Alien Legacy, give it a chance.
Rungson G Samroengraja
definitely worth a look. I've read other posts slamming it. After playing
it a little bit I might have agreed.
This not like MoO or Outpost, though this game is at least an order of
magnitude more enjoyable than the latter, though not as addictive as the
former.
Someone mentioned that it's basically a game of looking on planet x at pt y
and then being directed to planet a at pt b and so on. This is true, but
still not a bad way to unravel the plot, and it is NOT strictly linear.
Although some parts have an unavoidable progression, your situation and what
technologies you have at the time a particular event occurs can determine
how that event is resolved. I had a situation where I was trying to prevent
something bad from happening (at least I think it would have been bad). The
first time I played I had to go through this huge ordeal of sending a hundred
missile ships. I accidently restarted from an earlier savegame and developed
a technology that I didn't have before and that's all it took to easily get
rid of the aforementioned problem. The same thing can happen in the other
crucial events in the game. I find the plot to be very entertaining and
imaginative. If you liked Star Control II, I don't think you'll be too
disappointed in this respect.
The animation cut scenes are superb. If anyone can mention a gorier scene than
the one displayed during the first attack of the Empiants, let me know. The
cut scenes in Outpost may be done in hi-res 256 color, but these are more fun
and you know what's going on. Losing the game is cute.
As to the strategic part, I'll admit that there's not much depth. Though
making sure all colonies are adequately supplied can be challenging.
Abstracting resources down to ore, energy, life, humans and robots provides
enough variety in development. In Outpost, apart from MinA, does anyone keep
track of all the other types of resources? Oh yeah, I'm running a bit low on
PrecB (snicker).
What really damages this game is the interface. The method of getting from
screen to screen is adequate and well thought out. Where this game really
needs help is in the colony manager screen and the actual colony grid itself.
Since colonies are listed in order of your building them, it's difficult to
get a coherent management scheme going. It would be great if I could see all
my colonies on the same planet listed together (including moons and space
stations). It would make managing and shuttling neeeded resources much easier.
The colony grid interface is unnecessary. It's thrown in for a graphical look
which is OK, except that it makes monitoring colony development too difficult.
You can't quickly tell what you're factories are making unless you get the
pointer over each one and see it on the display (which can involve scrolling
the screen). The same goes for research labs. You can only change a tiles
characteristics by being on that colony and getting the pointer on top of it.
Imagine trying to get your research redirected from being math oriented to
astronomy when you've got 15 labs scattered through 10 colonies and you've got
to manually check each one. This involves flipping back and forth between two
screens and scrolling through lists and screens. It's not easy nor fun. The
graphic screens should have been supplemented with a basic text screen that
lists the tiles grouped by type and then display what a particular tile is
doing.
Flipping through the technology screen to see what you've developed is
not too much fun either. Sometimes I'll spend a minute or two flipping
through the screens just to get to the device that I need to invent.
Technologies not yet invented should be listed separately.
Searching the planet for items or resources is tiring. It took me a while to
figure out that a particular tile on a planet wraps around while your flying
over it. You end up doing the same thing over and over. Pick a sector to
explore. Turn your ship slightly at an angle. Head off. You'll eventually
see everything in the sector. It doens't make sense to use the sector scanner.
You use the planet scanner to find which sectors you should explore in detail,
which is a hell of alot.
I also suffer from a fatal bug which seems to crash my game for no apparent
reason at varying intervals. I have to remember to save often or I can lose
hours of "work". Very frustrating.
This game is not great but I find myself drawn into the story and mood. The
advisors are a nice touch and add dimension. People will probably compare
this to Outpost, funny that they're both published Sierra. I would not
hesitate recommending this over Outpost, even though they're technically not
the same genre and saying this is a better game than Outpost is also not
saying a whole lot IMHO. The story is engrossing, and doesn't always follow
the exact same path. The animations are integrated better and more coherent,
though nowhere near as technically sophisticated. The poor interface makes
Alien Legacy almost unplayable however. In ending, all I can say is that game
has soul, it has a warmth compared to Outpost which feels pretty sterile to
me. Give me Melinda Williams warmongering (Commander, Military Staff) anyday
over the snide, acerbic comments of that damned AI in Outpost.
