Unity Wings of Empire [v0.2.0] [Droid Productions]

[The_Man_With_No_Name]

So, first off, I want to say I'm enjoying it. Good stuff. I'm still playing, but I want to post my thoughts. Most of them seem negative, because I'm much better at complaining than praising. So I hope you're up for constructive criticism; that's all I can do.

Spoiler: constructive criticism, put in a spoiler tag in part to save space

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-For the first bit you're correct that it's +753. Timeline changed around the mid 200s AD if I recall.
-For the next bit I agree that Morningstar and this one have that issue. Never was a problem for me in LoM since it felt like it was paced better where in this it feels like it doesn't have much "go walk the paths" so that the sandbox balances against forced timeslot story sections better. In other words, you had more free time slots in LoM. Morningstar was smaller in scope to be fair.
-For the combat it's still work in progress for balance. Morningstar was being tweaked for most of it's devs time for example.
-For the Sci-fi aspects all I can say is that it's more like Star Wars "ww2 in space" and less hardcore sci-fi. I don't think they will be reconfiguring the deflector dish to emit an inverse tachyon pulse to scan beyond the subspace barrier.

My main nitpick is a dialogue one since I swear half of the dialogue is
Character1: Hello *insert honorific here*
Character2: Please, we agreed to not use titles in this situation
Ch1: You're right. I'm sorry

Repeat over and over. Yes I know it's a military setting and socially stratified society, but even by irl standards if that kept going on as much as it has the senior in that exchange wouldn't find it cute anymore and just get genuinely frustrated or just give up and treat them as pure subordinates at all times. We should probably start to ease up on this exact interaction nonstop as the game progresses.
Though, there seems to be signs of that in the latter days of this version. So that's good.

 

[amandressedlikeabat]

will be reconfiguring the deflector dish to emit an inverse tachyon pulse to scan beyond the subspace barrier.

No idea what that's from, but it's definitely NOT hard sci-fi.

And I get that this isn't hard sci-fi, but, when asking myself "what should be different in the combat," that's my starting point. Otherwise there are infinite possibilities. You'll notice I didn't mention anything about real space combat being in 3 (spatial) dimensions. I mean, I just did, but that's my point. I'm trying not to let the stick branch shrub shrubbery up my ass take over.

And maybe I just suck, but I missed the entire romance plot with the Aztec healer goddess in LoM. I didn't even know she was an LI until I looked at the gallery.

 

[The_Man_With_No_Name]

No idea what that's from, but it's definitely NOT hard sci-fi.

And maybe I just suck, but I missed the entire romance plot with the Aztec healer goddess in LoM. I didn't even know she was an LI until I looked at the gallery.

Yeah not really super hard scifi. Just a joke about Star Trek.
You can't really do really "hard scifi" with space manipulation without doing things like nerfing the bio tech advancement unless you want to go full ye old scifis with time scopes of 1000s of years. Good for setting speculation but not much fun for story. You can also do "nasa punk" but that's lame.
Better to just take it as it is.

I'm vague on the details of LoM but that was a book 3 thing right? Think there was dialogue that could be missed that threw you off her path or something.

 

[Avaron1974]

Always makes my day when I come across a fantasy or science fiction story and someone tries to say something wouldn't work because *insert real life shit here*.

It's fiction folks, the whole point of fiction is for it NOT being real.

 

[Dark479]

Always makes my day when I come across a fantasy or science fiction story and someone tries to say something wouldn't work because *insert real life shit here*.

It's fiction folks, the whole point of fiction is for it NOT being real.

I completely 100% second this. If fiction had to follow real life rules everything would be one hundred times duller and the most fun is found in fiction that most drastically diverges from real life.

 

[amandressedlikeabat]

fantasy or science fiction story and someone tries to say something wouldn't work because *insert real life shit here*

Fantasy and science fiction are quite different in how they treat reality. You'll never see me complain about unrealistic magic.
But more to the point, assuming you were referring to me, you were missing my point. Except for the 10kTonne nuke thing, which is hardly the realm of science fiction, my points were not about "what can work," but about what's enjoyable. If you notice, my complaints are not about what the ships are capable of doing, but about what they are incapable of doing ; rotating freely and firing their laser in any direction. Those things are possible, and cool, and as such would make the combat feel better. We don't like science fiction action stories because they have the same action as we do in our universe. We like them because the action goes beyond what we're capable of. So going beyond aerodynamic limited jetfighters into more free spacefighters is not good just because it's realistic, but because it's cool. And cool makes combat more fun, and more satisfying, and makes available more rewarding mechanics.
Hell, even the nuke thing is that the nukes could be capable of much much more; I want my fantasy and science fiction to go beyond the constraints of reality.

