Review: Helixteus

How the endgame looks like, where any basic resource you had at the start is largely irrelevant.

Helixteus is a strategy / idle space game where pretty much everything is procedurally generated (an area which I support). Except that the strategy is more like ensuring you have more powerful ships to conquer (more in reality be able to explore) planets, solar systems, galaxies, etc., and idle doesn't occur until a ways in, when research allows you to get stuff passively as long as resource generators aren't full (though the game also runs when you're not playing).

The game's over there. Review's over here based on beta v1.30, but it's still in development, so I'll give it a month to see if new things are introduced and update from there.

A sequel, Helixteus 2, was released a year later, and its appropriate walkthrough is available on this page.

GUI Interface, help, etc.

A larger canvas size might be needed since all the gui elements makes the game a bit tiny, even though you can zoom out. Some elements are a bit misleading, particularly on DirectMax (which you had to max a certain amount of that building manually before you can DM them). I don't review graphics unless there's clear flaws in them, which there aren't. And then there's the collect all (next to the blue I), where it's not even clear what it is until you click it after you researched that.

And there's some clunky mechanics regarding planet selection, naming (I see lots of Planet 0's, Planet 1's, etc. on Global Planets as more are captured, where it takes a lot of clicks to find out where each one's at in the universe. Or maybe it isn't that important) and retreating in a battle (it involves having to move a fleet to another planet first before sending that + more units to attack the planet again). They'll probably be fixed soon.

Some settings, such as time between saves, should not be set to low values, such as .5 second; should it take longer than that to save the game (and late game it will) the game will lock up and you'll probably lose the savefile.

Starting Out

• You build an ore mine from the tutorial, convert to cash, build more, etc. Build only a few power plants, enough to get upgrades and send ships out.
• When reaching 10 or so ore mines, a shipyard can be built, several T1 ships (and maybe to T2), and clearing the entire system. This should allow you to expand ore/power plants on nearby planets, with at least one level in path 3.
• Remainder of the Galaxy can be accessed using T2 and T3 ships. Quantity over quality since it allows you to lay down more shots. Continue expanding, and build a handful of Institutes and upgrade main power/ore base production/storage, and rest storage only.
• On Institutes, Overclock, upgrade, speedup, and repeat, for fast SP. Repeat for main base power and ore (L6 for now). T3 ships. Taking planets is now the majority of income for now. Idle on the planet with power plants and wait for energy balls (you do need to upgrade them a bit before they become useful).
• Start research on collect all.

Midgame (Galaxies, Superclusters)

• You should be able to build a probe at this point, and find at least an O star, where Solar Plants can then be built. The energy costs might be a bit high to send powerful ships through superclusters, so take a weak planet and a fleet just good enough to beat them, build a starbase there and rebuild a fleet. Stock up on XTRM specs - you'll need them.
• The XP from the former should be enough to access some tile operations, like upgrade all and speedup all. The Upgrade All / Speedup all
• More SP facilities and proceed through the upgrade tree. If you have upgrade all and speedup all, use them while overclocked, they give more SP than it uses. Use that to finish the science tree.

Endgame (Achivements)

Resource generation now tends to fall in these categories now using these methods (assumes you maxed out your science tree):

• UPXP: You should not worry about this value. DMaxing Ore Storage and Solar Panels should be enough to raise it to get achievements. (Note that while DMXed panels are cheaper than their Lv25 components they are also reducing your XP gain as well so you'll need to max them manually to get the full benefit. Thankfully the time to build is much shorter each time you do that on the same planet (it might take a few minutes for the level counter to catch up). You won't be able to max solar panels until your cash flow is in the E range (the price range is actually so large I had to put the details in respective article since no one else had them).
• Energy: Get maxed out Solar Panels near an O star and overclock to 25x. Idle here if you want to get passive energy but make sure you collect as there's no idle generation when they're full. There's up to 1000 luminosity per blue sun (more if you established them before the recent patches), so 25 x15T = 375T per hour if distance is 0.5)
• Cash: Late game crystals sells millions of times higher (or more) than the ore itself, especially when your ratio is at high values (since its sell price also increases exponentially; at 1:259, quillite sells at ~510E cash). You'll need a planet of fusion plants since making them takes a while, even with full upgrades. (100B ore makes high level crystals consistently at a rate of 50%). The dev probably expects you to take this path anyways, as they are used for other endgame content like crafting.
• Ore Storage: 1 DMaxed ore mine to reduce the build time, and then fill the rest with Ore Storage. Use a UT Speedup instead of finishing all buildings on planet since its fewer SP spent. You'll need the ore to bump up the Higher ore/gem value. Convert cash to ore. Buy upgrade. Rinse, repeat (you'll run in into the 'can't convert all to ore' box every time). Yes, there's a wall, but that exists at around 1:300 or so, where you need so many storage tanks to upgrade by 1, you'll probably crash the game eventually. Future updates might allow more.
• Research Points: v1.30 makes them much more useful. If cash / energy is not an issue, which it shouldn't be, fill with Institutes, overclock 25x, and then finish construction. They only give you a Lv20, so top it off to Lv25. Then collect. On a 14x14 planet, it costs 50M to complete the above, and you will collect 768 billion SP. (Note: the SP cost for filling is 500 * (Institutes Placed ^ 2.38), and more to complete them.)
• Exploration: Never place probes on full energy saver. You'll be waiting at least a month without speedups and most likely you'll scrap them for a faster speed one. Also for battles never use UT XTRM Spec (even though its 7x stats) since its SP cost is exorbitant for large T5 fleets, which you're probably using them on.
  
