The Complete Highfleet Experience Part 1: Tutorial, Death, Design, ROCKETS?! (๑•̀ᗝ•́)૭
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- čas přidán 5. 01. 2024
- I decided to split my full commentary on Highfleet into two parts. This first part covers general first impressions, the tutorial, and the assorted mishaps of attempting to play the campaign. Coming soon will be commentary on the second campaign attempt, which had much more for show for it.
Highfleet is a stylish strategy-action hybrid where you travel around a 'naval' map of a hostile territory, and fight in strangely good-looking 2D shooters reminiscent of arcade shooters or bullet hell games. It's cool, deep, and beautiful; however those things aren't necessarily pulling their weight, as the gameplay itself still seems vulnerable to critique. So let's hear my rants as we lay the groundwork for a full playthrough!
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#highfleet - Hry
I was sitting here with my coffee lamenting the fact that CZcams no longer lets you see the homepage when your watch history is off. Scrolling through videos I'd already seen and on the verge of giving up, a notification appears, salvation, my coffee will not go cold. It is with great joy that I click on this video, thank you for saving my coffee, Devin, your heroic actions will not be forgotten.
I, predicting this scenario, created this video just for you, enjoy!
It's funny hearing how you discuss the utility of strike fleets, compared to how I used them. Basically I would always have three, four, perhaps even five different strike groups, hitting different cities at the same time. A few quick ships, a single tanker/elint ship, and just scooping up as many cities, as many tarkhans, as much loot as I could. Then the slow main fleet would be flying from refueling city to refueling city, or just sitting in a hidden city.
I also agree with the ship rebuilding. I just couldn't find it particularly useful. I'd upgrade guns and such as I went, but wholesale reworkings?.. naw. What I did do is rework the flagship (after I'd quit for.. like a week, then came back with a new idea). All armor goes away, most guns go away, replace the top with a flight deck. Planes are so OP (which is ironic considering your rocket tirade)! Meanwhile lugging around an enormous gun ship that never actually sees battles is pointless. Also all that weight guzzles so much fuel! So the very first city I just stripped it down to a more manageable size, and added a flight deck plus as many planes as I could fit.
But while my flagship sits there being rebuilt, I'd also sent out multiple strike forces. If you only hit with your main fleet, you're barely making enough to make ends meet, let alone building up a bigger and more powerful fleet capable of.. sending out lots of attack planes. Because, again, they're super good. They can clear out garrisons by themselves, or whole enemy Big Bad fleets. Then you can just waltz in and sweep up a few left overs. IF you time it right, they won't even send out an alarm.
As the game gets harder, and it does, the strike fleets would change, becoming bigger and often their own dedicated fleets with support ships etc. But at no time did I actually only have one fleet moving around.
Edit: I also thought the combat in the tutorial was super hard, and that the first portion of the campaign was super hard. I had to restart multiple times, and always rage-quit more than once. I think that's a deep flaw the game has. It needed to hold the players' hands more (and the flagship sucks in every way! rebuild it!). It's great in so many ways, it's a shame it tries to make you quit immediately. Once the combat becomes natural, it really does feel amazing. But the learning curve is way too steep. I'm a player who, like you, don't really like that. This time I stuck with it.. but only barely, which is a shame since I ended up really loving the game overall.
Edit2: I did end up looking at outside resources after my first flailing attempt. Of course, they had wildly different opinions it seemed. But it did inspire me to try not just big ships, but instead small ships because they're cheaper and easier and quicker to repair. And then from small ships I thought why not try using LOADS of small ships in multiple strike groups, and that was where the game clicked for me. Also, later, realizing how good fighter planes were, at which point the flagship rework on city 1 became an obvious go-to. Plus all that armor, all those extra guns, they're so much money early game too. Just sell it all, buy better stuff than armor and guns on a ship that shouldn't ever fight, or get caught by missiles.
I didn't really try planes, although I do remember someone else saying they were OP when I was looking stuff up, and also the stuff you said about removing armour. That strike group setup sounds pretty good. I only used it for avoiding the detection timer thing with the main fleet, since that was how it was introduced in the tutorial. Only at the end did I fully appreciate you could split the fleet entirely. I am tempted to try again with some wild strike-everything tactics!
