Game:

HighFleet (2021)

Duration: 5:00:18

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I spent like 2 days building ships, testing them and googling. People have made some amazing tutorials on it, though most of it is dated now.
So there's an elevation mechanic, surround blocks to get higher, but it doesn't matter, cuz gun line of fire doesn't work currently, it's just aesthetics. And thank god for that, spent a lot of time trying to mitigate it. Using small fuel tanks to get around the 3 elevation high large tanks and weapons blocking themselves also. All pointless. Large engines are pointless for most but the largest dreadnaught ships. Because the large hull that it uses is too heavy. Crew is pointless. Space optimization is a little pointless, cuz a lot of the stuff was nerfed. Can still fit a static and maneuver engine together to form a 3x2 block and hide a small 1x2 thing behind an engine. But that's it. Sucks that all hull blocks basically weigh the same though: triangles are the same as a full block. Also engines are kind of weak. This all makes fuel economy optimization incredibly difficult for tactical ships. Large generator is like a couple of percentage more efficient.

Planned on building strategic ships: small fast scout one, airplane carriers, missile carriers. Most sensors are on them. No armor, minimum hull, never have to land so no legs, cuz never in combat. fixed engines with best fuel economy.

And tactical ships: things with guns, flares. Armor as best around as possible. Using lots of maneuverable engines. As fuel optimization is difficult, I'll have to pair them with tankers, to keep the ship's speed up and weight down.

Getting into ship building was really fun. The problem is though, that 1.16 kind of nerfed a lot of things, so a lot of cool builds don't work anymore. Thank god gun line of fire doesn't work, it would've been so bad.

The biggest frustration is how the building blocks don't always click together. Sometimes you build stuff and everything is fine and suddenly nothing is connected. A little janky.

And after all this text, guess what? My ships are kind of awful, so scratch that. Guess I'll just use the stock ones?
Did make a decent small scout ship, better skylark tanker, and a dedicated airplane carrier. Everything else I just scrapped. Can't even optimize the flagship without modifying game files. Kind of a bummer. I have a feeling that more fun viable ship designs were possible in the past but balance nerfs ruined them. All the tactical ideas I have are improbable. Main thing was I want a lightning but with 4 guns and armored. Can't for the life of me make it fast. So mostly stock easy mode it is. I fear that this game might have actually been better 3 years ago.

Main thing being, I have to use the same ships as the enemy, while they've got 3 ships out at a time and basically unlimited supply. If I can't even the playfield with ingenuity, then all that's left is skill, but that's kind of unlikely also, when the enemy spams missiles and superior firepower. Once again got to game the system, instead of playing with it. I'm not complaining that designing ships is impossible, it's just difficult to make something a lot better, that evens out the 1v3, without destroying your bank.

What all of this means, is that there's a high chance that I won't even try to beat this on hard. For now I'll try to finish it on easy and then we'll see if I want to try higher difficulty.

And boy is it fun. All that test runs did give me a decent idea on how to fly the planes in combat. Easy mode gives a lot of weak enemies, so it's a lot of fun just capturing all those towns. Forgot to buy my built aircraft carriers. Though the missile spam was still awful. Have no idea how to counter that. Have to just back off and bait them and flank somehow. Really hoped that my scout using the radar would bait them, but I guess they used infrared or radar and deducted that the small enemy didn't matter, the big one was the target? The missile spam is one of the reasons I'm hoarding airplanes and carrier missiles. I hope that they can be used to counter them.

Money is still a problem. Easy didn't seem to fix that. Fuel is quit expensive and capturing a town doesn't give money by itself. It's either trade ships or capturing weapons after defeating enemies. The tankar + single lightning seems to be quite money efficient, but the moment I need something bigger, I'm bleeding fuel. And it's not like I can just keep them behind. They need to move with the fleet.

There is an idea of remembering what ships can be bought at a recruitment town, remembering them and then coming back to it once I need the ships. But then I'll just waste a lot of fuel and time getting back and forth. More tankers, and just keep the heavier ships with the main fleet and move from fuel depo to fuel depo? Or more like fuel to hidden to fuel. Probably have to park the fleet in the middle of the desert next. Hmm.. This might actually work. The busy bees are the lightnings, and the sparingly heavy hitters in desert.

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