Dev Team,

Some notes so far based on my single play-through as Sophons. I completely understand this as an Alpha version and some undocumented intentional design combined with still to be completed features are the cause of many issues. This is just my reactions to what I have seen so far. First, after several decidedly lopsided starts where I got hemmed up with some early losses I started a new game which seemingly had nothing but pirates. It turns out that almost half of the galaxy (default size, default # of players) was occupied by me and the pirates, while the other half had 3 other races jammed together, they were separated by a single wormhole bridge, which allowed me to progress at almost my own leisure. Aside: those pirates are obnoxious and obnoxiously powerful, popping up immediately after I destroyed them with twice the number of ships, after I dedicated some serious resources to build a capable navy their large numbers ceased to be an issue, fading to a mere annoyance until I was able to colonize all the planets on my side of the galaxy but two. And this is where the real confusion about how the rules of space, zone of control, movement, battles, all started to come billowing out of my CPU and monitor frustrating what seemed like solid tactics. Where to start:



Zone of control: the two planets that I had visited previously but were unable to colonize it appears were in the colorized circles extending from the planets, which I'm calling 'territory' however these circles weren't on my map at the time as I hadn't seen the planets whose territory extended to the system I wanted to reach. So I tried in vain to send ships to these uninhabited worlds both scouts, corvettes and colonizers. It wasn't until my primary opponent (Craver) colonized my side of the wormhole that I could visit that world again, only this time with much resistance. I still hadn't figured out why I couldn't get to the other planet, but wresting the foothold on my side of the galaxy from its occupiers took precedence. In the meanwhile more advances came and went including the drive to travel not on cosmic strings. This is cool I thought, only to find that I can't travel to any system off of a string, (me thinking that I would putter the galaxy at some slow pace off of the network, discovering the other half of the galaxy I learned was out there when it prompted me I had only explored 50% of it) Instead it wasn't until I pushed a suicide mission through the wormhole to see more planets that my non-string drive worked and I travelled between a previously unknown star and another of my systems closely parallel with it. This was awesome I thought to myself, and as I moved to the planet I saw a whole new race of Craver's with territory overlapping the planet I had worked to hard and in vain to reach. It was at this point that I finally figured out that I must not have been able to visit that planet because it was in the other's territory even though they couldn't reach it and probably didn't know it was there, much like I didn't know they were there even though they were in my detection circle. Some 40-50 odd turns later after my territory coverage was amped up I finally colonized that world.



ZoC and movement: My next issue which I was discovering along side the mystery unvisitable planet was that the enemy could send ships past my wormhole blockading fleet. Even when I put two fleets at the choke point and another at a follow on world the scouts would run past my ships, sometimes giving me mere seconds 2-4? to click on fight battle in the HUD on the bottom left before they moved on either bypassing both systems or in one case, bypassing the gateway world and laying siege to the world I had placed another fleet on to deal with the sieve of a blockade I had set up. All without presenting me the opportunity to engage the enemy fleet. While every time I attempted a similar maneuver just to see what would happen I would be immediately intercepted, what gives? I even tried a ship without any armor or weapons, nope just target practice. Then there's the two fleets guarding a system with two different capability levels in both load-out as well and # of ships and total HP. Which one intercepts the invader? the weaker one, it seems like every time (I'll allow that it might be random and I haven't noticed) shouldn't I, the defender, be able to decide which fleet defends my system? seems like my superiour interior lines of communication means I should be able to position the superior fleet to meet the opposing forces. And then after my fleet -invariably- gets wiped out they start an invasion, with another fleet in orbit! And finally, when these little scout ships, or invasion fleets jump my blockades I would set up an ambush at one of their targeted systems. I even pre-position my screen over that system so that I can click the temporary engage fleet button at the exact right moment, only the ship which clearly has way more than enough movement remaining to hit my system and move on stops short and doesn't enter the system. I wait for it to move, it doesn't. I take my eye off to do something else knowing that some enemy queued movements take a second or two during my turn, nope still there. I go finish my move and then voila! the ship hits my system and moves on without ever giving me the opportunity to intercept. or one frustrating example, I had 2 fleets on orbiting a freshly fought over world (mine) one damaged from the last stellar battle, one fresh and ready to take on the enemy. I do my moves last after all the admin, so I know a few minutes have gone by. near my planet there is another enemy fleet comparable to my healthy one and I decide to take it out before it jumps to this one and -invariably- takes out the weaker of the two fleets. So I go to move my strong fleet to the system, and at the exact moment my ships travel to the enemy planet the other fleet travels along the same cosmic string to mine, destroying my weakened fleet, starting an invasion on this contested world. Only now my strong fleet doesn't have enough movement to come back! how does that work?!? there isn't a worse way for that to have turned out.



