xkcd

by **Swivelguy** » Sun May 29, 2011 6:04 am UTC

Frozen Synapse is a unique, turn-based real-time tactical simulator reminiscent of the planning mode from Rainbow Six games, distilled into quick arena matches.

http://www.frozensynapse.com/

27min video review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jJrUY27O0Y

I just bought this thing and started playing. It's an excellent little diversion. Anyone else playing?

by **psion** » Sun May 29, 2011 10:55 am UTC

I've been waiting for this for a while. Rainbow Six planning mode is definitely what I was thinking when I saw the teasers. I'm a little disappointed that there aren't any doors and the options that would come with them.
--
Damn it. I just had a friendly AI kill two of my men from a wanton rocket.
--
"Alternatively, just let him die and I'll suck his knowledge from the stunted neural pathways of his forlorn, gently necrosing mind."
--
I checkmated an enemy into not moving while I moved my hacker to a terminal. Teehee. Oh, he killed my hacker... But apparently I still won. It's amusing to see him talk to me when he's a green and red smear.

by **SlyReaper** » Sun May 29, 2011 1:02 pm UTC

I'd never heard of it until yesterday, and I just bought it off Steam because it looked interesting. Definitely worth it. It's brilliant. :mrgreen:

by **a_fuzzyduck** » Mon May 30, 2011 1:55 am UTC

its ace. I have equal amounts of fun messing about with all the UI stuff in game and actually playing

by **EvanED** » Mon May 30, 2011 6:04 am UTC

Thanks for the link. This is what I always wanted Rainbow Six's planning phase to be like. (In particular, the "aim" commands.) It still has a very different feel though, even if you play RS by planning out your actions then starting in observer mode.

(I guess part of me still wants it to be more like RS, but that's cause Rainbow Six 3 was just about my favorite fps ever. This isn't even trying to be the same game.)

by **Jahoclave** » Mon May 30, 2011 7:19 am UTC

You know, Total Biscuit might just be my favorite reviewer. That said, this might just be the second game I'd buy because of him. The multiplayer has a lot of fun potential.

by **Toeofdoom** » Mon May 30, 2011 7:48 am UTC

I've been playing for a while in the beta, the multiplayer is good fun. Penny arcade plus total biscuit did crush the servers a bit at launch, but it seems to be smoother now.

by **Swivelguy** » Mon May 30, 2011 8:15 pm UTC

I'm gonna be playing intermittently today while I work, as CosmicOsmo on Texas3. Come challenge me!

by **Jahoclave** » Mon May 30, 2011 8:45 pm UTC

Well, this might just end that getting things done campaign I was trying to do. At any rate. My username's Jahoclave, I know. Huge surprise.

by **SlyReaper** » Mon May 30, 2011 9:16 pm UTC

Is it just me, or is this game really really punishingly hard? And every time you fail, the map changes so you can't even correct whatever small mistake it was that caused you to fail last time. It's especially hard now I'm on levels where the AI outnumbers me. My current mission is where I have to defend a room with lots of windows and doors for enemy snipers and machine gunners to shoot through. For 10 turns. No matter where I place my men, there's always some enemy who can get an angle on them. I have 2 rockets, 2 shotguns and a machine gunner. They have several machine gunners, shotgunners and snipers, and more spawn on every turn, and the AI is very devious. They tend to overrun me on the 7th turn.

Today I played my first multiplayer game. I won. Every turn ended up with me killing one of his men, and him killing one of my men. But on the final turn, I somehow managed to get the drop on him by placing a machine gunner behind some light cover in the middle of a long wall. I think he'd expected me to come round the corner.

Oh, my multiplayer name is...

Wait for it...

Spoiler:

Bet you didn't expect that name.

by **Swivelguy** » Mon May 30, 2011 10:09 pm UTC

You guys should post which of the servers you're playing on, as there's no cross-server friend list or even statistics.

by **Menacing Spike** » Mon May 30, 2011 10:21 pm UTC

Penny Arcade talking about it: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/5/30/

by **Jahoclave** » Mon May 30, 2011 10:49 pm UTC

Texas 3:

I think the trick is to rocket the hell out of all approaches? Explosions are good, right?

