The Good:
Camera control and zooms feel more stable and less erratic.
Closing the program will not create a memory leak any longer. Great work fixing this!

The Not So Good:
Audio stuttering still exists.
Getting prompted about 'hostile approaching' can be nerving especially with a large empire and enemy fleets jumping in and out of your own gravity wells.

The Bad:
AI diplomacy needs improvement, very fickle and changes their stances way too rapidly.
Trader AI, kept sending trader ships even though my fleet was blockading a system.
Research tree maxed with only 2 research stations in ~4 hrs. But I only conquered 2/3rd of current solar system.
Repetitive gameplay once a well-balanced and experienced fleet was assembled. Opponent AI got steamrolled pretty quickly. Only thing slowing progress down was the large number of static structures.

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Gameplay experience:
I played a medium sized game (2 solar systems). Had 3 opponents. Left everything else at default. Started the game, grabbed a few planets, placed my choke point, secured my 'arm' of the phase lanes. Then I began to hunker down and improve both social and military research. (I'm one of those that enjoy going up the research trees in most sim games)

Basically I spent over 5 hrs on that game and had not conquered both solar systems. Was I playing the game right? Are medium size maps supposed to last longer than 5hrs?

I 'think' I have conquered about 2/3rds of the FIRST solar system let alone visited the 2nd solar system. I maxed research in about 4 hrs, probably could have done it faster if I wasn't micromanaging my fleets and had more research stations. And I realized that Armistice was slowing my expansion progress Current AI wasn't posing a problem.

Once tech tree was max, the gameplay just wasn't fun anymore. It felt like a chore:
1. jump into enemy territory
2. steamroll opposing fleet
3. bomb the living lights out of the opponent colony
4. re-colonize the planet/asteroid
5. mop up any last opposition or static structures
6. rinse and repeat

I even parked one fleet near the edge a gravity well, and let them blast trader ships that warped in. I did not use Phase Inhibition structures. The capital ships there managed to gain a few levels of experience from just shooting down opposing traders. Before I stopped playing my fleet was *still* shooting down traders (they just kept coming and coming), the AI did not stop that trade route, but then again was there any real economic penalty for loosing trader ships? Great way for cap ships to gain experience though - exploitable bug?

I don't recall reading any warnings on cultural / influence working. Was the feature working in the beta? One of the AI built like 10 of those broadcast structures but didn't flip any of my planets.

Would be nice to have a 'capture' option, to capture enemy structures like spies. Or at least to avoid the need to destroy everything in the system.

Gaming Experience feedback:
The updates are great and indeed bringing a polished feel to the product. Not once did the beta crash on me. But the AI and gameplay needs looking into. The strategic element needs to be addressed to maintain the 'fun' level of this game. Afterall we are controlling 'empires' here, other than the diplomatic screen (which also acts as a trade menu to the blackmarket). After the first 3 hrs I did not feel that I was making important 'empire'-shattering decisions. Should we be enforcing taxes on the population, conscripting new recruits, work on our popularity votes, do more for the Home-world, etc...

Micromanaging fleets is fine. But it can get tedious at times, some form of automation might help. Like perhaps - attack capital ships, attack frigate-class ships, attack enemy offensive structures, attack support structures, attack colony, defend cap-ship etc. That way each ship in the fleet has a role and then we don't need to micromanage everything.

I maxed out the tech-tree 'comparatively quickly', all with only 2 research stations in my empire! I am not sure how the final game design is supposed to be. Was the tech tree supposed to max out *WAY* before the game ends? Neither do I currently have suggestions on how to improve or 'stretch' the tech advancement. Perhaps at a later date when the tech tree progression is under the microscope.

If you made it this far... congratulations Thanks for reading my long feedback. Granted I might be playing the game wrong, so comments on my gameplay style are welcome.


My PC:
WinXP SP2
Shuttle SN25P
AMD 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ (2GHz)
2 Gig of RAM
Nividia GeForce 7800 GT
Via Envy24PT hardware audio (onboard)
All graphics settings at default except resolution @ 1920x1200 or @ 1280x1024