Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Can someone exlain to me what the hell i see here?

So i see first game trailers and announcements for Dragon commander, looks like fun - massive battle between my air fleet and theirs with me flying inbetween.


Then i install the beta and i see a bloody ground war rts with intensely annoying unit micro. basically warcraft 3 or starcraft, but with a clunky controls and the sense of betrayal that can only come from some designer radically changing things up to be more boring.
but oh well, a boring rts that will fail is what you want to make, i cannot stop you.

But heres soem questions:
Why cant units use their own damn abilities themselves? This is something that has plagued RTS since EVER. I am the head honcho, i have enough on my plate i do not need units that need freaking hand holding all the time.


Why is this game not featuring the exiting air to air fleet battles anymore?


Why are you trying to compete with Company of heroes and starcraft in terms of gameplay when you had a perfectly fitting niche before?

How many games are there wher you pit your air fleet versus the other guys air fleet and personally get mixed in as a fckn dragon? Yeah. NONE.

AS for beta experience: the gameplay is borign and feels restricted.

*slow clap*

I kinda like the redesign. Air combat seems more interesting at first but when you really think about it that would get stale fast. Since there is no terrain in the air it would be fighting on the same battlefield every time. That would get boring QUICK! I don't really feel that restricted in the beta (well aside from lack of single player which is what I'm really interested in) although I do heavily agree with you that units need autocast. Having to manually trigger tons of abilities during a fast paced game where you are stretched thin along multiple fronts is a serious no-no.

boring? i fought in hills over plains and mountaions for ages now in dozens of games.

I never got a good game where i had my air fleet versus some other dudes air fleet.

How to make it interesting? make positioning important by restricting firing arcs and different armor values for each side of the units. there, your boring air batrtlefield jsut got a lot more interesting.

Add in field modifieing powers like smoke screens, or other area denial/damage effects either naturally or cast by player and you got your self a challenging game environment.


Nothing interesting about ground war rts. been there. done that. ad nauseumn.

but i realize its to plate to change the game again, guess i have to wait for someone else to get a clue and produce something not already doen to death.

See the blog post Land Ahoy.

Oh i see: it was too difficult to create what amounts to a naval stratgy game in the skys (the fleet vs fleet action, while dragon cobmat would take the form of fighter wing versus, err, dragon action with the occasional colossal burnign of things) and so the decision was made to create a horrible ground RTS.


*slow clap*

There are ground, air, naval and amphibious units in the game. But don't let the facts get in the way.

I fail to see how having exclusive air combat is any different than having purely ground based combat. The original concept you liked so much was air units that could be sent lower for a speed advantage or higher for an offence advantage... unlike the horrible ground RTS game where you just have ground, low ground and high ground.

And as a result of all aspect warfare, we have incredibly shallow warfrare in all aspects.

But do not let the facts get in the way.



You could have made a tactical air based rts, with units having armor facings, weapon arcs and the air being manipulable to create aoe effects that hinder or damage or buff or debuff, you could have used global spells to influence the happenings, due to guns arcs and armor arcs, positioning would have been vital. But hey i guess when you make what amounts to a unit zerg in the air, you really do not have much to offer.

I see now that my initial ipressions from way back werent accurate. I thought this would be a tactical air fleet battle game but i guess it was never anything but a zerg fest.

I apologize for misreading the devs intentions like that. I actually thought they wanted to make an interesting game. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking from the get go.

Oh well. truck on, right into the realms already trodden over by your betters.


no hard feelings, just the dissapointment speaking.

Heu... Did you ever played a *** dragon in the battlefield ? I mean, destroying your foes with ease and fire ball ? Feeling your flight and killing them, crushed by your flames ?

I agree with you on one point : the trailer should be changed, as the game changed, but raging like that is not the best way, is it ? If the game doesn't please you, say what your vision would be, Larian is a great team and could answer and even change some stuff. But just saying "This game is bad" is just useless.

Enjoy your Star2

simply put:
Premise: we have airshisp and dragon, groundforces are going to get annihilated by dragonfire and all sorts of air based firepower, that combined with air mobility and the fact that its difficult in this setting to bring enough mobile firepower to counter an air raid has made groudn troops largely obsolete, they garrison and do cleanup but when it comes to war, you need an air fleet. or esle you get bum rushed. Thats for premise


Gameplay
- Strategy map as planned.

combat:
- Aerial combat with pre set up fleets (which you uset up in the strategy map)
- The combat has 2 main foci: The fleet vs fleet battle consisting of various ship types + the home base ship, the combat engine should feature at least the basic 4 arcs of armor (6 would be better actually, hexagon) and all combat takes place on the same plane as far as ship to ship goes, this is for the sake of not overloading the player with stuff he has no time to do). Ships weaposn have firing arcs, as does their armor have armor arcs, weapon types vary and the ship equipment either is pre set by the dev or a player-custom build system. Both have their perks and problems. pre built means tighter balancing, palyer build means more flexibility but also more balancing problems.
Fleet to fleet is about positinoning yourself so you can take advantage of different angles of attack and using the "whatever we gonna call them" global spells to influence maneuvers or the field. Ships feature all sortso of weapons from guns to missiles to beams and just about anything that fits into the setting. So basically a fleet combat sim with arcade touch (aka lets have action...)

