Skoob

Hi Species, So, is there any risk to the islands my friend has already captured? He's just reloaded and is now fortifying Taksavan, Endymion and Evergreen as Defence islands, all rated "Deadly" so should be pretty tough. As a result, other islands have been re-assgned to resource/production to maintain a good balance. Enemy just started attacking Evergreen as I typed this...I hope it's safe, shame we cannot see remotely what's going on! Edit: Enemy gave up on Evergreen, but moved on to Trease, which they have taken. Treasure wasn't connected to the network due to the Frontier bug, so it's no loss as the resources were cut off. Cheers, Scoob.

Hi all, My friend has progressed quite well in the Campaign...spoilers ahead... He's taken Fulcrum, secured some great new tech (building) an had headed off to Duessa to take another island. A message comes in saying Fulcrum is under attack...he heads there, the enemy carrier flees with NO attack on Fulcrum evident. He buzzes the island wil Mantas, searching for any enemy landing craft and there are none - only a VERY healthy compliment of friendly units. About to head back to Duessa he gets a message saying Endymion is now under attack - this isn't quite the fortress Fulcrum is, so he's heading there next. The thing is, can he actually continue to take islands now or is he going to be constantly chasing the enemy carrier to ensure the islands he already has are safe? Not so much fun. I'd rather the enemy carrier helped reinforce HIS islands. Or, maybe even better, I could take control of the units on my island that's under attack remotely (those huge satellite dishes should extend comms no end!) and help fight him off, while my carrier remains where it is. Maybe only allow remote control, rather than remote piloting, of friendly units on islands...AI permitting :) So, people who completed the campaign, did you have to play chase the enemy carrier for hours, or could you continue island hopping and capturing? Cheers, Scoob.

Thanks for posting that Foxhound, very interesting! I've not bought the game myself yet, but have been playing it with a friend...well, "back seat" playing to be exact, but I'm still liking what I see. There are obvious issues that need to be addressed, I'll not go into them here, but it's good to see that the developer is committed to this game and opening it up to the community - this will be key to it's longevity I reckon, and also means I am far more likely to buy myself, though maybe not until an update or two. Cheers, Scoob.

Yep, we've hacked every such building we've come across. Very much one for exploring the entire island too, so I don't think anything has been missed. Ha ha, good point re: AI...Mantas attempting to dock while on full burn...that's gonna be messy! Edit: Well, my friend is at the stage where he can attack Fulcrum, however he still only has the most basic of equipment. Here's all he can currently produce: Walrus Manta Armor Mk 1 Fuel Machine Gun (Walrus) Machine Gun (Manta) Grenades Fuel Pack Quad Gun Hack-Capsule Laser Defns-Capsule Prod-Capsule RSC-Capsule So, nothing advanced yet at all despite exploring all island except Isolus and Lingard...can those two islands - which he doesn't need to do before hitting Fulcrum - really yield the missing tech? I guess there must be more after Fulcrum where this tech becomes available? For completeness, Isolus and Lingard will be taken prior to Fulcrum... Carrier is fully restored, but it's not been attacked or anything yet... Scoob.

Hi Species, Yes, they bombard the island and, while my friend followed the road up from the beach, he also got attacked by Walrus's and troops. I think the first Walrus was equipped with a grenade launcher and it did some damage. It seemed that following the road was a bad idea as kept getting destroyed by mortar shells. Going off road seemed to by-pass that "always die" mechanic, so maybe a glitch of some sort. The frustrating thing is that we'd already secured the EXACT area the mortars spawn with remotely-controlled units. Really, those mortars would have lasted about 10 seconds had our assets not automagically docked. Ok, sending one back to pick the player character up would have been a little frustrating, but more in keeping with the campaign. It just bugs me when you make a tactical choice to secure an area, then a game script decides "you didn't do that, you did this". When control is taken away like that it really breaks things, for me and my friend at least. Due to the sequence we did the islands in, we did not have the Turbo option at this stage. Still, mission was done in the end and the little FPS bit seemed ok, though it was confusing which way to go at first. Also, escaping in the Manta - which the dialogue implied was well equipped - was disappointing when it turned out to be totally vanilla. I do find progress a little slow, new tech isn't very forthcoming. I mean, I cannot even hook & carry stuff with a Manta yet - something that'd be very useful for assisting damaged Walrus - especially when their AI pathfinding decided to run a couple of them off a high bridge, rather than simply follow the leader over it. Also, we're encounting Mantas that are more resistant to laser fire than our own "Armour Mk1" equipped Walruses! AND they're equipped with twin lasers that can chew through a Walrus in seconds....scary stuff lol. You know, if they sort the pathfinding AI and give us commands such as "hold ground" so we can leave a unit facing the appropriate direction to cover a road / base entrance etc. along with things like "retreat when damaged n%" hopefully with a pre-configurable fallback waypoint, then that would enhance the game no end. We found that leaving units guarding an area would often see them engaged by the enemy, then they'd turn around in their panic and not be able to bring their guns to bear on the target. The 360 degree Quad Turret worked ok of course, but Walruses still often crash off the road...the AI seems to follow the logic of "I'm ATTACKED, let's accelerate!" Bash. So, still a fun and addictive game so far, even for me as largely a spectator. I'm looking forward to getting more upgrades though. Plus my Mantas are still basic, so no armour, and just the machine gun, bar the recently aquired turbo. I wonder, can the AI use the turbo or is that a player triggered feature only? Retreating ALL Mantas at once using their turbos would be useful... Still hopeful we see some patches soon - I never played the ARMA games so I don't know the devs from their prior work. Scoob.

