We're in the home-stretch of waiting for this one. Less than two weeks. Is /vst/ still interested after the demo and postponement? If you've been paying attention you might have seen that some Beta-testers have been thoughtlessly breaking their NDA and oversharing on the steam discussion forums. I didn't want to read too much and spoil myself, but what I did see sounded quite good.
The bugs looked way too slow and maybe too tanky if they were faster. I would rather they move a lot faster and be somewhat squishy compared too the demo (for balance).
>The bugs looked way too slow and maybe too tanky if they were faster.
Bugs are slow and tanky. Do you remember the original show real for the bugs, they barely outpace infantry. As for tanky "blow off one of it's limbs and it can still be up to 80% combat effective".
Don't. Look. NOW! Obligatory viewing:
Damn, even the visual effects tests looked awesome. M60 with MG42 parts also look cool.
>based on the movie and not the book
dropped
Hey now, I've played plenty of great video games that weren't based on 'Starship Troopers' the novel by Robert Heinlein. My favourite game I've played so far this year was Sekiro, and that also had the audacity to not be based on Starship Troopers, the novel by Robert Heinlein.
Why would something like Planescape: Torment be talked about on a strategy board? Of course it's based on the "adaptation". It can have merit in its own way.
older gamers go here?
There is literally a dedicated board for old games. Also what kind of moron ends a regular sentence with a question mark? I do not remember seeing this back when those older gamers were much younger.
>Dropping an RTS because it is based on something that makes for a good RTS instead of a mediocre book.
Look at this civilian and laugh, he'll never get to vote at this rate!
>something that makes for a good RTS
It would make a great mod for Renegade I think. In RTS it's a bit too impersonal. Or why not a mod for Open X-Com.
I can't tell which you think would make what.
Both of them would make good FPS games(Marauder isn't good), but unless you can have like 3-4 ships worth of troops in an open-xcom mod, I don't see either of them making a good mod for OpXc.
>But the movies dont even encompass half the shit that's shown in the books
Do we really need the dudes that have a psychic relationship with their dogs?
A mod for Renegade would work pretty good in MP. SP campaign maybe, maybe not.
And yes, you can have lots of troops in Open X-Com.
But the movies dont even encompass half the shit that's shown in the books
>good RTS
Right, with one faction spamming one type of unit against another faction that spams a few other types of units.
Forgot this was /vst/ where garbage like RA2 is considered a masterpiece.
>Hasn't seen any of the gameplay videos
>Thinks there is only one kind of bug, so might not even have ever seen the movie.
>Thinks the book would make a good RTS
>Dislikes RA2
Just go macfricking kys.
RA2
he's right doe, it sucks and YR is somehow worse. the only thing that saves it is mental omega.
He isn't, and neither are you. Mental Omega is good, but it does not save RA2, as RA2 does not need saving.
whatever chum, if spamming rhinos/rocketeers/prism tanks is good by your standards, then good for you, but by the rest of the world's standards, it's shit.
Wasted dubs on shitty bait
>dubs
>>>/b/
Wrong board
>Hates RA2 and YR but likes mental omega
My distaste for mental omega gays only increases each day.
>he wants a game where you are a guy that jumps around throwing nukes
The concept itself could be fun for 10 minutes, but if we translate this to actual gameplay this is literally just flash game material. Can you imagine how boring that would actually be after the first three bombs you fire?
Never read the book, but how did their opponents provide a challenge? Or is that besides the point.
>bugs mass quantity over quality
>have absolutely no respect for life; willing to drop asteroids on civilian targets and use terror tactics
>strong arm neutral and friendly aliens into turning on humanity
>initial battles go heavily in the bugs favor, due to humanity not using the right tactics
>bugs are also masters of digging in (literally- they honeycomb entire planets)
>the bugs are literally modeled after Soviet and Chinese tactics; humanity is using NATO/Marine tactics
The book starts at the point where the war is starting to turn around. Humanity has adopted more mobile troop tactics, using our strengths to play against the bugs' weaknesses. Even then, humanity is mostly knocking out the bugs' unwilling allies from the war and retaking lost planets. Only at the end do we finally get the chance to dig them out of their tunnels, and even then it's implied to be brutal close quarters combat.
Tossing mini-nukes is cool, but the book is set in the far future so it's about as impressive as firing a bazooka.
IIRC the bugs also used directed energy weapons attached to them, which would be pretty baller actually.
kek this
People somehow forget that book-bugs were basically zerg with energy weapons
>implied to be brutal close quarters comba
I want games based on armour by steakley, that's the proppa power armor that can be fun in gameplay, with energy management between movement/close combat and shooting.
So like Space Hulkish gameplay
I gotta read the first part again; Armor felt like a refutation against Starship Troopers, especially with Fleet being incredibly incompetent. The actual suits were still cool.
Armor wasn't about the Fleet being really incompetent, it was more about how one man slipping through the cracks and not being properly taken care of could cause such an extreme mental breakdown. Both with the main character (Felix?) and the Olympian dude who freaks the frick out. The suits turning into nukes when overloaded was the big payoff to that theme.
>with energy management between movement/close combat and shooting
Did someone call for an exterminator?
EDF is unfortunately the closest you're ever really going to get to that feel anytime in the near future
E-D-F!!!
and most important, you should never return with any ammo
>>have absolutely no respect for life; willing to drop asteroids on civilian targets and use terror tactics
So pretty much any side of ww2.
Bugs also have high tech gear in the book, they also have vastly superior numbers
>flash games... le bad
how do i know you don't have a soul?
Where did you get the idea that I was saying flash games are bad? Simple and boring after a while doesn't mean bad, but that doesn't mean I'd be willing to pay for a game like that.
I unironically enjoyed space hulk, too bad that there's like 4 players and 2 of those are me and my brother.
that's just EDF
t: didn’t actually read the book
Shut the frick up.
I don't want my game interrupted every mission by a half-hour flashback to the protag's high school civics class
Having played that one FPS based on the movie that had hundreds of on screen enemies I generally drop any and all Starship Trooper adaptations if they do not wind up being genuine hordes of bugs.
The one with the Marauder armor and Royal X Bug?
>I generally drop any and all Starship Trooper adaptations if they do not wind up being genuine hordes of bugs.
So hypothetically, if someone was to make a fangame, bugs being in hordes is detrimental?
>omergerd guys did you guys know that I READ THE BOOK?! That's right guys I read the book even though it had too many words and not really any pictures... that makes me SMARTER than you dum-dums who only watched the stupid MOVIE! Bet you silly billys don't even READ, ha!
Both are good kys bug lover
I think they could nuke them from orbit but wanted the mobile infantry to invade planets and take/free prisoners
on the movie and not the book
>dropped
Play Terran Ascendancy then.
The first movie is pure SOVL homosexual. At least give it a chance
I'm a beta tester for it so I'll tell you a bit about it.
Game can get kinda fricking hard on some levels, the hardest one for me was the one where you retake a planets capitol from bugs. Royal Guard bugs in close quarters will wipe a squad in seconds. Your troops cannot take punishment, if bugs get in close, they'll use underbarrel shotguns but that won't stop the bugs forever.
You're looking at a good 13 hours of campaign on medium.
Hopefully Sweden doesn't send a death squad to my house for telling you.
I liked the demo they had a while back.
Are all of the levels sparse desert colonies? You say you retake a planets capitol, is it actual urban environment or just a shanty town with dirt roads and the prefab buildings?
Your sacrifice will be remembered, i hope the swedes dont make you suffer too long
Oh it's a proper city, bugs even use the metro tunnels to ambush you.
I guess there isn't multi-layers where you can go manually fumigate.
There are levels where you need to go underground and clear a tunnel or sewer, but none with surface levels.
Figured.
Would be nice if in the aforementioned example you can also go use those metros too.
Like maybe an alt objective where you can either collapse or otherwise clog up the tunnel. Like fight your way in and either mine it or plant charges on load bearing points.
>Your troops cannot take punishment, if bugs get in close, they'll use underbarrel shotguns but that won't stop the bugs forever.
Even veterans? That's kinda lame.
Level 3 Rifle troopers can use the shotgun barrage, where everybody unloads with their underbarrels and that will absolutely stop a bug charge. It's way better than the grenade bundle.
They stated they want to be able to use the factories as soon as the battle is over, hence why you can't demolish them.
Oh and remember this tip. It takes 3 rocket teams to kill a Scorpion bug in one volley. Those frickers will wipe half a squad with one beam.
i found the shotgun blast thing underwhelming in the demo. fist of all you had to pick a target for it manually, i think it would be better as an automatic blast originating from the squad and doing damage in the direction they're facing and second it never seemed to do much. yeah it killed the bug you chose but that's not really a big deal
Well you're in luck because that's exactly what it does now. It can also stun bugs and stop them in what I'm guessing is a 180 degree angle in front of the squad. It's actually way more useful than the bundle grenades.
excellent
I don't like how the soldiers are static as frick even when they are being shredded alive, I expected some kind of panic management and the bugs are too slow for my taste. Unless this completely changed I'll pass.
