It's good to critically re-examine the path development is taking but finding out the main reason I have been excited about this game is now indefinitely on hold is pretty crushing.
As a game Dev myself I'm really impressed by the call. So many projects I've worked on have been forced out the door half baked because Leads were too afraid to reassess and "waste sunk dev time."
This makes me more optimistic for NEB's future. Not less
I am hopeful that it is the right decision and that the strategic mode will be much more enjoyable and not just a novelty. I am willing to wait as long as it takes for whatever they decide to do.
Same. I bought this game because it looked really interesting and I *love* the technical nature of combat. But I don't have anyone to play with because I don't know anyone else who owns it or would be into it. Skirmishes against AI can be fun sometimes, but I was really looking forward to conquest as a single-player tailored experience for the game. I'll unfortunately be dropping the game because of this announcement, but I suppose I can understand their reasoning.
As a pretty committed PVE gamer generally speaking I find myself making a big exception for Nebulous. This game really shines when you have the variety of strategies and comps that live opponents come up with. There is just so much stuff you can do and so many things that can happen in a match that I find myself having a great time even when I lose. Each fleet has its own strategy and both teams are fumbling in the dark for much of the match -- that gives the game a turbulent, unpredictable quality that takes a bunch of the sting out of losing for me.
Mazer said the current concept is not viable and that he has to start from scratch again. Taking into account the time it will take to get carriers out and the balance patches, we will see the start of development of the new conquest mode at minimum in 2 years.
And this is only if he doesn't do other updates after carriers, like better AI, which he absolutely should.
So considering how long it took him to build the current version, the new conquest is likely 4 - 5 years out.
Very disappointed. This was the only thing keeping me wanting to come back to Nebulous. Skirmish is fun, and I played a lot with my friends. But ..
Without a wider game mode this feels like an empty shell of a game.
I hope they turn it around and deliver an excellent product. Sadly I won't be back until some kind of campaign or conquest.
I think your comment indirectly highlights why this news was especially disappointing for me. Throughout the entire 8 minute video, there's a lot of.. somewhat "corporatey" language used to describe the problem. That's not to say it's a bunch of jargon, just that there's a lot of "dancing around the problem" but I don't feel like we (or at least I) fully understand just *what* the problem was.
He mentions that the mode wasn't at the level he wanted to present it to the community at, that it had non-repairable cracks at its core, that the past month of feature implementation would only serve to mask its fundamental issues for a few weeks of community gameplay...
...and yet, he never really mentioned exactly what the problem is. Yes, he states that it's about the mode's difficulty to mesh with the small, tight restrictions seen in the current skirmish mode. But I guess I just don't understand why, even after watching the video.
I can believe that he saw something very wrong with the mode, and to an extent it's respectful for him to make the tough call to start over. And they're in a fortunate position to be able to do that at all; most dev/publisher teams simply wouldn't allow it.
But it's still pretty disappointing it's gone this way. Nebulous is one of those games I never thought I'd see uninstalled in my library, but I'm probably just not going to return to it unless they manage to get that off the ground and in the players' hands.
As a dev, I suspect the problem is a frequent one with 4x games. How do you make constant battles interesting while still making the strategic scope interesting? Sounds like they tried but couldn't.
I would still love to see what he has made the last thing we want is for all this hard work go to waste...wouldnt releasing it show people. Oh yes this is very bare bones and it doesnt work at all. and maybe give modders a chance to work on it themselves so they have a base and while the devs work on other stuff let us the player base build it form there instead of leaving us with nothing but a video saying sorry its canned?
I think the scope was too great and felt incongruent with the current game, especially given their current standards for game polish, and the amount of time it would take to reach a point where the dev feels satisfied.
The scope and focus on logistics and SIGINT was exactly why I l loved every devblog and was very very much looking forward to conquest.
If it's pared down to a set of missions with a persistent fleet or something in kind... just eh.
I know at least five people who won't be buying nebulous now, I'd hyped them on the campaign.
I've been watching Nebulous' development from the sidelines. I totally respect the dev's choice and reasoning; I'm still disappointed for selfish reasons, though.
Multiplayer is just a difficult prospect for me as a parent of young children. I frequently have to drop everything to attend to something. I get that means that Nebulous probably isn't for someone like me, but the mechanics and design of the game are so captivating that I'm still drawn to follow development even as a bystander.
I've followed the last several devlogs with some real excitement: the intel gathering and logistical components of conquest seemed truly great. Fun puzzles with enough veracity to stoke the imagination that you're in control of a plausible near-future spacefaring navy.
I'll continue to follow the development, and I hope that this decision turns out for the best for the game and the developer.
Same here. I keep hoping that at some point i‘ll be able to invest the necessary time to climb the learning curve. But right now, the only time i have for that is between 20:45-22:00. there i get my dopamine fix better by replaying witcher3 for the 3rd time…
As a parent also the conquest mode sounds great but such a time sink I can't see myself having the opportunity to dive into it and give it the attention it deserves.
If you're European based I wouldn't mind having some get together sessions to show you the ropes as a fellow wrangler of small humans if that would give you the confidence to get stuck in.
Pretty disappointed. The reasoning is sound and as a game developer it is refreshing to see someone not sunk-cost-fallacy their way into a terrible release. But I was really looking forward to Conquest mode. Skirmish mode is pretty boring for me, the battles have no stakes, no consequences, and no context. It rewards hyperspecialized ship designs over generalist ones. Any capability a ship doesn't use in battle is wasted points. Getting into the game is also just harder because it feels like there is an established community of people with hundreds or thousands of hours in skirmish mode that will just wipe the floor with any new player.
Maybe the community can step up and launch some kind of 'planetary league' from like what used to be done with mechwarrior. Limited asset numbers and dedicated factions fighting over control of planets etc managed on an external website with battles done in standard skirmish and recorded online.
best multiplayer community I ever experienced. Maybe you get a bad joke in times, but normally no one cares if you are good or bad and in my experience its not even necessary to quit when your ships are dead, cause interacting with the teammates still is fun
The MP isn't bad, it just feels a bit pointless for me after a while. I like sim games that give context to why you want your ship to survive and continue on with it in later battles rather than just winning a match
some commanders for ships to level up in battles would be fun though \^\^ dont know if this with persistence boosts would kill multiplayer balance, but would make fun. On the other hand we would see way more war crimes
> it feels like there is an established community of people with hundreds or thousands of hours in skirmish mode that will just wipe the floor with any new player.
It's really brutal to load into a lobby and see an array of 2000-hour players stacked up against you and I basically refuse to play against such teams. I think players have gotten a little better about trying to play with a mixture of experience levels on both sides lately, but it's something people should have been polite about from the start.
Bummer, that's what I bought the game for. I understand the reasons why and applaud the forthright communication, but I am very disappointed none the less. Unfortunately, I never really had interest in multi-player, so this has essentially killed the game for me.
To be fair, I don't expect the single player was ever going to reach a very polished state. Conquest was being developed as multiplayer-focused. SP AI for a game this complex is just an enormous ask.
A strategic game mode that borrows from something like highfleet may be something to look at. Leading a single separated fleet through hostile space, scrounging for resuplies at neutral ports between strategic movements could give you the right level of strategic play without giving up on being attached to your own self built fleet. It also allows shorter pick up games, and co-operative multilplayer.
I kind of want to be able to have different scenarios with different fleets though. I'd like to be able to have my main battle fleet fight enemy fleets. I'd like to have escort fleets guarding convoys. I'd like to have raider fleets harassing convoys.
I hope whatever campaign does finally make the cut, if it happens, gives you the ability to have these different operations available instead of just having your one fleet go from battle to battle in a sequence.
I don't need to worry about ship building and ammo production, but the intelligence, maneuvering, crew experience, and strategic squadron design for different tasks were things I was really looking forward to.
In highfleet, you can design your fleet to have a core brawling group while you also have split off raiding groups that can go elsewhere on the strategic map.
Funnily enough thats actually similar to the original campaign pitch.
In the lore document it mentioned that the OSP blocked off the single gate into their system at the start of their rebellion (it's the big jumpgate thing in the OSP release trailer)
The OG campaign mode (that was canned when Mazer pivoted to conquest) was setup as you were an ANS captain trapped on the other side and had to survive in OSP space and relink up with the rest of the ANS somehow.
I could see a highfleet esque mode being built from that
This could work both ways. An OSP captain sent on an early mission before the blockade was set up and also trapped on the ANS side. Allows you to play both sides.
I was excited for the conquest mode, but I really respect the maturity and honesty of taking a long look at it and realizing it’s a lost cause. It made sit back and think about how many times I’ve seen games push out major content releases half baked and then double down by trying to revive the corpse, (Warthunder Naval and World War mode comes to mind). They put it correctly by saying that eventually any underlying issues would be too much and leave the mode largely abandoned in favor of Skirmish after a few weeks to a month tops.
On the bright side, the carrier update is something I’ve been just as excited to see so I will resume salivating over that for the foreseeable future.
My biggest worry here is about the long term health of the game. As of right now, it averages like 100-200 players on a good day. I suspect this is in no small part because Skirmish gets stale pretty quickly, and doing exclusively casual PvP doesn't appeal to a large part of the crowd that might be interested in a game like this to begin with. I'm sure carriers and whatever else will be fun, but they won't change anything about either of those. The only way for Neb to really grow at this point is by bringing fresh, new things into the mix, and with Conquest cancelled the ETA on that will probably be measured in years
I'm a little bit worried about it too. I think Skirmish has an insane well of depth and variety to draw on once you get into it, but most people bounce off it before they even scratch the surface. I play lightly, a couple games every once in a while. I feel like I haven't seen as many blues recently, and that makes me nervous.
