I bought this game with the Humble Indie Bundle #2, and after I saw some minutes of gameplay on Youtube, I thought to myself: "Holy crap! This looks so awesome, I got to have this!"
So, since I really love the whole concept of this game, I would love to see that it's becoming something even more great in the further future, so I would like to give the staff some early feedback.

- The good things -

1. The graphics
I absolutely adore the graphic style! 2D sideview action with up to date physics: It can't get any better. The sprite work is fantastic, and the colours are distinctive but not too poppy. Beautiful.

2. Mod support
This is something very important to me. If a game is opened up to community-created content, it already has my full veneration. Having the opportunity to insert specific graphics, objects or gameplay elements designed by non-company users is really cool.

3. Physics
After I got hit by a grenade, and wondered why my soldier was a clumpy ball of meat, but still alive, I saw it: He lost his legs! It's so cool to have body or vehicle parts react on every threat they encounter. Metal fragments flying around, giant craters in the ground...Nice job!

4. Variety
From the beginning on, there are a lot of things to choose from in the buy menu. It's nice to have such a big choice, though some weapons are really similar to each other. Hope there's a lot more to come.

- The not so good things -

1. The controls
I really have to say: The controls are horrible. I seldom had a game, where I had the feeling I had to "force" every action I'm doing. The characters often respond in a non-understandable way, rolling around on the floor without a clue or just falling over their own feet. This is also a problem when climbing ladders or cliffs: It sometimes just doesn't work! I hope this will be fixed in the future, since it's destroying alot of gameplay fun.

2. The tutorial
The tutorial was nearly useless for me. The amount of information given to you is extremely small, and I still felt lost in this game. What about the ring menu? What about building bunkers? What about different game modes? It still feels very crypted to me. You just bearly scratched the surface with this introduction.
Also, the text that explains everything is ridiculously small.

3. Hiring troops
So, I go into the buy menu, get some soldiers, weapons and stuff. I choose the landing point, the shuttle comes down, and...It falls over, smashes my soldiers into bloody pieces, grinds over the ♥♥♥♥ floor until it explodes, tearing my other soldier into tiny bits...
WTF?! Please, give the shuttle some more power to control itself. I don't want to waste big amounts of gold, just because it's too stupid to land on plain area.

So, these are the things that came to my mind after some hours of gaming. Please use this criticism to take a closer look at specific flaws, and proceed making the good things even better.
I really really hope to see this game growing into something exciting and wondeful, since the overall idea is just damn cool!

The AI is abysmally bad at delivering anything in a powered craft, so unless you want to take control yourself, use the drop box, or a modded craft that's more stable than the vanilla stuff.
This is a gameplay tip though, it is a problem that needs to be fixed. Rockets are ridiculously horrible at delivering anything alive, dropships are better but not 90% survival rate.

1. Well, that's really how CC is built, on ragdoll physics. Just sometimes that backfires and makes you soldier fall when he's trying to jetpack.

2. The tutorial hasn't really ever been good. You might get something better asking for a better tutorial mission in the requests sub-forum of mod making.

3. CC's AI isn't the best to say the least. Use a dropship if you want have more luck with the AI, but either way you probably want to do it manually. I'm not sure, but I think B24 was supposed to come with AI modding. So it might be fixed later.

Ninjad.

I find that the best way for AI to drop in is with any craft whatsoever. This greatly reduces the amount of falling debris, so more baddies survive on arrival.

Dropships are also much more reliable as long as you can protect it on its descent and the actors don't mind a little fall. Manual control is king in pretty much any situation.
Rockets can do deliveries much quicker than dropships once you get the hang of piloting them.

Hi!, I also met the game thanks to the bundle and I am loving It. It is the first game that properly uses the capacity of a physics driven engine.

Also I have to say that the multiplayer feature is great and given the poor AI the game really demonstrates all its power by playing it with some friends.

I am getting a lot of mods but I am trying first to learn from the vanilla. See you later!

What I would also like to know is: Are there some mods that are "must-have" for beginners? Like mods that add a big amount of additional, but still somehow basic objects / weapons / actors that fit into the whole setting? Can someone give me any recommendation regarding this point?

Thanks

Methinks Unitec might fit the bill there.

Darkstorm and MDC. And Spartan of course

This part cheered my day. You win an e-cookie sir.

Okay, thanks for the advice, I will give them a try

@Previous poster:
It was somehow entertaining to see my own army getting dismembered by the shuttle, though tragic!

A while ago I made a list of neat mods, which you should be able to find here.

As a beginner myself i can only add: D-pads!!! Playing 3+ people in split-screen (1 mouse+keyb, 2+ D-pads) is kickass fun and made the game worth the 160 Sek i got it for; every update from now on is just gravy.

I should point out that Swarm won't function in B24 without adjusting the Activities.ini to set the minimum team # to 1 (the same may apply to other custom missions), and Stratosphere currently bugs out as it tries to load a non-existant Revolver Cannon or something from the Coalition.rte.

Darkstorm, UniTec and the UAVs are all stable for me, though B24 seems to be kinda inconsistent so I'm not going to promise they'll work for you.

To make Swarm playable, open up Swarm.rte/Mission Activities.ini and paste this below LuaClassName = Swarm;



So the entire thing should look like this;