I havn't play the game for a longtime but i notice:



- Repairing a fleet can be very long when you're at war.



- Diplomacy seem to have one rule: the larger fleet you have the more friend you have. Expension and research doesn't seem to be count in the diplomacy.

Also if your military strength is not at the top other factions are suspicious.



(Incoming Edit)

Lots of good ideas here. This is a thread to take note of.

Hi August,



I noticed last night that there are 2 separate messages when disbanding a fleet. If you disband in your own colony system it tells you that they will go to the hangar. If you disband in uncolonized space, it says it will be permanently destroyed.



Cheers,



~Draz

Would like to see some type of Strategic View or galaxy filters, particularly for ships. Something making ships stand out more, show moves left, fleet size, HP. Fleet management is very clunky from the galaxy screen, especially in medium/large empires.

Just want to point out a single point:

TimBur wrote:


Seems fair that if you scuttle ships far from home, they're gone for good. If you want to keep them, then bring them home.

"Disband" feature seems to be something other than mere scuttling - disbanded ships break up the fleet and go to hangar. In my example I used it to rearrange the fleet, only to realize that I have just killed/marooned the entire crew of the ship upon an uninhabited world. Disband should either have a warning when it is about to destroy a ship, or be simply grayed out over uncolonized worlds, since there seems to be no reason to ever dismantle your own ships.

I was just about to post a list of my thoughts, which are medium different from yours, so I thought I ought to respond to you first.

Releasing(disbanding) fleets over uncolonized world destroys them with no visible way of recovery. Seems fair that if you scuttle ships far from home, they're gone for good. If you want to keep them, then bring them home

Seems fair that if you scuttle ships far from home, they're gone for good. If you want to keep them, then bring them home.

Diplomatic behavior seems to be completely unrealistic - AI asks for ceasefire only when it has no hope of survival, it declares wars for no visible reason(relations deteriorate with no visible triggers, leading to war ). I found no incentive to engage in diplomacy, since it is so unpredictable.

I found diplomacy to be very predictable, though much too harsh. All the relations modifiers are spelled out in the inspect-opponent diplomacy window. However, I found it near-impossible to have good relations with any opponent, and especially with neighbors. I ended up at war w/4 of 5 AI because of harsh penalties for 'expansion' and low bonuses for trade connections

AI controlled scout fleets are nigh uncatchable since AI can move fleets before player does, allowing it to elude multiple pursuing fleets ad nauseum. Regular AI fleets can attack anything they like before player does, devaluing attack stats and making it difficult to keep vunerable scouts/colony ships alive.

I almost agree. It may be OK that ships pass w/o interacting when in interstellar space. But if a hostile ship tries to travel through a system with a fleet that I own, then I ought to have the option to interdict.

Introduction of planetary/system defenses seems necessary. Systems should be able to somehow actively threaten enemy fleets and support friendlies fighting nearby.

Totally agree. You can build a big gun far more cheaply on a planet surface than you can in space. Systems without orbiting fleets ought to be able to do some sort of damage to enemy fleets based on system improvements. So I'd like to see some system-defense improvements. E.g. mines, big guns, etc.

Often, if Player is attacked during AI's turn, he(player) cannot click auto/manual battle options - buttons begin to blink, but are unclickable so the timer runs out, going into autoresolve. Looks like a bug, potentially can wreck player's fleets without them being able to do anything about it.

In the context of the current battle system, attacking stacks of AI fleets (which it is fond of making) is very tedious and repetitive. The conflict turns into a meat-grinder until one side runs out of ships.

Agreed. I like the idea of the simplified combat in this game, but at the moment, there's too little strategy. The ship design screens have loads of wonderful flexibility, but it feels almost useless because I have so little control over battles (see my post for thoughts on a solution).

Ship visual variety is needed. Mods used should be visibly identifiable to a player: missiles, beams, kinetics all should be obvious. Ship's veterancy should be reflected on it somehow(not a necessary thing, but a very welcome one). Aesthetic mods for the ships for players to have have some control over how they look(so two players using the same race don't look at the parade of identical ships)?

More visual variety would be nice, but please don't do this at the cost of balance or fun in game mechanics.

Races should have more than a few pictures, ship designs and research options to differ from each other. More artwork tied to each race to convey the character of each race. You seem to already have talented artists on your team - they can add more luster to the project.

Same thing. Visual variety is nice, but I'm far more interested in fun.

