I have just played the game for over 20 hours and was please by many things about it. The concept has incredible potential, and that is very exciting. I do, however, have some critiques that I hope are helpful. First, let me qualify myself by saying that I have beta tested about 10 games over the years – though admittedly only one of those was a RTS. Perhaps more importantly, I have been gaming for many years and have played a wide variety of computer strategy games as well as tabletop miniatures – notably battlefleet gothic and its ilk. Lastly, I realize that the feature set is certainly fixed by now and that time to rebalance things is limited, so I will not suggest anything that goes greatly outside of the current build. I also understand the principles of making a game suitable to the largest audience possible, niche does not make a company enough money to recoup the creation costs. And lastly, I realize this is still beta and that things are being worked out behind the scenes.

All that being said, let me say why I think the game is currently floating in no-man’s land between genres, which is dangerous. It doesn’t have the rush feel of many fast games such as SC, C&C, etc, which is fine as I realize that is not the market of a 4X games. However, it lacks the depth that one would expect from a 4X games, understandably due to the nature of realtime, but there needs to be compensation for that to keep it enjoyable.

Ships

The gap between capital ships and frigates complicates many things, as does the fact that new capital ships do not need to be researched. A third "combat" tier, in my estimation, is desperately needed. The "support cruisers" are insufficient. I highly recommend, surely to def ears, that you make battlescruisers and battleships/dreadnaughts different classes. Each race already has five cap ships, so this would be a matter of each having two battleships and three battlescuisers. A player starts out with the option to pick one of the two battleships as their flagship, but they do not start with a capitalship foundry (Were this "first" ship came from need not be explained, it is an acceptable omission for game-play sake). Battlecruisers then become a researchable item, as are capital ship foundries. Two additional points to this: First, of the two battleships for each race, one should be generic (i.e. the Tec Kol) and the other should be specialized. The specialization for the other should be race specific. (I.e. Tec get a missile ship – Marza – and one race gets a carrier, and the third gets… (another weapon class that is missing – I will get to this in a moment).

Scaling

The ships are simply beautiful, separating this game from its most similar competition. Unfortunately, I never get to see them. The size difference between the capital ships and frigates combined with the fact that ships stop at max weapon range means that I am almost always zoomed out to a distance to where I cannot enjoy the capital ships in their full glory and can barely see the frigates; and on top of that fact, many small fights go unobserved as I manage my empire, adding up to the player almost never get to see most of my ships. Thus, you have neutralized one of the areas that could set this game far from its competition – a fact that will not go unnoticed by reviewers. Two solutions to this problem are scaling and movement. As far as scaling goes – assuming my above recommendations on ships were implemented – should be as follows: Battleship: Full. Battle Cruisers are ½ of a BattleShip, Cruisers are ¼ of a Battleship, and frigates 1/16 of a Battleship in size. This will allow the graphical features of the game, a major selling point to reviewers and players alike, to shine, rather than become nearly irrelevant.

Movement

As stated, the fact that my ships engage at full distance means I have to zoom out further to manage them, and makes for a generic feel, and makes for very unbalanced gameplay. The first two are self-evident, but let me explain the latter. A frigate would NEVER sit there and get pummeled by the main fore gun of a powerful battleship. Frigates exist specifically because they CAN stay out of the way of such guns. Thus, frigates should be programmed to maneuver away from the main guns, thus keeping them constantly in motion, and since the weapon’s arc increases at greater distances, they would try to keep closer to the larger ships – LRM’s excluded. The result would be a) a less generic/static feel, more ships closer together so that the player can view them all at once from a more intimate, exciting vantage point, and c) changes the power relationship between capital ships and frigates, therefore making support craft all the more important. Frigates and cruisers should both be able to stay out of the way of main battleship guns, while battlecruisers and battleships obviously should not be able to maneuver fast enough to do so.

Weapons

As the weapons are now, there is a major category lacking, and that is the close range powerful. The TEC, for example, would probably have "rockets" which can pummel other capitalships rapidly should they maneuver close enough for a broadside. Lacking a close range punch weapon adds to the "static" and distant makeup of current engagements – no ships have an incentive to get closer. And to tie this back into the "ships" section, the third race’s second battleship would specialize in this close range weaponry. Making for interesting engagements in which the larger battleships are jockeying for position that best utilizes their weapons and minimized their opponents.


That is really all my complaints wrapped into one post, which is encouraging actually. I realize they are simple in presentation though fairly large in scope with significant implications on gameplay. But I fear that without these changes, or ones similar, the game will lack the depth and combat complexity to fully satisfy the target audience, while being too slow and obscure to completely please the fast paced fanatic. I hope that these comments have been helpful and it is understood that I am not flaming trying to bend this game to my personal taste; I have a broad demographic of players in mind. Thanks.

PS: I read on a forum that the warp inhibitor used to stop enemy fleets from jumping. The suggestion I read about giving it antimatter and have it drain as it holds the fleet there sounds like an optimal option, while making a cruiser/battlecruiser with a focused warp inhibitor seems reasonable as well. And I did not mention in the ships section that I really think that each race needs at least one fully combative cruiser. A larger/stronger hull would separate it from the frigates, as well as two weapons (ie. Laser/autocanning, laser/rocks, autocannon/missles), instead of the frigates one.

Thanks,
Mak Wu