I gave SiS a whirl tonight after a few months, to see how ground combat works now among other things. I haven't played since shortly after resources became a thing, so there was a bit of a learning curve involved:

• Using the 64-bit .exe gave me zero issues whatsoever, where with the 32-bit I'd have memory problems after a period of time. Definitely a huge improvement!
  
  
• My first game as the humans went quite badly. While I started right beside Gaia, I made a dumb choice by letting my second colony get wiped out by the Marauders. While I did manage to get back on track, I later got declared on by two AIs at once. I was able to defeat the first one's fleet, however the second one had far better tech than I did and wiped me out. Since I was bottlenecking extremely hard on Metal, there was no way I could rebuild to fight back after being so decisively beaten. Without diplomacy, this issue stands out a lot more than it would if it were possible to sue for peace in such a situation.
  
  
• My start as the Humans, aside from getting Gaia, was pretty bad as I was surrounded on almost all sides by pirates - pirates my starting cruiser often struggled against. It might not be a bad idea if the starting cruiser had a single deflector to help give it a little more tankiness in those situations.
  
  
• In this game, I learned that you can shuttle the Gaiads off of Gaia. Pretty sure this isn't intended from a story perspective, so they need a no-movement clause in a future patch. The real lesson I learned is that metal requirements are vicious now. Even a pyrrhic victory can mean certain doom if you don't have at least two or three colonies dedicated to raking in metal.
  
  
• Game #2 was as the Haduir - I was a bit salty after getting trounced by the game and went looking for revenge. I again started right beside Gaia and invested far more effort into strip-mining crappy small planets to feed my war machine. I beelined for Heavy Railguns, which are still ridiculously overpowered for how easy they are to obtain, slapped two on the Heavy Cruiser frame, spammed them en masse and went to town. The fact that they dish out roughly 40-45 damage on average AND they are crazy accurate (AC) AND they have mind-boggling range (LR) AND they penetrate shields is just nuts. I mainly chose the Haduir for the stargates, as the one-turn travel gives you an incredible advantage when defending.
  
  
• I got to play with ground combat some more. Learned quickly that teching ground troops up is smart, as is spamming troopships once you have the metal to burn. The interface is a bit choppy and doesn't display some choice info I'd like (such as the target planet's characteristics: fertility, size, minerals, etc.) but I didn't run into any glaring bugs or the like. Mostly feels like it needs polishing.
  
  
• Again speaking of metal to burn, I was able to stay on top of every other resource except metal. Haduir (and the Teros by extension) bottleneck on metal with alarming ease. Sure, I might have been trying a little too hard to print ships - my beef was that the only way to solve my problem was to roll over my neighbours as opposed to getting greater yields from my existing mines, using Shipyards to save on metal in ship construction or just having a way of flat-out buying the stuff. It got to the point where when I steamrolled the Phidi, I'd turn any colonies they had that was Normal or Rich into strip-mines simply so I could spam more battlecruisers.
  
  
• I didn't find much point in researching non-military techs until much later in the game. I felt like my main concern was to get the ability to build decent ships, then work on making my structures more efficient. The mine upgrade is by far the most crucial one I needed. The farm upgrade is good too, but good lord it is expensive.
  
  
• Despite trying to build ships at a rate that might've seemed cheat-worthy, I never ran into cash problems, mostly since transports double as freighters and money-makers. As a result, markets are pretty useless as buildings go.
  
  
• I also finally finished my first game, thanks to the 64-bit exe. I found that after I squished the Phidi, the game went straight into mop-up duty. Definitely would appreciate victory settings to speed that along similar to the glorious autocombat button, which saved me at least half an hour of fighting battles against planetary defenses - I was quite happy with how well autocombat worked out in terms of not being terrible as in other strategy games.

That's about all for now. I may continue adding onto this, especially if the diplomacy module comes out in the not-too-distant future.

Unbroken wrote:My first game as the humans went quite badly. While I started right beside Gaia, I made a dumb choice by letting my second colony get wiped out by the Marauders. While I did manage to get back on track, I later got declared on by two AIs at once. I was able to defeat the first one's fleet, however the second one had far better tech than I did and wiped me out. Since I was bottlenecking extremely hard on Metal, there was no way I could rebuild to fight back after being so decisively beaten. Without diplomacy, this issue stands out a lot more than it would if it were possible to sue for peace in such a situation.

Yes, diplomacy should make the early game less of a kill-or-be-killed affair, but Humanity is the hardmode faction. There's going to be heavy RNG there no matter what... though the diplomacy system will offer the human faction a better-than-average chance of non-violent coexistence with the human pirates.

Unbroken wrote:In this game, I learned that you can shuttle the Gaiads off of Gaia. Pretty sure this isn't intended from a story perspective, so they need a no-movement clause in a future patch. The real lesson I learned is that metal requirements are vicious now.

The diplomacy system, which will make early war less essential, also includes population morale, which will prevent you from moving discontent population (unless they are enslaved). The reason why there's not an Orion Guardian in orbit around Gaia is because the Gaiads are supposed to be a pain in the ass. When we have more ways in which they can mess with you (and you have more tools to deal with discontent population), they should be a more engaging foil.

Metal is still a comparatively new resource, and so the balance is still a little rough in that regard. If it's an early bottleneck, that's intended.

Unbroken wrote:I didn't find much point in researching non-military techs until much later in the game. I felt like my main concern was to get the ability to build decent ships, then work on making my structures more efficient. The mine upgrade is by far the most crucial one I needed. The farm upgrade is good too, but good lord it is expensive.

The ability to establish non-hostile relationships with the diplomacy system should ease the pressure to research military techs early. Unless your near neighbors are jerks.

Unbroken wrote:Despite trying to build ships at a rate that might've seemed cheat-worthy, I never ran into cash problems, mostly since transports double as freighters and money-makers. As a result, markets are pretty useless as buildings go.

Agreed that cash is too easy to get in the current balance.

Unbroken wrote:I also finally finished my first game, thanks to the 64-bit exe. I found that after I squished the Phidi, the game went straight into mop-up duty. Definitely would appreciate victory settings to speed that along similar to the glorious autocombat button, which saved me at least half an hour of fighting battles against planetary defenses - I was quite happy with how well autocombat worked out in terms of not being terrible as in other strategy games.

As a pure military conquest simulation (at present without diplomacy), once you've reached a certain critical mass, the rest of the game doesn't present much of a challenge. We aim to ameliorate that with the addition of the diplomacy module, emphasizing a) the advantage of cultivating allies to satisfy the "galactic council" win condition, and b) the tendency of your enemies to ally against you if you're attempting a solo steamroll.

Unbroken wrote:That's about all for now. I may continue adding onto this, especially if the diplomacy module comes out in the not-too-distant future.

Thanks for the feedback! It's always appreciated.