Bought the game this past weekend and played it quite a lot. I like where this is going and I had fun exploring the systems. Really like the teraforming / ecology system. It feels good and I can only imagine it getting better. There are some bugs with autocombat weighting, I was using battleships with PD lasers and heavier particle guns for the main armament. The strength comparison with enemy ships listed mine as having ~38 power, vs a frigate with 1 tungsten gun and 1 ion cannon at ~36. I lost autocombats with great frequency, but in actual battle I fired the main gun once from across the screen on turn one and obliterated the target every time. I think the game was weighing the particle weapon as zero for some reason, and crediting only for the PD lasers. I think this is also why the AI empires were all ranked ahead of me in military, despite the actual power being considerably more one sided in my favor. I like infrastructure, but I think the gap between tiny and huge is too much. A tiny ultra rich world will get 2 people with 2 infra at 8 prod each is 8*2*2 = 32 production. A huge ultra poor world will get 20 * 10 * 1 = 200 production. This is before you even consider the fact the huge ultra poor can fit every single production enhancer on it, and the tiny can not. Size scales both infra and population, then compounds that with buildings. Divorcing infrastructure from size, or changing to something like 5 base +1 per size, would go a long way toward correcting that. The infrastructure perks are interesting, hope we see more of those. Scaling on support ships is really good, and they also stack. Probably too good. Half dozen of these babies in orbit and every world in the system can be simultaneously developed to full from nothing, AND populated to the max, in less time than it took to build your first colony ship at the beginning. I like the concept but pretty sure this is the main reason I was able to crush the AI so easily on my first go. I like scanning. It fell behind near the end, even with 2 scanners going at once I barely made a dent in the huge galaxy before the game was over. I'd imagine there are techs coming later to add more scans at once and to speed them up. Tactical combat felt good, although my fights were pretty short on account of the disparity with the AI. Couldn't figure out a way to move population from my worlds to new ones, but support ships obliterated the need to do so anyway. It looks like the game supports the notion of multiple races on one world, but I couldn't figure out how to make that happen. Not yet implemented I'm guessing. Anyway, I'm having fun even here in alpha and I'm excited about where this is going.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, and welcome to the forums! Here's a few comments to your feedback. Thanks for purchasing the pre-alpha and for supporting us. I'm glad you liked the planetary engineering system. We did our best to make it interesting and deeper than we usually see. Let us know if you have any suggestions to improve it further. Yeah, the combat auto-resolve function is still very rudimentary. This will be significantly overhauled in our Alpha release because the auto-resolve function will actually use an automated version of the main combat system to resolve, so the results should be as good as it gets. You're right, the gap between tiny and bigger worlds is too great in the current infrastructure model, to the point of making tiny worlds useless at the moment. We took note of this and will address it for the Alpha version. Your idea of providing a base infrastructure level and then add infra bonuses on top could be a good start. Thanks for the suggestion. Do you think more would be required? And if so, what would you like to see added or changed? They probably have a too low Ship Support requirement. It was 3 in the past, now it's only 2. Perhaps reverting to 3 would help. And/or, we may have to figure out another way to provide the bonuses they give, or address the stacking issue somehow. The ideia is that they are a great instrument to assist underdeveloped offworld colonies, or to assist in developing military infrastructure in the front, but I agree that it's probably too much and too easy as of now. We'll see what we can do. As always, feel free to toss out ideas. Glad you like it. And yes, 2 scanners is too low for larger maps, especially in Huge. The idea is that you will be granted more scanners depending on how big your empire is, or via tech, we'll see. In any case, rest assured that adding more scanners in larger games is in our todo list, as for making the process of selecting sectors for remote exploration more user-friendly and streamlined. Awesome. Expect the combat AI to be enhanced considerably for the Alpha release. Your perception is correct. The game was indeed implemented to be able to support multi-racial colonies. However, that is something that has received less priority for the time being, as other more pressing matters require our attention. The idea is to support multi-racial colonies at some point, however we're not sure if this will be in for the official release or if it will only come after release via a DLC or expansion. Being able to move people around is still under analysis as well. The idea is that it will not be possible to do so for the time being, or if it is allowed it will be in a much more restricted manner, possibly through a migration mechanic that is still to be designed. So that's why I say that we'll have to see if moving people around and supporting multi-racial colonies will make it for the initial release. That's awesome to hear. This is the most important thing for the game, to know that people are having fun with the present mechanics, already at pre-alpha where they are not complete and the visuals are still serviceable. We're working hard to elevate the fun and experience to a completely new level, both in terms of gameplay and graphics, music and immersion. And for that we count with all of your support to make it happen. I believe that together we will make one of the greatest space 4X games of all time, which is the minimum we can do to make justice to our mission to develop a worthy successor to Master of Orion 2. Thanks again for these first impressions, and please keep those comments and suggestions coming.
