Good game, it could easily pass for a 'release' when compared to some 'games' and in Alpha no less! Sunk about 30 hours into it already, time well spent. The races are great, and diverse , and don't look completely stupid like they did in the X series, that one thing put me off the game, having dogfights with the cast of sesame street just didn't do much for my immersion.



Hopefully the game will continue to get better, and the developers don't think "Well, they like the alpha, lets just release it like that!"



Do NOT do that.

So far I have only gotten a chance to put in a couple of hours. Those few hours are some of the best I have had in a game released this year. To see how great this game is in Alpha is definitely great. I already expect this to be on my list for top games of the year.



So far everything looks great. The game-play phenomenal. The races really stand out. I can't wait to see the final product.

I've just played for pretty much 8 hours straight, and I didn't even notice the time flying - imagine the shock as I closed the game and looked at my watch. In my opinion this is the best space 4x game since Master of Orion 2, even in it's alpha state. Thank you and well done Amplitude!



I am especially happy about the well designed user interface and the equally well done graphics. It helps immersion a lot, and really feels like you are managing a space empire and not looking at some kind of souped up excel spreadsheet, which is a big factor that turned me off similar titles. I am very excited to see where this game goes from here!



While playing, I encountered exactly one single (already well known) bug beside some minor typo/translation errors - everything else was rock solid from start to finish: It seems like you cannot chose between automatic and manual battle when the enemy attacks you during his turn, or at least I believe this to be the reason.



And finally, some suggestions on how to improve the game even further:



- More art assets. More hulls to chose from, different effects for weapons in battle (continuous beams etc.), more planet variation, hero pictures and so on. How about some full screen stills for certain galaxy events? You have great some great graphical talent in your team, I am sure you will put it to good use.



- Addition of unique ship systems besides "Laser I", "Laser II", "Laser III" etc. to spice up the battles a bit. Think fighter bays, cloaking devices, boarding transports, planet destroyers and what have you. I realize this goes a little against the current rock-paper-scissors system, but it could give the game another layer of tactical depth and would nicely compliment the first suggestion.



- I really like the card system, but I would welcome if I could also chose which enemy ships are to be targeted first. It's nasty when the single enemy ship that has the best weaponry against yours lives the longest.



- Give us a research option/planetary improvement/ship module to stop the enemy from blockade running well defended systems and chokepoints. Currently the AI often manages to slip behind your front line, instead of being greeted with a warm laser salvo when it enters occupied systems.



- Maybe let the pirates have bases, so they don't spawn out of thin air and you can wipe them from your sphere of influence when you muster the strength. This should not be too easy of course.



- Espionage would be great! I read this will be added later on in an expansion - nice to know you are already planning for the time after the release of the final build.



I hope this didn't sound like some kind of lecture or rant, as I will love this game whether or not you implement some of the points above. I just wanted to give some feedback back to the community and developers and say again: Great work Amplitude!

The game is awesome and i got really nostalgic about it. Keep up the good work.

As for opinions... Main issue for me is Ship Design

Probably the most conspicuous issue of the game that branches down to 3 main problems:



1.

At the moment the ship designer itself is something like a BMP image that shows what goes where. You cant really interact, or design your ship, not to mention take a look at it. Everything is fixed from weapons lay out to the ship body itself.

Imho: get rid of every fixed option as soon as possible.



First of all. Take the 3D ship models you already have in manual combat, and put them into the designing room so players get to look at their little baby.

Second: Remove the limitations of modules so players can put on the ships whatever they want, where ever they want it, allowing a truly free design of choice.



Examples for this can be found in Sword of the Stars, Gratuitous space battles, Nexus: The jupiter incident which brings us to the second issue.



2.

What to equip?

Currently there are like ~10 things to put on your ship, weapons, armor and support modules counted all together.

This meager amount of items, makes ship designing almost completely obsolete.

There are 3 types of weapons and 3 types of defenses to counter them as well as 3 (?) types of "other" modules. As you research, all that changes is their color and stats. Its a literal let down.



Example: About every space flight game out there (picture from gratuitous space battles)



You see this is a grey area where you can literally let your fantasy just go.

In Masters of Orion 2 you had roughly 50 different sort of utility/support items to tweak your ships with.

From the simplest troop pods that added 20 marines for invasion, to the god and lord of MoO2: the time warp facilitator which allowed your ships to attack twice in one round. There is literally no end to what you can come up with in terms of effects and diversity.

Fast missile racks, hard shields, beam capacitors, research stations....

The talk is not entirely about weapons here. The talk here (mainly) is about the lack of diversity in the designer.



3.

Ship types and "basic load out"

If im counting right, the maximum amount of ships you get in ES is 6. It gave me to think, but in the end i have to admit that its not that much of a problem if you can modify them well enough. After all, even MoO2 had 6 types + the doom star which was counted as the juggernaut.

What distinguished between these ships was their load out. You could turn a doom star into a rocket platform, mothership, beam trap or whatever depending on its load out, however:

Adding to diversity in design, im missing the essential build up of a star ship.



Example: Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.



In nexus, the minimum a ship had to have was a generator and an engine. Without those two things, the ship was just a dead weight.

Then came the support section: sensors, batteries, support generators, shields, electronic warfare systems, etc

And lastly the weapon platforms.

What i mean to say with this, is that you could add design diversity just by handling starships as a mass of subsystems instead of large, flying blocks that carry weapons and armor on them. Just by having to pick between generators and engines, you would add the feeling of actual choice and design.



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Blarg... well, read the entire thing with pictures and stuff in my blog post...

Aerensiniac wrote:
The game is awesome and i got really nostalgic about it. Keep up the good work.

As for opinions... Main issue for me is Ship Design

Probably the most conspicuous issue of the game that branches down to 3 main problems: (...)

You put it better than I ever could, very good post! Especially regarding the research tree... I knew something was amiss, but I couldn't quite point my finger on it.

Love it! It looks and plays great already, needs more balancing though. I haven't encountered any bugs yet!