As I said, I use reality to color my ideas, because that's how I think. I didn't complain about FTL: Faster Than Light because of its lack of hard scifi. I fucking love that game. The reason for my points here is that the combat isn't very good, and that led me to ask questions about how it could be different.

And Droid also put a fair amount of work into the technology in this universe. You may not notice it, since you apparently hate reality (although, to be fair, reality fucking sucks,) but I sure as hell do. If this was just space magic, I would treat things differently, but it's not.

 

[iamthejuggler]

Always makes my day when I come across a fantasy or science fiction story and someone tries to say something wouldn't work because *insert real life shit here*.

It's fiction folks, the whole point of fiction is for it NOT being real.

That's not strictly true, at least in my opinion. If you're just going complete bonkers laws of physics, like star wars, then fine. But if you're putting a bunch of tech explanation then it should at least have some basis in reality, like star trek. At least for me it's pretty immersion breaking. But not a massive deal. I think fantasy is a lot more forgiving in this than sci-fi, because "MAGIC".

 

[Griffihn]

Always makes my day when I come across a fantasy or science fiction story and someone tries to say something wouldn't work because *insert real life shit here*.

It's fiction folks, the whole point of fiction is for it NOT being real.

it's not fantasy (LoM and Morningstar go in this category) and it's not fiction (think pretty much every tv show without magic out there), it's science-fiction. well, the actual category would be something like "mythical science-fiction", since the main focus is on futuristic science and a hint of the mythical, aka gods. BIG difference between them when it comes to world building. all sci-fi settings are actually rooted in reality, especially the laws of physics and chemistry, which means a lot of explanations get skipped over, unless it's a foreign concept or technology that's supposed to be futuristic, in which case the explanation needs to be made starting from what's currently known. it's basically why Raven failed while Andromeda still has a pretty large cult following and Stargate is still a phenomenon even today (tv shows in the late 90's, early 2000's, in case you're wondering). and for your information, both Andromeda and Stargate are actually mythical science-fiction if you look up their stories. a better comparison would be the new Star Trek series vs the Dune movies. it can make your day all you want but until you release a book and see everyone and their grandmother call you an idiot for doing fantasy instead of fiction, while claiming you're doing sci-fi (it happened to me with my first book), you won't get it, not really.

 

[Avaron1974]

it's not fantasy (LoM and Morningstar go in this category) and it's not fiction (think pretty much every tv show without magic out there), it's science-fiction.

Er.......

Allow me to quote, well, me....

Always makes my day when I come across a fantasy or science fiction

 

[Griffihn]

and you completely missed the point. I was trying to show you that your statement would have been completely valid for fantasy, not science fiction. then I proceeded to explain why, with comparisons, so you could understand why.

 

[e6mill]

Clarke's third law is a thing.

 

[amandressedlikeabat]

People are never going to agree on whether sci-fi should be harder than fantasy. It should, but some people just don't give a flying fuck, and will never change their mind. (I mean, one person literally doesn't see a difference between the two genres.)
The best thing we can do is take the word for what it is. And in this case, it's science fiction not space fantasy. (I wouldn't say it's mythical, since there's thus far no indication that their gods are real/have any impact no the universe.) Like it or not, Droid put thought and work into the technology, rather than just hand waving everything as "space magic."
I'm getting worried that my original comment, which was largely about ways to improve the combat minigame, is going to get buried when Droid looks at the thread and goes "Why the fuck are these people arguing about this?"

 

[e6mill]

one person literally doesn't see a difference between the two genres.

There's no practical difference between magic and science - the fiction genres are different. The genre of fiction that's hardest to distinguish from SF - from a distance (without getting into technical details) is Westerns.

 

[Dr.TSoni]

"Why the fuck are these people arguing about this?"

Absolutely right, let's talk about serious things: Who has the best abs?
Astrid
Ao
Keira
Vote on the toll-free number.....

 

[Tonyloco]

Ok, a few comments and a question.

How do I get the scene where I'm supposed to take CASS weapon ??
I never saw her not got it, but everyone acted as if I had it and the story went with it and never saw the girl until later when I meet her at Valeria's room.

The space battles a kinda kit and miss, the Missiles scared be at the beginning but once I realized they basically hit like a wet noodle, I didn't really cared too much for them unless it was a barrage in the face.

