Posted June 06, 2017
I started the campaign but quickly realized I really just wanted to rush through to the 4X piece, so I started free-roam as "Humble Beginnings", and had a blast.
Researching tech, upgrading resources, building a fleet, defending, expanding: great stuff. :) I played until I had a 60K power fleet and had conquered a planet, and at that point, I figured I was into repetition.
Overall, well done. I hope, however, you all -aren't- done. :) The implementation of 4X elements felt like a good start, with plenty more that could come.
Here are some bugs/annoyances/suggestions:
- When doing a time delivery, your officer repeats herself when admonishing you that while you have time, you should be heading to the waypoint (a clear bug);
- The potential thief waylaying you during a normal delivery was annoying. How a small ship can magically grab something out of my dreadnought I'll never know. :) Seems unrealistic, too. What if he grabbed an important part of my engines or something? Could be excellent battle tech.
- Civilian fleets really need their own management page. By the end of my 4X free-roam, I was spending most of my time assigning my 16 fleets to tasks, and only briefly entering the 3D world to do battles. (Overall, I think I spent close to half my time on the starmap.) I'd really like to see an available mission list, sortable by varying properties. I'd also like to be able to assign fleets to certain task types, so that, say, they'll charge off on the easiest material salvaging mission available.
- I also wish I could offer resources for exchange to the AI, like they do to me.
- The game really wanted to play in windowed mode, and it would often switch to windowed mode in the middle of gameplay, with no apparent trigger. Also, a full screen, at the correct resolution for my monitor, I saw lot of flickering at the top starmap bar that went away when it jumped to windowed.
- I couldn't find any way to sell looted weapons.
- I researched the laser weapon to max and bought it for my dreadnought (hugely expensive), only to find a better laser at another station. That was very disappointing. From a game balance perspective, given the cost of the researchable laser, it should be the best thing available for sale.
- The apparent usefulness of perks varies widely. I was hoping for more 4X-related perks, but they were scarce and fairly weak. The many perks for personal mining/salvaging/gas extraction also seemed useless. (The best first perk to get is probably freelancer, by far.) The research speed perk appears useless, too, since speed wasn't the bottleneck on research: resources were. If the research perk lowered cost, however, it would be a must have.
- Some of the research costs seemed odd (mainly the enormous gas requirements for things that weren't that useful).
- Material resource nodes seemed odd, too. Sure, I can see salvaging materials from junk fields, but where did that junk come from? Planets, most likely. Planets should probably be the primary material resources. It might also make sense to be able to convert ore and gas into materials (since materials seem to be refined products, as opposed to the raw materials of ore and gas).
- Planets should be vastly upgradeable. :) Lots of opportunity to expand 4X elements there.
- I don't like level scaling, and I appreciated that enemy stations didn't level scale. Missions do scale (more on missions later), but what really bugged me was border guards. Small ships as a border screen make sense. At the end of the game, though, I'd be running into supercapital ships. These just spawned out of thin space, at every crossing, and that was immersion-breaking (especially since the faction involved had to spend a lot of time building fleets of supercapitals to send at me, so where are all these supercapitals at the border coming from?).
- While I appreciated not having to garrison stations, the fact that they also could indefinitely spawn supercapitals seemed odd. I almost feel like stations should only have small ships (nothing bigger than a frigate), but should have tougher fixed "supercapital" defenses to bring up their fleet power. Those make sense to me, given the world. Supercapitals are about projecting power, not guarding every border or station, whereas fixed points don't need the expense and overhead of mobile defenses, and can concentrate resources on making tougher fixed defenses.
- The AI once retreated from a station fight that had gone on until only a couple supercapitals were left on each side, and then it re-engaged for some reason. Big mistake, because it ran into the full fleet power of the station, instantly respawned. :P I feel like station defenses should take time to rebuild (maybe even resources).
- I was able to retreat station defenses. I couldn't actually control them on the map, however. Seemed like a bug.
- All the cool-sounding cargo that would drop in space could be summed up as one item type: "lootable cargo", and it wouldn't have changed gameplay. Would be cool if trade goods actually meant something, maybe as resources your planets need to upgrade, or gain population, or something.
- Although I carried looted contraband on numerous occasions, no one ever stopped me for it. I didn't mind, since it seemed irrelevant, anyhow.
- I never did find out what artifact vaults do. Would be nice if they did something in 4X mode (along with jails).
Missions:
- Missions felt very odd in 4X mode. For one thing, my faction seems to have an indefinite supply of credits to pay me to do missions, while as faction manager, I don't have access to those credits. For another, the missions spawn things out of nothing and back into nothing (like station defenses for stations that mean nothing in the 4X world).
- Real missions would involve things like defending our actual resources and stations, and I did plenty of that for free. :) I feel like missions are a great opportunity to increase the 4X immersion. For instance, missions seem to represent a faction offering credits to do things for which they don't have the naval capacity. Thus, as faction manager/commander, I should be able to offer missions to mercenaries, to defend a station I can't reach in time, for instance. (And the AI should be able to do the same if I'm attacking them.)
