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[kingofthescots]

This is a fantastic game. It certainly is tough to learn with just the manual, but Das Tactic's videos and Explorminate's "Life on Seth" playthrough have both helped me figure it out. The information is all there in the game, it's just not intuitive where to look for it. A healthy amount of restarting was useful too! I'm really looking forward to seeing how it continues to develop.

[Digital Hellhound]

Having a blast and/or a major case of Just One More Turn Syndrome with this.

I'm getting a handle on things at last, but in my latest game I have an odd problem. The SHQ refuses to allocate any logistics points towards unit replacements, however high I put the setting in its admin panel. I can manually replace them just fine. There's plenty of supply to go around and the reinforcements won't get sent out even if I park the suffering unit right on top of the SHQ.

Any idea what could be causing this? Manually replenishing each unit is pretty tiresome.

[Mkok]

hmm, no idea, but did you actually order them to be replaced? If I am not wrong you have to tell the unit which quality it is to use and then set the corresponding quality to models. Or set models as obsolete, otherwise they will not autoreplace.

Or do you mean replacing loses? In this case you must have a suitable unit in your SHQ, they will not autorecruit.

[Vivalas]

Yeah there's a difference between reinforcements and replacements / upgrades. Upgrading units is generally a manual order, reinforcement of battle losses happens automatically so long as there is logistical points left over after the unit has everything else it needs sent to it, and you have the required units in your SHQ. You recruit reinforcement troops separately from creating new formations, so make sure there are enough troops on standby in the SHQ waiting to be sent out.

[Shooer]

Also I like to leave reserve troops stocked up in my SHQ.  Each level of barracks you build in a city provides some XP to troops stationed in the city.  That includes troops sitting in a SHQ.

Means my reinforcements have some XP as opposed to being mostly green when arriving on the front.

[E. Albright]

There's been some language in recent patches suggesting that manual replacement isn't strictly necessary - can't remember if it was only if there were replacements, log points, and obsolescence in play. That aside though, in my experience, yes, you need to manually replace anything mechanical.

[Digital Hellhound]

Yes, I meant reinforcement of battle losses. It has worked just fine automatically in other games - I just use the Replenish button in the SHQ and create the needed amount and type of troops there, and it sends them to those who need them.

The SHQ sends supplies normally, just not replacements. The basic setting for it prioritizes supplies over replacements, but there's plenty of leftover LP in this case and forcing it to only send replacements just meant nothing at all was sent.

I hadn't considered the quality settings interfering. Will need to check that out. Suspect it could be a bug too, though, since it has been working before. Oh well.

[Karlito]

The SHQ sends supplies normally, just not replacements. The basic setting for it prioritizes supplies over replacements, but there's plenty of leftover LP in this case and forcing it to only send replacements just meant nothing at all was sent.

I hadn't considered the quality settings interfering. Will need to check that out. Suspect it could be a bug too, though, since it has been working before. Oh well.

Are you certain there's no bottleneck somewhere along the path? If you move depleted units back to your capital, will they reinforce there?

[Cthulhu]

I bounced off of this once but slowly getting the hang of it this time.  I really like the idea of hex-and-chit maneuver warfare games where the context for the battle comes out of your decisions instead of being predetermined from history or alt-history or whatever.  So I'm wondering, has anybody actually won a game of this?  How well does it do the wargame thing especially later on?  Is the AI any good?  Early game it's pretty easy to just surround and wipe out minor regime militaries cause they're so small they can't properly form a line, but what about bigger forces?

When I invade a major regime later in the game, can I expect to see big lines along my border that try to prevent me from just looping around?  Will the enemy know how to concentrate and try to punch through those lines at their weak points?  Similarly, is the enemy AI smart enough to actually keep up into the late game?  I worry about games like Civilization where outside the hardest difficulties eventually it's like 2030 tech vs WW1 and you just plow through them without any challenge at all.

Just in general, how do the later game wars feel?  Are they good, or is most of the challenge and fun in the earlier parts of the game?

[E. Albright]

It's more challenging than early game, yes. I've only played to completion on the lowest two settings, so it's possible the AI is far more clever on higher ones, but it is at least reasonably competent at supporting its flanks and isn't a pushover - but it's flawed and beatable. Again, it may not be so easy on higher levels. But you'll get stretched-out supported battle lines and attempts to cut you off, plus units which may have tech parity.

[Mkok]

It seems to be kind of case to case. In my two games the AI barely resisted, in fact every single turn I gained ground simply from them retreating, no need o even engage in battles. The first game it was slow, about one hex per turn, plus the few I conquered, until they hunkered down in their only city, which I easily surrounded and took by repeated storming. The second time it was way easier, as the AI was also fighting another war on the opposite side of its borders and I literarilly marched my troops through their territory with nearly no resistance, and once I reached enemy troops they again started to retreat so fast my troops just barely kept up, until they ended in their single city as well (I had already taken the other two they mostly abandoned). I barely experienced any resistance except for the city garisons. And the AI had huge tech advantage as it was not even turn 30 yet, and they were nemesis, giving them more cities and tech at the start. Had they simply formed a defensive wall and not kept moving I might have seriously been unable to advance, or at least they might have had a chance. Did not have the will to try another game, as game turns get too long currently in late game, but dev said he plans to fix this, as well as many other improvements, and I am greatly looking towards those. There already were quite few changes from patch notes since then.

Minors never get better troops, so they are just there to be food the whole game, they only get more militia as game progresses.

[E. Albright]

Minors DO get better troops: they get your militia models at the same rate your militia gets them; i.e., on a 30-turn delay. If the game goes on long enough and tech is set to develop slowly enough, they can end up with more meaningful resistance though they're still mostly speedbumps.

I'd also point out that the games where I had a challenge from majors were engagement no earlier than turn 50 if not 100 - that makes for a much more involved opposition just in terms of muddled complexity. I'd also guess that I was dealing with a much larger planet if you were hitting endgame at turn 30-ish. Logistics become a lot more of an issue when you're dealing with more meaningful distances, especially if you've got incursions on multiple fronts. Aircraft are a lot more powerful on small maps as well; on a big map you need to keep pushing out airbases as the front moves until you've gotten to at least turboprops in most atmospheres.

The main enemy still felt like it was logistics, but that's pretty much feeling right in any case. It helped that clearing alien lifeforms was also never an easy task.

[E. Albright]

Okay, seriously got into it with a major for the first time in several patches. They're more passive and pacifistic than they used to be. Hopefully the forthcoming promised AI work in the next(ish?) patch will give them back their teeth.

[EuchreJack]

Yeah, but the best strategy is still to just force your enemy to extend their supply lines and let the local wildlife cut them off (aka retreat until they kill themselves).

AI sort of got lobotomized in the name of speeding up turn processing.  There is an option for better AI, if you don't mind looooooooooooooooong turns.

[E. Albright]

Vic's doing a development feedback/direction poll: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5030276

I encourage everyone to hope over and whine that planet atmosphere/biosphere/climate doesn't have enough distinct impact on how combat, model design, etc. function from one planet to the wildly-different next one...