Some race unique mechanics needed - Emperor as a central figure when playing UE and some sort of Senate for Sophon and so forth.

I don't think the game should work differently for different races. However, I agree that it would be nice for some more qualitatively different features. I like the idea of the race/empire characteristics, but most of the current ones are of the 'spreadsheet' variety. Consider having the race-specific techs be more unique and interesting.

Fact that individual ships gain experience and level up should be developed further, and expanded - I have discovered this fact only because I was putting in effort to pay attention to every detail to write this review. Regular player would scarcely notice the mechanic. Expanding this would add more value to individual ships, less of a faceless parade of identical ships.

Agreed. I don't understand what benefit my ships get from XP.

Pirates are too numerous for a normal setting. Lowering the setting is not an option, since next setting is "no pirates". More pirate options, less pirates on Normal. In general, I like the idea of pirates being a great force to be reckoned with, but they should be grounded on some solid mechanic(pirate bases or something similar).

I'm good with pirate strength on normal. The way they pop up is a little unrealistic, but it's in keeping with most other 4x games, so I'm OK with it.

Higher level ship templates essentially make previous generations obsolete - there is no need to make "defenders" and "cruisers" when you are able to make "dreadnoughts" at a steady pace. That needs to be addressed. (this does not apply to scouts and colonial ships)

Agreed. I like the way that different hull types have bonuses for different components. It seems like this hull-type-bonus mechanic was an attempt by the devs to keep smaller hull sizes relevant throughout the game. But the current version just isn't enough. The HP/defense benefit of larger ships seems so big that smaller ones really aren't useful after the larger ones have been unlocked. See my post for further thoughts.

Totally agree with all your points most of which i was thinking to myself and a few i wasn't but now am

Just want to throw my own in here, mostly interface stuff





WASD movement for the research menu



Popup reminder every turn when not doing any research



Popup reminder every turn when a system is not producing anything



List of how many resources players have on the trade screen



Spacebar ends turn



System health displayed while in system view



Ship icons for systems with docked ships



Close popup windows with ESC



Save able sort options for empire management



Expandable windows for build menu, luxury goods, etc



Auto scouting



Option to play on after winning



Random event options



Mouse hover over build options previews the effect it would have on the system

Agreed on all points. Great feedback OP.

I really like your ideas, especially about more visual difference between ships.

I think visible turrets and stuff like that would be cool.

And maybe have ships fire as many projectiles/beams/rockets as turrets are installed?

I also ain't sure if there are more way's to win the match unless you do combat with them are there more victories then combat?

• Releasing(disbanding) fleets over uncolonized world destroys them with no visible way of recovery.
  
  
  
  
• Pirates randomly appear with no visible source or reason on any uninhabited system, unless someone has it in radar range. If that is an intentional mechanic, I found it strange to see large fleets appear on worlds devoid of any habitation. Pirate bases spawning after awhile, then spawning fleets from them is a much less arbitrary pirate mechanic, perhaps.
  
  
  
  
• Would like to be able to rename fleets outside of fleet menu please.
  
  
  
  
• Fleets travelling through the same star "link" can overlap on top of each other making it impossible to click them\and to visually see where they are.
  
  
  
  
• Diplomatic behavior seems to be completely unrealistic - AI asks for ceasefire only when it has no hope of survival, it declares wars for no visible reason(relations deteriorate with no visible triggers, leading to war ). I found no incentive to engage in diplomacy, since it is so unpredictable.
  
  
  
  
• AI controlled scout fleets are nigh uncatchable since AI can move fleets before player does, allowing it to elude multiple pursuing fleets ad nauseum. Regular AI fleets can attack anything they like before player does, devaluing attack stats and making it difficult to keep vunerable scouts/colony ships alive.
  
  
  
  
• Player cannot see size of the population when scouting enemy systems. It is not a far-fetched notion for a scouting fleet to gauge roughly population size from orbit.
  
  
  
  
• Introduction of planetary/system defenses seems necessary. Systems should be able to somehow actively threaten enemy fleets and support friendlies fighting nearby.
  
  
  
  
• Often, if Player is attacked during AI's turn, he(player) cannot click auto/manual battle options - buttons begin to blink, but are unclickable so the timer runs out, going into autoresolve. Looks like a bug, potentially can wreck player's fleets without them being able to do anything about it.
  
