The Beta started today, so I decided to go ahead and stream a little on twitch (will probably stream more later, check my twitch if you want to watch). Since it’s entertaining and I got the time and motivation, I’ll put some of my impressions, battle reports and videos in here for your viewing pleasure.
For the first entry, I just played around a little bit, did a battle or two and designed a few ships. Then I wanted to see how well a dreadnought centered fleet would do in the “tutorial” map (which has 2 cruisers, several destroyers and some fighters and gunships), so I used my newly built carrier, added some destroyers for cover fire and some fighters and gunships to round things up. At first it went as planned but all of the sudden the shields on my carrier failed and even though I had done some damage to the enemy, it did not look good at all. Fast forwarding a bit: I destroyed one of the enemy cruisers and damaged the other but lost my carrier eventually, leaving behind a fleet of destroyers and gunships without weapons while the enemy was still fielding that remaining cruiser and a destroyer with working weapons. My last destroyer lost his weapon a few shots later and only a single, damaged gunship was left to save the day. How it ends you can see here, I uploaded it to youtube.
Just amazing how much influence one little ship can have, reminded me of space combat literature that I read when I was a kid (in this case the attack of the Cylons on the 12 colonies in the old BSG - where a smaller cylon craft was able to take out a damaged Battlestar all on it’s own because of the earlier damage).
So far I’m loving the game, it needs some improvements but it is already really fun. And it will only get better!