Did I buy it on release? Am I a sad 40K whoreslutman at this time? Yes. Yes I am. :-* :smitten:
(I'm not getting paid, so I figured that was technically more accurate.)
Now for the download at peak time, bleh. 3.6 Gigs on a day several major (and important minor games) release, 6:30 Central Standard.
I probably won't be able to play until tomorrow... ;)
Btw, I thought I had been luckily clever not to use my November Gamersgate coupon yet, so as to apply it to this game along with any release-day discount -- but GG doesn't have it up yet (as of 6:26 pm CST).
And I bought it anyway. Because see the first line.
Got back to the room tonight, it had finished downloading of course. Fired it up before bedtime for some pre-play impressions.
The Blood Angels vs Sin of Damnation story animation from the first game has been replaced with no intro movie, which is okay. The menu screen shows a Space Hulk looming largely behind a planet (?? I didn't think they got that big???) while a Battle Barge warps into the area (with classic warpy colors by the way), maneuvers into position, and shoots off three landing craft to impact the Hulk. I was impressed by the effort at detail and atmosphere in this understated 'opening cinematic' replacement.
I can't remember if I ever heard that they were changing the game system for the new sequel-reboot. It isn't just adding RPG features (rather like X-Com or more appropriately that Templar game which was originally intended as a remake of the 90s computer SH) and more enemy and combat options. The game is no longer a straight port of the boardgame rules. So the previous SH game from a year or two ago hasn't been simply replaced: if you want the board game without the ability to set up your own missions (but with more graphical bling) you can still play that. Just not in this game. Much as the 90s version translated the gameplay rules surprisingly faithfully to a Doom-esque squad-based FPS, this will be attempting to translate the gameplay rules to an XCOMish experience. I don't think anyone will pooh that design variation choice in theory -- on the contrary, the devs redesigned it based on fan input.
Whether they've succeeded in practice remains to be seen.
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That was the first sight of the tutorial, pre-deployment. No, you can't zoom in yet. I expect that's on purpose, to emphasize the black unknown.
(It looks even better in gameplay, because of the whirling fan. The opening imagery so far has taken more cues from Alien than we've seen before in this property.)
Clicking the "deployment" button zooms to the actual play mode, which can be further zoomed in or out. This is a few mousewheel clicks out from max zoom. I've opened the stats screen for the selected Terminator (there can be only one... I feel like I just started the design for one of those geek-rage baiting posters ;) ) to show what that looks like including a tooltip for one of the stats. Skittering genestealer random background noises are rather more 'realistically' muffled.
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Ultramarine Rufus deployed. Don't know why he doesn't have a standard helmet; he isn't otherwise equipped like a captain or chaplain or whatever. :tickedoff: I've rotated the main camera view to show Rufus from the front.
The shoulder camera is back, and can be increased in size relative to the rest of the screen, as I've done here. (Or turned off with a little camera icon remaining for turning it on again.) It can also go to pseudo-infrared which looks more pseudo- because the heat signature doesn't seem to mesh up with the genestealer well (though his little skull will show a heat bloom as it weaves and bobs around. Otherwise it looks like he's hiding behind a heated stool. Maybe it's a fancy bidan? I'm not showing the IR view here.)
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Holy balls of Terror this game is dark now! -- which I don't mind, but the Astartes seems a notch over-glowy, maybe to compensate.
Zooming all the way out will show a faint green ring to indicate his bolter range; and also reduces ambient noises by 'distance' proportion which is a nice touch. (Can't recall if the previous game had that.)
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When he's set on overwatch, the SM's shoulder camera shows him looking around (a bit nervously!) with raised gun.
Here I've zoomed out after issuing the overwatch order.
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Those red things to each side are the "blips" in game now (corresponding to "blips" in the board game, which of course correspond to the "motion tracking" blips from Aliens.) They appear and pulse and disappear, so it's possible to miss them if you're not looking. (My first screenshot attempt was poorly timed and they had completely disappeared for a moment.) The pulses are in synch so they're all there or not all there.
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Rufus did survive that by the way. I just wanted to show the nice smoke effect from the storm bolter now.
The weapons build up heat semi-randomly now, and that's what causes jamming. Unjamming, as in the board game, costs 1 action point and removes half the weapon heat; unsure yet if reloading accomplishes the same thing, or if it can't be done while jammed. (My guess is the latter, otherwise it would be stupid to waste an ap on an unjam instead of a reload.)
