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[Orb]

There's a very old thread on this(clocked over a year), so I figured it was time to give this game some new light.

Achron, if you didn't get it from the title, is an RTS with time travel elements. You can go into the past, change your orders, and prevent that devastating attack by building a few more defenses. Or you can go into the future and send your newly built units into the past. Its really quite interesting and hard to explain. A video of a very recent match might be better:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?feature=iv&user=ShadowFury333&annotation_id=annotation_2211#p/c/A4C4710676E6BB14


There's also a lot of Alpha videos on youtube explaining the gameplay of Achron.

Right now its in Beta, and since I found out about this game while shifting through another thread today, I'll probably be preordering it soon to get into the beta.


http://www.achrongame.com/site/index.php

[Neonivek]

The game seems too too frustrating to play for me.

Though watching it with commentary seems a lot more fun then... actually playing it oddly enough.

[ThtblovesDF]

Looking forward to it, but it might become dumped down and made very simple to be more accessable. Already seems like time travel is mostly a "fix fuck up" button

[Journier]

looks ridiculous to play, in a bad way.

i saw the teasers or trailers of it long before and I said it would be horrid, but have yet to play it, however... having seen that 2v2, it looks silly.

[Neonivek]

You would also expect a extreme time travel society to feel more advanced.

As well the resources are boxes.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Looking forward to it, but it might become dumped down and made very simple to be more accessable. Already seems like time travel is mostly a "fix fuck up" button

It's also a "sneak up" button. When you really consider it, how many uses for time travel can there be in an RTS? "Fix fuck up" is about the only thing you can reliably squeeze out of the function, because that's essentially its purpose, for varying definitions of "fuck up". Scout blown up by enemy defences? Retcon. Rush failed? Retcon. Overwhelmed by sudden attack? Send in units from past or future to repel it. There are a few more uses, but that's essentially the gist of it.

Come to think of it, that's about the only real use for time travel at all, barring the occasional trip to see the sights of the past or future.

[Jopax]

I still expect players to find many more uses for time travel, just give them time.Also the game looks very unatractive now since most things are still placeholders, but it's nice to see how much the game has progressed since the early alpha screens and videos

[Thexor]

I still expect players to find many more uses for time travel, just give them time.Also the game looks very unatractive now since most things are still placeholders, but it's nice to see how much the game has progressed since the early alpha screens and videos

Yeah, the appearance of the game is the most obvious issue. No offense, but when I drop $30 on a game, having a decent underlying mechanic isn't enough. 


Now, that said, I really think the time travel system is intriguing. The obvious "anti-fuckup" capacity has been mentioned already... but remember, there's an awful lot you can undo. Scout different parts of the enemy base, retreat from a failed attack, change your build order, and so on. Not to mention things like chronoporting - if you're losing in battle, head to the future, use your accumulated resources to build an army, then send it back in time to win your battles! Heck, I remember one of their videos showing off how you could force a grandfather paradox; I'm sure there's some use out there for an army that vanishes and then spontaneously reappears a minute later!

But, yeah. If they tidy up the graphics a bit, and convince me that the game either has decent single-player AI and/or some guarantee of more than a handful of people ever playing MP at once, I'll buy this happily.

[Neonivek]

What I feel the game lacks, other then having maybe TOO much rock paper scissor gameplay, is a lack of epicness in many ways outside of time travel.

Though from what I am aware they know and don't care.

[Virex]

There doesn't seem to be much more rock-paper-siccors then in Total Annihilation, but that could just be me.

I still expect players to find many more uses for time travel, just give them time.Also the game looks very unatractive now since most things are still placeholders, but it's nice to see how much the game has progressed since the early alpha screens and videos

Well in the linked video, Blue actually saved himself by sending units back in time to take out an enemy assault. Those units then proceeded to kill his opponent before they were made (I think)

[Sean Mirrsen]

He also survived Red player's surprise rush by quickly retconning his actions into building a secondary base in the southwest corner. That one even slipped past the commentator.

Of tricks I want to personally try out, the most audacious is probably what I call the Unit ChronoSplosion - nothing to do with chronofrag, this is actually just a bunch of units permanently stationed around a chronoporter. But whenever a surprisingly massive force would be required, the number of these units can spontaneously quintuple - since the units were always near the chronoporter, you can jump to -1, -2, -3, -4, and -5 minutes, and send their copies in, making sure to move every next batch a little out of the way. This would give a short-lived expendable army that hopefully is enough to do whatever you need it to do in the present.

[Sowelu]

Even if you do just think of it as a "fix fuckup" button, when BOTH players have it, shit gets real.  There's lots of different strategies with different counters.  Do you meddle way back in the past at high expense with big repercussions, or do you tweak things twenty seconds ago, not modifying as much but doing more of it?  I dunno.

I do look forward to it.  And back to it.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I especially like the concept of "defending factories with units that they will make".

Also, I wonder if it'll be possible to save both the "Ingame" replay with all the timelayers, and the simple "aftermath" replay that consists only of things that were permanently committed to the timeline? I suspect the latter will be rather interesting to watch.

[Itnetlolor]

This actually looks like an interesting game for me and my brothers to play against each other in. Just how much can be done with so "few" units and in so "little" time.

[lemon10]

This looks pretty awesome, and i would definitely try it out. But the 30$ for a beta-indie strategy title is just a bit too much for me.