This better play like it's shown in the movie; waves of imperial guardsmen praising humanity while zerg rushing the zerg
There was a demo a few months ago, you can find some gameplay of that.
Lots of bugs, not lots of Infantry. But you can definitely send wave after wave since you never run out. Althought the demo levels were probably much smaller in scale than whatever is later in the game
Early missions are cakewalks. Later missions have nigh unending hoards of bugs and those fricking laser scorpions and a few Royal guard tossed in there for good measure. I must have lost an entire battalion trying to retake Federatsygrad.
Is there a counter that shows how many bugs you killed and how many men died a the end of the level, like in the Men of War games?
This better play like it's shown in the book; highly mobile infantry in power armor fending off endless waves of insects
>like it's shown in the book
Frick off
>like it's shown in the book
Read the book, there is barely any combat.
Don't they showcase more species and equipment which could then be adapated? The movies already go far off the beaten trail so why not base it off the book with creative liberty
That is the TV show. The bugs from the book are so different they wouldn't be recognizable.
>highly mobile infantry in power armor fending off endless waves of insects
That isn't how combat is portrayed in the books.
It is, but only in the end of the book when they launch an offensive on a major bug planet. Most of the book is more a discussion of ethics and the only battle we see before that is a raid on the Skinnies to get them to pull out of the war.
The bugs in teh book had technology, they were not a hivemind.
This. In the being of the book MI are doing hit and run tactic on the skinnies.
theres not enough bugs, hell theres more marines than bugs by like x10. why bother
>acknowledges the second and third movies by using bugs from them
dropped
>no multiplayer
>one playable faction
fricking dropped
>multiplayer
>wants to play as the bugs
Disgusting
co-ops against big hordes would also be nice
peak s.oy
>EVERY GAME HAS TO BE A VARIANT SIDEGRADE OF STARCRAFT OR WARCRAFT UNTIL THE END OF TIME
>wtf why is my genre dead?
That is silly and dumb, RTS and turn bases strategy games with multiplayer are all selectable maps or campaigns with customizeable matchups.
>no multiplayer
Good
What? Ok then the game is shit no excuses or exceptions. Frick every gay that thinks this is any good its just garbage. What about a skirmish mode?
the fricking minature of this thing looks like the bug is giving a "daily dose" to something
soooo... thanks doc
It's shit. You're directed to do everything, the bugs are harmless, maps are mostly choke points with a lot of untraversable/worthless void space, animations are unsatisfying, the sergeant foley guy doesn't stop talking, and all the voiced characters are either blacks or women. 1/10 at least the graphics resemble the first movie even if the scale is off.
>and all the voiced characters are either blacks or women
But the movie portrayed the infantry as inherently disposable.
Did you play the beta or just the demo?
And how would you have this game work? I see no meaningful suggestions but the trends in criticisms seem to suggest the ideal game in the heads of most critics is basically Dawn of War Ultimate Apocalypse Guard v Tyranids, which is complete shit to play even if it is fun to look at. I appreciate that they've managed to work the starship troopers premise into something that looks like the movie and actually feels like a game I can get good at and win.
White guy voice acts later in the missions and is arguably the most competent one shown in the story.
Overall I think its alright, a little bummed out that you get power armour only for like 2 missions and the marauders feel useless/annoying to control if any scorpions decide to fire their laser at you. I hate scorpion bugs so much.
>marauders feel useless/annoying to control if any scorpions decide to fire their laser at you
you get mortar marauders later and they blow the shit out of big bugs
>I hate scorpion bugs so much.
they are definitely ass though. Whenever they appear in a mission my whole strategy changes to counter their existence, I micro rocket teams out the ass.
When I got the power armor guys though I practically nutted because giving them all the rocket elite ability turned them into my typical rifleman/rocketman deathball but even more efficient.
Don't think I've quite reached the halfway point yet, at the mission where you have to kill the plasma bugs at night, but I noticed that the MK2 troopers are pretty effective against scorpions.
As for the game, I quite like it, it reminds me of something like SunAge: Battle for Elysium.
>Don't think I've quite reached the halfway point yet
rocket troops are your friend then
ah yes starship troopers the book where the main character is filipino the head of state is african and the pilots are all women because theyre better at it
truly the epitome of w&b
>no Skinnies
>no Neodogs
>no bugs from the show
>there better be fricking Marauders and Control Bugs
I'm interested but aware I'll be nothing but disappointed
depending on what you mean by marauders:
>one of the early screenshots on steam features troops wearing suits like from the show, but maybe it was cut idk
>there are definitely massive walkers similar to the third movie's marauders.
After watching some twitch streams I have to say this game looks as fun as wathing paint dry... its just travelling hallways maps from point A to B while the game throw some chokepoints with bugs to kill in a fashionly order...
The only way I see this game could have potential is with some kind of online cooperative horde mode
mite b cool
Starship Troopers is for fat fricking nerds and fat fricking nerds make mods, so I've got my fingers crossed.
Modding isn't a priority for new games anymore
OK I'll bet on it. I bet the first few mods that come out are going to mostly be minor lore corrections. The presence of fat fricking nerds will be confirmed.
wait the release date is the 16th, two days from now? i thought it was at the end of the month. am i tripping or did they change it?
It's been that since the delay. Though I'm not sure when exactly, 16th or 17th. My steam says 2 days from now, but also 17th. This may be because I'm Australian. I think I've seen games come out earlier than Steam said they would before.
i can't waith to get a job to buy it.
i don't think there's any reason for you to not pirate this. even thought i don't play mp, i can understand mp players pirating to get access to servers, but this game doesn't even have mp
so it just comes out in under 3 hours i think. i figure it's going to be a buggy piece of shit at first, how long do you figure until slytherine comes out with a bugfixing patch? also how long until it gets cracked?
Of course it’s going to be a buggy piece of shit. Why else would they send in the mobile infantry?
torrent's already out
the devs confirmed theres power armour on the later levels
Unless they have mobile infantry in power armor, with jump packs, spamming nukes then it's no go for me.
power armor and mini-nukes are in, havent seen jump packs so far
Federatsiyagrad was my mindbreak moment. I went from trying to be a good commander who brings his boys back home whenever he can to a callous bastard who sends hundreds to die just to take a single hive.
As someone who's played the later levels I can double confirm this.
>a callous bastard who sends hundreds to die just to take a single hive
that's how i felt by the end of the demo mission where you assault those three hives on a plateau and it was easily my least favorite part of the demo, with the awkward tight positioning and constant reinforcement spam
good to know i can at least count on the game to not turn into that for a while
btw i played it for a bit it this morning just to see if it runs alright and so far the first two missions were the same as the demo, the same goes for the third one i assume?
Well? What's the verdict?
Personally I'm having fun
does it have a skirmish feature with harder AI/different maps or is the game purely campaign?
there's a couple of challenge maps/scenarios, as well as a section called "special" which so far only has one very short "cinematic" mission (very railroaded, more basic than a tutorial) that is supposed to recreate the invasion of klendathu which serves as an introduction the first time you launch the game.
my guess is they'll keep adding more scenarios and challenges via dlc, like they did with battlestar galactica deadlock, a game that had so many dlcs i almost didn't want to even bother pirating it.
can't give feedback on the quality of those scenario missions though, as i don't have time to play yet
and as for difficulty, well...
there's a difficulty setting adjuster but it just seems to reduce your weapon damage. to be honest, i don't think it's the worst thing in the world since movie arachnids were pretty beefy, but then again, in the one demo mission, you were pretty hard-capped in terms of how many troops you brought to bear. if my damage was reduced, that would mean i had to leave more troops holding chokepoints leaving my mobile force reduced. if my mobile force was any more reduced, i don't see how i would have been able to clear the map.
I'm liking it a lot.
I'm OP and I'm having a good time. A few notable improvements over the demo but nothing drastically changed. Very cool. This is what I wanted when I first saw Starship Troopers when I was 12.
>I'm
same person
honored to have experienced my own schizo accusation
Took too long, lost interest. Be faster next time, devs.
Picked it up this afternoon, played it for a few hours, split between two sessions with a barbecue in between.
So far, I like how they captured the movie aesthetic, including having a between tongue in cheek tone than Verhoeven. Gameplay is fun, microing squads to achieve the best sight lines and fire lanes is finicky but can be rewarding. Some mission ratchet up the tension of running around a corner into bugs, creating close encounters.
Special abilities seem harder to manage, I frequently forget about them, and they have the downside of allowing friendly fire while normal attack do not. For example, on the power plant mission, got surrounded by bugs and thought "Aha! I'll use the shredder shells for my MI Riflement Mk 2". Deploying the ability shredded what was left of my dwindling squads due to FF.
I'm going to keep on with it. I like it so far.
I played it for an hour yesterday and didn't really like it, the movement is finicky and setting up proper fire lanes is a pain in the ass
I'll play one more mission today and decide if I'll refund or not, also I read on the steam forums that the game is apparently like 4 hours long?