The autocannon (and some other weapons) can't be jammed, but can explode from overheating. So it isn't just a bad random roll of three dice all coming up the same number, or not until the gun overheats.
Didn't finish the tutorial "training ground" campaign, as I wanted to pick up a few more impressions before I slept.
"Hard" amusingly seems to be the expected default "normal" mode, as "normal" grants a few special advantages like having dead termies replaced with equivalent levels instead of rookies. :o :smitten: "Impossible" is ironman, no saves.
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There are three different Hulks with campaigns, ostensibly one for each chapter present (Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Space Wolves), but despite story text assuming each chapter any chapter can play any hulk. The Blood Angels do get "Sin of Damnation". Ultramarines get the the "Fortress of Desolation" at Macragge. Space Wolves get "the Fall of Jotenheim" campaign.
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Here are two squads of Space Wolves preparing to defend the capitol planet of Ultramar, which is kind of hilarious.
Notice all of them look like Vikings! (Or dwarves. Needs more facial variety eventually, but that can be added by the devs as they go I guess.)
Also notice that anyone can have sergeant or chaplain faces despite not being officers or chaplains; or they can have some typical helmets, even officers. This annoys the fluff out of me: if it's to give common soldier marines more role-playing character, that could be done with suit variations. It doesn't really make sense for officers and librarians and other "player character" types to go around unhelmeted anyway, but at least thematically it makes sense in some ways. Having a squad randomly assigned helmets or not doesn't make any kind of internal sense.
Sooooo....
Is the campaign customization really gonna be like X-Com? Or just the exact same missions lined up for you every campaign, with a little carryover added to your space marines?
If it truly had the depth of X-Com's campaign layer and randomized missions, then I'd be all over it. But I get the feeling that it's not quite there. Hell.. I'd even seriously consider a purchase now if it had procedurally generated missions to a satisfactory extent, to go with the RPG-ish advancement.
Overall, it sounds like an ideal improvement. I'm just not sure if it's been taken to the extent requested. I suppose the moderate price indicates a compromise so perhaps it's worth it for the $27. Dunno.. need to watch vids.
I've been tying to successfully complete the first mission In the ultra marines campaign for a week now. I'm playing on normal and it is extremely hard. If I could beat the damn mission, I could gain experience for my terminators and explore the leveling up mechanics.
No procedural campaign like either XCOM or X-Com; the campaigns are taken from the boardgame.
However, there are "flash missions" which may be sort of random (like the side missions in the old Fantasy General game, randomly generating a map with the assets). Can't tell yet.
Also, the game says over 100 missions, which seems to indicate around 30 missions per campaign plus presumably the "training" campaign. Not sure whether the flash missions count yet. I need to look up what the "Sin of Damnation" mission count is/was: I noticed the previous game included some not included in the 90s FPS, but also left some out. (The SoD missions were included in that old game under the "Original Missions" list and maybe some of the one and two-squad sets or parts of the basic and advanced tutorials. The main campaign in the old FPS game was the "Deathwing Company", which could be what's being adapted for the upcoming "Deathwing" Space Hulk shooter made by someone else.)
I've finished three missions so far in Space Hulk Ascension. This is definitely a more RPG type campaign for Space Hulk that foregoes some of the basic rules which actually adds to the immersion. The biggest change is that you no longer see the entire map at the start of the mission and you don't get to see where the Tyranids spawn. These two aspects actually make the game more intense as it feels like your squads are stumbling around in the dark in a twisted maze of a space hulk. Each of your space marines can also deploy a single servo skull that scans a certain radius for enemies and hallways/rooms in pulses. When you have multiple servo skulls scanning the map, it looks pretty cool.
The bolter mechanics have been revised so that your bolters have to worry about reloading and overheating but these rules seem to have toned down the effects of jamming in the original. They have also taken out the random AP pool mechanic. I believe that marines can increase their APs available through leveling up.
There is also a pretty good RPG layer in which you can customize your space marines faces, armor, weapons, etc. You marines level up and you put points into special abilities and skills. So it does retain that XCOM feeling of wanting to keep your space marines alive and I believe their is an 'Iron Man' difficulty that does not allow saves mid game. All in all, a good game as it looks to have addressed some players' concerns that the game was simply a port. I am enjoying the game immensely.
Trey
#(*#$7 being a Warhammer fan I am going to have to pick this up.... I was waiting to hear how terrible it is, but I will add this to my gaming list.... NOW DIE HERETICS!!!!
