They are a good addition to the game, yes. They can be interesting. But custom challange scenarios should be filterable.
Why?
Its easy to make a fleet, then limit all counters to it. This can turn it into a boring mirror match. It seems most people like to do this. Create a fleet with weakness, but remove those from the game.
Thats great and all, but i dont want to play those.
To illustrate my point ive set two custom challanges.
There is Impossible! Lenient, which limits very little, but engine speed is 1% and you are against missiles.
Then there is Impossible! Hard which i think is impossible except for mirror matches. All things except what i used limmited, 1% engine speed. Only cruisers. If you play them, you should put your fleet as forward as you can, and come back in a few minutes after 4x speed. Id be very supired is a non tribe fleet beat me here.
Id love to hear any replies, and play and counter challanges.
I might make another one with a bit faster engines, so not to bore us all to death.
I support the idea of filters, though my main concern is how long the challenge list is getting. The Slider bar is nearly useless now as that moving it one tick down takes you well past where you wanted to go. (In my case, looking for all the new challenges for the day.)
And Crakker. You are the Devil. Running 2 instances of GSB’s at the same time running both scenerio’s. I think the first one I’m an Hour into it, and I’ve only killed 17% of your fleet. Gonna have to come back in a few hours for my inevitable victory. (Enough armor, and even missiles bounce. A small chance at a critical hit is better then double hit points for quite awhile. Plus I managed to shoehorn in some Point defense frigates.)
Meanwhile For your second challenge, At least both sides started in range of each other. Apparently perfect mirror fights are not the only option seeing as that my fleet started with about 13,000 more HP then yours. Deployment is also a factor, your front rank was crushed, before your second rank could even move into to offer fire support. Now I’m just waiting for my flanking wings to roll up your line.
Now the question is, How much engine reduction do you need to stop fast designs. I figure the biggest danger is speed frigates. With top speeds around .8 they tend to dodge incoming missile fire. At a guess I think a 90% reduction should keep them at range long enough for cruisers missiles to finish them off. Possibly 75% would work
And it’s really bad when Ship shape makes that much of a difference. I swear, My phython cruisers are killing your tribe ships, with the single nose mounted missile luancher, Before your front guns ever get into range. I’m reasonably sure that My back guns aren’t getting into range on the second challenge, which might be an orders problem, Or it might just be a Things are dieing faster then I can move problem.
Aye that was the design i thought might have a chance of winning, but i dont like redesigning my main ships. A cheap cruiser that is longer than my ships will have its weapons in range first, since it messures range from the center of the model. So those longer ships will win. And i know the 2 tows wont win, and coming in from the side means you dont have to attack all my guys.
But i think you get the point. We need to be able to filter these things, as they are much different from what we may want.
It would be cool if we could have a challenge filter. For instance, it could be set to only list unrestricted challenges.
I loaded up one of your impossible challenges there, Crakker; and after seeing the limitations in the deployment screen, dropped out. I’ve seen enough of your cruisers for awhile at least…grins.