#Campaign balance

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winter coral
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figured I oughta start this thread ^^ I'm not done with the campaign yet, but having passed level 5, I have remarks

all 8-bit series missions are possible to beat with all stars on hard mode without having to come back from a later mission. some are quite difficult to do this on, but nevertheless, it was always possible. I'm gonna assume that's the end goal with the campaign balance in 9-bit

the first four missions felt on-target 😄 I'll go over them briefly before getting to the fifth

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Steel Shore felt like a good introductory mission without being a pushover, which is a step up from the 8-bit series. the AI actually attacked 😛 there was an objective close to the base and on its parallel side, there were a bunch of crates to collect to help snowball the map faster, rewarding the observant. and with both infantry and a light vehicle type available, there's a good amount of stuff to start out with before introducing naval units and combat. I approve!

Fleeing Rats is hectic, but fair. the player is warned about enemy naval transports before they start to drop units off near the Radars, the Radars around the map offer Shipyard and Refinery locations, and mass Gunboats are able to do most of the work on the map, but not all. the player doesn't need many units at all to finish off the HQ on the central island, but he does need some, forcing him to acquaint himself with Sea Transports. also, having an allied team around helps take attention off the player so he can get acquainted with the naval stuff, but that they eventually get rekt is good. the player is encouraged to be quick at taking over the sea.

warning the player about the enemy naval transports is definitely for the best, and it would certainly be helpful to warn the player about other such things on other missions. a little forewarning goes a long way in allowing the player to react cleanly to things as opposed to getting blindsided and overwhelmed before he gets his shoes on 😛 that warning is enough time to drop a factory, or turret, or position some gunboats, or something at the two Radars along the shoreline.

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Prototype Panic is pretty straightforward; not much to say about this one. I think it's nice that we get to sample the paradrop cannons long before we get access to them, so we have the opportunity to discover, "what? we can put tanks in this thing?" and, being the introduction for tanks, it seems like a good map built for massing them up and rolling them around. still, it helps to have other units around to support those tanks, so it keeps with the sense I get from the design that each new mission is meant to encourage use of the new thing, but the new thing on its own won't carry you to the end. I think this is a good design policy

Holes to Elsewhere nothing much to say about this one either. we get forward HQs, the main objective is to deploy some, there was enough time to complete all the objectives, but not enough time to feel comfortable or to go wandering around blowing up ALL the things. introducing a non-combat unit after the first three missions and emphasizing its use in this one is good because it allows us to reinforce the fundamentals we got from the first few missions, using all the combat units available and stuff

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Hidden Truth has some problems ^^ it's tough to narrow down the exact culprit(s) for why this one feels so overtuned, but I did a couple of hard mode runs using a couple of different strategies, and here are some bullet points I think might be good summaries of the shenanigans and what exactly could use some adjustment

  • there's stuff EVERYWHERE on this map! not only are the anomalies chock full of aberrations, but the Sentinels send substantial armies. the Sentinels' aggression and number of attackers are justifiable, but I believe it must be counterbalanced somehow, such as through a lower amount of defense forces or less anomalous units. those are other points though, so I'll move on
  • the player must defend everywhere while attempting to attack many areas of the map, meaning there's quite a lot to keep track of. while I appreciate that the AI is quite competent, their attacks from many angles, partly because a couple of their bases have no land routes to the player's, are a lot to deal with on defense while also attempting to strike out. this results in air units wandering around (and the Heavy Drones outrange regular MG turrets and bunkers, so area coverage with those isn't particularly helpful as their attacks have to be responded to manually. mega MG turrets are a factor, but with how many angles the player must cover, that's rather inconvenient, no?), tadpoles poking you here or there, suddenly a naval transport dropped off 15 Rocket Cars on the east side of your base, the bridge is being overrun, all this other stuff... I would put some MG copters on patrol, but the patrol key works differently from how it did in 8-bit and I haven't figured out the command yet 😛 anyway... like I mentioned in the first point, I believe the enemy aggression and approach can stay the way it is as long as their defenses are reduced or made more exploitable from certain angles, and if there are less anomalies on the map.
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  • due to the amount of stuff, securing additional resources and getting the snowball rolling requires a considerable investment. the most obvious location for expansion is the area directly east of the player's start location, but there are quite a lot of anomalies there. it's a good thing that the combinations of anomalies are countered by specific things, like the water elementals and cyclops being weak to rocket infantry and tanks, and the cranoids units being weak to armored cars and MG inf. MG copters are also great against the anomalies because only half of them are fighting back. to that end, I think the composition of anomalous units is quite good as there are a variety of approaches the player can go for. however, as stated, there are many of them and they take a while to clear out enough to get some infantry to the crates. the top-left and top-right corners of the map can probably stay totally infested, but I would suggest cutting down anomaly numbers somewhat on the center-left, and very much so in the bottom right corner of the map. that way, the player is able to fund and focus on his own aggression much better!
  • the player must attack everywhere. again, this is fine with a good snowball or if there's not too much stuff around, but as I mentioned, the player has a lot to focus on with regards to defense, and the act of acquiring additional resources is quite difficult. striking out is thus best done on this map after massing up a force that shouldn't have to be so large. this might be somewhat remedied by reducing the Sentinels' Mega Power Plants to two per base rather than three, or by piling factories & dangerous turrets closer to the enemy HQ while having more sparse defenses around the Mega Power Plants. I get the impression that this is already the case, but the sheer amount of defenses, and defenders, seems too much. if the AI were to build less & commit more forces to attack, thus having less forces on defenses, that'd help
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all of this has to be figured out in under 20 minutes for the gold star objective, which seems too harsh given all the stuff above 😛 I tried this mission with a land army supported by navy, and again with an air force supported by navy. air was faster, but I had Engineers unlocked and was able to repair my MG Copters. without having beaten the level with the land forces first, I imagine this one would have taken about as long as the land run, with air. so even if the timer were to be increased to, say, 30 minutes, there are still other things to adjust, and it's still quite the spike in difficulty when compared with the prior maps.

I took recordings of those runs, so here they are:
https://streamable.com/6048av
https://streamable.com/g0n7mv

Streamable
Watch Hidden Truth land + naval | Streamable

Watch "Hidden Truth land + naval" on Streamable.

▶ Play video
Streamable
Watch Hidden Truth air + naval | Streamable

Watch "Hidden Truth air + naval" on Streamable.

▶ Play video
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I suppose, in addition to heavily reducing anomaly presence on the east side of the map, I ought to also suggest making the Sentinels' base directly west of the player significantly weaker. that way some more choice is maintained in where the player can attack first, yeah?

and another minor note, why are the ol' Overlords bases attackable? 😛 should those be made neutral or allied or something so the player's units can focus on the anomalies? xD

on the subject of bugs rather than balance, you'll notice a corner of the map was blacked out in both of these runs. this was rather inconvenient 😄 so... could probably do with fixing lol

I hope all that adequately explains why I think this mission is overtuned, and I hope those are some good suggestions for adjusting the difficulty. I'm curious if other folks agree that this one's overtuned, so please do feel free to kindly chime in in this thread if you don't mind 🙂

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oh, and the Sentinels' EVA voice plays when stuff involving the Forward HQ happens 😮 I think a Tadpole poked my eastern FHQ around 4:10 into the first vid, and you can hear her voice 😛

fluid jacinth
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Thank you for the in-depth detailed feedback! Very helpful (especially from a skilled player on hard).
As I mentioned elsewhere the gold timers are probably short on a lot of later missions so while is nice seeing you all try for them - keep in mind that sometimes they are just probably wrong! (30 might be a more realistic number… depending on what other changes are made and where it all ends up!) at lot of your other feedback has some good points as well so am sure will try and implement a few of them…

winter coral
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I'm grateful for the opportunity to help make the game the best it can be 😃 I quite like this series!

