Hello, and first of all, congratulations. It is a rare thing to see a game with such polish in a game still in its alpha testing phase.



Since I do not want to appear like I dislike the game or only see its negative points, I will start "positive feedback":

-Sleek design. It's a pleasure to see, speaks of professionalism, and feels smooth and polished. The planets, the stars, the galaxy, the factions are easy to distinguish and are pleasant to the eye. Great job.

-The best UI in a space 4X yet, in my estimation. Sleek, pretty, easy to understand. It still needs some refinements (the tech tree should be easier to navigate, for instance techs giving combat cards should be easier to find; the combat AI needs more fleshed out tooltips to help players understand how the different weapons/armor/modules interact, and have a rough estimate of how much damage they will inflict).

-Overall a simple and efficient design.



Now, with the negative feedback:

-A lot of techs are afflicted by the "Laser I,II,III" syndrome - and not just military techs. Improvements suffer the same problem - it very often just comes down to either an FIDS bonus on a different type of planet, or a morale boost. Diversifying game mechanics, having a few improvements and tech offer new options that leave the current framework and introduce new effects/abilities, would make the game even more enjoyable. No need to overdo it, but going beyond FIDS would be a great idea.

-Combat needs fleshing out. Currently, I've observed a few issues:

*It uses a GalCiv2-like 3 weapons types system, with the corresponding defenses. However, unlike GalCiv2, there is very little inertia in this area, at least in the early game - it's very easy to jump from one weapon type to another as the techs don't seem to have demanding requirements (or maybe it's because I'm playing Sophons?). In GalCiv2, if you've researched 3-4 laser techs, it's quite a drag on your resources to start research missiles, and your abilities with lasers will be better than with missiles for a long time; this means that the opponent knows which type of defense to use against you, because you won't be bringing new effective weapons of another type for a while. In endless space, it's extremely easy to convert your fleet to a new weapon type, which makes it difficult for opponents to know, in advance, which defense to use against you. It's much easier to fill the starship with weapons and deals as much damage as possible as fast as possible. This is made worse by the fact that defenses only work against one type of damage, instead of being "Strong against one, weaker against the 2 others". This means that a wrong choice makes all the defense slots on the starship useless, decreasing the incentive to uses defenses even further. In the end, there doesn't seem to be a lot of arguments in favor of defenses.

*Weapons need more personality; this would contribute to make the long/mid/close range system more than a series of identical phases (since each one has an associated weapons). Basically, the combat system needs to be fleshed out a bit. This might, in turn, solve the "Laser I,II,II" problem by allowing the players to research weapons with a twist.

*Similarly, fleet composition needs more options. It'd be nice to be able to define a role for each vessel; for now, since the lighter ships are destroyed first, it seems like there's no point building them. There's no screening, no escort, or anything of the sort, meaning that the best ships to use are always the biggest. Once I reach cruisers, I don't really have an incentive to build destroyers anymore, aside from their bonus (which isn't enough to counter the fact that they're too fragile).

-A couple things could be improved in combat graphics; weapon effects are quite simplistic and look somewhat fake, some improvement there would be welcome. Sophons vessels sometimes look weird (up close, that purple glow thingie found on port and starboard sides close to the front of the starship looks quite weird - it gives the whole ship a "toy vessel" look)

You do have a fair and valid point. But for starters the tech issue seems to be a typical alpha release issue. Since it isn't nearly done. And the majority of threads so far, have been about the combat which clearly needs some work.

I like some of your later suggestions about increasing the effectiveness of defenses and allowing players to designate ship roles. Along with the graphics upgrade, it'd be nice to see actual weapon batteries on the ships (right now the effects just kinda come out of the side), but that might be a bit difficult due to how weapons are applied.

I think advanced buildings and tech will be added before the Alpha is done, but I do agree that the combat could use a bit of fleshing out. In addition, having an actual reason to use smaller ship types would be nice.