PE
After watching a couple of the animations and seeing the aliens perform a kill by squishing the Marines' heads, it begs the question of not just this game, but the entire WHK40 universe - why the hell are these leaders armored to the gills but have their squishy, cartilage-infused heads bare and open to aliens cracking open like ripe eggs?
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on November 13, 2014, 02:38:49 PM
After watching a couple of the animations and seeing the aliens perform a kill by squishing the Marines' heads, it begs the question of not just this game, but the entire WHK40 universe - why the hell are these leaders armored to the gills but have their squishy, cartilage-infused heads bare and open to aliens cracking open like ripe eggs?
Bragging rights.
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on November 13, 2014, 02:38:49 PM
After watching a couple of the animations and seeing the aliens perform a kill by squishing the Marines' heads, it begs the question of not just this game, but the entire WHK40 universe - why the hell are these leaders armored to the gills but have their squishy, cartilage-infused heads bare and open to aliens cracking open like ripe eggs?
Why develop tanks, spaceships and energy based weaponry... and then go around tugging in a crud metal armor to hit your foes over the head with axe? :P
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on November 13, 2014, 02:38:49 PM
After watching a couple of the animations and seeing the aliens perform a kill by squishing the Marines' heads, it begs the question of not just this game, but the entire WHK40 universe - why the hell are these leaders armored to the gills but have their squishy, cartilage-infused heads bare and open to aliens cracking open like ripe eggs?
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^^ The eldar snipers are proud to help you with that. >:D
In the novels at least, only the utterly uber Marines (primarch level) go around without helmets, and I'm pretty sure they actually still have them. Everyone else does have helmets to use in battle, and they only take them off (when armored up) for peaceful actions.
In figurine games, the point is to help distinguish leader-characters visually. This is often carried over to other games where it would make no sense, Dawn of War and Space Hulk being the obvious malefactors. (Especially the latter since the WHOLE FREAKING POINT of termie armor is that it is specially resistant to the inhuman atmosphere of hulks. Though to be fair terminator armor really shouldn't be used in a hulk anyway, since it doesn't slow down stealer attacks one iota, and the potentially increased firepower can only be deployed in ways so limited they might as well be using regular SM armor. This is certainly a holdover from the primitive game concept of "ALIENS VS SPACE MARINES BUT WE'LL CALL THE MARINES TERMINATORS BECAUSE JAMES CAMERON IS AWESOME!!1")
Notably, the original 90s SH FPS (and its sequel) showed the sergeants and librarians etc. in proper helmet armor.
More first impressions.
1.) Unlike previous iterations, while you do have to send in a minimum number for the mission, you can keep other SMs in reserve and send them in later as you wish. Like if SMs die.
2.) The game still features the buggy audio popping which plagued the preceding game like subtle taunting by Slaasnesh Noise Marines. (That isn't a disguised fluffy compliment....)
3.) It is now possible to block (at least some) GS entry points by plonking a termie in front of it. He can even turn his back to it. This seems... dubious.
4.) At least it's possible to select properly enclosed helmets for your SMs, though there only seems to be two models for each Legion type (or only two for the Ultramarines anyway, who are the Legion for the tutorial campaign). Personally I would like to see a distinction where the player can choose different helmet types for missions but many more different personal head types for distinction between missions.
I definitely don't understand the action point system yet -- may need to read the manual. Had a stealer run up to me while on overwatch, so I took an automatic shot of course and (as it happens) missed. When it comes my turn, I only have 3 AP instead of 4 -- but if I click overwatch again I gain 2 AP for 5 instead of 4... though what that means in terms of what happens next I don't know (yet) since obviously I chose to shoot the stealer again. After doing that, using an AP, I now have all 4 of my AP instead of 3-1=2 AP.
That... is some serious what the hellery.
Relatedly, I move a termie who has 4 ap up 2 squares, and turn left once which should deduct 3 ap total (the game itself agrees). But when I'm done I still have 3 ap and can go into overwatch (with 1 ap left over).
Yeah yeah yeah...it LOOKS cool. But it looks weird, too.
I'm a WH40K fan...I just...well, whatever.
It LOOKS great, though much murkier and unclear (and so more "Alienish") than the preceding game. (Update: oh, wait, you didn't mean the game, you meant the aesthetics of having exposed heads in termie armor.)
