B25, that next installment in the saga that is CC. This just a place where I'd like to throw in my unsolicited 2 cents, and I certainly hope others will too. Here goes, after ~30 min exploring B25.

1. I like the cleaner, better-fitting store interface. It's a nice addition, and looks pleasant.

2. I find the new clouds (I've seen them on Dummy Assault) distracting. They don't fit with the art style, and their movement around as I'm scrolling annoys me. They seem like a trivial addition that doesn't really improve the game.

3. Revisited factions and weapons feel great! I've always liked the vanilla content, and this goes a long way toward cleaning up what was good and removing what was superfluous. Also, pricing is more reasonable.

4. Why isn't there a kill-counter on Skirmish Defense? I recall there being quite a bit of disgruntlement over that removal in B24, to the point where someone created a mod to put it back in. It was half the fun of Skirmish Defense, to rack up as many kills as possible. I, personally, would like to see that put back in, or the aforementioned mod included in some form as vanilla.

5. Jetpacks. They work quite well now.

6. I Like the addition of a grapple gun, however the "retract" and "Detract" pie-buttons do not work for me.

7. I couldn't play the campaign, as I have no one to play with me, but it's nice to see the progress that is being made there.

All-in-all, a great step forward for my favorite Indie game.
Keep up the good work, Data and Dev Team!

I need to get B25 .

yeah that cloud layer is jacked, will fix.

the metagame is the meat of the changes in this version.. give it a go with a friend asap and let us know how it plays. next build will have metagame AI opponents working

The clouds are annoying, really they should be locked to the top of the scene, not the screen. However there are other scene backgrounds that are great, and it's good since it adds variety, though I do think the parallax effect is too high.

The biggest selling point for this build is the AI, the AI is great! There's actual sniping, rockets not crashing, alert guards, if an enemy loses their weapon they will try to get a new one and the mining AI mode actually works. I haven't seen a single instance of derpy AI so far (though I haven't played that much). Also working jetpacks although the browncoats are still a little too heavy.

The campaign looks very interesting for playing with friends, I tried with the non functional meta-game AI and the map scanning is nice but after finishing it takes a while for anything to happen (all you can do is look around the scene until "press space to continue" appears). Also I wasn't sure what to do at first I wasn't aware that you have to drag the slider to allocate a mission budget to be able to land, so I scanned both possible locations without doing anything for the first turn (Also map scans aren't saved so it had to do the scan again on the second turn which leads me to question the point of being able to scan a place without setting a budget).

I did have one problem though the game wouldn't let me set the screen to 2x mode on any screen size (my res is 1680*1050 so the 640*480 mode at least should fit at 1280*960).

It's a good build and with some of the features added a lot of nice mods should be made, this is what everyone was expecting for build 24.

Biggest issue for me, is the sound of the jetpack still buggy in the linux version. I really hoped it would be fixed on B25 since it's a sound you hear a lot !

Nevertheless I understand features are the most important things right now, and I hope the linux version will be fixed when the game is finally released

It won't run fullscreen for me on my laptop and my desktop is dead atm so I can't test it there. A lot of the resolutions are also not working. For example. I put it at 1280x800, and it shrunk itself to like 400x200.

You can hit esc to escape (pun intended).

Also, AI seems somewhat improved. My snipers no longer swan-dive gracefully into the enemy.

it's a little unresponsive at times in B25.

Yes, I forgot to mention, great job with Rocket AI's and such! They're actually useful now, as opposed to the glorified missiles I used them as before, and the cluster mine bomb and infantry mine are great additions.

i really like the way the campaign is set up, but i also can't run the game fullscreen which make have
a somewhat large sreen rather pointless

The campaign definitely has potential. I don't have that many friends to play CC with, but even 1v1 with a large skill gap can be fun.
It's a bit slow, though. Also: The dropships that deliver the brains should be uncontrollable. Rushing with them is just way too easy.
Some dedicated anti-air turrets in general would be lovely, just to stop people from landing on your base.

There has been some unpredictable behaviour regarding the terrain being revealed to a single player but not the other when building bases.
It would be nice to at least have your own bunker pieces clear out fog as they're built.
Actor's don't see nearly far enough in fow-revealing purposes, on the resolutions I've played, at least. (large windowed resolutions)

But when the game is only hotseat splitscreen, fow is mostly just good spirit anyways.
You don't see much on 2x fullscreen, on my puny 19", at least. Even some of the planet can get lost to screen edges.

I think gold income from sites should be somehow related to how much actual gold is there, and whether or not you can actually reach it.

Anyways, I'm really looking forward to seeing what becomes of this. Wonder if we'll see B27 before HIB4.

Alt+Enter

First Impressions:
1) B25 runs a lot better than B24
1) B25 dont crash without a reason like B24 did
3) The game does feels a bit more polished.
4) AI is not retarded, but stil needs some work.
5) Metagame is fun but it needs some changes:
-A) I dont want to press continue every time it says whose turn is it, just make it auto skip this phase.
-B) When someone attacks it just spawns dropship with brain bot holding a pistol while the defending team may have 100 of units with miniguns. Make so that attacker can select what to load in dropship before selecting where to land. (usualy my brain die before i can order some reinforcements)
-C) Is there any way to loose/win in metagame ?
-D) When you capture location and skip a turn sometimes entire map, including your base gets covered in fog of war.
-E) I dont know what other think but would love if all rubble material would delete from map after each battle.
-H) Gold incomes should be lowered or made location specific; like mountain areas with lots of ore give more gold while forest areas give less.

I've had Cortex Command since Humble Indie Bundle 2, and I feel B25 was a great improvement so I am here making my first post. Here's my first impressions:

1. The metagame adds more meaning to multiplayer. It is a great addition. Battles have more on the line and are more intense as a result.

2. I like the resolution change, it makes the game clearer and allows me to run it at my native resolution without losing speed.

3. Jetpack changes feel more polished.

The metagame has some problems, but I know it is a work in progress. Here are some suggestions:

1. Scan from orbit is boring to watch and takes a while, especially when both teams are scanning the same terrain. There should be a "stage", similar to the one where the metagame builds bases, so that the game can scan the terrains from orbit at the same time. Another solution is to change the "Scan from Orbit" button to a checkbox and have teams scan at the start of the battle.

2. Because only a dropship and a brain come down at the start of each battle, the game started to feel like a race to either burn, crash, or abduct the enemy brain. Maybe the brain can come down in a crate or rocket, or the brain can come down with support. Perhaps a fix would be as simple as not allowing control of the dropship.

3. After only a few days ingame I felt like I was swimming in gold. Each area gives too much gold.

Also I found this bug where when I am aiming and the second player is using the pie menu, buying stuff, and switching bodies, the aim gets canceled. This rarely happens though, compared to the last build where aiming was canceled just by movement of the second player.

Overall, I feel the metagame was a great addition to Cortex Command. I hope I didn't go overboard on this post.

B25 is alright, I just have one problem with it. Seems that it has a tendency to freeze up very quickly when using a controller, whether alone or if a friend is using it to play.