difficultlevel wrote:
From a gameplay perspective I found myself not being connected to my empire of choice. Perhaps it's due to being alpha but I expected deeper feedback form my colonies. Combat is boring and frankly a waste of time to watch. Risk did the card game better. I think I can safely say most 4x players are hankering for a homeworld style combat system.

I'll agree that sitting around, waiting, is incredibly boring.



At the same time, I actually, like the basic design of the current system. A way to click 'selection locked' and then have it skip to the last locked phase would be nice.



E. g.



Intro: everyone makes our selections for round 1. I lock mine, my opponent doesn't. The intro continues to 'count down' until it's end, just like it does currently.



Phase one triggers, I select and lock my second card. My opponent also selects and locks his card. Instead of waiting for combat to resolve in a flurry of pretty-pretty shots, the game fast-forwards to round two and plays them out.



(Optional add on I lock my card for round 3 in, my opponent doesn't. I decide to change my mind, so I un-lock it (think the 'ready' ticks many games use for game start) and make a change before locking it again.



... And so on. AI players would, presumably, start with all three cards 'locked' (or at least, that's what the appearance would be to human players).

difficultlevel wrote:
The network or travel is also linear (atleast to start). Wouldn't it be better to have a free form travel system with far more star systems?



Then from that have certain systems that are amicable to your empires needs in terms of atmosphere etc? Once you find the sweet spot system, it then becomes part of your empire, trade ensues it is then linked, not by arbitary lines but by necessity.

Personally, I'd like to remove free-form travel! Those connections provide for the ability to define points of contact, chokepoints for defensive (or offensive) purposes, and add additional, very visibly apparent criteria for system importance. A 'string' system that only acts as a waypoint from A to B probably doesn't get too much extra defense, but a nodal system with MANY lines of contact is something I want to control -- it grants me an 'interior' position in the result of a war, and lets me deny the enemy the same. And it's INCREIDBLY annoying to discover 'oh, he researched warp technology!' and have your entire rear area 'open up' to an attack that you didn't see coming. (Think two 'constellations' attached by a warp point at one end, but with many star systems close to each other but dis-connected).



If you do de-emphasize strings, you need -- need! -- to add another mechanic to help balance the game. Master of Orion II did it with range-limits, creating borders that exist because your ships just can't go much deeper, and then gradually replacing them with 'friendly jump' (jump gate /star gate) and 'enemy jump' (warp inhibitor) systems combined with scanning systems.



Otherwise, the game becomes 'wack a mole' as you jump around hunting after the enemy fleets in your space, with little or no way to catch and stop them.

I may be risking my forum image here, but I want to be really blunt about something. I hated Homeworld. Hated it. All my friends said, 'this is exactly the kind of game you play!' I said it didn't look like my thing. They said, 'Come on, it's totally in your genre!' I said I'd try it. That was a waste of money. A "Homeworld-style combat system" would be a death knell for any game for me.



Other people can like what they like and play what they want, but I personally am a 4X player who does not and has never hankered for a Homeworld-style combat system.



Turn-based games just may not be your thing, in turn, and there's nothing wrong with that if it's the case.

difficultlevel wrote:


I have to say the game is polished, while memory leaks are apparent, it's playable.



However, I have to wonder, should the player spend time waiting for the turn to end? i.e. after 100+ turns the wait can be some 10-15 seconds. additionally, whatever saving the game does hogs my quad core and hybrid HDD to the point that the music stalls.

The long wait is due to several memory leaks and other bugs (seeming to include excessive AI calculations) adding up over time. That should get a lot better as the debugging progresses. Let's see what the new release this week does in that regard.