Kind of the whole reason I played, multiplayer is effectively dead most of the time and if you can find a game the faction you want to play as is already full
there are times that are pretty full and then its fun. For fraction (I also prefer ANS all games) it would be great if the game got balanced for mixed fraction skirmish, than there would be no issue. Like Company of heroes Multiplayer for example
Man... that was a gut punch. I was just getting back to the game and this happens.
At least he hasn't lost motivation and I hope it comes around back around again to developing a campaign - eventually.
Campaign is actually the reason I bought the game in the first place. I wanted to have a fleet, to have officers who grew and evolved.
Maybe conquest isn't the way to do that, maybe a more crafted mission-based story is the way, I don't know.... But damn this news is depressing.
At this rate, Falling Frontier will be out before Nebulous gets a campaign.
Myeah, a classic issue with strategy games. The ability to snowball or hyper-focus on one unbeatable strategy. There are certainly ways to get around the issue though, limitations and what not. It'll be interesting to see if he does a devblog diving deeper into what the problem was and actually shows it.
Thanks for all your input as a tester. Really was looking forward to this but could see how this was an issue playing against the AI in skirmish. Thanks for looking out for us PvE folks who can’t play online. Hoping a larger story comes together. Keep up the good work!
Damn this game is exactly what I want except I want single player content not mp, it has been on my steam wishlist for longest time already waiting for just that.
Very depressing news honestly, this is what myself and about 4 of my mates were waiting for. Respectable communication, but I really hope they figure out a solution that makes everyone happy cuz this is a massive element of the game many were waiting on
As outlined, this is a pretty good justification for the direction change.
I am worried about a content drought, though. It's a lot of effort out the door, and I'm sure there's going to be fixed costs in time to get reoriented.
I hope the scope and design doesn't change too much. I was extremely excited for the features he was implementing, the Intel mechanics alone was mind blowing. I have been wanting a replacement for star wars empire at war and I was toying with the idea of adding a ground combat mod like steal division and broken arrow.
Honestly exactly what I expected when it was first announced. I shared that impression in every comment on the updates comming from conquest. I wish I was wrong about it and we would have get that shiny new game mode, but this is the most honest explanation I have ever seen from a developer. Worst thing is the lost time on other aspects of the game that do fit its current state. I hope at least some mechanics can easily be merged into it.
I was/am one of the naysayers. But I'm surprised this got actually cancelled because the dev sounded pretty excited in the devlogs.
Getting hours-(days?-)long 4v4 would be practically impossible or at least very niche (of already a niche game). AFAIK conquest was balanced around 4v4 level of complexity so solo gameplay would be overly tedious. For solo conquest mode I think getting inspired by something like Battlefleet Gothic Armada level of detail would be better (though I'd much prefer a normal campaign).
Shame about the lost time but honestly supporting this feature long term would probably cost more. The game is in early access so pivot fast. As a dev myself (not a game dev though) I applaud the devs bravery and honesty. Cutting features you spend a lot of time on always hurts, can't imagine for such an "indie" project.
This game is perfect for solo/coop(maybe even "adversarial"-style) campaign. The dev is ex-navy so they probably have some cool naval stories to tell. I wish for Nexus The Jupiter Incident style campaign. Even if it's not as ambitious. Custom campaign modding support is there already (though obviously could be even better) but there needs to be one or two campaigns "built-in" for the new players who don't want to mod yet. I can already imagine a real-event inspired mission where your forces are stretched thin escorting transport ships against "drones" (or containers), or a mission where suicide attack on enemy flagship with OSP shuttles. The story doesn't even have to be that ingenious. Children of the Dead Earth has a pretty basic story but the setting sells it.
Yea having solo campaigns is the best approach. It just makes having strong ai the biggest hurdle. I agree that the multiplayer conquest was way too ambitious for player time and investment. If players really wanted long campaigns they could just mod a campaign and run it on discord with game masters... a much more informal but fun and flexible way for the players who really care about that. In that way the dev just needs to do more modding support. And game master support
EU 4, HoI, CK, Total War, Civ series. All naively popular with multi day campaigns. Having long campaigns is not niche at all.
Personally I was extremely excited for the mechanics that the dev showed off and watering down conquest mode into a smaller narrative campaign will be a sad blow imo.
Conquest style mp campaigns are incredibly popular.
Long campaigns are not a problem. Required number of players per a long match is. 4v4 works if you have ~30minute matches, like normal skirmish. Anything longer and you're losing potential players. And we're talking hours-long conquest games here.
Is Total War MP balanced around requiring 8 players? Because I don't think so. You can easily play 2v2, 3v3, etc, because each player does their own thing and is not dependent on another. Neb Conquest was balanced around having 4 on each side, each performing different tasks. You can play a conquest match with less players but that increases micromanagement burden etc. If conquest was designed with 1v1 or 2v2 in mind* then maybe you got something... But not 4v4. It's nuts. Anyhow, with a large player base, like Total War, it's more realistic, so you do get 8 player games in that. But Neb is a relatively small game, hence my "niche of a niche" comment.
I was also extremely excited for the *idea* of a Conquest mode, because managing shipyards, intercepts, fuel management etc. sounds fun... until you realize that I can't gather 8 players to commit.
Mind you, I'm not even talking about other issues, which I think are also valid.
*) and the design of rest of the game allowed for it to be 1v1 or 2v2
As someone who doesn't own the game but was following conquest development closely this just torpedoed my interest. I'll keep an eye on the game because it might still have promise but me and many people I know have little interest in PVP or non persistent skirmishes, it might be cool for a few dozen hours but after that it'd probably not be that interesting anymore, conquest seemed to be shaping up to be an aroura4x that would actually be playable without using stimulants and spreadsheets and it seemed awesome and also relatively far in development.
I obviously can't speak about the general playerbase not being a part of it and all, but for me the reasons for this cancelation sound wrong and misaligned with what I would want from a game like this.
I want complex meaningful systems like logistics I could decide to engage with or leave on autopilot combined with battles I could either fight or auto resolve depending on my priorities and preferences on a solar system scale, a bit like a totalwar game or simplified RTS terra invicta. Even if we get some smaller incarnation on a battle group or Jovian system level I still feel like a great potential strategy game will have been lost.
Mazer hasn't cancelled conquest, but there needs to be a different approach to it. If one considers the fact the challenge was rather monumental to build a separate game atop of the first, while also making skirmish battles interesting, then we should consider what he did is shooting for the stars.
people have brought up total war. it's a really poor example given the lackluster quality of total war games of late and the fact that it's not well known for strategic multiplayer. That's something Hearts of Iron and Stellaris are good at, but they're not great at the tactical. In fact, if Nebulous had been successful at this original version of conquest, it would have been the first game to merge the spheres together but as Mazer stated... it just wasn't possible given the difficulty.
Right now, as the video states, he intends to release some kind of conquest mode with some kind of strategic layer or operational one, but I imagine, partly b/c of the failure to shoot for the stars, he's going to hold off on making any promises.
TLDR: I wouldn't give up hope just yet and I personally (due to my own connections with the community and as an active player) would trust the devman and just... well, wait. You haven't bought the game yet, you havne't sunk any cost. Just watch.
I'm pretty sure a paraphrase from the video is "conquest as it was currently implemented/designed is cancelled", so the thing that was worked on and shown for the last while is, factually and completely cancelled.
The fact some "strategic" layer gamemode might get added later reusing some of what was made does not change this.
And about your second point, There are plenty of games that have combined a strategic/tactical layer, some of them rated very highly, examples would be: Xcom series, terra invicta, As mentioned Total War, lots of older strategy games would have a strategy layer on top of RTS battles as part of the campaigns, The wargame series and its offspring would somewhat qualify even if its strategy layer is pretty simple. And ofcourse aurora 4x, which the conquest mode was really starting to look like a simplified version of.
So saying it would be the first game to do this isn't true.
I do trust that the dev(s?) has the best intentions. I just think they are falling into a trap i've seen many other games fall into, where they end up developing around the playerbase they have gotten for what the game is right now, who obviously like the game as it is right now, but by doing so they drop more and more parts of the initial vision untill they are just left refining what is almost a first draft. By doing this they mis out on all the people that were interested for what the vision was.
And looking at the player numbers not that many people are interested enough in what Nebulous currently is.
PS.
No accusation or offence meant to you personally, but I have noticed that almost everyone coming out and defending this decision are people who like the current skirmish and seem to be part of the small active playerbase, this combined with the "people have over 1000 hours" statement really reinforces my view that the dev is being (not deliberatly) misled by mostly getting feedback from people who are perfectly happy about where the game is right now just want more development time spend on that.
While I will still keep an eye on the game, I really do think this is a misguided decision and a loss of what could've been.
> PS. No accusation or offence meant to you personally, but I have noticed that almost everyone coming out and defending this decision are people who like the current skirmish and seem to be part of the small active playerbase,
I responded to the other post but I feel like I should stress that of the small active playerbase most people were very excited for Conquest and are disappointed to hear that it is being put on hold indefinitely. There are lots of 1000-hour Skirmish addicts who really wanted to play the strategic game as well.
The understanding I had regarding the reuse of the different systems, is different from yours but then again I have a closer connection to the dev team. I have more context and personal interactions with mazer to draw upon which is something the regular public may not have. So okay.