  
  
  
• AI/Player fleets can pick off any fleet they want at their leisure, one at a time, while the rest do nothing to support attacked ally. Particularly problematic with AI, as it can make it's decisions before player does, attacking what it wants every time. I propose allowing player to set their fleet into defense/intercept mode to remedy this, though there are other possible solutions.
  
  
  
  
• Using buyout to speedup production, and then cancelling it does not refund the dust spent.
  
  
  
  
• In the context of the current battle system, attacking stacks of AI fleets (which it is fond of making) is very tedious and repetitive. The conflict turns into a meat-grinder until one side runs out of ships.
  
  
  
  
• Ship visual variety is needed. Mods used should be visibly identifiable to a player: missiles, beams, kinetics all should be obvious. Ship's veterancy should be reflected on it somehow(not a necessary thing, but a very welcome one). Aesthetic mods for the ships for players to have have some control over how they look(so two players using the same race don't look at the parade of identical ships)?
  
  
  
  
• Game appears to have no way to mitigate Hostile Fauna anomaly(none of the research options seem to deal with it).
  
  
  
  
• Races should have more than a few pictures, ship designs and research options to differ from each other. More artwork tied to each race to convey the character of each race. You seem to already have talented artists on your team - they can add more luster to the project.
  
  
  
  
• Some race unique mechanics needed - Emperor as a central figure when playing UE and some sort of Senate for Sophon and so forth.
  
  
  
  
• Fact that individual ships gain experience and level up should be developed further, and expanded - I have discovered this fact only because I was putting in effort to pay attention to every detail to write this review. Regular player would scarcely notice the mechanic. Expanding this would add more value to individual ships, less of a faceless parade of identical ships.
  
  
  
  
• Pirates are too numerous for a normal setting. Lowering the setting is not an option, since next setting is "no pirates". More pirate options, less pirates on Normal. In general, I like the idea of pirates being a great force to be reckoned with, but they should be grounded on some solid mechanic(pirate bases or something similar).
  
  
  
  
• Races need more ways to control approval on planets/systems. Currently it is very difficult to have any noticeable improvements in the approval on the planets with difficult living conditions.
  
  
  
  
• "Destroyed" races seem to still persist after they lose all colonies. They still change their diplomatic statuses and are present in the diplomacy menu.
  
  
  
  
• Fleets should have some sort of way to annihilate populations in the systems - planetary bombardment/nukes/bioweapons, even high level tech to blow up planet itself, perhaps? Essentially, something that can wipe out enemy presence without committing to a lengthy siege.
  
  
  
  
• Allow players to continue playing after the victory conditions are met (Civ's "One... more... turn..." sort of option)
  
  
  
  
• Higher level ship templates essentially make previous generations obsolete - there is no need to make "defenders" and "cruisers" when you are able to make "dreadnoughts" at a steady pace. That needs to be addressed. (this does not apply to scouts and colonial ships)
  
  
  
  
• Would like to see the galaxy to have a greater impact on the game. Allow player to find some unique Endless tech - some lost ship templates, upgrades, buildings and so forth. Neutral mini races, and other minor forces in the galaxy would be welcome as well. It would be good to see a living, breathing galaxy, even without input from a player or major AI players.
  
  
  
  

Keep up the GREAT work, Amplitude!

Just loaded up a test game, noticed I was mistaking it for a different anomaly. My bad; problem duplicated and (as to my knowledge, though not complete since I inevitably win before maxing the tech tree) unrepairable. Maybe it's just *really* hostile.

PolytheistGoat wrote:
Great post, and very well organized. One thing - in all my games, Hostile Fauna just gives + 1 FIDS, minus Dust. Why would you want to negate it?

In the game where I found it to be an issue Hostile Fauna gave -10 approval and +1 Food on a barren planet - which amounts to -25 Approval total, resulting in an eternal population strike on the planet.

Love this post. Seconding everything, adding some thoughts from my review/playthrough:



- Tax is unbalanced. Low is strictly better because of increased productivity, there should be social investments that high-tax players can make.

- Diplomacy. It's been said before, but more goodness here.

- Something like MadGiraf's galactic events.

- Continue playing after victory/loss and or sandbox mode.

- Benefit for expanding Sphere of Influence, perhaps? Space debris mining commission or something... Again, more stuff - but that's what moving from Alpha to Beta should be~!



