First off, I am LOVING this game. I personally could never get into the 4x/TB space games being a pretty exclusive RTS fan. So the fact that I have logged 68 hours in 5 days on this game is saying a lot for me. The fact that this is just the alpha makes it even more impressive. So, for the first time in my 20-some years of gaming, mostly because this is the first time it may actually make a difference, I am gonna post every thought I can on what I would like to see in this game, any bugs I have seen, and any improvements that can be made.



Disclaimer: I have not read every bug thread (been too busy playing , so if I mention something already touched on/beaten to death, forgive me. Also, if I mention something due to me missing something or my apparent misunderstanding, please point it out and be specific! Also, I intend this to be a large post, so I apologize for that if you actually read this whole thing. Also, when I say "positive/negative" bonus, i mean "+/-", not "good/bad". Example: A "positive tonnage bonus" to armor would mean that armor would weigh more, not less...keep that in mind since thats the way my mind works



First, the question(s) and/or confirmation(s):



1: Resolved

I may have missed this in the tutorial, more than likely I imagine, but can someone confirm what the green arrows for ship/fleet movement is vs the blue arrows. I am assuming that the green arrow represent the movement speed of ships not on the "string" network. Please confirm.



2: Resolved

Just curious about the "Accelerated Magnetics" and "Neutrino Capture" Support modules. The Accelerated Magnetics lists a 15% improvement to defenses (shields, deflectors etc) but the Neutrino Capture, which is much higher in the tech tree only sows 6%...Am I missing something, missreading something or is it just a typo?



Second, the bugs (Only gonna mention major ones that I have witnessed that adversely effected gameplay. This is by no means a exhaustive/conclusive list as I imagine there are alot and that most, if not all, are already been looked into.):



1: Resolved

The most difficult and obvious bug to me has been late-game pathfinding, especially after researching "Wormhole Hyperspace" which links the wormholes under your control. Invariably, If I ask a ship/fleet to travel a long distance, most of the time it will bounce back and forth between the starting system and a nearby system before finally moving to a wormhole and zooming to its destination (or as close as it can get in one turn). One time in particular, a fleet got "stuck" in a rediculous/hilarious back and forth between system "A" and system "B" one its way to system "C" when A and B were connected by a "Cosmic String" but B and C were not. I literally had them try over the course of 5 turns and they just kept bouncing back and forth and I ended up having to pick a different route myself.



2: Resolved

When playing as the Empire, none of the Empire tonnage research upgrades except "Lossless Transmission" appeared to take effect. For example, I had a Dreadnought maxed out at around 440 tons. Later, after I had all the "tonnage" and some new weapon researches I went to modify it to add the new weapons and equipment and it was still at a 440 ton limit. I tried starting from scratch but had the same limit. Now it is POSSIBLE that I may have things mixed up about what research I had when, but I noticed this on 2 seperate games as the Empire but when I played as the Cravers, my maxed tonnage was well over 600 for the Dreadnought. I also went the the Empire stats page and could only find the one tonnage research stat (%15) but I must admit that there were so many stats and the space for the list was so small that it was hard to scroll through it and be sure that I read everything. Can someone confirm this? (Either that I am crazy from lack of sleep or this is an actual bug).



3:

Not really a bug, so to speak, but annoying and something I would like "fixed" is certain menus (most notably, the star system improvement list) "resetting" to the top of the list after every selection. Becomes quite the hassle when you have conquered a new system and have alot of improvements to queue up and have to select/scroll back down/select/scroll back down/etc to get to the improvements you want/need.



4: Resolved

The AI when it comes to fleets. On more than one occasion, the AI will spit a massive amount of fleets dur to a limited cap size. Example, I had a United Empire AI send 15+ fleets, each containing a single Dreadnought because its cap was at 5. This was a problem because you can only attack once per turn per fleet. So I had to call in fleets from everywhere just so I could take out this "group" in less than 15 turns. I can see this being exploited in multipler as well. Some limit should be placed on the ratio of cap/fleets maybe? I dunno, just FYI.



5:

I don't know how Endless Space caused this, but right-clicking is not allowing me to go back in my browser...Heh, it never did, but I found that after playing Endless Space I have, on more than one occasion...or ten, tried to go "back" in my browser by right clicking. This is not a bug, but I found it frustrating/hilarious (at myself) for getting into the habit of "right click to go back". In a future version, can we make that setting configurable...for my sanity



Continued....

