First Impressions

[echo2361]

Just reporting that the install went well with no problems. I was able to start up the game and start a new game without any complaints from my security software. Once I have a decent amount of time to sit down and play the game I'll upload the save to the test server, but for now everything is looking great!

[echo2361]

Here are my first impressions of the game. Overall, I am very impressed with the game and I am enjoying myself quite a bit. I tend to keep a running list of things that stand out to me as I play which I then post as my usual form of feedback. These are just the things, both positive and negative, that jumped out at me in my first hour with the game. I will apologize in advance if some of my questions are obviously answered somewhere in the game. Since we're all just learning the game I'm sure we're bound to make silly mistakes so I figured I'd get my apologies out nice and early

- No zooming with mouse wheel or otherwise that I can find. Not the biggest deal with the current size of the galaxy, but if there are intentions to offer bigger galaxies a zoom feature would be nice. I don’t need to be able to zoom in to a system view or anything, I just like to be able to zoom out to take in the entire size of a galaxy map sometimes.

- I’ll briefly mention that three of the things Arioch stated in the game play tips post as needing an overhaul (end turn button, fleet movement, and tactical combat move and attack combats) are all very apparent to me. I’m glad to see they are obvious to everyone else already so that is the last I’ll mention of them until you guys have had a chance to make some improvements.

- Visually, the game is VERY impressive to me. The planets, various races, and ships all look great.

- I’m very excited to see pirates and marauders presenting early game threats to exploration. Will we be seeing more things like this going forward? I’m thinking space monsters, ancient derelict warships to be explored, anomalies in space time, etc.

- It wasn’t immediately obvious to me why I couldn’t move my scout to a certain system fairly far away from my home world. Only after remembering that there are range limits and looking closer to notice the grey color of the movement line did I realize the planet was outside my range. A simple solution would be to turn the line bright red. A more complex solution might be to faintly show the current range limit as a circle emanating out from your colonized worlds so I can easily see what is and is not within my travel range.

- An ETA on the amount of turns it will take to research a technology on the main galaxy screen would be nice. The current setup works fine, but requires a little math to figure out how many turns at +X amount of research per turn it will take.

- I was attacked by pirates at a system containing my scout cruiser. Knowing I had no weapons, instead of clicking defend, I just tried to tell me ship to move to a different system. When I clicked the end turn button my scout cruiser simply disappeared, presumably destroyed by the pirate. It would be nice if a warning were given about trying to run from battles just resulting in an auto-resolve situation. Or you could simply not allow the player to issue move commands on the galaxy screen to a fleet about to be engaged in combat.

- It appears as though I can change my mind whenever I want in production and still keep the same amount of relative progress. If I have 79 production being put towards a factory, when I switch to building a cruiser that 79 production carries over. I don’t know how I feel about this system. I feel like it is too easy to be very responsive to my ever shifting needs. I think I prefer systems where I am forced to think ahead before picking a production project. I would definitely like to be able to save my production progress on something if I want to switch to something else, but being able to just carry my production over to anything I want makes the game seem a little too easy to me.

- On a related note to the one above, will we be able to queue up production at some point? I could be missing something obvious, but from what I can tell I don’t see a way to do that.

- I like the way you’ve setup trade routes to be fairly hands off. However, will we have ways to raid enemy trade routes and/or influence pirates to do so?

- I came across a independent colony (I guess?) of my own race. The only option I saw was to bombard them. Will we have diplomatic ways to integrate independent colonies at some point? Seemed kind of counter intuitive that I had to kill two million of my own kind to settle a world. I didn’t have a colony ship around to test my theory, but could I have just settled the world and absorbed that existing population since I would presume they would be friendly to me?

That is all for now. I'll probably have time to do more testing in a couple of days. Until then, keep up the good work!

[Arioch]

Thanks for the feedback!

- No zooming with mouse wheel or otherwise that I can find. Not the biggest deal with the current size of the galaxy, but if there are intentions to offer bigger galaxies a zoom feature would be nice. I don’t need to be able to zoom in to a system view or anything, I just like to be able to zoom out to take in the entire size of a galaxy map sometimes.

There isn't currently a zoom feature on the strategic map. We've talked about possible zoom in and zoom out modes, but I agree with you that for bigger maps, a zoom out mode will be very desirable.

- I’m very excited to see pirates and marauders presenting early game threats to exploration. Will we be seeing more things like this going forward? I’m thinking space monsters, ancient derelict warships to be explored, anomalies in space time, etc.

Yes, we plan to have more of this, and more varied.

