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jjandrah

Join Date 11/2008

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2.6 Campaign review, "Imminent Crisis"

yes, it needs help

As others have mentioned on the forum, the first campaign Imminent Crisis has eroded away, from launch to an expansion and then major changes all the way through 2.6.

I was fortunate enough to play through the campaign during launch week of original Ashes. I still have a fondness for the chat-box style text delivery for story as it was at launch. With this in mind, I've played through the campaign as it stands as of 2.6. Indeed, there are problems with how it lives now. I kept notes as I went along and have recommendations for how I propose to restore it.

Now, to the details! Spoilers, obviously, if you haven't played through it.

Kepler (Mission 1)
Remove the dreadnoughts from the camera pan of units fighting, otherwise OK.

Cygnus
At launch, I remember that this took several waves to clear, as suggested by the story text. Way too easy on Normal - it can be cleared in one simple wave. I recommend fixing this by adding a larger defense force (unit count).

Deneb
Brainwhale! This was a favorite back at launch, and remains so today. It has generally held up quite well. It is still a decent challenge to stop the Brainwhale with the units and economy available to you. It is made slightly harder today because Engineers can no longer heal units though, and you do not get medics yet.

Recommendation:
- Edit tooltip text of Engineer so that it no longer says it heals units
- Allow Medics to be built [FIXED]

Yorkshire
Ahh.... this mission needs some changes to bring it back in line.
Suddenly orbitals! Lots of them. Suddenly units! Three new unit construction facilities, three new defense towers (plus 5 different upgrades), dreadnoughts, air, advanced air, four new tech buildings.

I played it through only using the units I'm suggesting be available, and it went pretty fast. It was much easier than it should be for Normal. Actually, way too easy...

I restarted the mission, set the speed to Fastest. I then got up, left the room to do dishes and feed the kids. I came back to a victory screen! Fascinating! The mission wins itself. I ran this trial again and watched: Mac defeated Splinter at 18 minutes, Artix at 32 minutes, and Ventrix at 36 minutes. Ran the trial for a third time, after Mac defeated Splinter a lone rogue dreadnought found it's way to my nexus and killed me - he was still on his way to winning even after this fluke.

https://imgur.com/a/ODJpg

Recommendation:
- Remove Orbital Nullifier (enemy gets to keep theirs)
- Remove Energy Projector
- Remove Intensive Care orbital
- Remove Rush Build orbital
- Remove Adv. Sky Factory and units: Air Maurader, Strat Bomber. (all sides)
- Remove all turret upgrades: Falcon, Air Elim, Barrager, Artillery, Oblivion. (all sides)
- Remove Dread Launch and all three Dreadnoughts (all sides)
- Add Repair Bay (don't split tech building features)
- Move voiceover/text for repair bay from Calethaon to this mission.
- Add Plasma Storm (don't split tech building features)
- Move the 'Amplifiers' and 'Amplify the amplifers' voiceover/text from Silgul to this mission
- Remove Nano Mesh orbital
- Remove Orbital Jam orbital
- Remove tech otherwise not allowed for you from all sides (Mac), like Orbital command, refinery, drone bays, orbital fabricator....
- Change "Build an armory" goal to "Build a sky factory"
- Add optional goal "Upgrade unit health with quanta"
- Move voiceover/text "you can also upgrade units with quanta" from Noctus to this mission
- Add optional goal "Build 20 quantum relays"
- Then re-test to see if Mac still peanut butters in blue all over the map on his own, and tweak him downwards appropriately.

Calethaon
This is a great introduction to upgraded turrets and base defenses. This was a great "king of the hill" map with Turinium at launch. There's a few problems with it today, and I have a feeling it's due to the turret balances that happened over the years. Turrets also seem to be more expensive now compared to the intake...

This mission is also too easy at the start. If you literally do nothing but watch, you will survive until the "final wave" of Substrate units comes at you.

Recommendation:
- Remove Dread Launch and all three Dreadnoughts (allow Substrate waves to keep theirs)
- Remove Orbital Fabricator
- Remove Orbital Fabricator building spawn at start of mission
- Remove Call Sapper orbital
- Remove Orbital Nullifier
- Change goal "Build a repair bay" and "Build a drone bay" to "Upgrade 5 turrets"
- Remove Nano Mesh orbital
- Remove Orbital Jam orbital
- Add Plasma Storm orbital
- Add EMP Pulse orbital
- Remove Sapper spawns
- Add Falcon Anti-Air upgrade option from the start, instead of "beginning to build air" voiceover/text. All other turret upgrade options are already available, including Air Eliminator. [FIXED]
- Change Energy Projector so that it cannot be built until the voiceover/text for drone bay shows up. At this time, also add Charon, Intensive Care orbital, and EMP Pulse orbital.
- Add 6 more metal deposits and 5 more radioactive deposits inside the hill you're defending. The general take of this is that you have more than enough money, but you're hurrying to get as many turrets up as you can on the bluffs before the big waves come in.
- Add more, and bigger, waves of splinters to buffet themselves against the turrets you've built up.