I'm reading the book atm and the film really is nothing like. In the books the mobile infantry are in mech suits with jetpacks and heavy weapons, not just cannon fodder.
excellent, a fresh perspective. do you think the combat portrayed in the book seems like it would make for a good game?
i read the book maybe 15 years ago and i never craved a game centered around combat like that.
D/a. But if you think about it isn't that just Battletech?
what's d/a? and isn't battletech just mech vs. mech battles?
The book combat would be fine as an action mecha TPS, like Shogo.
Possibly, there aren't many games that are just soldiers in powered suits, it's either big mechs or nothing. It wasn't a criticism of the film by the way, I just found it interesting.
You could, and honestly it would look insane.
Kinda like modern Heavy Gear with nukes.
But good luck getting the money and people to make in a powerful engine. Especially these days when gaming is changing so much and going niche again. With mobile and stream hanging like a Damocles sword.
Triggers me like you won't fricking believe that plasma bugs just fall over dead when they are killed instead of blowing apart in a huge juicy blue explosion.
Still waiting on an Rts based on the superior adaptation of starship troopers : the obscure 1990s cgi saturday morning cartoon.
>that fricking opening theme
>plasma bugs just fall over dead when they are killed instead of blowing apart in a huge juicy blue explosion
What? They do blow up? I lost a whole squad figuring that out.
Well I haven't gotten to them proper yet, just the tutorial where you nuke em, and I found it quite unsatisfying.
You are thinking of tanker bugs and it blew up in the movie because of Rico’s grenade
No, tanker bugs are fine. The plasma bugs are glowing blue nigh immobile artillery things, movie logic dictates that they ought to blow up spectacularly in a colorful gory explosion when killed in general, not just when hit with nukes.
I shot at the plasma bugs in that one mission where you have to kill like 5 of them and they all blew up just like in the movie
Sweet, looking forward to it then.
Hoping for a scenario editor.
Welp, just beat the campaign after 14.7 hours of play time, though I'd reckon an hour or two of that was just it idling in the background. Overall I liked it, all I wish is that there were more. Hopefully the devs add additional content later.
Doesn't this game have multiplayer? People that play RTS for Campaign exclusively are a small minority... The meat and potatoes of RTS games is the multiplayer and modding.
Nevermind I just looked apparently it doesn't have PVP multiplayer. That's really stupid lol
>People that play RTS for Campaign exclusively are a small minority
you're baiting right? That mindset has been the reason RTS games have consistently failed for years, everyone forgot the majority of players played for the campaign and went for the minority competitive demographic.
First you play campaign
Then some matches against AI or friends from time to time until you drop it for the next thing
I don't think I've ever played online multiplayer in any RTS other than Starcraft
Personally I want to see games with co-op campaigns against an AI
same, aoe2de has coop campaigns, which are really fun
Just realized the giant doors in tunnel levels replenish your troopers
Every Starship Troopers: Terran Command thread is full to bursting with mindblowingly dumb people who can't stop trying to turn every thread into an opportunity to brag about having read the book. These posters are so dumb that I'm starting to think someone has a hateboner against Robert Heinlein and is now falseflagging the book.
Yes but anon, what do you think of the game?
It's a perfectly solid and playable B-game. I've already gotten many hours of it and will probably play around with it a bit further after finishing its campaign just for the fun of it. I appreciate that it's trying to be an artisan product rather than a live service. Is it master craftwork? No. But it's good enough to make me happy.
>brag about having read the book.
There's a lot more morons b***hing about this than there are people actually doing it. Book le bad, movie le good, we already know. Stop trying to fit in so hard homosexual.
>There's a lot more morons b***hing about this than there are people actually doing it
hahahahaha, definitely not anon, but good joke
get some glasses pal
i have perfect vision, thank you. no allergies either! can you say the same?
you're allergic to deez nuts, b***h. gottem.
>t. didn't read the book
Good morning.
I HATE THE FRICKING SCORPIONS.
i'd sell one of my nuts for a starship troopers game that's nothing but mowing down warrior bugs and big tanky warrior bugs (basically what the tanker is), without obnoxious ranged bugs intruding on your fun like spitters or cliff mites or scorpions.
>b-buh it wouldn't be challenging
don't care, just add more warrior bugs
Its perfect fricking material for a EDF game.
just reached fort meru
scorpions are cancer holy shit
Oh buddy, it's gonna get sooo much worse.
The key to scorpion bugs is microing your rocket teams to lock them down whenever they show up. And regarding Meru, you can command the wavebreakers to target them.
Nothing says bread and butter like rifles and rockets
Really wish it kept track of how many bugs i killed and how many troops of mine died.
Took me about 10 hours to finish the game and its scenarios on the hardest difficulty. Decently hard, satisfying to win and it had just the right length before it got old
Recommend, but probably on a sale
also some follow-up takes
>rifle squad are the best boys and shotgun barrage is the best ability to stunlock scary bugs or mulch their trash
>combat engineers are relegated to b***hboy turret defense simulator real fricking fast once Tigers show up
>Mk ll Moritas are just outclasssed by rocket launcher squads
>snipers are deadbeat wankers and can frick off
>radio officer is decent, but the fleet liaison does their job but better
>rocket launchers are artillery, AoE, tankerbusters and area denial in one, 2-pop package absolute MVPs
>E-troopers take the role of short-range fire superiority that combat engineers had, but eat absolute shit to scorpions and spitters
>marauders are alright fire support, best utility they have is long-range bombardment and being able to have rifle squads chill between their legs without being obstructed
>fleet liaison calls down TAC bombardment on scorpions and grenadier bugs, and can call a landing zone - literally never got one to elite except for the last mission, where one of the scripted bombardments gibbed her before I got to see the orbital bombardment go off
>power armor troopers are a one-mission wonder for some reason
>who the frick even got to see marines
I liked most of the units, some got redundant or obsolete, but I suspect that's from the difficulty slider
>who the frick even got to see marines
I had the option to get them at the last option but I then picked orbital bombardment because it looked more fun
got one to elite except for the last mission,
>not just farming hives to level your troops before moving on with the objectives
Just finished it. I found it enjoyable, it doesn't revolutionize the genre but it nicely scratch the itch for a Starship Troopers game, pathfinding can be sometimes rough however. Will probably buy it on sale.
Obligatory frick Scorpions but it was surprisingly Spitters that caused me the most casualties during the last mission.
Spitters are a b***h. The last mission on the first where you need to clear the 3 hives. I was stuck the one to the right until setup 4 snipers to kill in spitter in fricking site.
How the frick do I do the power core mission with the timer? There’s constant bugs spawning non-stop.
You don't need to kill the hive to take out the core, just hold the line while one squad captures it. Sacrifice as many as it takes to hold the line long enough to do that.
I forgot what triggers the countdown, maybe it was repairing one of the turbines or discovering some shit. Either way, if you just secure that hive before triggering the countdown you have all the time you need.
I started with the lower right base and cleared the map counter clockwise meaning that, by the time I reactived the leftmost turbine, the core area was cleared and it was simply walking to it.
I cleared that before fixing the second turbine or whatever it was, just because it looked important. Then when I set it off I just walked in lol.
just finished this mission, what triggered it for me was clearing four hives. (a secondary objective).
thankfully I had done a lot of other objectives so i had a lot of war support. after an initial wipe of the squads i sent towards the center, i managed to hang in there by spamming like 5 turrets, there were like three elevation levels from the area i approached so it was easy to set up a good perimeter. managed to clear the central hive with 5 minutes to spare
i played around with it on sunday for a bit, just beat the prison mission.
so far it seems the devs have managed to successfully make slaughtering bug hordes feel satisfying. they also seem to have struck a perfect balance wherein your unit population cap is just enough to keep things tense and challenging. i always had to keep enough troops holding a defensive position to make sure that my mobile force isn't strong enough to just easily wipe the floor with the bugs on the map
also a couple of questions
>what exactly do promotions do until you hit level 3 and get to choose a special ability? are there any stats bonuses?
>does anybody get the feeling there's some kind of inverse ninja rule going on with the bugs, like say a couple of them take longer to shoot down and you get to see limbs flying and more complex animations and they get to get pretty close to you, while the individual bugs in larger hordes are easier to kill?
just finished the mission before Federatsiyagrad, tell me more about how fricked I am.
Also:
>game keeps asking if I want to know more
>I want to know more about veterancy: does it do anything besides give you a new special ability at tier 3?
>I want to know more about what the hell the combat level or whatever is. how do I fill up that bar?
>veterancy
manual says every unit gets something, mostly related to damage output.
>combat level
Starts to fill automatically as soon as you get a support building of the most recent tier. It's like your tech level.
