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FortressCraft Evolved

anvi

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Anyone have this game?

It looks amazing. It is like Factorio, but in first person and using a blocks world like Minecraft, but also it has Tower Defense for combat. So you have to build a factory and gather resources, build towers, and then stuff attacks and blows up your shit including chunks of the world itself etc..

I am tempted to buy it but not sure if it is worth my time. I liked Factorio but found it lacking and a bit shallow. The building is fun while it lasts but once I run out of stuff to research, I run out of motivation to play. I am hoping this game might be similar but with more stuff to do.
 

Norfleet

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Shallow is what happens when you buy into a thing that isn't actually complete, and thus there is no ultimate end goal beyond the construction of additional pylons.
 

anvi

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Yeah, but that's modern gaming, I don't pay for anything that isn't finished and good but millions of others do unfortunately. Factorio has 2 more patches planned and the last one will be release version, out even those patches look really lacking. I checked out FortressCraft and it doesn't look that much better. It feels like playing Minecraft, first person, digging holes and collecting all the blocks, but you then get to build a network of factory gear with the materials. So it is good in that way. But the tower defence aspect looks like it was really over stated. Enemies attack eventually but they just seem to be some weak things that you can easily shoot manually, or you build a tower and it rips them apart. Promising game though but it only has 1 dev so may never get to where I would want it.
 

anvi

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Wow this game is better than I expected! It is basically Factorio and Minecraft combined. You search for resources all over the world and then set up mines on them and have to power the mines with coal or electricity, and then you transport the materials to a forge etc. You can set a miner on a patch of coal, then have it send the coal to a storage crate but some of it back to a hopper that powers an electric engine to give you endless coal.

But there is way more stuff to research than Factorio so this is a really long term game. I put something like 15 hours in so far and still only scratching the very early surface. There are a lot more resources, for example I started with coal, tin, copper, and iron, but I also needed lithium for more advanced stuff like battery packs, and that is really deep underground. So I had to build a huge mine tunnel, far deeper than you ever go in minecraft, and then I had to build down there which requires setting up a power network etc. It is really addictive, I loved the way Minecraft looked and felt but I always got super bored because there was no purpose to building anything. This game has lots of purpose, you have a huge research tree to work through and everything you want to make, requires components, and getting those requires expanding your factory network far and wide.

I haven't even started with the combat yet. There is an item you can build called a Threat Scanner, and once you build that it will trigger the attacks which are like Factorio, not too deadly but you can't ignore them. I want to do that but I wanted to get the basics down first and it has taken me a long time to figure everything out and get a basic base setup. I loved Factorio but only until the research was done and then I got instantly bored. This game is the same kind of experience but has a lot more length to it. I think it is maybe more satisfying too because you are IN the world, in first person, so you everything you build up close and personal. Also it isn't 2d, some veins of metals are on the surface but lots of stuff requires digging, and you need to make serious mine shafts for that. The bottom of the world is many times deeper than Minecraft goes.

Also you get a grappling hook which is a big part of the game, and flying around with that is so satisfying... It is an essential way to travel up your deep mine shafts and over long distances, but it is also really fun. So glad I heard about this game, it seems like hardly anyone knows about it.
 

anvi

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This game has destroyed my life in the same way I expect crack coated heroin would.
 

Norfleet

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Are you talking to yourself? How much did they pay you for saying that? I notice you went from an unbiased, sane review to some kind of effusive drooling shill.
 

anvi

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Loving a game makes you a shill? WAT.

I just ended up buying the game and have put in a crazy number of hours because it is so addictive, and so good.
 

odrzut

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I played this for 2 days a few months ago, was fun, but there was no threat (the enemies are laughably easy and seem to only attack when you're already set up).

But yeah the naturally arising 3d factorio-like puzzles (where to put that transmission belt to get this here) are fun. Just needs some goals in game besides "build X to research and build Y, etc".
 

anvi

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The threat becomes huge later on. You get a loooong time of just little wasps that are really easy to kill, but I think they did that deliberately so you can focus on finding all the resources you need and setting up supply lines. You can just put 1 laser tower in each corner of your base and then go away harvesting stuff and not need to return. But after a while... crazy shit happens. You get huge enemies that start flying in and whoop you, and sometimes there are bosses too. There is also a thing called a Hivemind which creates this hard resin stuff which you can't destroy until later in the game. The Hivemind surrounds itself in this hard resin and then starts extending it outwards... growing bigger and bigger. If it gets to your base you are in deep trouble. I have a Hivemind right near my base but luckily I noticed in time so I have started building stuff to hold it off and eventually I'll be able to fight back, but I need to build more power first.