I'll review the prior maps to see if there's anything in particular I missed, and be sure to take note of things I get blindsided by on later missions, if anything 🙂 if there are any other data points y'all could use more feedback on, please let me know and I'll see what I can do!

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I was just about to sit down and continue the campaign, actually 😄 so I'll have a bit more feedback a bit later

winter coral
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revisiting prior levels, I'm not sure there's anything else that warrants explanation or 'warning about.' the first mission has enough crates laying around for the player to notice, I think. the second mission already warns the player about enemy sea transports before they arrive, the third doesn't need to spell out for the player that "hey, you can fit tanks in the paradrop cannon!" or something because the player gets a bunch of them for free and has the whole mission to experiment with them, which seems quite fair to me, and then the fourth mission's nukage pools are, uhh... well, is there a way to get rid of them? I tried destroying nearby towers, but that didn't seem to have an effect. if there is a way to get rid of them, maybe that could use a remark from one of the Overlord Soldiers, but if they're simply a hazard meant to be there for good, that's quite obvious enough

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I remarked plenty on the fifth mission already 😄 however, I don't think there's anything in particular that should be forewarned about that the player wouldn't expect already... except, perhaps, that 'the enemy may try to hit us from any direction.' if only because it appears they're quite a lot more flanky on this mission as opposed to prior missions

on the subject of strategies the player should probably be the one to figure out, I noticed the channel under the bridge is the only way to the east beach where the enemy likes to drop off units, so around that area is where I decided to focus my defense, blocking both attackers attempting to cross the bridge as well as any sea transports attempting to head to the eastern beach. the western beach was covered by my Gunboat production in that area, so that worked out rather well. even then, there were air units to account for, so, yeah, hectic map 😛 if the balance is still iffy, pointing this out would make it much easier on a player to realize where to centralize his defenses, but again, I think this is one of those things the player should figure out for himself. only the flankiness of the enemy on this map possibly warrants a heads-up

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Off the Books felt fair to me, a return to form after Hidden Truth, however I observed some AI shenanigans that might be noteworthy: some enemy land units were clinging to the eastern island's western edge rather than making use of Sea Transports to attack me. for artillery this is fine since they can hit my naval units, but I imagine all those infantry and such would want to storm a beach somewhere 😛 destroying enough bridges to cut off the enemy's land approaches also seemed to pacify the AI somewhat. Hidden Truth's AIs had some aggressive Sea Transport usage, and Overlords have air transports too, so I would love to see that behavior in action here!

to that end, it's probably a bit undertuned. AI aggression increase and sea or air transport usage would remedy that. they make use of naval and air units just fine, but land units fell behind due to the east island thing and also the bridge destruction xD granted, bridge destruction should have an impact, but in this scenario it's the enemy AI not making use of all the tools available to it, ya know?

my strategy was to secure the south-central island with bunkers covering each bridge while I expanded eastward, claiming all the resource nodes along the southern side. I decided to blow up the bridge between the south-central and center-west islands, and then ditto for its parallel bridge, allowing me to hold the data center more easily. the enemy defenders are sparse, and the mission could probably be cleared quite fast with the amount of starting units and free resource nodes we can claim from the Sentinels' base, but there's still a lot of transporting stuff and waiting around to do, so the timer feels about right

I feel this map is well-rounded enough to support all sorts of warfare - there is the need to transport and use land units, the waters must be controlled to achieve that, and air can roam freely to cover areas with insufficient defense. feels like a good setup to me!

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if anything was missing, it was some sort of indicator as to how long it takes to capture a Data Center. I noticed when I moused over one, there was a caveat that "infantry must be nearby to capture the Data Center." should there be some kind of indication as to how long it will take for the structure to be captured? that would give a better idea of how long the player actually has to complete the gold star objective, and he can attempt to account for that time 🙂

oh, also, the Data Centers provide build radius after being captured. is this intentional? aren't they invulnerable structures, so the player always has build radius there after they're captured? the enemy doesn't appear to be trying to sit infantry in the vicinity to take them back, so perhaps this is OP 😄 or at least exploitable

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Against the Odds might have another timer that's a bit too short, depending on what other players think, I guess. five Mega Rocket Turrets, with zero downtime between building them and not accounting for the power required, base crawl time, or travel time of forward HQs, would take a total of ~6 mins 40 secs to build. that's over a third of the timer's duration!

I think it's tight, and the player has to be early to account for build time, but really the timer feels just right on this one to me

that said, it was entirely doable, even to the point I was able to smash everything on the map and not just the objectives. Heavy Tank spam is no joke 😆 and with Engineers to keep them maintained, they wreck everything. not NEARLY as difficult as level 5 (clips for reference here #1210931660347150366 message), rolling with tanks and no engis, for the land army-based strategy, despite the higher number of aberrations in a smaller space to deal with on this mission

the only concern was getting to all the locations early to start building up the Rocket Turrets in time to hit the timer, and keeping tabs on the sidebar so it's not idle for too long. again, personally, I think the timer is just right for this mission, as are the amount of resources. if anything should change, I'd say the aberrations are much too passive. they should probably poke the player more often, yeah? 😛

I had some unobstructed free time during this mission, so I turned OBS on and as it turns out, there appears to be a bug involving the aberrations that I caught. here's the clip:
https://streamable.com/ogccz9

Discord
Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities

Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text. Chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.

Streamable
Watch Against the Odds | Streamable

Watch "Against the Odds" on Streamable.

▶ Play video
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around 4 mins 20 secs (blaze it) in, you can see the portal in the water ain't spawning water elementals, but they're spawning in on the land out of nowhere. it appears to be the same on the opposite side of the map, with the other portal in the water. I believe there were some water elementals that spawned just fine in the water on Hidden Truth, so this might just be a case of an erroneous spawn point set somewhere other than the attached doodad that has to be destroyed to disable that spawn point. right?

that's about all I've got for now 🙂 hope that helps!

winter coral
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hmm, I guess there are a couple of other bugs or funny behaviors I oughta report

I'll add to the #1210942596801896489 thread over in #1210939251160522763 🙂

winter coral
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oh! I'm silly, what am I thinking 😂 there's no need to warn the player about all the flankiness on level 5 if you just give the player a radar or something to start. then they'll be able to see stuff coming from every angle!

that's an alternative suggestion to warning the player about the level's flankiness 😃

winter coral
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Savage suggests a paradrop cannon on mission 5 😃 what if such a thing could be captured from the offline Overlords bases around? maybe if at least some of those structures could be put to use, it would snowball better

not to mention those structures are very inconvenient targets while trying to attack-move against the aberrations lol

vital ledge
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Holy jesus mission 5

winter coral
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🤣

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overtuned, right? 😆

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I clipped this cuz it was hilarious 😂

something went wrong with the tab when I tried to clip Pen-Gwen, so I guess I'll have to clip that after the stream is over and the vod is available 😦

winter coral
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hmm, there is a sea transport on level 6, Off the Books, in Savage's run of the level 😮 but I'm not sure the AI is doing anything with it