Great post, and very well organized. One thing - in all my games, Hostile Fauna just gives + 1 FIDS, minus Dust. Why would you want to negate it?

I concur with the original poster on all of the above!



I understand this is alpha but here are some points for the newbie starting out that frustrated me to some end early on:





Auto Upgrading ships... when using this feature it would upgrade only of the type it started out with (in terms of weapons and armor). So say I have researched Uber Lasers of Destruction which is 10x higher on the weapon damage scale than my puny kinetic depleted uranium shells. When using the auto upgrade feature, it will only outfit my ship based on my previous configuration, and not my best technology. So instead of replacing kinetic weapons that are vastly inferior to my new lasers, it just replaces them with the highest rated kinetic weapons.

Basically, I kept researching higher weaponry and auto upgrading my ships and wondering why I was getting blown out of the stars each time I encountered an enemy fleet. Finally figured out I had to delete or use the reset all option to force it to use the best tech I had when upgrading. Something that would either inform you of how it upgrades or letting you choose the type of auto upgrade (based on tech) would helpful here. Rather than spend 2 small games figuring out that your ships suck because it wasn't utilizing researched tech when you auto upgrade.



Also, ship name space... call me slow but I just didn't see where to put a new name when adding a ship design... kept telling me a design with that name already exists. Perhaps highlight this field?



Notifications... apparently you can go turn after turn with your tech research sitting idle. Some notification here from the outset (the newbie who just purchased the game) to let them know they need to choose a path of research would be helpful. The notifications when research has completed and what is in queue is sufficient, however if someone were to accidently click through it, there is no longer any notification that your research is sitting idle.



In addition to notifications regarding system events. In particular, pirates. They are exasperating. They spawn out of the void and lay waste to newly colonized systems and if your attention is focused on the dreaded 50 turn siege of an enemy star system... chances are you aren't going to notice the speck that is the pirate fleet orbiting one of your inner colonies in space you thought was safe. If the intent is to have fleets stationed above every star system I own, I am going to lose interest fairly quickly. It's enough I have to manage these system and planets minus any type of real notification system (hey, pirates are blowing up your newly created stations in newly acquired space without you knowing about it!) and especially since the AI can do a runner right past your fleets defending those nice choke points you staked out. As much as I would like to be omniscient… at some stage I will have to rely on my minions to let me know that the Empire's colonies are under siege or that some of them remain unproductive (sitting idle).



Pirates need staging areas in uninhabited space and/or they need to be able to be contained via some type of orbital defense structures around my empires systems. Something to stop them from just appearing, blowing away a 1 turn founded colony and disappearing again before my fleets can come back from the front lines and chase them around (which doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to keep their numbers down as more just pop up on a whim of the universe). Give us a goal to deal with the pirates... I expect the inner part of my galactic empire to be relatively safe from marauding pirates after my fleets have cruised out and are holding down the choke points I've acquired.



In addition to the pirate problem, interception of enemy fleets would be nice... nothing like trying to keep a star system out of their hands or blockaded only to have them run past you. I guess that's part of the "cold war" strategy, but an active solution here would be useful.



Heroes: They come to me seeking glory! … but apparently my Star Academy can't fit more than 3 cots?! I have 50 star systems and numerous fleets... I have plenty of space for them. Let me hire them! If there is some deeply buried Hero cap increase buried in the tech tree... it needs to be moved up or lifted. Stuck with 3 heroes for the majority of the game kind of sucks...



Other than that, a great game, looking forward to more!



~Draz

madgiraf wrote:
I do not fully agree with this since the dreadnought has no bonus, in terms of pure Military Power it's better to have a fleet of destroyers (i.e -20% weapon tonnage) and cruiser rather than dreadnoughts, additionally the module adding +25/+50 tons can be fitted on all the multiple small ships (one dreadnought 400+50=450, two cruiser 2x200+50=500). Now of course in terms of survivability (avoidance+HP) it may be better to use the dreadnought since it's less likely to die, at least in some circumstances.

The blunt of my argument is this:



In the later game, player should not be limited to one or two ship types. Two is boring, one is terrible.