Though, sometimes you can get lucky. I'm pretty sure that on that first kill all scientist mission I wasn't generally supposed to be able to pop all the scientists from where my guys were standing.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Mon May 30, 2011 11:13 pm UTC

SlyReaper wrote:Is it just me, or is this game really really punishingly hard? And every time you fail, the map changes so you can't even correct whatever small mistake it was that caused you to fail last time. It's especially hard now I'm on levels where the AI outnumbers me. My current mission is where I have to defend a room with lots of windows and doors for enemy snipers and machine gunners to shoot through. For 10 turns. No matter where I place my men, there's always some enemy who can get an angle on them. I have 2 rockets, 2 shotguns and a machine gunner. They have several machine gunners, shotgunners and snipers, and more spawn on every turn, and the AI is very devious. They tend to overrun me on the 7th turn.

Man, fuck that level, I'm stuck there too, never been past turn 8 and generally give up and restart between turns three and six.

For multiplayer, I'm zephyr256k, mostly on Texas4.
It would be nice if you could switch servers in game, if anyone wants to play on a different server, PM me or friend me on steam or somesuch.

by **Jahoclave** » Tue May 31, 2011 1:07 am UTC

All I know, is that this little must see them to fire thing is annoying. I'm sorry, I know he's going to pop out that cover, fire on that cover. Or, for some reason, even when seeing people it lags to fire on them.

As for that other thing about chating I got sent. No idea what happened with that.

by **dbsmith** » Tue May 31, 2011 1:33 am UTC

Me and my flatmate got the game, spent 2 hours last night playing each. It was heaps of fun! Inevitably, after both of us would hit Prime, one of us would yell out "AHHHHH SHIT!" or the like, as best-laid plans were thwarted.
Love it.

by **SlyReaper** » Tue May 31, 2011 5:49 am UTC

Jahoclave wrote:All I know, is that this little must see them to fire thing is annoying. I'm sorry, I know he's going to pop out that cover, fire on that cover. Or, for some reason, even when seeing people it lags to fire on them.

As for that other thing about chating I got sent. No idea what happened with that.

Are you actively aiming at the cover/corner/whatever or just facing it? I think if he's actively aiming, it makes the guy open fire more quickly even if he's already facing that way. Also I think machine gunners have a small delay anyway to make the shotgunners (which have a much smaller delay) more useful.

I'm on server UK2. I wish there was a single shard.

by **Swivelguy** » Tue May 31, 2011 7:14 am UTC

SlyReaper wrote:I'm on server UK2. I wish there was a single shard.

Note that you can switch and play games on every server. I'm pretty sure I have games in progress on all of the Texases now. If you go overseas with your server choice, you'll get longer load times, but because it's turn based, you can still play with no disadvantage. This means we can have a global xkcd FS league!

It could be done a lot better—they could have 1 master server handle all of the statistics, online-status, and chat, and then divide individual games up "behind the scenes" onto multiple gameplay servers to spread the load around.

by **SlyReaper** » Tue May 31, 2011 12:19 pm UTC

Listening to the soundtrack on my mp3 player. Lovely.

by **Amnesiasoft** » Tue May 31, 2011 8:27 pm UTC

My username follows the trend we seem to have established in this thread.

I actually almost ended up in a game with Jahoclave from the matchmaker, I got a request saying "Jahoclave wants to play" and attempted to get into, but was too late. So I started one up anyway

Is it just me though, or do the default match settings seem to like bunching up the entire team in a corner?

by **Swivelguy** » Tue May 31, 2011 9:41 pm UTC

Amnesiasoft wrote:My username follows the trend we seem to have established in this thread.

I actually almost ended up in a game with Jahoclave from the matchmaker, I got a request saying "Jahoclave wants to play" and attempted to get into, but was too late. So I started one up anyway

Is it just me though, or do the default match settings seem to like bunching up the entire team in a corner?

There are two different kinds of extermination: team bunched up, and random positions. The auto-matchmaker seems to give 50/50 of both.

I am already [not so] secretly planning the XKCD frozen synapse league. Simultaneous pool play!

by **Jahoclave** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 1:37 am UTC

Amnesiasoft wrote:My username follows the trend we seem to have established in this thread.

I actually almost ended up in a game with Jahoclave from the matchmaker, I got a request saying "Jahoclave wants to play" and attempted to get into, but was too late. So I started one up anyway

Is it just me though, or do the default match settings seem to like bunching up the entire team in a corner?

Yeah. I think ours ended up looking more like a paintball arena than a tactical situation.

Finally won a match. Don't know how since I didn't get the last guy--even though he was irreparably doomed. From my rocket launcher destroying all cover. And my gunner positioned to kill him once it did.