Roceda
A delightful blitz. Harder than it should be on Normal.

Recommendation:
- Remove Advanced Sky Factory and units: Marauder, Strat Bomber (all sides)
- Remove Dread Launch and all three Dreadnoughts (all sides)
- Add Refinery
- Remove Orbital Fabricator
- Remove Incursion orbital
- Remove Sentry orbital
- Remove Nano-Mesh
- Slow down the enemy's early capping of Turinium generators.
- Remove all other tech the enemy has but you don't.
- Add barrager turret upgrade (all other upgrades are available) [FIXED]
- Add mobile nullifier

Decanus
Heavily scripted and unusual map, but still generally functional. Couple issues.

Sappers can't build advanced defenses (bug?). [FIXED] You can also see plenty of buildings through the fog of war in an interesting way:

https://imgur.com/a/vL99K

The camera shifts that are scripted for when the Hades spawn looks broken. Also, the Air Elim upgrade doesn't require a factory but the Falcon AA does?

Recommendation:
- Remove Dread Launch and all three Dreadnoughts (all sides)
- Remove camera shift script for when the Hades spawn
- Don't allow 'Call Sapper' until 'Engineer Drop' is allowed
- Add mobile nullifier
- Add Plasma Storm orbital
- Add EMP Pulse orbital
- Put an orbital jammer and one AA blossom tower at the bottom-left resource node, otherwise you'll go here instead of where the mission suggests.
- Add Charon
- Remove Nano Mesh
- Add Refinery

Noctus
Titled "Dreadnaughts". OK! This is a great mission.

Recommendation:
- Remove Advanced Sky Factory and units: Marauder, Strat Bomber (all sides)

Falnas
Generally serviceable as-is.

Recommendation:
- Add goal "Build advanced sky factory"
- Add Repair Bay
- Remove scripted camera steals during opponent self-announcements
- Remove Orbital Strike from enemy

Artorius
Slightly harder than it should be on Normal due to starting timing. Delay a little bit longer.

Recommendation:
- Delay the festivities a little bit longer on Normal [FIXED]
- Snip "build a sky factory" from voiceover/text
- Remove goal "build a sky factory"
- Remove Orbital Command
- Remove Orbital Strike

Silgul
During the mission, the voiceover/text indicates that all allies get resources from an ally-claimed node, when in practice it doesn't appear to work that way. Otherwise, this mission is still functional. Slightly easier than it should be on Normal.

Recommendation
- Add goal "Build orbital command"
- Add goal "Use Orbital Strike"
- Add Barrager turret upgrade [FIXED]
- Make enemy's pre-existing entrenchments more entrenched.

Drengi
Endgame. Epic mission. I remember losing this one over and over, trying different strategies until I got it. Today, it's a bit easier on Normal than it should be.

Recommendation:
- Make Athena more resistant against rushes
- Tune Valen/Haalee up. Mac needs to lose against Valen/Haalee unless you help him. There needs to be the real possibility that if you don't help him, he will be overrun and that hardpoint he points out to you will actually be important. This doesn't seem to happen today. Additionally, neither Athena nor Haalee made an air attempt at my nexus during my 2.6 playthrough. I certainly had to guard against air attacks when I originally played through it.

[EDIT: 2.65 added fixes for things. Yay!]

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igncom1

There is one meta item that has made all the campaigns easy mode:

"Removed diminishing returns for having multiple Engineers build a structure or boost a factory.

Each assisting engineer increases base build speed by 50%, up from 50/25/12.5/6.25"

The enemy AI doesn't seem to know how to use this giving the player a huge advantage to be able to pop out units really quick. For example, that Deneb mission that used to be so hard? Imagine having 100 Artemis to fight it with? The enemy could have a Nest Of The Queen now and it wouldn't matter.

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Speaking as a complete newcomer (I bought the game in the recent sale and started playing at the weekend): I found the difficulty to be fine for the most part. Yorkshire I found fine, and one of the more enjoyable missions, since I wasn't under time pressure and was - with the dreadnoughts - able to slowly march forwards.

Falnas and Artorius, though, I have found extremely difficult. I dropped the difficulty to beginner on the former (though I might have some idea how to deal with it better now having completed it), and rage-quit out of my last attempt on Easy on the latter, simply because there doesn't seem to be enough time to build enough defences to withstand (on my last attempt) four near-simultaneous waves of attacks.

I agree the scripted camera steals are a nuisence. I would say either don't do them, or (like a lot of other games do), just pause the game while they play (or allow them to be skipped, unless you can I just don't know what key that is.)