>tell me more about how fricked I am
Do you like scorpion bugs?
is this unusual? in fort meru i was being attacked by upwards of 10 at the same time, with like 5-6 at most on a single screen. rocket troopers did a great job against them
btw i don't know how i even won that mission, it felt like a complete failure to me, with my defenses collapsing across the board but somehow i survived and eventually cleared the bugs until it was time for the final countdown.
does the game know to stop spawning bugs when you get your shit pushed in or was there a finite amount being spawned and it was just barely enough to make it past the walls but not enough to finish the job? would love to learn how things work under the hood but don't have the technical knowledge to check for myself. like does the game only spawn more bugs while it can detect troopers on certain wall sections and stops it when they're gone?
>Fort Meru was worse
It was quite the opposite for me
I had a couple of scorpions in the beginning, but at the end I had to fight only a handful of them compared to what I had to deal with in the city and on the airfield
Maybe the AI broke out or got stuck on a cliff edge or something
While the Marauders are underwhelming I found them to be useful against the spitter bugs in the final mission soaking up damage and the cannon variant can quickly deal with the grenadier bugs
>power troopers are fricking amazing
Agreed
I do agree Marauders are good for soaking up damage. Used them as front line shields on defense missions.
eh, fort meru was worse.
>tfw finished it just before my liason officer got to level 3
I just want to try marines. I had the chance once, but picked orbital bombardment, because I didn't realize they weren't just a rifle squad
so if I'm understanding, when liaison officers become level 3, they get a special ability to call in these marines as a unit, is that correct?
This mission was hands down the hardest. I beat the game on hardest difficulty as well. Last mission was little to easy.
Also, power troopers are fricking amazing and mecha fricking suck.
I had a harder time with power armor guys mission than at federatsiyagrad. they're great in general, but their rocket launchers don't seem to fire nearly as often and they don't go over cover so I would just get blasted by like 4 scorpions at once and have to run away. which to their credit, they can actually do unlike regular MI, but it was over and over with these guys until I eventually managed to clear away enough scorpions without getting wrecked to take the point.
If I had my rocket mans, I'd just kill the scorpions, but even with 4 power armors vetted up with rocket launchers, they mostly refuse to fire them. Cover restrictions, slower fire rate, LOS issues with other squads maybe?
Looking forward to using them alongside rocket infantry, so I can just try out the SAWs and shit.
Also:
>first mission where you get mk2 troopers
>frick year, this is awesome
>ripping up tigers left and right
>3 vet in no time
>aw shit, ripper volley
>fire it from a unit in back through my own troops
>it has friendly fire
>wipes out three squads
guess I'm never using that ability again.
The SAW's will take down scorpions pretty quickly if you have like 4 or 5 of them massed.
just finished the power armored troopers mission and yeah it's bullshit that you don't get rocket troopers for it. i actually gave up on trying to take the central hive because i could not focus fire on the scorpions and clear them out fast enough with the constant warrior attacks. and needing to cycle out squads to reinforce them.
also the saws are great for mowing down warriors, tigers etc. but definitely not ideal when dealing with scorpions. i feel like i probably would have done better if all my squads were upgraded with rockets, instead it was 3 saws and one rocket, raised to 2 saws and 2 rockets when i lost one squad. they do more damage than any other rifle infantry attack, that's true but it's still not enough damage output to make it worth it.
btw did anyone try to clear out the three hives that were outside the airfield? is it possible at all or does it trigger some event? also does the engineer option for the power troopers allow you to set up turrets or just repair?
Not to start book/movie shit again but i don't think they need to be two completely separate things, i like both.
Would love to have a nigh unkillable mech bristling with firepower drop down into bug tunnels with a little infantry support to keep it moving.
"they weren't ready yet or weren't yet deployed in the region at the time of the movie but now they are"
"the book focused on the elite Starship Troopers™ but there were still whole fronts of GI dying wave after wave"
There, now we can have the movie aesthetic with giant mechs.
what about the true kino masterpiece in the franchise:
the incomplete 1999 CGI cartoon
I don't think that series ever made it over here, also haven't seen the anime though it's on my list.
It's legitimately quite good
Terran Ascendancy is a true RTT. You pick your dudes and their loadouts before the mission, and that's all you get to work with. They gain experience and ranks across the entire campaign so you have to keep every last fricker alive at all costs if you want to be swimming in cool shit like power armor at the end and not babysitting some dork with a rifle while half your squad is bouncing around on rocket jets blasting plasma and missiles in every direction. I think there was some kind of medivac function that could save downed troopers from permadeath, but they'd be out for a mission or two afterwards? It's been a while.
It had more terrain types than I've seen in Terran Command, I remember an ice world and a green world. Missions were still mostly "go here kill this, go there try not to die" etc. Fun though.
That little series has no right to be as good as it is. Even though its aged very much, the designs for the MI, their equipment, and the fleet are still fricking on point. I'm surprised they aimed it at kids when there was a lot of dark shit in it, with mind-control, death, and even the one skinny alien that was fighting so that his family would not be enslaved by the bugs. Just a lot of concepts I didn't really think about as a kid.
Terran Ascendancy has a lot of customization with your units. While the core gameplay (move your guys here, destroy the bug lair, now defend at this location until pickup) is the same, the scale is a lot different. TC doesn't have any customization, and the marauders are simply a unit to call in that are unstoppable except if they so much as look at a scorpion, which kills them way too fast, rather than a piece of equipment that you choose the pilot for. TA is old but it has so much little shit like choosing the gear and equipment you use, and the AI was smart enough to actually backpedal if a bug got too close. In this new game, they just sit there and take the hits without moving till they die. It kind of has this mobile game type of feel, where you atk+move to a location and just watch your mob of guys kill everything. I only struggled on one mission, which is mission 10 where you have to navigate a canyon with no reinforcements, and that's just because the game became suddenly micro-intensive out of nowhere.
>where you atk+move to a location and just watch your mob of guys kill everything
I had repeated issues with that due to the awful pathfinding. Try to attack move and your guys will run through eachother, both trying to get a shot around one another until they run straight into the bugs. At least they hold position by default move.
sauce? help a fellow MI find something so obscure.
It's on YouTube
It's starship troopers chronicles roughnecks
>240p
why
anon is a show from the 90s.
shows from the 90s were 480p
no im not.
was this the show that was on TV for a little bit or was that something else?
Has anyone played Terran ascendancy? How does it compare?
>How does it compare?
I believe the difference is analogous to Company of Heroes vs Men of War.
If you want to imagine the gameplay loop of Ascendancy, imagine XCom equipment selection and combat but real time, but the campaign is absolutely linear. Not even secondary objectives.
You have unit customization and promotion, each trooper has stats, units can be armed with different weapons, unit rank determines what weapons and even power armor they can wear and the heavier the power armor gets the more lighter weapons are locked out in favor of heavier weapons. There is ammo management with ammo banks distributed on the map.
There's a plethora of weapons and equipment. There's req points that allow you to get more equipment or more upgraded(better stats) weapon variants.
You have the iconic Morita and Nuke launcher, as well as other weapons that flesh out the roster.
Also there's nerve gas grenades you can throw down bugholes. They are nice.
The game is actually power armor centric. In general they allow you to carry more equipment/ammo/weapons or increase mobility.
There's 3 types of power armor: Command, Scout, Marauder.
Command is centered on call downs, such as airstrike and is reserved to officer ranks.
Scout is fast and has better sight, but iirc 1st tier has only one weapon slot with no secondary.
Marauder not only has secondary weapon slot but both weapons can be heavy.
Campaign is split in 3 chapters, with each chapter having it's own tier of power armor.
1st tier is a basic suit.
2nd tier is closer to power armor and iirc scouts can bounce while marauders get a shoulder strapped rocket launcher.
3rd tier is all bounce and closer to mechs making them truly mobile. Keep in mind tho that flying bugs will kill your mechs on the bounce.
The controls have aged surprisingly well for a game from the 90s, but if you decide to give it a play you'll need to reconfigure a few stat files to get more bugs to kill and more ammo to shoot, or it gets boring.
Where do you get it? And does it play well on modern systems?
Last time I tried on W7 iirc it didn't work.
Loved it when I got to play it though, good stuff but iirc I only got to the 2nd chapter based on what you said.
>Where do you get it?
I mean I get it from *overseas*, cause there was no digital release, but if Terran Command is successful we can hope GOG uploads it cause the alternative is bidding against collectors for a physical copy.
I do believe there is a torrent on the bay tho.
>And does it play well on modern systems?
It runs on Win10.
>Last time I tried on W7 iirc it didn't work.
I do remember having problems on 7 and spending hours on forums for a fix.
That's where I found that weapon, unit and map stats are kept in csv text files.
>iirc I only got to the 2nd chapter based on what you said.
To be fair it does become kind of a slog considering bug amounts were balanced around the rigs of the time, meaning 5 bugs per bughole max meanwhile your platoon can wipe out the enemy without flinching, so increasing bugs per hole is a must.
I mean they could have balanced it with giving you less troopers.
But anyway, I still remember the first time I played it when I was young and dumb, I was shooting bugholes and Plasma Bugs with rifles. Took me ages before I got smart enough to get out of Klendathu. And by that I meant revisiting it when I was older.
