I’ve been playing ISG for a while now and I have various questions and comments. My experience in 4x games is quite limited. I’ve only played one 4x game before, the 2016 reboot of Master of Orion Conquer the Stars. So any reference below to Master of Orion is to that game. In no particular order here are my points. I'm sure some of my points have probably been mentioned before and I apologise for mentioning them again. I’ve numbered them so that if anyone replies you can reference my point by number. 1. I noticed that a planet can be constructed from a gas giant only if you have a colony in the same system. So a system that has only gas giants can never have a planet constructed. Is that deliberate or an oversight? What was the thinking here? Why not have a ship capable of constructing planets that you could send to the system? 2. I noticed that a survey ship can perform a full system scan. But in order to do that I have to send the survey ship to a system which does not have a full system scan and run the risk of encountering a monster that will destroy the survey ship. What’s the idea? 3. If a system has a space monster we receive no information about the monster’s strength. How am I supposed to judge whether to attack it with my fleet, or judge what size fleet to use? Contrast ISG with MoO which does give you useful information about the strength of the monster and allow you to compare the monster to your fleet’s strength. 4. If I conquer an outpost why would I choose to “Raze” rather than “Occupy”? 5. Am I correct in understanding that enabling emigration in one colony and enabling immigration in another colony will result in reduction of population growth in the first colony and an increase in population growth in the second colony? But no existing population will move? Is that right? If my understanding is correct, I think someone does not understand the meaning of emigration and immigration. These words mean people actually moving from one place to another. It seems there is no way to move a population unit from one colony to another. 6. I think it would have been a much better choice to allow players to send a pop unit from one colony to another. Surely it would have been a simple matter to have a civil transport ship which could transport pop units. Explorminate agrees with me. In their review of ISG they said, “New colonies can be very slow to get up to speed the production front. This is exacerbated by the fact that you can’t transport colonists between worlds (a curious omission I feel).” 7. I notice that emigration is “evenly distributed to all colonies accepting population”. So a colony that has 6/12 will receive the same growth boost as a colony that has 1/12. This doesn’t seem sensible, but the only way to stop it is to switch off emigration completely in the larger colony. 8. It seems that constructing a colony ship does not reduce Pop on the colony. So where does the Pop unit on the colony ship come from? Do they pop out of thin air? 9. The Wiki for ISG says: “The mechanics of Population Growth can be a bit confusing.” You’re not kidding! Why the game designers felt it necessary to have so many inputs into Pop growth is a mystery to me. 10. Generally speaking, there are far too many inputs to determine many things. Hover over production, credits, research or a bunch of other things and you are shown a long tooltip with a myriad of inputs. Trying to figure out how to affect things turns into a maths exercise. 11. It seems that if I research a better version of a building then the building on my colony is automatically upgraded. What if I don’t want to upgrade automatically because it means paying more credits for the upgraded building? You might answer then don’t research the tech. But what if want to have the upgraded building available for when I want to use it? Or what if I don’t want to upgrade on one colony but I do on another? 12. Regarding the penalty applied to research techs if you have already researched techs in the same field, I don’t understand the point of this penalty. There are fields where you really need to research most or all of the techs in that field. For example the first field in “Construction” has the techs Colony Base, Robotic Factory, Subsurface Vault and Space Elevator. These are all important and necessary techs to get. I feel like this penalty was implemented because it’s a cheap and easy way of creating different game experiences so as to enhance replayability. 13. Why not receive a message when a construction project has been completed? I know you receive a message when construction is idle. But what if I have several projects in a colony’s construction queue and I am waiting on a particular project to be completed. I might continue playing and make many turns without realizing that the project was completed. 14. I think the building panel on the colony screen could have been better designed. I think the problem here is trying to cram a large amount of information into a small space. This could have been solved by a separate popup window for building decisions. This was done well in Master of Orion. It’s not like you make building decisions every turn. A building popup window could set out all the available buildings with the full name and a better image of the building or ship. See Master of Orion for this done well. 15. I found the colony screen to be quite cluttered and it took me a long time to figure out what everything meant. For ages I couldn’t figure out how to switch from colony to colony. Eventually I saw there were arrows on the colony screen providing this function. I think these arrows are too small. I think there should be a much more prominent arrow to switch from colony to colony. Also I can’t figure out the order used here. It doesn’t seem to be alphabetical and it’s certainly not the same order of my colonies in the overview list. 16. Why is there no function to switch from system to system. The lack of such a function has caused me much annoyance. There are numerous times that I wish I could switch through all explored systems. I have to close one system, go back to the colony screen and click on another system. And I have to do this every time if I want to search through my explored systems. Very annoying! You allow players to switch through colonies, even though you tried hard to hide it. Why not systems?! 17. If I send a fleet of ships to a system which already has a fleet the arriving ships will automatically become part of the fleet in that system. Why? Why can’t I have two fleets in the one system? This means that I need to select ships to create another fleet. 18. Should I rely only on Remote Exploration to gain information about other systems? Is there any point in sending ships to a system for exploration especially given the risk of running into a space monster and my ship being destroyed? 19. Why does that stupid banner appear across the screen after every turn – “President Hiram of the Human Federation”. So annoying! Can it be turned off? 20. One of the big differences between ISG and Master of Orion is that there are no hyperlanes between systems in ISG. The galaxy is completely open and ships can fly from any system to any other system. This took me a bit of getting used to after playing Master of Orion. In MoO you can build military outposts that block off your territory. But it occurred to me that ISG’s layout is more realistic. After all, there are no hyperlanes in real space. Ships can fly in any direction. It was a bit unnerving to see other empire’s ships flying across my territory. Is that something I should be concerned about? Is that an indication that the other empire might attack soon?
