Who has won Galactic War on Absurd difficulty?

Attempting again, I want to try some of Trialq's tricks.

Is it me, or do large systems produce 2-3 enemy commanders per single match on absurd, even on the very first match?

I just had 4 games where the first match of the GW was 2-3 enemies on the very first match together at same time. That IS absurd...

It partly depends on distance from your start. If you're playing uber size and your first match is quite a ways from your start, you could end up with 3 enemies.

That is just painful to watch. I look forwards to when these issues get fixed, either by the developers, or by the modding community.

The lower levels will ramp up the difficulty as you go, but absurd just throws everything it has at you right from the start. It's probably going to get easier the farther you get because you will collect better techs. I can't imagine trying to beat all the faction leaders like this though.

Id give it a shot, but my net prevents me from playing PA atm. So Ill give it a shot when the offline GW is released

thats the thing, 5 games in, I still have 3 tech slots. The only reason I am still in, is I got incredibly lucky with tank armor, tank damage, and tank upgrade, all stacked together.

and then you spawn on a water planet right? xP

I find it amusing that you guys are expecting things to be fair and easy on something called 'absurd difficulty'.
Did you expect it to be a cake walk?
Maybe you are the mouse in the snake pit, wouldn't that be absurd?

We love the challenge. We're not atually complaining about it being too hard; we're just crying because we aren't good enough.

My only complaint atm is that almost all of my games devolve into 5-10 minutes of chasing the enemy commander around. Though that's partially due to the fact that I never get vehicle speed.

I think I used just about every synonym for the difficulty descriptor in the English language while streaming

I feel it is worth pointing out that there is nothing wrong with an extremely difficult game-mode. However, creating an extremely difficult game mode that is fair is far trickier. Although I don't like parroting everything that extra-creditz says, I think that they do a far better job than I could on describing when a difficult game is fun:

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As pointed out in the video, the single biggest test of whether a difficult game is fun, even thought player looses a lot is "do they loose the game, but then immediately want to have another go?". My own experiences, along with TheWrongCat's video suggest that Galactic war is not there yet, although I hope it will be in the future.

I would love to know, without going into the game files which tempts me each loss, what the exact parameters for it are. Like, I understand food is less common in Castlevania games on harder difficulties, but what's the change in drop percent? Or in this case, my specific question is, what are the drop rates for absurd tech? Because I got commander full upgrade tech, speeding him up and damaging him, but I get the STRONG notion that tech slots are either 5%, lower, or turned off on absurd. Which, knowing that, would satisfy me, I would understand it is a hardship.

However, this absurd AI really quizzes and tests the player ability. I do accept that as fact. That is great too, it really adds longevity and value to the game, knowing the AI can be made strong enough to be viable on a rainy ol' boring day at home. Job well done Uber Team.

So, I beat another faction leader. I got REALLY terrible spawns, and that has convinced me to do "retries" on my game (starting over from last won match and keeping that damn tank upgrade tech I held onto). I have videos to show progress. I am especially proud of my last game's portrayl of skill on my behalf.

I concede that the game's typical rules are "annihilation is final", so this would not constitute a correct victory on absurd difficulty. I submit it nonetheless. Game 11.5 (called 11.5 because 11th attempt 5th match) is at the very least a terrific demonstration of average player strategy to accomplish a victory.

Give or take. I have absolutely no economy multipliers, havent found or had slots for them. I have tank damage multipliers. You would need 3 factories for every 1 of mine with eco multipliers, and tanks may die faster but just throw even more at the enemy, if you were to tweak my strategy in-game.

I am not a terrific player either, so it is a realistic expectation of what an average not-tournament player can do. I shoulda raided more, but I felt if I sacrificed any of my precious early units I wouldn't be able to slap an enemy should I run into one on better circumstances, and that is technically a good thing because 10 tanks pushed through a teleporter sniped an enemy commander on a distant planet and keeping those tanks stowed away to do that was a strategy-turned-success on my behalf.

Man this is thrilling!

In the Galactic War the difficulty AI numbers start low and grow higher as the number of links from your starting point increase. Those AI numbers don't increase and are always set to the highest values in Absurd. This includes how much econ restriction they get, how they manage their economy, how they micro their units, etc.

The more links from the starting system you get the higher chance you have of facing more than one AI on each non-boss planet. In Absurd there is always one additional AI to face.

I'm very happy with the Galactic War. I will get at least one more tuning pass on it before we hit 1.0.

You are at least going to do something about the unwinnable scenario problems and how random slot unlocks lead to a difficulty sawtooth though right?

Well hopefully with game balancing, the actual changes for the GW mode should be rather minimal.

I still think the metagame needs a bit more additional depth. It's brilliant for a first pass and proof of concept, but it needs more functionality to make it more than a funkier looking version of the skirmish mode.

Think of how a similar SP metagame was done in Wargame: Airland battle. It's actually quite deep for something that's meant to move you between the battles of the actual game.

I think it needs a lot more work than just "one more tuning". The whole tech and loadout idea is nice, but implementation kinda pushes it in the wrong direction.

Right now loadout sets initial limitation with bare bones functionality and tech is used in attempt to make it work by adding power in a few places. You don't really experiment with different units and strategies, you are just searching for stuff that is actually necessary (but not included) and then for ways to make it stronger. This is not really interesting, it doesn't give you a good variety of strategies to work with within a single playthrough. And it's not short enough to justify keeping that variety for multiple ones.

Initial loadouts should be a little more capable and varied. At least the first one - then you can add more stuff that makes stuff hard, but interesting. It sucks to fight for oceans with no naval and for moons with no orbital (or halleys). And techs should make your army - and with it your strategy - different and not just stronger. Start with giving a player all basic factories, but only one battle unit in each. Then add more, open individual units, or buff and nerf (don't be afraid of doing that) individual units in interesting ways, replace one unit with other, change prices, change which units are basic and which are advanced. It should keep you inventing and exploring, opening more possibilities as you go. Current version rewards players for finding tech for a single strategy that works and then finding tech that makes it stronger. Make players change their strategies instead and reward them for doing so.

And the egg. You seem to scrap this concept entirely, and for the core game (which is multiplayer and individual skirmishes - fair and "symmetrical" stuff) it is really not needed, but it would fit the Galactic War perfectly as a specified tech slot. You can have so much interesting gimmicks and variety with it. This egg is a big storage, this egg produces resources, this egg is a nanolathe tower that repairs and assists in a limited raduis, this egg is a little factory that can only build one unit type, this egg has a couple of air fabbers in it, this egg has some other units, this egg is a tactical missile launcher. And when you get sub-commanders, you can customize their eggs too. That would be cool.

And also the maps. I'm sick of "a planet with a moon". I know you want boss battles to stand out, but you shouldn't do that by making everything else bland and monotonous. Can we have actually randomized systems?