Game Discussions carrier command 2

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Well... the initial reviews are trickling in:

www.rockpapershotgun.com

Carrier Command 2 review: all lost at sequel

The strategic battles of Carrier Command 2 have potential for co-op, but single player has you spinning a few two many plates for it to be really enjoyable
www.rockpapershotgun.com www.rockpapershotgun.com
culturedvultures.com

Carrier Command 2 (PC) REVIEW - Not Quite Commanding

Carrier Command 2, while not a terrible strategy game, offers frustration all round whether you're playing alone or with others.
culturedvultures.com culturedvultures.com

The TLDR version so far is: It's frustrating to play this game solo, it's "designed" to be played multi-player. :(

Unless other reviews say otherwise, I'll likely pick this game up during a Steam sale. I'm not at a stage in my life where frequently grouping up in multi-player is feasible, and I doubt that there'll ever be a time where frequently grouping up to play a game is desirable.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
I’m still tempted to get this if the price is around $30, solely for the VR experience (assuming it’s a good VR experience {glares at NMS} ). IIRC, the original game suffered from multi-tasking overload as well, and I spent the time between islands. But those reviews really put a damper on my enthusiasm.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Well… retail price is $49.99 on Steam currently, but until the 17th it’s on sale for $39.99.

FOMO is now in effect. Well played, MicroProse. Well played. ;)
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
I've looked at some sea-state and it looks like a more fidelious version of Stormworks kinda. I probably only need a ship and a fishing rod. Then a stormy sea and I'm good. Love it in Valheim too.
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Ah well, tbh, I was eyeing Humankind for a bit longer. CC2 is just the opportunity release I had no idea of. Humankind is due in a week. And I've been waiting an eternity for a Valheim content update. Could try Stormworks, too - I heard they put in prototype weapons. The intricate designs ppl pull off boggles my mind. My stuff looks just blocky.
 

Arioch

Arioch
£26 for me, so I pulled the trigger. After an hour with it, I’ll say this: if you’re buying it for VR, don’t bother 😅
Hot-take thoughts:
  • Performance is fine on my 3070ti, everything defaulted to Ultra
  • World-scale was hugely off, Quest 2 controllers looked dinky and the bridge-station chairs looked like toddler sized things, so I increased to 125% - looks better but controller images now offset to my wrists
  • Awful, awful, awful teleport only
  • No controls prompts at all
  • Someone need to take the Devs and show them any other VR game and say, “Do you see? Do you see? Dooooo you seeeeeee?” because honestly the controls (when you can figure them out) are that terrible 😅
When the Devs said, “don’t worry, crossplay with the flatscreen game will be possible, it’s literally the same game” - they weren’t kidding. The VR controllers are used like a mouse. Considering there’s only a few buttons, a pair of sticks, and some grip triggers - I’ve spent far too long pressing everything in some situations trying to do what the game is asking me to do - I accidentally managed one required action by double pressing a button while looking at a target (yup, the deck gun is head-aimed 😬). When it got to the stage of trying to set waypoints for the amphibious vehicles, I quit in frustration.

For a laugh (and because the download is only just over 100MB) I installed it on my decade-old laptop, with its mighty GT 630m graphics 😁 And you know what? It plays fine, and moving around is much more fun in flatscreen.

This may be the first VR/flat game that I prefer in flat 😂
 

jojon

J
Arioch said:
The VR controllers are used like a mouse.
Click to expand...
I did react with an: "... Ummmm...", when the VR functionality was announced with the word: "diegetic" featuring prominently in the blurb, but the trailer showing all interaction happening by laser pointer. :p
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
@Arioch

Out of idle curiosity, how's the single player version in your opinion? I was so looking forward to an updated version of the original, that I reinstalled Gaea Mission, and foolishly started the story campaign. It has not aged well…
 

Arioch

Arioch
Darkfyre99 said:
@Arioch

Out of idle curiosity, how's the single player version in your opinion? I was so looking forward to an updated version of the original, that I reinstalled Gaea Mission, and foolishly started the story campaign. It has not aged well…
Click to expand...
If you’re playing Gaea Mission, ensure you’ve got Deadly Islands installed and don’t bother with the campaign - and make sure you check out all the DI settings, I managed to virtually cure the Walrus’ path finding issues by setting an increased route sample rate, for example.

As for CC2 single player, there are only a few stations to use and I reckon if you’re used to flight sims then you’ll not have many issues - the problems come from the keys required to access everything and the way the control scheme is set. I’d be happy if I could walk up to a station, left click a few things and then right click myself away from the station focus. As it stands, you’ve got to repeatedly press ESC to back out which I find annoying.