Can I place bets on who ends up at the bottom of the league? Can I? Can I? Can I?

And what I meant was that I want my guy to be firing before he even has a visual. You know, covering fire. Seems like an order I should be able to give. Fire round.

Though i did enjoy my way of taking care of this sniper in single player. Oh, you're somewhere on the other side of that wall. Well here, let my rocket guy destroy that wall so I can shoot you.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 4:35 am UTC

games end after a pre-determined number of rounds (usually eight or ten I think) and whoever has the most kills wins.

Just played two really fun rounds.

In the first both sides started with a machine-gunner, a grenadier and a rocket launcher. First turn our MGs killed each other and the rest of the game was a massively destructive explosives duel.
I was smiling the whole time even though I ended up losing handily

The other I lost my rocket launcher and shotgunner very early on but was able to ninja my one MGer around and take out the whole enemy team.

by **Swivelguy** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 2:15 pm UTC

Jahoclave and I are in the midst of a pretty tense cat-and-mouse game in which no shots have been fired after 4 turns. This will either end very dramatically or very anticlimactically.

I would force at least 1 explosive unit per game if I could without having to make custom games. Also, why must Disputed give unequal teams!?

by **Jahoclave** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:14 pm UTC

Swivelguy wrote:Jahoclave and I are in the midst of a pretty tense cat-and-mouse game in which no shots have been fired after 4 turns. This will either end very dramatically or very anticlimactically.

I would force at least 1 explosive unit per game if I could without having to make custom games. Also, why must Disputed give unequal teams!?

Well, it's not so much cat and mouse. I have a pretty good general idea of where your guys are, I just figure the more experienced person is responsible for rushing in to get the kill. Besides, if you'd just come into my cleverly laid traps this wouldn't be an issue. :wink:

Though, you'd be down one shotgun guy if I hadn't have moved.

But there have been some shots. Sadly your shotgun guy is still alive.

Dang you and skirting the visible range.

But yeah, one explosive unit is probably a good idea. Especially if they're going to enforce turn limits.
4 explosive units is a better idea.

by **SlyReaper** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:29 pm UTC

There has been talk of how overpowered explosive units are. But there's a very simple way to never be troubled by them, and that's to never stand near any walls ever. I'm pretty sure rockets are incapable of directly hitting a unit, that it's all splash damage from when it hits a wall. Solution: never go near any walls. I have used this tactic to great effect against AI when I've managed to kill everything except their rocket man.

by **Swivelguy** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:04 pm UTC

Yeah, the explosives are a little bit extreme, but still necessary. Here's how I'd change them:

Rockets: make it so that if the explosion is out of LOS of a victim, it won't kill them. In other words, someone standing just left of a wall can't be killed by a rocket hitting the right side of that wall, but it will remove the wall and expose them. Either this or just decrease their radius a little.

Grenades: change them to flashbangs! Make anyone who would have been killed by a grenade under the current conditions incapacitated for ~1 second. That way you can still use them to bust a camper, but games with grenades won't just consist of lobbing them willy nilly hoping to get a lucky kill of an enemy you've never seen.

Jahoclave wrote:Well, it's not so much cat and mouse. I have a pretty good general idea of where your guys are, I just figure the more experienced person is responsible for rushing in to get the kill. Besides, if you'd just come into my cleverly laid traps this wouldn't be an issue. Though, you'd be down one shotgun guy if I hadn't have moved.

But there have been some shots. Sadly your shotgun guy is still alive. Dang you and skirting the visible range.

I wouldn't have run my shottie across that open ground if I hadn't seen you retreating and known that it could be done safely by dodging from cover to cover

You're not exactly going to love turn 6 when you see it. One of your traps was not carefully laid in time. Let's reroll our next match until we get some rockets.

And for the crowd: I rushed madly in on turn 7, lost a guy, and a draw was forced

by **Jahoclave** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:32 am UTC

See, you knew it was A TRAP! but it was still too pretty to resist.

Though, in our next two games I've gotten rather lucky with those first round rocket attacks.

Though, I think in this last game I have four rounds to clear you out of three rooms.
Sorry about having to leave, Steam believed it didn't want to have right clicking allowed. Had to restart my computer.

by **Babam** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:57 am UTC

In game name is Babam, rocket launchers are balanced right now.

5x rockets vs 5x rockets is the best fun when there are tons of walls between the two of you.

by **Jahoclave** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:00 am UTC

I never thought I'd be so annoyed that my opponent didn't duck, sneak back around the corner, then die by my cleverly placed rocket on his get away.

