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jjandrah

Join Date 11/2008

+21

2.6 Campaign review, "Escalation"

once more, with quanta

Part 2 for campaign review as of the 2.6 patch: Escalation. See the earlier thread for Imminent Crisis.

There's a few story oddities that don't line up with the timeline of this happening after the end if Imminent Crisis, such as Orion Spur's text/voiceover of "the ability to upgrade defenses" and Lagoan's text/voiceover about "what is that, almost as big as a dreadnaught" when referring to the PHC Hera cruiser. [FIXED]

Generally splitting tech building features is bad for players feeling them out. Unfortunately, the Caregiver comes late in the campaign and the dependent tech building Energy Modulator is needed early for shield regen building and economy. The least-bad option seems to be to edit the tooltip text per-mission.

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

Orion's Spur (Mission 1)

This plays the new intro movie. It's.... fine. The original one from vanilla Ashes would be a better intro to the Escalation campaign. Pretty please add it back in for just the campaign intro?

Mechanically, it's fine all around though. Few things to remove at this early stage.

Recommendation:
- Snip the "I have invented... ability to upgrade defenses" text/voiceover
- Remove Quantum Jammer
- Remove Orbital Jam orbital
- Remove Subspace Streamer
- Remove Antimatter Detonate
- Remove Gateway
- Remove Nano Transport
- Remove Call Avatar
- Remove Nano Mesh Barrier
- Remove Orbital Drone Relay
- Remove Shredder Turret upgrade
- Remove Nanite Assassination orbital
- Remove Drone Swarm orbital
- Remove Shredder Turret spawn at home base
- Remove Starburst, Sky Ender turret upgrades
- Edit the Energy Modulator tooltip text to no longer claim it unlocks Caregiver

Betelgeuse

With the air changes for substrate, you can no longer build air units.... which you need for this map, because the opponent cannot be reached by ground. You can still queue the basic air units for an existing army though, but the orders can't be fulfilled. Grrrr.

Recommendation:
- Add Aviary. [FIXED]
- Remove dread launch, dreadnaughts
- Remove Quantum Jammer
- Remove Orbital Jam orbital
- Remove Subspace Streamer
- Remove Eradicator
- Remove Antimatter Detonate
- Remove Gateway
- Remove Nano Transport
- Remove Call Avatar
- Remove Nano Mesh Barrier
- Remove Orbital Drone Relay
- Remove Shredder Turret upgrade
- Remove Nanite Assassination orbital
- Remove Drone Swarm orbital
- Remove Starburst, Sky Ender turret upgrades
- Move "What is that? that's almost as big as a dreadnaught" from Lagoan to here, on first Hera sighting. [FIXED]

- Add optional goal "Build 10 Punishers"
- Edit the Energy Modulator tooltip text to no longer claim it unlocks Caregiver

Rosette
Good introduction for dreadnaughts.

Recommendation:
- Add Aviary [FIXED]
- Add Rampager (don't split tech buildings)
- Add four (4) enemy Air Eliminator turrets to the spawns at each "heavily air defended" locations.
- Add six (6) enemy Air Eliminator turrets to the opponent's base.
- Remove Subspace Streamer
- Remove Eradicator
- Remove Antimatter Detonate
- Remove Orbital Drone Relay
- Remove Shredder Turret upgrade
- Remove Nanite Assassination orbital
- Remove Drone Swarm orbital
- Remove Starburst, Sky Ender turret upgrades
- Avatar can't build advanced turrets. Bug? [FIXED]
- Add text along the lines of "my child, you can now build your own dreadnaughts. I will supply you with some from orbit as well to even the odds."
- Edit the Energy Modulator tooltip text to no longer claim it unlocks Caregiver

Leo
Bunch of folks have commented on this. Harbinger makes appearance here. Harder than it should be on Normal.

Recommendation:
- Snip "to send your harvesters" from the text/voiceover "You will need to send your harvesters to collect leftover resources". This is incorrect. [FIXED]
- Remove Orbital Drone Relay building spawn at start
- Add Aviary building spawn at start
- On Normal, spawn a brainwhale dreadnaught plus logistics to cover it.
- Remove Gateway (going backwards just for this mission)
- Remove Nano Transport (going backwards just for this mission)
- Remove Call Avatar (going backwards just for this mission)
- Remove Rampager (going backwards just for this mission)
- Remove Orbital Drone Relay
- Remove Shredder Turret upgrade
- Remove Nanite Assassination orbital
- Remove Drone Swarm orbital
- Remove Starburst, Sky Ender turret upgrades
- Edit the Energy Modulator tooltip text to no longer claim it unlocks Caregiver

Lagoan

Too easy on Normal. If you start the mission and do nothing, you don't die for a while. It took 57 minutes for me to die to Swift, of all opponents. Apoch, your nearest, didn't attack once.

https://imgur.com/a/8BVIH

Recommendation
- Fix Apoch so that he attacks. Swift spawns an Avatar between you and Apoch, perhaps that triggered a bug? This should make it appropriately hard.
- Remove Orbital Drone Relay
- Remove Shredder Turret upgrade
- Remove Nanite Assassination orbital
- Remove Drone Swarm orbital
- Remove Starburst, Sky Ender turret upgrades
- Edit the Energy Modulator tooltip text to no longer claim it unlocks Caregiver

Polaris
Generally OK. We can make it better!

