Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vivalas]

snip

Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. didn't know the  space layer was so detailed. All the different factions sounds like in the game proper there will be plenty of chaos, as well as replayability. I play KSP and CoDE so I'm familiar with the orbital mechanics stuff. Are you able to create your own orbits, or are they sort of automatically made for you? I say this because there are certain tricks you can use to make the most of delta v. Bielliptic transfers, gravity assist, oberth, etc. Or are these things modelled at least?

Getting some expanse vibes too, which is neat. If it is modder friendly it wouldn't be hard to make an alternate Expanse starting scenario.

[Jopax]

but main source of influence are countries you own

It isn't. It's the amount of population agreeing with your agenda. You can run public campaigns on uncontrolled nations to gain influence And conversely, losing popular support will lose you influence income even if you retain control.
One reason why China and India are attractive targets for permanent placement public campaigns.

Also advisors/orgs. They seem to have been my main source of influence in most of my runs so far, so having good traits/orgs is pretty important early on at least, before you get a proper base of support worldwide.

Another thing that's worth pointing out, even though you're locked into the one starting date in the demo, there is an option present for a different one. I'm guessing you'll be able to skip the early game if you're not interested in it and go for a later date where humans have an established space presence. Hell, maybe an earlier starting date too, with worse tech and a different global layout could be interesting as well.

[NikkTheTrick]

for example the country control limits, where the more countries you have the more influence they cost you

This is mitigated later in game as you research projects that allow unifying countries into mega-nations. For example, you would eventually be able to create a mega-EU that includes Russia and Turkey.

didn't know the  space layer was so detailed.

The game is pretty hardcore in terms of realistic space mechanics. For example, going from point A to B, you don't constantly have thrusters on. Instead, your ship will turn thrusters early on, burning fuel, to accelerate, coast for a long time with velocity gained and then turn around and burn the same amount of fuel it used to accelerate away from your target. This way, you actually arrive at it instead of flying by.

Also, it is interesting how armor and positioning works in combat. Nose of the ship has a very small cross-section, so it will have a very heavy armor for a reasonable weight. At the same time, area on ship's sides is huge and for same weight the armor would be very weak. Thus, you could take a lot of punishment from the front, but would be destroyed easily from the side. The implication is that it is absolutely critical to both not expose sides to enemy and to get shot at their sides.

But there is more: in combat your ships are moving towards enemy at the velocity they have. You can turn and acclerate (burning limited fuel), but turning engines off means you just keep moving at current velocity. There are no brakes! If you want to move away from enemy, or at least stop moving towards them, your ship will need to turn 180 degrees first and then accelerate away. The problem is: while you are turning you expose those juicy sides to enemy fire.

Getting some expanse vibes too, which is neat. If it is modder friendly it wouldn't be hard to make an alternate Expanse starting scenario.

Moddability looks very promising. It seems similar to Paradox games (Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron) in how game parameters are located: there are a lot of things in plain text files. You could make North Korea a hyper-advanced juggernaut with literally a minute of editing a plain text file. All ship modules, faction resources, etc. are easily editable in notepad even for someone who has zero experience modding.

I am pretty sure there will be a flat earth mod within months.

[Egan_BW]

Hell, maybe an earlier starting date too, with worse tech and a different global layout could be interesting as well.

Fingers crossed for a bronze age invasion starting scenario. >.>

[NikkTheTrick]

Hell, maybe an earlier starting date too, with worse tech and a different global layout could be interesting as well.

Fingers crossed for a bronze age invasion starting scenario. >.>

I'd wait a few month until Rome scenario is modded in.

The Cold War scenario will be shipped with the released game. Also, a near-future scenario (with Humanity already on Mars) will be included.

[Mkok]

the two scenarios, future and cold war, are supposed to be free dlcs, not included upon release.

Yes, influence comes from public opinions, but ussually you have high public opinion of your faction in countries you own, whereas low in countries you dont own. Can be mitigated to some degree, but from my experience that is how it is most of the time as the most reliable source of public opinion seems to be the unity priority. But I can imagine choosing one or two uncontrolled nations and just spamming them with public campaign missions once councilors are free. Dunno how big influence income from orgs is compared to public opinion, bet you have to focus on influence for orgs for that to be any decent value...

As for orbital mechanics, maybe there just wanst enough of that in the demo for me to try out, but for the moment it seems like moving ships between places you just tell them where you want to go and how much fuel you are willing to spend to get there faster, not much else can be done about how they do it.


On the other hand, I checked the tech tree, and god, there are so many different research projects for variously sized laser cannons...

[Il Palazzo]

There is something more to popular support than active campaigns, unity, and an occasional tech. It might be 'bleeding' across national borders (I find neighbouring countries I've never interacted with having respectable support), how you interact with aliens (letting them do their thing almost definitely raises the Servants' support - so maybe investigating/exfoliating raises yours?). Some other effects, maybe.