I'm not sure I saw any sea transports in my run, so, uhh... are they broken on this map? 😅

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@vital ledge
#1210931660347150366 message

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boop'd

light cape
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mission 5 is awful, everywhere is built up and constantly attacking you from several angles. expanding off the island is too costly for little reward. a slog even if you weren't going for a 20 minute win. needs way less stuff in general. removing the bases to the right of the player's start would take a bit of pressure off. the player could even expand over there instead to fund the army you would need to gold star

winter coral
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less stuff to the right seems like a popular take 😮

radiant sable
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Forget gold in the first run.

winter coral
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it's early access 🙂 a Petroglyph dev got back to us in this thread and encouraged us to provide as much feedback as possible for balance!

he also specified that some of the timers may be 'quite off,' as is the case on this mission 😄

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Savage posits that the level could maybe remain the way it is, but the timer could even go as far as 40 minutes

in the interest of making the difficulty of this level more in line with levels before and after, I think some other tweaks should be made, and then maybe a timer of 30 minutes is fair

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Savage adds 'the biggest concern for me on this mission is that it was turning me off. and if it turns ME off, imagine how it makes the average player, you know, the player who just plays video games for fun, feel'

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I have to agree with that assessment ^^ I personally appreciate a big macro map, even a slog sometimes, but at some point there's too much 😅

radiant sable
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M5 is a good example for another gold condition instead of a timer

winter coral
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I can agree with that 😄

radiant sable
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Devs think about this

winter coral
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though it doesn't solve the issue of "this is quite the difficulty spike from level 4, and then level 6 is much easier"

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I'm sure they do 🙂 I don't believe it insults them to throw our opinions out there and make suggestions as to how something could be designed a bit differently so it can be improved 😃

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I would quite like for this game to be the best it can be 😄 but maybe I'm an outlier with some of my opinions, in which case, please do feel free to argue against them ^^

FYI, I stated my impression of the 'target balance' at the start of this thread 🙂 here: #1210931660347150366 message so with that impression in mind, that's, uhh, that affects the feedback and stuff

if the devs have a different balance goal in mind and would prefer to hit that target instead, it would definitely help to hear it 😛

radiant sable
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I red much of your impression. Its a really good one

winter coral
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thank you! 😃 I'm relieved to hear that 😄

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Savage adds the suggestion that upping cash nodes for the campaign would probably help some of the balancing out 🙂 I'm not sure about that, I think the cash nodes being how they normally are on the multiplayer maps is fine, especially if a player is looking to get acquainted with those maps through the campaign before attempting multiplayer, but the enemy may need some adjustment here or there

he ran into quite the hellish spot between a bunch of spawners on level 7 😅 I wonder if perhaps I got lucky on my run or underestimated the level, and maybe it's a bit tougher than I thought it was?

will get timestamps from stream vod after it's over for analysis 😛

radiant sable
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Fine tuning for the later missions is still in progress. 🙂

winter coral
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good to know 😄 have you passed any of them? I would ask if there are any particularly confusing or frustrating ones that ya know any tricks for, but, if you know any, perhaps they're best put under spoilers 😃 I wanna go in blind and see if I can figure stuff out with the clues available before looking for cheat cards

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err, passed 8-12 that is 🙂 those are the ones I haven't checked out yet

radiant sable
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Not yet. Sadly. Not so much time to play atm. 3 kids and 2 of them feel a bit ill.

winter coral
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aww 😦 I hope they feel better soon!

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I took some more clips from the stream 😃
https://clips.twitch.tv/ArborealEnticingWolfLitty-TaFsQu5hOR6CovEq
https://clips.twitch.tv/TacitSparklingGrasshopperBabyRage-NRadP4CB953dK5xK
https://clips.twitch.tv/AggressiveTenuousSheepAMPEnergy-wiCmNjupBkt78awS
https://clips.twitch.tv/BreakablePiliableWitchBudStar-rPOD5MB0B4i-_8C9

Twitch
justplainsavage_ - bruh

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Twitch
justplainsavage_ - pen gwen jeez louise

Watch justplainsavage_'s clip titled "pen gwen jeez louise"

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justplainsavage_ - this clip is 60 seconds, but Savage's pain is et...

Watch justplainsavage_'s clip titled "this clip is 60 seconds, but Savage's pain is eternal and there are many shenanigans abound indeed!!"

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Twitch
justplainsavage_ - AA drone memes xDDDDDD

Watch justplainsavage_'s clip titled "AA drone memes xDDDDDD"

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how strange, only one of them appears to be embedded properly

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did I underestimate the difficulty of mission 7? 😅 I wonder

I'll get the timestamps of Savage's stream for when he started the levels, in case that helps the devs too 🙂

fading temple
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Mission 5:

image.png
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played on hard

winter coral
fading temple
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it was fun actually haha

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but more fun like 'this is the final mission!'

winter coral
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I agree 😃 but for the purposes of balancing the objectives and all

yeah! that's what Savage said 😂

fading temple
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oh haha

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20min is impossible

winter coral
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yep, I think we've thoroughly confirmed that 😆

fading temple
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I could do it a bit faster

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but 45min is already stretching it

winter coral
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well, umm

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I have a 37:40 land+navy run up there, aaaand a 30:42 air+navy run ^^ perhaps some aspect of my strat might help you push the limit even further? 😮

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here ya go 😃
#1210931660347150366 message

I don't imagine it's even remotely possible to get it down to sub-20 before, like, making significant progress in the campaign, but I am curious how the limits can be pushed with ~level 5 tech strats

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err

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with the caveat that the air+navy was done AFTER beating the mission with land+navy, sooo... engineers were unlocked for the air+navy run, which probably had some effect on completion speed

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but yeah 😮

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timestamps from Savage's stream for reference:
first mission starts here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=0h10m15s
and my goodness, was that fast 😅 second here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=0h16m40s
third here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=0h27m15s
Savage goes over build orders and some optimization tricks for both Overlords and Sentinels here (something I believe he wished to clip out and put up by itself on YT or something, in which case, I hope this timestamp helps 😃):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=0h41m40s
fourth mission here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=1h12m9s
fifth begins here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=1h26m7s
sixth here (there are two runs cuz of a silver objective meme):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=2h35m34s
seventh begins here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2073151132?t=3h30m13s

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embeds don't work with Twitch vod timestamps because they're silly, but going directly to the link appears to work 🙂

winter coral
# fading temple but 45min is already stretching it

with regard to those clips up there 😮 I think the lynchpin of the strat was the gunboats rallied under the bridge. not only does it cover the only enemy land route into the player's territory, but it also prevents them from getting sea transports over to your eastern beach and dropping off whole truckloads of butt-whooping over there and then the western beach is covered by it being the location where the Gunboats are produced, so that's sorted 😃

with all that, I was able to focus purely on offense, but even then, there's soooo much stuff to clear out 😛 so, umm

yep 😅

fading temple
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could surely be faster indeed. but 20min is impossible

winter coral
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aye 😮

vital ledge
winter coral
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ah, it wasn't so big a deal 😄 I could hear you just fine!

vital ledge
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I think my mic was picking up my headset noise

winter coral
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ohhh that would explain it 😮

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well then again, you were playing music earlier on in the stream, but I'm not sure that was doubled up

fluid jacinth
winter coral
# fluid jacinth One of the main advantages of early access - a chance to have a larger number of...

for sure 🙂 I was beta testing for Dune: Spice Wars, and I think I did a decent amount at the very start but the games are very long 😅 and not exactly classic RTS design, being also 4X, so I was pretty clueless. when early access released for DSW and all the multiplayer enthusiasts came out to play, they were able to get so much data, I was left in the dust!

mostly because I'm a campaign player and shy away from multi 😛 and DSW was focused on multiplayer first, and by the time conquest mode came out, which is different from campaign, they seemed to have more than enough help with that lol

winter coral
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was almost on target for the 100%. I had bad macro in places, forgot to place my 4th ref lol, ran outta funds, failed to bring enough Forward HQs with me, and infantry, but I was attentive to the radar and caught an enemy Sea Transport or two before they could drop units off near me, was cautious in my approach to online APD megaturrets, and felt encouraged to use units in every area - land, sea and air.

