GalCiv: What confuses you about it?

I've not played as much as most beta testers, so maybe that makes me more qualified to answer!

Hitting enter to close a message window is very natural to me. In GalCiv it ends the turn instead. I make this mistake a lot...

Morale and influence will need a good thrashing out, maybe in the appendix, with a detailed explanation of how each works and how to influence (sorry) them. How does morale effect production, if at all? Things like that.

Right click to autopilot is also non-intuitive to me, I would expect right-click to get info about something. Hmmm, have I been playing CivIII too much? But even in office apps I get a menu popup when I rc on something. The first time I played (sans-reading the manual) this drove me nuts.

Another bit would be to explain what, if any, good the "excess" planets are. Still a mystery to me. Why even have all the low-grade planets? I'm thinking of other games where you could get some economic value from them (ie resources) but this game covers that with the (mmm, mind blank) resource shape thingies.

Looking back, this isn't very helpful for the original question. Sorry.

Scott

This is good stuff. The Esc key makes the windows go away.

Believe it or not, left click was the original auto pilot method. But users asked for it to be changed. Most people I think are now used to right click in strategy games. Right click was used to bring up information about what you clicked on early on but tis was changed base don feedback.

The excess planets are just there to keep the game remotely realistic. THough we do plan in an update where you'll be able to "mine" resources in a star system but that won't be in 1.0. It's one of the "goodies" in the 1.x series.

I'll second the comment about needing some detailed explanation for how morale and influence affect things.

Yes, I agree with morale and influence. But I'd also like more about espionage. Right now, I have trouble understanding the impacts of everything and what I can actually get for my investment in it.

Grifman

Ok, here's something that confuses me. Stuff like Love Mushrooms or the Translators or the Tri-Strontium Steel. Are these wonders or trade goods. I believe it says one per galaxy, but then you can trade them. I find that confusing - I still don't know the nature of these items or how they count.

Grifman

Also good vs. evil - I want to understand exactly how that works. What is the impact of the different actions? I don't know how "evil" or "good" relative actions are. What exactly does it take to move me to good or evil.

Grifman

I'll try to get a rough draft of the user manual up tomorrow evening to see what you guys think.

It will be important to be critical. Too many games come out with crappy game manuals these days. I dont't want the user manual to get ridicuously long but it needs to cover it. I'm also trying to add some humor to it so that people are encouraged to read it.

A couple of points I'd like clarified...
1) The list of items produced and messages at the lower
left window stays there until I click them, right? If so,
then is there a way to clear them all without clicking them one at a time?
2) Is there a list of planets found and their levels? Or do I really have to go looking at all of them to find a good one?
3) Also, is there a way to easily located found resources?

Diplomancy.

Not that it confuses me, but a good section describing not only how it works, but suggestions on how best to use it, is required. Hints like how to keep aggressive empires friendly, what sort of deals to be making (get cash off minors), relative merits of trading for techs/ ships/ cash/ trade good depending on the game status, etc.
This is an area that often pops up on the forum when new players are gettingg wiped out. Good use of diplomancy can turn an impossible seeming game into a fairly straight forward and enjoyable victory.

Paul.

Data Tables and Charts!

Lots of them!!! I love strategy games which give the basic data. I would love a pull out chart of the tech tree (and the improvements, and the ships) for the final game.

Paul.

Suggested games??

An interesting addition might be to get some players to write a single page game guide. Starting with the conditions they are playing at (small, rare planets), then describing their early game focus, mid game focus, and end game focus.

A handful of these would be useful in helping new players to find a style of gameplay they like and get quickly into the game. If each page guide also had a saved game which matched the description exactly, it would also act like a tutorial.

Paul.

Having a glossery,

picture of ship - description
picture of resource - description
picture of system - description
picture of anomoly - description

would be nice.

I'd like to see a strong look at the UI in there. Apparently I keep on missing a lot of features because I don't select detail/other tabs a lot.


Also, don't forget an Index/Table of Contents!

Following is stuff from another post. I have edited0-in square brackets as it wasn't written for this post and doesn't read well. The points are all about understanding key game aspects which improve play and so aid enjoyment and a manual can perhaps provide this understanding?...

12. It took me 5 to 10 transports to take each planet if i was lucky. AI was taking mine with an average 1 or two.. [could manual explain what am i doing wrong, what the dynamics are?]

13. Can the following be right? If so please can someone explain [manual??]-

a) Late game when me and the AI got Avatars (me first) the AI Avatars have something like 97 hit points [why?]mine had 60. I had no more ship improving tech to research that I know off.

I lost 3 or 4 'fresh' 60 hit-point Avatars in a row to a a single damaged 19-97 AI Avatar [why?]. I dont think I would have destroyed it if I had pounded it all day.

c) However my 69-69 Ranger beats an AI 97-97 Avatar! - they have different weapons (Ranger projectile/photon Avatar beam) is there some scissors-paper-stone at work here? If so [manual] item please!

14. [Q-what are terror stars for??] Are terror stars to expensive? I was out producing my last remaining opponent (Drengin) by around 25% i felt and then i built one TS and all of a sudden was 25k in debt and game over. I could not produce anything else and he wiped the floor with me with his 'indestructable Avatars.