Alpha 3 Notes

from GalCiv3 Forums

Overall, I'm very impressed. I love what I'm seeing.

I know some of the things I'll note below have been mentioned by others and/or are already known by the devs, but I'll post them just in case.

Galaxy View:

1. Completion times for production & research in galaxy view would be nice, at least as a tooltip.

2. In the planet list, the manufacturing icon is missing and the population icon is where the research icon should be.

3. The tooltip for planet stats (manufacturing, research, pop, etc.) doesn't always match the info pane at the bottom left corner.

4. Ships & fleets are still disappearing occasionally. Sometimes this happens as  result of combat. I also had a ship disappear when a colony ship colonized a planet via the same hex (other ship & colony ship were in same hex, when I colonized planet, other ship disappeared).

5. During combat, sometimes fleets/stacks of ships weren't able to be attacked by one ship, but when I attacked a different stack with that or another ship, the original stack is where the damage was done. In other words, my fleet A attacks enemy fleet A, the dialog-box pops up, I confirm battle, nobody dies. Then my fleet B attacks enemy fleet B and one of the ships/fleets from enemy fleet A is destroyed.

Planet Management Screen:

1. The "planetfall" special tile has typo "impartments" instead of "improvements"

2. Upgrade from colonial hospital to medical center results in a weird completion time: 4294967295. It doesn't actually take that long.

3. Horizontal lines on at least some of the maps

4 Would maybe be nice to be able to click arrows to switch planets with the planet governor open.

Starbases & Starports:

1. If you add the mining ring to a starbase, you can still add culture or econ rings. But if you start with culture or economy, you can't add mining.

2. Removing sponsors so you can add to different starport is a bit annoying--I totally realize that the starport UI is pretty new.

Designer Issues:

1. Symmetry of grouped objects often distorts them significantly.

2. Anchor points can be very difficult to access at times.

3. Cannot export grouped objects--must ungroup and select individually, then export.

4. I had a strange glitch when I animated one of the small oval-shaped pieces (Terran model 101)--after a while it became very askew. Not sure if it was the animation or me tweaking other components.

Tech Tree:

I know Gaunathor pointed out most, if not all, of the duplicate bonuses. My overall feedback is it is a little bit unclear of what some things actually do--but I know you'll be adding and tweaking descriptions and all that, so I'm not too worried.

One tech/component balance issue is the Subspace Sensor (and sensors in general)--it is only 5.6 mass and offers 12.5 sensor range (plus nebula vision bonus), which felt way to inexpensive/miniaturized. And sensors should definitely be limited. I strapped about 10 on a ship and bought it and poof, goodbye fog of war. I love seeing more sensor range, but perhaps the biggest ranges could be left for starbases.

That's it for now. I'll keep taking notes as I play some more. Thanks for all your hard work!

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Some more issues/notes.

Blueprint issues:

1. When the ship blueprints advance, sometimes sensors and life support are reduced--which is really annoying when you are sending ships across the galaxy and all the sudden the next version of the same ship can't reach as far as the former iteration.

2. When you research the final weapons techs and need Durantium/Elerium for weapons, the automated ship designs become unusable if you don't have those resources. It would be nice if the blueprints didn't advance unless sufficient resources were available.

3. It would be nice if former blueprints could be accessed using a filter (this would also solve the issue in point 2).

Tech Tree issues:

1. The "now researching" info panel on the top right of the tech tree gets in the way of Doom Ray. This doesn't affect gameplay or access to the tech in the tech tree, but it doesn't look clean.

2. The cost of Nightmare Torpedoes seems incorrect--At 736 research production per turn, Doom Ray will take 24 turns, Singularity Drivers will take 22 turns, but Nightmare Torpedoes will take only 4 turns.

Starport Management:

1. In the manager screen, sometimes the planet distances aren't affecting the manufacturing numbers. For example, I have a planet 19 hexes from a starport, but in the manager screen it shows a 3.2 manufacturing value.

2. The manager screen's manufacturing numbers are often different from the numbers on the bottom-left screen in the galaxy view, often just by 0.1.

3. Far planets seem to be given a default manufacturing value of 1, while close planets with small amounts of manufacturing have a lower value, like 0.5. If the minimum for planets outside of the optimum range is 1.0, I'd expect the nearer planets to have a minimum of 1.0 as well. But instead of bringing up the minimum for near planets, I think I'd rather see the minimum removed for distant planets.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Also, I was curious of how the game handles starport construction when normal placement isn't possible... I might have gotten carried away.

I'm not sure if there should be some point at which starport construction can't happen due to blockading vessels, but for now, it doesn't appear there is such a point...

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