Hello,
I would like to say overall this is a wonderful step in the correct direction for campaign mode of this game. Pretty much everything the last campaign did has been improved, bad things removed, and new things added.
The story is great so far, lots of detail, great voice acting, and interesting main characters. The first few missions are well crafted. Saving those few ships at cadia was quite hard but doable and you get the reward of a fleet after which is great.
The campaign map is easy to read though I agree with some of the other posters that highlighting or making the resource producing planets stand out in some way is a good idea. Maybe some sort of color code for each of the type of planets along with the iconography.
The ships are awesome as ever and the little upgrade tree based of renown rank is a perfect addition. I do wish there was a little more to each ship, more customization, and personalization so these critical vessels mean more and are badly missed when destroyed.
Being able to customize the LC and higher class ships, change out weapon combinations, make special tanker, DPS and special weapon ships would be a great way for the players to have a greater feeling of ownership over what they work so hard to earn.
I know there are three factions to play with in the Imp campaign but the Imperial fleet and adeptus mechanicus ships on face value see a bit too similar the light macro battery on the LCs of both groups are the exact same, dps, range, hit chance. I was expecting more differences to be there. I do know the torps are different and the speed seems to be different. However, I was expecting more contrast,
the Imps would be the mid-range gunners going broadsides and just duking it out with tanky ranged damage ships medium boarding damage.
Adeptus Mechanicus would be Long range gunners better accuracy, crit chance, weaker hulled, weak boarding [which they are now] but generally just shoot the crap out of things at range and be able to heal up their ships when damaged.[where did that ability go?]
Space marines are capital ship knife fights, deadly close range, deadly boarding actions, bad at medium and long range, low gunner damage but high health ships to get the marines into boarding range. So far it feels like Imp Navy and Space marines and no third group to pick from.
The Campaign battles are fun but having the ticking arbitrary capture the point total isn’t actually all that fun. Maybe only attach that style of combat to the systems with a planet that is “Strategic”? It would be very frustrating to have the whole enemy fleet destroyed and all that’s left is to kill some defense platforms but to lose because a number got to a certain point. OK boys time to go home with our massive fleet that could totally win given an extra couple of mins to blow up these platforms…?
I know the mission-based objectives “get the baby ships across the map” and “Steal the data!” may have not gone over well but the variety was a little welcomed.
Maybe make the basic battle type be the knock out drag down fleet battles that this game is built up for.
Make the “baby ship escort” have reason like, An Agri world that doesn’t have a clear path to your sector capital produce a mission of that type to gain the benefits of the planet buff for a certain number of turns. Get more ships to the other end and get more turns.
Make the “Steal the Data!” mission sort of a hit and fade, like it is in the first game. Move a fleet into a system that has an enemy fleet of [Number] strength so you can steal those enemy plans and step back to the end game ticker
Make the “Planet strike” a way to have a smaller fleet attack a certain planet to turn off its buff for a certain number of turns? The defenders have a smaller defending fleet as well with reinforcements on the way and the longer the attacking player stays the more enemies that show up? But if the attack does more damage to the planet its buff stays away longer?
The campaign ticker was fine until I read that at the end is ‘game over’ I play a lot of strategy games and I am more methodical about how I move across the board. Take, hold, improve, move on, is my normal plan, rushing across the map to snap up stuff seems like a long-term problem in the making and just isn’t fun. Perhaps give the -option- to turn off just the ‘game over’ end to that ticker but we still suffer under the weight of more frequent attacks? I know the feel and theme of Warhammer but optional is just that people who want it can click the box and others can leave it as is.
The new campaign is wonderful and I want more already, I would love to see a Tau campaign and honestly everyone getting their own campaign would be wonderful.
Co-op thank you so much for adding this into the game. I really hope you expand it and allow full co-op campaigns where two players are leading different parts of their chosen faction not just splitting up fleet battles. I would really like to encourage you to move on this so in march we can have fully realized Co-op campaigns.
I could give more specific ideas if the Devs would like to read them.