I had all the side objectives complete and was missing a single crate when the timer ran out

for hard mode, this is quite fair. the aberrations to the right of the player are not so nasty, easily and quickly handled by MG Copters and some Heavy Tanks, although I suppose I was lucky in not stumbling across the water elementals first. my MG copters were able to take potshots at the xenodogs until some water elementals showed up, so that was a bit of luck there. that naturally flows into claiming those resource nodes, ramping up production, and after my Heavy Tank spam kicked into overdrive, I was able to clean my way up to the top of the map. a foray up the west side was unsuccessful, but the east side plowed through the enemy base in the top right and reached the enemy Mega Power Plants just fine. I probably would have had more success dealing with the Sentinels' frigates, tadpoles and stuff if I threw some Torpedo Boats into the mix, and maybe eight Commandos in a bunker on the west side of my shoreline would be a much better investment than all those turrets guarding the Refinery

I wonder though if all the veterancy obtained from testing mission 5 out, and experimenting on other maps a bit more, factors in heavily to how this one felt for me though. being less sloppy in macro could have accounted for the difference, but it's hard to be totally sure 😛

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in my second run, I mixed in Torpedo Boats with my Gunboats, used Commandos, maybe had some better luck with the Sea Transports... I had a couple of minutes to spare this time, so it seems generous enough. factoring for unit veterancy and a bit of enemy Sea Transport RNG though, should a LITTLE more of an edge of some sort be given to the player, somehow? idk, y'all might be the better judges. here's a clip of the second run:
https://streamable.com/sji6po

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Watch Urgent Care (refined a bit) | Streamable

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I am quite enjoying the difficulty level of the campaign so far, sans the shenanigans on level 5 and level 6 feeling a little undertuned 😄 it feels like there's a lot going on on each mission, but not too much that I can't keep on top of it all. on mission 8, you don't get blindsided with too much that foreknowledge is absolutely essential to passing it. there's enough breathing room and stuff to react to what's going on, and it was only due to my sloppiness in some game mechanics that I wasn't able to 100% right away

in other words, one of the major questions for any mission, I think, is "how much is knowing what's gonna happen ahead of time necessary to perform adequately for what the mission asks of you?" and the answer for this one was, not at all, so this one seems fair to me! unlike, say, in the scenario of mission 5 for comparison, where even if you DO know your way around the map, there's nothing you can do short of unlocking aaaaaall the things to complete it in under the presently set time limit xD however, I can't say I'm quite sure if going left first would have worked as well as going right first. I guess if I get the chance I can do another run on thisun and test the viability of that approach

oh yeah, uhh, and ain't it a bug that around 6 mins 50 secs into the clip of the failed run of this level, the crates spawned xenodogs belonging to the Sentinels, and not to me? 😛 or are y'all prankin me xD

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Rogue Transmissions might benefit from a bit of adjustment. its objectives cut down on the effective amount of time you have: the silver objective demands waiting for a while and holding off on production, and the bronze objective takes a combined total of 300 seconds, or five minutes, not counting other stuff like base crawling or FHQ travel time. so the timer is a little deceptive

this is fair enough, and the timer is generous enough to be entirely doable, but I wound up going through a few strategies that seem like they should have had more potential than they turned out to, and I had to gain significantly more intimiate knowledge about the map and enemy layouts before being quite able to nail it. much more-so than was the case on level 8

due to the amount of water on the map and the shapes of the islands, I attempted with a navy-based strategy first, but discovered that I wasn't quite able to secure enough resources to support it. on this first run, I set my FHQ up on top of the central primary objective straight away, but there was only one Refinery nearby and the Battleships simply weren't able to handle seizing the resources south of that. that would have required a land army-based strategy, though the Battleships are at least helpful for taking out the Arc turrets nearby the bridges. bad luck attempting it this way first? I got the wrong impression from Battleships being unlocked on the prior mission

in the next attempt, I found that I could build off my ally, so I set Refineries up in the top right and one in the bottom left, but that didn't seem to be sufficient to support an offensive against the center-bottom Sentinels base. again, I tried to use some naval units in addition to mostly Commandos, but that didn't really pan out

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trying to go for the center-bottom Sentinels base wasn't working out for me, so I decided to mass Heavy Tanks + Engineers along with Commandos, no navy really, and seige the top left Sentinels position first. this was remarkably simple to take down, and then I was able to push cleanly through to the top side of the map, claiming those resources. I was then able to head through my ally's base and yeet through the other Sentinels base on the east side of the map, get a naval transport to ferry an FHQ across the way, and get the final radar sorted

it felt substantially easier than attempting to hit the southern base first. I don't know if it was just bad luck on the south side of the map, but y'all map designers would be able to confirm if there's more stuff there than, say, in the east or northwest bases, yeah? shouldn't either direction feel about equally assailable, even if they require rather different approaches? maybe some shoreline power plants on the southern base would support a naval assault there, but the top left base felt about right to me as a first target. the APD there can be circumvented, there aren't too many enemies, taking the location secures numerous resource nodes, and it follows a natural path around the the map

experimenting further with this and attempting again, my go-south-first strat was quite improved. as for the go-north-first strat... I guess it might be because I tried a reversed strat for the silver objective, where I spammed units first and tried to rack up the 40k while yeeting around the map, like I did the first time I finished the map with this strategy. I tried to replicate my first run on vid this time (I don't have OBS running if I'm semi-AFK or busy or something, which was the case when I first tried the strat xD). only, this time around was terribly unclean. I might have built more units than I did last time, but it also doesn't help that I didn't keep defense near the central location and lost the mega-radar there

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sorry, I know my feedback on this one is pretty meandering 😛 I might be a lil eepy. I guess the point is that I kinda had to know a few things about the southern base to attack it so effectively, whereas the north base has some exploitable parts without any preparation. hopefully that makes sense and is an apt summary

I took recordings of both strategies, so, y'all be the judge on if the above seems accurate:
https://streamable.com/e68ks8
https://streamable.com/7uy51f

Streamable
Watch Rogue Transmissions south strat | Streamable

Watch "Rogue Transmissions south strat" on Streamable.

▶ Play video
Streamable
Watch Rogue Transmissions north strat | Streamable

Watch "Rogue Transmissions north strat" on Streamable.