I think I would like to see the game slightly altered so that you can have a different ship be the flagship from the start - you may see at the end of this video I also had my misgivings about the sevastopol and tried to change it! But in the campaign itself I didn't dare touch it. I think stripping it for parts and money is probably a good shout at the very least, esp if you don't want to use its nuke launchers. I saw someone say they park the sevastopol on its own somewhere outside of radar range and leave it there the whole campaign to save money and avoid risk!
With the difficulty, some people probably prefer that it's so hard to get into, so they can feel proud of the achievement, knowing few people got to play as far as they did or something. Not my own view, but I also get it. Personally, I'd prefer points of pride to come from completing 'hard mode' or rare achievements, and the main route through the game be easy enough that most people will at least see most of what world has to offer, even if they don't care enough/don't have time to git gud. So, add some kind of disgusting 'beginner mode' to highfleet 2, and I bet more people would ultimately make it through to enjoy higher modes. Or at least more people would think the game is cool.
Thanks for your comment and insight!
@@OffyDGGgenerally speaking the go2 tactic was making a really good flagship - economical 200kph carrier - and altering gamefiles (super easy via noyepad, just like in stalker) to be your flag, instead of useless Sevastopol.
Alternatively you can just get the repair city, strip big dumb oaf of everything and park it in the desert never to be moved. There is no penalty for cruising w/out your flagship, and since getting it killed is game over....
Yes that sounds like the secret to success! I guess the concern could be lack of fuel since sev has most of tanks, but pretty sure there is a fast tanker available from the start, and I am sure something better could be designed.
@@OffyDGG yeap. Your elint ship (skylark if memory serves) can fulfill light tanker duties w/out any modifications. It's doing 300kph so it won't hinder lightning strike teams on their way to silent strike enemy cities.
@@andrewkovalchuk4619 I had forgotten the name. Skylark, that's the one. Elint and decent tanker all in one. One compliments up to 3 lightnings if I recall correctly, or just one heavier armored ship.
The Sev actually is a pretty good tanker if you rip off all her armor, most of her weapons, most of the extra she doesn't need, and perhaps add a fuel efficient engine or two. Suddenly she no longer flies at 90, either. Slap on some flight decks on the top, add some fighter planes.. and she's actually really useful. Never take her to battle, but as part of your missile/carrier group, she can support your attack fleets. Again, planes are OP. Huge nasty garrisons become easy when half the ships/AA batteries are destroyed before the fight even starts by cheap bombs.
Edit: Am looking forward to seeing how the actual campaign goes. :D
OMG. 🎉🎉🎉🎉
Finally!
You'll have a field day with this one's design. A pity they reduced glitch mode.
part of the struggle you had during the tutorial is definitely the extra fuel tanks, the enemy wasnt using incendiary ammo
fuel tanks tend to start burning whenever hit and having the giant exposed balls of fuel ontop of the ships meant every salvo not from below was likely to hit that and cause a fire, the tutorial fleet is also set up in a way you can barely reach the next goal with the default fuel limit regardless
This was an interesting watch, I have been looking at High Fleet a bit but not really feeling it for some reason.
A game that you might find compelling, with similar battles in a way and designing airships (and landships!) is Airships: Conquer the Skies. A steampunk airship battle game with a grand strategy mode that is not the deepest but still gives you some context and flow to the battles.
You can even start in like a sort of "Age of Sail" tech-level with balloons and stuff, and you go all the way up to like basically making WW2 flying ships with like even their own onboard planes and such. You can also make ramming and boarding ships. It is quite a gem in my opinion.
I played conquer the skies a little bit ages ago, and when I saw highfleet had ship building I thought it might be something similar. Gonna have to go back and take another look at it.
Ahh just what I need after a long day of CLASSIFIED at the REDACTED.
Eating soup, soylent factory?
@@colmoe Rats! That was a lucky guess!
Been loving the videos lately Devin. Hope you had a nice holiday period and wishing you a happy new year.
Many thanks, and a happy new year to you too!
I think the important thing to consider with the lore and why it's rocket ships, is that this is not Earth, but a planet that's at the same time bigger and less dense. So, these ships probably don't require nearly as much fuel as they would on Earth, because there's less gravity. And I think the atmosphere is also less dense, so planes and helicopters would be relatively less efficient.
Not really sure how this planet could exist or how it could sustain human life, but I think the transportation being handled by rockets isn't quite that bad.
