Well Stardock/Ironclad guys, cool game. Got lots of constructive feedback for you but that can wait until Beta 2, as I know you're mainly looking for graphical bugs.
I do have some for you though. First off the game runs great and very fluid with my graphics card at 1280x960 with graphics on full; however, it seems that I crash about 30 min into a game at random. Doesn't seem to correspond to any particular event. When it crashes, the game locks up and another application comes up called "MiniDump" but I cant ever view that window. I end up having to Ctrl+Alt+Del to get out and restart the game.
And by the way... I know you said that Beta 1 wouldn't be "FUN" and that you'd try to make it as unfun as possible in order to only get feedback on bugs... well I tried my best, but I must say, even in an early stage this game is lookin' good and already addicting even with the few elements in the game so far. Other than the bug I mentioned earlier, It's quite impressive. Nothing quite like sitting back, building my empire to a new golden age, only to see an enemy fleet coming in from Phase Space. My small fleet and a few defensive platforms were all that defended the border world to my empire, an ice planet I had spent thousands of credits on developing as a good colony. Luckily, my ships had far more skill than the others, a veterancy gained from a successful campaign to rid my corner of the galaxy from Pirates. After a heated battle and focusing all fire on the enemies flagship, I was able to take it down. The remaining fleet seemed in disarray after the loss of their command ship and tried to run, only to be stopped by my Phase Jump Disrupter and picked off my by frigates. Not even 30 seconds after my victory the enemy was begging for a truce. Wow guys... addicting already. Can't wait to see what the full game has in store.
((Posted previously))

relative phase jumping could be quite nice

when i say that i mean the following here are three planets liked in phase by the dashes

planet 1 ---------- asteroid 1 ----------planet 2

when a ship is heading to planet two atm it hits the asteroids then instantly starts phase jumping through the gravwell and off to planet two

what i would prefer so we could stop them from reaching our main base instantaniously is:
to make it that if the phase jump of the next target is past the grav well of the place
they are at currently they have to fly through the gravwell by normal engines then phase jump

Dingbat

First thought this game is great, way beyond my original expectations.
Well back on the subject at hand.
1. The mouse has little or no options in the game(i.e. invert axes) also I don't know if it is just my computer or not, but the mouse wheel will only zoom out not in.
2. Fighters and other ships can fly through objects without problems, if you could fix that it would be great, for instance the fighters can fly through the planet to attack someone on the other side, this should not happen if you wanted to use the planet as cover. Also a part of this is if a fighter can't turn fast enough it should crash into the ship. So basically to sum this up there should be proximity properties in the game.
3. this is purely a suggestion, there is no flare between going to a planet and going to another galaxy. There should either be a different effect or once you get there you can build a jump gate network to connect the stars so that travel is faster.
4. What is the point in building the orbital facilities if they don't orbit the gravity well? Just an observation.

Thank you for your time if you read this, I know you want more suggestions on the core of the game rather than what I have suggested, but this all I could find right now that I just noticed. My system is as follows:

Windows Vista 64-(works great on this, no errors)
X2 3600+
1gb ddr2
x1950 256mb

Pathfinding could use some work.

I've had a capital ship bump into a astroid for over a minute last night. The ship would fly against the astroid be bumped back and then fly into it again and again.

My game have run great so far, so might as well add in some gameplay critisim now sincei dont have any CTD or other stuff, not yet anyway   

This might not be valid later on when the other races comes into play, but i think the capital ships needs to be differentiatet a bit more. give the carrier 4-6 squads of fighters while removing em completly from the other 4. The special abilitys also seems a bit messy. Give em each a more defined role both trough there weapons and the special abilitys.
Planet siege, anti fighter, anti capital etc. You should be able to do this without makeing it entierly rock paper scissor.

Also can we get a bit bigger ships? make the current captial ships "cruisers" and make a new class called battleships, dreadnoughts or what you like to call it   

I remember homeworld 2 had a nice scale when it came to the different ships. When you had your battlecruiser lined up other ships paled in its company. Make a ship class in the range of maybe 10k credits for the really big games.

Yeah, i've noticed that to. Doesn't happen with planets, shipyards or enemies though.


Another thing, When you try to build stuff that you haven't researched yet, all it says is "Research requirement not met" but it's not very nice to have to go by all of the 50+ items to figure out which one you need.

One more thing ()
The nice see-through stat window is murder on my framerate, Maybe an option to turn it off?

I've got the same problem, some letters are running outside the box, some run off the screen.

Oops I posted in the Main forum on accident. I will cut and paste here and hope I dont piss the admins off to bad....

I played the game for a few hours last night. My impressions so far is, for a incomplete beta, its pretty dang good. I really enjoyed the weapon effects and thought they were done well.

I do have a few suggestions though:

1. I also do not like the "jumping through gravity well" mechaninc. I find it cheesy and you spend to much time chasing down fleets running rampant in your space. I understand that you do not want to have fleets blockaded at "entry points" so you are giving them an option to escape, but I think a better way of handling this mechanic would be this.
a. Divide the Gravity well into two rings an "Inner" and a "Outer". The Inner ring would be for construction of modules and defenses. The outer area would represent the fringes of the Gravity well that prohibits Phase Jumping. By doing this you eliminate the "Blockade" but also make enemy fleets transit through a system to head further into an Empires space.
b. Change the Inhibitors function to perhaps slow the drives of ships along the Jump Lanes, or make Phase transitions longer to initiate.

2. Spinal mounts firing at rediculous angles. Don't get me wrong, I love the graphics but seeing a spinal mount look like a radio antenna with beams shooting out at 90 degree angels ruins some of the atmosphere for me. Either incorporate stricter facing rules or change those weapons to large turrets.