▶ Play video
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I also tried to meme around a bit with napalm bombers but they kinda got BTFO'd by AA drones and some other stuff 😛 I guess they're meant to hang around in small numbers and be escorted by a large force. does anyone else suppose they could do with a bit of a movement speed boost though? they seem too squishy for how slow they are lol

FYI, some other players I've spoken with have remarked that they feel the gold timers in general are a bit too tight. I guess that depends on your target level of difficulty... my experience was that all timers sans on level 5 have been fair so far, although the levels feel substantially tougher than 8-bit. I favor this direction, though I wouldn't say it's a bad idea at all to bump it down a little.

some missions may take a couple of attempts, but that's fine! I try to keep a distinction between learning as I go, using a couple of attempts to refine my own strategy and execution as opposed to a couple of attempts to learn more about the map's layout and stuff in order to exploit it more effectively. the former feels fair and was my experience on level 8, Urgent Care. the latter, well, in that case you get my experience on level 9, Rogue Transmissions 😄

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I only had a brief glance at level 10, Ground Zero. PG_DKondor and I had a short discussion about it over in this thread, starting here: #1211244889228976200 message and this got into the realm of suggestions as opposed to a bug report, so I'm remarking on it here: my first impression was that the transport copter could be used to bring Loopwell back to base, and then we strike out from there. however, PG_DKondor suggested the intent with this one is to use the Paradrop Cannon to support Loopwell from far away

perhaps a line of dialogue from the commando team saying they found Loopwell and encouraging the use of the Paradrop Cannon would be warranted for this mission? in the pre-game cinematic, if not just after the map starts 🙂

I guess you could also have the transport copter fly in and drop off the commando team during the cinematic, clearing up that they found him. if he refuses to come along until after he gets data, the commandos can then be like "get some stuff over here with the paradrop memes!" and then the player is like "oh yeah, those were just unlocked, I can use those." you might even go as far as to have the Commandos recommend a Forward HQ be packed into a Paradrop Cannon, ensuring that the player understands vehicles can be piled into the structure, and not just infantry!

I think that's all I've gotta say for now 😛 so I'll be on my merry way until I get around to actually attempting level 10. given the stated design intent, I'll try to avoid using the portals' provided build radius and put the Paradrop Cannon to use 😃 that should give more reliable data on the mission's balance

light cape
#

throwing my results for mission 5 in, hard difficulty. mission feels about twice as long as it needs to be

20240226230022_1.jpg
winter coral
winter coral
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regarding Ground Zero, it seems about balanced the way it is, but is also pretty clunky on account of aberration behavior (like how the portal closest to Loopwell is free), Loopwell being unable to get into a copter, paradrop cannon, bunker or presumably sea transport, aaand even the blue Overlords seem kinda passive and unthreatening. they attack in a few places at least, but they could probably do more. I'm not exactly sure what, is just the feeling I get

I appreciate the humor in death warps being the only way to potentially get Loopwell across the map faster, but surely getting into a transport of some sort would be the most practical, wouldn't it? 😛

my first run, here:
https://streamable.com/5fvrq9

Streamable
Watch Ground Zero first run | Streamable

Watch "Ground Zero first run" on Streamable.

▶ Play video
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I played fairly defensively, even putting a bunker behind Loopwell's place so he could sit in it until I was ready to escort him, but he couldn't get in! I tried escorting him down and to the left first, but lost track of him on the way to the west portal. my bad, I should have put him in a unit group or something xD anyway, he died somewhere and I had to take him to the top right one instead. then I stayed on the map until he got to the last portal, even though the timer was failed, just to see how long it would take. on the game timer, he starts running from the top right portal to the left portal at 17:48 on the in-game timer, and he gets there when I surrender from the mission at 22:10. I took a fairly direct path too, through the center of the map!

my second run, here:
https://streamable.com/qul1x4

Streamable
Watch Ground Zero with the rust shaken off | Streamable

Watch "Ground Zero with the rust shaken off" on Streamable.

▶ Play video
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I noticed Commandos in bunkers handled everything from the enemy Overlords without issue, so I set some up and observed some amusing AI behavior. the enemy tried to run between the bunkers and barely did any damage at all around 2 mins and 40 secs into the clip (watch the minimap!). is this a bug? 😅 perhaps the AI is a bit unfinished on this map, similar to some other stuff? like how I assume there's supposed to be some nukes dropped at the end

anyway, I was more proactive about leading Loopwell around here, and I threw some air support into the mix. handily met the timed condition, no problem. even forgot to hit the south portal, passed it

so, I guess that might make it too easy, but for funny reasons, and at the same time a bit more difficult than I might expect in other ways, but also for funny reasons

I wouldn't say it's necessary to make the aberrations aggressive on this one as long as they're better arranged to defend more effectively. the portal closest to Loopwell, for instance, needs some coverage on its top side, something I exploited the lack of in both runs. the blue AI could also be a little more competent. if changing up their attack patterns is tricky, how difficult would it be to, say, set up some Gunboat or MG Copter patrols around the map? maybe one of the portals is already subdued, and there's a small Overlords base with a decent amount of defenses surrounding it?

if y'all decide that you'd like Loopwell to be able to board transports after all, the addition of such patrols and adequate coverage of the portals could counterbalance the mobility afforded by a Transport Copter

I don't mind him not being able to board transports since the portals are 'captured' rather fast, but can't we put him in a bunker, please? 😛 muh peace of mind!

uhh... I noticed the water elementals spawning on land again even though their portal's in the water. I guess that's most likely a bug. other than that, I'm not sure anything else occurs to me for this one

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I'm gonna assume the intended time is 30 minutes and that this mission needs to be tuned up to better fit the time. also, because some prior missions were significantly tougher. this one should logically be harder than those

maybe the result would have been different if I opted to attack with navy from the southeasternish island, but how it happened was, I was like "wha" at the amount of resource nodes around, "yay," and then "oh hey there are blues on what should be MY island" so I went straight there

took the opportunity to get those units off the southwesternmost island with the sea transport, but after that I preferred to stick to land as much as possible, so I relied on the Paradrop Cannon. great superweapon, by the way! really handy, lots of different uses, I like it. I hear the Sentinels' shrink ray is a bit ehhhh from the multiplayer boys, but I haven't really tried it myself so I can't be sure

anyway, after getting all the resources, I went to the Sentinels' island because it's attached by a bridge. their power was too easy to take down, I think... maybe they could use some more on that small island in the top left? that would keep it an exploitable area for the player to attack and make it harder to strip them of power with a land assault alone.

I think I saw the enemy Overlords using sea transports, but I'm not really sure. I kinda didn't defend the waters at all, but I guess they were dropping off units near one of my rally points. so, perhaps similarly to other maps, they could be buffed to use Transport Copters and Sea Transports at other locations? that way you don't have to increase the amount of enemy units on the map, but can make them better able to circumvent the player's defenses

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adding stuff like gunboat or copter patrol behavior for the enemy would probably be cool too. also, making them NOT use attack-move on units that don't need to attack move, like Heavy Tanks or Gunboats, could be a powerful improvement to the AI without relying on giving them more units or anything. just a thought

while clearing the Sentinels out, I sent an MG copter around the northeastern islands, but it got picked off by something out of radar range. I didn't really notice, but I assumed since it didn't discover any structures in the fog of war on that first island, that first island was most likely quite safe, so I Paradrop Cannon'd there. from there I could build locally, so, no APM spent on transporting units around, although I did rely on the Paradrop Cannon to make sure I wrapped up the map in time. yep, very straightforward. I like it that way!