- It wasn’t immediately obvious to me why I couldn’t move my scout to a certain system fairly far away from my home world. Only after remembering that there are range limits and looking closer to notice the grey color of the movement line did I realize the planet was outside my range. A simple solution would be to turn the line bright red. A more complex solution might be to faintly show the current range limit as a circle emanating out from your colonized worlds so I can easily see what is and is not within my travel range.

I think a "Beyond Range" hint text would do the trick.

- I was attacked by pirates at a system containing my scout cruiser. Knowing I had no weapons, instead of clicking defend, I just tried to tell me ship to move to a different system. When I clicked the end turn button my scout cruiser simply disappeared, presumably destroyed by the pirate. It would be nice if a warning were given about trying to run from battles just resulting in an auto-resolve situation. Or you could simply not allow the player to issue move commands on the galaxy screen to a fleet about to be engaged in combat.

Right now there's no mechanism to prevent the player from clicking Next Turn, and any unresolved activities will be auto-resolved. In the future there will be a way to interrupt this action with warnings. For now, when the game does something unexpected, you can use the undo feature.

- It appears as though I can change my mind whenever I want in production and still keep the same amount of relative progress. If I have 79 production being put towards a factory, when I switch to building a cruiser that 79 production carries over. I don’t know how I feel about this system. I feel like it is too easy to be very responsive to my ever shifting needs. I think I prefer systems where I am forced to think ahead before picking a production project. I would definitely like to be able to save my production progress on something if I want to switch to something else, but being able to just carry my production over to anything I want makes the game seem a little too easy to me.

I agree with you on this point.

- On a related note to the one above, will we be able to queue up production at some point? I could be missing something obvious, but from what I can tell I don’t see a way to do that.

There isn't currently a queue, but I believe this is an important feature. We just need to figure out how to work it into the UI; it's on my list of UI items to concept.

- I like the way you’ve setup trade routes to be fairly hands off. However, will we have ways to raid enemy trade routes and/or influence pirates to do so?

We have ambitious plans for trade, but it's still in the design phase.

- I came across a independent colony (I guess?) of my own race. The only option I saw was to bombard them. Will we have diplomatic ways to integrate independent colonies at some point? Seemed kind of counter intuitive that I had to kill two million of my own kind to settle a world. I didn’t have a colony ship around to test my theory, but could I have just settled the world and absorbed that existing population since I would presume they would be friendly to me?

In the current build you're always at war with everyone. If you have a troop transport, you can invade and capture a planet instead of bombarding it. In the future, there will be more options for how to deal with independent colonies.

[Devildogff]

Hi again, Echo! Good to see you here!

[echo2361]

Hey DD! Looks like we've found ourselves another 4x game with great potential in early development

[mharmless]

Second that, I see a lot of potential here.

[echo2361]

After playing around some more I have some questions regarding trade routes and combat specifically. I know the UI's for both systems are a work in progress, but I just want to know how things work currently to help me better play the game "as is."

Trading: I could use a better explanation of how trade routes work. I know they will be getting an overhaul, but right now I’m not sure what all the numbers mean.

- First off, when I select a transport to send it off to start trading it can say 0 or even negative numbers, which always turns out to be wrong.
- Additionally, what does X/X number mean in the galaxy screen trade route area of the top bar. I’m assuming it means number of traders/number of total possible trade routes?
- What determines the max number of trade routes. Empire wide population? Number of colonies?
- Why does it seem like sending one freighter can fill up multiple trade routes? It seems like one freighter produces eight “traders” which are distributed to fill up potential trade routes?

Combat: I know the UI is due for an overhaul, but I just need some basic info to fully understand what is being displayed with the current setup.

- What do the red, yellow, grey, and green square dots mean on the image of my ship in the lower left panel on the combat screen? I’m taking guesses here, but maybe grey is armor, green is hull health, yellow is important systems and red is critical systems?
- Also, does selecting where we fire on enemy ships play any role in determining which enemy systems are damaged? It seems like we have a high level of precision when it comes to selecting where on an enemy ships are weapons are aiming but I don’t know if that translates into any real impact on combat.
- Rotating is very finicky to me. I think I’m supposed to use the right mouse button to click on the ship once I’ve got its silhouette facing in the direction I want it to rotate, but more often than not nothing seems to happen when I do this. On occasion I get lucky and rotate my ship the way I want it to face, but quite often it either rotates in a different direction or does not rotate at all.

[sven]

Ok, these are all excellent questions. Let me try to answer them quickly...