I think low atmosphere pressure is the best hope to explain rocket use. Low density planet helps, although that would also counter the low atmosphere and bring planes and airships back into the running (as in less gravity means low atmosphere doesn't hinder flight much). So it might be more like low atmosphere but big planet and hence big gravity, forcing rocket use for air travel. Yeah probably wouldn't be possible live on, but then again this massive nation appears to have no rivers or farms and seems to have hundreds of cities regardless, so perhaps some technomagic makes day to day life possible even with minimal habitability. Perhpas this also explains why the place is a desert, but half the time when you go into battle its raining really hard.
IT ALL MAKES SENSE REALLY
@@OffyDGG I kept going over travel distances and thinking.. wait.. this doesn't make sense! Then I heard about the bigger weird alien future planet, and decided.. y'know what, I'm just gonna accept it rather than ruin my immersion once more. I'm sure it works. Don't think too hard on it! >.>
Oh my god, OffyD is playing Highfleet. I gotta get my popcorn and comfy slippers for this one!
I think the landing game (at least the one I used to play) was Luna Lander. Green vector graphics on the old Apple II. This may show my age a tad.
Ah thats right! I probably had it as part of some collection or something, vaugely remember having it as a 90s kid.
5 mins into the video and already gotta post. That UI is nightmare to me, such a late 90s gaming magazine demo disc undecipherable weird strategy game feeling.
90s demo disk is such a good way of putting it, that's amazing. Definitely old school cool, but yeah there is also good reasons people stopped making UI element like this, as users tend to prefer substance over style with these things. Still, I thought it was cool even if it made things even harder to understand.
There is another game that this dev made called Hammerfighter that is in the same world as Highfleet. Ho and have you seen the game Airships: Conquer the Skies?
Ah I didn't know that,very interesting!
And yeah I have, been ages but I will have to try it again since it's vaguely similar, I wonder how it compares to highfleet.
This game looks like it would be awesome if they were mecha of the same style and tech level, and instead of flying they walk along the ground and jump with similar rocket handling. If it were like that the rockets would be a bit more justified and you would have to choose between staying on the ground or jumping often, and customize your mech for each style. For example, a lighter jumpy mech would be hard to hit but less armored and vice versa. Maybe I'm just a mecha-head though...
I feel something similar. I would like to see the exact same game but with 'landships' or giant trains or something, with battles top down but otherwise same sort of thing. As ranted about early in this video, I thought the rockets were just a little too crazy for the lore to support.
Oh thank fucking god. Looking forward to this.
Im not that experienced with the genre and still thought the game was pretty hard but didn’t have that much trouble with the tutorial at least.
I probably wouldn’t have liked it all if not for the presentation, but I think it matters a lot and isn’t some kind of side thing.
Another enjoyable video. I can't really say much about the game, i tried it, didn't like it, clearly not for me (i hate rogue likes).
But regarding the rockets i can say as another physics nerd that these are actually somewhat justified by the setting. It is not post-apocalyptic (or not until the nukes start flying) but rather supposed to be an alien planet that is at the same time much larger than earth, but also less dense, with lower resulting gravity and a low-oxygen atmosphere (hence the people with breathing gear). And this setting works out in favour of rockets: ground vehicles are out because the large distances make them too slow, low oxygen atmosphere means you need to carry rocket fuel no what engine you use, and low gravity makes rockets work more efficiently and airships not at all. Giant planes could be an option, but they can't manoeuvre freely (though i'd question if VTOL is important enough to give up on the efficiency of winged flight). So the remaining options are rockets or helicopters and if you're going have broadside gun battles, rockets are better, you can hide a rocket almost completely behind armour, but heli rotors are big and fragile. And also lost efficiency in the lower density atmosphere.
I think it's quite the interesting setting, i don't know any other SF setting with a similar idea, i was actually quite disappointed when i tried the game and found the strategic layer to be what it is.
Someone else put that forward also, but there's something that doesn't feel right about the physics still. I think the issue would be that while low atmosphere makes traditional flight harder, low gravity then makes it easier, and you start needing to argue that the atmosphere must be practically non-existent for adding wings to these things to actually be a waste. That would explain the masks, although you do also see regular people in some cutscenes who don't have them, so it may be more related to aviation, since most characters you see also fly with you. It wasn't in this video, but late in the game you fight groups of jet planes that hunt you across map, so some kind of winged flight is available.
