Beta 1 Impressions and Suggestions

from Stardock Forums
Hi all,

After having only played the beta for about 1.5hrs I'd like to offer some suggestions for future beta builds.

Here are just some points I noted down on paper:

- The ability to view what each enemy planet is building, from space, should (in my opinon) be taken out of the game. It unbalances the game by giving the enemy too much information on each planet.

- The ability to queue research projects should be put into the game. It kinda sucks having to manually click on each project each time one finishes.

- This will probably not be in the game but I would like to see the ability to customize ships. I just think it 'feels' kinda basic to have a new ship version appear after you've researched the technology.

- Whats with all those space debries that give extra bonuses? I think they should be taken out because it just makes the game feel like some space shoot-em-up game where you collect powerups. If you insist that they should be in the game then make them just pure eye-candy because with the current setup I feel that its just too unbalanced and just plain cheesy.

- We are only allowed one save position? I think there needs to be more than that :)

- The invasion of a planet. Whats with the random number generator? Feels more like playing the pokies then anything else. I think a better way is just to have a pre-determined figure calculated before the ground combat beings.

- Diplomacy music. Boy I gotta say something about this :). I think what you currently have now is OK (apart from the Drengin music, damn thats just plain nasty, in my opinion :)). What I think would be better is to have a default backround music file for all races. I personally would like to see the Arcean music being played during all diplomacy negotiations.

- The survey ship that you get at the start of each game seems a little overpowering and is a little big. Perhaps what would be better is just to start off with a smaller scouting type ship that isn't capable of attacking anything.

- The ability to build ships immediately after colonizing a planet should be taken out. I think the ability to build ships should only happen once you have a shipyard.

- Managing more than one ship in a single tile is messy to say the least. What I think should happen is that you click on the tile and a small screen pops up allowing you to select which individual ships you want to move out, or perhaps the option of moving all the ships out in a single group.

- When you select a Colony Ship it says theres XXX amount of military troops. Instead of military troops shouldn't this be "civilians"? or "colonists"?

- Clicking on a solar system shows all the importent information like what quality each planet is, how much population they have, etcetc. But I would like to see just a small sentence on the bottom right of each planet saying what they're currently producing. This is more of a timesaver feature as I find it quite irratating going inside each planet to know what they're producing. Its just simply much easier to view what each planet is doing via the solar system.

Bugs I've encountered so far:

- The Population and Treasury labels on the bottom left of screen tend to dissapear.

- Clicking twice on the chosen race in the "Race Setup" screen makes their picture dissapear.

- Typo error. When colonizing a planet I got a message saying some advanced ship is sitting in space and would I like to invade it (something along those lines). The middle choice has a typo where you have "mush" where it should say "much".

It should be noted that I haven't tried any of the spying features yet.

Well that's about it so far. If anyone has any other suggestions then feel free to reply :)
270 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I happen to like the power-ups. they are an integral part of the game.

I think you'll find that the save stuff isn't fully in the game yet.

I don't think it sucks at all having to pick the next technology. After all the one you are researching may lead to a technology you want next. You can't select the 'unknown' technology until you research the first one. Also what happens to change in strategy?

BTW, the idea behind the ships just appearing is so you don't have to micro-manage the construction of ships.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Hi Aeam! Let me go down the list and answer/comment on what I can.

"The ability to queue research projects should be put into the game. " - The reason this isn't in deals with Brad's philosophy that Future techs can't be known by a civilization until the prerequsite techs have been fully researched. A queue without all the techs listed would require the player to edit the list whenever a new tech is completed, kinda defeating the purpose. We could, however, simply add new techs to the bottom of the list, or have a priority setting (research techs that deal with trade, then warfare, then economy ect.) Thoughts?

"I would like to see the ability to customize ships. " - this is actualy the idea with the Survey Ships, the ones that go around and search anomalys. By searching debris, there's a certain % that you'll get something that upgrades your ship. Right now, the upgrading is random, but eventually the team would like to put in customization with upgrades "Youve found a precious metal. It can be used for 1. Hull Strength (HP + 2) 2. Engine Upgrade (Speed + 1) or Weapons Advancement (Attack + 1)" Then the player could decide how they want their ship to advance. Which brings me to...

"Whats with all those space debries that give extra bonuses? " This is a feature that will be staying in the game. Early on, we were running into a lack a fun in the game. We added this in to give the player more to explore early in the game, as well as another course of action to take (should I put my money towards a battleship, or towards another survey ship that I can make more powerful through anomalies). The cheesiness of the current setup comes from the fact that you ALWAYS get something, and that it's always the same 5 things. Eventually, through the metaverse, you'll be able to have countless random events that could occour through anomalies, some good, some not-so-good. Hopefully that will counter-balance your dislike for the current system. :)

"We are only allowed one save position? I think there needs to be more than that " - In the works. Something every playtester here at the office is bugging us for. ;)

" When you select a Colony Ship it says theres XXX amount of military troops - shouldn't this be "civilians"? or "colonists"?" - This will be changed for the next build.