Con't.

Continued:



Battle Cards: I see these things and it looks like each card (for example Magnetic Field) has a buff and debuff. Buff: increase deflector efficiency 40% (Block +10%) Debuff: decrease beam power 20% (Block +20%). I interpret that as my deflectors will deflect 40% bullets, but my beam weapons do 20% less damage. If this is the case I recommend color coding good/bad stuff for you in green/red because I thought it was the ultimate card increasing my kinetic defense and beam defense at first. Second what is the Block +10% Block +20%? no explanation anywhere what this means or signifies, whether this signifies a "save" chance that the buff doesn't apply? or if the you counter the enemy's card with this one add 10%? 20%? Rounds 2 and 3 in battle are frequently unnecessary, I've rarely seen a battle make it to round 3, never the less still going strong. What does this mean? (and I discovered this from the AI after wondering why my butt kept getting kicked after I second fleet and the first battle's survivors were in top shape)it means round three can almost always be nano-repair systems, and often round 2 as well. As a result if you win the battle, your ships emerge unscathed or significantly healthier (it takes more than 10 turns to repair the same damage that can be repaired within rounds) Balance???



Battle: Kinetics are way overpowered at range, the system was supposed to be the least effective at range, but with me using deflectors entire battles are decided the first round with the enemy using nothing but kinetics. Missiles, are super powerful and generally worthless except that the enemy doesn't counter them. Missiles don't get launched until the long range fight is 50% over, (why? you would probably have missiles loaded and ready to fire the moment the battle started) meaning you can't use them on tiny ships when playing massive fleet on massive fleet because they die before they shoot. Since the missiles get launched so late, they impact immediately before round 2 starts, guaranteeing your enemy gets the full long-range round to pummel you. And if you have 4 dreadnaughts and the enemy has 16 destroyers (CP equivalent) the enemy will make it through all the way to the end, as each ship only hits one enemy ship with each salvo. How to solve this? I don't know if you spread all your missiles out they may hit ineffectually over all the ships' flack defenses but regardless 1 dreadnaught with all missiles is way overkill for 1 destroyer regardless of his defenses. At this point I'm riding beam and light missiles (can't really argue too much with their massive damage, especially if you get lucky and they target a fresh enemy), but the enemy? he's riding either all out beam or all out kinetics, and 100% kinetics defense. Whenever I battle a mixed fleet I want to give my ships individual orders to counter the enemy layouts. If I've got 4 enemies with no beam armor and 3 enemies with no kinetics armor I should be able to have my beam ships target the no beam defense ships and my kinetics ships target those with no kinetics defense. Or since my missiles do massive damage they should target the larger ships (especially since the enemy has never used flack yet) but ships without missiles should target smaller ships to destroy those and take their weapons out of the fight sooner. Maybe too much to put in user options, but what appears to be random targeting makes even more random chance come into play in these space battles and all they look like are pretty light shows which pay little homage to the tactics that a 3-prong attack defense system would almost certainly have. And FINALLY sometimes I can see the subordinate ship's in an enemy fleet other times I can't, even if they're over one of my planets with one of my fleets in orbit, I can't even see the raw break down in kinetics/beam/missile so I have to guess which one of my two purposely unbalanced fleets should attack them or should I settle for mediocrity and re-balance my fleet against an 'unknown' opponent ravaging a star system in my own back yard. If there is a rhyme or reason for why you can see the sub-contents of the fleet please let me know, and at some future point... annotate.





So yeah, ridiculously long, I've been waging trench warfare over 3 systems for about 150 turns out of an (at this point) 229 turn game. For reference: Spica is the world on my side of the wormhole, Antares on his, and Izar was the mysteriously unvisitable world.