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I'll say it's definitely important to provide enough time before the enemy starts attacking, or enough pre-placed defenses if they're supposed to attack early, for the player to get his bearings and look around the map. starting with soooo much stuff means it took me a minute to look around and be like "oh, I gotta defend all these spots, and there's an allied AI here, and here's where the Sentinels are..." and it seems that was the case on this map; I had plenty of time to observe and get my bearings. I mention this in the interest of preserving the breathing room in the event y'all buff the mission, as I would say y'all should!

also, bug report, the timer on this one's wrong again ^^ and is it a bug that the silver star doesn't appear over new missile silos I build? are they mission-critical too? I didn't try selling one after building one, but that's a thought

regarding strategy... as I built up my eco and started producing stuff, I noticed there were green boyos on my land, so my first thought on where to attack was directly north. however, I didn't really see any radar activity there, so I decided to ignore them, turn around, and head for the southwest portal. encountering a Destroyer made me remember that they can be reeeeally strong against weak units due to the area-effect acid breath and mutating killed units into xenodogs, so I shied away from infantry and stepped on the gas on vehicle production

having so many nukes is fun to play with 🙂 I still had to produce an army to get through the Sentinels, so that shouldn't really be a problem for balance. I was looking for an opportunity to use them against enemy unit clumps, but I think I only wound up firing off the nukes against their base structures every time

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the aberrations were passive as usual, with the exception of those Destroyers, though I don't think they were aggressive enough. I don't imagine making the aberrations aggressive in every mission is the right choice (like mission 5 is hard enough lol leave them on defense there), but in one like this where they're one of the main enemies, they should probably be hounding the player here or there

clearing the timer was very easy, not even close. not exactly ideal for a final map, though it's nice to see Destroyers again 😛 I should note that because it's the final map, thus it's not possible to come back with more powerful rewards after beating it, special caution should be taken not to make it too hard, but it definitely should be harder

are Destroyer Portals too squishy, or do MG Copters hit too hard?

besides aberration aggression, having the Sentinels to the north of the player, on the same island, send some land attacks might be a good idea. tadpole, submarine, heavy or AA drone, or other sorts of patrols y'all think might be good to have might, uhh... might be good to have. how about sneaky Infiltrator or Stealth Bomber stuff? I noticed them using both those units, but they could take more roundabout paths or something to be sneakier about it

the only other bug I have to report is that Kaiju Chaos on the world map lacks an arrow and the lil dude who runs along the world map is glitchy 🙂 near the end of the clip, I demonstrate that

now that the Overlords campaign is wrapped up, I can speak on the story: it's cool to see more serious stuff going on. the Eternal Commander as a concept being brought into play with all the portals and multiverse shenanigans feels like a logical continuation of what little insight we had into the meta workings of things in the 8-bit series. we also got some good insight into the Overlords as a faction with their central command structure, kill teams for the disloyal, and even from the very first mission's briefing and stuff

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however, the Sentinels appear very often in the campaign and besides some contextual clues, like that they take advantage of inopportune moments for their enemies, steal data, are independently investigating stuff the Overlords are trying to hide from the rest of the world and from their lower ranks, and some other stuff I guess, I feel like I don't know nearly enough about their motivations and plans for how much is revealed about the Overlords. even if y'all plan to go completely in depth with that in the Sentinels campaign, I think it would be a good idea to give such a prominent enemy in this campaign more of a face to wear. that should go the other way too; the Sentinels campaign should give us some perspective on the Overlords' tactics and motives as an enemy. I got somewhat of a feel for the Sentinels' tactics, but their motives are totally beyond me

even if you provide a mistaken motive, like for example if the Overlords think they want to harness portal tech as some sort of weapon like what Hardgrove did, but maybe they actually want to go somewhere? it would be something! a mistake by the Overlords as to what the Sentinels' motives actually are would probably be in character for the Sentinels too, purposefully trying to mislead their enemies and go about their real business stealthily xD

anyway, I guess that's pretty much everything until the Sentinels campaign comes out. unless y'all plan to allow more beta testers, in which case maybe I can help test it before it's time to release it 😃

or unless y'all have something in particular that needs testing, like a certain strat on a certain map, in which case, poke me and I'll see what I can do ^^

winter coral
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oh hey, the achievements for Overlords campaign victory / with any amount of stars don't appear to be working 😮

I'll try launching the game again and see if some achis pop up lol

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hmm, nope 😅

nope.png
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also hey, ain't this tip wrong? 😮 should be 3 mins, right? 😛

four_minutes.png
dusk wagon
# winter coral

i think you missed all the secret stuff those count as stars

winter coral
fluid jacinth
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Secrets don’t count (or shouldn’t) - just sounds like a bug

winter coral
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do the secrets contribute towards something, like a hidden reward or secret achi? 😮

well, I guess if it's a secret y'all can't say that, can ya 🙂

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🤔 I'm not sure Gwen's spaceship reappears in a mission if you found it on a prior run. bug?

fluid jacinth
fluid jacinth
winter coral
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ohhh! that explains why I've been having trouble finding her lol

on the note of campaign suggestions, I wonder if it would be a good idea to reveal the secret objective from the start if the player has found it out already

I wonder how that would interact with "reset campaign" 😛

light cape
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so far some of these maps feel too big, like they were designed for coop first. for example, the one where you must make 5 megaturrets lets you delegate half that work to another player with another build queue. you can also push forwards on 2 fronts a lot easier. i know its a bunch more work, but maybe there should be coop and solo variants of the maps?

drowsy osprey
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So iam not completely through the entire campaign yet, but Mission 5 seems extremely hard with the 3.Objective. maybe it could be improved with any ground vehicle being able to pick up the crates for the 1. Objective?

winter coral
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that'd fundamentally change the crates mechanic 😛 I was thinking 5 could just... ...have less stuff on it. xD lol

winter coral
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ah, I suppose some clips might have expired 😅 streamable doesn't keep 'em up forever

if anyone needs one put back up for reference or something, please feel free to poke me about it 🙂 I still have the processed files

winter coral
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seems I'm not the only one seeing enemy units cling to the sides of islands on mission 6 😮
#commons message

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most likely more-so a bug than a balance issue, yeah? 😛 I encouraged Bob to do a bug thread about it

last schooner
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clustering at edge of the island vs building transports to send them to me -- mission 5

image.png
fluid jacinth
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how long into the mission? and have you even seen them build any transports - looks like they are waiting for the transport... thanks for the writeup!

glossy yoke
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Howdy, I felt the last mission was a tad easy compared to the rest of the levels (got it first shot) - but I had learnt most of the tricks and used them to get it cleared with about 5 minutes to spare. (also totally could have loved a 'survive against attacking Kaiju's' whilst we evacuate mission )

vernal prism
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I managed to do objective 3 of mission 5. All I will say is to do it later once you have more tech.

winter coral
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so we can probably expect some changes 😄

last schooner
light cape
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it was another one that felt more fun in coop, in coop its fun to sweep through hitting 2 at once, or even 3. the most eastern one is a real pushover. very easy that way but it was like doing a little heist

solo it felt less undertuned, not a terribly hard map but not beat the gold star timer by like 8+ minutes undertuned. but doing it with a buddy felt cool

craggy jay
# winter coral **Hidden Truth** has some problems ^^ it's tough to narrow down the exact culpri...

Yes I just tried playing this mission, Its very tedious and I have no idea how I could possible beat all of the objectives under 20 minutes. I assumed since just unlocked the MG copters, they would want us to use those, especially since the objectives are all over the map and there arent enough bridges to efficiently mlve infantry around. I tried going after the power plants first, but you have to be super quick or the Anti air suicide drones will kill like 4 of your copters. It seems like you had a lot more success than I did though, I guess my micro wasn't on point. Still, it doesnt seem like you were able to beat it under 20 minutes either. It's kind of dumb because even if you go with helicopters, you still need to drop off an infantry unit to pick up the crates, so basically it's just better to use a ground army anyways.

