game report
Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 3:46 pm
Sorry it took so long for me to provide feedback. A few weeks ago I ran a game from beginning to ultimate conquest of 80 systems. I conquered the galaxy at 1500 by destroying all major and minor factions (except for the borg-looking pirates). I then ran 30 more turns to completely finish the technology tree -- to build some more ships and see what else was working.
I going to focus on the problems I think I found and likely make some recommendations. I don't think gushing too much over the good parts are very helpful, so mostly my comments will be about the mechanics and dynamics of the game I think can be improved. My goal is to not recommend new features, but offer suggestions on how to improve existing features. That said, if I stray to far into significant enhancements, I apologize now ahead of time.
I can't write it all in one go, but will come back and add more over the next few days.
Overall Feel
While certainly some people will not like the cartoon-ish graphics, I think it's your strongest differentiation from other similar products. It's a good theme and unifies everything in the game. Most importantly, I did NOT fall into the uncanny valley of an interface that looked like it was trying to be state-of-the-art, but then fell short due to poor uniformity and cheap illustrations. Well done.
I would also like to quickly highlight the "undo" and "redo" functionality. While it did offer some insight to how things were working under the hood, it was a very novel feature. Some might argue that it is a "cheat" mechanic, but I've never believed in the concept of cheating in single-player games. It's not a sport. Kudos on an ingenious way to help new players learn and understand the game's feedback as they play.
Sequential Mechanics
In terms of a general statement, much of the game's mechanics seem to be based on sequential progress, vice concurrent progress. Both the "build queue" industry converter and "research project" research converter come quickly to mind.
First, I would recommend research conversion on concurrent projects given some prioritization system.
Regarding conversion of the industry resource, the build queue seems closely coupled to planet. It's a sequential, FIFO queue. Perhaps consider separating the one queue into two potential concurrent converters (i.e. a planetary construction queue and shipyard queue).
Strategic Resources
Also regarding the industry resource, it appears to be at odds with the other strategic resources like food, metal, research, and money. While the sources, factories, are much like the other resources' creators, the industrial drains, converters, and traders seem unnecessarily limited. If I understood the mechanic, the industry resource is limited to only its host planet; so that all the other functions (drains, etc.) are only meaningful to the extent that the planet's build queue is producing something tangible.
If that's true, it might force the player into an onerous dominant strategy of producing factories first in order to build other structures; only to later destroy them to purchase the final structure (farm, etc.). Given a large, growing empire that seems too limited and promotes painful micromanagement. At the very least, many factories end up not working on anything.
My recommendation is to make the industry resource more like the food resource. The sources fill a strategic pool that are also drained by the population resource (e.g. as domestic goods). Trade ship capacity is required (like food) to move the needed resource between exporters and importers based on population demand. It can be used for the build queue work and the surplus for foreign trade. Shortfalls create unrest on net import planets where industry is unfulfilled. You could envision other dynamics such as demand rates for each species and under certain economic conditions (e.g. peacetime, wartime, etc.).
For the same benefits, I would also recommend a similar drain for the research resource (i.e. population-based demand). Innovation isn't just the state's interest. I'm reminded of Buzz Aldrin's quote on the cover of MIT Technology Review magazine, "You Promised Me Mars Colonies. Instead, I Got Facebook."
In both cases, the strategic resource drain is proportional to the population growth (i.e. a negative feedback loop).
Back with more later.