Okay, I think I've figured out an important mechanic: if I start a turn already in overwatch I get -1 to my action points while I remain in overwatch (so if I normally would have 4 I'd have 3); but if I leave overwatch, whether manually or by moving, the 2 ap I spent going into overwatch originally are refunded to me and so I get a temporary boost of 3+2=5 action points instead of 4.
I've tested this out and it seems to behave consistently.
On the other hand, a termie doesn't seem to need to be parked right on a spawn point to block it. He only needs to get within (as far as I can tell from testing) 3 squares directly of it. He can even turn his back to it and overwatch another area.
That seems broken.
Also, those creepy ceiling fans like in Alien (the movie)?
Some of them (but apparently not all??) are "air ducts" and stealers can drop down out of them like spawn points if a termie is under them. The game kind of warned me of this but wasn't clear what it meant by "air ducts" since before now (in the tutorial) they had been perfectly safe artistic elements.
Update: no, wait, it isn't the ceiling fans, but small holes (at ground level) which the termies can't get into, which lead into hallways beyond. But the SMs can't shoot into the halls either -- but (again like the Alien movie) flamers can. In effect these are the classic spawn points which can't be blocked: I moved a SM right up to it as far as he could go but didn't get the block sign.
Not sure what will happen now. I've got another SM nearby on overwatch, just in case. (Update: eh, I didn't realize the door to my target had already opened somehow, and so my flamer wouldn't have to manually open it, so I had enough ap left for him to shoot and win the mission.)
Quote from: JasonPratt on November 13, 2014, 07:55:03 PM
Relatedly, I move a termie who has 4 ap up 2 squares, and turn left once which should deduct 3 ap total (the game itself agrees). But when I'm done I still have 3 ap and can go into overwatch (with 1 ap left over).
From the vids I watched, they can move diagonally now (for 1 AP?). Also they may get a free facing change in their final location, after movement, to some extent.
Those could be possible reasons.
Guess I'll still be waiting for a new
Chaos Gate awhile longer. :-\
They could move diagonally (if relevant flanking squares aren't blocked) last game for 1 ap, though often needing to complete a turn with another action point afterward. Still better than L-ing it at 3 ap. That may be relatively new for the boardgame, though.
No, I'm very sure I figured it out (and might have gotten it sooner had I read the manual instead of the tutorial -- I just like to see how well designed tutorials are. This one could use a little more work.) I'm getting 2 action points back whenever I leave overwatch, no matter how many turns later that happens. THAT is new.
A slight mystery from earlier was cleared up also, which I forgot to mention in my puzzlement over the action-point accounting: reloading does reduce heat, but not as much. So a full 'purge' costs 2 ap, one for each action, reduce heat and reload -- though that won't reduce an overheated weapon fully. I know there's an early ability called "heat management" which helps with that however.
I'm not where I can screenie it right now, but the flamer action looks really nice -- it always has in preceding versions, too, of course, but the big improvement here (aside from volumetric smoke) are the possible flamer patterns, each of which comes with a nice ground-overlay (a little like for a boardgame!). I mean it behaves more like a boardgame overlay than the previous versions have done which simply marked which squares would be affected from the flame impact point.
The more I play the game the more impressed I am so far. I'm being picky, but the current state of the game is MUCH better than the original release of the preceding game.
Managed the Ultramarines first mission on normal difficulty. My fourth and last Marine had no chance in the end though.
Overwatch is you best friend.
Enjoying it so far..would have been cool if there was a selection of single missions aswell.
That was a great thing about the original 90s Doomesque PC game (among many other great things): while it didn't have randomly generated maps (and no game has so far), it did ship with a good set of missions, only some of which were linked in a grand campaign. Some of the others could be played like a campaign (having been borrowed from some of the boardgame campaigns), but they didn't have to be (except the tutorial missions I guess).
Do not, I repeat do not, attempt to suss out the military logic of the 40K universe. It's a series of aesthetic choices made to encourage us to purchase models. I'm a kid no longer and I still have my Space Marine chapter poster on my wall I do love it so, but there's little logic to the game itself...and don't get me started on AE weapons...
As to the new Hulk, it makes in all its adverts that I've seen the claim most likely to make me not want to purchase a product, viz.: "we are definitely NOT your father's boardgame!" I loved Space Hulk; all editions. I had all kinds of goofy WD expansion rules and even, if fading memory serves, played this ridiculous Space Wolves meta-campaign that took days to play. I like -- can't say love -- their first effort, but the notion of so aggressively distancing yourself from the reason anyone cares about your product baffles me.