Hi again, Well, things just got dumb....spoilers ahead! We'd just secured and island where you need to take out force-field generators then take down the heavy AA turrets they were protecting. A nice little mission. So, the AIR space is secure and I have my full force on the island. I'm feeling confident. Cue cut scene saying we need to go in person to secure the objective. No problem, we think. After all, we've secured the island, control the air space and have lots of assets already guarding the target area. What could go wrong? Cue daft scripted event. There I am in the water in a Walrus equipped with grenades. GRENADES? Is there a harder weapon for the player to aim? Also, ALL of my units are back on the carrier...who ordered that? Plus, despite the wonders of wireless radio communication, can we contact our carrier? Nope. So, here we am, being pounded by artillery fire, while troops and enemy units that are a struggle to hit are pounding our single Walrus. It's not long before a lucky Artillery shot takes it out. Nice. I know, how about some air cover that'd eat these guys in seconds? No. Ooo, maybe some "tanks" (Walrus) to have my back? Nope. I can see why one of the mods created is an invulnerable Walrus...this mission is silly! At least let me equip my own walrus before throwing it into the ocean with no support. I've got to say, this is one annoying design choice! Especially after all this time training to work with several units supporting each other in tactical engagements *sigh* Ok, I know I'm ranting, but we'd started getting back into the game since Species little tip earlier...ok, I'm very much back seat playing here as the game is my friends, but I'm still frustrated! lol. Wonder if he's got any further while I'm typing... Edit: he did... I suggested he try an alternate route around - one the AI would have no chance of negotiating! This seemed to help as we no longer insta-died at a certain place as we had been before - hence the frustration. We got a little better at using the Grenade launcher - well, I did those bits lol - and saved (luckily) just before entering the Research complex. We called the lift, up it came, he was standing too close so it lifted him up. He jumped down, but then could not enter the lift at all! Reload. Try again. This time the lift did not glitch, so he made it into the complex & saved....Time for a little break before the FPS bit... So, a frustrating mission, but easy once we didn't follow the road...I wonder if following the road and dieing is somehow scripted and we're missing the "stay off the road" warning for that early encounter? Maybe we just got unlucky dieing the same place... Scoob.

Wow, we totally missed that! Thanks Species1571. We were worried that the campaign game had effectively stalled due to the Frontier bug! We've taken over four islands since Frontier yet frontier is still grey...I think it's going to be stuck like that now. Still, there is a way around it! Thanks again! Scoob.

Heh, no I wasn't aware of that! Thanks for the info! Well, we've tried going back to the island, and that part of the objectives at least seems to have reset. Now we're resuming one of the more recent saves - before he'd commited to building lots of stuff - and have continued to play. Hopefully Frontier island will go blue soon and re-establish the links to Treasure, Arachnid and Vulcan, the first and last of those being resource producing of course, something rather essential. We did try building a "Prod Capsule" to change the function of Nemesis to give some resources...didn't know how to use it though. Neither going to the Command Centre or factory give any options to deploy it from the Walrus.... From what you're saying it seems there are a few glitches yet to be resolved. I'm unaware if there is any update from the devs regarding this - I assume it's safe to say they're working on it though. The poor AI in particular threatens to make things a bit of a grind as you either have to pilot things manually, or rescue them when they inevitably get into trouble. I'd want to deploy my units to strategic points and trust that they can look after themselves if properly equipped. It'll be interesting to see how things develop. The game IS fun as it stands, but I can see how it would quickly get frustrating, especially as it has so much potential. Cheers, Scoob.

