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Topic: Help with combat (Read 3257 times)
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storyyeller
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When I first started playing SC2, I got murdered by the probes, even using Fwiffo. After a couple dozen fights though, I got to the point where I could win Eluder vs Probe without losing a single crew member most of the time. It just takes practice.
My main strategy is to always run away from the Probe and fire off the occasional missle. As long as you aren't moving fast and you keep your distance, you can always avoid the probe. Usually, the AI goes comatose at some point and starts following you, making it an easy target for the BUTT.
I'd say don't give up. The fights aren't that hard if you use the right ships. The hardest part is the final fight, and even that only took me around a day and a half of trying before I beat it my first time.
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« Last Edit: June 09, 2010, 06:31:19 am by storyyeller »
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Lukipela
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The Ancient One
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Lone 'PC Race here' 'PC Description here' in a hostile 'milieu here' against 'great evil here' is hardly an unexplored trope.
Certainly not. Just trying to provide you with some reasoning for why your starting power is less than that of the enemy and why you might not want to engage everyone head on. I wonder if it was an unexplored trope back when the game was made? Probably not, although probably "unexplored-er"
Saying 'you are incompetent to use fwifo's ship in combat against the sylandro probes - there are specific tactics A B and C that work' is a legitimate criticism of my playstyle. Or that I just don't like a combat minigame that is a twitchgame. To be honest, I don't see why the above wasn't. Off the top of my head, there are only four or so encounters in the entire game that actually requires you to fight. All these are later on in the game when you have access to more hardware. Isn't it a legitimate criticism to say that you should avoid random encounters that are in no way obligatory if you find them hard?
But yes, you're also missing the tactics side. The combat is very arcade-y, so you do need to have good reflexes. There's no time to sit around and plot out strategies, you need to act from the beginning. I suppose that's what you mean by twitch, having to react in real time? But as others have lined out, you also need to be familiar with your ships and weapons, and those of the enemy. If you want to fight that is. I never really got the hang of fighting the Slylandro, but I also didn't feel compelled to invest time in it. Instead I avoided them by upgrading thrusters and turning jets quickly.
However, that . . . doesn't appear to be the answer I'm receiving - This seems to be the 'expected' behavior, with explanations ranging from 'don't use a rock versus paper' to 'you're a lone human Captain in a hostile universe' - well, apologies but being an adventure game doesn't make A balance issue a 'feature', and if this *isn't* a failing in my mastering tactics (annoying but possible), and this *isn't* a twitchgame I have to either master or leave (Annoying because I don't like twitchgames and will probably quit rather than messing with) . . . then this is an adventure game with severe balance issues. Nethack drops the 1st level character on . . . the 1st level of the dungeon, with equipment just barely sufficient to make it to DL 2. Saying you shouldn't expect an adventure game to *not* simply drop your level 1 character into level 10, naked, seem to ignore most of my experience in adventure games. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. There's no expected behaviour in the game, we're simply trying to advise you on how a player with low melee skills can get the most out of the game. If you're saying that you don't want to avoid combat encounters then you need to learn how the combat works, which is what we're advising you in in addition to ways of avoiding the problem completely. But f you don't like combat and don't want to skip it either, then I'm flummoxed as to how to improve your enjoyment.. That's not really a balance issue though, more that you don't like a particular part of the game. In my experience most adventure games (by that I mean games like the Sierra games or Monkey Island) don't have combat, what you're talking to sounds more like an RPG to me. If you go into an adventure game and expect it to be a scaling RPG, then I can certainly see why you are disappointed.
But, at the end of the day, some people obviously like it this way, I'm just not one of them. Time to use that "Satisfaction guaranteed or double your money back" warranty! Jonnan
True that. There's a lot of different systems out there, and from your writing it seems that you are mostly used to scaling RPG's. I used to play a lot of fighting games, racing games and such where difficulty doesn't necessarily scale in such a comfortable fashion, so I'm pretty comfortable with setups like this. But each to their own.
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What's up doc?
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Steve-O
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Posts: 127
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Lone 'PC Race here' 'PC Description here' in a hostile 'milieu here' against 'great evil here' is hardly an unexplored trope. Saying 'you are incompetent to use fwifo's ship in combat against the sylandro probes - there are specific tactics A B and C that work' is a legitimate criticism of my playstyle. Or that I just don't like a combat minigame that is a twitchgame.
In my opinion, SC2 was a highly original game when it first came out. In fairness that may simply be because I was about 12 at the time and hadn't really seen too many computer games before it. Computer games also weren't half as wide-spread as they are today. Yes, the space opera setting is fairly generic. You're a lone heroic captain, lots of weird aliens and a big bad enemy to confront. Really though, you can make anything sound like a tired old trope if you generalize it enough. No such thing as original thought, right?
If you look at the specific races, their (extensive) histories and the way the plot unfolds, I think there's plenty of original stuff in there, but you would have to hang on for the long haul in order to experience it. Some of SC2's aliens are pretty generic, but others are much more imaginative than anything I've seen elsewhere. To date SC2 is the only space opera (game, movie or whatever) I've seen with an alien race who evolved and live in a gas giant, for example. I won't say any more for fear of spoilers (I may already have said too much.)
However, that . . . doesn't appear to be the answer I'm receiving - This seems to be the 'expected' behavior, with explanations ranging from 'don't use a rock versus paper' to 'you're a lone human Captain in a hostile universe' - well, apologies but being an adventure game doesn't make A balance issue a 'feature', and if this *isn't* a failing in...
To be clear, you do have a legitimate issue against the game. Combat is a twitch minigame in an otherwise decidedly non-twitch adventure. I don't think anyone is denying that, most people are trying to offer suggestions for how to survive long enough to learn it. The reason why combat is so different from the rest of the game is because the combat engine was lifted pretty much verbatim out of SC1, which was entirely a twitch combat game with only a small amount of time spent moving your forces around the starmap before the next battle. It had relatively little in-game story (plenty of background in the manual though.) With SC2 the programmers decided to expand the game in several new directions, and added rather a lot of content. Compared to today's sequels that are usually just carbon copies of the gameplay, sometimes with better graphics, I have to say I find SC2 somewhat inspiring in this regard.
If you're really that put off by the combat, though, then maybe this game just isn't for you. Like all truly original products, there are those who like it and those who don't. Obviously, most of the people who frequent this message board will fall into the former category, so if you find yourself leaning toward the latter, please try not to take offense at our fervered attempts to bring fresh blood into the fold. =)
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« Last Edit: June 09, 2010, 06:28:40 pm by Steve-O »
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RTyp06
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As Novus mentioned, you can trun on cyborg and let the computer do the fighting for you. If you save just before battle you can do it over and over until you get a satisfactory result (less people killed). But that is a bit lame and really takes away from the game's overall excitement.
As stated earlier, perhaps this game simply isn't for you. It does grow on you if you give it a fair shake though. I think if you do give it a chance, you'll see what a non-issue the pesky probes really are. Sometimes its fun to let them multiply and farm them during the mid game when you have the Vindicator beefed up. It's faster gaining ru's from combat than visiting planets. And finally there is a certain satisfaction in exacting revenge on the probes that terrorized you in the early game.
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