At least the EA game gave us one of the greatest non sequiturs in the history of the world: "Brother marines, our scanners have failed us. One squad will be sufficient."
Best.
Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)
^^ Those lines could be generated in the boardgame PC version, too, though the vocal guy didn't sound nearly as engaged with what he was doing.
Haven't gotten far enough in the new game to know if the narration (including random descriptions of mission details) returns / improves.
Man, what this tutorial needs is a tutorial on how to get the best graphic settings. I spent a good 45 minutes dinking around with various things (what does "vignettes" mean?? -- "how oppressive the shadows are" apparently?), and this is where I'm at now visually.
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I know this has to be an improvement in some ways over this, but on the other hand maybe not:
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Quote from: JasonPratt on November 14, 2014, 09:11:51 PM
Man, what this tutorial needs is a tutorial on how to get the best graphic settings. I spent a good 45 minutes dinking around with various things (what does "vignettes" mean?? -- "how oppressive the shadows are" apparently?), and this is where I'm at now visually.
A vignette is a small training scenario.
'Vignette' in graphics setting-ese is the darkening of the edges of the screen, as if it's some old reel-to-reel theater movie from the dark ages playing on a big screen.
Quote from: Nefaro on November 14, 2014, 10:29:55 PM
'Vignette' in graphics setting-ese is the darkening of the edges of the screen, as if it's some old reel-to-reel theater movie from the dark ages playing on a big screen.
What the Brother is saying is, better to focus and kill the Heretics!
PE
Well, in this case it seems to increase a sort of dark oppression when cranked up, like a nightmarish malaise. Light still travels as far as it otherwise does, but it doesn't illuminate as much. If you're close enough to see the dead stealer over there and the hole it came out of, you'll still be able to see it but with more difficulty.
I love the effect in theory, but in practice it makes my eyes squint too much, so I'm keeping it mostly minimized now.
"Noise" is an interesting filter which when increased creates and amplifies a sort of grainy static effect. At lower levels it helps keep the figures from looking like painted miniatures. ;)
The color can be supersaturated, or eliminated entirely leaving black and white. No "contrast" though; but there is a gamma which when minimized or taken above about 25% will create some garish effects.
"Bloom" doesn't seem to be contrast, so much as how strongly light reflects from surfaces. The graphic engine is pretty bloomy already, probably to compensate for the forcible gloom, so I've got it minimized as much or more than the "vignette".
Well, the Sin of Damnation campaign sure doesn't start off like any other SoD campaign I've ever played! It does have some similarity to one of the standard later missions, with (up to) two termi squads sent into the south legs of a symmetrical area to kill 84 stealers.
But still, that's the first mission, out of the gate.
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SoDiNO. :crazy2:
(Admittedly, something different is nice, and being thrown into the grinder utterly out of the gate is nice, but why even call it by the name of a classic original campaign?)
The game uses vocal mission briefing assets from the first game, but only briefly. Not sure what the rationale was supposed to be about that. Not to compete too strongly with the previous game and/or the 90s version??
The update yesterday may have added ap and psi points remaining to the facecards of each SM -- I can't say for sure since I didn't start a campaign before the update, but I sure don't recall seeing them in the tutorial campaign.
So far so good, no SMs lost. I thought Briathos was doomed when the first NINE stealers ganged up on him in a row, but he held the line despite his gun overheating -- PIMPSLAPPING THE LAST THREE WITH RED RAGE!!
Wish I had gotten a screenie of that. This will have to do.
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The reason there aren't 9 bodies piled up is because the stealers squished them running down the hall.
Red rage, achieved. :smitten:
Everyone else has parked in a good defensive position. The librarian will likely get rushed next.
Note that because this isn't pure-D boardgame rules (unlike the predecessor) a Space Marine can't use any unused action points to unjam a weapon. I don't recall this being a skill to unlock later either, but I don't have a clear recollection of the skillz so I could be wrong: I hope so.
The game doesn't seem to have an option for focusing the map on the current action! I've double checked in every possible menu of the "option" submenu, and it just ain't there.
