So I finished the campaign for the Imperium... Though some of the design choices made it rather confusing, where it took me a while to figure stuff out just because nothing gave me a good indication of what I was supposed to be doing.

The other campaigns will get their own separate post, this is purely for the Imperium campaign right now.

BUT, first up, some general comments:

Some of the hint text on loading screens is shown for such a short time, that you can't even read it completely before it switches to the next.

I also found that the game responds really finnicky to alt tabbing while loading things, in many cases, it means the game would just show a black screen in the end and I'd have to wait for a while to alt-f4 shut it off completely and restart the game.

Alright, onward to the campaign comments.

On the first system map, it felt like the game was rushing me ahead very quickly with only little information. Where the tutorial showed gave me specific things to do, after that short tutorial was done, I was left to figure out everything by myself. I got a shipyard, but it felt like I could just get new ships regardless of where I was. I got all these planets with things that give certain -1 and +1 resources to whatever, but I'm not sure what they do, because they are all terms I can't relate to my actual progress in the game.

My ships upgrade, but where can I see how much effect that actually has on the ships? After certain battles, it just tells me with an icon that the ship upgraded! Yay, great, but what difference does it make?

Once I got more into the groove of things, I slowly figured some stuff out, but it's pretty confusing at first and I'd love if there was some kind of section in the game I could access that would explain things more deeply.

For example:

What is this threat level of enemies? I was at some point at urgency level 3 but I didn't feel a noticeable difference in enemy behavior and my response to it.

Same with Active Fleets/command capacity up top. At some point, when I leveled up, it increased. But that doesn't seem to make a difference for me, I'm at 2/2 - 1/2 - 1/1... When I mouse over, it doesn't give me specific information over what either of those three stats really means and I would love to know. Like, does it means fleets in a system? Or used command capacity in a system? Can I build more fleets in one system and still have it as 1 active fleet?

It seems I have 2 fleets, but I've got 3 fleets on screen, so what's going on there? How does it count 2 fleets specifically? Would be cool if I moused over it, it would show me what it sees as fleets and count as fleets.

Next up, I had a system that had turrets, that was being attacked by an enemy, I had one fleet there (which was good enough to defeat the enemy, barely) but unlike when I attacked an enemy system with turrets and those actually had two points capped with two turrets each. I did not receive any turrets in this defensive battle.

How do turrets work then?

And that's about it, I liked the battles and most of the rest pretty much and am looking forward to playing the other campaigns!

Next up, Necron campaign.

Necron time!

Alrighty, I figured some more parts of the game out, the little stripes next to the ships are actually its level, and when you click on the ship, you get to see that on certain level ups, it gains something extra... Hooray! Still, it would be great if this was actually explained or apparent more easily without having to go from ship to ship manually in order to get this information.

All in all, I liked the Necron campaign more, eventhough it was easier and I got through it in almost no time at all. The Necron ships in the campaign just seem to be really powerful compared to the how I feel the Necron now play vs... But, my vs experience is very low, so I can't really justify that statement!

What I do have as a complaint, is that the Necron campaign just throws resources at you, like, you start off in the negative, but after you easily win a few fights and win over some systems, you are very soon upgrading them and at the end I had a 200 surplus even though I pretty much maxed out my first two fleets and just gotten my third fleet.

I'm not sure how different the rest of the campaign is going to be though, but it felt maybe a bit too easy with what I could do and how powerful my ships were. There was not a single mission where I really had to focus on capturing points, because I could just beat down the enemy, be they small and fast or big and not so fast.

So yeah, a bit too easy, the turret thing also still doesn't work, I make turrets, an enemy attacks, no turrets in my game, so I'm not sure what's up with that.

I'm not sure what else to comment on really, it was pretty fun, just a little too easy and that first system is rather small, so you're done with it rather quickly as well so I can't really comment more than that.

I had the same issue with turrets. bought them when I was getting attacked (had 3 turns before the actual invasion) and when the battle took place, they were nowhere to be found.

I agree with your statement on the confusion, which isn't helped by the fact that pop-up tips were always getting scrolled outr by newer messages. I find the game to be pretty intuitive, but some of the content is a complete mystery. for example, Production points - what the hell do those do? the only resource I found useful was the cash itself

speaking of Cash, maybe this is just me, but I really felt as though we're given squat in terms of resources - I get it, it's supposed to be a dire situation. but when you combine that with the threat level system, which, again, isn't explained in any way on how it works, means you spend most of the campaign just guessing your way through the game. And, since you're both poor and rushed, means you don't get to play at your pace or enjoy the content the campaign has to offer.

Yup, that's my experience as well with the threat level, it doesn't seem to do anything, but then that last tick is "YOU LOSE" which is just too harsh for me, I would much rather see this represented as in increase in enemy strength, making it hard but certainly not impossible, than a full on stop, try again. That way you still have the feeling that putting in some rush is good, but if you don't manage it, you can still win if you play it well and are careful with your battles!

Like, the enemy becomes 20% stronger and more aggressive. Or enemies will also now bring in fleets from other systems. Or enemies will build new fleets (Which I haven't found to be the case so far, but maybe that's just because the first sector is just more of a tutorial sector, I don't know)

I also have no idea what production points are, I think it's supposed to limit the amount of ships you can make, but we haven't quite reached a point where we need multiple fleets and thus need to resupply and produce multiple fleets ourselves, so I don't know either right now!

@zucadragon construction points are refreshed for each shipyard every turn. the way they work is that say you made a cruiser from demios binary, that would cost that shipyard 3 of its available construction points. to make another ship form their you could only make a ship costing what is left or you could make the other ship at a different shipyard that still has their construction points.

@imptastic Alright, and how can I easily check the amount of points that a shipyard has?

@zucadragon if you were looking at demios binary from the campaign map without clicking on anything under its name should be a small x looking symbol and next to it white dots those white dots show how many the ship yard in that system is producing. Another easy way to see them is on the add a ship menu when you look above the available ships you can see different systems that have ship yards and under their names are also the same set of white dots.

@imptastic Gods, that's pretty obscure, there's enough space, there should be en easier and better way to show it at least in the add a ship menu.

@zucadragon perhaps i think its just because we're not used to looking for it. once you know where it is and what it does its easy to reference imo.

Multiplayer feedback, whoo!

I haven't played THAT many multiplayer matches, mostly 2 vs 2, what I find is that versus something like space marines... You're really shit out of luck, because they'll swoop in and just decimate your crews in no time at all, and if you're low rank like I am, I don't really have a good counter for it, just trying to stay away, but that in turn brings its own problems.

I've had a seriously hard time against spare marine boarding actions because of the fact that their range on their lightning strike is so unbelievably high. I can get that they're powerful, but with extra critical damage buff and 10% skill time down, it's hard to really do anything against it feels in my opinion. Larger ships take a few hits to take down, but I have lost almost every match against them by simply being turned into an unmanned wreck.

As eldar, my superior speed and long range just doesn't seem to make enough of a difference :(. So, anyone else got this experience or a counter for it?