"The Population and Treasury labels on the bottom left of screen tend to dissapear." - Something we're looking into...should be fixed by next build.

"Typo error." - Yeah, we'll be getting alot of type reports. All the current text is filler until a real writer comes in and whips up some cool sci-fi text. From my spelling I'm sure you can tell who DID write the current stuff. (:(

"It should be noted that I haven't tried any of the spying features yet." - Espionage and Destabilize features arn't in yet, but are high on our priority list.

We'll, I'll stop there. Many of the problems/comments listed above are better answered by oter members of the team, so I'll step back and give them a chance to speak.

Hopefully the game has been enjoyable to play thus far. Keep the comments coming! :)

ScottT - GalCiv Development Team
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
1) Looking at enemy planets:
A: That's mainly in so that we (beta testers) can see if there is something wrong with the AI. I.e. is the AI building what he should be at the righ ttime.

2)Queing of research projects. You can queue up social projects for your planets by assigning them a governor on the details part of the planet screen. THen in your domestic policy screen you can set up what order you want governors to build.

As for technology research itself, queing that would really be difficult since how would you queue up things you are not aware of yet? Moreover, technologies are quite important to look at before choosing since they can give your civilization new abilities.

3) Regarding space debris. These are anamolies. I don't see how these are any different than every other strategy game (Civ has huts, HOMM has all sorts of things scattered, WC3 has creeps). Right now, we've only made a few different types but if you check your directory there will be .anamoly files that you can edit and create more of.

4) Invasion of planet. There is a small but certain amount of luck involved in a great battle. The invasion of normandy would have been very different if the weather had gone bad for instance. The real job of it is to highlight the advantage factor so that players quickly come to learn the importance of researching technologies that improve soldiering as well as building planetary defenses.

5) THe music, in general, is in a state of flux. Though the Drengin music is actually my favorite. ;)

6) Survey ship is 0 attack, 1 defense at the start. It can't attack anything. Only through anomalies can it get the ability to attack things.

7) Regarding being able to build sihps without a shipyard. This is an interesting idea but the question really is how would requiring a special structure make the game more "Fun"? We've debated this internally a great deal and our current consensus is that it would merely slow down the game.

8) Regarding stacked ships. Yea, this is defiitely something we need to look at. We're open to other idas on this. I'm not sure about having a dialog pop up when you click on a stack, seems like that could get tedious.

9) Labeling of colonists. Good idea!

10) Yea, we've actually gone back and forth on that too. We don't want the display to get too cluttered but on the other hand we want it to be useful. But I do agree with you.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry for responding so late but by the time I getup (about 8am) its already very late in America so just bare with me :)

Frogboy,

About research queuing... what i actually mean by that is the ability to queue currently available research projects. Then maybe when one of those projects allows you to branch off into other areas the game might play a sound file that says something like "New research projects available". Or maybe have a little dialog box that comes up saying that and have a Yes/No box that asks the player whether he would like to change the research queue.

About the invasion of a planet, I agree with the luck factor in ground battles but is it really nessesary to have some random number generator there saying "Hit spacebar whenever you're ready!". I just think it would be more suitable to have the game calculate the conditions before going into battle.

About building ships without a shipyard. I guess you have a point in that it 'slows' the game down and doesn't make it as 'fun'. But if you're going for realisim then I just think its better to have a shipyard before building ships, one good example of this is how they did it in MOO2.

Another thing, what happens if you have a civilisation that doesn't explore as much and one that does? This will lead to imbalacing issues because on one hand you have a ship thats picking up all the 'anamolies' which then makes his Survey ship completely 'uber' and on the other you have a civilisation whose survey ship has minimal upgrades or even worse, can't attack. Whats stopping the 'uber' ship from moving into the weaker race and completely annhilating all his space ships? I'm experiencing this right now with my game because I've pickedup all the anamolies and i'm just killing space ships left right and centre. :notsure:

BoogieBac,

What I actually meant by the customizing of ships is to add certain weapons/armor/engines/etcetc to the ship. For example, Adding shielding to a ship, adding certain weapons like phasers/cannons/particle weapons, adding different types of engines like impulse/anti-matter and etc. I don't mean, for example, +1 to weapons or +1 to speed. But like I said before, I fully don't expect this customizing feature to be in the final game as it would require a lot of recoding of the game and possibly of the research tree.

Apart from what I just went through, there are many features already in the game that I like very much. Such as all the options available for foreign policy, the senate (altho it isn't working yet but looks cool :) ), and basically all the indepth stuff. I relise that more features are going to be put in before the final game but I'm just saying that at the moment the current features are pretty cool.