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[EuchreJack]

Hm, Il Palazzo is suggesting a game.  I feel like I should time how long it takes for me to jump on that bandwagon and buy it. 

I'm been playing a lot of Kerbal Space Program lately, so maybe this is the game that I have been looking to add to my collection.

[Il Palazzo]

Honestly, I might be just trying to justify shelling out a solid chunk of local currency.
It's definitely on the narrow interest side, and not a universal masterpiece (i.e. the cliched 'not for everyone' adage). But it certainly is different, and memorable, and I want to hug it for how old-school it feels.

How foes it compare with airships conquer the skies?

I haven't played that, but it's been sitting on my wishlist for ages. From what little I have absorbed about that game through general osmosis, this one is more on the simulation side than strategy, with much more focus on sneaking around a map with your radio in one hand and the radar in the other. As opposed to straight-up empire building and conquest. Also, the ship design/modification aspect in HF seems almost optional. More like a way to massage your chances, rather than a core mechanic.

[Frumple]

I've played airships, and from what I've seen of gameplay from this, about the only similarity is the very general aesthetic, both being punkish airship related games. Other than that basically everything is pretty different. Not in the same genre, not similar battle systems, wildly different narrative or whatever focuses (i.e. this one actually has one ), they're just not similar games except in a very suface level, distant first impression manner.

[Knave]

I can't resist games that ooze character like this.

Some frustrating points for me right now:
Can't rebind keys - as a lefty who usually rebinds this makes combat tougher. Hoping they add this sooner rather than later.

1 vs many - I'm sure I'll worry about this less as I get better, but once you get to the bigger battles where they have 3 ships in the air + ground defenses lobbing heat-seekers at you, it gets pretty difficult to avoid getting every ship mighty damaged (especially when coupled with lack of keybind)

Saves - The always on ironman saves - I get it's a choice, and it's supposed to be tough... I just would rather to be able to save when I want. Especially if I need to quit and do something else!

[Il Palazzo]

Aye, the saving behaviour is currenlty the worst offender imo. There's no excuse for just not saving whenever you want to exit the game. At least, at the very goddamn least, adding an indicator when an autosave has been made would do wonders for quality of life.

[Salmeuk]

Agreed about the saving, though I do admit there is a great sense of tension when you are trying to sneak back to the save city (your fleet headquarters) and your radio starts beeping, or the ELINT pings. I have rarely seen a dev fail to cave in to demands for saving, however I wouldn't put it past this dev team since they have quite the vision for this game.

I had a great time learning how to use strike missiles. I ended up installing about 8 on top of the large battleship you start the game with. It is mighty fun to launch a few missiles at the enemy radar signature and watch them fly through AA gunfire and dodge the AMM to land a hit. It is kind of broken though, since it lets you see exactly what craft are following you, in a risk-free sort of way. Except I just realized each one of these A100 strike missiles costs like 6000.. ridiculous.

Does anyone know how to reload the normal missiles in between fights? Rather, the missiles you use while in combat, I can't figure out how to reload those, since unlike the strike missiles which need to be reinstalled at the shipyard, it appears you can stock up on incendiary and airburst types, so you would assume there is a reload option. Not entirely sure though. Without those missiles my ships are hamstrung for sure.

Gladiator hull type is very powerful, especially the fact it comes with a free weapon slot and room for more armor. I salvaged a 130mm cannon or something and managed get that particular Gladiator up to veteran level 3 before I stumbled into a strike group and died. It has crazy powerful top armor so I have found the best strat is to immediately dive past the first volleys and attack the enemy from below.

Also, the ship design/modification aspect in HF seems almost optional. More like a way to massage your chances, rather than a core mechanic.

I disagree, for 200 monies you can slap two large armor plates over important parts, and that goes a LONG way to keeping your fuel tanks from catching fire, and prevents the smaller mgs from doing much of anything to you. Adding an additional fire suppression system is really good, too, assuming you can find room. Of course, armor makes you slower. This being said, I feel like the basic ships are so well designed that rarely could you find a straight improvement - it will always end up being a trade-off or a side-grade. good design imo, otherwise you get the simplistic meta you see in other games that have tried this sort of thing.

No one has mentioned this yet, but the game starts you off with freakin' NUCLEAR MISSILES.

