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zopzodeman

My Review and thoughts

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Hi there !

After completing the campaign and some strategy games , heres my review and thoughts on CCGM:

Campaign :

- cheesy story

- the FPS-part is one of the badest i seen in the last few years

- the other action - mission are ok , except for the "flying" one , that was extremly frustrating (partly because of the bad control of the manta , but ill come to that later)

- freedom in the campaign is ok , i can choose where to go and what to attack next

- never encountered the enemy carrier in the campaign , stopped it by taking all his production islands and having "deadly"-defence islands after he attacked one he moved to the next island with strong defence and it couldnt take it as it never moved away from there and i didnt bother to go there but take the rest of the islands

Rest of the game (in no particular order) :

- some weapons and equipment seem totally worthless (to build and use) like:

- tomahawk (one shot,very expensive, dumb-fire, i rather use a rocketpack that gets replenished),

- torpedo (one shot, very expensive, dumb fire...in the future ? we have homing torpedos today!) ,

- hammerhead (expensive, only targets the command center...why cant i target it where i want?, small blast radius, in the original cc i could target it anywhere the scout flew)

- howitzer ( nice range , ai drives most of the time in the firing range of the enemy,so its worthless, no clue how far im aiming...) ,

- bombs ( one shot, expensive) ,

- quad-gun for walrus (not able to aim down even a little,for aaa better use flak) ,

- shell and heat are too similar (heat slower refire , more damage) ,

- scanner is totally useles, why isnt this implemented on the chassis? rather make it a long range targeting pod or something...

- shell for carrier (nice bang , but not really aimable without clues or a spotter)

- quad-gun and flak for carrier look too similar in use (rather use flak , more bang but seems shorter range)

- scout drone ( one use only, why cant this thing dock again?)

- defence drones ( rather useles, most attackers get shredded either by quad-gun/flak or plasma/shell, original cc they where to be dummy targets for missiles!)

- flares for carrier ( never seen them being used , are they automatic?)

- fuel pack and fuel (why 2 times the same item, one larger and one smaller? original cc had 3 different fuels for carrier,manta and walrus!)

- bad steering due to mouse acceleration not able to turn off , this leads to over-steering while trying to target

- rebuilding a command center takes way too long , better hack it

- fixed positions for buildings and defence on the islands ... in the original cc i was able to choose where the cc would be....

- i would like to be able to control islands own mantas and walrus´

- carrier control screen (3d) too limited in views (cockpit/bridgeview?) and not really zoomabale

- slot 2 on walrus : what equipment goes there? (i remember being able to mount missiles/rockets and a gun in a beta?)

- mantas not able to refuel/rearm at islands (tried it on various ones) , how about a landing pad? original cc had runways on friendly islands...

- how to refuel walrus out of fuel? original cc had refuel pods... (ok i could use the hook to get it to a refuel station)

- waypoint system is shit , from a strategy game i was expecting more options (move wp, attack wp,defend wp, HOOK WP!!!, wp-height for mantas....being able to move the wp)

- radial menue too limited and bad to use

- general unit ai is too bad (pathfinding for walrus, no retreating after heavy damage...no real assistance from the other units) , so you are better of controling all by yourself and just let the ai drive from and to the points

- mantas are too slow (that dumb enemy carrier is as fast as a manta with armor mk2) and turn too slow and mouse acceleration is hindering precise targeting

- radar range generally is too low and locking targets only happens to line of sight most of the time...missile are bvr (beyond-visiual-range)-weapons in my eyes....(give the enemy flares to counter this or something)

- control range is too low , no long range com pod like in the original carrier command

- instanced islands : i can only see whats going on in my location...

- timewarp not chooseable leads to long waiting sometimes

-enemy carrier most of the time runs away and dont uses his assets against me

- building queue is shit...i wanted to be able to get 2 mantas,2 msisiles and then another 2 mantas....and not all 4 mantas at once

- missiles should be generally not be replensihed, rather have to build the launcher and the missiles seperatly , so launcher gets reused and needs ammo build

Rather long list i agree... :)

Dont get me wrong , i like CCGM ...often i get that "lets take one more island"-feeling , graphics are nice and the weather system is looking good...but the list above would be nice if most gets implemented /fixed ...some things in the original cc where way better than in the sequel ... like different fuels, better build queues , targetable hammerhead, real supply (missiles magically get replenished?),long-range com pod....