Final disclamier - these views are my own and I can't guarantee that if
you buy Alien Legacy that you'll like it. I loved MoO and Star Control II
and hated Outpost. I'd put this one a notch under SCII and pretty far above
Outpost.
_____________________________________________________________________
Rungson Samroengraja | The life so short,
rg...@columbia.edu | The craft so long to learn.
struggling doctoral candidate| -Hippocrates
.
: imaginative. If you liked Star Control II, I don't think you'll be too
: disappointed in this respect.
I dunno about this. SCII was way way good, but mostly because it's races
were highly amusing, and the game really funny. The plot and such in AL is
really well thought out, which makes it interesting. They're both good, but
in different ways.
: As to the strategic part, I'll admit that there's not much depth. Though
: making sure all colonies are adequately supplied can be challenging.
Especially with a zillion colonies.
: needs help is in the colony manager screen and the actual colony grid itself.
: Since colonies are listed in order of your building them, it's difficult to
: get a coherent management scheme going.
I solved this partially by naming my colonies certain ways:
mine1, mine2,... -- mines, equal productions of Ore,Life Support,Energy.
robot1,.... -- robot productions only. minimal produc. of all else (in fact
it's only enough to keep everything positive)
lab1,.... -- laboratories - actually, you can get by just fine with just
two of these.
-------GAEA -- I stick a bunch of ----- in front so it sticks way out. These
are space stations
=====1===== -- mines that ran out of ore. now just storage.
: my colonies on the same planet listed together (including moons and space
: stations). It would make managing and shuttling neeeded resources much easier.
Ah, true. I tend to fill up a planet before expanding, so that isn't too
much of a problem for me.
: Technologies not yet invented should be listed separately.
Yeah, this is annoying.
: You use the planet scanner to find which sectors you should explore in detail,
: which is a hell of alot.
Not really. it is and it's not. Just because there is a (?) there doens't
mean it's worth exploring. I do -not- browse planets for ore or tech, it just
isn't worth the trouble.
: though nowhere near as technically sophisticated. The poor interface makes
: Alien Legacy almost unplayable however.
I had a pretty controlled and systematic method of organizing and building
my colonies. I see what kind of problems you had, but you can get over
them if you're careful.
For example, you said, 'imagine having 15 labs, and trying to switch them all
over to bio' - This is fine and dandy, but it's not essential. a better way
would be to have organized it so that you had 2-3 labs of each type. then
you get regular growth, and rarely need to ever 'adjust' them. Or use
less labs.
Frank Wang
fw...@sbcs.sunysb.edu
David Pugh
I've played the game and my biggest complaint was the interface. The part
that really annoyed me was that they seemed to go out of their way too
make you micro-manage. For example:
Installations all produce & consume in chunks (power plant
produces so much power every 9 turns or whatever). This is
not a problem if you have a large enough reserve but, if you
don't, you can have your colony shut down.
This wouldn't be too bad as long as you were notified when
something shutdown for lack of supplies but you aren't. For
that matter, you are not notified when a ship reaches its
destination, you meet the criteria to invent, you complete an
invention, an installation is finished, etc.
The colonies are drawn so that you can only see part of the
colony at a time (fair enough ... it lets them make pretty
pictures). But they clutter the colony map with decoration
so you can't lay your colony out in a nice pattern. I was
also having problem getting the colony to scroll reliably.
And, for that matter, I do not like the way they handle time. Give me the
X-COM way any day: time only advances when you are at a certain screen and
you are notified of every event and given a chance to crank the time rate
back down so that you can deal with it.
--
.. He was determined to discover the David Pugh
underlying logic behind the universe. ...!seismo!cmucs!dep
Which was going to be hard, because
there wasn't one. _Mort_, Terry Pratchett
Chad White
: : You use the planet scanner to find which sectors you should explore in detail,
: : which is a hell of alot.