Low atmos and low gravity is perfect for ultra fast trains, or indeed giant landships since they could be both massive and quick, with all the benefits of wheels so big that terrain doesn't factor into things. And even a helicopter that fires small rockets is better than a large rocket with machine guns bolted to it.
Someone else suggested the real lore solution: the entire planet is made of frozen methane, or something, explaining why rocket fuel is so cheap that it beats jets, rotors, or even a good old fashioned piston engine on rail! Probably gonna have to go with that.
Not sure if the game itself mentions anything about all this, so no idea what the official take was. I think it was 'rockets are cool', and losers like me complaining that it's a waste of resources were executed for treason long ago :D
@@OffyDGG The argument against winged flight would be that planes can't move freely in 360° the way that the rockets can. But this is clearly the weakest element. Although who knows, maybe the ships have giant foldable wings that are used when not in combat or landing. Maybe the explanation is that they just haven't invented landing strips yet.
Trains and Landships could be impractical if the distances are simply too large and the terrain is too mountainous. That sort of fits as well, since low gravity worlds have taller mountains and low density atmosphere produces less weather erosion. Although having a world that is significantly larger and much less dense is a bit of a stretch. Maybe it's hollow and Highfleet II will have subterranean ships.
Regarding the rocket fuel, that is adequately explained by a low-oxygen atmosphere. If other types of engines need to carry oxygen as well as fuel, they lose significant amounts of efficiency. Even if the atmosphere is methane and you carry only the oxygen, that is still less efficient than the opposite.
But while we're talking about efficiency, we can also complain that the rocket engines seem to be pretty bad, given that the exhaust is very slow and smoky, telling us there's incomplete combustion going on and very inefficient use of the combustion products. Although we also don't actually know that they're rockets i think. They might be some sort of turbofan jet engine that's burning rocket fuel. Jet engines don't necessarily need to burn the air from the intake (see the SABRE engine).
Yeah the game throws too much at new players at the start and it's no surprise so many bounce of it.
Ironically the previous game I've played from this dev, Hammerfight, was a lot less brutal and a lot more visceral to me... when the controls worked. (It's about airships beating each other up with giant flail like devices and controlling them with the mouse in a way that it'll generate momentum for extra hitting power)
Hey Devin... you should try Airships: Conquer the Skies. There you CAN design the airships to your heart's content. It's half the game.Edit: Althought it is waaaaaay less cool than Highfleet
Yeah I totally will try it properly, I vaguely remember playing ages ago. I want to make some weird design so I better take a closer look!
just started watching but you talking around 2:20 about doom future seems to me to be at odds with other things you've mentioned in the past regarding sort of "instant gratification"-technologies
Not sure what you mean, but I hardly remember what I've said in the past anyway!
I bought Highfleet on Steam last year, but I refunded it because I wan't confident my skills would outpace my frustration with it. I might give it a second go someday, it looks great and the game's aesthetic is spot on!
The game doesn't make it super clear, but it's set on some other planet than Eartg, one that's a lot bigger too. Maybe the entire game is set on a endless flat desert, loosely floating over a bottomless sea of liquid methane that they pump out to power their rocket-boosted flying fortresses...
I think something like 'the planet is made of rocket fuel' is the only way at this stage, since there is so much of it but no apparent way to produce it. I did also notice that the distance you travel is like 20k kilometers north, so this desert nation is absolutely massive. So yeah, it's a super earth make of liquid methane, that deals with some some problems! Raises the question of why this infinite fuel supply isn't used for less sophisticated but more useful things. Like... trains! Ah I am sure the rants could be endless.
Difficult game for sure, I think playing with a walk through is really the best hope of finding fun in the beginning, it's way too hard right up front.
how long did it take you to beat the game if you havent already
I think the region of 10 hours. Steam playtime 12.4 hours, but some was tutorial and failing shown in this video. The campaign is not all that long as I think you are perhaps supposed to play it more than once, or fail more than once. I will cover this more in my next video.
Hey great video! I wouldn't bother with design suggestions the developer has utterly ignored the non-russian speaking audience.
yeah this game taught me to never again buy a game unless ive watched a couple of youtubers play it first. I dont understand why it should be this hard and i dont have the time to grind it. Yeah im pretty sure that its gonna be very rewarding to figure it out, but ii just dont have the time or the stress tolerance to waste on this. Im just messing around having simple battles in the ship editor...and then i uninstalled....maybe after i get my retirement i'll have time to kill and check this out again.