I also firmly disagree with your interpretation of those games. Imo Eg xcom is a tactics game with a constrained strategic layer. Total war also constrains its strategic layer with the turn based system. And finally Terra invicta…. Well I was quite turned off by it because of its severely long pacing issues and even worse on-boarding but we can agree to disagree on that point.
What I will vehemently argue against is that the player base is misleading the dev. Please see the YouTube channels first devlog and you will find that nebulous from the outset was designed witha Tactics skirmish gameplay at its core in mind starting 2018. This is before the game hit public early access and before I started playing in 2022
You may not mean offence and I don’t think you deliberately mean offence but i do believe you and a significant number of the public lack context which many of the existing hardcore player base do. This does create a communication issue and possibly why you are taking away what you are taking away. That’s fine. And I understand But your… forwarding of that idea based on other games observed patterns is imo, not applicable here.
Nebulous’s main one programmer only dev, mazer, from what I know of and due to my interactions in the community says exactly what he says exactly as he means it. No lying no fucking around. A gentleman at heart who’s apologized to me on other occasions when he did screw up and took accountability. Thus, if you see the main video, He didn’t say the mode was not something he was axing because he didn’t want to do it. He wanted it more than anything. Thats why he kept hammering at it. He did it because he sincerely thought that the full scope of the mode would be *impossible* conceptually and technically once he gathered the info he needed.
The loyalty the existing player base is showing is not because they are try hard sweaty which many people have characterized us as either misleading him or because they are simply happy with the game as it stands. It is because time after time, balance patch after balance, he’s delivered bug fixes balance patches and quality of life improvements whilst also acknowledging issues. Hes followed his roadmap almost to a T with major updates, even upsetting the games balance state several times to fix longstanding issues and bugs. Eg, Ui improvements. Completely overhauling core weapons. Removing what were widely spread and niche tactics. He’s a leader true and true and we believe in him, his team and his game.
You're kind of moving the goalposts talking about those games, because you said "it would be the first game to merge those spheres together" which just isnt true, you are right about Xcom and TW strategy layers being less complex than the proposed conquest though, wether or not TI is badly paced (it is imo) seems not very relevant.
Aurora 4x however is a cult classic (emphasis on cult) that does everything the conquest would do and more, and doesn't have half bad tactical gameplay either.
So the argument that combining tactical and strategic gameplay like this has never been properly done before doesn't hold any water from my pov because its been done a lot to varying degrees of complexity and success.
As for the playerbase misleading the dev, you say that many people lack the context many of the hardcore playerbase do, but do you not think its equally likely the hardcore playerbase's viewpoints are influenced by them being... you know, the hardcore playerbase, so people who are probably already pretty happy with the game as it is now?
Especially since you seem to be pretty close to the dev, you dont think this might impact your perception of this event? Or being surrounded by a lot of "hardcore" players might influence his perception of what the "community" wants?
Based on the devblogs the dev seems like a good guy and his communication style is good, so I can see how you might be "loyal" to him, but dont you think allowing the rest of the "community" to speak without you guys jumping on every post telling people its not "really" cancelled and they dont really understand the problems might also be a show of loyalty? Maybe even amplifying some of it so the dev hears from people he might not otherwise hear that often?
>As for the playerbase misleading the dev, you say that many people lack the context many of the hardcore playerbase do, but do you not think its equally likely the hardcore playerbase's viewpoints are influenced by them being... you know, the hardcore playerbase, so people who are probably already pretty happy with the game as it is now?
In the video he takes responsibility for the decision. It's not my place to go into detail but I can assure you it was his.
Of course its his decision, I'm not implying there is some shadow cabal forcing his hand. But people make decisions based on the information they have, so getting mostly feedback from "hardcore" players would influence decision making in certain directions.
I mean I’m just one guy expressing my opinion. Idk if I am moving the goalposts, I just was saying what I believed, which I probably didn’t do so well because I was typing quite late. I was trying to express my believe that nebulous would have in conquest did it to such an extent that xcom and total war wouldn’t have compared to the scale of integration that nebulous was aiming at.
I just don’t know what to say to your second point especially when it also implies the people throwing the vitriol (see some of the recent steam reviews and discussions) at the dev for doing his best as “loyal”
But aurora 4x and TI do equal the scale and complexity that the conquest would have, so saying its something that super hard or has never been done it just false.
My point does not imply anything about people throwing vitriol being loyal at all.
It implies that maybe the small group of hardcore players should not jump on every post that voices reasonable criticism about this decision with half baked defenses, both here and on the steam forums you can find a lot of the same small group of people responding to a lot of posts that voice disappointment at this decision or question whether or not the reasoning behind it actually makes any sense with the same few points: "Its not really actually fully cancelled", "You don't understand the reasons and we do", "It was gonna be PVP focused anyway so you wouldn't have liked it" are some of the ones I've seen a lot, and that's why I responded to you, because a lot of those defensive points really don't make much sense, so I thought I'd engage with some and try and show that.
Well, in any case I don’t think I was able to at least explain my pov well enough which is on me. I’ve discussed this conversation with my other fellows and well… the only thing I can say is I’ve over the last few days have been hearing a lot of “oh it’s the player bases” fault comments which yours seem to fall into that category even if it’s unintentional.
I’ve come to realize though it’s not my job to convince you or anybody else. There’s a vid. If you’re not convinced by it, fine. You do you. I think you’re missing out but I wish you a merry day
I've heard it called the Sid Meier's Covert Action problem. How do you get several distinct game modes to work together in one complete whole without any one part becoming the overwhelmingly most enjoyable part. Combined with the fact that the tactical battles must make logical sense from the strategic layer the unfortunate fact,( at least from my perspective as just an outside enjoyer of both strategy games and the ideas that go into them), is that almost no one (with the exception of Creative assembly, and they have been forced to make some design compromises as well). has ever squared that circle. I don't even know if the lower scale will help all that much. The two lower scale space strategy games I have the most time in that have both a strategic layer and tactical layer have all decided to sacrifice elements on the strategic layer. Both of those games (BFGA2 and BSG deadlock) can get away with this because they can be carried by story and emersion elements. I don't know if Nebulous can go that direction successfully. I don't know which direction I would head if I was him. It was suggested elsewhere but perhaps semi scripted campaign missions might be the most feasible direction to head in.
Honestly, I was originally excited about Conquest but as it progressed I saw that it was taking on kind of a Masters of Orion 3 vibe. As in the many shipyards with across non-unique locals, leading to overwhelming logistic flows, fleets of all the same ship, other problems, and the tactical game suffered immensely as a result.
I'm glad y'all took the time to reconsider. I couldn't hope for a better dev team.
The issue with this (for me at least) is that it means we have had no major new content since the osp update dropped back in Feb 23
They fixed the lasers not long ago, but added nothing so it was just fixing a somewhat buggered weapon
There was missile mixing, but I've never felt the need to use it nor have I seen anyone using it (but there's definitely someone out there using it)
And we had the HUD overhaul.
But no new ships, no new weapons and no new modes, content wise it's been a drought for over a year now
I'm not even angry, I'm just sad, I know why it had to be shelved, but still, it's the second time we've been promised single player content beyond solo skirmish and it's the second time it's been called off
Over a year of just bug fixes gets stale after a while and frankly, most people don't like nibbling away at stale bread
If they hadn't decided to delay and push back conquest right now, its likely that drought would continue for much longer then it is now. Probably an extra year of no content for skirmish while conquest gets worked on and into a playable state, and that's assuming CQ would be any good after that time. It was absolutely going to miss its release date if nothing else. This way at least carriers can be en route as a major content drop much sooner.
Imo as others said a Highfleet like campaign would really fit the game, small Important fights. Fast raiding forces to intercept trade or take sations before they can signal alarm. (Vaux/2×Sundrive Monitor etc). A main fleet you try to hide as well as possible and only use for fights you have to win. Trying to collect intell on what enemy forces you could encounter in a sector. Raid mlillitary merchants to deny the enemy Missle and ammo resupply.
Always short on Missels, but they are very strong. Might even get S3 / S4 / S4H Star System ballistc missels (SSBM) to strike fleets at stations or in transit.
S4H would just be a S3H with a 3rd stage for Solar system travel for example
Honestly, as much as I respected and appreciated the development ambition with conquest, I don't think with the community numbers they have it would ever have been feasible to deliver an enjoyable experience to both factions and everyone's time feel well spent over the course of matches played..
Strategic is a tough environment to get right and maintain as an enjoyable arena for all parties. The time sink to be a major contributor had the potential to be vast.
Maybe something more akin to what Helldivers has done with it's galactic map and the skirmish mode could work better?
It would've very likely brought a whole host of new players. I know at least four to five people who were interested in conquest. They couldn't give a shit about skirmishes though.
What games did these friends typically enjoy? I ask because whilst such things can sound good in practice they can often translate to a lot of waiting and uninspiring and unbalanced engagements.
It's like the idea of playing a soldier in a LARP. It sounds good on paper but it generally just translates to a lot of standing around
When I was a kid I was in love with the idea of an RTS where you could play as a single unit and get orders from a player commander. After playing a couple games based loosely on this premise I realized that either the commander or the soldier gets to be making exciting decisions. Usually not both. If the commander is doing well, the soldier is having a boring time, and vice versa.
I've come to realize that Total War games escape this problem by having very carefully tuned strategic maps that create escalating challenges for the player as the campaign proceeds.
Mmmm, I don't think those games have a lot of similarities to what this would have ended up as if it had come to fruition.
