Print

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

[PTTG??]

COADE is like Dwarf Fortress in that both games feature tensile strength of metals as a key feature....

Dwarf Fortress and COADE are both games where you can use gold in places gold should not be used....

COADE, like Dwarf Fortress, involves your minion's sudden, messy death via machinery....

It is possible to cover your spaceship in rock and spider-silk, so it's basically the same as Dwarf Fortress....

Children of a Dead Earth is an incredibly exacting and detailed simulation of a classically geeky topic, makes full use of the most extreme forms of combinatorial complexity, and new players must be prepared to ascend a vertical learning curve in order to extract the vast quantities of fun that can be found only in losing; it is, in essence, identical to Dwarf Fortress. Oh, and it's moddable.

Let's discuss it here.

Oh, there is one more similarity to Dwarf Fortress. Browsing the forums will inevitably get you put on the list, with one distinction: whereas Dwarf Fortress will put you on the "Do not allow near sharp objects" list, COADE will put you on the "Do not allow near anything radioactive, including bananas" list. Lately, the forum has tried, with some success, at designing an (ENTIRELY VIRTUAL) 5-pound hydrogen bomb. It probably doesn't work in real life.

[lastverb]

Played it some time ago. The idea is great, but IMO player has very little influence over outcome. I personally hate so much RNG in games.

I did feel like the point of game is to do proper orbital maneuver to watch RNG cutscene that do require you to press 2-3 buttons. And no one that have any knowledge about orbital mechanics or played KSP will have any problem with the maneuvers.

At least the game has multiple-object gravity simulation, which alone make it worth to keep watch on.

I didn't even get to the point of unlocking ship/module designers (which unlock from half to very late game, unless they plan to expand) before abandoning it. Will go back to it for sure once they fix the bugs and some minor design flaws (like missile behaviour - you could make them go straight to target, but not straight to crossing point).

[PTTG??]

I don't see the battles as random at all; certain strategies can handle a given scenario easily  while others might work only with narrow margins of success.

Lately though, I've spent most of my time making a crazy high power radiothermal reactor. It's amazing how fast this game will teach you nuclear physics.

[Malus]

Yeah, there's certainly *some* RNG to the battles (as in, you can kind of cheese through some of them if you get lucky) -- but if you keep trying the same thing over and over again until it works, you're kind of missing the point.

Sometimes my lasers were melting through drones in half a second, and other times they'd spend 30 seconds on a single drone and not penetrate its armor -- I thought it was all RNG, but then I realized I just had to target the drone's rockets and they'd all die pretty much instantly. Oops.

I have some major UI hangups with the game, but hopefully it'll get better. It'd be nice if you had more control over your fleet's formation. And I've had some issues where if you're already in a battle and then a different intercept happens, it seems like it's just ignored. It also seems like the kind of game that could really benefit from some sort of semi-persistent campaign, where the fuel, munitions, and ships that you use are carried over between missions to incentivize conserving your assets and discourage designing one-off ships optimized specifically for the enemies you're going to face in one particular mission.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Love this game. Any tips on beating that one where you have to get the captain in 2 years??? I can't seem to escape the Sun's gravity well when I try to match orbits with Mars.

[PTTG??]

Not yet, I unlocked ship design and module design and ever since I've been on a quest to make the smallest and largest possible things.

For instance, a 10g rocket motor primarily made of lithium, capable of pulling 500G. When paired with the smallest possible fuel tanks (100g hydrogen and 1.9 kg fluorine), the remote control module itself is an insanely massive portion of the module. I took someone's 513g nuke (an adorable 95 tons TNT equivalent) from the forum and made what I call the Sleet Storm missile, with over 2kms delta-v.

The only problem with this module is that in the average encounter produces thousands and thousands of missiles and rapidly slows the game to a hault. If you ignore that, it's a magnificent weapons system that can overwhelm any defense.

[Erkki]

Thinking about getting this game as soon as I receive my new components... Soon 6 years old PC's graphics card died so I decided to upgrade everything.

Any news on multiplayer or at least scenario editor yet?