Edited by Zopzodeman

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Agreed, your points are pretty valid. (I like the Walrus Quad Gun though, but Walrus HEAT is totally Overpowered; or rather the other weapons aren't nearly as useful). It took me a long time to learn to coordinate my attacks, simply because the units make so many mistakes.

I also think it's a great game, but it needs a whole iteration of polish; some features don't feel exactly "done", like ammo / supply / fuel / carrier weapons, or unit AI.

If I tell my unit to dock after it's heavily damaged, I DON'T want it to loiter in the area for another 20 seconds (mantas do this a lot). This has cost me so many units and, because of lacking manual time warp, so much time.

And I also disapprove of the "instanced islands", while I can see the reasons for this there should be a way to have an unit at another island, and the transition between island and open sea is pretty harsh, making it difficult to keep the screen focused on the carrier or units, etc. Also, you can actually lose a unit in the ocean when you deploy it while fighting the enemy carrier on the high seas. That unit turns out to be nigh impossible to retrieve (cancel time warp, but you can only go in straight lines towards islands, what if you chased the carrier off course?).

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BIS, I think that Carrier Command is a strong game. But it can be stronger.

I like it and love the fact that it is respectful to the original as it is.

I would like to see the island chain become open world and not seperated by loads. I would also love to see the view distance be trippled or quadrupled if the open world chain ever comes into fruition.

Thanks for the great game. In my humble opinion BI leads the way in "against the mindless flow" gaming.

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Agreed, your points are pretty valid. (I like the Walrus Quad Gun though, but Walrus HEAT is totally Overpowered; or rather the other weapons aren't nearly as useful). It took me a long time to learn to coordinate my attacks, simply because the units make so many mistakes.

I also think it's a great game, but it needs a whole iteration of polish; some features don't feel exactly "done", like ammo / supply / fuel / carrier weapons, or unit AI.

If I tell my unit to dock after it's heavily damaged, I DON'T want it to loiter in the area for another 20 seconds (mantas do this a lot). This has cost me so many units and, because of lacking manual time warp, so much time.

And I also disapprove of the "instanced islands", while I can see the reasons for this there should be a way to have an unit at another island, and the transition between island and open sea is pretty harsh, making it difficult to keep the screen focused on the carrier or units, etc. Also, you can actually lose a unit in the ocean when you deploy it while fighting the enemy carrier on the high seas. That unit turns out to be nigh impossible to retrieve (cancel time warp, but you can only go in straight lines towards islands, what if you chased the carrier off course?).

Yes i think more polish is needed....

Would be nice to see a Developer respond to most of my points...

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Still no answer for most of my points...i know pathfinding and enemy carrier ai gets a fix...but what about the rest?

Quite a lot of this points were also mentioned waaaaay back in beta by me , but still no fixes were taken, the team rather liked to build that damn console port that hinders REAL games.

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Still no answer for most of my points...i know pathfinding and enemy carrier ai gets a fix...but what about the rest?

Quite a lot of this points were also mentioned waaaaay back in beta by me , but still no fixes were taken, the team rather liked to build that damn console port that hinders REAL games.

Unfortunately that's where the money is and consoles are holding back innovation, but CCGM has not suffered much because of that.

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Pretty much all of those suggestions were given during the P&C phase on the feedback site. Heck, I even submitted a 30 page document with suggestions, which included many of those!

After about 10 hours of play so far, other than the FPS sections, the storyline and some glitch removals, I've yet to find a single suggestion from any of us P&C guinea pigs implemented anywhere in the game. Rather than P&C it should have "P&ORC" (Play and Only Report Crashes).

The feedback site, when I last checked had about 450ish issues, of which a good number were AI-related. They knew full well that the AI sucked nuts, but the publisher decided to go ahead and release anyway. BI is doing to Carrier Command what Gametek did to Frontier. Luckily, Gametek were able to reboot Frontier, with "F:First Encounters". Let's hope BI has a similar way to "wash clean" the smell from this first release... "CCGM: Second Encounter" perhaps? ;-)

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I know this game is strong enough to do just that, there is some real magic here that can not be seen because of the problems.

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