Should I Bother To Continue?

[pitman]

So I tried Pandora yesterday and found myself constantly frustrated by the lack of documentation. How do I get the map to zoom in or zoom out? (can it, even?) Who knows? How do I do this? How do I do that? I don't want to waste my limited game time in trial and error stuff just to figure out basic game and interface mechanics.

So my question is, do I bother to continue with this game or abandon it right now? Is a *real* manual going to be released in the near future? Is even the Pandora Wiki going to be populated (right now, it looks like downtown Hiroshima in 1945)?

I really liked the idea of--finally--a successor of some sort to SMAC, but I would like some reassurance here from Slitherine. Otherwise, there are plenty of other 4x games out there.

[mrowka]

Ther are keys in Pandora First Contact\Documents\ReadMe.txt

As for zoom use advenced technology feature on your mouse called scroll wheel this is a unique feature that works in pandora and wasnt use in any other game at all!


But seriously this is a beta so dont expect everything to be in, whats the point of making manual when in 2 days you add a feature that change that manual.

[pitman]

I have a laptop; I don't have a third wheel.

[mrowka]

I have a laptop; I don't have a third wheel.

You can scroll with touch pad.

[Belanos]

Or you can get yourself a cheap USB mouse.

[Piruparka]

Or try Page-down-key and Page-up-key, maybe also + and -. Don't abandon the game yet, you'd miss a great thing!

[jdmillard]

Continue with the game. It's worth it. Also, if there is any specific feature that bothers you, come make a discussion about it. The developers are extremely active on the forum (relative to other game sites where the devs pretend to have not seen or heard you).

The game isn't perfect yet, but the developers are "in for the long haul" (in their words). They intend to implement a lot of cool new features. There is a lack of documentation, but the biggest tip I can give you is that the tooltips are basically the manual. Yes, that bothers some people, but it doesn't change the fact that LOADS of information is found in tooltips. Just hover your cursor over anything that you aren't clear on. Then spend about 60 seconds with the keyboard shortcuts to get familiar with the basics. Then come back here with all your questions. We're pretty good with answering questions to fellow fans. Forgive some of the more sarcastic comments you got, that's how a lot of gamers they say they like you. lol.

[b52pilot1]

Sadly, I have abandoned this game -- like you I could not continue without something that explains how to play. I think it was a foul for the developers to release this game without a game manual. The "read me" file is a joke.

[Zak0r]

You could have asked us. It wouldn't hurt the forum if there were more posts.

[Apheirox]

What exactly is so puzzling about this game that it becomes "unplayable"? So far the only 'mysterious' feature you've listed that isn't explained in the manual is how to zoom (which works the exact same way as in almost every other TBS game).

[jdmillard]

I've tried to be welcoming and positive to all people interested in this game but I do have to say this: I just jumped right into the game and just figured it out. It was really easy. Any time I wasn't sure about how something worked I simply hovered my cursor over the object, number, symbol, hex, unit, window, button, or whatever it was I was curious about and read the tooltips. Sure, it may have seemed like a lot to take in at first, but I never found myself frustrated or even close to frustrated. The tooltips are crystal clear. I think everyone is so used to playing angry birds, flappy bird, and plants vs. zombies such that any time we encounter something mildly sophisticated we all have a panic attack.

And I agree with Zak0r. I'll add that there are a handful of players on this forum that are extremely helpful in explaining game mechanics or answering simple questions. People don't go around here dishing out the word "noob" to everyone they see. Everyone has been pretty awesome and helpful.

[NightReaper]

+1 what he just said

[someone_unknown]

I've played 2 or 3 times, that was enough to more or less grasp how to play. And I don't usually play games of this genre…

[Apheirox]

To finish off this thread on a more positive note I'd also like to stretch out a hand to anybody with questions. I'm confident that both I and quite a few posters here have sufficently in-depth game knowledge that we'll be able to answer virtually any and all questions you might have.

[Darkeus]

Well heck, I have a question. What is a good starting strategy? I am getting my butt stomped in by Aliens and I am not really getting when the local fauna is about to get "Game Over Man!" hostile.

[boulugre]

Well heck, I have a question. What is a good starting strategy? I am getting my butt stomped in by Aliens and I am not really getting when the local fauna is about to get "Game Over Man!" hostile.

Ok first thing to keep in mind is that Pandora growth model do not behave like a classic 4X game, so some automatism from other 4x has to be forgotten. The most important factor to remember is that population growth is fixed, meaning that your pop will grow the same size whatever number of city you have planted. So early city spam will not help you getting a bigger empire in the end, only conquest will achieve that. ( and more marginally growth building and clone ops)

This means you do not want to plant a lot of cities at the start of the game, you are just spreading your resource thin and making your job at defending against alien more difficult.