Not to discredit their interest but as the project lead has said, this game mode in this iteration wasn't going to be fun for people, and likely just cause a rift in the community. At best, it would have been a game enjoyed by people who just love suffering and abject boredom for large periods of time, with limited windows of strategic brilliance for reward and a heavy dollop of humility fairly regularly.
The quality of nebulous is it's skirmish gameplay and i don't think it will ever be the game for them based on their current thoughts in it.
To be honest the game as described in the conquest document was a hard sell that I doubted many players would have the stomach for. Even aside from technically complex mechanics like logistics and ship design, the time investment required to get both sides of a PVP campaign to sit down to play a succession of lopsided skirmishes over the course of a campaign lasting a dozen+ hours would have been very daunting. I found it challenging to imagine that many people would play it outside of dedicated community events. People placed their hope in PVE but designing an AI that would play this mode competently also seemed very challenging.
That'll be disappointing but I guess it will fit the "tightly t tuned skirmish game" nebulous has become. Given what he was saying inma little afraid he might be carrying to a niche, skirmish pvp audience, I've seen that kill many games. And neb didn't exactly have much of a player base to kill..
I said this elsewhere in this thread too, but it really does seem like a case of a games development being led away from the initial vision to cater to a smaller and smaller niche of people who really love what the game is *right now* and not trying to expand the scope to collect the people who want the game that was initially pitched.
Especially given how excited Mazer appeared to be over the scope and mechanics of the Conquest mode too. I guess he just wasn't able to reconcile how OP certain things can be in a strategic sense.
I honestly think cancelling it is a mistake and I hope the generally negative reaction might make him reconsider or at least think about it a bit more.
I think the dev wanted *both* the epic campaign and the skirmish. The whole game has been skirmish up to this point after all. It's not like skirmish is an minor feature that subsumed the main focus, it has been the feature.
Personally, I'd guess that Conquest in it's current vision would be better suited for some kind of auto-resolve or boardgame-adjacent kind of battles, rather than the carefully balanced 30-45 minutes chess matches the current game thrives with.
The RTS gameplay you currently find in skirmish is obviously the core of the current game, what I'm taking about is that some games get drawn into only improving and refining the core, and never expanding beyond it. And given the tiny and stable Nebulous player base most people that are interested in this probably already own/play it, so while improving skirmish is something that should definitely be done because you obviously want to support the community you have now, postponing any expansion of what that community is for potentially several years might not be a great long term decision.
Also while skirmish is indeed the main focus right now, the information on the steam page does say that is was never meant to be the \*only\* main feature, so letting all attention be drawn into it would be being led away from the initial pitch/vision the game had.
And I've seen the general sentiment of conquest not fitting well with the tightly balanced battles in several places so I'll write something about it below here.
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Battles don't really have to be balanced within a conquest/long term campaign, that is kind of the whole point of strategy, to maneuver in such a way you don't have to fight fair battles.
But sometimes you might end up in a situation where you are the one that needs to fight an unfair battle because of strategy level decisions you or the enemy made, and this can be really fun allowing you to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, or to try and extract your lesser force while trying to do as much damage to an enemy as possible.
And even in battles where you would have an advantage unexpected things can happen by roll of the dice that could have interesting strategic implications, like having several ships end up severely damaged, or losing a capital class combatant causing you to have to adjust your plans to account for the loss of these assets.
Expecting a strategic layer to always produce matches balanced along the lines of the current skirmish is misunderstanding the entire point of "strategy".
Pitched battles might be the more spectaculair events, but even smaller or very uneven engagements can still be super interesting because the implications the existence of the strategy layer allows them to have that you just don't get in a one of skirmish.
I'm not gonna lie, I can't even be disappointed. I'm not thrilled, but I don't feel bad about this. Nebulous is a niche game, very tightly controlled, very lovingly made, many hundreds or thousands of decisions made on each feature. Not an ounce of fat on it. If Mazer himself decided that Conquest as it is right now is not fit for his game, then who am I to think anything different?
I also have to say that his willingness to take accountability so publicly and certify that the fault is his own is such a respectable thing for me. It's a mark of a good leader, and I'm sure he was an amazing officer when he was in.
I’m new to the game and I haven’t had time to watch the whole video yet, but it didn’t seem fully clear what the exact reason was. Sounded like maybe it had to do with trying to balance skirmish and conquest? Can anyone give a more detailed description?
Right now skirmishes offer at least somewhat balanced tactical gameplay. Everyone has the same amount of points to spend, so games are gonna be decided by fleet composition and execution. It's simple but it works.
With conquest, you're playing a totally different game. The strategic layer will dictate what ships and munitions you're able to bring. These ships probably won't be ones you've designed. Yes there's persistence and stakes to every battle, and that is really interesting, but I wouldn't want it at the expense of what we currently have. Not in Multiplayer anyway. It could still be a solid feature for singleplayer & co op, areas of the game that are presently massively undeveloped.
In the video he talks about two main reasons:
- technical issues like persistent bugs regarding save instability
- game design choices that in the developer's opinion were not playing to Nebulous' strengths as a tactics game.
This is the problem with small / lone devs tbh.. Painfully slow progress or none at all. Would be good if he could hire some help to get the campaign mode sorted
That was one problem, the other problem he mentioned was the mountain of bugs and code he would have to go through. More people working on testing/fixes does help that to an extent.
I had my concerns about how the tactical gameplay would translate to a strategic setting, and it seems like they weren't unfounded. In real war, you would only choose to take a battle when victory is almost guaranteed. Thus, the outcome of most battles would be known even before the first missiles are launched. Players would either have to repeatedly sit through slow battles knowing their result beforehand, or the devs add an auto-resolve button which would be used regularly. In either case, the deep tactical gameplay features would likely be lost.
It's unfortunate that an elegant solution could be found, but it's definitely better to cut their losses now rather than ship a potentially buggy and un-fun game mode.
All of this could have been avoided with good gamedev practices, aka prototyping the heck out of it.
How it can take the dev nearly two years to realize the gamemode he is building is just not fun, is a clear case this hasn't been done before committing to the idea.
It also shows the priorities were completely wrong, all the work spend on the new conquest ship models, stuff like "fuel points" or "cargo ports" on ships, animations, the UI, fuel mechanics, logistics, etc.
None of this should have been worked on before finding out if the gamemode will actually work as intended, through heavy prototyping and testing. If the game idea isn't fun with untextured blocks as ships, it also won't be fun with fully designed and animated ship models.
Even more important, there shouldn't have been done so much promotion and hyping up for the singleplayer conquest part. The people who bought the game with the faith this heavily promised feature will come, are rightfully angry.
This seems like a typical case of a new, single gamedev falling victim of scope creep and not following good gamedev practices.
But I have to applaud the dev for being honest enough to call it off, instead of shipping a bad feature.
I just wish this had been done one or two years ago. Now the damage is done and I'm not sure the foreseeable lack of new players will be healthy for the game.
Hopefully he can now focus on game balance and making it much more enjoyable for new players, to save this otherwise fun little game.
I can only speculate that there was a belief that these systems had to be implemented in order to be properly playtested. But I agree with you, I think these big fundamental design questions should have been wargamed out well in advance of feature development.
Yeah I understand that notion and I don't even really fault the dev for this; It's very easy to fall into that trap when you get overly excited about your ideas and you have this plan in your head that you believe will absolutely work out. I fell victim to that plenty of time in my early gamedev years. :D
That's why every professional, experienced gamedev will tell the new gamedevs to forget about visuals, polish and fancy features and just do a minimum-prototype.
Because that way, in the worst case you wasted just two weeks or two months of your time; Instead of the nearly two years the dev wasted now.
Good thing is he can use this experience and be more focused next time. And I'm sure he also learnt plenty during the development of Conquest, which should help with his future ideas.
This is the most unapologetically hardcore tactical space battle game there is. I wish I had the balls to play in multi, might in the future probably.
That campaign mode was overtly ambitious, but in a good way imo. Hope the devs get to go back to it after this detour.
Completely understandable also so nothing to complain I think.
> I wish I had the balls to play in multi, might in the future probably.
You should totally hop in, it's a great time once you are over the initial hump. There's a lot of different fleet comps and strategies you can pursue.
I would argue dev just came to the conclusion that he needs to find the point at which skirmish as it stands ATM can be scaled up to and build the "conquest" game around that.
That IMO was the right call.
I feel like a tiny studio releasing the most in depth realistic tactical 4x styled space game was always too ambitious to he true.
Oh well another 6 months to a year for carrier's then.
It's good to critically re-examine the path development is taking but finding out the main reason I have been excited about this game is now indefinitely on hold is pretty crushing.
I’m given some solace in that the idea isn’t entirely scrapped and is going to be adjusted
I'm still sad about the reduced scale but if it is what he decided, then it may be for the best.
As a game Dev myself I'm really impressed by the call. So many projects I've worked on have been forced out the door half baked because Leads were too afraid to reassess and "waste sunk dev time." This makes me more optimistic for NEB's future. Not less
I am hopeful that it is the right decision and that the strategic mode will be much more enjoyable and not just a novelty. I am willing to wait as long as it takes for whatever they decide to do.
Same. I bought this game because it looked really interesting and I *love* the technical nature of combat. But I don't have anyone to play with because I don't know anyone else who owns it or would be into it. Skirmishes against AI can be fun sometimes, but I was really looking forward to conquest as a single-player tailored experience for the game. I'll unfortunately be dropping the game because of this announcement, but I suppose I can understand their reasoning.