Quoting Xaosinc,

reply 1

There is one meta item that has made all the campaigns easy mode:

"Removed diminishing returns for having multiple Engineers build a structure or boost a factory.

Each assisting engineer increases base build speed by 50%, up from 50/25/12.5/6.25"

The enemy AI doesn't seem to know how to use this giving the player a huge advantage to be able to pop out units really quick. For example, that Deneb mission that used to be so hard? Imagine having 100 Artemis to fight it with? The enemy could have a Nest Of The Queen now and it wouldn't matter.

Showing my ignorance here (as I was trying that in the aforementioned mission), but doesn't that just increase the metal and radioactives spend rate as well, or am I just thinking too much Supreme Commander?

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Quoting Aotrs Commander,

reply 2

Quoting Xaosinc,

reply 1

The resources used are the same, It just uses them faster. You have to do a good job of economic expansion to compensate, but I can pull it off every time without issue.

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Quoting Xaosinc,

reply 3

The resources used are the same, It just uses them faster. You have to do a good job of economic expansion to compensate, but I can pull it off every time without issue.

It would appear then, the main trouble with this mission is that - you can't win it first time (anymore), since the timing is so tight, you have to know exactly what to do, basically. (So an actual nephyte like myself has no chance, unless they have a much greater tolerance for repetetion/trail-and-error than I do...!)

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Quoting Aotrs Commander,

reply 4

Quoting Xaosinc,

reply 3

The resources used are the same, It just uses them faster. You have to do a good job of economic expansion to compensate, but I can pull it off every time without issue.

I have about a month into this game now. 2.6 patch changed a few things around and borked up the balance of things a bit, but the overall strategy has not changed much. I would assume that there is probably a patch from the Devs coming to fix some of the campaign balance.

This game seems to be about learning the tricks. That one mission you struggled on is not really much different from the rest. The strat is pretty much the same in all the campaigns:

1. Expand Fast

2. Build lots (and the ROCK MEANS LOTS) of air units.

3. Build dreadnoughts (for long scenarios/big maps)

4. Put together armies.

To me, the campaign maps are usually won in the first minute of the game. That's not to say I get a victory screen in 1 minute. I just mean that you can tell by the momentum whether you will win or not. Especially on hard difficulties. The setup of your base is the absolute key. The real skill factor here is figuring out how to micro less and multitask (Macro) more .

Economy, Offense, Quanta, Unlocks, Defense. this is your order of importance

Economy - Rapid capping of generators and then building them up as much as possible and as fast as possible. Especially radioactives, which is always the rarer of the 2 resources. Plan your move/attack strategy around where the radioactive generators are. Remember to link the expansions to your owned area via the map ley lines or you don't get the resources (and the generator will blink on the map). Know when to pause production in order to stabilize your economy.

Offense - This is pretty much the bread & butter of RTS games. Knowing what and how many to build is the key. To get a good idea, watch some of the multiplayer matches on youtube. These guys are very good at setting up their factories to spit out the right units.

Quanta - Often the key to any victory is having enough of this. You want mass quantities of this as fast as possible. Always have multiple engineers working on building quanta generators.

Unlocks - Learn what you need to build to get the unit/upgrade/building/orbital you want. Also don't build what you don't need for your strategy.

Defense - against the computer, you only need a bare minimum at your rear positions. Forward bases need a lot more as the computer is prone to massive armies and full frontal assault. Jammers are your friend because the computer likes incursions and plasma storms.

<EDIT> Sorry to derail your thread, jjandrah,

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Aww, that's ok! I'm just glad to know other people care about the campaign too.

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Just finished campaign one on normal. It took some hours (and one failed attept last night) - principally because Haylee and co spam orbitals, and the mobile nullifiers don't sit themselves in the middle of the armies very well, so it's a case of advance under orbital nullifiers.

(Also, what does it say about modern society these days when HayLee was slagging of humanity and I was sta there going "well, she's not wrong...!"

The years I have behind me, the more I start to think that maybe there's a good reason the machine intelligences always go SkyNet...!)

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Mac was well intentioned, as was that other Post-Human who tried to help the Substrate. The rest have kind let their new existence go to their heads and are actively the cause of the war.

Hell, in the second campaign the leaders of the PHC even speculate on the idea of asteroid annihilating Mars because they can't transform it, which would undoubtedly annihilate all of the humans on the surface.

So if anything, the Substrate and Post Humans supporting the Substrate are on the side of humanity in this case. It's the overruling leadership of the PHC that can't be controlled by Mac that is the real threat. Mac even wanted Haylee on the council to begin with but was shut down immediately.

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Okay, on the Substrate campaign: Leo.

