It’s been probably 12+ years since I played any RTS, back then it was the launch of Starcraft II, I did enjoy my time with it but my brain can’t seem to handle all the multitasking and I end up getting stressed and then panic, I quickly found that I was outclassed even by the people with fewer hours in game than myself. This made me put the game down with thoughts of coming back to it.I still spent many hours watching tournaments and streamers casting games, I did enjoy the game, learning strategies and following the meta but as for playing it seems like a mountain to climb to be good enough.
Many years later I hear about Stormgate, a modern RTS which I could start at the beginning again, this time it would be better, this time I will learn and improve. Well that’s the theory, but watching all the interviews and news it seems Stormgate is going to have many QoL (quality of life) improvements to make it more accessible. Could this be my RTS, could this game get me back. Firstly I needed to register StormgateNexus.com as the announcement is fresh and domains should be available…(devs and buying domains, I know)
Well that was over a year ago, but with Steam NextFest going on, we can all play again, there is a simple AI for me to practice on, so I thought I would document my progress, what I like, what I don’t, what I need to practice and will this be my go-to game.
So let’s get going, the first games might be verbose but they should get more concise as I just compare progress later on. Before playing I watched some videos from Beomulf and Artosis to learn the key aspects.
1st game: vs Peaceful AI
Immediately went to pan the map and instead, started creating units, seems WASD are shortcuts to create units, who knew!
Tried to zoom out… It seems you are right in the action with no option to zoom, well at least it’s the same for everyone so no advantage either way.
Queued up 2 B.O.B.S and set my rally point to the luminite deposit accidentally but it seems it was a good move regardless, saves manually assigning B.O.Bs each time, got my doggo, sorry S.C.O.U.T, to go to the other corner of the map and then I built a barracks. Can’t get used to panning the camera though.
Now time for some units, I can only build Lancers so I queued up 2 of those,, they are melee only and I needed more Dakka, so let's see where I can get them. Moving around the menu I found the Exo, which I needed a Biokinetics lab for ,so back to buildings (Q) and placed one down, automatically a B.O.B comes over and starts work.
B.O.B production looks fine, always having 2 in the queue means my forgetful brain has some redundancy and this is where I spot the other resource, Therium, knowing I’m going to need this soon I divert 4 B.O.Bs over and queue up their replacements, now realising I am running out of Supply.
Off hunting again for the solution but easily enough I found the habitat, placed 2 down (because I will forget to build more), I carried on with getting my army together, putting another barracks down to speed up production.
Still unable to build Exos I added 4 Scouts to the queue, map control is key right? They built quickly so grabbed all 4 and sent them on attack move to the enemy base. I’ll probably forget about them in seconds, but my mind has already gone over to expansion, looking around there is another lumite deposit nearby, so I set a command post down nearby, that’ll probably take some time but now the Exos are ready…
Excitedly I queued up 4 Exos and tried to add some Lancers but out of resources again… Dammit! My S.C.O.U.T.S,I knew I would forget them so I clicked the minimap to jump to the enemy base and luckily 3 scouts are still alive, chewing on an enemy lancer and not getting far so I made them attack the B.O.Bs out mining, perhaps I can hurt their economy?
Back to my base and my army is growing, using shortcuts this time I added 4 more Lancers, which, thank you Frost Giant, split it between the barracks, some nice QoL there, also setting a rally point now means all barracks will rally at the same point.
Selecting all my army, I attack moved them just before the enemy base, my thoughts being that if I encounter anything en-route, the army won’t just blindly walk past. I got to the base, rallied my barracks to my army's location for reinforcements and went in for the kill.
As you might expect, the peaceful AI is not really a challenge but I’m just learning how to play. So my thoughts after 10 minutes of playing
Pros: Production/research is all available in 4 tabs with shortcuts, with shortcuts for each unit/structure/research. Going to need practice but I can see this being much easier to handle when I learn it.
Cons: Panning the map, seems it’s better to click on the mini map to navigate.
Up Close - The game seems zoomed in too much, I’ll get used to it and it might help me macro later on.