The 'classic' approach to defeat alien is to turtle within you first city borders on the following path

Research path : Mineral building 1st tier > Food building 1st tier > flamer upgrade for infantry > Tank ( The exact order in which you grab this depend on the tech tree you get, grabing an armor upgrade on the way helps too).

Production Path : Former (not mandatory, depends on your gaming style) > Mineral building > farming building > 2 to 4 flamer infantry > 3 to 4 tanks (equipped with +% vs biological units)

Depending on the alien setting you are playing on, the alien agression will start somewhere during this period. Your goal is to have at least 2 or 3 flamer infantry ready in your city when it starts. With them you will be able to hold ( strenght 8 alien only attack later, you should have tank up by the time) your first city. Preserve your unit, let them heal once they are damaged by a fight and wait your tanks. Once you have a small pack of 2 to 4 tanks, create a raiding party with them ( I usually leave one tank behind to defend my capital in case a strenght 8 unit attacks me at that time) and head for the closest alien hive around your city and clear them one by one. Take the time to heal your stack between 2 hive if necessary.

If you can get artillery easily on your tech tree, don't hesitate pumping out a couple, they will make taking out hives waaaay more quicker and will also help to kill the big aliens.

Once you started cleaning hives you can think of pumping out 1 or 2 settler (colonization fervor is a nice upgrade to build at that stage) and start expanding your empire, but make sure you escort them and then defend new cities with 1 tank and one inf at all time (while keeping some defense up in your capital)

Proceeding this way you should quickly handle the alien threat, end up with a small experienced army to defend against an AI faction if you face an early war and will also receive a lot of cash from the hives that ou can use to quickly build up your new cities.

To conclude, please notice that this tactic needs to be adapted if you are playing with the latest patch, as the former crawler change quite a lot of things in the development of your economy but I haven't figured out an optimal strategy yet

Hope this will help!

[mrowka]

Well alien agression for no tree lovers is in 2110, this is for no + aggresion state. You get + to aggresion by building cities, features(like farms) or destroying hives.
So production path should look like you start with former, and set it in mineral harvest, since if you start to build features you will need extra defence so you should start with xenobilogy, flamethrowe,armor and defence addon. Food and mineral buildings save for last, since you will need troops to defend that features.
Xenobioogy if you build it lowers the aggresion you gain so insted of +1 point for building a farm you get 0.75, which in longer scale allows you to build more features, or destroy more hives.

[Darkeus]

Thanks for the replies! So what I am gathering is that instead of scouting out areas and getting ready for expansion pushes (I am not a colony rush player anyway. That is why I am really good with Ethiopia in Civ 5. I am always the smaller empire. )
I should be building up military. Basically, we are invaders on a hostile planet and I need to be acting that way. Establishing a colony city, establishing defenses and a perimeter and researching weapons to deal with the alien threat.

Cool, but this leads to my other problem that was mentioned in the post by boulugre. The population growth. Right, population growth is fixed. So what always prompts me to be ready to build another colony is overcrowding and unrest. How do you go about avoiding the habitat limit?

[mrowka]

Since ruins can provide you with gold/research/promotions, it helps alot at start but its not worth to loose units so its better to get them back before alien agression.
If you can establish city on a realtivley good food ground, just build habitats around it,this will lead colonist from overcrowded city to city with habitats and will incerase morale in thouse cities since ther is a pentaly for overcroding. And leater habitat cities are the most overpowered cities alteast atm, since they grow fast have extra workers and can be instatly respeced.

[Zak0r]

Boulugres post is very good. I play a very similar strategy so I endorse his one. However, I would add one hint and one additional strategic element.

Firstly, the right moment for expansion is very easy to determine. You should be expanding when you are 1 pop away from your habitat limit in your capital (and don't have any tech in range to extend it in the near future). If you plant your new city you can also lower the pop-pressure in your bigger cities by temporarily setting taxes to 0 in the new city. This way the local moral jumps up by 5 and you get more migration from the big cities. 1 pop doesn't generate much credits anyway so you don't loose much and the moral also raises your productivity there so you'll get the first resource building faster to fully utilize the local bonus tile if you can't buy it right away.

Secondly, for Single Player i would strongly encourage you to catch one or two spitters very early. You only need to build one good unit with the pheromone pod and the other pod(s) can be placed on your formers to extend your alien unit limit. Having a spitter early makes defense and taking out hives so much easier because bombing hives drives the aliens out where they don't get the 100% bonus from the hive+queen. Also you can steamroll even very hard AI factions with a few tanks and 1-2 spitters very early. Unfortunately this is not very useful in MP because human players usually focus on getting artillery too and spitters are killed instantly when being bombed.