- I would like to see all missions based solely on real-world activities and needs, not simply spawned at the moment. That would make missions harder to find, but more satisfying (you know you changed something in the world). I also don't think I should be able to do missions for my faction; I should be the one handing them out.
- This also holds true for civilian fleet missions, especially survey missions. Would be cool if you could actually survey new locations for resource extraction, for instance.
- It also felt odd to be taking my faction's fleet to do missions for other factions. :) I almost think that would be a bigger diplomatic deal than simply a squad of mercs taking on a job.
Factions:
- Factions have a lot of cool backstory, but in 4X mode, they seemed bland and uniform. If it were possible to give factions unique gameplay character, that would I think be a big boost in immersion/story. The trade deal mechanic is a good start (although I rarely found any interesting deals).
- In the backstory, it seemed like various factions had different goals, but I never saw any sign of that at work on the map, or in anyone's dealings with me. Maybe if factions were actively pursuing unique goals, and tried occasionally to work the player into those plans, it would help.
Fleet management:
- I found it impossible to do anything strategic during a fleet-on-fleet action. I gave up and just went with being there with the mostest. :) Would be cool if fleet formation mattered, somehow, as well as coordination of fire.
- I never did see what was so great about carriers, other than hull strength.
- Actual engagement ranges seem very short compared to the speed of the ships, which almost instantly results in a mess of mingled ships. I wonder if that could be tweaked somehow. (I'm contrasting this with Honor Harrington-style fleet engagements, so maybe I'm biased. :P )
- Controlling a ship in combat was hard, and sometimes I wished I could just tell the AI to fly it while I selected targets.
- In the end, since I had selected Vanguard at the start (which wound up being a good choice), I would usually just slam my dreadnought into the middle of the enemy, to grab their attention while my fleet picked them apart. That minimized losses.
Research:
- I'd like to see refinement/miniaturization tech, shades of Masters of Orion, to allow a faction to spend a lot of resources delving deeply into one thing to be the best at it. (This could also help make factions more unique.)
- I suppose I'd like more dynamic weapon or ship design, as well. :) Do I want fewer, more powerful turrets on my dreadnoughts, or many weaker ones? Do I want my lasers to sacrifice damage for range, or range for damage, or alpha damage for sustained fire, or vice versa?
- And I want to be able to research improvements to all those components as well. :P
Anyway, you all have something really cool here. Hoping to see more. :)
Researching tech, upgrading resources, building a fleet, defending, expanding: great stuff. :) I played until I had a 60K power fleet and had conquered a planet, and at that point, I figured I was into repetition.
Overall, well done. I hope, however, you all -aren't- done. :) The implementation of 4X elements felt like a good start, with plenty more that could come.
Here are some bugs/annoyances/suggestions:
- When doing a time delivery, your officer repeats herself when admonishing you that while you have time, you should be heading to the waypoint (a clear bug);
- The potential thief waylaying you during a normal delivery was annoying. How a small ship can magically grab something out of my dreadnought I'll never know. :) Seems unrealistic, too. What if he grabbed an important part of my engines or something? Could be excellent battle tech.
- Civilian fleets really need their own management page. By the end of my 4X free-roam, I was spending most of my time assigning my 16 fleets to tasks, and only briefly entering the 3D world to do battles. (Overall, I think I spent close to half my time on the starmap.) I'd really like to see an available mission list, sortable by varying properties. I'd also like to be able to assign fleets to certain task types, so that, say, they'll charge off on the easiest material salvaging mission available.
- I also wish I could offer resources for exchange to the AI, like they do to me.
- The game really wanted to play in windowed mode, and it would often switch to windowed mode in the middle of gameplay, with no apparent trigger. Also, a full screen, at the correct resolution for my monitor, I saw lot of flickering at the top starmap bar that went away when it jumped to windowed.
- I couldn't find any way to sell looted weapons.
- I researched the laser weapon to max and bought it for my dreadnought (hugely expensive), only to find a better laser at another station. That was very disappointing. From a game balance perspective, given the cost of the researchable laser, it should be the best thing available for sale.
- The apparent usefulness of perks varies widely. I was hoping for more 4X-related perks, but they were scarce and fairly weak. The many perks for personal mining/salvaging/gas extraction also seemed useless. (The best first perk to get is probably freelancer, by far.) The research speed perk appears useless, too, since speed wasn't the bottleneck on research: resources were. If the research perk lowered cost, however, it would be a must have.
- Some of the research costs seemed odd (mainly the enormous gas requirements for things that weren't that useful).
- Material resource nodes seemed odd, too. Sure, I can see salvaging materials from junk fields, but where did that junk come from? Planets, most likely. Planets should probably be the primary material resources. It might also make sense to be able to convert ore and gas into materials (since materials seem to be refined products, as opposed to the raw materials of ore and gas).