Recommendation
- Remove Sky Ender spawn at home base
- Don't unlock Starburst, Sky Ender turret upgrades until text/voiceover "he's been obsessed with air superiority lately". Add text: "I've given you plans for upgraded anti-air turrets." before "Defend yourself accordingly".
- First research lab you destroy unlocks the Masochist. Make it also unlock the Orbital Drone Relay building.
- Second research lab unlocks the Caregiver and Shredder Turret upgrade. Add text saying you found it. Add it to the Energy Modulator tooltip.
- Third research lab unlocks the Drone Swarm orbital. Add text saying you found it.
- Fourth research lab unlocks the Nanite Assassination orbital. Add text saying you found it.
- Fifth and final research lab ends the mission, as it does today

Alnitac

Too easy. If you start the game and do nothing, a strange thing happens - it stabilizes. You don't die, Haalee doesn't win. I gave up finding out who wins after over 5 hours game time went by without resolution. As a sidenote, Haalee AI doesn't seem to handle Zeus spam well, which is what the opponents use to keep her at bay.

https://imgur.com/a/fk94F

Recommendation
- Ally Aphae and Elangel together, ally Onard and Natel together (ally neighbors instead of across-the-table). This should make it so you have to defend yourself.

Alnilam
Is fine. Really.

Recommendation
- None

Altaria
The final showdown. This is too easy.

In fact, too easy.... I started this mission again and stepped away from the desk. Turns out they didn't need you at all! The mission wins itself.

https://imgur.com/a/jeBNx

Recommendation
- Buff Mac; starting resources, quanta upgrades, etc. He should completely overrun Agethon and Agememnon if you do nothing.

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

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I appreciate your analysis of the campaign missions and agree with the mechanical fixes.

However, I'm must point out your removal "abuse". This limits limits player options and experience during the "sandbox" play, that the campaign often is. Remember, if playing through "order", you already had use of these these abilities. There is also the risk of narrowing the range of completion strategies.

I believe I speak for many that play the story first and use the knowledge gained before playing online. There was even a statistic posted some time ago about how few players actually venture into VS online.

I'll also take this time to re-emphasize to the Devs the need to maintain the campaign missions across their usually welcome balance/content releases. This game got a LOT more mileage for me by replaying the missions with the various quirks that arose through the balance changes. When mission-breaking changes slip through though, it is highly damaging to new players and gives them a poor opinion of the game/Stardock. "How good could the rest of the game be if the basics are broken?"

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Quoting WatStrategy,

reply 1

Yeah, over 95% of players had never even touched the multiplayer button, there was simply no interest in doing so. (Source: https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/478991/page/1/#replies)

Hell, even Starcraft, the most quintessentially multiplayer RTS around only has about 50% of their player base even try multiplayer, according to their own posts.

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Hmm, I thought I was careful to not go backwards. Each mission should get you progressively more abilities and features. I argue that this does a better job of teaching players how to play than throwing everything at them at once.

Speaking to the Wat's like of using the campaign as a sandbox mode, we can have our cake and eat it too. Howabout a "New Game+" style feature. After you'd already beaten the mission on Normal or harder, it lights up a "Hard + all abilities unlocked" mode including juggernaughts.

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I have today just finished the escalation missions, so here is the newbie's opinion.

(And I will probably take a break now, rather than play any of the stand-alones; I'd about had enough by the end of the last one.

(And as a corollary to the above gentleman, I am one of those doesn't MP.))

As with the first ones, I found on normal the difficulty seemed fine (without any of the notable spikes like the first campaign had.)

I would also perhaps note that it seems farily likely that a new player will have already had a fairly extensive tutorial in the previous campaign (as they are choronologically linked), so I'm not sure it needed a second time now that the old campaign essentially has the same tech tree.

I would be personally feel taking away the defensive turret upgrades would not be a helpful move; us newbies tend to be a bit more turtly, I think, and, of course, take longer. I often found I was hard-pressed enough to get turrets to withstand the enemy attacks with the upgrades in place.

My experience with the last mission was also entirely different. I found even with my help Neoph died and Mac was making no headway, and it was getting increasingly difficult to hold off multiple dreadnought/juggenaut attacks before I finally scraped enough of the heavy bombers to knobble the nexus (I didn't even try fighting towards the reinforcement points; this was the first optional object I totally ignored).

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Quoting Aotrs Commander,

reply 4

This sounds like you are referring to the last mission in 'Genesis' The one in Escalation, you are fighting against Mac. not with him. and Neoph is not present.

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The Imminent Crisis campaign originally did just that. It wasn't really fun. There was one mission where there was no quantum jammer with limited orbital abilities and no T3. Put against 3 opponents, the onslaught of orbital attacks was maddening!

The problem with removing units/abilities/upgrades from the player is that you cannot also do the same for the AI. Therefore when a few of enemy tactical bombers come knocking on your door your light anti-air defenses get decimated and your base falls to the attack.

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Quoting Xaosinc,

reply 5

This sounds like you are referring to the last mission in 'Genesis' The one in Escalation, you are fighting against Mac. not with him. and Neoph is not present.

Ah, yes, could be, sorry. (I - having only played the once - as not so good at putting the missions to the names and hadn't twigged that jjandrah hadn't got that far yet!)

After a quick google... I don't recall that one being particularly strenuous, actually; I think all my carefully-built defences (where I EXPECTED to have Mac roll up to having offed the other pair) didn't see a lot of use.

I will note that orbitals can make advancing rather slow; the mobile nullifiers (when you have them) seem to do a poor job of covering your forces, which means have the time if you make a ground advance, you have to go slow, stepping up with engineers building nullifiers/jammers as you go, because one wrong orbital strike... With substrate, at least, after a while, I barely built and dreadnoughts (and a couple of juggernauts in the last Genesis mission only), simply because it was just quicker to throw air units at the enemy nexus (they can, at least, fly out of the way!)

I think orbitals could use toning back a bit (or I should say, maybe the AI slightly less keen to use them) or improve the positioning AI of the mobile emitters a bit more, so they make an effort to try and stay more in the centre (or maybe get a larger radius).

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