It's been a while since I played an RTS for a serious amount of time - so this review isn't going to draw many comparisons.

+ Intuitive controls and in-game quality of life features
Has prepend and append commands, click and drag controls for actions with in a range, mouse-drawn formations, and many general quality of life improvements. This reasonably reduces micromanagement in some areas, especially economy management.

+ Fun unit variety and cross-factory synergies.
To list some general characteristics, cloaking, shielded, jumping, air, naval, and amphibious.

+ Terraforming is great and interacts well with the available types of units.
For example, spiders can climb cliffs of any steepness, humanoids, limited steepness; and vehicles require flat ground.

+ Can place markers and draw with the mouse to coordinate with your team.

- Single player campaign is structured as a unit-by-unit tutorial, and overall isn't very interesting.
This probably impacts the multiplayer experience by having new players jumping straight into online matches. The main annoying thing in this game is playing teams or co-op with some new player that only builds turrets at base, which eventually will be overwhelmed by bombers and artillery.

The best playing experience I've had is with the lobby. Ignoring the player activity difference between the two, the perks are the following:

+ can choose maps, including those outside of a map pool

+ can choose specific modes (i.e Chickens is covered under co-op in mm)

+ can set AI difficulty (co-op)

+ access to various match options e.g mutators or things that change things up

+ team games are either self-organized or scrambled each session, as opposed to reoccuring premades in the matchmaker.

As for matchmaking, even if the game is FOSS/transparent and doesn't force unfair match-ups to influence buying microtransactions, there's still the frustrating experience of good teammates then terrible teammates even if the average player ratings between teams are equal, or just high skill differences because of the limited amount of players queuing.

I've noticed that Easy to Brutal Skirmish AI, they appear to employ the same general actions and tactics, just that they accomplish certain milestones later or sooner e.g first secondary factories, first Strider, first air strikes, first superweapons- albeit the lower difficulties are restricted from certain superweapons. Overall they do a well rounded amount of base building, expanding, scouting, and attacking; this makes them generally more effective than players that commonly neglect the latter two or three, but also gives them the perspective of being more difficult than they really are. I don't consider this a bad thing since playing the game like a turtle or as if it were a city builder should often result in a loss.

The one perk is that if you installed the game on a Windows partition, you can use the same install on Linux, and have Steam recognize that you're playing it. The extra Steam features like overlay, screenshot sharing, and friend invites are unavailable.

Listed in no particular order.

1. Crashes (both Windows and Linux).
   
   
2. Screen will black out if in the lobby for too long (both Windows and Linux).
   
   
3. In-game UI may fail to load (both Windows and Linux)
   
   
4. Memory leaks (Linux).

#1-3, are less common compared to May 2018.

#2, the developers will blame it on OpenGL or drivers, but this is the only OpenGL game where I've encountered such a thing.

#3, Happens more often if the game was tabbed out while loading, and can be manually fixed with the command
#4, I set in springsettings.cfg, by developer suggestion and haven't had memory issues until restarts, anymore.

You can't throw money at the devs to have them improve the game in certain areas- as much as I'd like that to be the case- because they're developing the game as a hobby. It mainly keeps the servers online.

It's been a while since I played an RTS for a serious amount of time - so this review isn't going to draw many comparisons. [h1]OVERVIEW[/h1] [i][b]+[/b] Intuitive controls and in-game quality of life features [/i] Has prepend and append commands, click and drag controls for actions with in a range, mouse-drawn formations, and many general quality of life improvements. This reasonably reduces micromanagement in some areas, especially economy management. [i][b]+[/b] Fun unit variety and cross-factory synergies.[/i] To list some general characteristics, cloaking, shielded, jumping, air, naval, and amphibious. [i][b]+[/b] Terraforming is great and interacts well with the available types of units.[/i] For example, spiders can climb cliffs of any steepness, humanoids, limited steepness; and vehicles require flat ground. [i][b]+[/b] Can place markers and draw with the mouse to coordinate with your team.[/i] [i][b]-[/b] Single player campaign is structured as a unit-by-unit tutorial, and overall isn't very interesting.[/i] This probably impacts the multiplayer experience by having new players jumping straight into online matches. The main annoying thing in this game is playing teams or co-op with some new player that only builds turrets at base, which eventually will be overwhelmed by bombers and artillery. [h1]MULTIPLAYER - MATCHMAKING VS LOBBY[/h1] The best playing experience I've had is with the lobby. Ignoring the player activity difference between the two, the perks are the following: [b][i]+[/i][/b] can choose maps, including those outside of a map pool [b][i]+[/i][/b] can choose specific modes (i.e Chickens is covered under co-op in mm) [b][i]+[/i][/b] can set AI difficulty (co-op) [b][i]+[/i][/b] access to various match options e.g mutators or things that change things up [b][i]+[/i][/b] team games are either self-organized or scrambled each session, as opposed to reoccuring premades in the matchmaker. As for matchmaking, even if the game is FOSS/transparent and doesn't force unfair match-ups to influence buying microtransactions, there's still the frustrating experience of good teammates then terrible teammates even if the average player ratings between teams are equal, or just high skill differences because of the limited amount of players queuing. [h1]THE AI [/h1] I've noticed that Easy to Brutal Skirmish AI, they appear to employ the same general actions and tactics, just that they accomplish certain milestones later or sooner e.g first secondary factories, first Strider, first air strikes, first superweapons- albeit the lower difficulties are restricted from certain superweapons. Overall they do a well rounded amount of base building, expanding, scouting, and attacking; this makes them generally more effective than players that commonly neglect the latter two or three, but also gives them the perspective of being more difficult than they really are. I don't consider this a bad thing since playing the game like a turtle or as if it were a city builder should often result in a loss. [h1]THE LINUX EXPERIENCE (NOT WINE)[/h1] The one perk is that if you installed the game on a Windows partition, you can use the same install on Linux, and have Steam recognize that you're playing it. The extra Steam features like overlay, screenshot sharing, and friend invites are unavailable. [h1]TECHNICAL ISSUES[/h1] Listed in no particular order. [olist] [*] Crashes [i](both Windows and Linux)[/i]. [*] Screen will black out if in the lobby for too long [i](both Windows and Linux)[/i]. [*] In-game UI may fail to load [i](both Windows and Linux)[/i] [*] Memory leaks [i](Linux)[/i]. [/olist] [b]#1-3[/b], are less common compared to May 2018. [b]#2[/b], the developers will blame it on OpenGL or drivers, but this is the only OpenGL game where I've encountered such a thing. [b]#3[/b], Happens more often if the game was tabbed out while loading, and can be manually fixed with the command [code]/luaui reload[/code] [b]#4[/b], I set [code]UseLuaMemPools = 0[/code] in springsettings.cfg, by developer suggestion and haven't had memory issues until restarts, anymore. [h1]DONATIONS[/h1] You can't throw money at the devs to have them improve the game in certain areas- as much as I'd like that to be the case- because they're developing the game as a hobby. It mainly keeps the servers online.