Terran Command is abandonware so you can find it for free in a certain site that offers abandoned games.
If you use dgVoodoo 2 the game works great on modern hardware.
Game is kinda simple but fun
At least it isn't multiplayer piss
Only downside is that there's not enough missions
What an enjoyable fricking AA game. I needed something like this.
One issue however Is that they cloud have had a more fun and better written dialogue and unit talk.
But you can only have one Relic team I guess.
Also forgot
>General Rico
That is a nice touch.
So glad that this game turned out to be good.
Its been ages since I had this feeling with rts, comfy you know. I think the last one was deserts of kharak, and I am hyped as frick for Homeworld 3.
I know it has nothing to do about it but this game made me think of Ground Control.
Now that its out how well does it run on potatos and toasters? Intel cards?
*
So I bit the bullet and decided to do a test run, no graphical glitches. Stuttering but when I set it to "fastest" in options it ran normally but I had the severe issue of my CPU getting way too hot. I'll have to shelve this one.
I'm interested. It seems like lots of people consider the game a little unfair? How bad is the balance?
They weren't expecting the map maker to be a fan of Starcraft defense maps from the looks of it.
I always loved those missions in the Terran campaign, seems like I'm getting a key then.
Its more like custom map defense where you have line you have to hold from continuous streams of enemies while you try to complete objectives. Although from the looks of it certain bugs are not popular.
Just finished this, really enjoyable. I hope they make more campaigns, I was surprised how long the base campaign was.
Childhood is hating scorpions, adulthood is hating spitters.
This. Scorpions were never a problem for me, the counter for scorpions is rocket mans, who are also amazing at almost everything else. The counter for spitters is supposed to be snipers, which are kind of garbage.
Just bring like four rocket squads everywhere, you won't regret it. They even do ok ish against spitters.
just beat it. marauders + power armor dudes is extremely powerful so the last mission is pretty easy.
multiplayer?
radio dudes are awesome, you can put down a drop point and use it to extract yourself back to base, or send reinforcements directly up to the front by using the transport command.
holy shit I'd been using them to replenish squads, didn't even think to send reinforcements. cool
Rocket troopers best bois.
As long as you have four, you don't have anything to worry about.
>warriors/tigers: decent aoe damage and the abilities wreck them
>spitters: ok counter, got the range
>tankers: won't even get in range
>hoppers: I don't actually know if they can even shoot hoppers, hasn't been an issue.
>plasma bugs: lol, lmao even
>scorpions: 4 rockets kills instantly
>plasma Grenadiers: they're like a much worse version of rocket troopers
>royal guard: unsurprising weak vs rockets.
If only power armor rockets ignored terrain like rocket trooper rockets, they would be a perfect unit.
I wonder if they will nerf rocket troops rang in patch. That's main reason there so damn good.
Is it good?
It's solid 7 out 10. It's has good size campaign with 1 special training and two challenge missions.
With some DLC and updates the game could be great.
It's definitely the best starship troopers game.
>7/10
For the future, I am going to warn you guys that 7/10 translates to 3/5 to most people because reviewers do something called a ratings inflation for the sweet perks publishers give them to give good ratings. I'd give it 8.5/10 for that reason.
>It's definitely the best starship troopers game.
As the biggest Terran Ascendancy shill on this board, I can agree with this. Terran Ascendancy has a lot going for it. Very satisfying to watch your troopers progress, more customization, cooler weapons and armors and even the vaunted jetpacks which I usually use twice or thrice per campaign. It also imho has a better soundtrack and more coherent campaign.
BUT. This game nails the feeling of fighting hordes of bugs and how dangerous they are more than any other game. It also has better set pieces which in a universe like this is crucial. And it actually has some difficulty to it, unlike Terran Ascendancy. Plus the devs have done a good job with balancing the amount of resources you get without turning the game unfair or making it a cakewalk
And finally, I feel like I'm in the minority on this one, but the system where you can't shoot through other troopers and you have to line up your units like it's the 18th century was a stroke of genius. It's what makes the game challenging and rewarding to micro. If I could just create death balls like in a standard rts, it can't possibly be challenging.
>but the system where you can't shoot through other troopers and you have to line up your units like it's the 18th century was a stroke of genius.
Agree this made you actually think about tactics and where to place you're men. Do you risk sending big group through tight space? Stuff like that.
It's the most fun had in quite a while, solid 7/10
It's shit and this thread is full of slitherine shills.
just played the canyon mission, mission 10
on my first attempt, when black colonel guy told me to disobey command's order to hold an installation and leg it to the exit, i did. and i rushed and took needless casualties and then the bugs caught up with me a screen away from the exit anyway.
i reloaded and i figured "yeah this position is actually fantastic to hold, i'll give it a shot" and sure enough i was able to clear out the "unstoppable" bug wave and carefully and methodically walk out at my leisure.
i'm struggling to think of how you could even possibly reach the exit before the bug wave reaches you. how did y'all homies handle it?
Been a while since I was doing that mission, but
Leg it as soon as you can, stick to the side of the canyon that's not riddled with bug hives, use the incredinary grenades
well there was hives and tunnels on one side and those lairs or whatever they're called that spawned drones (those mini-warrior bugs) on the other. i went with the one with the lairs
i'd definitely recommend trying to hold off the bug wave, since as usual, this game shines when you're holding a position against bug hordes. those e-pulse troopers excel at being on the front, their short range damage output is crazy. and when you've got other squads on a more elevated area putting out damage, it becomes a massacre.
i didn't lower it but i wasn't playing max difficulty either, i was on the one below it.
I b***h out and lowered the difficulty just for that mission.
Post your favorite tracks.
Are there any other sci-fi books from the 50s or earlier that could make good vidya games?
War of the Worlds unironically
if universe at war wasn't about special snowflake aliens fighting each other on earth and it was an underpowered humanity against the hierarchy, it could have done a decent job at that. they had some human units in the campaign, i think it was possible to make it work
the war of the worlds that worked like a total war game was absolute kino, one of the most unappreciated hidden gems of rts history.
just tried the marines. i mean it's cool that they can fire through your lines but 5 fricking supply? and the fleet liason can't even acquire experience the normal way because she's armed only with a shitty short range pistol so you have to just spam abilities and call bombardment on empty land to farm exp?
frick that noise, not worth it
Sent 5 gatling marauders through a 4 size hive along with some riflemen and wiped everything out
The attack move function in this game is fricked, the infantries constantly block each other and inch closer and closer to the bugs in an attempt to get a clear field of fire.
is there one? makes no sense to have it in a game like this, it's always a shitshow. it's a line formation/positioning game. that's like playing sid meier's gettysburg or ugcw or some total war game and hitting attack move. you shouldn't do it, unless you expect the ai/pathing to be able to do the positioning for you but at that point why even play.
I just started and expected the squads to be able to be at least competent enough to walk twenty feet outside the base and grab the supplies while I focus on defending my base, I feel like that's a pretty reasonable expectation from any RTS game.
idk, i had no such expectations as it's one of the things i assumed just don't work in these types of games. i can't think of any game where soldiers need to be arranged to have a clear line of fire and get in each others' way where i'd ever trust the attack move function. if i have more than one squad selected that is.
i think when you have certain units who can fire through each other like say riflemen+snipers+rocket troopers+tactical officer, you could trust them to a-move just fine though. but two riflemen squads? no way
okay who the FRICK thought it was a good idea to have scorpion bugs in a cave mission?
>you don't have any troops who do good damage against them
>guaranteed casualties no matter what tactics you use because you can't dance around them like you can tankers
>your only option is to sit around and take losses while your troops slowly grind them down and maybe toss a grenade or two
>no way to get reinforcements besides those tunnel entrances which seem to work arbitrarily
am i missing something here? do scorpions have a hidden weakness against something besides rocket troopers that i've not yet discovered?
Grenades temporarily stun scorpion and other larger bug types
you know i noticed that but i never took advantage of it. you're right
I bought it.
>can't play as the bugs
Dropped
Tips on how to move?
Or is it just moving as a blob and pressing stop when bugs appear and then try to form a firing line?
Move up in between bug waves. Move with smaller detachments capable of multiple firing angles. Always move in formations, bugs will devour your anus if they catch you lacking.
What about directions? Does it matter? Feels like it doesn't.
not that i've noticed. they turn around to face the attack, you just need to make sure they're not in each others' way.
I see, thanks.
Also just had the second surprise Tanker nearly kill my whole team lol, was fricking around trying to setup HMGs.
yeah it's very easy to lose troopers like that in this game, especially if it's offscreen. since your defences might kill the tanker but if you don't notice, your troops stay on the flaming terrain
btw i don't know if you've noticed, but if you do notice the tanker, it's very easy to cheese them, since their attacks are extremely telegraphed and easy to dodge.
Well, my micro skills are real rusty, if I ever had them that is.
But yeah, I did notice, did dodge a bunch of them, but I was also trying to setup the HMG right in front of them, in hindsight I should have just grenaded it to stun it.