I am once again, completely stuck. Again, it seems like it's time, since I don't have any resources to build up and defences (nor any offense) before the AI starts throwing a continuous stream of cruisers and to 19 minutes, I'm told the autofactories have upgraded again (I just quit the mission at that point). I don't have any resouces for quanta (so searching for the factories by scan is out), I can't build pulverisers (or Air Habingers - harbingER, I should say) fast enough to attack the factories. The defences provided are totally in adequate, and even reinforcing them, the continous stream of frigates tears them down (and can't even build regenators until later).

I have a finite resources stream (bar a trickle of metal), I have to simultaneously do recon, defence and attack against an infinite stream on steadily increasing enemies, and I don't have time to set-up for any of them.

Is this another one that is unbalanced by the patch revisions again or is there some strategy I can't see?

Edit: nevermind, I had one last try, and it appears that the strategy is to build basically nothing but Air Harbingers and send them out individually and to not even attempt to engage the air defences protecting the crates, just snipe them with shift attack and run away (the brief telling you to use Harvesters really doesn'thelp, by the by!) and I seem to be sort of managing.

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hahaha Leo is the worst.

1. Build 1 aviary right where your constructor starts. As soon as it is built, set it to auto build harbingers

2. Take your constructor down and build some more basic annihilator cannons. Close up the 'V' shape if you understand what I mean. Don't upgrade them. After those are built, send the constructor back up to boost the aviary.

3. As you said above, just shift-click on the crates and then set the final waypoint somewhere out of range of their turrets.

4. Take groups of 2 harbingers out to hunt factories. I would usually have a group of 2 on the right side of the map, and a group on the left side.

5. 6 Harbingers is enough to kill the enemy nexus if you first precision kill the air defenses. With 8 or more harbingers, the anti air no longer matters. Just go all in to the nexus

6. You want to finish this before dreadnoughts start entering your base. Killing at least 3/4 of the factories will help a lot

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Agreed, I hated Leo the first time around.

One trick I found was to leave my Harbingers outside my base while I built up a new army of them. That way they could contribute to base defense while I gathered enough.

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That was pretty

Quoting Xaosinc,

reply 10

hahaha Leo is the worst.

1. Build 1 aviary right where your constructor starts. As soon as it is built, set it to auto build harbingers

2. Take your constructor down and build some more basic annihilator cannons. Close up the 'V' shape if you understand what I mean. Don't upgrade them. After those are built, send the constructor back up to boost the aviary.

3. As you said above, just shift-click on the crates and then set the final waypoint somewhere out of range of their turrets.

4. Take groups of 2 harbingers out to hunt factories. I would usually have a group of 2 on the right side of the map, and a group on the left side.

5. 6 Harbingers is enough to kill the enemy nexus if you first precision kill the air defenses. With 8 or more harbingers, the anti air no longer matters. Just go all in to the nexus

6. You want to finish this before dreadnoughts start entering your base. Killing at least 3/4 of the factories will help a lot

That was close to what I did, in the end, though I didn't bother with bolstering the defences any. I managed to find all the factories and knobble the dreadnought before they got too many of them (though I naerly missed on at the end there).

I worked my way through the mext missions and just got to Alnilam and practically wet myself (and it was definitely not a missions I could start without a few hours spare! Eight or nine enemies and me all on my own (with a disturbingly pre-prepared defence, which concernes me...)

The biggest worry on that is, I think, whether the AIs will try to go for the turinium generators of just try to kill me...

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That mission isn't so bad as killing the AI's bases gives you generators in their place. You can just take the bottom third of the map and bunker down.

That said I never play any of the missions on anything harder then normal difficulty. At the very least the AI bug of them pooling units in their own base rather then attacking works to your advantage at the moment.

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Lots of folks commented on maps from the next campaign. I'll work on a campaign review for Escalation next, see if I encounter some of the same things.

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Quoting Aotrs Commander,

reply 2

While I have started a thread specifically, I figured I may as well add my two pence here as well, since I have both come in cold and sort of the target for normal difficulty (at least as far as the first 3/4 of the campaign, anyway.)

Speaking as a complete newcomer (I bought the game in the recent sale and started playing at the weekend): I found the difficulty to be fine for the most part. Yorkshire I found fine, and one of the more enjoyable missions, since I wasn't under time pressure and was - with the dreadnoughts - able to slowly march forwards.

Falnas and Artorius, though, I have found extremely difficult. I dropped the difficulty to beginner on the former (though I might have some idea how to deal with it better now having completed it), and rage-quit out of my last attempt on Easy on the latter, simply because there doesn't seem to be enough time to build enough defences to withstand (on my last attempt) four near-simultaneous waves of attacks.

I also mentioned Falnass here and probably another post around 1,5 months ago:

https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/485151/get;3692307

And, more importantly, I suggested to review the campaign since the latest releases.

Since then I did not touch the game. Wait & see.

I'm happy to see new players come and voice their opinion.

By principle I think that a set difficulty should be linear through a campaign in a game. But in this one, from 1 mission to another the difficulty is very irregular.

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