And, last but not least, the Demands...err, Requests This is what this post is really for as I know the bugs and whatnot are gonna be ironed out over time during the Alpha and Beta phase. These are the things I REALLY want...like pwetty pwease wif sugar on top! The space battles are the most fun thing about this game for me so most of my requests will be around this aspect.



1:

I guess its best to describe this request as a random/different angle of attack for fleet engagements. I would like to see some head on fleet engagements with the fleet more spread out(which would provide more fodder for epic camera angles). Heavier class ships up front of course taking the brunt of the assault (more on this particular later), with the smaller ships flanking and slightly behind the "lead" ship (if any exists in the fleet). In this category I would also like it if heavily damaged ships, having just barely survived the last volley, were to vere off and withdraw and then assist from behind healthier ships. This could have a benefit in the form of a lil longevity, but at the cost of battle effectiveness. I do not know how the AI determines what ship is "targetted", or to what degree its weapons randomly select ships, but it would be nice if a ship "retreating" (but still in the fight) were to get a negative bonus as to its "priority" as a target to the opposing fleet while getting a similiar negative bonus to its effectiveness (weapon damage/fire rate/volley size/etc). I would like this to be automated like most of the battle already is, but maybe add a Battle Card that has some effect to your/the enemies retreating ships (or incorporate it into another/existing Battle Card). Just to reitterate, the retreating ships would stay in the fight and could still, easily, be destroyed, they just have one "last chance" to survive. Also, somewhat related, is the ability to capture ships. This would be rare and only occuring if a ship was disabled at the end of battle (say at less than %5 health, whereas a "withdrawal" to the back of the fleet line would be triggered around 15%/20%)





2:

I know this has already been touched on, but I REALLY want it. Carriers/Strike craft. A carrier would be between the size and tonnage of the Battleship and Dreadnought, but should have a positive (instead of negative) bonus for weapons (meaning that weapons would "cost"/weigh more on the Carrier than other ships). Either that, or a hard limit set on the number of weapons it can hold, but setting a positive bonus to the weapons opposite of the destroyer class should be enough. Carriers would also get a negative bonus to most, if not all, Support Modules (Defensive as well?). The Carrier would need to have a seperate "module" determining the size/number/type/etc of the strike craft. Strike craft would need to be Fighters and Bombers. Obviously the fighters would be better at taking on other fighters, but nearly worthless against anything above destroyer class. Bombers, which would only be available through research or upgraded Carrier Bay module or some combination of the two, would obviously be for attacking capital ships. They would also have a flak turrent for fighters but this would only give them a limited defense (one fighter/fighter wing(squadron?) would still take out a single bomber/bomber wing(squadron?) with little to no trouble/losses unless the bombers were say a class/upgrade or 2 ahead of the equivalent fighters they were against. This also bring the point needed that a new Module will be needed for anti fighter/bomber attacks such as flak/anti strikecraft missle batteries. Assuming a maxed/upgraded Carrier were to be able to carry 6 bomber squadrons (or the eqivalent of say 25 seperate bombers); if it were to go up against a similiar maxed/upgraded Dreadnought WITHOUT any flak(or anti strikecraft missle) batteries, the Dreadnought would LOSE. It may take the Carrier with it if carried a sufficient missle payload that would take it out but not before the bombers ate it for lunch. A Battle Card to deal with/enhance Fighters/Bombers would seem to be in order as well . I'm also thinking of race specific benefits for strikecraft.



Sophons: shielded bombers, making them tougher to take out.



Hissho: greater payload and/or better piloting skill or armored bombers.



United Empire: faster fighters/bombers and/or better piloting skill.



Cravers: greater equivalent number of fighter/bombers per squadron/cap.



Horatio: Hmmm, I had to think a lil on this one but I think I got a perfect advantage for them: Holigraphic decoys (heh, get it? cloned ships . Basically, eachwing would have one or more "decoy" ships to mislead flak/missles/enemy fighters. The decoys would be extremely weak, but enough to extend the livelyhood of the rest.