[Mkok]

in the demo you start with relatively low public support for resistance, but there are multiple projects that give you significant global public opinion boost. The most significant one being deep system skywatch which triggers the "they dont come in peace event" that gives significant anti-alien public opinion boost. Early on, when most of the world is still undecided, this gives quite a lot of support for the resistance, with the exception of countries where resistance is already strong, those get pushed into humanity first. There is one or two other projects that give you global opinion boost which you will research if you follow your objectives, and some random events seem to do this as well. Other factions are also doing stuff that affects public support and could potentially push some in favor of you (servants comiting attrocities would be one of these). As for the aliens, those do their stuff as well and from my understanding that should push public opinion for the servants. So if you leave them alone I guess you could expect more support for servants? Also if lets say initiative tries to convince people who support exodus, they might end up supporting resistance for before turning to initiative due to how ideologies work. but this should probably have only very minor effect for the resistance who pretty much should benefit in this way only from humanity first propaganda.

[E. Albright]

...I'm surprised no one mentioned the obvious opportunity for a turn-of-last-century War of the Worlds mod...

[Malus]

An official release date was announced a few days ago: Terra Invicta is releasing in Early Access on September 26th for $39.99USD.
The choice to release in Early Access is not terribly surprising given the state of the demo as of June. Lots of little gripes and annoyances, more than a few bugs, AI barely existent, etc, and even with a lot of work poured into the game over the summer I don't think it was ever really reasonable to expect a finished and polished product this year. Personally, I played nearly 20 hours of the demo despite all its flaws, so I'll be picking the game up at launch with no regrets -- the core game loop was satisfying to puzzle out, and I'm very interested in seeing more of the combat, colony management, fleet maneuvering, etc. The EA version will launch "feature complete" (you can play all the way through and get an ending) but they're still working on AI improvements, late-game performance, music and event art, balancing, etc.

The demo is live again as well, in case you're interested in giving the game a shot but missed it in June. It's the same build as from then, so if you've already played it to your heart's content, probably not worth redownloading.

[Ranged66]

According to some of the testers, the demo build is vastly different from the latest build they have access to. Personally, the no-saving part of the demo really turned me off from playing it, so I'm looking forward to the EA release.

[EuchreJack]

the two scenarios, future and cold war, are supposed to be free dlcs, not included upon release.

..I've heard that lie before.

Generally, if the scenarios/additions are "slightly more work than a modder could/would do", then they indeed tend to be part of a free update a year or so after release to inspire interest and sales.  If they inspire new ideas and concepts that require more major work, they inspire a dlc that maybe results in a new start date not dependent entirely on the dlc (but seriously curtailed, for sure).

[Persus13]

So this game's out now in Early Access. Anyone get it and have thoughts on the released version?

[Cthulhu]

I have it.  Playing Resistance, I like their vibe the most.  Mostly the same, feels like there might be some small quality of life tweaks, not enough to pick them out but it feels smoother and easier overall.

I captured Mexico and Canada ASAP and used them to springboard into America.  It's extremely strong, with the best stats in almost everything (Russia has better boost but I think that's it), but massive management cost so you're extremely limited in what other countries you can control without taking huge penalties.  I put Mexico and Canada on abandon which is basically a self-crackdown, and then doing a bit of side-work to keep the others from taking them.  Have my first station, which I put in GEO.  Protip I didn't realize, a lot of station modules give bonuses to research or priorities (basically small incremental stat sliders on the countries you control for things like economy, welfare, military, etc.) if you're in an interface orbit, which is just LEO.  So while my station may have some future bonuses for doing deep space missions or like communications or something maybe? I'm missing some bonuses on the science labs I'm building.  Space facilities can be built on earth for a small funds cost and significant boost, or can be built in space for space-resource costs (fissiles, volatiles, metals, etc.) which don't seem obtainable on Earth.

Also probed the moon and saving up boost to eventually place a hab there, which will give me some space-resource income.

Aliens stuff, spoilers:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not much is going on yet.  The aliens are pretty clearly hostile and I got the "they don't come in peace" event.  My guess, not having played the other factions yet, is that the aliens' goals will vary depending on the faction you pick, driven by faction-specific research goals and the events/missions they generate.  Most of mine have been classic XCOM type research goals.  Haven't seen a real alien yet but I picked up a military councilor with my fifth slot and have been clearing out xenoflora where I find it.  They seem to have a heavy presence in South America, which is at least close by.  I'm considering military campaigns to stomp out servant influence.  I'm mostly playing mean with the servants lately, ignoring the other factions for now.

Interestingly, I got a "mission unavailable" tooltip on one of my missions that seems to imply you can have non-human councilors.  Having alien councilors as servants would be cool, or possibly AI councilors later in the tech tree.

[Il Palazzo]

Lol at the political drama in Steam discussions.