AI War: Fleet Command

[Sir T]

I got this game on Impulse in a bundle with Gratuitous Space Battles. Its basically an RTS in space, and reminds me a lot of a 2001 game called Conquest Frontier Wars.

Interesting thing about this game is that its not designed for competitive multilayer. You or your team is always against the AI. The AI is designed to scale with you the more players you have on your team. Looking over their forums the thing everyone raves about is the quality of the AI. It is apparently very adept at probing defenses and exploiting weak points. Also according to the background you are the remenents of a war with the AI that hasn't bothered to finish you off, And as you progress you make yourself more dangerous in the eyes of the AI, which will strike back at you according to the treat it perceives you to be. Ants < bears basicly.

In terms of gameplay you gather resources from building built on resource points, and Build ships. The hurf about it is that you can have thousands of ships in a fleet and that's no lie. However theres no individual ship differentiation as such, just big blobs of fleets. There are 4 basic ships types and several specialist ships, and you really do need a balanced fleet to do anything. Much like supreme commander you build stuff according to your income, and aside from "Knowlage" {which is used used for unlocking better ship designs), all resources are unlimited. However going out and capturing planets to gain resources will piss off the computer... Oddly running around capturing every planet can be the wrong thing to do in this game.

I've played through the tutorial which does a good job of explaining the game. I have really enjoyed playing through the tutorial and I think I'm hooked. The game is fun, and polished. Graphically it looks like an indie project but they are clear and you can see whats going on at a glance. And I haven't even looked at GSB yet I've as been so busy playing this.

So far after a few hours play its definite Buy it territory.

http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php

[schild]

I feel like, a couple years into BiiF, people should notice how to title things by now.

[ffc]

How does this compare to Sins of a Solar Empire?  I like how the AI War blurbs keep mentioning a lack of micromanagement.

[NiX]

How does this compare to Sins of a Solar Empire?  I like how the AI War blurbs keep mentioning a lack of micromanagement.

This. SoaSE has a bit too much to manage for me.

[Sir T]

How does this compare to Sins of a Solar Empire?  I like how the AI War blurbs keep mentioning a lack of micromanagement.

Not as graphically nice and not as much ship variations, but a hell of a lot less micro, yeah. You can even set your ships to patrol systems so they engage AI threats automatically, and have engineers roaming your systems repping everything and helping with building. You can even select ships of a certain types with a simple mouseclick on the panel at the side, that shows the total fleet numbers in the system. There are no triggered special abilities that I have run across yet, Those that exist are passive. On the basic level its about building ships and researching better versions of those ships. Its a 4x game mixed with tower defending.

Interestingly there's Unit caps based on ship types, which gives you a reason to be building the basic ships till the end of the game, to bulk up your fleets.

[x4000]

Hey guys,

I'm the developer of AI War, and saw the thread -- thought I'd come over to answer any questions there might be.

For the similarity to Sins of a Solar Empire, I'd say that Sir T pretty much hit it.  AI War is definitely not as pretty, and there are no triggered special abilities (all of those are passive -- going back to that "less micromanagement" thing), and so forth.  

The base game has about 245 ships, including around 30 main classes of fleet ships (4-5 ships in each), plus other various economic, defensive, turret, starship, warhead, and specialized ships.  Whether that is more or fewer than Sins has in terms of ship variety, I can't say -- I've played very little of Sins, honestly.  I was always much more into the Age of Empires series and the Supreme Commander game, both of which were much more my inspirations.  The controls of the camera and the economy are very SupCom-like, although perhaps a bit simpler in terms of the economy (it is easier to balance).

For more info about how the game blends RTS, 4X, tower defense, and grand strategy, I feel like this user review does a really good job of explaining it.  It's also hugely positive, of course, but I thought it was one of the better brief writeups of the mechanics I'd seen.

I will say that AI War has more to manage at one than Sins of a Solar Empire (from what I know of that game), but that complexity is mitigated by our interface and tutorials.  The tutorials walk you through the basics and then even through a simulated campaign (with just tips as you play, basically), and by the end of that players generally have a good grasp on how to automate their empire.  There is a ton going on at once, but the beauty of it is that you can largely automate most of what is going on, and then manage specific fronts that might require more attention.  So you're generally not forced to be rushed and juggling, and there's not benefits for being a fast-clicker.  My dad was one of my alpha testers for the game, and he's not a fast-clicker.  He was always slower at SupCom, which hurt his performance in that game by quite a bit compared to me, but in AI War he's a heck of a lot more productive and the skill gap has narrowed significantly.

Let me know if there are other questions!