These advantages would be disinct and not affected by Battle Cards or such. Also, I believe the Sophons shields should fair better than say the increased armor of the Hissho. For instance, assuming the armor of bombers starts/defaults at 50 hitpoints, the Sophons bomber shields would add another 50 equivalent hitpoints whereas the Hissho bonus would be around 25 or 30. But where the bonus for the Sophon would only apply to their bombers, the Hissho would get the bonus on the fighters AND bombers. The question remains though as to what happens to the remaining fighters/bombers if the carrier is destroyed but the fleet survives? I don't want them to simply be scrapped or "disappear", but maybe they would be stranded until another carrier was brought to the system. All of these are just ideas, and I know there are 3 more races, but I seriously want this in this game. I know I may have to wait for an expansion, and it breaks my heart. But seriously, who do I have to sleep with to get this? (just joking, don't be offended)



Continued....

3:

Dreadnought class, race specific weapons. Basically, you would have the option of equipping your race's Dreadnought with a capital class special weapon. These weapons would be super heavy so you would be equipping them at the expense of (almost) any other weapons. For example, my current fully upgraded Dreadnought config has 8 weapons and the weapons are 20 tons each, so 160 tons total. The Dreadnought weapon would need to be around 140 tons, maybe more or less depending on race (I will go over this in a moment). Regardless of how the ship is configured, only in certain circumstances may more than one be equipped. (my only idea for that right now would be the Sophon, maybe the Horatio). My ideas for the weapons are;



United Empire: Energy Torpedoes/Disrupter Cannon (whichever name fits), similiar to the beam weapons but larger and faster (almost as fast as Kinetics) but less "shots" per volley. The benefit is that the Energy Torpedoes are hard hitting and ignore shielding. Downside would be accuracy. What I imagine is that a Dreadnought with this weapon could easily take out another Dreadnought with conventional weapons, but would lose against, say, 5-10 destroyers because it wouldn't be able to hit them most of the time (but when it did it would only take one, no more than 2, direct hits to wipe out a destroyer).



Sophons: "Phasers", for lack of a better term. Dead on accurate, almost never misses and delivers a continuous "beam" until the target is destroyed (or 5-10 seconds). Can take on a "conventional" Dreadnought of equivalent specs, but barely

since the beam weapon doesn't have the hard hitting power as the Energy Torpedoes/Disrupter Cannon of the United Empire Dreadnought. Also, in the rare case it does miss (normally on smaller class ships), the beam would still remain "on" until it had exhausted and reset for the next firing sequence. This could spell disaster it it were to miss multiple times on a large fleet of smaller vessels. This weapon would weigh slightly less and maybe possible to equip 2 (at the expense of other equipment of course due to the still massive weight). This would effectively double the ships firepower allowing it to fire 2 beams at once.



Horatio: EMP or an Electrical "discharge" that will disable smaller ships, reduce the effectiveness in some way of largers ships. Advantage to this weapon is that it would affect multiple ships, not necessarily all the ships, but a good number. Downside is limited actual damage done. This weapon should weigh less than the other factions Dreadnought weapons. The main reason I believe this is a good weapon for the Horatio is because of the dome-like structure on their ships. The Horatio Dreadnought could emit the EMP/Electrical discharge from its "dome". The weapon would hit ships at random with only a slight chance of missing them all or hitting them all. Small chance to overload a Cruiser/Destroyer/Corvette class ship and instantly destroy it (no chance of this at all on the heavier Battleship, Carrier, or other Dreadnoughts). The smaller the class ship, the greater the chance for overload. I'm debating on if it should be able to equip this particular weapon twice...seems logical. It would simply double the firing rate which doubles the cahnces to disable/overload ships.



Hissho: I'm thinking of a dual Dreadnought system for this race. A weapon, and a defense. I see this as either an Ablative Armor with an energy weapon similiar to the Energy Torpedo/Disrupter Cannon (though with less damage and a slower rate of fire), or a Deflector shield that actually bounces weapons fire back at the enemy fleet. Upside to this weapon would be a slight negative weight bonus, the ability to deflect any weapon. Directed fire on the Deflector from kinetics and beams would be reflected back in the general direction they came from (not exact, but an excellent chance to strike an any ship with a weapon from its own fleet). Missles would "bounce" off and go in a random direction with as much chance to strike a friendly as the enemy! The Deflector protection would be absolute while operational, but would only work 1 or 2 phases of every battle (chance would be 50/50 whether it would work only 1, or 2 phases). The Abaltive Armor would work differently in that it never "fails" and gives the Dreadnought incredible, but not total, protection. It would absorb weapons fire, not deflect it. The obvious downside is that you basically have a heavy shield/armor that protects only you coupled with a good weapon, but not nearly as powerful as the other races' Dreadnought weapons.



