I really wish I could love this game, I love good physics in games and this should be it.

I got by the 2d aspect (I play DF after all...), and I tried to get by the lack of gameplay.

But I can't, why is a game that so obviously should be a sandbox game, not? The funnest part of this game, the meat of it, is the most unreachable part, the destruction is buried behind soldiers that can't walk, a game that wishes for the player to place his enemy's location as well as himself, tiny maps, and the requirement of digging for gold to do much of anything. The only truly fun default gamemode is Keepie Uppie, but without any really interesting maps (as all the custom maps are either broken in B24 or have ends) or changeable gameplay it gets stale fast. After digging around in the mod forums there are apparently no open, sandboxy, gamemodes and only a few mods trying to exploit the physics engine, and the rest are just reskins or remakes of things from other media.

About walking: Why can't a human walk up a grassy hill without getting stuck? I'm all for actual, physically based, walking, but if it doesn't play well with the scenery it won't ever be fun to do. As for the jetpack, it either doesn't work at all, due to being stuck in the ground as well or (apparently) the soldier being overweight, it feels like the pack was only tested in the first tutorial room with the nude-weight dummy and the devs said "Great, put it in!".

Some small mods should exist somewhere to fix these issues, a fuel-less jetpack (like how the rockets are fuel-less), or a jetpack that varies its thrust based on the mass the soldier is carrying, and why don't they, or, why can't I find them easily?

One last thing: this is just a content issue, but where are the ground vehicles at?

Oh look, replace a few words and...

I'm not going to discuss this anymore after this, but while Cortex Command might not have a full 3D engine, is has full and complex physics system, grenades bounce and depending on where they hit troops they would fly in the air and bounce on the ground. Really has a great feel to it for your average Indie game.
Also you should check out some mods like Darkstorm, The newest version has a addition to the Physics system, where you can punch characters and throw them around. Not to mention in Cortex Command you can already blast and push objects through others, killing them. In the game I've launched a Drop-ship through the air by blowing out it's left engine with a rocket launcher, the way it tumbled and rolled was great. (Hitting it with revolver cannon was x2 as great.)

What a fun game.

And no, you can't compare AAA titles like Crysis to an independently developed title like CC, there is just no comparison.
But since we're doing it, I think it's worth pointing out that neither Crysis nor Red Faction Guerrilla had fully destructible environments, they only had certain buildings or areas that could be damaged. Unlike CC where pretty much everything can be turned to rubble.

Criticism is good, but a lot of your points are just misguided.
-Yes the AI sucks, everyone knows this, it's something that will undoubtedly change in the future, go play with some friends in the meantime. Or try improving it yourself.
-Yes walking on certain terrain sucks, but these aren't humans, they're clunky robots, and that's why the jetpack is there. Don't tell me it doesn't work because it does. If you want your guy to be able to fly don't load him down with a rocket launcher; it's called using your men in certain roles. It does suck a bit in B24 however, so if you really don't like it, open up a text editor and copy the jump jet values from B23 to B24. I did it in 5 minutes.
-Yes the game modes kind of suck, but there's an included map editor, and loads of missions that will eventually get converted over.
-Yes, it's beta, deal with it, like everyone else here does. You can't come here and complain that not everything is perfect and the developer is all wrong and expect any sort of sympathy or support from those who have been here longer and waited longer than you. (than excludes me as well. :p )

[Fixed errors] :p

*CoughDarkstormCough*

I don't really put much weight on anything a professing DF player says. There's a reason I left that community, and I'm not lookin' back.

The game is not unplayable. Not yet ready for prime-time, but definitely quite playable. The Zombie Cave mission was kind of fun, and not murderously hard like the Swarm custom mission I downloaded and played first.(the ability to select which weapon I actually wanted to use may had something to do with that...)

Anybody who thinks it's hard to walk anywhere NOW should have seen build 18. Dreadnoughts were absolutely impossible to use, because their weight combined with the small surface area of their feet made them sink into even hard-packed dirt. I'm happy to see that's been dealt with.

It's a bit annoying that I can't load a body down with more than a weapon or two and have it still be mobile. This will apparently be fixed soon-ish. Until then, my heavy-weapons drones will be very slow and unable to jump, and I'll have to make sure any drone I want to be something approaching mobile has to have a light weapon or he's not getting very far.

With just a little polish in just the right places, I can see this becoming a fantastic LAN-party game, and I intend to pitch it to my gaming group at the next opportunity(with the caveats, of course, that it's still very incomplete and has a downright murderous learning curve... I don't think that'll slow any of them down). Of course, I'm still in the "experiment and see what this does" phase of gameplay.