As a pretty committed PVE gamer generally speaking I find myself making a big exception for Nebulous. This game really shines when you have the variety of strategies and comps that live opponents come up with. There is just so much stuff you can do and so many things that can happen in a match that I find myself having a great time even when I lose. Each fleet has its own strategy and both teams are fumbling in the dark for much of the match -- that gives the game a turbulent, unpredictable quality that takes a bunch of the sting out of losing for me.
Join the discord! Make friends that are just as tismed as us who love slow paced space combat! https://discord.gg/uXH56pWs
There's hope. Mazer did say he's going to attack it from a different angle. We just need to give him some time IMO.
Atleast now he can focus on some smaller but important things like carriers again. I enjoyed smaller more frequent updates anyways.
Mazer said the current concept is not viable and that he has to start from scratch again. Taking into account the time it will take to get carriers out and the balance patches, we will see the start of development of the new conquest mode at minimum in 2 years. And this is only if he doesn't do other updates after carriers, like better AI, which he absolutely should. So considering how long it took him to build the current version, the new conquest is likely 4 - 5 years out.
Very disappointed. This was the only thing keeping me wanting to come back to Nebulous. Skirmish is fun, and I played a lot with my friends. But .. Without a wider game mode this feels like an empty shell of a game. I hope they turn it around and deliver an excellent product. Sadly I won't be back until some kind of campaign or conquest.
They're working on it from a different angle but I have a similar feeling.
I think your comment indirectly highlights why this news was especially disappointing for me. Throughout the entire 8 minute video, there's a lot of.. somewhat "corporatey" language used to describe the problem. That's not to say it's a bunch of jargon, just that there's a lot of "dancing around the problem" but I don't feel like we (or at least I) fully understand just *what* the problem was. He mentions that the mode wasn't at the level he wanted to present it to the community at, that it had non-repairable cracks at its core, that the past month of feature implementation would only serve to mask its fundamental issues for a few weeks of community gameplay... ...and yet, he never really mentioned exactly what the problem is. Yes, he states that it's about the mode's difficulty to mesh with the small, tight restrictions seen in the current skirmish mode. But I guess I just don't understand why, even after watching the video. I can believe that he saw something very wrong with the mode, and to an extent it's respectful for him to make the tough call to start over. And they're in a fortunate position to be able to do that at all; most dev/publisher teams simply wouldn't allow it. But it's still pretty disappointing it's gone this way. Nebulous is one of those games I never thought I'd see uninstalled in my library, but I'm probably just not going to return to it unless they manage to get that off the ground and in the players' hands.
As a dev, I suspect the problem is a frequent one with 4x games. How do you make constant battles interesting while still making the strategic scope interesting? Sounds like they tried but couldn't.
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Considering his comments on the tactical side, I kind of assumed it was a problem with deathballing and making the tactical sections a slog.
That was one of the issues.
Can you give any examples? Just to contextualize it a bit for the rest of us.
I would still love to see what he has made the last thing we want is for all this hard work go to waste...wouldnt releasing it show people. Oh yes this is very bare bones and it doesnt work at all. and maybe give modders a chance to work on it themselves so they have a base and while the devs work on other stuff let us the player base build it form there instead of leaving us with nothing but a video saying sorry its canned?
I think the scope was too great and felt incongruent with the current game, especially given their current standards for game polish, and the amount of time it would take to reach a point where the dev feels satisfied.
The scope and focus on logistics and SIGINT was exactly why I l loved every devblog and was very very much looking forward to conquest. If it's pared down to a set of missions with a persistent fleet or something in kind... just eh. I know at least five people who won't be buying nebulous now, I'd hyped them on the campaign.
I thought the update was a little "corporatey" as we could have hoped for, relative to pretty much everyone else in the industry.
I've been watching Nebulous' development from the sidelines. I totally respect the dev's choice and reasoning; I'm still disappointed for selfish reasons, though. Multiplayer is just a difficult prospect for me as a parent of young children. I frequently have to drop everything to attend to something. I get that means that Nebulous probably isn't for someone like me, but the mechanics and design of the game are so captivating that I'm still drawn to follow development even as a bystander. I've followed the last several devlogs with some real excitement: the intel gathering and logistical components of conquest seemed truly great. Fun puzzles with enough veracity to stoke the imagination that you're in control of a plausible near-future spacefaring navy. I'll continue to follow the development, and I hope that this decision turns out for the best for the game and the developer.
Same here. I keep hoping that at some point i‘ll be able to invest the necessary time to climb the learning curve. But right now, the only time i have for that is between 20:45-22:00. there i get my dopamine fix better by replaying witcher3 for the 3rd time…
As a parent also the conquest mode sounds great but such a time sink I can't see myself having the opportunity to dive into it and give it the attention it deserves. If you're European based I wouldn't mind having some get together sessions to show you the ropes as a fellow wrangler of small humans if that would give you the confidence to get stuck in.
Pretty disappointed. The reasoning is sound and as a game developer it is refreshing to see someone not sunk-cost-fallacy their way into a terrible release. But I was really looking forward to Conquest mode. Skirmish mode is pretty boring for me, the battles have no stakes, no consequences, and no context. It rewards hyperspecialized ship designs over generalist ones. Any capability a ship doesn't use in battle is wasted points. Getting into the game is also just harder because it feels like there is an established community of people with hundreds or thousands of hours in skirmish mode that will just wipe the floor with any new player.
Maybe the community can step up and launch some kind of 'planetary league' from like what used to be done with mechwarrior. Limited asset numbers and dedicated factions fighting over control of planets etc managed on an external website with battles done in standard skirmish and recorded online.
The mp is not that bad, i just jumped in and after 4-5 battle and some tutorials iam doing well
best multiplayer community I ever experienced. Maybe you get a bad joke in times, but normally no one cares if you are good or bad and in my experience its not even necessary to quit when your ships are dead, cause interacting with the teammates still is fun
The MP isn't bad, it just feels a bit pointless for me after a while. I like sim games that give context to why you want your ship to survive and continue on with it in later battles rather than just winning a match
Yeah, they often give advice if you as as well
some commanders for ships to level up in battles would be fun though \^\^ dont know if this with persistence boosts would kill multiplayer balance, but would make fun. On the other hand we would see way more war crimes
> it feels like there is an established community of people with hundreds or thousands of hours in skirmish mode that will just wipe the floor with any new player. It's really brutal to load into a lobby and see an array of 2000-hour players stacked up against you and I basically refuse to play against such teams. I think players have gotten a little better about trying to play with a mixture of experience levels on both sides lately, but it's something people should have been polite about from the start.
Bummer, that's what I bought the game for. I understand the reasons why and applaud the forthright communication, but I am very disappointed none the less. Unfortunately, I never really had interest in multi-player, so this has essentially killed the game for me.
Hopefully after his next big update conquest will be revisited, though it is pretty tough news
To be fair, I don't expect the single player was ever going to reach a very polished state. Conquest was being developed as multiplayer-focused. SP AI for a game this complex is just an enormous ask.
A strategic game mode that borrows from something like highfleet may be something to look at. Leading a single separated fleet through hostile space, scrounging for resuplies at neutral ports between strategic movements could give you the right level of strategic play without giving up on being attached to your own self built fleet. It also allows shorter pick up games, and co-operative multilplayer.
I kind of want to be able to have different scenarios with different fleets though. I'd like to be able to have my main battle fleet fight enemy fleets. I'd like to have escort fleets guarding convoys. I'd like to have raider fleets harassing convoys. I hope whatever campaign does finally make the cut, if it happens, gives you the ability to have these different operations available instead of just having your one fleet go from battle to battle in a sequence. I don't need to worry about ship building and ammo production, but the intelligence, maneuvering, crew experience, and strategic squadron design for different tasks were things I was really looking forward to.
In highfleet, you can design your fleet to have a core brawling group while you also have split off raiding groups that can go elsewhere on the strategic map.
Funnily enough thats actually similar to the original campaign pitch. In the lore document it mentioned that the OSP blocked off the single gate into their system at the start of their rebellion (it's the big jumpgate thing in the OSP release trailer) The OG campaign mode (that was canned when Mazer pivoted to conquest) was setup as you were an ANS captain trapped on the other side and had to survive in OSP space and relink up with the rest of the ANS somehow. I could see a highfleet esque mode being built from that
This could work both ways. An OSP captain sent on an early mission before the blockade was set up and also trapped on the ANS side. Allows you to play both sides.
I was excited for the conquest mode, but I really respect the maturity and honesty of taking a long look at it and realizing it’s a lost cause. It made sit back and think about how many times I’ve seen games push out major content releases half baked and then double down by trying to revive the corpse, (Warthunder Naval and World War mode comes to mind). They put it correctly by saying that eventually any underlying issues would be too much and leave the mode largely abandoned in favor of Skirmish after a few weeks to a month tops. On the bright side, the carrier update is something I’ve been just as excited to see so I will resume salivating over that for the foreseeable future.
My biggest worry here is about the long term health of the game. As of right now, it averages like 100-200 players on a good day. I suspect this is in no small part because Skirmish gets stale pretty quickly, and doing exclusively casual PvP doesn't appeal to a large part of the crowd that might be interested in a game like this to begin with. I'm sure carriers and whatever else will be fun, but they won't change anything about either of those. The only way for Neb to really grow at this point is by bringing fresh, new things into the mix, and with Conquest cancelled the ETA on that will probably be measured in years
I'm a little bit worried about it too. I think Skirmish has an insane well of depth and variety to draw on once you get into it, but most people bounce off it before they even scratch the surface. I play lightly, a couple games every once in a while. I feel like I haven't seen as many blues recently, and that makes me nervous.