Doesn't matter, I saved all my units, though one rifle team was down to like one guy.
i never move more than 2 squads* at the same time, three if the area is very wide. you can hold down the right mouse button to make them for up.
*two squads of infantry that is. but if you have smaller support units like rocketmanii, snipermanii or radiomanii, you can move them all together with your two squads of infantry and the auto formation with holding down right click is smart enough to line them up behind your frontline infantry units.
starship troopers is the most moronic shit
there wasn't a single good reason to just dump a bunch of infantry into a bug infested planet without first raining down a ton of death from the orbit and the atmosphere
Ze bugz are underground.
Just gas them
underestimating "stupid bugs" is literally a plot point and part of the narrative theme anon.
They did do that, it didnt work because the bug nests are deep underground
frick this mission with the marauders their damage is shit they die really fast and their skills are either friendly fire aoe or long ranged attack with a minimum distance so long its useless for this.
aaaa
The game's fun and all, but whoever designed the mission levels need a beating.
>create a tight, tunnel map where you can only move one squad through at a time - only give you standard infantry and combat engineer
>a mission where you have to escape the city - your unit's abilities are useless for the first half of the mission because
>fill a mission full of scorpions - doesn't give you rocket troopers so you end up losing half your squad in every engagement
>a massive defensive map where you have to prevent enemy from reaching the exits - your pop cap limit is like five squads and you can't build any turrets
Scorpion is genuinely one of the most cancerous unit I've ever seen in an RTS.
yeah i actually enjoy most of the missions but a few are just fricking poorly designed.
the arbitrary limits on troops you can call up are the worst offenders. the marauder mission before federatsiyagrad and the power trooper mission suck for this. i am now at the mission where you have to keep arachnids from escaping, the second to last one. the tunnel missions i didn't have problems with since they were usually balanced well enough around your limitation.
ironically, i think federatsiyagrad is actually an example of a very fair and well designed mission and while it is hard and can easily go wrong, if you're careful and use the game's mechanics well, you'll succeed.
but my favorite mission would probably be the one where you have to reactivate four cannons and then fight off a bug attack. i think it's mission 15 or 16, the perimeter. the map is just great, with lots of approaches for attack, lots vantage points and areas you need to lock down to keep bugs from flanking you, you get a little fort to play around with and you've got a bunch of strong hives around the map that you have to power through. if you play it well enough, at one point your various groups of troops can link up and it makes exhausting the final hive pretty comfy
>i am now at the mission where you have to keep arachnids from escaping, the second to last one
actually just beat it. i flopped hard on the first attempt but next time i just stopped trying to hold the walls and retreated to the positions around the three outposts and held those. they also seemed to have better chokepoints this way and less chances for the spitters to snipe me. also got rid of the snipers in favor of rocket troopers.
it was pretty fun, lots of bugs to mow down, never saw any scorpions, never had too many obnoxious bug types
you can't ignore the warriors either, because they'll chew through you even faster. as usual, rockets are the best solution to the situation. just let the infantrymen do their job and manually handle the rockets to target the spitters, they finish em off pretty quickly.
did you try to hold the walls or did you retreat towards the three radio outposts?
btw i played on the second highest difficulty, not the highest one, so feel free to ignore this if you played brutal
>baddies seething because there's a modicum of challenge
Marauders can kite entire horders while withering them down and if you've got engineers, they can facetank anything besides multiple scorpions.
Also the mortar is a beast.
Holy shit, I thought Scorpions were bad, but the second to last mission made me hate Spitters more than anything in this game. It wouldn't be so bad if the units and turrets have better target priority, as is, they just keep shooting at shitty warriors while their health get whittled down by swarm of spitters that keeps on growing because your unit won't attack them unless you command them to.
This makes me think that this game would be way better with a coop function. This game is so micro-heavy and the maps so full of routes that it's impossible for you to be command everything at once by yourself.
>I thought Scorpions were bad, but Spitters
yea its spitters. you have to manually attack them every single time. even if you set up a huge defence your dudes and turrets will just ignore them until they're all dead
Figure I'm almost done with the campaign. The game is a fine diversion, though definitely amateurish in many ways. The fact that most abilities and a lot of units are straight up useless or obsolete very quickly is a little off putting.
id say the main issue is that it's too easy, even on brutal where you do like 50% damage. Scorps and wonky terrain are pretty much the only challenge, so I don't get why people hate them.
I actually like the LOS system, and I wish more missions let you take advantage of cameras and searchlights, I thought it was neat.
I think the main problem with scorpions is that they show up on missions where all the troops you have deal absolutely pathetic damage to them and their counters (rocket troopers) are not available for recruitment and other units do pathetic damage to them, so it seems unfair. If I get to recruit whatever I want and I'm attacking a level 4 hive, yeah I appreciate scorpions showing up to make me be mindful of my unit comp, micro and positioning.
>it's too easy, even on brutal where you do like 50% damage
Tentatively agree. It definitely has a few nail biter moments, but the few times where I've failed a mission, was just because the game throws an unpredictable curveball at me and at a simple reload, I can account for it and it becomes a cakewalk.
And another problem with difficulty is that for example you can have hives that are difficult to clear out due to the bug tunnel positions and the numbers, but a total wipe of my attacking force doesn't result in a failure state, you just have to recruit everything all over and try again until you win.
It has difficult aspects and objectives, but it's hard to lose. When you know how the game works, it's pretty easy to set yourself up in an unassailable position and then complete the mission at your leisure. If you're a complete moron and leave yourself open to attack and undefended and just run around the map with every unit at your disposal, yeah I guess a bug runby can uncapture your outposts but I literally can't imagine anyone doing that.
Shotguns aside, is there any reason to not just use Morita Mk. IIs once I get them over the regular rifle infantry?
it's been my impression that they don't have as much firepower against regular warriors. they also seem to have less staying power due to lower health or lower number of models idk. i use them as fire support to put on an elevated are because of their longer range and grenade launchers or i just travel with whatever number of rifleman squads i can afford + one mk 2 unit to make sure tiger bugs go down before they reach me.
the mk1 moritas stay useful throughout the campaign. and don't discount the shotguns. but full disclosure, i've never tried actually massing mk2 rifleman squads. maybe at some point they reach critical mass and they get better
Well, my first encounter with Tigers is a bloodbath, or my second perhaps. Which is partly why I'm trying to see what I can do, besides just running more rockets at least.
I'll think about it, thanks.
well don't get me wrong, you always want at least one of them going with your mobile force and one to defend anywhere tigers show up to attack your position (if you don't have hmg turrets). but i don't think they replace mk 1 troopers. on the mission where they show up (reactivating the turbines?) i think i had two of them and the rest were regular troopers
because they insta die in melee. the default riflemen are good for tanking.
Wait, they are supposed to tank? I don't know why but I've always imagined it's like the movies and if the bugs get's a couple seconds melee time all your dudes would just die.
So I read all that shit in the encyclopedia saying Mk.IIs suck at CQC and didn't think much about it.
Rifles have underslung shotguns that have soft CC on lightly armored enemies. Once they reach vet 3 they can (and always should) get the shotgun barrage which turns them into a fricking CC monster than can stunlock even scorpions at close range.
They also come with a lot of models and are decent all rounders due to their long range rifles. They just don't do AP so their effectiveness is questionable later on when you fight lots of Tigers or worse. E pulse troopers don't have the same CC but they have AP and devastating DPS so they effectively replace riflemen as your front line CQC unit.
How exactly do hives and tunnels work? Do you have to be in aggro range of every tunnel to actually whittle down the strength of a hive? Or can you camp one area and now them down long enough to deplete it?
to whittle down the strength stat of a hive (the stat that shows up when you hover over it "hive strength: 4; army strength:2), yes, you need to be in range of all the tunnels and to have depleted them, then the hive strength can drop to zero and you can destroy it with a single unit of riflemen.
if you just want to be able to assault the hive, i.e. deplete those little bug icons that are over the hive entrance, you can just be near one or two tunnels + the hive entrance and then aggro the bugs. the hive will eventually become assaultable and in theory even if the hive has a strength of 4 (meaning an untouched tunnel or 2), you can assault it with 5 units and win
in practice however, attacking a non-fully depleted hive has only worked once for me.
>you need to take the time it takes the troops to finish the entering the tunnel animation into consideration
>if you send troops in while there's an attack wave from a tunnel coming in, your troops take a while to enter and the bugs are free to slaughter them the ones lined up on the outside
>if you send troops in while the vulnerable hive's progress bar is almost full and it's about to spit out a wave, your troops will fail the assault and escape with 1 model each
>in practice everything is timed in such a way as to make assaulting a hive of greater than zero strength without running into the above issues, extremely difficult and finnicky.
you're better off trying to aggro all tunnels at once. but nothing's stopping you from camping outside of one tunnel while you drain it, which relieves the pressure and allows you to move in your troops deeper into the hive's area, making sure you have units ready to take on the next wave the drained hive spits out as shown by the progress bar, then aggroing a second tunnel and so on. sometimes you simply can't attack from just one direction and you need to bring in reinforcements to drain a tunnel that you can't get to without being exposed to attack from 4 directions
Yah, that's what I figured, royal guard make it hard to just setup shop in multiple areas without microijg rockets to make flame barriers. Honestly find them to be more of a pain than scorpions because they move just fast enough to dodge rockets in the first volley.