Quote function doesn't quote your quotes so just pasting in here. >>The infrastructure perks are interesting, hope we see more of those. >Do you think more would be required? And if so, what would you like to see added or changed? The static boosts for finish a tree were huge, so I focused on that. Tiny world? you get 2 ranks of +buildings. Small? 3 ranks of planetary engineering and one rank of +buildings. Medium? Either six of building or six of shipyards. More building earlier, more shipyards later. Large? Same as medium, leaning more to shipyards, but then add either a bit of ship support or a bit of building capacity, depending. Huge? Shipyards + planetary engineering + 1 rank of extra buildings. The stacking static bonuses served to accelerate towards a win, and I think that was an intentional choice and a good one. I just assumed there would be trees for other things later, such as diplomacy, espionage, or navigation, particularly since propulsion was the only tree without a corresponding boost to research. >>Scaling on support ships is really good, and they also stack. Probably too good. Half dozen of these babies in orbit and every world in the system can be simultaneously developed to full from nothing, AND populated to the max, in less time than it took to build your first colony ship at the beginning. I like the concept but pretty sure this is the main reason I was able to crush the AI so easily on my first go. >They probably have a too low Ship Support requirement. It was 3 in the past, now it's only 2. Perhaps reverting to 3 would help. And/or, we may have to figure out another way to provide the bonuses they give, or address the stacking issue somehow. The ideia is that they are a great instrument to assist underdeveloped offworld colonies, or to assist in developing military infrastructure in the front, but I agree that it's probably too much and too easy as of now. We'll see what we can do. As always, feel free to toss out ideas. My first thought is to have them direct their support to a specific world, like the asteroid exploits do. I was deliberately picking systems with many targets to colonize/teraform in order to get the most bang for my buck. I also noticed that they continue to boost developed worlds, but I didn't leave a bunch floating around in developed systems. Suspect that parking a dozen of them in a system full of shipyards would be... bonkers. So some way to limit their usefulness on developed worlds? Perhaps scaling down impact on a world as infrastructure rises, or capping how many can boost a single world? I don't know. >We will make one of the greatest space 4X games of all times, which is the minimum we can do to make justice to our mission to develop a worthy successor to Master of Orion 2. I think you're on the right track here. It felt like moo2 but it doesn't feel like a straight copy either.