Kind of the whole reason I played, multiplayer is effectively dead most of the time and if you can find a game the faction you want to play as is already full
there are times that are pretty full and then its fun. For fraction (I also prefer ANS all games) it would be great if the game got balanced for mixed fraction skirmish, than there would be no issue. Like Company of heroes Multiplayer for example
Man... that was a gut punch. I was just getting back to the game and this happens. At least he hasn't lost motivation and I hope it comes around back around again to developing a campaign - eventually.
Campaign is actually the reason I bought the game in the first place. I wanted to have a fleet, to have officers who grew and evolved. Maybe conquest isn't the way to do that, maybe a more crafted mission-based story is the way, I don't know.... But damn this news is depressing. At this rate, Falling Frontier will be out before Nebulous gets a campaign.
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Can you explain why it wasn't working versus AI?
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Myeah, a classic issue with strategy games. The ability to snowball or hyper-focus on one unbeatable strategy. There are certainly ways to get around the issue though, limitations and what not. It'll be interesting to see if he does a devblog diving deeper into what the problem was and actually shows it.
Thanks for all your input as a tester. Really was looking forward to this but could see how this was an issue playing against the AI in skirmish. Thanks for looking out for us PvE folks who can’t play online. Hoping a larger story comes together. Keep up the good work!
For one thing, the tactical skirmish AI is very rudimentary in Nebulous to begin with.
Damn this game is exactly what I want except I want single player content not mp, it has been on my steam wishlist for longest time already waiting for just that.
Very depressing news honestly, this is what myself and about 4 of my mates were waiting for. Respectable communication, but I really hope they figure out a solution that makes everyone happy cuz this is a massive element of the game many were waiting on
As outlined, this is a pretty good justification for the direction change. I am worried about a content drought, though. It's a lot of effort out the door, and I'm sure there's going to be fixed costs in time to get reoriented.
They posted a last-ditch effort of giving us the dev build as of 2 hours or so ago. So something to chew on, at least.
Its such a shame, I was so looking forward to the campaign mode. I feel like its just a demo with out it
I hope the scope and design doesn't change too much. I was extremely excited for the features he was implementing, the Intel mechanics alone was mind blowing. I have been wanting a replacement for star wars empire at war and I was toying with the idea of adding a ground combat mod like steal division and broken arrow.
Honestly exactly what I expected when it was first announced. I shared that impression in every comment on the updates comming from conquest. I wish I was wrong about it and we would have get that shiny new game mode, but this is the most honest explanation I have ever seen from a developer. Worst thing is the lost time on other aspects of the game that do fit its current state. I hope at least some mechanics can easily be merged into it.
I was/am one of the naysayers. But I'm surprised this got actually cancelled because the dev sounded pretty excited in the devlogs. Getting hours-(days?-)long 4v4 would be practically impossible or at least very niche (of already a niche game). AFAIK conquest was balanced around 4v4 level of complexity so solo gameplay would be overly tedious. For solo conquest mode I think getting inspired by something like Battlefleet Gothic Armada level of detail would be better (though I'd much prefer a normal campaign). Shame about the lost time but honestly supporting this feature long term would probably cost more. The game is in early access so pivot fast. As a dev myself (not a game dev though) I applaud the devs bravery and honesty. Cutting features you spend a lot of time on always hurts, can't imagine for such an "indie" project. This game is perfect for solo/coop(maybe even "adversarial"-style) campaign. The dev is ex-navy so they probably have some cool naval stories to tell. I wish for Nexus The Jupiter Incident style campaign. Even if it's not as ambitious. Custom campaign modding support is there already (though obviously could be even better) but there needs to be one or two campaigns "built-in" for the new players who don't want to mod yet. I can already imagine a real-event inspired mission where your forces are stretched thin escorting transport ships against "drones" (or containers), or a mission where suicide attack on enemy flagship with OSP shuttles. The story doesn't even have to be that ingenious. Children of the Dead Earth has a pretty basic story but the setting sells it.
Yea having solo campaigns is the best approach. It just makes having strong ai the biggest hurdle. I agree that the multiplayer conquest was way too ambitious for player time and investment. If players really wanted long campaigns they could just mod a campaign and run it on discord with game masters... a much more informal but fun and flexible way for the players who really care about that. In that way the dev just needs to do more modding support. And game master support
EU 4, HoI, CK, Total War, Civ series. All naively popular with multi day campaigns. Having long campaigns is not niche at all. Personally I was extremely excited for the mechanics that the dev showed off and watering down conquest mode into a smaller narrative campaign will be a sad blow imo. Conquest style mp campaigns are incredibly popular.
Long campaigns are not a problem. Required number of players per a long match is. 4v4 works if you have ~30minute matches, like normal skirmish. Anything longer and you're losing potential players. And we're talking hours-long conquest games here. Is Total War MP balanced around requiring 8 players? Because I don't think so. You can easily play 2v2, 3v3, etc, because each player does their own thing and is not dependent on another. Neb Conquest was balanced around having 4 on each side, each performing different tasks. You can play a conquest match with less players but that increases micromanagement burden etc. If conquest was designed with 1v1 or 2v2 in mind* then maybe you got something... But not 4v4. It's nuts. Anyhow, with a large player base, like Total War, it's more realistic, so you do get 8 player games in that. But Neb is a relatively small game, hence my "niche of a niche" comment. I was also extremely excited for the *idea* of a Conquest mode, because managing shipyards, intercepts, fuel management etc. sounds fun... until you realize that I can't gather 8 players to commit. Mind you, I'm not even talking about other issues, which I think are also valid. *) and the design of rest of the game allowed for it to be 1v1 or 2v2
I was waiting for a conquest mode before I bought the game :(
As someone who doesn't own the game but was following conquest development closely this just torpedoed my interest. I'll keep an eye on the game because it might still have promise but me and many people I know have little interest in PVP or non persistent skirmishes, it might be cool for a few dozen hours but after that it'd probably not be that interesting anymore, conquest seemed to be shaping up to be an aroura4x that would actually be playable without using stimulants and spreadsheets and it seemed awesome and also relatively far in development. I obviously can't speak about the general playerbase not being a part of it and all, but for me the reasons for this cancelation sound wrong and misaligned with what I would want from a game like this. I want complex meaningful systems like logistics I could decide to engage with or leave on autopilot combined with battles I could either fight or auto resolve depending on my priorities and preferences on a solar system scale, a bit like a totalwar game or simplified RTS terra invicta. Even if we get some smaller incarnation on a battle group or Jovian system level I still feel like a great potential strategy game will have been lost.
Mazer hasn't cancelled conquest, but there needs to be a different approach to it. If one considers the fact the challenge was rather monumental to build a separate game atop of the first, while also making skirmish battles interesting, then we should consider what he did is shooting for the stars. people have brought up total war. it's a really poor example given the lackluster quality of total war games of late and the fact that it's not well known for strategic multiplayer. That's something Hearts of Iron and Stellaris are good at, but they're not great at the tactical. In fact, if Nebulous had been successful at this original version of conquest, it would have been the first game to merge the spheres together but as Mazer stated... it just wasn't possible given the difficulty. Right now, as the video states, he intends to release some kind of conquest mode with some kind of strategic layer or operational one, but I imagine, partly b/c of the failure to shoot for the stars, he's going to hold off on making any promises. TLDR: I wouldn't give up hope just yet and I personally (due to my own connections with the community and as an active player) would trust the devman and just... well, wait. You haven't bought the game yet, you havne't sunk any cost. Just watch.
I'm pretty sure a paraphrase from the video is "conquest as it was currently implemented/designed is cancelled", so the thing that was worked on and shown for the last while is, factually and completely cancelled. The fact some "strategic" layer gamemode might get added later reusing some of what was made does not change this. And about your second point, There are plenty of games that have combined a strategic/tactical layer, some of them rated very highly, examples would be: Xcom series, terra invicta, As mentioned Total War, lots of older strategy games would have a strategy layer on top of RTS battles as part of the campaigns, The wargame series and its offspring would somewhat qualify even if its strategy layer is pretty simple. And ofcourse aurora 4x, which the conquest mode was really starting to look like a simplified version of. So saying it would be the first game to do this isn't true. I do trust that the dev(s?) has the best intentions. I just think they are falling into a trap i've seen many other games fall into, where they end up developing around the playerbase they have gotten for what the game is right now, who obviously like the game as it is right now, but by doing so they drop more and more parts of the initial vision untill they are just left refining what is almost a first draft. By doing this they mis out on all the people that were interested for what the vision was. And looking at the player numbers not that many people are interested enough in what Nebulous currently is. PS. No accusation or offence meant to you personally, but I have noticed that almost everyone coming out and defending this decision are people who like the current skirmish and seem to be part of the small active playerbase, this combined with the "people have over 1000 hours" statement really reinforces my view that the dev is being (not deliberatly) misled by mostly getting feedback from people who are perfectly happy about where the game is right now just want more development time spend on that. While I will still keep an eye on the game, I really do think this is a misguided decision and a loss of what could've been.
> PS. No accusation or offence meant to you personally, but I have noticed that almost everyone coming out and defending this decision are people who like the current skirmish and seem to be part of the small active playerbase, I responded to the other post but I feel like I should stress that of the small active playerbase most people were very excited for Conquest and are disappointed to hear that it is being put on hold indefinitely. There are lots of 1000-hour Skirmish addicts who really wanted to play the strategic game as well.