  An interesting note is that even though the probe's speed is set to one over 9000, any other ship can exceed that at this point in the game.
• Taking Late Game Planets: When the difficulty rises above 500M, you'll start having mobs with at least 10T HP, 1T atk, 1T def, etc. Builds focus on only two things: Being able to stunlock and having enough HP to survive the battle while tanking. Although rocks might be worthless with atk and def (smaller ones are worth no more than one or two spec points each) you'll need as many as you can to boost HP. Fleets with at least 300T HP, 350T attack, 15B defense, and 50k ships are required to have a chance of surviving here.

Shop GUI v2

GTG's shop in AD: Foundations Tech Demo, design board. Jelly returns.

Almost a year after the menu pages were added, they were revamped in order to take advantage of the higher resolution of the game. The shop GUI was modified to look a bit more 'colorful', and to actually show an item description instead of requiring a keypress to switch between your inventory / compare screens. The former is used for selling items, and there's now a separate tab for that. Only things now on the right is item information, what characters can use that item, and how many is in their inventory, as well as their carrying capacity.

There has been debate between the team regarding item information; the one used in the base game only shows charge / recoil with three speed values, apparently damage is irrelevant on their end because I don't know. Might be informative enough for action RPGs when you're sending so many attacks their way you don't need to know exact values, but in a turn-based RPG, each of your moves count, and a couple of mistakes almost certainly ends with a party wipe, sending you back to your last save (although I've heard the game would be a bit more forgiving than this).

For the latter, the comparison feature was removed. In other RPG games a simple up/down was used since the only main feature of weapons and armor is increased attack / defense later in the game. But there's really no way to determine if certain effects are better or not, since average damage does not increase significantly over the course of the game. It's the player's job to determine those tradeoffs.

Inventory space is not really an issue anymore, since it is set to an arbitrarily high value (such as 1000), and item usage in battle is limited to what your party can hold, so you can only bring a handful of items with you into battle.

Item Description: Four lines should be enough to display stuff about the item. Maybe not enough for witty humor, however. (The description itself may change since it breaks the fourth wall and makes a reference to the fact that Jelly could be bought in only two colors when it was listed in the Etsy store seven months ago, despite screenshots showing them in other colors. I attempted to buy them via other means, without success.)

Chinese Culture Camp, Round 4

The fourth year of Chinese Culture Camp. Same as usual, with the addition of female lion dancers and a new buiding available for classes. Unlike other years, I was only present in the morning, so I didn't make the end of camp slideshow.

I feel like the camp needs to be longer (both time-wise and length-wise), as 40 mins seems a bit short, and no Lion Dance classes past Beginner level are taught... there are repeat students. And they should also raise the grade level up a bit (right now it's K-6), because there's more counselors (Grade 7+) than campers, they could offer more advanced courses, and those lions are... quite heavy.

No article about this year's camp on The Record, though it was mentioned a month prior.

San Diego Model Railroad Museum

The San Diego Model Railroad Museum is imo one of the more interesting exhibits in Balboa Park for its cost ($3 for students, and up to $8 for others). The exhibits are actually pretty large and detailed, considering it takes around a minute to walk from one end of the train exhibit to another. And there's six of them...

There's a second floor that is accessible on busier days, when more volunteers are around. It wasn't open when I was there, though.

End of Asparagus Festival

Turning away from it, for the last time.

According to a news article, the Asparagus Festival will no longer be occurring.

Except on two occassions (this year included), I have personally attended the asparagus festival each year since 2004. Admission prices were raised 60% during those years, and I have seen most of the booths / things had to offer there (including running the Spear-It run and volunteering in the deep fried asparagus booth). Only thing I didn't do, however, was the zipline, which was introduced this year.

End of Cunningham

Over the past six months at Delta College, Cunningham center closed down... and went through a process of being fenced, scaffolds around it, covered up, and eventually torn down. They're expected to finish by this Fall. A new building takes its place instead.

I didn't get a last look at the place before it did, but I did manage to see the planetarium during the few times it was actually open, and went to the computer labs during HS (which those computers were large, had CRT monitors, and computers had floppy drives). And took classes in this area. And where I notably met KY at.

Americana Dawn: Microbattles

A Staresque Ring on Foster could've brought him back up, but they're quite expensive early on.

A Microbattle in AD is the game's battle system and the main way to resolve conflicts. From a distance and from screenshots, just like ordinary battles you see in other JRPGs: Turn based combat, characters using skills and items on the field, etc.

Beyond that, the similarities end here. Other than a few functions which handle battle related units (such as stats, learned skills, and equipment), what exactly occurs in the battle is based on map implementation. Want to have a simple skirmish vs a few soldiers? That works. But for those who demand more creativity (like me) I focus on a few other mechanics it can have:

• Units have both HP / willpower. Your characters (including enemies) will regenerate their HP once they're down or in cover, but further attacks on them when incapacitated will drain their willpower, which doesn't come back on its own and increases the amount of damage they take in combat.
• Each character has carrying capacity, which limits the amount of items they can carry at one time.
• Pardoning. Because killing enemies isn't the only way to resolve a conflict. Some events in the game may change based on your decisions.
• Passive environmental effects, meaning some weapons can be less effective in an area.
• Interactable objects. Sometimes the method to defeat them isn't as direct as it seems.

Note on Commands: Attack / Defend are not simple one-off commands, since characters usually have more than one attack type available. Example: If Foster has a musket, he can either fire (at reduced accuracy) or engage in close quarters combat and use it as a melee weapon.