Suggestions from 3D & 3E
from 
Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
I purchased the beta last week. I've played through three full games and a number of partial games. I think the game is fun and has a lot of potential. Here's some feedback....
GAMEPLAY
- My biggest gripe is the economic management. Having only "macro" sliders to adjust your whole empire's spending is annoying. There's no way to limit the spending of the bulk of your planets without also slowing down your home planet producing the Hyperion Manufacturing Center. My suggestion: move the spending sliders to the Governors screen. That way you could shift a planet to a different spending profile by changing governors.
- More on the same theme: you can't save money by setting a planet to build nothing. If you've allocated 35% to social spending, then every planet will spend 35% of its manufacturing points on social, even if there's nothing to build. Many games implement a "wealth" or "money" project to handle this situation.
- I'm curious what the intended "best practice" is for managing the economy. Because of the above problems, I find that I need a lot of tribute to be able to keep spending at 100%. Is there a way to build a profitable, economy without tribute?
- When you are upgrading a starbase or adjusting a planet, it would be great to see where the planet is located on the mini-map.
- Who needs terror stars when you've got survey ships? After a game of investigating anomalies, my starting survey ship has more hitpoints than my starbases and better attack/defense than my battle hammers. I haven't even bothered to build other ships - this one can decimate an entire fleet. There should probably be a limit on how much one ship can be upgraded.
- Morale effects seem better handled in 3E. In a previous game, I had three maxed morale resources and all the morale tech, and still most of my planets were sinking below 50%.
- The AI needs some work on its trading algorithm. Any of the AIs will agree to payment plans that put their civ into bankruptcy.
- The cultural conquest needs to be toned down somewhat. In my last game, I eventually had 3 planets per-turn surrendering to me, which pretty much brought the game to a close. I'd suggest retaining the local effects of culture (i.e. an upgraded starbase in an adjacent sector) but dramatically reducing the effects of culture on sectors far away from my civ.
- I'd love it if the game helped me remember where I saw good planets or resources. I kind of have to write down lists of these things so I can dispatch a constructor/colony ship.
BUGS
- The game is very unstable. I've had several games that completely hosed themselves. Crash to desktop, "restore last civ" is corrupted, last save was too far back to care about. I think improving stability needs to be your top priority.
- Ironically, the "autosave" feature may be the cause of some of the crashes. I noticed that I tended to crash when the year changed. So I edited prefs.ini to save every 3 months, and now the crashes tend to come on those months.
- Espionage does not seem to work against minor races. You can set the sliders, but the espionage will really be carried out against one of the major races.
- I've had several games where clicking on a certain minor race (usually the pirates) in the foreign policy screen will always crash to desktop.
- Minor races don't always show up in the fp screen. I've had two games where the fp screen told me that all minors were dead, but they were not. Other times, I can see the race on the map, but they don't show up in the fp screen. In all cases, I can click on their planets and contact them.
- The stats screen display trade routes and speed as percentages (i.e. Speed +3%). I believe both of these are just integers.
- I've had the occasional planet that always displayed 0 expenses, regardless of how much actual expense it incurred. In my current game, it was the second planet colonized, but that may not be the general rule.
GAMEPLAY
- My biggest gripe is the economic management. Having only "macro" sliders to adjust your whole empire's spending is annoying. There's no way to limit the spending of the bulk of your planets without also slowing down your home planet producing the Hyperion Manufacturing Center. My suggestion: move the spending sliders to the Governors screen. That way you could shift a planet to a different spending profile by changing governors.
- More on the same theme: you can't save money by setting a planet to build nothing. If you've allocated 35% to social spending, then every planet will spend 35% of its manufacturing points on social, even if there's nothing to build. Many games implement a "wealth" or "money" project to handle this situation.
- I'm curious what the intended "best practice" is for managing the economy. Because of the above problems, I find that I need a lot of tribute to be able to keep spending at 100%. Is there a way to build a profitable, economy without tribute?
- When you are upgrading a starbase or adjusting a planet, it would be great to see where the planet is located on the mini-map.
- Who needs terror stars when you've got survey ships? After a game of investigating anomalies, my starting survey ship has more hitpoints than my starbases and better attack/defense than my battle hammers. I haven't even bothered to build other ships - this one can decimate an entire fleet. There should probably be a limit on how much one ship can be upgraded.
- Morale effects seem better handled in 3E. In a previous game, I had three maxed morale resources and all the morale tech, and still most of my planets were sinking below 50%.
- The AI needs some work on its trading algorithm. Any of the AIs will agree to payment plans that put their civ into bankruptcy.
- The cultural conquest needs to be toned down somewhat. In my last game, I eventually had 3 planets per-turn surrendering to me, which pretty much brought the game to a close. I'd suggest retaining the local effects of culture (i.e. an upgraded starbase in an adjacent sector) but dramatically reducing the effects of culture on sectors far away from my civ.
- I'd love it if the game helped me remember where I saw good planets or resources. I kind of have to write down lists of these things so I can dispatch a constructor/colony ship.
BUGS
- The game is very unstable. I've had several games that completely hosed themselves. Crash to desktop, "restore last civ" is corrupted, last save was too far back to care about. I think improving stability needs to be your top priority.
- Ironically, the "autosave" feature may be the cause of some of the crashes. I noticed that I tended to crash when the year changed. So I edited prefs.ini to save every 3 months, and now the crashes tend to come on those months.
- Espionage does not seem to work against minor races. You can set the sliders, but the espionage will really be carried out against one of the major races.
- I've had several games where clicking on a certain minor race (usually the pirates) in the foreign policy screen will always crash to desktop.
- Minor races don't always show up in the fp screen. I've had two games where the fp screen told me that all minors were dead, but they were not. Other times, I can see the race on the map, but they don't show up in the fp screen. In all cases, I can click on their planets and contact them.
- The stats screen display trade routes and speed as percentages (i.e. Speed +3%). I believe both of these are just integers.
- I've had the occasional planet that always displayed 0 expenses, regardless of how much actual expense it incurred. In my current game, it was the second planet colonized, but that may not be the general rule.