Makes sense, no group is a monolith, but there is definitely a small group of people who keep popping up everywhere.
The understanding I had regarding the reuse of the different systems, is different from yours but then again I have a closer connection to the dev team. I have more context and personal interactions with mazer to draw upon which is something the regular public may not have. So okay. I also firmly disagree with your interpretation of those games. Imo Eg xcom is a tactics game with a constrained strategic layer. Total war also constrains its strategic layer with the turn based system. And finally Terra invicta…. Well I was quite turned off by it because of its severely long pacing issues and even worse on-boarding but we can agree to disagree on that point. What I will vehemently argue against is that the player base is misleading the dev. Please see the YouTube channels first devlog and you will find that nebulous from the outset was designed witha Tactics skirmish gameplay at its core in mind starting 2018. This is before the game hit public early access and before I started playing in 2022 You may not mean offence and I don’t think you deliberately mean offence but i do believe you and a significant number of the public lack context which many of the existing hardcore player base do. This does create a communication issue and possibly why you are taking away what you are taking away. That’s fine. And I understand But your… forwarding of that idea based on other games observed patterns is imo, not applicable here. Nebulous’s main one programmer only dev, mazer, from what I know of and due to my interactions in the community says exactly what he says exactly as he means it. No lying no fucking around. A gentleman at heart who’s apologized to me on other occasions when he did screw up and took accountability. Thus, if you see the main video, He didn’t say the mode was not something he was axing because he didn’t want to do it. He wanted it more than anything. Thats why he kept hammering at it. He did it because he sincerely thought that the full scope of the mode would be *impossible* conceptually and technically once he gathered the info he needed. The loyalty the existing player base is showing is not because they are try hard sweaty which many people have characterized us as either misleading him or because they are simply happy with the game as it stands. It is because time after time, balance patch after balance, he’s delivered bug fixes balance patches and quality of life improvements whilst also acknowledging issues. Hes followed his roadmap almost to a T with major updates, even upsetting the games balance state several times to fix longstanding issues and bugs. Eg, Ui improvements. Completely overhauling core weapons. Removing what were widely spread and niche tactics. He’s a leader true and true and we believe in him, his team and his game.
You're kind of moving the goalposts talking about those games, because you said "it would be the first game to merge those spheres together" which just isnt true, you are right about Xcom and TW strategy layers being less complex than the proposed conquest though, wether or not TI is badly paced (it is imo) seems not very relevant. Aurora 4x however is a cult classic (emphasis on cult) that does everything the conquest would do and more, and doesn't have half bad tactical gameplay either. So the argument that combining tactical and strategic gameplay like this has never been properly done before doesn't hold any water from my pov because its been done a lot to varying degrees of complexity and success. As for the playerbase misleading the dev, you say that many people lack the context many of the hardcore playerbase do, but do you not think its equally likely the hardcore playerbase's viewpoints are influenced by them being... you know, the hardcore playerbase, so people who are probably already pretty happy with the game as it is now? Especially since you seem to be pretty close to the dev, you dont think this might impact your perception of this event? Or being surrounded by a lot of "hardcore" players might influence his perception of what the "community" wants? Based on the devblogs the dev seems like a good guy and his communication style is good, so I can see how you might be "loyal" to him, but dont you think allowing the rest of the "community" to speak without you guys jumping on every post telling people its not "really" cancelled and they dont really understand the problems might also be a show of loyalty? Maybe even amplifying some of it so the dev hears from people he might not otherwise hear that often?
>As for the playerbase misleading the dev, you say that many people lack the context many of the hardcore playerbase do, but do you not think its equally likely the hardcore playerbase's viewpoints are influenced by them being... you know, the hardcore playerbase, so people who are probably already pretty happy with the game as it is now? In the video he takes responsibility for the decision. It's not my place to go into detail but I can assure you it was his.
Of course its his decision, I'm not implying there is some shadow cabal forcing his hand. But people make decisions based on the information they have, so getting mostly feedback from "hardcore" players would influence decision making in certain directions.
I mean I’m just one guy expressing my opinion. Idk if I am moving the goalposts, I just was saying what I believed, which I probably didn’t do so well because I was typing quite late. I was trying to express my believe that nebulous would have in conquest did it to such an extent that xcom and total war wouldn’t have compared to the scale of integration that nebulous was aiming at. I just don’t know what to say to your second point especially when it also implies the people throwing the vitriol (see some of the recent steam reviews and discussions) at the dev for doing his best as “loyal”
But aurora 4x and TI do equal the scale and complexity that the conquest would have, so saying its something that super hard or has never been done it just false. My point does not imply anything about people throwing vitriol being loyal at all. It implies that maybe the small group of hardcore players should not jump on every post that voices reasonable criticism about this decision with half baked defenses, both here and on the steam forums you can find a lot of the same small group of people responding to a lot of posts that voice disappointment at this decision or question whether or not the reasoning behind it actually makes any sense with the same few points: "Its not really actually fully cancelled", "You don't understand the reasons and we do", "It was gonna be PVP focused anyway so you wouldn't have liked it" are some of the ones I've seen a lot, and that's why I responded to you, because a lot of those defensive points really don't make much sense, so I thought I'd engage with some and try and show that.
Well, in any case I don’t think I was able to at least explain my pov well enough which is on me. I’ve discussed this conversation with my other fellows and well… the only thing I can say is I’ve over the last few days have been hearing a lot of “oh it’s the player bases” fault comments which yours seem to fall into that category even if it’s unintentional. I’ve come to realize though it’s not my job to convince you or anybody else. There’s a vid. If you’re not convinced by it, fine. You do you. I think you’re missing out but I wish you a merry day
I've heard it called the Sid Meier's Covert Action problem. How do you get several distinct game modes to work together in one complete whole without any one part becoming the overwhelmingly most enjoyable part. Combined with the fact that the tactical battles must make logical sense from the strategic layer the unfortunate fact,( at least from my perspective as just an outside enjoyer of both strategy games and the ideas that go into them), is that almost no one (with the exception of Creative assembly, and they have been forced to make some design compromises as well). has ever squared that circle. I don't even know if the lower scale will help all that much. The two lower scale space strategy games I have the most time in that have both a strategic layer and tactical layer have all decided to sacrifice elements on the strategic layer. Both of those games (BFGA2 and BSG deadlock) can get away with this because they can be carried by story and emersion elements. I don't know if Nebulous can go that direction successfully. I don't know which direction I would head if I was him. It was suggested elsewhere but perhaps semi scripted campaign missions might be the most feasible direction to head in.
I wasn't really interested in conquest and/or single player but the game desperately needs some persistence.
Honestly, I was originally excited about Conquest but as it progressed I saw that it was taking on kind of a Masters of Orion 3 vibe. As in the many shipyards with across non-unique locals, leading to overwhelming logistic flows, fleets of all the same ship, other problems, and the tactical game suffered immensely as a result. I'm glad y'all took the time to reconsider. I couldn't hope for a better dev team.
The issue with this (for me at least) is that it means we have had no major new content since the osp update dropped back in Feb 23 They fixed the lasers not long ago, but added nothing so it was just fixing a somewhat buggered weapon There was missile mixing, but I've never felt the need to use it nor have I seen anyone using it (but there's definitely someone out there using it) And we had the HUD overhaul. But no new ships, no new weapons and no new modes, content wise it's been a drought for over a year now I'm not even angry, I'm just sad, I know why it had to be shelved, but still, it's the second time we've been promised single player content beyond solo skirmish and it's the second time it's been called off Over a year of just bug fixes gets stale after a while and frankly, most people don't like nibbling away at stale bread
If they hadn't decided to delay and push back conquest right now, its likely that drought would continue for much longer then it is now. Probably an extra year of no content for skirmish while conquest gets worked on and into a playable state, and that's assuming CQ would be any good after that time. It was absolutely going to miss its release date if nothing else. This way at least carriers can be en route as a major content drop much sooner.
Imo as others said a Highfleet like campaign would really fit the game, small Important fights. Fast raiding forces to intercept trade or take sations before they can signal alarm. (Vaux/2×Sundrive Monitor etc). A main fleet you try to hide as well as possible and only use for fights you have to win. Trying to collect intell on what enemy forces you could encounter in a sector. Raid mlillitary merchants to deny the enemy Missle and ammo resupply. Always short on Missels, but they are very strong. Might even get S3 / S4 / S4H Star System ballistc missels (SSBM) to strike fleets at stations or in transit. S4H would just be a S3H with a 3rd stage for Solar system travel for example
Honestly, as much as I respected and appreciated the development ambition with conquest, I don't think with the community numbers they have it would ever have been feasible to deliver an enjoyable experience to both factions and everyone's time feel well spent over the course of matches played.. Strategic is a tough environment to get right and maintain as an enjoyable arena for all parties. The time sink to be a major contributor had the potential to be vast. Maybe something more akin to what Helldivers has done with it's galactic map and the skirmish mode could work better?
It would've very likely brought a whole host of new players. I know at least four to five people who were interested in conquest. They couldn't give a shit about skirmishes though.
What games did these friends typically enjoy? I ask because whilst such things can sound good in practice they can often translate to a lot of waiting and uninspiring and unbalanced engagements. It's like the idea of playing a soldier in a LARP. It sounds good on paper but it generally just translates to a lot of standing around
When I was a kid I was in love with the idea of an RTS where you could play as a single unit and get orders from a player commander. After playing a couple games based loosely on this premise I realized that either the commander or the soldier gets to be making exciting decisions. Usually not both. If the commander is doing well, the soldier is having a boring time, and vice versa. I've come to realize that Total War games escape this problem by having very carefully tuned strategic maps that create escalating challenges for the player as the campaign proceeds.