There seems to be needlessly convoluted controls to do simple things, and different controls for doing similar things in different settings (eg. you can use mouse wheel for zooming on display screens, but you need to use “z” when using a vehicle weapon).

I’ve only played a couple of short sessions but I can see a really good game in there trying to emerge from its crap-controls-cacoon 😅 I’ve just taken a snow-bound island in the midst of a lightning storm that rendered my ship guns inoperative and having to bring my carrier closer to shore because the sea-swell was restricting my vehicle launches. I could see these changing weather states on my ship sensors but blithely sailed into them anyway - I like how this mixed up my initial normal gameplay of Naval Gun Support everything to smithereens from kilometres away 😁

I think the weakness in the controls becomes apparent in Single Player - if you were in a Multi session then I suppose you’d only be concentrating on one set of controls.

My advice is to wait and see what the Devs are going to do next - feedback on Steam seems pretty unanimous regarding controls (and the rubbish VR!) 👍
 

Arioch

Arioch
Heartening news on the VR front:

“Dear players,

Thank you for all the feedback on Carrier Command 2 and particularly the VR version.

Player feedback has been clear, and the necessary changes will be made to get the VR version to the required level of quality.

We are carefully listening to player feedback and are planning the following changes based on what players have told us:

  • We will add a VR settings section for specific VR options.
  • We will add continuous movement / locomotion movement mode options.
  • We will add an option to not tilt or offset the camera when interacting with a screen.
  • We will add a motion smoothing option.
  • We will add controller binding information to tell players what the controller bindings are for their controller type.
  • We will add options for selecting the position in which the tablet appears.
  • We will add a VR scale slider to adjust the world scale.
  • We will investigate improving gimbal camera interactions.
  • We will investigate adding grab / touch interactions for wheel / throttle / switches.
  • We will investigate interacting with screens without having to enter a seat.
  • We will fix the issue pasting invite codes.
  • We will fix the issue joining non-vr multiplayer games.
  • We will fix the tutorial issue.
  • We will fix the orientation issue for on-screen labels.
  • We will fix the rendering issue when changing the VR render scale in SteamVR settings.
  • We will fix subtitles rendering in a narrow column.”
Sounds good to me!
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
I dipped in. Only played SP.
Performance was good. No crashes.
Gameplay is not outright bad but there are some stuff that are like bullcrap:
1) You don't know what all the equipment does.
2) Like in Gaea Mission you unlock stuff by conquering islands. - However, you don't know what it will be and only the ordnance islands give ammo blueprints which you will use in guns the turret islands give you BPs of. See where this is going? Yeah, 1st PT had me unlock ship gun ammo. 6 restarts later and I never unlocked this ammo again. You start out with ship guns. Also never unlocked the guided missiles. Nollocks.
3) You start with some basic stuff. The IR missiles are good and all. Then you run dry and didn't unlock the ordnance BP. Yeah, recurring theme.
4) Stuff takes long. No time dilation. Spollocks. But the plane to hangar takes even longer. Jesus Lord, it takes so long to launch a drone. I made 4 ship flights in CC1 and went for the enemy carrier in half the time it takes to cycle a drone on station in CC2.
5) Enemy respawn for some reason in the middle of an island. It's Anno putyearnamehere again. Even when you just clear some - then you wonder where all the blips suddenly came from.
6) Clunky keyboard controls. I'd prefer mouse controls. Just like in CC1, lol. AI isn't so good when doing the orders. You lose your planes and walruses in no time and then you can't reproduce them because - you guessed it - you dint have the BP. Shollocks.

I'd mod the crap out of it. First address the stupid unlock system. I don't waste several hours playing RNG lottery in order to plan my strategic campaigns. Shouldn't be that hard to adress. In the meantime I maybe start custom campaigns with more islands unlocked - they also unlock tech. So I restart until I can at least fabricate torpedoes. Yeah, that is unlockable ordnance too. Just like bombs, Mantas, Walruses. The only stuff you can produce is like 20mm peahot and virus thingens. The virus thingen recharges though and isn't spent like in CC1.
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
"Hey I just unlocked this sonar thingoprojector! Cool, I wonder what it does - gonna try it out in my next attack, yay."

'Finds out it needs ammo that isn't unlocked*

Kinda my underlying experience with the game. Be it 100mm, 120mm. Battle cannons, artillery. The game lures with options and variety and then goes anal in dishing it out to the play. It's nickel and diming gameplay in good old ED tradition.
 
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