So i sunk about four hours into the game tonight and I have had some fun. By the end I was totally hooked into the "one more turn" mentality.

I chose the Alkari empire and ended up in a corner of a medium galaxy. I quickly expanded to where I felt was a good choke point system where I met the Sakkra and basically settled into a two hour build up of colonies and ships. I did fight some pirates and a space dragon which was pretty cool but I will be honest this stage of the game was a little bit boring at times, but not all the time. Perhaps things were just going well because of my choke point and luck of the draw.

So I built three cruisers and attacked the Sakkra with 3 troop transports. I destroyed their fleet with no losses then took a planet, but here I was a little surprised because I used up all my troop transports in one attack. it would have been nice if I only used one or two, or had the option to deploy less than maximum force. Right now I am building up two military outposts so I can push forward and conquer some more of their turf. Will see how that goes tomorrow.

The game itself is very responsive, but it would be nice if there were a few more options for tactical combat such as formation and engagement range at the least. Also the user interface is clean but I wish I could tell the max population of my planets while in the colony manage.

Ship design looks a little bugged as the damage per second of weapons is not adjusted based on weapon mods. Also missiles might be a little OP right now, still thinking on that one though because I do not have a lot of experience in the game yet.

So far the difficulty seems a bit easy on normal, but I am a MOO veteran with more than 20,000 hours under my belt playing this game type so my difficulty expectation bar might be a bit different than most!

The good news is this does feel like Master of Orion to me, and I was having fun! I might prefer to spend my time in World of Warshis when hanging with friends but I will definitely enjoy many, many games of this, thanks for the hard work WG!

The difficulty does seem a little bit on the light side for us veterans of MoO, I'm the tech and firepower leader of my current game as the mrrshans. the only race doing better than me is the humans and only because of diplomacy.

I also felt the MoO vibe very strongly.. especially all those music tracks that are straight out of the first game :D

I overthrew the Sakkra today and was locked in by red points. I like the red jump points but I think unlocking them should be a little more intuitive than it is. but I managed and attacked the nearby Mersian empire.

Tech advancement feels a little faster than it should be, fleet movement feels a tad slower than it should be.

I feel a little bit bogged down by all the building ques mid game. I think this is reminiscent of Master of Orion 2 for better or worse.

I think that once you move ships to a enemy colony it should give you the choice to attack and invade right there, you should also be able to see from orbit their marines vs yours inn number. also ground combat should be more visual, at least as visual as master of orion 2's.

I am enjoying the game, hoping a harder difficulty level will come out after the first playthrough.

I had two crashes last night after switching between Master of Orion and World of Warships, both were running simultaneously for a little bit and it might have pushed my system. I have 12 GB of memory so thought I would be okay but figured I would mention it.

Usually I run photoshop and Warships at the same time and edit skins on ships when or er if I sink in Warships. Tried alternating to MOO after I sink and that did not work out so well.

Seems to be when I sellect a specific constructor in the game I get a crash, other than that it seems to be working fine

dang! thanks for the prompt response. glad to see you guys are working on it. I chalk most of it up to the fact that the interface already feels very intuitive to me as a veteran of moo 1 and 2. I feel like an overlord already.. but yeah. I can probably say for the sake of most of the old guard.. I wouldn't mind having at least one difficulty setting that is absolutely brutal to humble me from time to time :D seriously though.. don't lose heart from all the negativity surrounding tactical combat thus far.. I think you guys are on a pretty solid track right now :D

Great post, JonPWills,

I agree with a lot of what you've laid out, in particular.

"So I built three cruisers and attacked the Sakkra with 3 troop transports. I destroyed their fleet with no losses then took a planet, but here I was a little surprised because I used up all my troop transports in one attack. it would have been nice if I only used one or two, or had the option to deploy less than maximum force."

Oh my, yes. I have accidentally consumed a huge number of marines on planets that only had four defenders before, which was very expensive and time consuming. Hugely frustrating to accidentally land all of your marines and therefore lose them. >.<

"Ship design looks a little bugged as the damage per second of weapons is not adjusted based on weapon mods."

I noticed this as well -- I kept expecting damage per second of weapons to change when toggling modifications.

Thanks!