#4 one reason is you want to deny the extra range to the other race and do not want to defend that outpost. #15 is a common method in 4x tbs games, you see it in civ games for example. #17 same as #15. It is a common tactic. A single ship or a fleet of ships are added upon arrival. One scheme is used and you will be dammed use the other scheme and you will also be dammed. No compelling reason to change I guess. #18 I do both as it takes too long to use remote on a large map. #20 everyone hated lanes in Moo3. I played Ascendancy way back, so I did not mind them, but a lot of players are adamant about them. Plus this was a Moo2 based game and Moo2 did not have star lanes.
Hi Laser_Eyes, I will answer what I can. Some of your questions can only be answered by the programmers/developers.
I personally either like all the features you've listed or am neutral towards them, with the exception of immigration/emigration. I really don't know how to use existing means to move population effectively. Also, a number of points you listed can be answered with generic "because that is how it was in Master of Orion 2 (and maybe 1), which is not surprising as I understand that developers are fans of that game. Specifically points 1, 3, 8, 11, 17, 20 look very much alike MoO2. Now to your specific points: Right now the game has really low variability of monsters - I think only two types exist with their offspring subtypes. Also, you can scan them to get their HP and see their weapons (without understanding their power though). But basically since there are so few of them, you can simply learn by experience. I am actually fine with a lot of inputs exactly because popups explain very well how much each of them contributes to total. Game design wise, large number of inputs provide more options in research tree. For example, it makes sense to research space station modules only if you have a lot of them over a lot of populated planets. Otherwise you should pursue other techs giving other bonuses. But that is very subjective opinion as it should be noted that I am pretty comfortable with math. Hmm, can you point to a single "improved building" tech which increases its production or maintenance cost? As far as I can tell, all builds of the same category cost the same production and maintenance, and further developed building always provide more benefits without any drawbacks. For example, all space stations cost 3500 production and 5 maintenance. In other words, it never makes sense to NOT develop better version of a building. My 1.3.4 version of the game behaves exactly like you want: if, after completing production, I have further items in build queue, I do receive notification. Example: "Construction: Space Mirror Array completed in Colony X. Next in queue: Med-Bay Facility". In settings check that you do not have "noncritical notifications" disabled. I have them set to "grouped". But that design also simplifies interface. As there is no concept of separate fleets, UI does not need to tell you the number of fleets, or their separate composition (which matters when you want to send of the fleets away), or total composition (which matter for combat, as all your ships in system take part in it). If you need to select a few of your ships, there is a button which allows you to select all or none with one click and then select in/out the needed ships. I send frigate scout ships to every system once it becomes reachable. It is much faster then waiting for remote exploration. Scouting allows you to find potential colonies or good systems for further remote exploration very fast. Also, the danger of monster is low, as I think in battle you always have enough distance to flee before monster can hit your ship. And even if your ship is destroyed, it is just a frigate, which becomes expendable almost in the beginning of the game. Well, unless it has a leader. Just don't send leaders to scout. But that is so cool as it requires a completely different strategy! No more choke points. Offense is the best defense. Drive speed is very important as you can outmaneuver your enemy and deny them a battle, stinging them at the same time in their weak spots, etc.
Yes, you are correct. My mistake. An assumption on my part. I guess I just thought it would be the case because it makes sense. After all, you get increased benefit from upgraded buildings and your capacity to pay is greater as the game continues. There's every reason to think that upgraded buildings should cost more. Now I'm wondering why they don't.
IMO it greatly simplifies game design and game play. UI is less cluttered as it does not need to provide an options to build lower tier buildings or upgrade a building. Or imagine you are looking through list of buildings on a planet and see "Imperial Garisson". You definitely remember what Garisson is. But what about "Imperial", which tier is it, 2nd or 3rd? Can it be upgraded or not? With current design there is no such problem - you just need to rember which latest tier you researched and there is no option to upgrade anyway.
