Be warned this is a 2 player game only!

Originally posted by Flankenzee:

Be warned this is a 2 player game only!

So I have read. But the fact this game is still in EA means there can be a brighter future. For the time being however multiplayer isnt my main concern. Just how stable and playable this game is. That and what exactly is the game about game wise? Is it like supcom but you get to customize your mechs before battles? or is it more like warcraft 3 where your mechs are your hero units you use in big situations while everything else is just meat for the grinder?

This game is not SupCom at all. It is a full RTS but the scope is a bit different. I like to compare it to warcraft 3 but it is an imperfect comparison.

In this game you have 5 'servos' (huge mechs) which can be outfitted with parts you gain playing matches. You can pick from 2 servo classes (3 at launch) for each of the 5 pilots, what weapons they have, etc. There is a lot of variety of parts letting you make all kinds of hero units. These are set up between matches/doing campaign misions

You pick 1 servo as your lead for matches, you get them at the start of the match, along with a dropship and other starting buildings/units. The dropship is like your town center/nexus building, it trains the game's worker unit and if destroyed you lose the match. During the match you can escalate your s.con (age up), unlocking more units, tech and allowing you to pick one of your 4 remaining servos. You can do this twice, unlocking up to 3 of your servos.

Servos are free to respawn, if they die they go on cooldown, about 30 seconds by default. The cooldown only ticks down 1 servo at a time, so if you lose more than 1 you have to wait for them to come off cooldown 1 by 1, which is risky. So, even though the servos are free it isn't generally a good idea to get more than 1 killed at a time.

If you enjoy using the commander a lot in SupCom you might enjoy using the servos. Matches are far faster than SupCom though, long servo matches are about 12 minutes, they're usually over in under 10. This is mostly due to resource constraints in the match, there's only so much bloom on the map. This isn't to say the game has really tiny armies, just not the sort of scale SupCom has, nor the unit variety.

There's lots of videos of matches if you want to see how it plays. I recorded a lot of PVP games but the dev streams are usually the most entertaining to watch, you can find them on the stardock twitch channel or youtube. More recent the better, the game has changed a lot during beta.

Originally posted by Flankenzee:

Be warned this is a 2 player game only!

Yep, 1v1 PVP or 2 player CoOp for now. Probably won't be any other teamplay beyond CoOp until after launch. It is on their post-launch wish list though. Bit of a bummer for people who don't like campaign/2p coop/1v1 though

thanks for the info. I'll keep mulling this over as I am really cautious of EA games, however I am a Stardock fanboy. This game does look like tons of fun, but after what Uber did to all of us who played Planetary Annihilation I have a bitter taste in my mouth.

Originally posted by Marijuana Merlin:

Originally posted by Flankenzee:

Be warned this is a 2 player game only!

So I have read. But the fact this game is still in EA means there can be a brighter future. For the time being however multiplayer isnt my main concern. Just how stable and playable this game is. That and what exactly is the game about game wise? Is it like supcom but you get to customize your mechs before battles? or is it more like warcraft 3 where your mechs are your hero units you use in big situations while everything else is just meat for the grinder?

Hard to say exactly how the hero/unit power balance will end up, it moves around a lot.

Everything is bought with 'bloom' in matches and that only comes out of creeps and the bloom wells scattered around the map. Once both players have sucked a lot of resources out of the map units get pretty valuable. Carelessly throwing them away is a bad idea really, but it isn't as brutal about it as WC3. WC3 had feeding via the XP system which has no analogue in servo, so a few units dying isn't a huge loss. Just the usual RTS tradeoff of wanting to do more damage than the units are worth when you attack with them.

Servos you don't really hang back for big fights, you have them doing something constantly. If one dies in a push involving a few servos you can just try to run from the fight and wait for the respawn, cut your losses. Servos end up blowing up a lot and getting into fights. You can get your whole party of heroes wiped out at once though, like I said in the previous post the more dead servos you have the longer it takes to get them all back on the map. Servos are the only way to build buildings as well so you sometimes split them up.

Servo weapons and abilities can often demolish a nice blob of units if used right, but units can bring down servos just fine.

Originally posted by Marijuana Merlin:

thanks for the info. I'll keep mulling this over as I am really cautious of EA games, however I am a Stardock fanboy. This game does look like tons of fun, but after what Uber did to all of us who played Planetary Annihilation I have a bitter taste in my mouth.

This game's by a bunch of key people from the Age of Empires team, stardock are just publishing it. They're a small studio, mind you, not as big as ES was.

If you're cautious of EA, you may want to wait until launch. However, the site says the game will go up in price at launch, if you want to treat it like a preorder with an added beta you don't bother with. The game has low pop, profiles sometimes get reset in patches and the campaign isn't in the beta (2 missions are but that's a lot less than 25). In addition to this the skirmish AI isn't that bright. It'll be launched by the end of the year or early next year and these problems won't be problems anymore. You may want to wait and see.

