Yeah, the camera is a bit less than optimal. I've found the best ways to get around seem to be double clicking the planet icons in the top left, double tapping the number keys to jump to groups, and zooming out and back in with the mouse since it reorients to the mouse location when you do. To date, I haven't seen a control system for an RTS that can compete with C&C: Generals. Also the only RTS I've ever really been able to wrap my head around, too. Which is to say, at least you aren't alone in being terrible.

Damn, I love Generals.

I think my favorite/best RTS was warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. Its a shame I never bought the expansions for it, I heard it made the game alot better, which is hard to believe.

As far as this game goes, I spend the good majority of my time zoomed out to the point of where I can't really well what each of my units is, so instead of looking like a new computer game it looks like I'm playing Galaga. When I do zoom in, it seems some of the textures and polygons are just painful to look. One of the Tec capitals looks like a Carnival Cruise Liner. I spent an hour and a half playing my first game against 2 normal computers. I didn't finish the game, I just got too frustrated and decided to give up after a fleet of pirates destroyed almost my entire fleet, and my ally expanded in all the planets around me making it impossible for me to expand without attacking him.

I also spent alot of my time lost as to how to upgrage things. It seemed like I was always missing a parameter in which I needed to upgrade, but i could never figure out how to upgrade said parameter.

my first game went something like this.

*Research cruiser*
"Your fleet doesn't have enough blueberry muffins to research that technology. Build more blueberry muffin factories."
*build blueberry muffin factory*
"You have reached the maximum amount of blueberry muffin factories you can build at this planet, research more logisitics.
*research logisitics*
"Your logistical team needs more pizzas before they can do any more research, build more california pizza kitchens"
*build california pizza kitchen*
"You don't have the franchising liscence to build a California Pizza Kitchen"
"Pirates have destroyed your colony"
*RAGEQUIT*

I can't say I've been enjoying it very much. Every time I play it, the entire session consists of me sitting there wondering why I'm not playing Master of Orion 3 instead. Also a flawed game, but a lot better than this.

At least it's better than Rome total war. I agree with you BS, I'll give it another shot today and hopefully I'll be able to scale this learning curve. Otherwise its PVK2 time.

*edit* ok so i loaded up a 1 player game today with no opponent and just kind of tried to advance through the tech tree. I see how the game works a little better now, but I am still having an awful time trying to host games on the ICO. I even set my computer as the DMZ host and still nothing. I'm out of ideas.

Well, after a few more hours in game I've managed to grok how to play the game a good deal better. Turns out after a certain point, there's almost no reason to ever zoom in. Knowing that, it's started to play a lot like MoO, just in real-time. Pretty well executed system after all, to be honest, but I'm still not really enjoying it. It's just not for me. I much prefer the gameplay and feel of RTSs like Starcraft/Warcraft 3 and Generals, with their smaller scale, wider unit variety, and much, much faster pacing.

Much as I liked DoW back in the day, the balance is god-awful. Way too many sides.

I had heard they fixed the balance issues in the expansions, but I never played them to truly test that claim. The balance in the original release wasn't really that terrible. The space marines were a little overpowered and the chaos marines were a little underpowered, but other than that, the balance worked decently well. I even thought I remember them buffing the Chaos marines in one of the later patches to help balance them a tad.



I agree. I'll continue playing it just to get the most out of my 40$ investment, but I kind of wish I had saved the money for something else.

Bah. Neither of you have any taste.

I would like it more if i could get the multiplayer working. But not being able to host games really puts a damper on things.

forward port 6112

'

Tried it. It's still telling me I'm behind a firewall. I even set up my computer as the DMZ host, but it still says im behind a firewall. Windows firewall is off. I'm trying to remember if I had to install any other third party fire walls for my school network last year, and forgot about them, but I don't remember doing so, and I can't seem to find any active firewalls.

You still have no taste >_>

Lol, if I can get it working multiplayer, and I can start playing games with my friend I am sure i will like it much better than I do now.

Still, it doesn't have the character that starcraft or dawn of war had. And you usually do spend the bulk of your time zoomed out all the way so you can see what's going on.

I do like the concept of planet colonies though, building in orbit, planetary defenses, planetary bombardment etc. It is cool when your colonies are actually dynamic and aren't just static buildings that always act the same way. I would like a little bit more unit variation though. I don't mind the pacing so much except everything takes sooo long to do.

I don't believe it's possible to finish a game in under five hours even on the smallest of maps, and I'm not remotely willing to spend that much time on it. It's the same reason why I never really got into the Civ series like so many others, in spite of the fact that I think it's a great game in a lot of ways. I'm just not that patient. Moreover, I only play RTS games for either the campaign, or to compete with otheres via multiplayer. This lacks the former entirely, and as to the latter... with the exceedingly short list of people I know who also have this game that I could play with, and the extreme amount of time it takes to play, I'm not willing to plonk down $40-50 for that privilege.

Again, it's not a bad game. Just not one for me.

Ok, so I finally got to play this game in a 3v3 multiplayer game. I have to say, it was pretty amazing. I think this game could possibly be one of the best RTS I have ever played.

Props to yogurt for convincing me to buy it.