Well, at first I thought that picking "Unhappy" would be a little bit harsh and express that I don't really like the game.

But in my case that's not the case.

I really like the game but there's all those small annoyances that sum up to a point where the fun suffers.



Also it doesn't mean that there is a giant gap between unhappy, content and happy.



Of course I'm willing to give the exact reasons that reduce my "Approval" of the game:



-New invasion mechanics -10: I liked how simple it was in Vanilla and am somewhat annoyed by the addition of a new game-mechanic I don't remeber anyone asking for.



-Stupid AI-behavior -10: Putting Heros on Scouts and flying them into enemy-systems or sending in undefended Invasion-ships over and over again, until they are all destroyed.



-Overcomplicated, almost uncomparable and artificially diverse weapons -10: Number of projectiles*damage*number of salvos*range-modifier*hit-chance/tonnage-usage... I want to see the friggin' avarage damage per tonnage so I can actually compare the weapons. I don't want to sit down with a calculator to find out: "Oh, look, Melee-Kinetics in avarage are way superior to everything else... or are they?"



-Reduced weapon-level-progression -10: Vanilla had 30, Disharmony has 9. Sure there's still other fields to progress in but I liked it much more when you could research weapons because you wanted better weapons and not get countless filler techs while having the next better weapon so far away that you won't make it there in the current war. 90% of the game is now played on Tier-2-weapons/defenses. Also weapons and defenses on the exact same techs? I think that's not a good idea either.



-Bugs -10: Like building Contamination-Barriers before colonizing all planets in a system virtually "destroys" the uncolonized planets by removing all Dust without giving the Food and Science that was promised.



-Stupid-GUI-Decisions -10: When you click a stack of fleets on galaxy-view you get a fleet-list that contains a whoopin' 4 items and depending on how many fleets there are a very tiny scroll-bar. All the while there's like 5 or 6 times the amount of space of the fleet-list above it. Or even worse: In manual combat you have a list of your ships with their health-bars. It holds 5 of them and has a very tiny scrollbar. How can one even think that this would make any sense? I want to see all of the health-bars at, so I actually can see what's going on! There still is a hide button for those who want to watch the combat-animation.

And yes, there is more than enough, almost endless space for the addition of the other ships.

Same goes for the system view, that also can only contain 4 items. Moving a new item to the top of the list when you have like 10 small ships queued is a total pain in the ass because you can only move it 3 places up, scroll, move it 3 places up again, scroll again, ...



-Fleet merging/launching -10: As long as the amount of ships selected is smaller than one fleet's maximum capacity everything is fine. But what happens when it exceeds it? The friggin' merge and launch buttons get greyed out and your only way to do it now is to manually pick every single ship for the fleet and then merge. This really is annoying! Why can't it just merge/launch several fleets at once? I guess the code is there and it even can take care of different ship types because the AI must somehow merge it's fleets too, right? It's just not accessible to the player!



So if this list of issues would be worked, my approval for the game could drastically improve. ^^

I am content. But I pu the game down waiting on some fixes. I'll load it up again sometime this winter.

Happy. Like Ail, I'll give an ES style breakdown of my choice.



-15 due to bugs

-10 due to lifeless faction game-play

-10 due to lifeless combat

-5 due to no clarification on the future of ES



+15 due to new invasion mechanics (I asked for them, at least)

+80 due to empire (I think is headed in the right direction)

+10 due to Fighters and Bombers

+10 due to improvements (I think they are allot more balanced)

Unhappy.



There are plenty of positives to the game, and on some level I really like it but there are so many small things that make it sometimes unbearable to play. Haven't tried Disharmony yet since I'm waiting on the patches but these are my feelings on ES vanilla (likely the same for Disharmony).



Non-gameplay related problems:

i. -10 Crashing and freezing. This is the only game I play where crashing and freezing occurs regularly (at least once per game for at least one person). Luckily it's a 4x turn-based game so it doesn't totally kill it, but it is incredibly annoying and makes playing with strangers very difficult.



ii. -10 Game fails to focus on SP or MP, just does both at a mediocre level.



With regards to singleplayer, the AI is terrible. Increasing difficulty merely increases the amount of cheats they use and penalty you suffer. Honestly if it was done this way, at least give us slider bars to set exactly how much penalty we suffer and the bonuses they get.



With regards to multiplayer, the interface is unspectacular, I'll cut Amplitude a break on this one since they're a small company though.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gameplay related problems:



iii. -25 Terrible control stream lining. No rally points. You must produce ships with 1 click per ship, instead of being able to simply type "20" and allow 20 ships to be made. Fleet merging is annoying to say the least. In system you can't just click drag an improvement to put it at the top of the queue, instead you must drag it upward starting from the bottom of the queue.



iv. -25 Poor/shallow mechanic design in many crucial areas of a 4x game. Diplomacy is a minimal in this game, combat is stale (with a card system there should be MANY, MANY cards to choose from to start), and trade route mechanic is too shallow (there are no options to play around with in trade routes).



v. -10 Poor race design/diversification. Races could have been made much more unique by having race-specific battle/tactic cards. MP could have had much more differentiated races (+30 overall points to spend with more unique faction traits). IMO the idea of custom races should have been kept to single player-only since they're impossible to balance with the original races.



