Hi just downloaded the beta and here are my thoughts so far.
First I’m impressed how extremely stable this game is considering this is still in beta. I have fully released games that are less stables then this. Iv played this game so far for 6 hours 5 or them straight and hasn’t encountered any noticeable bugs or crashes.
Performance so far is brilliant. I have a relatively modest laptop. 2.8 GHZ Intel 4 Processor, 1 GB of RAM, 128MB Radeon 9700 and the game runs smoothly on high detail setting and on large galaxy’s.
Few suggestions
-Planetary Invasions, seems a bit extreme wiping out a entire plant. I’m not expecting a RTS combat but perhaps a new value of ground troops added to the planetary stats independent of the planets population. The amount of troops on the planet increases with the logistics rating and planet type. Troop transports (or colony ships could double up as troops transports? Gives them a use late game) could then be sent with the special ability to land troops on the planet. The amount of troops transports needed would depend on the number of troops on the planet. If a invasion successful you get the plant with all its infrastructure intact. Invasions should cost large amounts of credits or the troop transports should be used up in the process. To me this seem like a way to make the planetary invasion aspect abit more fun without to much of a drastic change.
-A new type of super defence platform or large starbase with multiple abilities. Something that can take on a Battle cruiser or 2. Should be extremely expensive and a lot of research should be needed to build one.
-Ability to place some structures, manly defence structures round a star.
-Some dead zones which are uncolonisable. Maybe areas with a black hole, nebula or high density asteroid field, things that can affect your ships one way or another. For example High-density asteroid fields slowing damage ships passing through them, the lager they are the more damage the accumulate. Nebulas disable shields. Black hole slow ships down or destroys ships if small ships with smaller engines get to close. Also pirate bases could be found in these zones.
-In the Tech screen pop up box displayed when the cursors over a technology can get in the way when trying to select a tech especially were the shield improvement technology are concerned. Would be good to be able to collapse it.
This is all I have so far as everything else I could mention has been mentioned on the forums already.
So far it’s an extremely fun game and cant wait to see what other features are implemented.
