Autonauts vs Piratebots

This could've easily been a DLC for the original Autonauts instead of a standalone game. I really enjoyed the first game, but this feels like a watered-down version with combat awkwardly tacked on. The combat is repetitive, grindy, and constantly has you replacing destroyed bots, which quickly becomes more frustrating than fun. Overall, it's a pretty underwhelming follow-up to a game I actually liked.

Honestly not good. No respect for player time, extremely (and unnecessarily) clunky controls, the idea was great - I played during the beta even, it's fun to automate your city, a sort-of Satisfactory but with robots. But the end product...combat is stupid for no reason - you have to pick which enemy to attack, OR buildings, not either/or, in a specific box, and if it's not that enemy type, IN that box, they do nothing. Maybe there's more options if I "program" them more, but it's not clear, and even at that it's not fun. You can kite the enemies, but if you put the box where they are, your troops will just go in full send, and if you put the box outside of their little encampment, your troops will follow them inside when they retreat - and then your troops are outside of their little box and don't attack. And to fix this? Surely it's as easy as just moving the box, right? Well, sure, if you like clicking one of the bots, then stop, then record (to change their "program,"), then click yes it's OK I'm changing this for the whole group, then click the little box that allows you to click and move the actual box, then push play - so that the ONE robot will do that (even though …

[b]Incredibly Iffy[/b] In this game you have to do all the work programmers do for you in other games. In a normal strategy game you just select a worker and right-click a resource to get. In Autonauts you have to build a robot, build a workbench, create 2 versions of a tool, program a robot to get resources from multiple chests, tell it to make that tool, program a robot to use that tool and in what area and to get a new tool if the old one breaks. That's a lot of work, even for an assembly line game. While you're trying to concentrate on learning and doing this trees and such shake quickly on screen from being interacted with, and the tutorial shows you big blinking arrows. Imagine trying to pay attention in class while the teacher shines a strobelight in your face. I couldn't even deal with this for half an hour.

Gets tedious very quickly. Teaching bots how to chop and store logs isn't very interesting and makes you question the whole concept. Bots are also not visually distinct or anything, and the whole automation thing just becomes an unorganized mess. Building things is also an absolute chore because you literally have to pick up every single building material and also literally dump every single one on the construction site. This is one of these games that look interesting at first but aren't fun at all.

Love this game. I never finished the previous game, for feeling overwhelmed and lacking drive, but the streamlining of mechanics and "conquer the map" goals made this hard to quit.

an strategy game that i played when i bored