Phantoms, in my opinion, bring back the worst aspect of an otherwise great game.
Well, the randomness of them is pretty annoying - but aside from that there's nothing that bad about them, there are plenty of solutions to them (and phantom coils only cost 5 energy to build too), and even if they land the damage they do isn't that bad to deal with (at least on the current maps) - it will slow you down a lot if you lose a bunch of reactors, but it isn't hard to rebuild them.
My only complaint about phantoms is that the phantom coils are extremely slow and its almost more beneficial to build another than move an existing one.
I don't see how. On none of the in-game levels are phantoms a problem. Coils are cheap and effective. They come from an in-map point, so its easy to surround that gate with coils. And, the waves can be eliminated.
Just flood the map with coils. I do that they don't really take much energy to create and once at full ammo they don't use energy.
Quote from: Kithros on May 30, 2011, 03:20:54 PM
Well, the randomness of them is pretty annoying
Unlike in CW1 the phantoms aren't really random:
- they always come from the same gateway;
- you know in advance how many and at which moment;
- every time you replay the same way, they will target the same structures. This is because their 'randomness' is based on a map hash. When you however just add or delete for instance 1 single reactor the map hash changes resulting in a different target.
I hardly ever have been surprised by the phantoms because usually their gate is located at the bottom half of the map, which buys you enough time to build more coils at the moment they appear on your screen.
Phantoms Shmantoms! The only way Phantoms are really going to be an issue is on custom maps with very close points of origin and little or no time to build coils. The story and bonus Phantoms ALL give you enough time to deal with them (albeit sometimes at the cost of time and other construction choices).
that's like saying that the spores in cw1 ruin the game. The phantoms are a part of the game, and they add one extra extra aspect to the strategy of it.
If anything, phantoms are a much easier to handle than spores. The phantom coils are much more energy effeincnt than S.A.M.s by destroy phantoms without wasting any energy.
Drones on the other hand... :'(