Campaign Feedback

from Stardock Forums

Since the developers are looking for feedback on the campaign specifically, I spent a fair amount of time over this past weekend playing through the campaign (challenging difficulty).

General comments:

- There is a rather large discrepancy among difficulty among missions.

- Please change the color on the AI that is similar to the "available missions" white color. I kept trying to start on those areas, and I couldn't because it looked open.

- I assume its known, but the indication of winning the campaign is lacking.

- Some of the perks are far superior to other similar perks. For example, 100 goods vs 100 water. The goods provides an almost instant upgrade by selling, or plunk down pleasure domes or multiple hacker arrays for easy profits.

- its difficult to catch up once the first mission is lost. Puts you far behind the opponents and you lose out on perks.

Colony Specific:

Robotic: Significantly easier than the other types at the same difficulty. Many of the missions were over very quickly, as its very easy to make a pile of cash off steel/aluminum and buy a ton of stock early. Rarely got past colony  Probably too easy to acquire power perks considering the robotic only requires power.Maybe I just got lucky with the perks for winning?

Scavenger: The first couple missions were more difficult, depending on the colony type matched up against. Robotic/Expansive were hardest. Scientific stagnated a few times at level 1. Scavenger became easier as more perks were acquired.

Expansive: Failed several times at expansive at all different points throughout multiple campaign trys. The matches dragged out quite a while. It was difficult to generate cash to buy out competitors. Early missions were hard because there was always something interfering with cash generation, whether it was power, steel costs, or life support. Fuel was almost always a very large drain as well. Producing life support didnt generate cash, merely removed the debt hemorrhaging. Later missions were hard as well because I never found a reliable way to generate cash from resources. Many of the staples, aluminum/steel, had the market saturated and suppressed. The life supports were unreliable as well. I found the "balanced" nature made it harder to generate a sellable resource as it was very easy to run into a problem somewhere. Either too much debt from expensive life supports, power, etc. or everything became overproduced. Either way, it led to long drawn out matches where I lost becuase I didn't get the offworld. Or lost because I hadn't invested enough into goods/glass/etc to take advantage of higher prices.

Scientific: I won not too long ago with scientific by taking advantage of the patent perks. Can skip alot of the basic building boosts and spend the income boosting steel mines/glass mines etc.

4,050 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks - where would you say the discrepancy is coming from among missions? Do you mean that robotic were easier in general, or that some levels were easier (with only one opponent, maybe)?

we'll fix the color issue and the end game text.

Mainly, do you feel like the experience was different enough from the main game? Would you play again at a higher level, or would you rather have different starting Executives who had a different set of perks per HQ type? (a scientific one that wasn't based on patents, for example...)

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Also, I would be very open to ideas for new executives who had powers that break the game in some specific way. We can be very creative here because these powers won't be available in MP AND the AI doesn't need to use them.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Soren_Johnson, reply 1

Thanks - where would you say the discrepancy is coming from among missions? Do you mean that robotic were easier in general, or that some levels were easier (with only one opponent, maybe)?

we'll fix the color issue and the end game text.

Mainly, do you feel like the experience was different enough from the main game? Would you play again at a higher level, or would you rather have different starting Executives who had a different set of perks per HQ type? (a scientific one that wasn't based on patents, for example...)

In a way, both.

Robotic was very easy to play through the entire campaign. Picked up a power perk (free wind turbine, iirc) on the first mission. After that, I'd found, place an aluminum mine and a steel mine. Upgrade as fast as possible (assuming an ok start location) and then make more steel mines. At colony size 2 make more steel mines and maybe another power source, just unload everything for cash. Dump Steel and aluminum for cash and just buy the opponents stock early. Very easy to make enough cash to win. Worked almost every time. Later missions towards the end which required more cash, after picking up a goods shipment perk, I'd do the same, except expand to level 3, and build tons of steel and a pair of hacker arrays. Spam the shortage on steel and sell a few hundred units of steel for a ton of cash. Only needing to worry about power made it very easy to manage every mission.

Some of the missions within a campaign were easier than others. I assume its because some of the AI's had lost and didn't have as many or as useful perks and really lagged behind in power. It did seem that playing a mission against a robotic colony were typically more difficult than others as the robotics tended to invest heavily into goods which maintained a higher price. Missions against scientific were sometimes easiest as they sometimes stagnated at level 1. Expansive posed a challenge if they weren't eliminated early as they could grow quickly. Resource distribution sometimes played a role. Maps with rare resources could be a challenge if you didn't get that key resource.

The experience was different from the main game. It was nice having thing flow from one mission to the next as you developed your HQ and tried to focus on certain things. I'd like the campaign to be a little bit longer, and it would be fun more things would carry over from mission to mission within the campaign.

I'll think about types of perks that would be fun to play with. IE Scavenger getting pirates each level as they used to.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Also.

Fuel was a bit of an annoyance at times. When you invest in a few quarry or mine upgrades, it was extremely easy to have a ton of blimps going at the same time, driving the price up (and debt!) very quickly.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Soren_Johnson, reply 2

Also, I would be very open to ideas for new executives who had powers that break the game in some specific way. We can be very creative here because these powers won't be available in MP AND the AI doesn't need to use them.

Perhaps you could have a Scientific executive retain research and engineering upgrades, but have the research cost more/take longer?