That was my take on it though, I really hope they're balancing out the missions so that it's possible to beat all of the objectives without beating any of the later missions to beef up your base, or at least let us know some objectives are made to completed once you are leveled up more or something

winter coral
# craggy jay Yes I just tried playing this mission, Its very tedious and I have no idea how I...

aye, it seems everybody is running into problems on that one ^^ I believe their intent is to tune that one down when they get the chance

for now, it's possible to clear gold star when you pick up the Paradrop Cannon. I'd say come back after that's unlocked and then, uhh. drop some Forward HQs wherever you want to stage attacks on the ground from 🙂 easier than air due to the amount of AA drones around lol

hope that helps!

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and indeed, my land run (first run) was 37:40 and air (which had engis unlocked from clearing this mission the first time) was 30:42

still had to manually target the AA drones due to funny attack move priorities atm lol

craggy jay
winter coral
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no worries! 😃

even with the paradrop cannon, I still had to use the funny naval strat with squatting under the northern bridge with gunboats. that blocks not only the land route to your base, but also prevents cheeky sea transports from dropping off units by blocking the only water route to that eastern beach lol

and then the western beach is where your Gunboats are being spammed from, so that's covered too 😄

vernal prism
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I did it when I unlocked the elite commando unit and only spammed them. That's essentially what I been doing ever since.

winter coral
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commandos are really cool 😛

still holly
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Regarding Kaiju Chaos, was I the only one who only needed to destroy four of the Destroyer Portals to complete the mission? Or did I miss something?

winter coral
still holly
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It'll be up in a bit.

winter coral
still holly
# still holly It'll be up in a bit.

Finally got it out: https://youtu.be/RHWkCIN2NT0

YouTube
SteamsDev
9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far (Early Access) - Overlords Campaign - M...

The newest game from Petroglyph just released in Early Access! I've been super stoked for this game since playing the 8-Bit Armies series and hope to cover as much of it as possible with singleplayer and coop content. For now, enjoy some of the campaign mode as I trudge through the mud and sail the waters in the campaign.

Playlist: https://www....

▶ Play video
winter coral
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ayy 😄

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oh yeah, at 46:40 the bronze objective counts up twice rapidly as the one portal is destroyed 😮

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seems like a bug to me!

still holly
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Yeah, I just caught it.

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I think it was because I managed to kill the portal twice somehow... Devs may want to look into it?

winter coral
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I wonder what would have happened if you ground-attacked with the battleship on where the portal was, after it was already gone xD probably nothing but who knows lol

fluid jacinth
winter coral
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I didn't notice the same bug on my run ^^ I wonder if the battleship volley struck it multiple times while it was dying, resulting in two deaths? lol

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battleships so OP they kill stuff twice, pls nerf? 😨

fluid night
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My opinions on the campaign, after playing through it on Normal difficulty:

Steel Shore: Very good intro mission, the various crates everywhere reward players for exploring (though I admit I missed them on my first playthrough), easy enough to beat fully the first try
Fleeing Rats: Teaches you about the importance of boats, and how useful controlling the water can be, I didn't manage to beat it with gold first try, because I neglected water a bit too much
Prototype Panic: Doing this map without forward Hqs is kinda awful, because additional resource depots are so far away, but otherwise fine, can get hectic if you are ill prepared once the enemy onslaught begins, I did not do this mission 100% on the first try; While the idea of using the paradrops early sounds like a cool idea, I ignored them because they were in my allies base and I didn't know what they did, perhaps preload them to entice players more into using them?
Holes to Elsewhere: I don't remember much about this mission, I ran through it on time on my first play on this map, may be a bit too easy?
Hidden Truth: You probably have heard a lot about this map, but here are my thoughts: There are way too many things to do, 8 crates and 9 powerplants scattered across a huge map is ridiculous. Each base has 2 power plants near the shore where the crate battleships can blow them up, but the third one is always hidden behind the base, which is really weird and rather difficult to reach. We are supposed to destroy them to weaken the bases, but to get to them we have to destroy the bases?? I guess helicopter play is encouraged, but the sentinels spam so many anti-air drones that it's so easy to just lose your entire fleet very quickly. The portal creeps also decimate smaller forces, meaning you have to either ferry your troops across the water (very micro intensive!) or bulldoze a large army through the sentinel bases. The design of this map is all over the place. Way tougher than all previous and all following maps.
Off The Books: I love the idea of this scenario. It's such a good idea. Unfortunately I fully beat it first try, and haven't gotten to reexperience it yet. A great palate cleanser after the slog of the previous mission.
Against the Odds: It's annoying having to build all 20 turrets one by one. If we could queue them up, a massive amount of tedium of this mission would be gone. The time limit is rather tough but doable. Portals that sit on water spawn their creeps on land, even if the creeps can move on water. The portal creeps blocking your path to the beach heads but also blocking the enemies path to you is great.
Urgent Care: Another mission I fully beat first try. It was very easy, once I had a large army rolling you can just beat all bases one by one. Taking control of the water early helps stem the tide of enemies because for some reason they ferry their troops across the water, which makes them easy to snipe.
Rogue Transmissions: This mission was tough, and took me a few tries. Building 12 radars is less than the 20 turrets, but still tedious, especially since it prevents you from building other base structures. I think this map is fine, though your starting army can easily steam roll the base to your north. I don't think I have seen the AI try to land transports here, which would have been scary if they did.
Ground Zero: Your starting army and fleet can steam roll the enemy base to your right, which seems unintentional? It neutered the enemy forces very hard. Bringing the doctor to each zone is slow, because you can't transport him in a helicopter or a transport boat (there are no beaches), causing you to basically lose the gold long before you realise you did. It was a very easy mission, but I had to try again because the doctor was so slow.

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Behind the Curtain: Also a very good mission, just somewhat easy. Your starting fleet can destroy the sentinels on it's own, because the AI absolutely cannot handle enemy battle ships. However adding a few more battleships makes it a bit faster. Doing this makes the mission very easy, as the blue enemies only attack the same beach. I have no idea where the sentinels attack, because they never attacked me. If the time limit really was the 30 minutes, it would be an easy mission and an easy gold, but with the actual 20 minutes the gold actually is quite a toughie, but very doable.
Kaiju Chaos: Once more the starting fleet can neuter the top sentinel base, and then go on to bombard the portals. Only one of the silos ever got attacked, and I won with all medals easily. The idea is cool, the map is easy. The destroyers can be cheesed, as they have a minimum range they will not move away from

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I have not noticed that the AI rebuilds any lost buildings, meaning if you rush the enemy ship yards you can neuter them permanently in most/all missions

winter coral
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that's a lotta great feedback 😃

😂 I see you also enjoyed the AA drones on level 5, me too lol

seems everybody loves mission 6 🙂 I dunno if that's mostly because of how 5 went, but, on its own I really like it too. I think it could do with a buff though, the enemy doesn't really like transports and they should totally use those more

ayy, you also caught the sea transports on mission 8! idk what's up with that, but I'm kinda thankful xD maybe they should also use some APCs and bring some dudes to the back of your base or something 😛 or make an effort to disembark at the nearest shore if they come under attack? as long as that behavior isn't exploitable, like hopefully they also learn to bring adequate escorts for their transports and all that

oh, you can steamroll the base to the right immediately with your starting units on Ground Zero? 😮 I just ignored them and went on my merry way. it seems that mission needs a buff 😛