This was insane to me, until I realized it might be on purpose: it suddenly occurred to me that I was using the shoulder cameras to tell me where to scroll the mouse around for action! Until I got there, all I had was shoulder-cam action to watch; and in the dark, and not knowing my termies well yet, I didn't always know where "Orpheus" was being attacked yet. But I could see him being attacked and fighting back on the shoulder camera, so I'd keyboard around (can't actually mouse around during stealer turns despite what I said) until I found him (anchoring the far right advance: I'd let him get ahead of my librarian so he could get some experience for a while.)
That may be only accidental genius, and I think players ought to have the option of letting the program zip around (maybe that's available on lesser difficulties? I'm playing "hard".) But even if it's accidental genius, I'm impressed. In the 90s game the shoulder cams were utterly vital -- in fact the whole game was played that way (unless you were looking at the map during the action), very much like the lieutenant back in the APC in the Aliens movie (not surprisingly). In the preceding game, the shoulder cams were merely graphical bling, and not great looking bling at that because they had constant interference which made no sense (since in effect they only showed what the Marine was seeing at ground level and during a fight the camera might zoom down for action shots anyway. Something missing in this game, incidentally, which is probably just as well since it tended to show the clipping errors! ::) )
Now, during the stealer turn, the camera will change to whomever is being attacked, and the player can keyboard around or not as he wants to find the action. That must have been intentional!
(But the mouse should be turned back on for movement purposes during stealer turns.)
By the way, poking around the Steam forums confirmed a suspicion I hadn't mentioned yet: the UNDO command has been eliminated.
This was done to prevent people from using the UNDO for scum-scouting (and possibly because of how the overwatch affects action points now), but considering that the movement protocols still occasionally result in me accidentally ending a termie's move facing somewhere useless or even potentially suicidal, I wish the undo command would be reinstated.
I take it you're enjoying this quite a bit, JP?
I'm still fenced. Do your SMs get to level up enough over the course of a campaign, and with enough different viable skill options, to make their skill sets feel individualized? Is there enough good skill variety to make two different Librarians with different skills & styles? Or are there just a few 'Must-have' skills and some filler?
I probably shouldn't be picking up anything new when I'll just be purchasing Elite: Dangerous by next week anyway. That's probably where I'll have my head stuck.
I haven't got anywhere near enough along to answer the question about skills yet, sorry.
I've really only finished the first tutorial campaign (where skill advancement is pretty meaningless of course), and was working on the first SoD when the game crashed. Apparently there's a Lovecraftian evil behind a particular door, and shooting that door in itself nearly crashed the game but mousing back over that area later to get to might right flank crashed it totally as the mind of my computer became unable to accept what it couldn't see in the darkness there or words to that effect. ::)
But yes, overall I'm enjoying it. It's definitely Space Hulk, and not at all the same missions (despite the SoD campaign name) as in previous iterations. The mission briefing presentations could be a lot better, but my tentative guess for why they aren't is that eventually the mission types will exceed what the 90s/13 versions could have "talked" about in briefing.
I actually rather like that so far there is no one definitive version that exceeds the others. All three (90s, 2013, and this one) have their merits.
Phew! I thought Nazarreno was screwed for a minute. I had put out a skull sensor and forgot to put him back on overwatch, so a stealer just cold ran up and to the side without any problem.
The Naz could take one aimed shot at 75%, and missed, so I put him back on overwatch and hoped for the best (at close range and with sustained fire now in effect to aid in aiming). Elyon off to his left down a long hall tried a hail Mary aimed volley to bust open a door which would have given him at least some overwatch support, but he failed and had to go back on OW himself.
The AI was smart enough not to do what I was most worried he'd try: a two square advance under overwatch fire, which if the GS had succeeded would have been instadeath for Naz -- though it had positioned itself to try that anyway given an opportunity! With overwatch back on, it took the most probable option and zigged back in front of me one square figuring it only had to dodge me once this way and then it would be in melee where it had the advantage.
That almost worked, but the Nazarene BACKHANDED HIM WITH THE POWER GLOVE!
HE'S FOR EVERY ONE OF US {boom boom} STANDS FOR EVERY ONE OF US {boom boom} HE SAVES WITH A MIGHTY HAND EVERY MAN EVERY WOMAN EVERY CHILD WITH A MIGHTY FLASH!
The Naz had been racking up a good kill count; would have been a shame to lose him to stupidity.
Okay, ended SoD 1 (mission to kill over 80 stealers) -- but a bug or something reports only 58 kills, and that's what my individual marine tally adds up to, too.