I see. Well, the infrastructure perks were designed to serve colony specialization, therefore you get the buildings, construction and planetary engineering perks, the three areas of colony development. Things like diplomacy, navigation and other areas were addressed more at the "empire level", and as such they were addressed mainly through tech, space culture perks and now also via race perks (already implemented but not yet released). We may add another infra perk tree, but it should be linked to the colony itself and how it can be specialized further. As you say, propulsion is the only tech area not addressed in the infra perks. It didn't seem required, but we're always open for suggestions of course. As we've discussed earlier, tiny worlds will still need to be addressed though, as only having the possibility to pick 2 infra perks may not be sufficient enough to make them interesting. In the past we had fewer buildings, so it was justifiable to have a low infrastructure level to keep the choices on what to build interesting. Now we have more buildings, and just this week we finished adding 5 more galactic wonders to the game and 1 more planetary improvement. So, we may buff the number of available infra perks a bit, perhaps a +2 baseline with the rest coming on top due to the planet size. 4 infra perks for a tiny world could make the trick perhaps? Those are some good ideas. We may add a constraint on already developed worlds. Perhaps scale down to already present infrastructure, or capping on the stacking somewhow. Remember that support ships' bonuses are static, i.e. they are not percentage modifiers, so the idea was for them to be a huge boon for underdeveloped worlds but not really that useful to justify the trouble for already developed worlds. If they are then we have to revisit their bonuses again to make sure they aren't too good. Maybe increasing ship support will do, we'll have to see. Also, support ships can be taken down as they are just civilian ships, so they need to be guarded. And, they are still big construction projects. Another idea to make them more interesting would be to tie in freighters to support ships so that you would require 1 freighter fleet for each support ship to function, or to see their bonuses improve. That's great to hear. And, that's exactly what we're after. The game should have the "feel" of MoO2 without it being too close. We abide for Sid Meier's 1/3 rule. So, roughly 1/3 we keep the same, 1/3 we improve and 1/3 is new.
I like this, it is superior to simply raising their SSP cost by 1 point. On the surface, it seems like it is the same, (3 ssp total), but actually having to build a freighter means construction time allocated to the task, that could have been allocated elsewhere. On a huge map, as played by the OP, it wont make a difference with only two AI factions, that are at 1/3 capacity, and intentionally overly passive. What I mean here is that if you project to more AIs, that are also more aggressive, spamming support ships might just get you steam-rolled. In fact, many of the excellent comments presented here must be viewed through the lens of playing on the larger map at this stage of the game, this is not how things will play out later, the medium map gives a better projection right now. What about the larger planets then? how will a +2 baseline affect them and consequently the flow of the game? Perhaps the cost of achieving these higher levels should be astronomical, after all a huge world would get 12 infra perks under this scenario... this may be too much. Currently, tiny worlds are to be avoided... unless of course they confer a strategic value or a "must-have" special. The thing is, on a huge map with three races it is far less likely that they will fit either of these criteria. In all honesty, I disliked the change that tied infra to size... but less so now. Perhaps rather than giving a +2 baseline across the board, you could partially re-introduce the older system? For example, at Eco 3, a bonus infrastructure slot. I'm not certain, but I dislike the baseline approach unless it is balanced in such a way that it benefits the tiny and small worlds more than the rest, this should not be an across the board solution.
It could work. Either rising the SSP requirements or getting freighters into the mix. Whatever is done needs to be balanced so that they are not overpowered. We'll see what we can do. And, yes, things will change dramatically after we introduce the 4th race and race customization, where you'll be able to design as many races as you want and play games with 8 players. Yes, if the +2 baseline, or other is introduced it needs to be balanced for the larger worlds. The cost is quite big after 6 or so. After that point the cost to develop the infrastructure further becomes astronomical. So much in fact that it gets proibitive at some point, so you will have to consider going after a new tech (not in PA10) that speeds up the infrastructure development. The old system had a problem, which is why we changed it. A planet's eco level is volatile, it changes due to nuclear bombardement and when you terraform (eco level 3 is less bad because you can't terraform and don't get nuclear fallout - if I recall correctly - but there is a culture perk that reverses the terraforming non possibility). Therefore, tying infra with eco will causa infra levels (and the structures they support) to become volatile as well. It gets messy. Therefore, we changed the system to tie in infra with a static aspect of the planet itself, and that's why it is tied to size now. True, Tiny worlds became a bit useless due to this, unless there's something special or strategic about them. So, we'll have to see how we can balance the system so that Tiny worlds aren't as bad (they should always be worse on average than big wolds though, that's a fact). A baseline approach to infra may work because as said above the cost to develop infrastructure after some point becomes proibitive. So, all things considered I'm confident that it's worth a shot. That said, that doesn't mean that there could not be other factors associated with infra levels besides planet size. However, it should be static properties about the planets and preferentially not techs, eco levels, biome type, etc, because those are dynamic aspects, tied to the empire who owns the planet at that point. Some other static or physical aspect could be considered though. We'll see.