[Karlito]

Does anyone know how to reload the normal missiles in between fights? Rather, the missiles you use while in combat, I can't figure out how to reload those, since unlike the strike missiles which need to be reinstalled at the shipyard, it appears you can stock up on incendiary and airburst types, so you would assume there is a reload option. Not entirely sure though. Without those missiles my ships are hamstrung for sure.

The heat-seeking and AA missiles you launch in combat (with space or C) also need to be reinstalled at shipworks. Generally need to go to a Merchants town to find them, though you can also strip some off of the Sevastopol.

[Egan_BW]

our words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

[LoSboccacc]

Ptw loved the original hammer fight this is significantly different so idk gonna wait for some let's play but surely dudeknows  how to pique my interest

[Cthulhu]

I love it.  Favorite vanilla ship is the gladiator, it's pretty much all you need for fighting anything short of strike group ships.  Armor's crazy good and gladiator has almost 100% coverage on the top, so as long as you're below an enemy you can just slug it out all day. 

In general though the map view is the most important part of the game.  Learning to fight with missiles and aircraft makes the game massively easier, strike groups are much less scary when you soften them up before they reach you.  Story's reasonably interesting, fun mix of spiritual and realistic elements

Spoiler: Story (click to show/hide)

About 50-70% of the way the sun goes out, and you can be matter of fact that nuclear winter is setting in or go full religious and declare yourself the prophet that will lead them through the apocalypse.
 Doesn't change much, but it's fun.

Spoiler: If you haven't gotten to the endgame, hoo boy (click to show/hide)

The goal changes a few times and this is a bit confusing.  At first you're trying to hold the Khiva reactor hostage to buy safe passage out of Gerat.  Then once nuclear winter hits holding Khiva becomes a matter of survival.  Then once you get there the Khiva bunker has a giant stockpile of ICBMs and then controlling the bunker means ruling the world.  The Gathering decides to just glass Khiva rather than let you have it.  Everyone in your party with a positive relation gives you free ships, and everything in cities becomes free.

Then it's just a giant anything-goes brawl as the remaining strike groups, along with two unique super-cruisers with ICBMs, all descend on Khiva and you have to kill them before they nuke the bunker.

Spoiler: Regarding the cruise missile spam from strike groups, slightly cheesy (click to show/hide)

If you suspect missiles are incoming, send out a single lightning interceptor.  When they come in on it, fly up to dodge it, and then fly down as it loops back around.  Cruise missiles do their damage in a cone, and the lightning can dodge it virtually every time.  Lightning doesn't give a shit about cruise missiles.

[Il Palazzo]

Gladiator hull type is very powerful, especially the fact it comes with a free weapon slot

How do you figure? Where is it? I can't see shit on those schematics.

[Cthulhu]

Yeah there's not really any good explanation of how ship-building works, you have to puzzle it out on your own.  But basically you've got hull parts, which all look like various girder constructions, and you stick those together and depending on their size you can place modules on top of them, which changes the shape of the hull part.

Most guns fit on the 2x2 pieces, except for a couple very large guns which fit on the extra-large hull piece, see below.  Generally modules will fit on any hull piece that can fit them, some can sit on top of multiple hull pieces, though guns cannot (e.g. the square in the bottom left is two pieces stuck together. You could stick 2 small generators or maybe two missiles on that, but not a gun).  Any pieces that separate from the ship like missiles and escape pods need a clear path or they won't function, so you can't put armor over them.  It's a lot of trial and error figuring out what goes where, feels like custom ship building wasn't a priority for the dev.

[Il Palazzo]

I get the basics, but in the aggregate it's all very confusing. Like, you can fit two extra rockets (the basic heat-seeking type) on the vanilla Gladiator. But the fourth (lower left) slot turns green only when I rotate the missile to point towards the hull, even though it's placed symmetrically to the other one. Why?
And I don't see any extra slots for an additional cannon at all. So what did Salmeuk mean?

[Cthulhu]

I don't know what he's talking about with that, I didn't see one either.

There's a few weird things with the gladiator.  It's got APS in an arc along the bottom (that's what that line some ships have, will destroy the first few high caliber shells to pass the line), but the ship doesn't actually appear to have APS modules on it. 

[Il Palazzo]

It's got APS in an arc along the bottom (that's what that line some ships have, will destroy the first few high caliber shells to pass the line)

Is that what this is? I thought it was some remaining armour indicator or something.