Slitherine

Hello everyone,
I just bought the game a couple of days ago as I heard from several sources that this is the most faithfull "HD Remake" of Alpha Centauri out there.
And though I'm am not easily impressed I'm quite pleased with the results so far.

But I have some questions about some things that irritate me:

Is it me or is the game heavily focussed on the military?
The Aliens turn hostile very quickly (even on lower settings) and just crush you with their 8.0 Strength while you are just having fun building up a peaceful coexistant life on Pandora with some 2.0 Cannonfodder as scouts. I remember, back in SMAC (and Civ) you could just try a more peaceful approach not so on Pandora with all that aggresive wildlife eating your colonists.
Is this game mechanic influenced by the Epic/Marathon setup?

Capturing "Wildlife" with pheromones...
So this looks like a fun past-time, especially for my "officially" peaceful approach. Seems a bit broken though, oh and I captured a Queen, but she doesn't seem to be able to heal quicker, let alone patch up my "park rangers & peace-keepers" (bug?) and worst of all she doesn't lay eggs for me.
I want to start my alien Invasion by enslaving the indigenous lifeforms and using them for my will, just like in the bad movies only this time I am the alien aggressor.

Advanced Settings when starting the game
I love to have advanced settings, but I also want a perfect starting position (especially when I try to learn the concept of this game) so why doesn't it remember several advanced setup tweaks when I start a new game? Oh and will it be possible some time to pick a landing zone in the future? Why do these stupid humans always stumble blindly towards the surface of some alien planet? Would make more sense to pick a landing zone...

I have not played enough to comment on your first point intelligently, but points 2 & 3 will, I hope, find their way into the game!

I'll put OP's stuff in red.

khadgar wrote:Hello everyone,
I just bought the game a couple of days ago as I heard from several sources that this is the most faithfull "HD Remake" of Alpha Centauri out there.
And though I'm am not easily impressed I'm quite pleased with the results so far.

But I have some questions about some things that irritate me:

Is it me or is the game heavily focussed on the military?
The Aliens turn hostile very quickly (even on lower settings) and just crush you with their 8.0 Strength while you are just having fun building up a peaceful coexistant life on Pandora with some 2.0 Cannonfodder as scouts. I remember, back in SMAC (and Civ) you could just try a more peaceful approach not so on Pandora with all that aggresive wildlife eating your colonists.
Is this game mechanic influenced by the Epic/Marathon setup?
Aliens are supposed to make you build a military early so you don't just spend all your time building up your research and money, then wipe everyone else off the map with your expensive high-tech army. Don't like 8 strength aliens? Just build lots of tanks. You'll need less of them as they rank up. 8 strength aliens provide +2 rank on kill. You can rack these up pretty quickly on one unit.
Capturing "Wildlife" with pheromones...
So this looks like a fun past-time, especially for my "officially" peaceful approach. Seems a bit broken though, oh and I captured a Queen, but she doesn't seem to be able to heal quicker, let alone patch up my "park rangers & peace-keepers" (bug?) and worst of all she doesn't lay eggs for me.
I want to start my alien Invasion by enslaving the indigenous lifeforms and using them for my will, just like in the bad movies only this time I am the alien aggressor.
You can only have one unit per alien-capture-gadget so it would be pointless to capture the queen. You're better off capturing one of those 8 strength monsters you hate so much. I never use that gadget because the best you can do with most aliens is a little scouting, and even the tougher aliens will look like 95 pound weaklings once you get into mechanization era.
Advanced Settings when starting the game
I love to have advanced settings, but I also want a perfect starting position (especially when I try to learn the concept of this game) so why doesn't it remember several advanced setup tweaks when I start a new game? Oh and will it be possible some time to pick a landing zone in the future? Why do these stupid humans always stumble blindly towards the surface of some alien planet? Would make more sense to pick a landing zone...
If you pick a landing zone then you will probably get to see the whole map. I can imagine telling the game to give you a starting point that fits predefined parameters set by you, but letting you pick precisely where you want to settle? Not gonna happen, chief.

Thank you RedHawl for your support, I didn't really play that much, maybe 10-20 hours myself - so this was my first observation besides: "oooh shiny"

stiefelss wrote: Aliens are supposed to make you build a military early so you don't just spend all your time building up your research and money, then wipe everyone else off the map with your expensive high-tech army. Don't like 8 strength aliens? Just build lots of tanks. You'll need less of them as they rank up. 8 strength aliens provide +2 rank on kill. You can rack these up pretty quickly on one unit.

Well, stiefelss thank you for the advice, not that I asked how to beat them in the first place, but you actually answered my questions in the first sentence up to your first comma.

Anyway, that's something I miss in Pandora, you are the the Alien invasion here and you have to crush the local defenses. No choice there, a pity but Pandora is a war game not a civilisation game.
In Alpha Centauri you could get along with the planet quite well, especially if you aimed at the "transendence" Ending. (My personal favourite ending of all Civ games I ever played, heck probably the best ending I ever experienced save for the Warcraft I Orc Ending.) A "Rather" peaceful victory was indeed a possibility.

stiefelss wrote: You can only have one unit per alien-capture-gadget so it would be pointless to capture the queen. You're better off capturing one of those 8 strength monsters you hate so much. I never use that gadget because the best you can do with most aliens is a little scouting, and even the tougher aliens will look like 95 pound weaklings once you get into mechanization era.

You have no idea of pointlessness I presume and I actually like the superaliens, especially my private fleet of leviathans patrolling my coast against that invasion fleet. Again don't try to use your standards of gameplay on other players, I never asked for comments how anyone likes my strategy, if I want a bloody queen in any of my cities I don't need your permission to have them. Which brings me back to question if the healing thing is broken, as I tried it in another game and it certainly didn't work.
Again, why couldn't the queen start to reproduce units for me, or at least create a new building/advancement like a spawning ground/pool where you can spam cheap indigenious lifeforms or more control points for them. Would make sense to me, whether some people would use it or not is another discussion I don't want to tackle right now.

stiefelss wrote: If you pick a landing zone then you will probably get to see the whole map. I can imagine telling the game to give you a starting point that fits predefined parameters set by you, but letting you pick precisely where you want to settle? Not gonna happen, chief.

Sorry "dude", but a visible map already happened in its spritual predecessor. You are too late.
You should check SMAC, even without Alien Crossfire the game offered a mode where "Planet" was already completely discovered, fog of war was on, but at least you could check for decent resources and plan accordingly. Sound far more realistic to me.
A very interesting feature that Pandora sadly lacks and I'm haven't even started lamenting about the missing random map generator and the sea colonies, oh the sea colonies, I better stop now before I get too sentimental...