Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: BuriBuriZaemon on May 02, 2016, 08:30:05 am
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I found this hidden gem called Airships: Conquer the Skies on Steam. To date, 504 reviews with overall score of Overwhelmingly Positive.
Basically you design airships, landships (imagine giant tanks and walkers), and buildings (imagine fortresses and guard towers) in 2D and use them to battle it out against other designs. There are single player campaign and multiplayer battles. The player base is still small, due to lack of exposure, but I'm loving it so far and hoping it will get some attention here.
Official website (http://zarkonnen.com/airships)
Steam store page (http://store.steampowered.com/app/342560)
Gameplay video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVlPZBeKPIw)
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This is one hell of a game and everyone with even a small interest in steampunk should play it. Next update will introduce monsters such as flying kraken: http://zarkonnen.com/airships/the_kraken (http://zarkonnen.com/airships/the_kraken)
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Didn't we already have a topic on this? I thought interest in it and the project itself had waned, but I'm glad I'm wrong.
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Got it, played it, none around for multiplayer really and after a few (good!) hours, I don't feel there is much content left to explore. Maybe if you had a more complex system of rooms/damage allocation, moving parts (or a decoupler), one-use-weapons (like torpedos), different ammo types and reactions, different reactions of different materials hitting X/Y, more AI randomness and interaction and a bit more life to it... but eh, it does its job.
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I'f you haven't made a crocodile airship, you haven't even scratched the surface.
(http://i859.photobucket.com/albums/ab155/kulik242/111.jpg)
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"This game is amazing!" - Scoopbeard
I play it a lot actually.
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I tried the game out, made a simple cheap(1017$) airship with rifles on both sides with reinforced wood armor and subsequently beat the entire map with nothing but one or two of them each fight without losing a single ship. I feel conquest doesn't last long enough and if the laziest design I could throw together wiped out everything repeatedly, I fear the game won't have much longevity for me. Cool concept, but not too much of a challenge, Windforge would probably be my go-to 2D airship designing game until this one gets harder.
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Well by vanilla airship standards $1017 is not cheap. Also, what were you settings, I'm curious? The smallest tend to be too easy, but the game scales exponentially once empires are allowed to blob, pretty much ensuring your death.
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I had the size on medium and the difficulty turned up to max. Getting the first 1k$ for a ship took no time at all and once I started capping cities they weren't hard to produce. The match was a very short one, they never took out anything of mine and I just stomped on everything.
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Airships may feel simple at first but I feel it has many layers of complexity that are hidden. Bigger, more expensive ships are not necessarily better than the smaller, lower costs one. I built a $7000 landship and another, more heavily armed $10,000 landship (cos I'm obsessed with Maus and Ratte-kind of tanks) and tested the two against each other. Surprisingly the $7000 won simply by being designed better.
I had most fun when testing my designs against other players in Multiplayer.
Windforge looks interesting though, looking into it now.
EDIT: Windforge is basically Terarria with airship building, while Airships is straight-to-action airship building game. Both are not comparable, only thing they have in common is the airship theme.
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Multiplayer could profit heavly from a "here is my ship design, fight vs it with a AI controlling it" - maybe even add AI layout (i.e. always try to ram, move above, move below) and ya'd have some interaction even if you're not american.
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Multiplayer could profit heavly from a "here is my ship design, fight vs it with a AI controlling it" - maybe even add AI layout (i.e. always try to ram, move above, move below) and ya'd have some interaction even if you're not american.
You can toggle on/off AI control on your ship in both multiplayer and combat mode, but no AI layout. The button is on the top of the screen. You can toggle AI on and your ship(s) will fight independently. You can immediately toggle it off again to regain control.
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'I know, but I want to fight ships of other players. Seeing how I didn't see a single person online in the year-ish I had it, even when i showed up on the "play times" from the website, ... yeah.
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Interface for this game is top tier horrible though.
I don't get why it isn't less awful, it wouldn't even have been more effort >_>
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I'll definitely keep a look on this, I saw a couple days ago but missed lathland let's play. maybe when the next sale comes around...
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Bringing this thread back from the grave to let people know that this game was formally released yesterday (August 16th), and is also 20% off through next Thursday.
I waited to pick it up until it left early access - to be frank, I had assumed it'd never get completed - so I can't compare 1.0 in 2018 to what it was back in 2016, but I do find it rather fun. The crew mechanics in particular do set it apart from other similar entrants in the field, as when designing a ship "how close is the nearest fire extinguisher" actually matters. Running skeleton crews is possible and viable in some situations, while running a crew surplus can be quite useful as well - someone needs to bring shells to the cannons, even if the engine needs repair and enemy boarders are tying people up on deck 5.
It also features workshop support, and alongside the usual 'more guns/stuff' mods there are also ones that tinker with campaign mechanics.
