Firstly I have to say how impressed I am with the game I can't believe it's an alpha, the whole interface is very polished and feels very comfortable and intuitive. Also I have to commend the AI I played on normal and they really gave me a hard time but I learned many lessons and they won't have it so easy next time. Now onto some areas where I have ideas and thoughts to maybe improve things. Some of these may already be in the pipeline if so I apologise in advance as I realise the game is only in alpha.



Pirates - I'm not sure what rules govern pirates but I found them to be very random and more of an issue as my fleet grew is this intended? I did notice them blockading and then taking over planets which I think is a good idea and encourages defence fleets at key planets. I lost my only source of Titanium-70 to a pirate fleet. I feel that rather than having seemingly random pirate attacks some pirate bases should spawn at the game start in random locations with a small fleet and this could then grow overtime as the empires expand. This would then add the possibility of having to take out a pirate base to colonise more planets or to prevent the attacks.



Fleets - At the start of the game when only a few fleets are available it's very easy to keep a close eye on their movement points and use them efficiently but as the game moves forward and the fleets grow it get's much harder. When I select a fleet destination I don't want to have to babysit. I want it to carry out its orders and only inform me of issues if something unexpected occurs. So as an example if I select a planet for colonisation that is a fair distance from my current worlds. I select the fleet click its destination then it sets off and moves each turn until it reaches the colonisation target. Once the target is reached or something unexpected happens I should get a message to inform me so I can take action. Some kind of message when a fleet arrives I feel is essential and I don't think it's currently implemented.



Planet Info - It would be great to have a list of explored systems that could be broken down by planet types so colonisation targets are easier to select I found as the game moved forward I was clicking all over the star map to find systems suitable for my colonisation needs.



Well that's all for now hope some of these make sense and thanks again for such a fantastic game.

Completely agree with the pirate bases idea. After my first few games I thought it would be much better to have smaller craft operate in star systems as a kind of "small time criminal" element with more hardened bases appearing in certain systems (kind of like SoaSE) after your Empire starts expanding



I'd love some fleet notifications as well. I think the system in place now is good but should be expanded to offer more alerts. The ability to customize what kind of alerts appear at the bottom would be excellent as well.

Should ideas be posted in another part of the forum so the devs have a chance to spot them?

The only real problems I have is the shallow combat and fleets I'm at war with flying right past my own "blockades" and hitting my less defended worlds with ease.



Do I really have to build dreadnaughts for every single planet I own?



If the combat system is going to remain as is, it desperately needs some control over camera angles and different formations atm it's horribly monotonous and entirely necessary as the ai seems to alternate between not using cards and using terrible ones.

The blockade thingie is a well known bug, the devs are aware of it.

darkcerb wrote:
The only real problems I have is the shallow combat and fleets I'm at war with flying right past my own "blockades" and hitting my less defended worlds with ease.



Do I really have to build dreadnaughts for every single planet I own?



If the combat system is going to remain as is, it desperately needs some control over camera angles and different formations atm it's horribly monotonous and entirely necessary as the ai seems to alternate between not using cards and using terrible ones.

As for ideas, you have another forum called : /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design

And for bugs: /#/endless-space/forum/35-tech-support

Sharidann wrote:
As for ideas, you have another forum called : /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design

And for bugs: /#/endless-space/forum/35-tech-support

Oops missed that I'll post my ideas there thanks.