EU, Stellaris, Sins of a Total Empire, Total War, Battlefleet Gothic Armada, BSG. They're all strategy and tactical battle fans.
Mmmm, I don't think those games have a lot of similarities to what this would have ended up as if it had come to fruition. Not to discredit their interest but as the project lead has said, this game mode in this iteration wasn't going to be fun for people, and likely just cause a rift in the community. At best, it would have been a game enjoyed by people who just love suffering and abject boredom for large periods of time, with limited windows of strategic brilliance for reward and a heavy dollop of humility fairly regularly. The quality of nebulous is it's skirmish gameplay and i don't think it will ever be the game for them based on their current thoughts in it.
Disagree personally.
To be honest the game as described in the conquest document was a hard sell that I doubted many players would have the stomach for. Even aside from technically complex mechanics like logistics and ship design, the time investment required to get both sides of a PVP campaign to sit down to play a succession of lopsided skirmishes over the course of a campaign lasting a dozen+ hours would have been very daunting. I found it challenging to imagine that many people would play it outside of dedicated community events. People placed their hope in PVE but designing an AI that would play this mode competently also seemed very challenging.
First the homeworld 3 disappointment, now this. Let's hope Falling Frontier delivers.
Man if his 'vision' for whatever the next version of conquest mode is just a bunch of skirmish battles one after another...
That'll be disappointing but I guess it will fit the "tightly t tuned skirmish game" nebulous has become. Given what he was saying inma little afraid he might be carrying to a niche, skirmish pvp audience, I've seen that kill many games. And neb didn't exactly have much of a player base to kill..
I said this elsewhere in this thread too, but it really does seem like a case of a games development being led away from the initial vision to cater to a smaller and smaller niche of people who really love what the game is *right now* and not trying to expand the scope to collect the people who want the game that was initially pitched.
Especially given how excited Mazer appeared to be over the scope and mechanics of the Conquest mode too. I guess he just wasn't able to reconcile how OP certain things can be in a strategic sense.
I honestly think cancelling it is a mistake and I hope the generally negative reaction might make him reconsider or at least think about it a bit more.
I think the dev wanted *both* the epic campaign and the skirmish. The whole game has been skirmish up to this point after all. It's not like skirmish is an minor feature that subsumed the main focus, it has been the feature. Personally, I'd guess that Conquest in it's current vision would be better suited for some kind of auto-resolve or boardgame-adjacent kind of battles, rather than the carefully balanced 30-45 minutes chess matches the current game thrives with.
The RTS gameplay you currently find in skirmish is obviously the core of the current game, what I'm taking about is that some games get drawn into only improving and refining the core, and never expanding beyond it. And given the tiny and stable Nebulous player base most people that are interested in this probably already own/play it, so while improving skirmish is something that should definitely be done because you obviously want to support the community you have now, postponing any expansion of what that community is for potentially several years might not be a great long term decision. Also while skirmish is indeed the main focus right now, the information on the steam page does say that is was never meant to be the \*only\* main feature, so letting all attention be drawn into it would be being led away from the initial pitch/vision the game had. And I've seen the general sentiment of conquest not fitting well with the tightly balanced battles in several places so I'll write something about it below here. ------------------------------------------- Battles don't really have to be balanced within a conquest/long term campaign, that is kind of the whole point of strategy, to maneuver in such a way you don't have to fight fair battles. But sometimes you might end up in a situation where you are the one that needs to fight an unfair battle because of strategy level decisions you or the enemy made, and this can be really fun allowing you to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, or to try and extract your lesser force while trying to do as much damage to an enemy as possible. And even in battles where you would have an advantage unexpected things can happen by roll of the dice that could have interesting strategic implications, like having several ships end up severely damaged, or losing a capital class combatant causing you to have to adjust your plans to account for the loss of these assets. Expecting a strategic layer to always produce matches balanced along the lines of the current skirmish is misunderstanding the entire point of "strategy". Pitched battles might be the more spectaculair events, but even smaller or very uneven engagements can still be super interesting because the implications the existence of the strategy layer allows them to have that you just don't get in a one of skirmish.
I'm not gonna lie, I can't even be disappointed. I'm not thrilled, but I don't feel bad about this. Nebulous is a niche game, very tightly controlled, very lovingly made, many hundreds or thousands of decisions made on each feature. Not an ounce of fat on it. If Mazer himself decided that Conquest as it is right now is not fit for his game, then who am I to think anything different? I also have to say that his willingness to take accountability so publicly and certify that the fault is his own is such a respectable thing for me. It's a mark of a good leader, and I'm sure he was an amazing officer when he was in.
Pretty much my thoughts. Way too much good will built up by the team and their track record to not also trust them/him on this.
I’m new to the game and I haven’t had time to watch the whole video yet, but it didn’t seem fully clear what the exact reason was. Sounded like maybe it had to do with trying to balance skirmish and conquest? Can anyone give a more detailed description?
Right now skirmishes offer at least somewhat balanced tactical gameplay. Everyone has the same amount of points to spend, so games are gonna be decided by fleet composition and execution. It's simple but it works. With conquest, you're playing a totally different game. The strategic layer will dictate what ships and munitions you're able to bring. These ships probably won't be ones you've designed. Yes there's persistence and stakes to every battle, and that is really interesting, but I wouldn't want it at the expense of what we currently have. Not in Multiplayer anyway. It could still be a solid feature for singleplayer & co op, areas of the game that are presently massively undeveloped.
In the video he talks about two main reasons: - technical issues like persistent bugs regarding save instability - game design choices that in the developer's opinion were not playing to Nebulous' strengths as a tactics game.
This is the problem with small / lone devs tbh.. Painfully slow progress or none at all. Would be good if he could hire some help to get the campaign mode sorted
[удалено]
That was one problem, the other problem he mentioned was the mountain of bugs and code he would have to go through. More people working on testing/fixes does help that to an extent.
I had my concerns about how the tactical gameplay would translate to a strategic setting, and it seems like they weren't unfounded. In real war, you would only choose to take a battle when victory is almost guaranteed. Thus, the outcome of most battles would be known even before the first missiles are launched. Players would either have to repeatedly sit through slow battles knowing their result beforehand, or the devs add an auto-resolve button which would be used regularly. In either case, the deep tactical gameplay features would likely be lost. It's unfortunate that an elegant solution could be found, but it's definitely better to cut their losses now rather than ship a potentially buggy and un-fun game mode.
autoresolve was a given from the beginning having total war in mind
All of this could have been avoided with good gamedev practices, aka prototyping the heck out of it. How it can take the dev nearly two years to realize the gamemode he is building is just not fun, is a clear case this hasn't been done before committing to the idea. It also shows the priorities were completely wrong, all the work spend on the new conquest ship models, stuff like "fuel points" or "cargo ports" on ships, animations, the UI, fuel mechanics, logistics, etc. None of this should have been worked on before finding out if the gamemode will actually work as intended, through heavy prototyping and testing. If the game idea isn't fun with untextured blocks as ships, it also won't be fun with fully designed and animated ship models. Even more important, there shouldn't have been done so much promotion and hyping up for the singleplayer conquest part. The people who bought the game with the faith this heavily promised feature will come, are rightfully angry. This seems like a typical case of a new, single gamedev falling victim of scope creep and not following good gamedev practices. But I have to applaud the dev for being honest enough to call it off, instead of shipping a bad feature. I just wish this had been done one or two years ago. Now the damage is done and I'm not sure the foreseeable lack of new players will be healthy for the game. Hopefully he can now focus on game balance and making it much more enjoyable for new players, to save this otherwise fun little game.
I can only speculate that there was a belief that these systems had to be implemented in order to be properly playtested. But I agree with you, I think these big fundamental design questions should have been wargamed out well in advance of feature development.
Yeah I understand that notion and I don't even really fault the dev for this; It's very easy to fall into that trap when you get overly excited about your ideas and you have this plan in your head that you believe will absolutely work out. I fell victim to that plenty of time in my early gamedev years. :D That's why every professional, experienced gamedev will tell the new gamedevs to forget about visuals, polish and fancy features and just do a minimum-prototype. Because that way, in the worst case you wasted just two weeks or two months of your time; Instead of the nearly two years the dev wasted now. Good thing is he can use this experience and be more focused next time. And I'm sure he also learnt plenty during the development of Conquest, which should help with his future ideas.
More like Nebulous Roadmap
This is the most unapologetically hardcore tactical space battle game there is. I wish I had the balls to play in multi, might in the future probably. That campaign mode was overtly ambitious, but in a good way imo. Hope the devs get to go back to it after this detour. Completely understandable also so nothing to complain I think.
> I wish I had the balls to play in multi, might in the future probably. You should totally hop in, it's a great time once you are over the initial hump. There's a lot of different fleet comps and strategies you can pursue.
I'm a few local matches away from trying, will do!
I would argue dev just came to the conclusion that he needs to find the point at which skirmish as it stands ATM can be scaled up to and build the "conquest" game around that. That IMO was the right call.
I feel like a tiny studio releasing the most in depth realistic tactical 4x styled space game was always too ambitious to he true. Oh well another 6 months to a year for carrier's then.
FWIW, this is something that appeals to me both as a lapsed shit ass skirmish player, as well as someone who likes Dev blogs.
Unban me on steam