long5hot

I viewed this with interest and anticipation when it first came out. It promised at long last to deliver a Star Wars based dogfighting game, with potential to be expanded into so much more. However, for me it failed to hit the mark and quickly saw me delete SWTOR from my hard drive. The rest of SWTOR held no interest for me, I'd only downloaded it for this expansion. So why was I so disappointed? The answer is simple. It employs a basic server-side model. Hence the game will only work for you if your ping is very low - sub 100 at a minimum, preferably sub 50. I live in Australia, the servers were in the US, and my ping was 250 at least. The server-side model meant that I'd tell my plane to change course, and half a second later it would do so. I'd tell my guns to fire, half second delay, they'd shoot. Because of the delay my ship as seen on the server was never exactly where I saw it, so I couldn't fly too close to the scenery or I'd collide with it. It also meant I had absolutely zero chance of ever ever hitting an enemy, and that I was easy pickings for enemies I had no hope of avoiding, because they'd shoot me down before they were even flying towards me (as I saw it). Hence, the game was unplayable. This has several possible solutions. One: I move to the USA (not going to happen). Two: They open Australian servers which are then well-populated (also not going to happen). Three: They institute a client-side model of ship positioning and hit detection, which would improve the experience immensely but leave the game wide open to hacking, or Four: they implement a form of Host State Rewind which has been done successfully in MWO and War Thunder and which makes those games playable at higher pings. If that last option was ever introduced to SWTOR then I would consider checking this out once more, but otherwise this remains on my long list of disappointing games that failed to live up to their potential.

Very enjoyable, reminiscent of table top wargaming. At the time of writing the game is in early access beta, and still needs quite a lot of work. The AI is very good, but by no means perfect - there's a few crucial gameplay mechanisms that it doesn't take advantage of that make all the difference & allow you to beat it easily once you know how. I do like how there's 9 different styles of AI, though really only the 3 hardest ones are worth playing against. That aside, the game suffers from a lack of content. It really needs to be a full Civil War campaign with dynamic paths to follow depending on battle results - not just one battle as it is now. Also the various phases of the battle have a way of ending abruptly with no warning, sometimes while the battle is just warming up. Units respond instantly with no courier system to relay orders. There's no command HQ for the general commanding the armies, and the corps HQs don't seem to make any difference to unit morale or rallying disrupted/routed units. There's no way to set formations, to limber/unlimber artillery (which by the way must be closely micromanaged as it has a mind of its own), or to detach regiments from brigades. Artillery line of sight is troublesome, often with units refusing to fire even though the LoS display indicates no problems. Multiplayer will be interesting, but the single player at the moment is only good for about 20 hours or so of playtime after which it loses interest. I hope they continue to add to this game and expand it to become the classic it has the potential to be.