At least scorps just bleed models, they don't tie up your front line.
e-troopers seem to do a pretty good job of cutting through them for me. and all warrior bug types really. the latter part of the campaign, my frontline is just e-troopers with a unit or two of rifles/mk2 if there's an elevated position nearby to exploit because the e-troopers have way too pathetic a range to serve as fire support.
E troopers are very good but don't do enough damage on brutal to kill them without having to kite.
You have to either use flame rockets to CC them, the tac flare to Amp up the DPS, or get lucky with rocket hits.
Forgot to mention your setup is identical to mine, e troops in front, mk2s and rockets in back. You can sometimes get lucky and the mk2 grenades will slow the royal guards, but not always.
Also is it me or do rocket turrets have absurdly long range? Almost quadruple the range of rocket troopers.
Turrets are great in this, I always try to use them offensively.
They're good but I think the AI is programmed to prioritize them even through fog of war.
On that mission with the size 4 hive with the southern traffic gate, I built 5 rocket turrets to help me snipe scorps while I pushed from the north. I left the gate closed (its invulnerable) and after about a minute I realized I needed to get vision with a camera and realized about 10 scorpions and a dozens of warriors/Tigers had bunched up there, refusing to attack my northern force even as I hit the hive.
Think I'll load that save and take a screenshot.
I having problems with that mission on Brutal, I'm at that last hive and I can barely keep the bugs back.
Pro tip, replace your riflemen with E pulse troopers ASAP. They can hold off warriors and Tigers indefinitely.
Misread your post,
Hace a Frontline of e pulse troopers with mk2s and rockets as your back line. engage the hive and 1-2 tunnels. Have a small southern force at the traffic gate, setup rocket turrets outside of scorpion range.
Capture the traffic control center to get the cameras which overlook the hive.
Manually target scorpions and royal guard with the rocket turrets, thin out horses with a fleet liaisons TAC bombing runs.
Doing it this way, your northern force can inch towards the hive, deal with half the bugs, and the southern force can provide both fire support and a distraction. Those turrets can reach anywhere in that entire area, it's honestly busted.
I'm using marauders, so should I replace them, I thought they were good at holding the line.
Having just done the introductory Marauder mission it feels their dps kinda sucks.
They are either long range bombardment with mortars, or tank/kite. Though even they would go down fast to scorpions, but it's still less annoying to repair them compared to needing to setup a dropzone and then replenish your troops. Though using regular troops apparently you can just dodge scorpion fire, but that's too much micro for me.
i don't think you can dodge scorpion fire. it never worked for me. you could dodge tanker fire for sure though. maybe others have had different experiences.
and i found dropzones easier and radio operators less vulnerable - you can reinforce multiple squads at once btw. just select all damaged squads and ask for reinforcements from a dropzone. if the dropzone is close enough behind them, the squad won't even move. i reinforced 4 squads at once that way. if you ask me that's broken but hey might as well use it until it gets patched out.
Steam discussion indicates that Scorpions targets the area your troops are in, and that apparently if you walk towards the Scorpions they would miss.
Also my problem with dropzones is needing to rebuild the line, but I'll take your tip, not like I can spam Marauders anyway.
Anyway I found that thing
>They will ALWAYS attack the closest unit, and their attack is a multi-projectile strike which is ground-targetted when it fires. This means that having your closest squad running towards or away them will mitigate the damage it deals... And that having that squad running side-to-side will make them deal NO damage.
It's from that Constructive discussion on scorpions thread.
well look, i can't argue with what's been found in the game files, but personally, i failed to make it work. i ran side to side too. maybe i just had bad luck.
yeah just make sure the dropzone and the radioman squad is right up your line's ass and they won't move and disrupt your line whenever you call up reinforcements. tried and true.
yeah they could be great but as long as scorpions exist, they flop hard. you need rocketmanii and engineers to support them and you need 3 to make a dent and each one is five supply and for the 15 supply and 3 war support that gets you three marauders, you could have 5 frontline infantry units and three turrets. and instead of an engineer and rocketman squad you could have two rocketman squads (assuming you disband the engineers after they build the turrets). which is better?
Yeah this anon lays it out pretty clearly. Marauders just don't make sense from a value proposition perspective. Infantry with turret and dropzones are just straight up superior to 3 marauders.
I think this is an universal theme in strategy games, expensive units suffer from diminishing returns, you are focusing too many resources in a limited point instead of distributing them in a way that gives you more flexibility.
I gave up on the Marauders and just got a shit ton of rocketman, rocket turrets and 4 pulse troopers, it was actually super easy to finish it like that, it's a shame that the big mechs are such a noob trap.
seconding this. you can't beat that mission without a second smaller force aggroing at least one tunnel
ironically i did it backwards, i had my main force for the southern entrance where the gate was and i sent a smaller force from the group that holds the bridgehead to aggro the northernmost tunnel, but the same principle applies
i think i had two rifleman units in front, two rocketmen in back and an mk2 on top of a destroyed building. it was enough to handle the tigers, warriors royal guards and scorpions that get sent your way.
and for the southern force i had two e-pulse squads, one mk2, one rifleman and 2 or 3 rockets.
they seemed to work fantastic in certain situation but personally after their performance at the federatsiyagrad warmup mission, i was never tempted to get them again. scorpions hard counter them
>two rifleman units in front
just checked a save, it was one rifleman, one e-pulse. i thought i was too autistic to disband veteran squads but i guess i'm only halfway autistic
I really like the big mechs, they can tank hordes of regular enemies with an engineer repairing them, but scorpions really frick them up too fast, with troopers you can rotate units and reinforce units.
skip the mk2's, more rockets
i see, makes sense. i play on the difficulty below brutal and i only need to kite if there's two out at the same time.
as for rocket turrets, they have a longer range yeah. but two war support keeps me from spamming them, i only set one up where tankers show up and despite the longer range it's not enough to take it down before it gets a shot which usually kills it. but it's a nice assist
i do too when i can but when the hive is out in the desert you can't really place them. but turrets are what saved me when i was attacking the central hive with the time limit on the repair the turbines mission
>2 separate teams to do separate objectives on separate paths.
>1 team goes fricking around in front of a safe supply tunnel, entering to see if I can capture it for bonuses.
>Other team enters the control room activates that supply tunnel as a bug hive and it spews tons of Tiger Bugs onto my team.
That's a reload, because my tac officer got ganked.
Also just got off Ft. Meru and Scorpions, that was a nasty mission, no longer clean clears.
Marine or Orbital Bombardment for Fleet Liason?
Also poor Colonel Hawthrone, despite doing what Command ordered we still pretended we didn't do what Command ordered.
Thanks for the tip btw, holding the line made the whole thing way easier.
Orbital bombardment, the marines cost 5 supply points
Not free then. Damn.
Are the marines worth 5 supply points though? I was imagining something like calling them down and then sending them to die or something.
Like what do they do? I heard they can shoot through friendlies or something?
yeah they can shoot through friendlies and they have good damage output and armor piercing
not worth 5 points though. 3, maybe
Compared to E-Pulse and Morita 2s?
Like do they take the best traits of all the rifle type units?
sorry, hard to quantify as I only used them once with a bunch of other units. i'd say better than mk2s, worse than e-pulse. regardless, their main bonus is that it's a free damage dealer that doesn't take up space and n+1 units dealing damage is better than n units dealing damage either way.
not worth 5 supply for sure, considering a marauder is also 5 supply and it also shoots from behind your line.
it's not hard to try them out for yourself on the mission where you get the fleet liason, you get 400 experience points any time you cast aerial bombardment regardless if you hit anything or not, so just spam the ability and wa-la. level 3 fleet liason
>it's not hard to try them out for yourself on the mission where you get the fleet liason, you get 400 experience points any time you cast aerial bombardment regardless if you hit anything or not, so just spam the ability and wa-la. level 3 fleet liason
Yeah, but I don't want to be stuck with some shitter. Also apparently at the start I only have 4 spare supply so.
Oh well, since their abilities share cd anyway I'll just hold off and see.
you don't get stuck, you can just recall them at a dropzone and free up the supply. it's one of the buttons on their abilities panel. assuming you were talking about the supplies
I meant the abilities.
Like is orbital strike good enough that I would miss it? Or I'll get by with the air strike?
They share cd right? Cannot just use both together?
ah sorry, no clue. i never recruited a fleet liason officer ever again after that mission. in retrospect that was a mistake, because i just realized he could also call in reinforcement areas but eh whatever, i got by fine without it
one thing's for sure, if you pick marines you can't pick orbital bombardment.
You are playing on Brutal, right?
wtf my e-pulse troopers don't shoot little beams
i need to check my graffix settings
Those are it's tactical.