There are positives but I'm sure people already know what's good about the game. Fighters and bombers are cool. We did need a way to completely destroy a system (the troop mechanic was completely unneeded though, we simply needed a way to raze a system and bombers were sufficient).



Fixing the gameplay related issues would already make me say that I'm happy with it.

Content

No rally points

That gripe may have to be removed soon.

"In system you can't just click drag an improvement to put it at the top of the queue, instead you must drag it upward starting from the bottom of the queue.

Sure can't argue about that one, drives me nuts when I have large queues.

Well, what I really want to know is what is next for ES? Another expansion? SOme more balance patches? Any future content planned?

You guys pretty said everything I want to say. The game is fun, it keeps me coming back (especially coming up new ways to mod it though that's probably not what most other people find fun), but there are so many little things that gets in the way of enjoyment. From the list of already posted issues, I find the non-intuitive combat system and the bad AI to be the biggest ones. I'll also throw in my own pet peeves to the list:



* Semi-turn-based strategic action, I mean really, why do players have to scramble with fleet/hero placement during their turn in a "mostly" turn-based game? Makes no sense.



* Government, would have been nice to have, not the biggest deal to do without, but isn't different forms of government an obvious way to distinguish the different races?



* Unnecessary wait time, 5 sec between clicking the button to start a fight and actually starting the fight, doesn't sound like a lot? Well it really adds up when you go through 10+ fight per turn, really drags the game down.



* Relatively poor modding support, not everyone is interested in this, but many games now-a-days gain longevity from having excellent modding community. And this community can only build up if the devs themselves are willing to invest time to teach players to use their system. ES definitely has one of the most flexible modding system out there but also one of the poorest documented system. Devs are generally helpful when asked in private but rarely engages the modder in open forum. There's so much potential there, yet it is largely untapped.

^^ I have to disagree with you on the modding thing (not your main point on modding) in that I think most people are interested and do mod ES. In fact, I don't think there is any aspect of the game I haven't modded. I just never release mods because I never do anything big, just a few touch-ups.



So I think modding is actually in most everyone's best interest. And even to the relatively few people I know who don't mod on some level or another, support for moders means a better game... So everyone is interested.

Better poll question: What option matches your feelings best?



Seems like a lot of people are dissatisfied with the state of balance of disharmony. And I really like this game, but it seems something is wrong based on all the criticism and balance threads. I want to know where the community lies in this situation. Is it really a major problem, or just a vocal few? The poll will tell. If we want to get the devs attention, we need a lot of votes. Perhaps a goal of 200 total votes would be a start? This is really important for the success of ES, so vote!



Please, this is just an evaluation of how people feel, leave the disharmony discussions and arguments to their own threads.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
So I think modding is actually in most everyone's best interest. And even to the relatively few people I know who don't mod on some level or another, support for moders means a better game... So everyone is interested.

There is so much to mod already, I don't understand?



Its really easy.

Igncom1 wrote:
There is so much to mod already, I don't understand?



Its really easy.

This! The mods make it better for the personal desires.



I guess it's fine for me atm - i don't play much, therefore the state of the game is OK for me.

Igncom1 wrote:
There is so much to mod already,

Pretty much anything except copyrighted material... Which would present a bigger challenge, like you pointed out, punching lines into an XML is pretty simple.

I don't even do that, I just copy code that is like what I want to do from other parts of the game.

I'm moderately unhappy with disharmony overall right now, mostly because the harmony are so cool, and yet I feel bad for playing them. I really like them (favorite race atm), and I try to do good with them, but i can only seem to compete with hard level AI without absolutely getting curbstomped. Then again if I get a craver/hissho early i often still end up getting smacked before i get my economy going.



Additionally i'd say that the addition of the new combat mechanics is nice, but I wasn't able to figure out what anything meant for the longest time (especially hull weakness) since that information is only really available in patch notes hosted here on the forum, instead of a terminology reference somewhere in the game.



Others have said points that I agree with as well, so I won't parrot them.



Hope they fix some things soon, or at least implement the proposed harmony changes I saw a couple weeks ago in the harmony thread. Would make my life against my friends somewhat easier.



Also if I had a genie I would like to wish for custom faction-specific events (such as harmony having replacement events for things that only give dust or hero xp options).

I do not have the disharmony add on because it sounds like all it does is add to the war aspect of the game, of which I dislike the most. I like colonizing the planets, terraforming them, creating trade routes and diplomacy. I'm not into the war aspect of this game, but I am content to play the game without the DLC.

Basically haven't played at all since the initial release. I was really unhappy with changes like the massive reduction to weapon progression and the general screwiness of all the combat mechanics. Not much has changed on that front.



Since it seems like Amplitude has moved on to new games I'm not sure anything else is going to be done with ES at this point. Disharmony was a rushed release to cash in, sadly.