I may just wait. However I regret mnot pre ordering Homeworld Remastered when it had a good pre order deal otg. This seems like ti could be the same thing.

Now my only question is, how is the community? So small it's not worth my time? Small but active? Or just large enough and active enough to get a game going any time of the day?

I find it rather funny how the 6 negative reviews are putting this game up against 4x games Like Sins of a Solar Empire or SupCom and compering it over all to those games. Which I could tell that this is not a 4x game. So those morons just made apples to oranges comparisons to vindicate their narrow minded reviews >_>

Like I only brought up SupCom cause it has robots like this game :/

Originally posted by Marijuana Merlin:

I may just wait. However I regret mnot pre ordering Homeworld Remastered when it had a good pre order deal otg. This seems like ti could be the same thing.

Now my only question is, how is the community? So small it's not worth my time? Small but active? Or just large enough and active enough to get a game going any time of the day?

When EA launched I had no problem getting a game most times, though Aussie prime time was a bit sparse. Then a reset happened and most people realized they can't play it for serious until launch. Myself and another player were insane enough to level to level cap multiple times and keep doing pvp games but even I am playing less. This probably isn't a reflection on how the pop will be at launch, hard to get people to care about progression if it will reset, and one of the best sources of parts and XP (the campaign) isn't in beta. They also haven't advertised this much yet. They don't really want to give people the impression that EA is launch. Pretty much the only reason to play right now is to check out the game and give feedback.

Originally posted by Marijuana Merlin:

I find it rather funny how the 6 negative reviews are putting this game up against 4x games Like Sins of a Solar Empire or SupCom and compering it over all to those games. Which I could tell that this is not a 4x game. So those morons just made apples to oranges comparisons to vindicate their narrow minded reviews >_>

Like I only brought up SupCom cause it has robots like this game :/

Don't worry about it lol.

What is involved in 2 player co-op? Is it against 2 AI? (2v2)?

Originally posted by Flankenzee:

What is involved in 2 player co-op? Is it against 2 AI? (2v2)?

Varies by map.
Degrees of Ire - Meteors fall on the map, up to 3 at a time, spawning creeps until destroyed. Ends when 8 meteors have been destroyed, the longer the match goes the tougher the creeps get
Sandstorm - Players start in the middle and are attacked by waves of creeps. Each wave 2 meteors appear and spawn a big wave of creeps, so they come from 2 random directions. To win you have to kill every creep in all 8 waves
Creep Rock City - Starting in one corner, both players try to push against an entrenched, teched up AI force, 2v1. There is a time limit, 10 minutes, if you don't destroy the dropship by then you lose.

There used to be more maps, but some have been removed, for example there were 3 of those 'comp stomp' 2v1 maps. There will deffo be more than 3 maps at launch

2v2 comp stomps is something I really wish the game had, a lot easier to get a friend to try the game if you can clown on the AI with them. The 2v1 is pretty cool though, even if it doesn't have quite the same charm as playing a 4 player skirmish with a mate. The entrenched AI force can be hard to break through in the 10 minutes you're given

If you want SupCom like game. You should get Ashes of Singularity. Another title from Stardock.

Co-op sounds pretty interesting, it's still a real shame the player limit is so low, people tend to gobble up 4 player co-op games.

Originally posted by Flankenzee:

Co-op sounds pretty interesting, it's still a real shame the player limit is so low, people tend to gobble up 4 player co-op games.

Yeah for sure. 3 is a crowd in servo and it is a real shame. There's nothing technically stopping them from trying to scale it up but they'd need 4 player maps. Hopefully if we nag em enough for 2v2 pvp they'll have 4 player maps to convert into crazy coop maps with 12 servos on the field on one team down the road

yeah as a supreme commander fan I have to say the number 1 difference between this game and SupCom is time - the maps on supcom are made for hours of play where as these are a get in slug it out fast and furious - I'd compare it to more SupCom Meets DOW2 Last stand

also not only can you custimize robots they can also buff units - like unit 1 has a turret booster I get 5 turrets max at half cost and half buld time - called a turret blitz pack - he also carrys a gladiator (the emp tank) booster giving it more damage and more hp for less speed it really changes early game play as I can quickly toss down defense and attack

where as my 2nd set of bots are heavy hitters for co op wave fighting - bot 1 is a well gundam heavy arms comes to mind - shields missiles armor and rapid fire big guns - 2nd bot down is a medic with a pistol and 3rd is a brute

I feel the shorter games is a bit nice since I loved supreme commander and metal fatigue but now in days I find it hard with family / life to get 3-5 hours strait to finish a match - where as the 10min games are awesome to hit up 2-3 matches which is nice when you have 10-20mins free time but wanna play some rts