Later I realized that you can blow up them when they are close to the enemy, and can cause damage to them and yourself, still trying to find the range of the AOE for the explosion.

I hope we can get something to disable shields or pass them later because following a shit for several rounds missing every shoot while their shields recharge sucks...

About the shooting is there a specific range for hitting?

I can see or at least imagine that the further away the more you miss but I shoot at basically face to face range only to miss every shoot, and then the blond with the luck trait one shot a ship from the other side of the map with 3 crits in a row.

while I like the Imelman maneuver skill it take a a while to get used to it and I would recommend Arya to get something different, maybe so + damage or more mobility or even better range, so every pilot has a different skill and fells really unique.

I'm expecting the enemies to have skills later so the more the merrier I guess.

Overall most of the girls look great and the story actually has some deep and its engaging.

my only complain maybe its that you and seem to have a lot of time to train your stats and attends all the events that are going... or maybe its just me.

 

[hameleona]

Loved it. Droid again comes out swinging and I am 100% sold.

Combat needs a lot of work, but I like it a lot. Weirdest part is the AI skipping turns for no reason both with fighters and rockets. I like how I can blow rockets with rockets. What I don't like is that the hit-boxes bug out now and then (i've had more then one case of my ship moving on top of the enemy instead of shooting at them) and my complete inability to figure out if I can shoot down rockets reliably. AI does well in the first few rounds (concentrating fire, trying to rocket spam) but as the battle progresses it seems it loses focus.

I hated the racing mini-game, tho.

The story is intriguing, can't wait to see where it will go. I expect major upheavals, lots of dead heroes and villains and empires falling and being reborn.

I loved the world building. The idea, that somehow the Roman Empire not only survived, but faced off the Chinese Empire and this led to a war lasting essentially thousands of years - fun. The exodus of the Chinese and the Japanese (who somehow resisted a clearly expansionist china for again - thousands of years) just needs some exposition. How the hell did it happen? How could those political entities build big enough empires, so that they could challenge the Roman fleet at all? So many questions.
The only thing I didn't like about the world building was the virginity stuff. It's just so... not Roman. As in, yes, the Romans talked a lot about it, but in practice everything we have says they gave about as much damn about it as modern day societies in the West. They were marrying, divorcing, cheating, etc at insanely high rates for an ancient civilization. Oh, yeah, and not enough Augustus worship. Octavian was revered as one of THE greatest Emperors centuries after his death. But besides nitpicks that might get explained in the future - I really like the setting.
The "peacetime" navy is a really good touch. The socio-political and doctrinal stuff rimes quite heavily with the Honorverse and that's a good thing. Except here it seems it plagues all sides of the conflict. Cool.
Also a great moment with the XO - I just hope it's not foreshadowing, cause c-fractional orbital strikes on planets are extinction level events.
And... well, space fighters make little to no sense IRL, but I am a sucker for dogfights, so - more please. Maybe talk a bit more about the ECM and ECCM war that has to be going on for the space-fighter to make sense.
Also did I miss something or did a carrier really had 0 replacement birds? Peace time navy indeed.

Overall - Droid again goes above and beyond my expectations. Can I be a jerk and nit pick some more? Well, yeah, I'ts kinda my thing. But every negative I might nit pick about is more then overshadowed by the overal quality.

 

[rasyonel]

MC looks hot.

 

[The_Man_With_No_Name]

How do I get the scene where I'm supposed to take CASS weapon ??
I never saw her not got it, but everyone acted as if I had it and the story went with it and never saw the girl until later when I meet her at Valeria's room.

It's just a part of the main story I think. She breaks into your room so her weapon gets taken and given to the quartermaster where Cass picks it up from later off screen before you talk to her later.

Absolutely right, let's talk about serious things: Who has the best abs?
Astrid
Ao
Keira

Astrid has the most sculpted abs of the 3.

Keira has a lot more going for her like being the resident redhead and being this timeline's member of the Irvine family like dear Molly.

 

[buttsman69]

Absolutely right, let's talk about serious things: Who has the best abs?
Astrid
Ao
Keira
Vote on the toll-free number.....

I love all of them, but I choose door #4

Jenn won't always be your CO, so... View attachment 5090987

They're a little tough to see through the bodysuit but they are DEFINITELY gonna be spectacular

 

[lancecomwar]

So I keep trying to play the combat minigame legit, but Amber keeps flying off the space map and I can't scroll far back enough to see her so I can't fire at her and can't win the game... I think, anyway. And I have too much pride to lose my first training match. Am I doing something wrong in some way?