Sorry for the double post, but here's a little update on my friends and my experiences. We noticed, after loading a game in progress, he'd lost two "oil derek" icons and one production icon from his production screen. As you'd expect his materials metre had stopped rising as a result. Checking the map the island "Frontier" had greyed out, almost as if he'd not captured it and rebuild the HQ. We (well he, me watching) headed back to Frontier only to find the HQ destroyed (again) and an outstanding objective to rebuild it...again. Obviously without the scripted sequence there is no way to action this objective. I did read about this bug elsewhere, but it didn't make sense until experiencing it directly Unfortunately, this island, and those before it seem to have been cut off for a while so his saved games have long since cycled around, overwriting any saves on Frontier. Edit: looks like the auto-save right after rebuilding the Command Centre is intact. Going to load it and wait, to see if the HQ build properly and the "force field" effect around it dissapates... Additionally, after leaving Outpost (after Frontier) I seemed to get some tech early. I got a laser, AA guns and an Ammo pack, as well as facilities for changing an islands specialisation. I thought this odd, but it was only later when I got a cut-scene speach about finding said items I realised I'd gotten them early. Sadly, while some of the glitches are just annoyances, the Frontier Island bug has stopped all progress. My friend is out of resources - having produced fuel that the carrier seems to get through very very quickly, and the carrier is almost out again - out of range of any islands. There's no fuel or ability to produce fuel even though we got early access to the Barque - again, prior to the dialogue explaining it. I think, personally, I will wait until some of these issues are addressed before purchasing my own copy on Steam. Shame really. If anyone knows of a hack to force the Frontier Command Centre to be rebuilt and stay rebuild I'll relay it to my friend. Cheers, Scoob.

Hi Species1571, Thanks, I've found it! I appreciate your reply. Also, thanks for confirming the Manta Altitude issue isn't an issue. Seeing that modders are already starting to address little issues like this as well as add more to the game is very encouraging. For such a new game, I assume this is a good sign that modders are able to create such things already. Just checked on Steam, demo is available - so I can download my own copy, though it will take a while - and the full game is currently £31.99 - not too bad, but one of the more expensive titles. Still, if updates are forthcoming and the modding community takes off then this is a must buy for me. Will the mod work on the demo version do you know? Sorry for more questions, but I'm at that excited stage where I may ignore all reason and just buy the game on Steam...then wait hours while it downloads lol. Cheers, Scoob (Skoob)

Hi all, Have just spent a couple of hours playing this around a friends. Not sure if his game is the demo or the full version, sorry, though it is on Steam. Anyway, let's start off....firstly I was excited as this wasn't a game I was aware of! I played the original Carrier Command back on an Amiga many years ago - it was already an old-ish game when I picked it up. I thought it was epic. I put this in the same genre as things like Battlezone 2 (still play a modded version of that every now and again) and Hardwar (still play a modded version of that every now and again! lol) Starting up the Capaign as a simplistic FPS I actually quite liked. Ok, combat was easy and only via a slight glitch did I get killed. Still, it was a nice intro to "earn" the carrier. The glitch in question seems to be how my characters running speed would vary, irrespective of terrain every now and again. Almost like I was walking through mud, but I was not. A minor niggle, so I'll move on. Onto the game proper, remote controlling vehicles (the Walrus) was fun and easy. The AI pathfinding....not so great, but I'm sure that will be improved. It's when I actually had a 2nd Walrus to "help" me that things got a little confusing for me. I may be being dumb, but I couldn't figure how to tell a SINGLE walrus to simply stop. Seems like the "assist" command is a little sticky. I.e. I'd be in Walrus 6 asking 7 to "Assist" which it would. I'd then park Walrus 6, jumping into Walrus 7 and Walrus 6 would move to me...not what I wanted. It appears that commands can be suspended to be resumed later - a great idea - however jumping in and out of a vehicle seems to auto-resume things. Several times I'd just hopped into the other vehicle to refine its positioning. I.e. guard a choke point or whatever. I'd hoped to be able to select a vehicle from the map and issue it a direct order, but it doesn't seem to quite work that way. What I've done to work around things is simply issue a move order when I want a Walrus to stay put - sounds silly, but I tell it where I want it to wait, and it then defends that position reasonably well. As its finished the command, it's queue is empty so it doesn't wander off after a move command is given. So, I've not done much yet, just a quick play session at a friends, but I'm already hooked. I think the game needs a few fixes before I'd be ready to buy for myself, but I'll keep an eye on the forums and play my friends copy some more. Hopefully subsequent game updates will help polish this gem. Control of the Walrus craft needs to be a little better from a command perspective - direct control is fine. I assume Manta's would be equally effected. Also, did I read that when commanding a Manta to move you cannot set altitude? I think that might cause problems! A 3d map would do the business, but that's likely a larger change. Lastly, I really hope the game can be opened up for modding easily. There's a lot of talent out there & I can see this game getting some attention due to the combined RTS and FPS elements. So, a good start, from what little I've seen, but some AI polish needed as well as a little more control. Oh, Dark Waters: Anteus Rising is still on my shelf. Unit command and control on that were very well done from what I recall...glasses likely very rose tinted mind :) Cheers, Skoob (well Scoob, but that was taken. Darn!)