Cravers: I saved these guys for last because there is a small problem. In order for my idea to work for the Cravers Dreadnought weapon, fleets would have to engage head on at some point (not the converging strafing run that fleet battles are now). The reason for this is that the Cravers' Dreadnought design literally BEGS for some enormous cannon of some sort in its "nose" section. Hell, it looks like one is there already! This "Cannon" would be the single most powerful Dreadnought weapon on a shot-per-shot basis. But as expected, its fire rate would be abysmal, taking nearly an entire phase just to charge up. The only defense against it would be the Hissho Deflector/Ablative Armor (the Deflector would NOT deflect this weapon however, and would instantly fail for the remainder of the battle if hit with it, so a second hit would spell death. The Abalative Armor would allow it to take 2 direct hits, something no other ship would be able to). Accuracy would be good, but not great....just "point n shoot". I think the weapon should have a "wake" of sorts in that ships not directly hit are still damaged, but not destroyed, if caught in its "wake" or sphere of energy as it passes. The projectile itself would be incredibly slow, and maybe it would be possible for the projectile itself to targetted by the enemy fleet to weaken or destroy it. Weapon would have the ability to destroy 2 ships in one shot if "lined up" correctly. Of course, it would not destroy 2 Dreadnoughts this way, but may 2 Cruisers and smaller class ships. This weapon should be the heaviest weapon out of all the ones so far. Equipping it should limit the ship to being its only weapon unless something else is also sacrificed (like virtually all other defensive/support modules.



In the case of other races, it can be easily made to fire their weapon from almost any angle (except out their ass I guess), but for my idea to work for the Cravers, head on fleet battles should at least be common, if not most likely. Another idea for them if this is not to be so would be to use those "locust" things as some sort of weapon or defense. Maybe a form of "shield" of those "locusts" intercepting a large percentage of incoming fire, perhaps protecting a large portion of the fleet as well?.





4:

One word: Planetary Bombardment...ok, thats 2 words, but it should be one . After playing what is now a 150+ turn game against 4 AI opponents it is becoming exhausting managing all the newly "acquired" systems. Especially since the brats always hate me at first. I already "own" half the galaxy, so is it really too much to ask to just blow up the rest? LOL. The real reason for this request is to get another chance to see the ships in action firing weapons at a planet. But I also have some ideas. Only Battleship class and higher should be capable of planetary bombardment and i would image a certain bit of research somewhere in the high/middle of the tech tree (or simply require that only a certain class weapon be able to accomplish it, high level kinetics, middle level beams and all but the lowest level of missle/torpedoes but would still have to be on a Battleship/Dreadnought hull). And of course, with research and the proper star system improvements, maybe we can get the planets in on the fighting if you try to "bombard" them Maybe planetary defence missle batteries or Star Wars-esque Ion Cannons!!! Another option for planetary defense: land based strike craft. Same as those on my carrier that is gonna be added (hint hint but launched from the planet in case of bombardment and even if only the enemy has a single destroyer blockading your planet...send up a couple bomber wings you had on standby to wipe the smirk off the cocky bast*** for thinking he could send only ONE lil ship!





5:

I've read some other posts of people wanting to add ground combat in a similiar fasion to the space combat. While the idea is intriguing, I have no ideas on how to make it work. Maybe someone will add something to my thread on this aspect and how it could work. However, this is something that if added, it should be an "option" to set at the beginning of the game maybe? Most likely as an expansion that you can choose whether to enable/disable for a particular match. Something I am interested in, just no ideas on how it would work so please post yours if you ant this and have any neat ideas on its inclusion in this game.







Thats it for now...I'm tired....will add morel ater as I think of them...or remember them because I thought I had more...but my mind is mush right now. Gonna go play some more LOL.



Thanks again for an awesome game!



PS: OMG, I more than doubled the allowed post size....uhg....Had to break it up, sorry about that....

Reserved...

1) Seems to be warp engine speed (offlane) for green vs lane speed for blue.

2) All + weight techs aside of the first +10% tech don't work, currently. This is a known issue and should be fixed in the next alpha build.

4) This is a bug and a known issue that will be fixed for the next alpha build.

5) Nice habit teaching the game seems to provide. XD