But yeah, it is all about building stuff, figuring out the logistics of it all, and expanding so you can afford to research for better gear which you need for the late game. Maybe it isn't for everyone but for me it is one of the best things I've ever played. I haven't been this hooked on a game for 20 years. It is crazy.

I also feel so happy that what pissed me off in gaming recently has been basically fixed by this game. I used to get so mad reading about Minecraft and hearing about people who love it and all the hype it gets, and the billions of dollars that fat fuck made from it, when really it is just 3d lego and very little actual gameplay. I always assumed it would develop into something great eventually but it never did. Mods helped but there is still nothing like what I wanted. This game nails that for me, I enjoy building bigger and bigger scope stuff, but my motivation always dies after an hour if there is no incentive. But this game gives so much incentive, you have to build to grow, and you have to grow to survive.

Also, the grappling hook was really cool but now I have a jetpack which is amazing!
 

anvi

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Killed my first Hivemind tonight! I had one right next to my base and it was putting my whole base at risk so I had to deal with it. There are lasers you can build to slowly eat away at the resin it spreads out into the world, but it was taking forever so I started making charged explosives for the first time. They are really dangerous because if you accidentally set one off in your base it would wipe out your base and it could be game over after spending 70+ hours... So I was super careful. A few glorious explosions later and the Hivemind was dead. It feels good, I was stressed about that next to my base and it was using a lot of power to hold it off.

There is another one not too far away but it is no danger I think, but I will take it out sometime. But my next job is to fight the Overlords.
 

anvi

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I'm in the end game now and it is starting to get a bit grindy and tedious. I am still enjoying it but there are issues with it. The game has a lot of building up to a certain point, but then it just stops and you go day after day without really building much. Also you don't get to build an actual fortress, it is just a factory with some defense towers in the corners. It is basically just Factorio in 3d which is cool, but I would have liked there to be more actual building of stuff. They should let you shape the path of the enemies with walls and towers like a real tower defense, and it would be good to have a 'home' rather than just a factory that you work in endlessly. Late game the enemies are huge and tough to kill so I had to build a second type of tower, the rocket tower. But it isn't fun because you just build a few of the towers and then you go away to do stuff and never really see it again.

The end game gets quite grindy, the last few researches require tons of resources. The game was fun at first when you travel around searching for resource patches and then building a supply line to them and automating it all. But you do it for tin, then copper, then iron, then lithium, then nickle, then gold, then platinum, then biomass, and now it wants me to do it for 2 more new resources and I can't really be bothered. Part of the problem is that the old resource patches started drying up so I have to rebuild all of those all over again. But also the harvesting of resin is really tedious and burned me out. The problem is you have to build a set of power batteries, link them to your base so they charge up, and then build the resin harvesting stuff on them, and then build a supply line to bring back the resin they harvest. But they clear an area in about 30 minutes to an hour, and then you need to move your whole setup forward 20 feet and rebuild it again, and repeat 100 times to get rid of all the resin. It is a pain.

Still a great game and so memorable for me, but is unravelling a bit near the end. Also I bought the DLC/expansion which I regret getting because I think just playing the base game would be best. I am at the end of that part now and all I have left to do is build an orbital laser and use it to kill 3 Overlords which would be pretty boring and easy because you don't get to fight them yourself, you just aim the laser and shoot. But it would be an ending to a fun experience. But the DLC adds 2 more resources which are far deeper and some new super grindy researches to go with it, and I think that would just really boring and drag the experience out. But still, I hate most games and this gave me a super fun 80 something hours which makes it amazing.
 

Perkel

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Tried it. Runs like total ass on my rig. like 10 fps i5-3470+HD7970
 

anvi

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I think it is cpu heavy. But either way it has serious optimisation problems. I think the only way you can make it work is to press F9 and it shows small regions. You need to only put a small amount of things in each of those regions. So you have to really spread your base out far and wide. If you do that you can have a massive base with minimal frame rate hit. Originally I built everything compacted into a small area and it brought my uber PC to its knees.

Also even with that regions trick, you also need to hardly ever use the power batteries. They kill fps more than anything else. When you do have to use them, build them inside a wall or underground or anywhere out of sight, because they fuck the fps. The suggested way of doing it is to build the mk4 or 5 version of batteries, and build them beyond the horizon so they don't even load into memory when you are at your base. Then just have lasers linking them all up over distance.

It sounds nuts but I went into multiplayer and looked at peoples worlds and they were amazing and ran really smooth, and these are the tricks they used. They had far more complex bases than me yet it ran smooth.
 

anvi

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Another pro tip for this game is to just use whatever mods you want, and then if you want to get the achievements to unlock other game modes, you can just remove the mods at the end, and it gives all the achievements. I did it to unlock the rush mode which is a really fun mode.
 

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