Seriously, that was a really tricky shot to line up and estimate based on where he should be because of the angle he had available. And I did all that hard work to make sure he'd be dead.

by **Robot_Raptor** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 3:15 pm UTC

Gnarr, shotgun guys, i like long range shooters.

How do I lure the AI into my infinitely clever ambushes? I am, :oops:

, stuck on the first campaign map.

by **SlyReaper** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 3:29 pm UTC

They're obviously not quite clever enough. The AI in this game is actually very smart. It won't walk into what it thinks is likely to be a trap. And remember, except for the dark levels, he can see exactly where all your guys are, just as you can see his.

by **LLCoolDave** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:57 pm UTC

Does anyone by chance still have his second copy or is interested in the game and hasn't bought it yet? The two-pack only sales model is interesting but I have noone to share it with right now.

by **Eseell** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:06 pm UTC

Robot_Raptor wrote:Gnarr, shotgun guys, i like long range shooters.

How do I lure the AI into my infinitely clever ambushes? I am, , stuck on the first campaign map.

The first map was really tough for me. My winning strategy was to have my guys move more defensively, sticking near full-height walls and to rooms with minimal amounts of windows. I avoided any large open spaces as much as possible. Trying to charge the machine gunners was not a good idea. Fortunately, I found that the maps got a lot easier for me after that first one.

by **Jahoclave** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:39 pm UTC

SlyReaper wrote:They're obviously not quite clever enough. The AI in this game is actually very smart. It won't walk into what it thinks is likely to be a trap. And remember, except for the dark levels, he can see exactly where all your guys are, just as you can see his.

Well, except for the rocket guys. There's been times where they've killed more AI opponents than I did. Oh to give the AI more rocket guys. That and AI rockets are so easy to avoid. Why yes, I will stand out in the open and gun all of you down because you killed all your teammates except one shotgun guy who can't possibly get withing range before dying.

It was actually less safe to go to the section to take out the rocket guys because they could have accidentally hit the wall. I'm enjoying this game far more than I thought I would, given how much I hate chess. I don't enjoy trying to plan twenty moves ahead.

Yet, I want if-then tactical abilities. GIVE ME MORE CONTROL! MORE CONTROL! MUWHAHAHAHAHA! But seriously, part of my kingdom for if-then commands.

by **Essah** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 12:03 am UTC

awesome game, usename is Essah - Challenge me

by **Swivelguy** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 12:36 am UTC

If-then would be so awesome, but probably result in totally unmanageable orders for each turn.

by **Jahoclave** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 12:38 am UTC

Swivelguy wrote:If-then would be so awesome, but probably result in totally unmanageable orders for each turn.

What, don't yell at me, it takes time to compile my orders! I'll get my turn to you next Thursday. If you want it sooner, promise to stand still!

Also, Swiv, I don't think you're gonna like the first turn in this game. But hey, at least I didn't get your rocket guy first turn this time!

There also might be a limit to their map generation. One of swiv's favorite games has a map and character layout as one of my games.

by **SlyReaper** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:41 am UTC

If-then commands would defeat the purpose of the game. The whole idea is you have to guess what your opponent is going to do. If you can issue orders that cover every possible eventuality, it would get boring.

by **Jahoclave** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 8:32 am UTC

SlyReaper wrote:If-then commands would defeat the purpose of the game. The whole idea is you have to guess what your opponent is going to do. If you can issue orders that cover every possible eventuality, it would get boring.

I dunno. I just feel like there's many situations where I remain far more defensive than I normally would, especially when I have the advantage. As I can scout with one character, see what's there then move the other guy contingent on what is seen.

Look, if they want me to use logic, logic demands I program for all scenarios! I'm still guessing, but I want to make a contingency plan for every thing I'm guessing.

Also, dear game, if completely ignoring every opponent and running to a location doesn't get me blown up by the grenade in simulation, then running to that location and ignoring all opponents shouldn't get me blow up by the grenade in the turn. Seriously. Wtf. I'm going to draw a game that was a win because of that. :evil:

And it wasn't because he was shot, my opponent couldn't do that.

Found that damn defend level. It's rather ridiculous.

Edit: And it seems bitching about it is the quickest way to success. Or, enough rockets to blow up all the cover so that I take out all but 1 person on the first turn, except he was instantly dead on turn two.

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