Player involvement:

Al lships feature the ability to release trash mobs, err clutter mobs err fighters which will fight and bomb and attack, they add to the scenery of combat and give you some obstacles while you ride around in dragon for mto attack more important stuff. add in the elite foes that give your dragon pause etc. an aerial action combat game basically.



Add bells and whistles, an upgrade tree etc...


There. tactical fleet vs fleet air combat action game which has no other games to content with and depending how oppulent you make it, would garner oohs and aahs.


But hey, perhaps your rts will fare better. because yo ucan turn into a dragon. and blast some boring shiite on the ground. That never stood a chance. And instead of having intense air wars, you build buildings and some units on ugly ground maps.


I TOTALLY see success here. hehheh. no.

What are you up against?

- planetary annihilation
- Starcraft
- Dawn of war
- Comopany of heroes.
- At some point CnC Generals online.
- Mechwarrieor online just came out, browser based mech turnbased warfare.
- wargame air land battle.
- a deluge of 4x games.
- Totall annhilation, the spring project where you jump into any unit....
- Supreme commander.

my, one could almost think you are pitting yourself against a whole swath of games that you have no chance of overashadowing....


So how many air war tactical battle games are there right now or in the furtre?


- Oh right. None.




No. Well i turned into what amounts a physics free launch point for air to ground attack on opponents that have zero chance of fighting back i nany case, and no idid not feel any flight because the game has no flight physics. And watching oddly formed units, so small i would have to squint to even recognize what they are supposed to be, die in an easily done ground attack is not even a fck yeah moment.


I did play the beta. and its all very, very boring and been there done that. and done better at that....


But hey, lets not argue. this game is goign where its going now and larian is unlikely to swtich gears again at this point. so mediocre rts is what we will get. Well what you will get. if you buy it.

I don't want to argue more, but sup com for exemple is inferior ... Booring like hell.

Total Annihilation, I agree, is awesome, with mods etc... but this one is just different in his own way. And it's made with the cards and the strategic map too, everything goes smoothly together.

(I didn't know the SPRING project worked now... I only tried a buggy version of it).

I can advise you some "other games" like Space Rangers 2 and SPAZ (Space Pirates and Zombies) to give you some 'aerial strategy' .

all combat takes place on the same plane as far as ship to ship goes, this is for the sake of not overloading the player with stuff he has no time to do).

So basically the same as ground based combat, or naval, or an overhead view of spaced based combat?


i turned into what amounts a physics free launch point for air to ground attack on opponents that have zero chance of fighting back i nany case

The first few units produced in a skirmish may not have much anti-air capability, but that will change relatively quickly. Try attacking any moderate to large group alone in dragon form and you probably will not last very long (or even relatively small groups, depending on the unit).


so small i would have to squint to even recognize what they are supposed to be

So zoom in.

Or zoom out enough that the icons start showing. Anyway, blame yourself for not being able to remember what you yourself built or brought into the battle and where you sent it.

I'm detecting a lot of self-righteousness and irony from this one. Good job to those who can maintain politeness in front of such rudeness. As for me, all I can do is clap slowly and then facepalm at the way this one sees good criticism.

In my own point of view Larian has actually made me LIKE RTS games for the first time in my 28 years with their card system and layers. I'm still not that good at it (I think there is hardware limitations also involved as I'm using a laptop) but that doesn't stop me loving the game (I just need an actual desktop and not laptop like I have just now).

So it doesn't feature just aerial combat? I'd be more upset if it did. I like how the different troops mix together in the current game, but that's my POV, had it remained purely aerial I would probably have taken my metaphorical hat off to them and wished them good luck and tried my bf's copy or the beta version before I got the actual game myself.

For every person that loves an aspect of a game, there will be people that hates it, I personally love the RTS even though the dragon lags and dies with a handful of fireballs to the face before I can even get it to respond from spawn properly, last night pre-patch was a good example of it when I played another player with a superior army in my hand (I had something like 10 hunters before the battle even began) and had to pull out because of laggy dragon controls (as I said before may be due to the fact that I have a laptop and not a desktop which would be preferable).

The strategy map is very interesting, with cards that can be used to good effect and I can't wait to see what they do in the single player game. I have no doubt that the single player is what I'll love most about the game, but for me the entire package is looking to be a good buy for me.

Dear Inanna,

I have been able to play the DC on a laptop with the hardware which is WAY under the official minimal requirements without any serious crashed or lags. Try to set all the graphics options to low or very low and untick all effects boxes. If this does not help, also reduce your desktop resolution (this did wonders for me). The graphics may not look very pretty at low settings (but still nice enough in my opinion) but at least one one is able to play without lags

Will be trying that later Elwyn, my laptop just seems to have issues where issues need not be (considering some of the other games it plays without issue). I'm just so used to playing DC on my bf's PC that I guess half the problems is that I forget my laptop probably would never live up to that expectations.

So like every other space 4x games? sure its not air, but space, however what uve said there was all already done by:

- Imperium Galactica
- Sword of the stars
- Star empires
- Master of Orion
- Sins of a solar empire

And so on and so on heres a full list for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_4X_video_games

Btw the only difference between what uve said and whats in space games already is being able to rain down destruction as a dragon, nothing else.

I actually think that Gratious Space Battles is just the game for you. It's only about sending one army of ships towards the other army of ships and cross your fingers (however a lot more complicated than this, but you get the picture).
And you can design your own ships