Behind the Curtain seems like it could use some AI buffs, yeah? xD I didn't try with Battleships but it's good to know they're so broken against the AI. and that's a good point about the Shipyards, they should probably try to rebuild those and patrol the coasts with air units while they're being rebuilt, yeah?

it's good you had some clearly different strategies from mine 😮 more valuable data for the Petroglyph devs

fluid night
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Yeah, I love boats they are good

winter coral
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I should really use them more 😂 I got great use out of them on some early missions but after getting Heavy Tanks I was like "yeet"

fluid night
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I may have been playing wrong, but I was always able to constantly produce water, infantry and heavy tanks

winter coral
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naww, that sounds about right 😃 should be able to produce one of everything with a focus on one thing in particular. my focus was Motor Pools cuz I'm basic af, but ye

light cape
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its getting to the point where i have to make myself attempt gold star on hard, its not very fun anymore

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rogue transmissions is another coop focused map where you have to blow up a billion things and make too many megastructures

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'you can let them fight each other!' the game tells you, except you cant, because sentinels will constantly attack you from all directions

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why the southern base has 2 tesla megaturrets is beyond me, too. we're supposed to attack into this while banking 40000 unspent money on a time limit?

winter coral
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glad to know I wasn't the only one who had trouble with the southern base xD

granted, the APD megaturrets are in range of battleships, but that southern base could probably use less defenses and stuff all around. in my strat for going south enemy base first, I mostly only built harvs and refs and waited for the cash to tick up while picking apart that base's defenses with battleships. once cash was done ticking up, I yeeted through the rest of the map

the top left base is fair enough even without having seen the map before since you can totally circumvent enemy defense structures, but you still have to deal with their standing forces. I found it also works to go for that base quickly, and then settle in for resource stacking while the force that destroyed the top left base continues around the top and then right sides of the map

if the bottom base had more vulnerabilities and less stuff, similar to the top left base, that would be fair and enable the player to go either way. there're still plenty of tougher Sentinels positions on the map to handle even if those two, or either of them, fall relatively easily

normally, I would whine about an objective to amass tons of resources, but the fact that we can spend it really fast in a game like this combined with the abundance of targets on this map that can be handled with a small force micro'd well makes it seem fair to me

that's how I felt about this one tho 😛

fluid night
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I am yet to play it on hard, but I just ignored the southern base, and landed some troops on the beach to the southeast above the point there

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It's has very little defenses

winter coral
fluid night
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Why are you trying to destroy the bases though?

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If you want to fullclear, just battleship everything

winter coral
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resources 😄 and also to clear a path to objective locations

vernal prism
light cape
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so i started trying to just take more areas and it turns out theres a base absolutely everywhere and they're all not attacking the "death squad", which doesnt ever attack them

vernal prism
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You built 9 barracks and only went for Commandos and nothing else?

light cape
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no because 4 x nodes = 40k?

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and spending any money at all makes that impossible?

vernal prism
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That's literally what I do every single mission after getting them

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Well, the match started, I grabbed the closest refs and mined them. At the bottom of the map there are some money crates. I also destroyed the bridges and relied on the Battleships to do damage.

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But then I waited for the 40k

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Just rely on your starting units

light cape
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and yes to the guy earlier: i tried battleships, did you know it takes 3 of them about a minute to blow up the first 2 turrets of one of these bases?

vernal prism
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I didn't go for the turrets

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Just get sea transports

light cape
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oh boy, so theres a single solution to figure out over multiple playthroughs

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a puzzle and not a strategy scenario

vernal prism
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Just saying what I did. Timed missions make me go straight for the objective.

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Lose maybe 4-5 times.

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Develop the strategy from there.

light cape
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im done Developing The Strategy, the games not fun

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8 bit series was my fave set of campaigns and im NOT ENJOYING THIS GAME

vernal prism
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It will be after you get the gold star on the final level

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Or you can try coop

light cape
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no

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thats the main problem right there

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these missions have never been played solo, its obvious from mission 5 onwards

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in a year there will be no one to ever play coop with, fyi, so if the devs could avoid making this a singleplayer game that kills itself due to low pop like orcs must die 2 that'd be great

winter coral
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remember, it's early access 😛 things are wonky in balance and they mentioned they're lookin at this thread 🙂 so I think it's safe to say they'll make some adjustments

I also considered the southern base something of a puzzle, whereas the top left one came totally naturally the first time I went to it cuz, uhh... the structure of it, the layout, allowed me to circumvent its defenses rather than confronting them directly xD I don't consider that a good thing, so I recommended they change the southern base up some

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if that's not enough though, perhaps they should bump the credits count for the silver objective to like 30k or something? 😄

any suggestions you can make for how to improve the map will surely go a long way in... uhh... improving the map! before full release 😃

light cape
winter coral
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an apt summary 😄 cheers!

craggy jay
# light cape these missions have never been played solo, its obvious from mission 5 onwards

Yeah i definitely agree, it seems like they didnt have enough QA on the campaign missions considering the bonus objective timers were wrong on a couple missions and that mission dificulty will change a lot.

That being said, i still think their campaign mission design has improved signififcanly from 8 bit armies. If i remember correctly, most of the missions in 8-bit armies were just multiplayer maps with ai bases in all of the preset positions, and the only real strategic decision was just the order in which you take out the different bases. In 9-bit armies, they sadly still seem to be using multiplayer maps instead of custom made maps, but they have done a lot better job of placing/designing enemy bases, adding in ally bases, and adding the monster portals which really had me scratching my head on what the best strategy was. Also they had more interesting objectives like saving money or building structures.

craggy jay
# winter coral glad to know I wasn't the only one who had trouble with the southern base xD gr...

Dam now that i think about it, thats probabaly why they gave you the battleships on this mission. Ive noticed they are kind of micro intensive since they need vision to fire. Also im not sure if this is a bug or not, but when i set them on attack move they sometimes wouldn't attack anything. But yeah, i bet the developers intended for you to use the time waiting to get the resources on battle ship micro. However i did not do that lol, i completely ignored my navy because the battleships were frustrating me haha. I just stormed the top left base with my starting army since you can walk around the APD turrets, then i just spammed refineries on all the oil derricks up top. I built a couple of mega turrets in the bottom to defend in the mean time. Once i had 40k, i just spammed mammoth tanks, artillery, commandos, and engineers to take out the bottom two bases, ignoring the base in the middle. I feel like you can basically attack move any base in the game with that army comp, but it does help if you dont let you infantry attack the apd turrets, and leave it to the tanks. I also put any left over money into helicopters just in case, theyre pretty good at backdooring bases when their army is focused on your ground army. That was basically my strategy for almost all of the mission after the hidden truth

fluid night
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You can make battleships force fire anywhere

winter coral
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yeah, attack move is a bit buggy with battleships 😛 if they target a structure, they stop acting entirely because the anti-structure attack must be manually targeted

and yes, alt + rmb is attack ground

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sounds like they just came out with an update that affects campaign balance, so I'm looking forward to yeeting through again 😄

last schooner
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did they fix the zombie battleships?

winter coral
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not sure yet 😄

last schooner
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seems not