: Not really. it is and it's not. Just because there is a (?) there doens't
: mean it's worth exploring. I do -not- browse planets for ore or tech, it just
: isn't worth the trouble.
There are actually clues even on squares that don't show (?)'s.
I was searching everything to stockpile some tech and hit quite a few crashed
ships and abandoned colonies in spots that only show that generic rotor
looking symbal on the scanner. I don't remember that I ever found anything
important at any of those, however.
: : though nowhere near as technically sophisticated. The poor interface makes
: : Alien Legacy almost unplayable however.
: I had a pretty controlled and systematic method of organizing and building
: my colonies. I see what kind of problems you had, but you can get over
: them if you're careful.
: For example, you said, 'imagine having 15 labs, and trying to switch them all
: over to bio' - This is fine and dandy, but it's not essential. a better way
: would be to have organized it so that you had 2-3 labs of each type. then
: you get regular growth, and rarely need to ever 'adjust' them. Or use
: less labs.
I've never been able to expand too much, due to a couple of
bugs I've hit on. The biggest and most annoying is the total inability
of my ships to follow a path for any length of time.. I will set up a
pipline mission between New Terra and Calypso for example. The Calypso
is orbiting Gaea. I set up the cargo, and it takes about 1-2 turns for
it to do each leg of the trip. It'll go for a few trips, then I'll
look in the Vehicle Manager and it says it will take 34 turns to get
to the Calypso! Sure enough, I find it on the space map and it's out
past the Beta Asteroids.. Urgh. This might not be so bad if I had a
Mass Driver to move stuff around with.. But I can't figure out how to
build them. I found a sector that said "This area was being surveyed
for a Mass Driver by Tantalus colonists," I've even found what it
said was an abandoned Mass Driver installation. But it never shows
up in the Tech Manager. Anyone know how to get it?
The other thing is less important.. If you explore every sector
that shows up as being interesting on the scanner, you spend a LOT of
time on surface exploration missions. Time stops while you are flying
over the surface. Your ships don't go anywhere, your factories don't
produce etc.. however, the turn counter still goes up. I noticed
this when I checked the turn.. I was at 2348, immediately explored
about 7 sectors on the planet for tech, and when I got back, the counter
said 2365. However, the factory that I was re-fitting still said it
had two turns till it went back on-line, the same as before I left.
I know time is supposed to stop, but it should stop all the way. :^)
The main problem with this is when you only have 1000 game turns to
accomplish something (anyone who has played past about turn 2150 will
probably know what I'm talking about. :^) )
--
Just Boo it!
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|cwh...@golden.ncw.net / Always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn. |
|obDisclaimer: "I have no / "And remember, I'm not only the president, |
|idea what that meant."-Dot/ I'm also annoying!" - Yakko Warner, Animaniacs|
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Rungson G Samroengraja
some of my own ideas:
Decide how many colonies you'll need on a particular planet and then have a
ship go out and build them even if you don't plan to develop it right away,
it doesn't cost you any resources to do so.
I immediately construct colonies:
4 on Gaea
1 ss on Gaea
4 on Rhea
1 ss on Rhea
2 on Prometheus
2 on Hermes
1 on each of the signif. Alphas (3,5,7)
Doing so in order makes it easier now to manage them. I use the SS's to
house my labs (6 apiece) and one each on the Gaea col's that require them.
I also make sure each colony has all the equipment in the same place. I put
habitats in upper left, facs in upper right and power lower left. I usually
get a stable setup with 3,7,4 resp. leaving enough room for a shield and a
mass driver ('cept for places with labs).
Frank, you're suggestion about balanced labs is a good idea, but I found
later inventions were heavily dependent on one or two categories. But now
that most of my labs are in a few places, it's not a worry.
Also, you mentioned not having to use the planet scanner, in a sense you
don't have too, but makes it easy when the location for a clue is not specific.
This is esp. true at a certain planet. But you're definitely exploring _many_
sectors.
The game proceeds much easier now, but we shouldn't have to invent these
workarounds to play it.