I can understand why people might find this game frustrating/confusing.
Since it is very much in an unprecedented style, you have to do more than learn to play it: you have to learn to learn to play it.
That may sound a bit stupid, but it's actually kinda true, and the best part is that most of that comes naturally with time.
For me, I found the game virtually unplayable until I played the Manigot mission a dozen times or so in demo mode, just sitting there shooting the engines off all the enemy drop-ships with a heavy sniper rifle. While it couldn't really be called fun at that stage, it was certainly satisfying to see the ships spiralling towards the ground, crushing anything beneath with relative ease.

Basically, while this game will eventually reach the point where it could be played straight off, it is certainly not a casual game, it's a strategy game. No matter how good you are at shooting the faces off the enemy, there will come a time when they dig around behind you, or you're hit by an assault rifle propelled by an exploding impulse grenade, and suddenly you wish you'd bought a back up.
Or when, after having your army massacred by a single dude with a flak cannon, you wish you'd had a guy sitting ready to mine some more gold, as while even a small bombing run is expensive, it sure can be cheaper than clearing out open ground by hand.

Have you ever heard of anyone playing Natural Selection for the first time wiping out an entire room of marines? No!
Have you ever heard of anyone playing Company of Heroes winning straight off? No!
Hell, I could even move out of the realm of strategy and ask whether you've ever finished Spelunky without dying at least 400 time first?! NO WAY!
It's a hard game, it is supposed to be hard!
If there's something that is a push over, it's probably only because the AI managed to shoot their own brain again.

If you want the ideal learning environment, play against a friend!
Sure, it might never be possible to make it a LAN game(sorry Volfram), with a half decent computer you can get the resolution up high enough that it's not stupid.
And if you think that there's no way you could possibly play with four people on one keyboard, you obviously come from a small family, and have never played Triplane Turmoil.

As far as controls go, it's a simple game.
If you've ever played games like Descent(Descent 2 has a little over 20 controls requiring regular use, if I recall) or even most FPSs, it's a synch!

Yeah, I guess a lot of players just want to be able to do whatever in a game, without first having to learn how to do it. I don't know about others, but for me learning a game's rules and mastering them is part of the challenge and the fun.

Apart from improving the bad AI, and the currently lightly useless jet packs, I think that campaign missions and a better tutorial would help ease new players into the game a lot better, because when I first started playing I too was like "This is kind of cool, but what's the point?" And even now, playing against the AI is becoming not that interesting.

Although I heard someone say that they're going to redo parts of the game engine or assets? Although I don't know why they'd redo the assets, the art and sprites look good enough to me. If it is so then that would make making tutorials kind of pointless as the moment, not to mention that a lot will change till release. Still, there should be some sort of text introduction, like a sort of in-game wiki that could help players learn as they play.

As a humble indie player I don't have access to B23, which moots your point of telling me about great mods, until these mods are converted to B24 I can't play anything.

There is another indie game out there btw where you are a runner and... Nvm I said I'm not doing this.

Because we aren't receptive to insane rants?

After racking my brain for a long time I finally remembered the indie game that had physics exactly like what you guys are describing.

I'm not linking this to in anyway prove my point, in fact forget my points, only thing it is going to do is create more arguments and alienate me from this community more. So rather, I post this as a peace offering because a lot of you seem to like physics based games.

Violance perfected.

viewtopic.php?f=82&t=20495
It gets boring after a while, it's not as hectic as CC either.

Ya'll need to calm down a little, just saying. Just because someone can't get into the Cortex Command groove isn't an invitation to prove this or that game is superior to another.
This topic is on the road to a lock soon, so tone down the angst if you could.

So yeah, this game is playable, I play it regularly, and I am pleased with the results.
[Which usually entails me getting cheap-shotted by the damnedest things, still pretty entertaining though.]

I even loved to play this game back when it was complete crap, before BYOB, when there were no gibs, and the engine was a lot more simple, when rockets were synonymous with "GOD'S FLAMING FIST OF DOOM".
[Good times. Good times.]

I still think B18 was the epitome of CC's main idea. There was BYOB, rockets were angry ♥♥♥♥ when shot and people flew when hit by shrapnel to the face.

I am not having this conversation. As I said, I am not looking back.

I do seem to recall Toady threatening to ban anyone who brought it up again, though.

You should recall a little harder. Although a ban wouldn't have been unwarranted after such sage aphorisms as "shut your worthless piehole".