That wouldn't be so bad except kills = xp, and I've decided the point of starting the SoD campaign with a meat grinder out of the gate is to rack up kills for everyone to get the xp rolling early.
Next up is a branching (?) mission, one of which seems to be the classic 1st SoD mission "Suicide", and the other the classic 2nd mission "Exterminate". Not sure why there would be a branching mission or an option to do one first.
Supposedly each campaign has over 30 missions, so I would expect quite a bit of branching. At least it adds to the replayability.
Oh, I don't mind branching, I'm just being picky about the "canon" mission order.
Going back to the Nazarene's victory for a moment, two things occur to me:
1.) the chances of basic melee survival are demonstrably MUCH better in this game than in either 90 or 13 Space Hulk. I wanted to give one of my flamers some extra experience, so let his two flankers stop overwatching in order to let some nearby stealers come down the all and into the room. This was almost a disaster, as the spawn points were one square closer than I had reckoned, and so three stealers parked themselves inside his flamer range (can't start the flamer immediately in front anymore, and the spread pattern will never be more than 1 square wide at the initial impact point). We survived, because after all that little squad did still have two shooters nearby, but while I was trying and failing to light them up I noticed that because one stealer had set up directly in front of the flamer, that marine could only hit with his power glove (the flamer being illegal to shoot so close).
In previous games a power glove has a base 33% chance to hit. In this game it's more like 75%. That makes one of my previous marines slapping three in a row less impressively lucky. :P (I still had one of my flankers shoot first, since I didn't want to risk dying from a miss after the counterattack.)
(Digression: Like the 2013 game, this shows the odds of a successful kill, though I don't recall the preceding game doing that for melee. For multiple-shot modes, like burst or suppression, the game helpfully shows the adjusted odds of a kill rather than making you calc it out yourself; so it's relatively easy to compare a burst shot which uses more ammo and an aimed shot which uses more action points and see which would be more likely to score under the circumstances. Unlike the 13 game, this version also shows the modifiers going into the calculations before the attack.)
Not sure how I feel about that. On one hand it nerfs the stealers terribly, because if they get close to a marine the marine should be likely to die -- that's literally the whole point of the game, managing ranged distance. On the other hand, having the SMs die more often would be corrosive to the point of having them grow more experienced. (Though why inexperienced marines are in termie armor or why they would be sent into a hulk out of the gate, makes no sense in-game.)
2.) ... .... ..........I should probably not make lists of points before 9 in the morning. :-[ ::)
Oh, now I remember.
2.) In the 13 game (but not the 90s), Space Marines did get one final shot at close range, under some circumstances. I haven't seen that yet. But if my impression is right and that rule has been removed, the reason is probably because the chances of even a basic melee fight (with the power glove) are so much vastly better: actually better than one round of basic shooting! (But with the difference that the stealer can't shoot back. Usually. I don't think any of these tyrannids can shoot, but some have ranged melee so to speak.)
I'm enjoying this a lot so far. At first I thought the tutorial was broken, until I figured out that it was me not understanding which Marine I was supposed to be controlling at the time.
I also find it to be a bit more forgiving.
Played through the tutorial last night and have to say it is very atmospheric. I enjoyed playing it and it has the right feel to it.... and you will learn quickly why Space Marines show NO MERCY to HERETICS!
PE
Imperial Fists campaign now available (plus numerous tweaks, bugfixes). $8, pretty reasonable for what it is, i.e. another full SH campaign in a decent (if supermurky) adaptation of the boardgame to PC. Still no way around the lack of an undo-move plus a slightly wonky control scheme, though.
I would hope if they aren't going to continue supporting the 'actual' boardgame port from last year, that they would release an editor for that game so customers can create and re-create campaigns with original boardgame rules. They eventually got the bugs ironed out, and SH2013 works as a legitimate pureblood adaptation of the board game. There's room for both, even though I can understand putting dev resources toward servicing the newer product.
I prefer the older version as a straight-up adaptation of the BG which is all I ever really wanted anyway. The notion that they'll turn back and support it in any significant way strikes me as unlikely. I also find it amusing, that, at least on Steam, I can have a copy of the game for $7.50, but must pay $30 for the TWO PACK.
Careless, gents, careless...
Best,
Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)
Oh I doubt they'll ever go back and support it again with new content. Thus I wish they'd release a mission/campaign editor.
Just went on sale for $17.99! What to do...
The Salamanders campaign released this past week (thus the sale), for less than $8.