Suranis

I don't have much of a problem with it. I I WOULD like to be able to have the defense turrets active while I am Driving, but I guess the enemy carrier has to have some advantages.

Yes, I too was initially confused between "headquarters" and "command centers," but building command centers works perfectly in the beta. Just select the walrus and hover your mouse over the destroyed command center and it should change to a build icon, and click it and the walrus will wander over and build it.

Unless the save game changed the amount of ammo in the unit, it should have been full up. I had just launched them prior to saving.

Yeah, and last night my repair walrus inexplicably stopped repairing. After I reloaded the map, and docked and relaunched them, it decided to get back to doing its job. Oddly enough, in the same save before that it was working fine. So it is inconsistent. But I think we can agree that the physics and stuff is good so they can focus on tweaking the AI to get things good. I am convinced however that certain areas you are MEANT to physical drive past to get around, like last night when I snuck a walrus around some rocks to the back of a base to take out its AA guns. The AI could never get past the rocks but there was a pass there that had to be deliberately placed so that the player could get there but the AI could not.

I haven't timed it but I'd say it takes me about an hour and a half per island, mainly as I'm still figuring things out and I don't know how to use my units effectively. I am overcautious with the use of my mantas though and only started using them aggressively last night.

Just standard. I Rushed to attack an enemy ismald that was a mining Island and ehtn the Icon changed to a hammer and spanner which means the computer was changing its type, which I knew would be turning into a defense Island. So I wanted to take it before it turned into a defnese and the defense was boosted. Then I went and took the neutral Island. Then The enemy carrier attacked one of my Islands and I went to defend it. I moved to the enemy carrier but unloaded all my guys a little away from it so that the enemy carrier would not shoot them off while they were launching. Then when we got in combat I set my units to kill his. Turing the fight he took out my main gun but he got completely wrecked and ran. I let him go mainly as, even though I had lost a couple of units he had lost all of his which would all need to be replaced, and he would need to turn through a lot of fuel to repair himself. So he was out of it for a while. Then I killed his sole mining Island and then took my time with the rest as I knew he was pretty much sunk at that. I finally fought him on the last Island and the enemy carrier still killed half my units. Damn defence guns. Must remember to shoot them off in future...

A large part of the problem is there is rocks and trees on the islands now, which the Walruses cant figure out how to path around and so get stuck. That I find is the big problem. I would imagine if the trees were just eye candy that the walruses could pass through rather than invincible sticks of Whateverium I think the AI would be having an easier time navigating. It does ok on empty beaches and what not. It also affects the AI as I've been finding huge piles of tanks around the generators all the time as the enemies simply cant go anywhereWhich makes attacking easier than it should.

Of course that applies to the computer Islands too. Plasma cannon carrying mantas were a very unpleasant surprise then I ran smack into them for the first time. Of course this affects what islands you want to attack as well, Attacking a newly made defence island is better than one which has been sitting there for a while. And you don't want the AI to have 2 defence islands sitting beside one another for a while if at all possible. These are the things we will be thinking about in the full game... Oh and I just won my first game... :P

MOM! The bad men are making my head hurt!!!

You move the stockpile by selecting an island, clicking on the little spanner icon and then selecting move stockpile. You change the island type the same way

I've gotten a manta from hacking a factory.

Yeah, I found I could drive some of the hacked viecles around yesterday as well. You might be able to when its in com range of one of your carrier units... Dunno.

I used a manta with no equipment for recon last night and yeah that thing is damn fast when you have nothing on it. You kinda have to be careful to skirt the coast and the range of any AA you find, but its a snap to AB out of its range and get back to the carrier for a repair job.

I faced the enemy carrier last night and drove it off, but I found I could not tell my units to attack it at all. I had no problem telling them to attack the enemy carrier units, but not the carrier itself. I mean I think the carrier is toast anyway as its a wreck and all its units are dead, and I'm attacking its factory island right now, but it did pretty much mean that I didn't finish the game right there. I did find that launching my units a bit before engaging and holding them back till the battle had begun was the way to go. I have found that problem with the Island as well. I had to zoom right in to select the Enemy carrier, which was annoying. By the way, anyone know if the enemy carrier in the full game will have a different design than your carrier?

All or which can be explained away by the switch to electrical fuel. Without liquid fuel you can't use a jet aircraft, but there would be no need for extra weight for fuel tanks either nor would carrying a full load of fuel cost any extra weight as opposed to light loading. Anyway, they could change the graphics to choppers no-one would complain much enough. They largely are helicopters anyway considering the lift is created from fans in the wings. They just aren't aircraft like you would think of them. And frankly they are fine the way they are imo.

Not quite. VTOLs and Helicopters are used a lot on Amphibious Warfare Ships, which our dear Carrier here is a very good example of. It would not have the landing space for Jet aircraft. Tiawan's single 18 plane Carrier Uses VTOLS as well. The USA's new America-class amphibious assault ship will be using STOVL planes and helicopters and the WASP class uses Harrier VTOLS. In fact, if you want to call on realism, the islands should be using jets against US as they have the space for landing strips, but that's a whole different ball game :D But I think the VTOLS here work fine and are fun to use so far.

One thing you have to figure though is the thrill of "seeing it happen." For example, when I play X3, the only thing I NEED to be therefore regarding my factories is to put them in place. Everything can be handled remotely. But there is just a thrill of watching all them work, al all the freighters fly to them and away. Its also a thrill to buy a transport, assign it to the factory and then watch it undock from the shipyards and begin its journey to my factory. I don't always do it but I would say a good 50% of the time I like being there for operations like that. So if the option was there I can see people doing it

Ok I had the same issue last night, and I know how to fix it! When I started first it looked ok, but was a bit shuddery so I started to play with my graphiocs settings. Eventually I decided not to bother, but I moved the Nvidia "Adjust performance Options" slider from "best performance" to the middle setting. Then I opened the game and everything was as you describe. Reinstall, nothing. Then I moved the slider back to best performance. Presto, issue gone! I don't know what specificity is adjusted by that slider that causes this, but settingyour graphics settings to best performance in that slider will cause you to be able to play the game. I submitted a ticket about this last night. it really is an issue that needs to be addressed prior to launch so its good we all caught it. What a first post eh?