon as the CC-7700 is down, pull back and let shields recharge and then retreat.
Attack again with all forces at full shield and hull strength.

One thing it does is teach you how to make the most of your units and use your fleet maneuverabillity. Charging straight into the middle of enemy formations is tantamount to suicide.

[Phoenix Rising]

On planet positions, v1.2 is the last release with PR placement. Our galaxy will fit the atlas in v1.3. All things considered, we did a fantastic job of diving locations before that information was set.

[mitch]

Amazing Modd. Initially the amount to "learn" is overwhelming but is so worth it. The AI always beats the shit out of me, but that's ok.....makes it incredibly exciting and forces me to calculate my moves. The free worlds aren't just there for the taking either, you really have to be selective of your planets, and sometimes it comes down to what is easiest to take. Can't wait for the next manual addition so i can figure out all the details of how to best expand my empire. Cheers,

Mitch

P.S. Has any one ever found a solution to Nvidia card dedicated laptops and being unable to set the texture and water details in the graphics options?

[Phoenix Rising]

It's less about memorizing counters and more about knowing how to interpret the stats!

[wuffles]

Pretty much completed my easy game of core worlds as have just been sat over all the rebel planets while teching up so I can see what the later ships look like, despite the fact realistically I could end the fight now since I have total space dominance. Will be interesting to start a new game on medium using the knowledge I have of the mod now.

Some things I noticed were that corvettes still seem largely pointless as they are big enough for the capitals to hit pretty easily but dont have that much more shield/hull than transports meaning they die too fast to be useful.

The dreads (praetor etc) also seem not worth it as they are very expensive and take ages to build. If anything though it could be that the capitals like ISD and especially tector variants are too cheap. Admittedly I was only on easy but a fully upgraded tector is a monster that is pretty hard to kill and packs a massive punch. Admittedly it is a bit vulnerable to massed fighter/bomber/transports but it does seem to need quite a few to down it.

Still need to try some more ground combat as well, will try taking these rebel worlds using fully upgraded stormtroopers/AT-AT. Will be interesting to see if the ground unit upgrades are as strong as the space ones.

I really do like the way the upgrades in this mod really do make a noticable difference, I mean the difference between an ISD-I and IV is pretty huge.