- Planets should be vastly upgradeable. :) Lots of opportunity to expand 4X elements there.
- I don't like level scaling, and I appreciated that enemy stations didn't level scale. Missions do scale (more on missions later), but what really bugged me was border guards. Small ships as a border screen make sense. At the end of the game, though, I'd be running into supercapital ships. These just spawned out of thin space, at every crossing, and that was immersion-breaking (especially since the faction involved had to spend a lot of time building fleets of supercapitals to send at me, so where are all these supercapitals at the border coming from?).
- While I appreciated not having to garrison stations, the fact that they also could indefinitely spawn supercapitals seemed odd. I almost feel like stations should only have small ships (nothing bigger than a frigate), but should have tougher fixed "supercapital" defenses to bring up their fleet power. Those make sense to me, given the world. Supercapitals are about projecting power, not guarding every border or station, whereas fixed points don't need the expense and overhead of mobile defenses, and can concentrate resources on making tougher fixed defenses.
- The AI once retreated from a station fight that had gone on until only a couple supercapitals were left on each side, and then it re-engaged for some reason. Big mistake, because it ran into the full fleet power of the station, instantly respawned. :P I feel like station defenses should take time to rebuild (maybe even resources).
- I was able to retreat station defenses. I couldn't actually control them on the map, however. Seemed like a bug.
- All the cool-sounding cargo that would drop in space could be summed up as one item type: "lootable cargo", and it wouldn't have changed gameplay. Would be cool if trade goods actually meant something, maybe as resources your planets need to upgrade, or gain population, or something.
- Although I carried looted contraband on numerous occasions, no one ever stopped me for it. I didn't mind, since it seemed irrelevant, anyhow.
- I never did find out what artifact vaults do. Would be nice if they did something in 4X mode (along with jails).
Missions:
- Missions felt very odd in 4X mode. For one thing, my faction seems to have an indefinite supply of credits to pay me to do missions, while as faction manager, I don't have access to those credits. For another, the missions spawn things out of nothing and back into nothing (like station defenses for stations that mean nothing in the 4X world).
- Real missions would involve things like defending our actual resources and stations, and I did plenty of that for free. :) I feel like missions are a great opportunity to increase the 4X immersion. For instance, missions seem to represent a faction offering credits to do things for which they don't have the naval capacity. Thus, as faction manager/commander, I should be able to offer missions to mercenaries, to defend a station I can't reach in time, for instance. (And the AI should be able to do the same if I'm attacking them.)
- I would like to see all missions based solely on real-world activities and needs, not simply spawned at the moment. That would make missions harder to find, but more satisfying (you know you changed something in the world). I also don't think I should be able to do missions for my faction; I should be the one handing them out.
- This also holds true for civilian fleet missions, especially survey missions. Would be cool if you could actually survey new locations for resource extraction, for instance.
- It also felt odd to be taking my faction's fleet to do missions for other factions. :) I almost think that would be a bigger diplomatic deal than simply a squad of mercs taking on a job.
Factions:
- Factions have a lot of cool backstory, but in 4X mode, they seemed bland and uniform. If it were possible to give factions unique gameplay character, that would I think be a big boost in immersion/story. The trade deal mechanic is a good start (although I rarely found any interesting deals).
- In the backstory, it seemed like various factions had different goals, but I never saw any sign of that at work on the map, or in anyone's dealings with me. Maybe if factions were actively pursuing unique goals, and tried occasionally to work the player into those plans, it would help.
Fleet management:
- I found it impossible to do anything strategic during a fleet-on-fleet action. I gave up and just went with being there with the mostest. :) Would be cool if fleet formation mattered, somehow, as well as coordination of fire.
- I never did see what was so great about carriers, other than hull strength.
- Actual engagement ranges seem very short compared to the speed of the ships, which almost instantly results in a mess of mingled ships. I wonder if that could be tweaked somehow. (I'm contrasting this with Honor Harrington-style fleet engagements, so maybe I'm biased. :P )
- Controlling a ship in combat was hard, and sometimes I wished I could just tell the AI to fly it while I selected targets.
- In the end, since I had selected Vanguard at the start (which wound up being a good choice), I would usually just slam my dreadnought into the middle of the enemy, to grab their attention while my fleet picked them apart. That minimized losses.
Research:
- I'd like to see refinement/miniaturization tech, shades of Masters of Orion, to allow a faction to spend a lot of resources delving deeply into one thing to be the best at it. (This could also help make factions more unique.)
- I suppose I'd like more dynamic weapon or ship design, as well. :) Do I want fewer, more powerful turrets on my dreadnoughts, or many weaker ones? Do I want my lasers to sacrifice damage for range, or range for damage, or alpha damage for sustained fire, or vice versa?
- And I want to be able to research improvements to all those components as well. :P
Anyway, you all have something really cool here. Hoping to see more. :)
Post edited June 06, 2017 by Roccandil
