Annihilated in galactic war now have to restart? WTF?

Been playing for about 8 hours on a galactic war. I've just been blown up. Now I can't replay I have to restart right from the beginning? WTF? Is this right? How do I retry the failed mission?

You don't. Galactic War is basically a rougelite.

8 hours without crashing? what madness is this!?!

What's a rougelite?

Well, whatever. That has to be just about the most retarded decision for an otherwise awesome game. No point playing single player any more then.

The point of GW is to make the best out of what you get along the journey (i.e. technology). This can be fun, this can be challenging, but it can also be unfair. It either works, or you're going to get destroyed and start anew. That's the very essence of roguelikes (from the game "Rogue", which had random levels, permadeath and a thousand reasons to play it again and again and again ...).

Since PA isn't going to see a campaign in the usual sense of the word and skirmishes vs. AI aren't exactly the epitome of single player, we have Galactic War. Which is pretty cool - certainly nothing for the modern day digital Napoleons and Rommels, but enough for everyone who wants a quick match every now and then with some sense of challenge involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

They should make it so when you play on the default difficulty setting you can replay from your last successful mission, and make it obvious that if you choose a harder difficulty level that you'll have to replay from the beginning. I've never played a game that autosaves that doesn't let me restart when I die without that warning.

Like in batman by default you get autosaves and restarts from checkpoints, then you can play again with harder enemies, and finally it goes to 'insane' mode where you won't restart. But they make that very clear. Also all C & Cs and other games don't force you to restart.

I think it's stupid and just makes it pointless for new players. The first 11 missions were really easy, then on the last one I played against a boss (but I didn't know what the little flag was), got killed somehow and then I couldn't replay. Just doesn't make any sense.

Once upon a time it was the default to start from the very beginning upon defeat. Before the days of autosaves and quickload. Yeah, you didn't know Galactic War worked liked that, and now you're frustrated. And I agree that - perhaps - Uber could add a small description that annihilation is final, that just like for your AI opponents, there is no second chance.

But apart from that, I'd be happy if GW stayed the way it is. Roguelikes have a fascination of their own - once you get hooked, you always want to be a bit better, faster, stronger, more efficient. In a different genre, The Binding of Isaac is an excellent example for a game where you'll keep dieing, but will always want to continue.

I actually think having restart from last mission tied to difficulty is a very very sensible idea +1 to op on that. Maybe offer a 'training' mode that offers that if they don't want to make it default.....

You forgot harder*

"Harder, better, faster, stronger"

I'm sorry I just read that and yeah.

I must have missed that time. C&C 1 always let you restart. OK, you had to save it yourself, but if autosaves hadn't been in PA I'd have done that myself.

I'm only frustrated because the difficulty rocketed up and to try again I probably have to put in 5 or 6 more hours to get back to a simlar point. I'm a casual gamer and have better things to do with my life than just keep wasting time getting to the point where the game becomes a challenge, only to lose. I just want to play my way through a campaign at my own pace, replaying when I die so I can get better.

There were some impossible NES games.

It's a bit like FTL. Each run is it's own unique adventure, where your decisions count.

And permadeath gives it it's uniqueness. Because if you know you're gonna die and will have to start over, your mindset and line of thinking will change. Suddenly your decisions have a heavier consequence than a few minutes of inconvenience. It gives your actions more weight.

I like it as a concept in GW. There are details I'd change, like making the concept obvious in-game, but the general idea I like.

A non-iron man mode would be cool for the time that you kinda just want to end a GW, but without the prestige.

Would also be awesome in normal GW to pick up extra lives.....I mean commanders, in case of a loss.

Yeah. the difficulty rockets up stupidly, especially on small galactic wars. Essentually, check the AI count (how many you're playing against, for a rough estimation of difficulty, which is normally 1 (a bit too easy) or 2 (almost impossible). If you're lucky and get some sub-commanders, it helps out a lot (a bit too much).

The reason people find roguelikes fun, is even though they restart, things don't turn out the same way as before. You arent "trying to get back where you were", rather, you are playing a new game, different upgrades, different occurances.

Difficulty rockets are a problem atm, I try to comment as much as I can on galactic war, because it really could be epic if they improved it.

Basically. You play accepting that win or lose is a possibility and in the event of lose you just restart and beat the easy ones again hoping that you have more steam to burn onto the harder late game ones.

ALSO, YOU CAN REPLAY A LOSS IN GW. It is a simple exploit, you ALT-F4 your game at the very least before the endgame stat screen appears. Even after your commander explodes at least a few seconds anyway. If your game closes before the match end is officially taken into account by the game itself, when you reload PA you will find it left at the GW map of that fight and you just need to replay the fight and actually win.

I did this in my play of Absurd GW.

As Popededi alluded to FTL is as frustrating as hell, took me countless failures to get to and defeat the last boss but the threat (reality) of 'death is final' made my final victory one of the best gaming experiences in terms of feeling like I'd achieved something in a long time.

While GW obviously still needs some work done on it the 'death is final' scenario adds to the tension and means that every decision you make is important. The riskier the road the greater the profit.

I agree that GW should have a note in it's description to inform players that if they die they have to start from scratch.

I'm pretty sure the intro video in GW states something like "Annihilation is final"