Hey there, (sorry in advance for the long read)



I figured I would post on what I found, I've been a gamer for years. Played MOO, BotF, Civs, HoM&M and tons of other games.. Lords of the Realm even (we're going a ways back here) and I really loved the idea of this game. I would consider myself the average user for this particular genre of game, I like these types of games enough to buy them and play them casually, but I'm not a hardcore completionist..



I wasn't disappointed in any way, however some things seemed rough around the edges for me in particular. I'm sure some things are being addressed, I haven't had time to read all the forum posts yet! Hooking the user on the first game is important so I figured I would give a list of things that aren't necessarily "cons" per-say but I felt could be improved upon before I forget while starting more multi-hour(day?) games!





Possible changes:



-Fleets in the galaxy screen - Possibly have a more detailed icon for each fleet represented by the largest ship in the particular fleet. Possible star(or officer badge unique to each race?) or some other identifier added for fleets with a general. The 'outline' definitely easily points out a fleet is there but the little aesthetics would really add to that portion. Also, for ships guarding a system, possibly a passive animation of said ship circling the system (not sure how that would be on system resources in large galaxies, but all these options could be enabled/disabled) and for invading some fight sort of animation at the beginning of a new round like mass drivers from Babylon 5.



- Better AI build system: I'm not sure how intuitive the AI was supposed to be, however it builds half the wrong things. When I attempted to raise happiness, unless the building had +happiness on it the AI just built whatever it wanted and my poor people starved. That was fixed later by me taking manual control; however I don't trust the AI anymore.. it broke my heart and let my people die!



- Ship Design: I'm assuming that the MODs section will eventually have someone design or does have the ability to create your own ship graphics or piece together ships, and with that assumption I'll move to the second part.



- Ship Types: They are displayed in the 'custom build' your ship option, however certain ones are not present until you discover them through technology; this was a real pain because I wasn't quite sure exactly where I was supposed to look for this. Had I spent more time reading than playing I would've found it, however I think a grayed out version of each ship and a link or pop-up that says you require "X Technology" would be helpful. It would've saved me a lot of time and effort trading tech with other alliances. (again alternatively I could've spent more time reading, but it would've streamlined things in that part of the game)



- More ship types in the game and possible unique reasons to have the ships.



- Super Weapons (this has been mentioned, I can't stress enough how much you could do with this in a fleet battle situation outmatched and out gunned)



- Space Stations in battles: There should be some real threatening reason to not attack a system.. I was able to just trapeze my way through enemy space without a care in the world taking over every system one by one without much real resistance as soon as the fleets were dead. I think if you put a couple different types of space stations (all the same graphic initially would be fine, just larger vs smaller in the battle screen) that would assist in the defense with a fleet that would make taking systems hard enough that you would have to be willing to sacrifice multiple fleets. Also, it would be awesome to have a shield system for the space stations (they require too much power for a mobile ship?) that gave an animation similar to Nexus: The Jupiter Incident when a ship is hit.



- A targeting system for the fights; while they are graphically well presented.. the fact I can't say "BLOW UP THE BIG ONE" is unfortunate. This could be a possible card ability even? Select x amount of ships to fire at, or select a certain type of weaponry to aim at a certain target(missles, lasers, Kinetic etc)? I just don't feel as involved as I want to be, and involvement is what (me at least) keeps a player involved/entertained.



- Planets; while they look great thus far could use a bit of evolving to give it that little extra "umph" for the user. I think that you could use multiple stages of planetary evolution based on population there which would make a player feel (and see) that they're accomplishing something. Add little cities (buildings, nothing requiring too much detail) for max population on smaller worlds, and possibly as you reach a high industrial level on larger worlds an animation of a city-world state (like the capital city in Star-Wars). The surface and for larger seeming improvements (space elevator?) you could add a small animation for that so when zooming in on a planet it seems more meaningful that you completed a building. I really like the artifacts and how they stand out, which is likely where this thought originated from.



- I found the ship movement a little weird at times as clicking didn't necessarily seem to always work right away when clicking, I didn't notice the left shift or anything like that until later, nor was there any indication there was a reason for it. So I was a bit confused, but that worked itself out. Possibly a different colour (maybe a brighter green for movement possible) that stands out more for ship movement might be nice, but not a requirement. (I could also be blind).. and maybe throw in a tail (warp/thruster?) animation on the ship when it moves.



- Fleet Commanders - I found it convenient that you could just swap commanders to different fleets using the "change" button, but you could do that by just removing/adding ships until you got the right combination. There's no real reason to 'change' fleets which sort of devalues the whole change system other than immediately porting him to a different part of the star system, I think that there should be something that locks him and that fleet together for the duration, and if you make changes to the fleet he cannot be removed from that fleet again for x amount of turns. Right now you can just bring 5 fleets in and change him back and forth until the end of time to keep the strongest ones together. I'm sure others may disagree and this is not really a big deal, but I figured I would put it on here though.





Top 3 changes I would like to see:



1) Space Stations for Defense that will add to a fleets value when defending an add an extra "scenic" battle scene complete with space station model and possibly unique weapons for the station? A shield of Star Trek type look would be a neat addition.. though I've only ever seen one company ever pull off something like that in a game so far and that was Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.

2) Ability to target ships or parts of ships (though parts may make combat longer, it could remove their ability to retreat/run by hitting engines)

3) Super weapons with specific super weapon counter-cards(high tech required) that cause possible reverse damage which would make strategy with them even more important.



Sorry for the long winded speech gents/ladies(I heard they existed on the internet recently, but I still think it's propaganda), I just like this game and if anything here helps it do better I'll be happy.



-Phix

Phix wrote:
Sorry for the long winded speech gents/ladies(I heard they existed on the internet recently, but I still think it's propaganda)

-Phix

Hi Phix, and welcome!

Yes, you may be right, it's some kind of propaganda. A poll was made on that very question six months ago:

/#/games2gether/forum/1-off-topic/thread/219-off-topic-are-you-a-space-boy-or-a-space-girl

5% only. Sad.