- First off, when I select a transport to send it off to start trading it can say 0 or even negative numbers, which always turns out to be wrong.
- Additionally, what does X/X number mean in the galaxy screen trade route area of the top bar. I’m assuming it means number of traders/number of total possible trade routes?

The idea, basically, is that your empire has a capacity for trade, which is measured in "coins per turn".

Each transport has a cargo space value (currently set to 8 for most of the race's transports). The number of coins you'll actually make from trade is the smaller of either the total cargo space of all the ships in the trade pool, or your trade capacity. So, the display you're seeing is:

<total cargo space> /<trade capacity>

The whole system is made more complex because transports require 3 turns to move from the strategic map to the trade pool. Thus, there are really 2 potentially important cargo space numbers -- the number associated with the the ships that are in the trade pool right now, and the number associated with the ships that will eventually be in the pool, once everyone who's headed there arrives. Thus, you'll often see something like

<total cargo space> (+ cargo space you'll have when everyone arrive) / <trade capacity>

[sven]

- What determines the max number of trade routes. Empire wide population? Number of colonies?

Right now -- it's just equal to your total population, with the caveat that you need to have at least 2 colonies before you can generate any income from trade.

[Arioch]

Also, does selecting where we fire on enemy ships play any role in determining which enemy systems are damaged?

No.

Rotating is very finicky to me. I think I’m supposed to use the right mouse button to click on the ship once I’ve got its silhouette facing in the direction I want it to rotate, but more often than not nothing seems to happen when I do this. On occasion I get lucky and rotate my ship the way I want it to face, but quite often it either rotates in a different direction or does not rotate at all.

Movement currently requires a right-click to execute. However, there is not a great difference visually between the shadowed destination graphic between "this will work" and "this will not work". The "this will work" is only slightly brighter. Currently most ships can't rotate more than about 90 degrees in a single move, so if you're trying to flip a 180 it won't work.

The whole tactical UI is due for a revision pass, but this is probably a week or more away. We're still trying to finish the changes to the notification system in the strategic UI.

[sven]

- First off, when I select a transport to send it off to start trading it can say 0 or even negative numbers, which always turns out to be wrong.

Yeah, this is a place where the UI needs to get better. The problem is, at the start of the game, you only have 1 planet. Thus, 0 trade capacity. So, the number is actually right, in a technical sense. If you do nothing at the start of the game but send your transport to the pool, then wait for 3 turns, it will generate 0 income.

But, you also have 1 colony ship, which is almost certain to found a colony by the time your tradeship arrives in the pool. And that will boost your trade capacity.

The simple fix is just to get rid of the cleverness in the "Send to Tradepool" dialog that tries to guess how much your transport may be capable of earning. In the early game, at least, it's guesses are almost always going to be wrong.

(A negative earning value is a bug, but, as I think I should really change the way this dialog works anyhow, it's a bug that should soon disappear.)

[sven]

- What do the red, yellow, grey, and green square dots mean on the image of my ship in the lower left panel on the combat screen? I’m taking guesses here, but maybe grey is armor, green is hull health, yellow is important systems and red is critical systems?

Red is "hull", yellow is "systems" grey is "armor" and green is "crew".

The basic damage rules are that armor tends to get destroyed before hull -- and shields (if applicable) get destroyed before armor. If your hull is reduced to less than 20% of it's base value, your ship is destroyed.

Whenever you take hull damage, there's a chance that some of your systems will be damaged as well. The details here get complex, but, basically, as your ship starts to fall apart, there's an increasingly good chance that various things will stop working. The yellow bar shows how healthy your systems are overall -- but, its not really that informative, because it doesn't tell you which systems are broken or damaged. To see what's working and what's not, you need to open up the expanded ship status pane, and look at the numbers around each individual weapon / component.

(Clicking on each system, and clicking on the Hull/Armor/Crew display numbers, should also give you some in-game descriptions of what everything means.)

[echo2361]

Thanks for all the helpful information about trade and combat! Your answers will definitely help me out in playing the current build to the best of my abilities. I appreciate the quick responses as well, something I value highly when it comes to developer interactions on forums

[sven]

Thanks for all the helpful information about trade and combat! Your answers will definitely help me out in playing the current build to the best of my abilities. I appreciate the quick responses as well, something I value highly when it comes to developer interactions on forums

Well, it's a lot easier when there are only a handful of beta testers Even so, one can only be in so many places at once. For example, while I've been trying to sort out the forum bugs with Arioch, I've been badly neglecting all of mharmless's very carefully prepared bug reports. Need to get back to that. The forum glitches will keep a bit, I think.

[mharmless]

Speaking of which, I need to go add to that pile.