>99% casualty rate
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
yeah fort meru was very unrewarding, felt like i failed every step of the way but only survived because the bugs held back from finishing me off
mission might be good for challenge runs
Just finished the game and it was alright. It's fun for what it is but some of the level designs really are weird, some of the units seem kind of pointless, and it would be nice if there are some more challenge maps.
How many challenge maps?
If you guys want to have some fun, apparently the number of bugs scale with the amount of supplies you have; So you can experience Klendathu hell by opening up console, typing in "supply" for a few time, and then watch as a tide of bugs comes crashing into you.
Just two, the space port clearing one and plasma bugs hunting one.
What maps give you all troops?
I want to spam all the good shit and hold the line, at least until they give us an actual hold the line mode.
>all troops
Only the last two missions, I think. If you want to play defense then you'll probably want to try it with the second to last mission.
I tried it with Fort Meru and I almost died when 10 scorpions showed up.
as i suspected, this sounds fun in theory but it's actually anti-fun when 10 scorpinogs, 10 tankers and 10 royal guard show up
any way to control what bugs get spawned, like in terran ascendancy? i used the terran ascendancy csv hack to delete spitters and spawn more warriors
It's fine because you also get way more soldiers and turrets.
>bug spawn
No idea, you might have to dig in the game's files for that.
Go take a look at steam discussions imo, people are modding shit there.
But anyway, even if you cannot tune what bugs spawn, the next best thing is to nerf them.
Hoping for an actual Hold the Line mode with multiple maps.
From easy ones with a fort with easy chokepoints to hard ones with being at the center of the map with enemies coming from all around you.
That's the challenge, also I think you can hold off anything with good use of CC from the rocket dudes, they are so good.
Tried this on easiest and it didn't work.
Perhaps they also have other things beyond just increasing weapon's damage?
So apparently this game has console commands, and reading through the Steam guide, someone discovered that it appears that the bugs scale with your supply count.
And what do you know, there is a command to give you more supply.
The flare is great.
>Marauders
the howitzer version is the only version you should get.extremely important for the final mission and sniping the grenadiers
Can't you just use rocketman instead? The are like artillery.
reminder that rocket turrets have effectively infinite range
funny seeing this post here. i just started the final mission and my infantry was completely ineffective at trying to take the last two hives of the opening area due to so many spitters. i switched out my infantry and got 2 and then 3 marauders and pushed the bugs' shit in
i'll see how much use they see for the rest of the mission but for now i called it a day just before taking the second outpost
just beat the final mission
first of all scratch what i said here about marauders
apparently if there are no scorpions around marauders are basically invulnerable. in that mission only royal guard can even put a scratch on them
after the initial slog and switching out my infantry for marauders, the mission became a cakewalk and i basically a-moved through the map. only lost one marauder by leaving it in a pool of burning tanker fire.
i pity the people who tried to beat this mission with infantry only, because spitters probably made your life hell.
ironically for all the hate scorpions get, i think this mission would have been better if instead of spitter bugs, it had scorpions. infantry dies way less to scorpions than to spitters and scorpions disincentivize using marauders a LOT. mission would have been a way more fun time if you had to do it the old fashioned way.
I can't believe it's Private Hawthorne!
Also I didn't fully understand the final bombing run the first time and lost most of my troops.
Also I don't know why you say Powered Armor and Marauders suck, maybe if you're looking purely dps maybe.
But consider this, while Marauder are fairly vulnerable to Scorpions, Powered Armor are strangely unusually tanky against them, they also move fast enough that you can dodge to reduce their damage even more. Stutterstepping might actually work using PA against Scorpions.
Secondly, both those units are imprevious to almost every other bug in game, turned the final mission into a cakewalk.
While PA damage is anemic early on, once you get them some SAWs and Rockets they start putting the pain on the Arachnid menace. Also use the Engineering Tool thing on one of your PA, that way you can ditch your fragile Combat Engineers and use PA to repair your Marauders. Add on one Tac Officer and Fleet Liason and you can murder anything coming your way.
But really, seeing how tanky PA is, don't know why people ever said they suck.
is this a post from slytherine's marketing agency?
power armored troopers aren't "strangely tanky" to scorpion shots, they lose 1-2 models per shot just like every other unit. also you didn't get marauders to repair with the engineering skill on the power armor trooper mission
you're wasting your time, everyone here either already bought the game or pirated it. there's no room for new recruits
Now that you mention it I think I realise why.
It's because PA troops are naturally more spread out, that's why it seems that they are tankier against Scorpions.
>Greetings Troopers,
>Firstly, we’d like to thank everyone for all the positive feedback and reviews we’ve received since the game’s launch. Morale is high, and our team has been overjoyed by your support and comments. But we haven’t let that go to our heads.
>As the war against the Bugs rages on, we have heard your frontline needs.
>Rest assured these battlefield reports are finding their way to the highest levels of military intelligence. What we need is time -- time to construct a full roadmap of everything we’d like to do, time to align on which priorities to focus on first, and time to create and deliver the content you want.
>Starship Troopers: Terran Command’s future is bright,
>We’ll do our part…
>…and we’ll keep fighting.
>Full roadmap, coming soon
Posted yesterday. Just a confirmation that they are going to keep on releasing content if anyone was wondering about it
I feel like SAWs are the best choice on PA troops in every situation except fighting massed scorpions. The time to kill is just too high, especially when other bugs are mixed in. How good are the PA rockets against scorps? They felt like a waste for general use since they are direct fire and SAWs are just so fricking good (you can cheese grenadiers so fricking easily).
well in the one mission you get them, you have no access to rocket troopers, so you need to go with rockets.
then on the last mission there are no scorpions but there are spitters aplenty so they chew through your infantry regardless so you're better off going marauders
and on the airport bonus mission that's basically a sandbox, the supply cap was pretty tight so you couldn't mass enough rockets to instagib scorpions and you didn't have enough war support to get many power armored troopers so i didn't feel like i was free to get saws
i just started up the knights in powered armor mission and i feel like that's the only case where it would be better (and a lot better at that) to get saws, unless scorpions show up later.
i guess royal guard are an issue but the powered armor dudes can run fast so you can kite them easily of they show up
>then on the last mission there are no scorpions but there are spitters aplenty so they chew through your infantry regardless so you're better off going marauders
Final mission should be a mix of Marauders and PA imo. PA tank spitters well too, and you can easily in field repair with Fleet Liason.
Also is it just me or do PA clear hives the fastest? Couldn't tell if I wasn't paying attention or what.
maybe on brutal idk. i played on challenging and practically a-moved through the map, just had to keep a couple of engineer units in tow. never felt like i was lacking for infantry support, especially after you free up the other mobile infantry base to advance with you.
if brutal makes it that much more difficult, maybe it's useful to have one engineer power armor infantry in addition to SAWs but in my experience, nothing but scorpions seemed to put a dent in marauder armor so i saw no reason to bother.
as for if they clear hives fastest, they might, simply due to their fast movement speed and lower number of models than e-troopers or riflemen.
I mean PA uses less War Points or w/e it's called compared to Marauders. You could probably get more pure dps that way.
And since Marauders do not block firing lines, you can stack them together.
you homies crying about spitters, I bet you don't even use snipers.
spitters can fire through solid objects, snipers cannot
I beat last mission using Sniper to kill spitters. Work like a charm.
Snipers are pretty good, they make flyers and spitters a no factor almost and the flare can save you in a pinch.
They are extremely niche, yes. I would think they should cost 1 supply and start with the flare ability.
I love the setting, the book, the movie, but this game looks like grindy tower-defense. Low supply cap with no means of getting an army larger-scale than your enemy nor hard-countering them with tech.
From the showcase, looks like the intended gameplay is you lose wave after wave of dudes to take enemy bases then repeat. I always hated in SC and other RTSs when there were campaign maps like that and this's a whole game of that without much story.
It'd be much cooler if it were a proper RTS: players can choose Federation, Buggers, or Skinnies. Higher-tier units like Psychics will reveal the underground tunnels of the Buggers to a Federation player so he can't be ambushed and can search for the enemy queen.
I get how the game's kinda loyal to the movie's representation of the material but that's a shit. Should be more like pic related
>no means of getting an army larger-scale than your enemy nor hard-countering them with tech.
How would that make for fun gameplay? The book doesn't make for a good RTS.
>How would that make for fun gameplay?
It would offer a range of strategic options for players to decide between instead of mindless grind.
>The book doesn't make for a good RTS.
yes it does.
>mindless grind.
The game is nothing like that, if you play on hard settings, which you should, it's about managing your resources strategically, using the terrain, force composition and skillshots properly to advance.
Best moment in the game.
>he thinks it looks like tower defense
>he complains there's no way to outnumber the bugs
>he thinks it should be like a "proper rts" with three factions and some meme mechanic he just made up in his head
extremely, extremely low iq individual
COME ON YOU APES YOU WANNA LIVE FOREVER!?!?