Caltrops - Mischief Maker's Maker's Mark





	[quote name="Mischief Psychohistorian"]This is your big chance, Fabio! <A HREF="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php" TARGET="new">AI War: Fleet Command</A> is poised to be the next "big thing" out of the indie community. The author prefers to play RTS as human allies vs AI, got sick of shitty skirmish AIs posing no challange, and created this game to fill his particular niche. The result is a game that's half Supreme Commander (with an even larger scope) and half X-Com, as human allies battle against an AI with superior numbers and technology. Unfortunately the author is still faffing around with balancing units and needs input from RTS vets to help keep the thing fast and strategically robust. He has a <A HREF="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/" TARGET="new">forum</A> that he is VERY active in and responsive to, but being an indie game he only has a handful of people giving concrete ideas. So instead of impotent bitching about how Relic continues to shit up the DoW franchise with every new patch, why not use your super nitpicking powers to take a promising RTS and turn it into a great one? The basic premise is that an AI rebellion has wiped out almost all of humanity's militaries and occupied the whole of the galaxy, save the starting planets of you and your human allies. For whatever reason, the AI has recently deemed your destruction a low priority and is only attacking you with minimal resources. You and the other human players are former enemies who must use this temporary reprieve to strike back at the AI's Achilles heel central processing node before the AI brings back its full might and crushes you for good. Each human player starts out with a single planet in a galaxy with between 10-120 planets (currently balanced toward 10-12 hour 80-planet galaxies). Human players' economies are similar to the Total Annihilation model, with knowledge to unlock tech being the only limited resource. You get only 2000 knowledge per planet and can only unlock up to tech level 3 units. Level 4 tech can be stolen by capturing AI research stations, and only the AI has access to level V ships. Gaining a new tech not only gives you better units, it increases the size of your forces since population caps are on an individual unit type basis. The AI, on the other hand, has virtually unlimited forces which are busy doing something outside the galaxy when the game starts. In place of an economy, the AI has a "progress level" that increases in response to the player destroying major AI installations. During the game, the AI receives regular influxes of units as both waves that attack player planets, tower defense style, and reinforcements to threatened systems (which will eventually attack if the player sits on his ass long enough for their numbers to swell). As the progress level increases, the number and tech level of the units sent in waves/reinforcements increase. For this reason, capturing everything and anything is a losing strategy in this game. The player must defend against regular attack waves, scout a safe route to the AI's vulnerable core, selectively attack for resources, tech, and safe travel routes, all while doing as little as possible to piss off the AI. And I haven't even mentioned the patrols of special forces AI ships, the unkillable Astro-Trains, and the weird little surprises every now and then like finding an enslaved human colony. See what you can do to help with the balance. The game's different, it's epic, and you can have a hell of a lot more influence on the direction of development than you ever will with a big budget game. Check it out![/quote]