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Excellent game! Not only are the design and combat parts top-notch, but it is surprisingly atmospheric as well! (Pun not intended, but I'll take it anyways.)
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This game has definitely come a ways since it was first available and is good fun even now.
Design of ships is pretty easy and straight forward but you can get into the fiddly if you want.
Like I designed a ship with the goal of being flown at max height and being able to drop bombs on everything else. Worked great against my defense structure and land ship filled continent and I thought it would need to be retired against the rest of the world. Nope, turns out they were running low flying ram ships or large airships with very vulnerable tops.
Or my spider tank that was the complete opposite. Just a giant battery of upwards aimed guns backed by a similar one that was a wall of guns. Gun wall spider charges and takes care of the ground while the AA gunner spider blows up anything in the sky.
Played a new game recently and seeing the new designs the AI is working with is giving me some great ideas (first game I lost against a neighbors fleet that consisted of a metal musket tower sitting on a blimp that my planes couldn't take down.)
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I'm simply going to say, this is one of the funnest games I've played in a long time. If you find some issues with it being 'too easy' there are mods not only expanding, but also allowing the game to be far more difficult. It is a must-buy on my book, and very few games hit that mark for me.
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This game has definitely come a ways since it was first available and is good fun even now.
Design of ships is pretty easy and straight forward but you can get into the fiddly if you want.
Like I designed a ship with the goal of being flown at max height and being able to drop bombs on everything else. Worked great against my defense structure and land ship filled continent and I thought it would need to be retired against the rest of the world. Nope, turns out they were running low flying ram ships or large airships with very vulnerable tops.
Or my spider tank that was the complete opposite. Just a giant battery of upwards aimed guns backed by a similar one that was a wall of guns. Gun wall spider charges and takes care of the ground while the AA gunner spider blows up anything in the sky.
Played a new game recently and seeing the new designs the AI is working with is giving me some great ideas (first game I lost against a neighbors fleet that consisted of a metal musket tower sitting on a blimp that my planes couldn't take down.)
In general, but specially in the early game, build bombers, park them on top of people you don't like. If possible very buoyant and very cheap (buoyancy means you can fly over and bomb more things. Cheap because from time to time you get blown off the sky; the idea is to have spares and if possible to have downed blimps fall on top of your enemies. I've had situations where a downed blimp drove an enemy to the ground where the rest of my fleet could bombard hi, with abandon.
I have a fairly fast bomber design special for this purpose. Comes off at 350 each ship or so. I send them in teams of four to wreck enemy capitals, with a more valuable missile boat staying slightly behind to take pot shots
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What is considered high-altitude in this game? My fleet's haphazardly designed flagship is pretty big and reaches like 700m+
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I think there's an hard coded ceiling around 300 and most spoilers can't attack above 250
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That's probably about right. Its good to know because you shouldnt really bother beyond the maximum. But its important to build budget bombers that reach it.
Consider, bomb bays are effective and bombers are cheap. And ironclads tend to be fairly limited buoyancy wise.
Just include a grenade launcher or two to deal with close range lightweight foes.
Also strategically speaking, I'm having success with my current policy of more or less ignoring my hamlet defenses and focusing on the cities. I do raid hamlets but its mostly for pillage, area denial, and poaching enemy airships if possible. I have more money to play with this way
Btw, in case you are wondering there IS a counter for high flying - harpoons. I think extra buoyancy helps, thouh, and once again, even if they hook you and destroy you, making sure your budget blimp falls on top of the ironclad can cause extra damage and possibly stop it from moving, giving the rest of the fleet a chance. I think going for cheap throwaway shit is a good rule of thumb for most of the early game... and its still true late game, its just that you'll need something a bit more special to deal with tough enemies
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Cheap throwaways are likely the cost-effective solution. But there is strange satisfaction in building a huge landship that fills like half the map, costs a ridicilous amount of money but is basically a moving city. With airports.
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I'm a little disappointed how the AI will surrender even on its last territory. Just finished a Conquest game, the last few territories were carpeted in rocket towers, making them very tough to crack. A couple I broke using cheap throwaway bombers, followed up with a strike by more heavily-armed and armored ships. The last one I wanted to have fun with: a few large landships with dual heavy cannons, some very large battleships with six heavy cannons up front, and several... I'd say they're "teacup"-shaped ships with several torpedo launchers. Took out some of their defenses with spies for good measure. AI surrendered the second the battle started.
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Oh my god this game is amazing. I'm having so damn much fun right now.
I had a master plan in the campaign. I was gonna make a prototype bomber with my frigging sails and tier 0 tech. Made a fatal miscalculation. It was so heavy it couldn't even fly higher than 28 meters. My bomber couldn't even bomb blades of grass.