I am currently playing the survival scenerio “The Orion Ambush”, and have been for over an hour at 4x speed. I am already at 540.000 score, my ships are still in mint condition, and the enemy shows now sign of getting significantly closer to being able to harm my fleet.
It is getting a bit silly. Shouldn’t the difficulty increase faster, so that that you get a genuine feel of your ships trying to survive the odds against an overwhelming horde instead of doing something else while looking at the current score once in a while?
The situation doesn’t look currently noticeably different than it did 200.000 points ago. It felt a lot more dangerous in the beginning in fact.
My last try took eons too, but due to some stupid ship design mistakes, they finally got killed at 484.830 points…
It crashed with a runtime error at about 680.000 points…
It amazes me how rapidly people work out how to build such overwhelmingly good fleets. I will significantly ramp up the difficulty of both survival maps…
Wonderful. 
Varying the builds that hit us will help significantly Cliff. Also, hitting us with larger waves that are closely packed also helps.
I’d also suggest using weapons platform designs more. Ships designed primarily to carry loads of long ranged weapons but with poor defense that are slightly slower than the much tougher tank designs they are paired with. These designs and Tank+killers are standard in the player challenges now but rarely seen in the survival modes.
The toughest challenges I have seen have been ones that feature tanks with ECM beams, shock beams, anti missile, lots of shields and armor and maybe a couple beam lasers closely followed by either Missile or plasma killers with only a single shield and often no armor at all.
This makes me wish the other races had light fighters as useful as the rebels or a viable bomber design with an ‘inside the shield’ bomb was feasible… because such ships should be meat for fighters. However right now all the need to do is mount one tractor and CDL per ship and the fighters melt like butter.
Honestly, I’d like it best if the anti fighter fighter weapons like the laser and the pulse didn’t do much against capital ships but were indispensable for taking out other fighters. Ideal fighter behavior is that they would respond to the ‘escort’ command by hanging in formation nearby the ship they are escorting and then when they sight enemies they would zip out to engage as a group up to a predetermined distance away. I.e. “Hang around ship X, until you sight an incoming enemy ship of class A (or class B if no class A) that is withing range Z which you will then engage.”
I’ve managed to “beat” the new survival mode scenario, too - got to 500k and my fleet had sustained no damage.
The ships I was using were:
SPOILER
[config]
name = impey bee v fleet
guiname = Impey Bee V Fleet
hull = Imperial Legion Cruiser hull
cost = 2973
[modules]
0 = cruiser_pulselaser,
1 = cruiser_armour V,
2 = cruiser_targetboosterII,
3 = cruiser_engine II,
4 = cruiser power III,
5 = cruiser power III,
6 = cruiser_ecm beam,
7 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
8 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
9 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
10 = cruiser power,
11 = cruiser_beamlaser,
12 = cruiser_beamlaser,
13 = cruiser_empire_beamlaser,
14 = cruiser_empire_beamlaser,
15 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
16 = cruiser crew II,
And
[config]
name = impey bee v command
guiname = Impey Bee V Command
hull = Imperial Legion Cruiser hull
cost = 2984
[modules]
0 = cruiser_ecm beam,
1 = cruiser_armour V,
2 = cruiser_targetboosterII,
3 = cruiser_engine,
4 = cruiser power III,
5 = cruiser power III,
6 = cruiser_ecm beam,
7 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
8 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
9 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
10 = cruiser power,
11 = cruiser_beamlaser,
12 = cruiser_empire_beamlaser,
13 = cruiser_empire_beamlaser,
14 = cruiser_ecm shock,
15 = cruiser shield fastrecharge,
16 = cruiser crew II,
With four of the fleet ships arranged in tight formation around the command ship.
1.17 introduces some new waves for the second survival mode that should be more of a challenge. I’m starting to think that even post-release, those challenges should probably get regular updates anyway, just to keep it fresh.
I don’t know about updating the survival challenges; I’d far rather see an expanded list of survival maps. At the moment, survival mode is where the real longevity of GSB lies (IMO); as a score challenge it’s as addictive as it gets.
I’d actually find updates to the individual survival missions to be quite annoying after spending so long building fleets geared towards one setup only to go back to square one after an update.
Potentially each survival map could come in three flavours of difficulty though, with seperate score tables for each?
Wouldn’t it be a whole lot less trouble to just spawn random waves? And maybe every 10th wave spawn a “boss” wave where you have unrealistic odds or a ship without regular restrictions. You could then change the music and maybe do a WARNING screen graphic to go with it. XD
I think user-generated survival mode missions - survival mode challenges - are the way forward - can we do that already? I don’t have the game to hand.
Those cloaking plasma cruisers are evil man!
In the long run, I’d like to support user-uploaded survival maps, or multi-wave skirmish battles. I’m sure some of you would be better than me at creating cunningly evil waves for survival maps. There is a whole world of complexity involved in doing that, and handling it from a database and web page and client side, but it could be truly cool.
Your survival upgrade made the scenario a lot more difficult indeed. I can’t think of a way to survive wave after wave unscratched now. And those plasma cruisers are quite deadly indeed. How high a score did you manage to get while testing your new balance changes Cliffski?
I’ve as of yet only got about 90.000.
Silver Chain, in your setup you have cruiser_ECM Beam listed as a weapon? But I don’t see any module that would fall under that category, so what in the world is it you’re putting in those positions?
Agreed, the difficulty just sky-rocketed, and that’s a good thing. Maybe reset the high scores list now ?
As I recall my top test score was 90,001
Integrate the Grand Challenge Quest system then. Seriously, that’s pretty much what the GCQ boils down to: user-generated multi-scenario battles.
Wow. That new wave is about as nasty as it gets.
Beautiful ship design Cliffy, you evil bastard.
I would love to see multiplayer survival missions.
Ie your fleet + another players fleet(s) versus neutral enemies, the player who kills the most neutral enemies fastest gets a better score, first person to score x/last player alive wins.
Or better yet, any chance some of the Beta testers could put in a dozen or so survival squads of our own design?
Velmeran - ECM beam is the anti-missile defence beam, it goes in a weapon slot but is in the defences page.