August wrote:




Higher level ship templates essentially make previous generations obsolete - there is no need to make "defenders" and "cruisers" when you are able to make "dreadnoughts" at a steady pace. That needs to be addressed. (this does not apply to scouts and colonial ships)

I do not fully agree with this since the dreadnought has no bonus, in terms of pure Military Power it's better to have a fleet of destroyers (i.e -20% weapon tonnage) and cruisers rather than dreadnoughts, additionally the module adding +25/+50 tons can be fitted on all the multiple small ships (one dreadnought 400+50=450, two cruiser 2x200+50=500). Now of course in terms of survivability (avoidance+HP) it may be better to use the dreadnought since it's less likely to die, at least in some circumstances.

August wrote:


Pirates are too numerous for a normal setting. Lowering the setting is not an option, since next setting is "no pirates". More pirate options, less pirates on Normal. In general, I like the idea of pirates being a great force to be reckoned with, but they should be grounded on some solid mechanic(pirate bases or something similar).



Would like to see the galaxy to have a greater impact on the game. Allow player to find some unique Endless tech - some lost ship templates, upgrades, buildings and so forth. Neutral mini races, and other minor forces in the galaxy would be welcome as well. It would be good to see a living, breathing galaxy, even without input from a player or major AI players.

Those two bullet point are somehow meaning the same (I said somehow ).



Ya definitely, a living, breathing galaxy would be awesome.

Consistent space pirates (with bases, doing raids, raids not only blockades, with some interactivity), galactic map events (A wandering space monster has been spotted ! Space amobea invasion in a star system ! Starlocusts swarms the galaxy, all empires to join forces ! Void Maggots have damaged your fleet ! A new pirate base has been established in a nearby galaxy ! A comet has been spotted, oh noes! scientist predict collision of the flying rock with your hard place ! The classic "a star has gone Nova"... ZombiePlants epidemy : animated dead plants destroyed some buildings on your planet (just kidding, not really fit for ES this one wording) ! A wealthy merchant visited you, but the greedy fat man did not give us anything !).



And if you, amplitude, want to be really really contemporary, do some dynamic events too (both for "the universe" and the IA players).



Definitely, MoO2 had so many good idea (yeah senate)... definitely mini races could do so much good as well. Well there is so much to eXplore in a 4X birth.



Now If I was to expose all my crazy ideas, I would actually add civilians ships on the galactic map (that could be involved in events) and a quest system with imperial requests (both random static and dynamic).

YOu checked off all my my observations and nailed some that I hadn't notice. Very, very well done.

Terrific feedback, echoing many of my feelings. In particular :



1. Diplomatic behavior seems to be completely unrealistic - AI asks for ceasefire only when it has no hope of survival, it declares wars for no visible reason(relations deteriorate with no visible triggers, leading to war ). I found no incentive to engage in diplomacy, since it is so unpredictable.



2. Races should have ... ship designs and research options to differ from each other.



3. Some race unique mechanics needed - Emperor as a central figure when playing UE and some sort of Senate for Sophon and so forth.



4. Fact that gain experience and level up should be developed further, and expanded - I have discovered this fact only because I was putting in effort to pay attention to every detail to write this review. Regular player would scarcely notice the mechanic. Expanding this would add more value to individual ships, less of a faceless parade of identical ships.



5. Allow players to continue playing after the victory conditions are met (Civ's "One... more... turn..." sort of option)



6. Would like to see the galaxy to have a greater impact on the game. Allow player to find some unique Endless tech - some lost ship templates, upgrades, buildings and so forth. Neutral mini races, and minor other players in the galaxy would be welcome as well. It would be good to see a living, breathing galaxy, even without input from a player or major AI players.



On :



1 - See diplomatic discussions in signature and add issues to be addressed / fixed

2 - See link on randomness of tech, which discusses how this might look

3 - A senate sounds amazing, some sort of system, for depending which party is in power, sees certain bonus's applied to your civ. Hmmm.. Now where have I seen THAT before?

4 - I think that Veteran Crews should feature heavily, and even that the ships should not be tossed out when superseded - perhaps the ships experience/traditions can roll over into another ship in the system when disbanded, as the crews transfer?

5 - Personally, I am a fan of the 'mix it up' option, with some nice, random chaos ensuring continued fun - e.g. a divided realm, loss of heroes, a new dark age, with access to technology and sectors lost, a old enemy makes a return with some other twist. Don't stick to the standard formula's.

6 - That whole idea of recovering Gaia - Returning to paradise in Moo, or learning some neat tricks, like how to create a single wormhole after lots of effort, or something else, sounds very fun, and mini-races?! The more the merrier! Especially if they join my empire down the track by means of .. persuasion, bribery or coercion...