[exdeath]

"In case it is not obvious by now, Children of a Dead Earth was designed with no vision in mind, unlike just about every other videogame, novel, or movie attempting to do the same. This is because I never wanted to corrupt the ultimate goal of this project, which was to discover what space warfare would be like, rather than to say what space warfare would be like. To have an initial vision when building this game would have been starting with a conclusion, and then twisting reality to support that vision. By starting with no vision whatsoever, the conclusion would be generated by implementing the equations, and observing how they interact. In this way, the end result of Children of a Dead Earth was little like I had ever imagined actual space warfare would be like, and this will probably be true for you as well.

To reiterate: Children of a Dead Earth is a simulation first, and a game second. No amount of realism was compromised to make things more fun, or to make things prettier. It is science first, everything else second. Despite this, the game still remains fun, but you’ll find it plays very differently than any space warfare game you’ve ever played."

I wish we had more what if games like that.

[PTTG??]

It's certainly uncovered some surprises. High-density fluids like Decane and Methane are the kings of combat propellants. Nuclear reactors aren't optimized for size, but rather for operating temperature, to minimize the size of the radiators.

There seem to be some math errors still, resulting in absurdly high-speed coil-guns. What we do know is that all electrically-accelerated projectiles are basically thin-film disks.

The doctrine on missiles, drones, and capital ships is still mutable, but missiles seem to be very important. Swarms of tiny, guided munitions are used to overpower large projectiles. Lasers are extremely reliant on their radiators and, while effective at absurd ranges, are almost entirely defeated by graphite areogel armor. Coilguns are used for CIWS and put on drones which close with enemy capships in swarms.

[BigFatStupidHead]

All spaceships shall be cigars performing majestic broadside maneuvers as guns can't be designed to aim forwards.

This seriously bugs me. What is the point of using a minimal profile shape like a tapered cylinder if you just go and point your big flat flank at the enemy?

[Krevsin]

Slope the ship into a conical shape, it'll help with that

Or just stick the guns on the very front. it works well.

[clone95]

What is the point of using a minimal profile shape like a tapered cylinder if you just go and point your big flat flank at the enemy?

Because that flank is guarding your Radiators, which are considerably more important in a space engagement than actual armor impacts.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

What is the point of using a minimal profile shape like a tapered cylinder if you just go and point your big flat flank at the enemy?

Because that flank is guarding your Radiators, which are considerably more important in a space engagement than actual armor impacts.

Or--in the spirit of the game--so we think. Maybe we're wrong? There is technically less radiator profile when pointed directly at the enemy.

[BigFatStupidHead]

Slope the ship into a conical shape, it'll help with that.
Or just stick the guns on the very front. it works well.

You can only stick one type of gun on the very front. If you want a ship with more than one type of armament, they have to go on the side. Even with a strongly conical shape, the guns stick directly out the side, perpendicular to the direction of travel and not to the surface of the ship. I've even tried to make a sideways flying monster but it just ends up confusing the AI too much.

What is the point of using a minimal profile shape like a tapered cylinder if you just go and point your big flat flank at the enemy?

Because that flank is guarding your Radiators, which are considerably more important in a space engagement than actual armor impacts.

That flank might guard ONE (or one set, if you prefer) of your radiators. You could also mount radiators on the very rear, outside of the engine wash, and have them all protected by all the rest of the ship.

Or--in the spirit of the game--so we think. Maybe we're wrong? There is technically less radiator profile when pointed directly at the enemy.

Exactly! What good is a simulator if built in biases prevent us from truly simulating (simple) possibilities that may occur?

[Krevsin]

Slope the ship into a conical shape, it'll help with that.
Or just stick the guns on the very front. it works well.

You can only stick one type of gun on the very front. If you want a ship with more than one type of armament, they have to go on the side. Even with a strongly conical shape, the guns stick directly out the side, perpendicular to the direction of travel and not to the surface of the ship. I've even tried to make a sideways flying monster but it just ends up confusing the AI too much.

Turreted guns on the sides and a powerful spinal mount gun.