Thats all I have for now. Great game so far, I cant wait to see what the other builds bring.

-Frank

My quick takes on beta 1:

1. I also think that jumping through wells should be impossible. I think ships should at least have to move far enough that they have a clear line of sight to their destination before jumping (this way they can't jump through the gravity well, but they won't have to move all the way to the other side of the well either).

2. Generally, I would like to know if the pacing/speed of the game is likely to change much? To me it is way to fast to really feel "epic" at this point. It feels more like normal RTS games with fast buildup of a huge fleet etc. For instance, I would like ships to travel through phase-space much slower (several minutes travel time at least, and some substantial charge-up time before being able to jump too), and I would like the gravity wells to be much larger (twice the current diameter or more). Also, both for visual and tactical purposes, I would like the planets to be alot bigger. If the ships moved at the current speed, but these size changes were implemented, the game would feel much much more epic to me. Also, I am hoping that the final game will allow me to set the research speed etc. like in for instance galciv 2.

I'm really just putting out a feeler here. Are these pacing/size changes possible at all? How do the developers and my fellow beta-player feel about it?

Anyway, I'm enjoying the beta very much, and I'm sure the finished game will be great

I agree with you on all your points. I would also like a more "Grand" scale and feel to game.

Slower Pace
Larger Gravity wells
Slower Ship speeds
Much longer research times.

Also see my suggestion about dividing gravity wells so you cannot build in the "outer areas" to prevent blockading.

After playing some more i have to agree about the being able to so easly jump past planets, its annoying haveing to chase down fleets that run rampant inside your space... BUT!!!! at the same time i feel it might become to static i mean with fleet movements if all you have is choke points?? not sure good its only beta he he

If we had more static defences and the upkeep wasnt so high i think this would be less of a problem. As it is now figthers/bombers if they arent fully upgraded are useless if the enemy brings some flak frigates. That leaves the gauss turrets, but there range is somewhat short so you have to plaster your whole space with em.

but i think we can be at peace people, since gameplay tweaks and balanceing will change alot in the comming betas. So not to worry. Remember this first one is for compatebility how ever you spell that one. Anyway so far we have 1 side, and do we even know if its the full race we got? i mean full structures and ships? talking game balance with only 1 race etc would be like talking balance on a demo, and all knows that cant be done. Secondly they said they made this beta1 so it wasnt fun. Take it as you may but to me it sounds like they changed some things to the core game, so beta2 might be a big change for us.

about the speed, well i think it plays at a ok speed. We have a somewhat slow build up etc and then it picks up some. But i doubt the phase of the game will alter to much. Its clealy not as fast as C&C3 but not as slow as GC2 he he yes i know its a TBS  

Yeah having two different zones is a good idea. It seems reasonable to keep us from building defences at the entrance points like that, it makes it too easy to set up an effective defence without having a fleet. As far as being able to escape fast, it should generally be a good idea to send in a scout ahead of the main fleet anyway. Once you're there it should take some time (not very long, but some suitable amount of time ) before you can jump again. I just don't think it should be too easy to pass through a defended system, depending on where in the system the defending fleet is ofcourse.

Hello, Just played the beta and It was awesome. This game is really shaping up to be great fun.

My only thing with the AI is that they call me to defend planets I don't even know where they are. I wish they would put a ping or sign a damn intellegence treaty.

Other than that, my only two suggestions are to give us more anti ship frigates, becuase the only thing that can take down frigates are either swarms of scout frigates or until you get the koidiac, Cap ships.

I really love the order stacking, and the shipes auto acting. I pick up the order quene right away after my considerable Supreme Commander Experience. It is something I wish that I think will become common in RTS's just like the minimap and others. Also love the way zoom out.

I was suprised with how smooth this was all running, I was expecting something far more rough, Kudos.

I wish Carriers could carry more fighters, they seem to be glorified crusiers, only without the colonization option, by the way I love cruisers. I think that Cap ships need to have more differentiatied roles.

Ex. Cruisers are armed colony ships, Battleships are heavy armored anti-ship units, Carriers carry several squads of fighters or bombers but only anti-fighter defenses, Dreadnaughts are huge extremely expenseive death platforms that combine the aspects of all the other ships, but bigger are ruinously expensive.

I would love to see a Long range only Cap ship that fires missles, plus anti fighters weapons. Kind of like a carrier with missles instead of fighters. And an Electronic warfare frigate.

Other than that, this is turning into everything I had hoped for.

I just wanted to say thank you Ironclad for making the space strategy game I have been waiting for since Homeworld. You have put my faith in computer gaming once again.

Seconded! Best space RTS in a long time.

My suggestions:

1. Provide better feedback on the status of factories (working or idle). There is a little spark animation inside the factory when it's working, but that's actually pretty hard to see from a high camera angle, or when you are zoomed out. What you need is a more visible indicator, and one that carries over to the factory's icon (so that you can see which factories are working and which are idle by looking at the icon list on the left side of the screen). Perhaps you could have little flashing lights on top of the factory that are red when it's working and green when it's idle. This would translate to a little dot (green or red) next to the factory icon in the list and when the view is zoomed out. That way, you can easily see at a glance which factories are working and which ones are idle.

2. Similarly, it would be good to have the same sort of feedback for research. IIRC, there is a voice notification when you finish researching something, but there is no indication (short of opening the research window) of whether or not your researchers are currently working or idle. Since you can queue up multiple research projects, it would be handy to have some indication for when the queue is empty, like a little red or green light/dot on (or next to) the button that opens the research screen (if you went with the same system for factories, that would keep everything consistent).

3. Some of the icons are hard to see against some backdrops. In my current game, I'm the orange player and the "space" color is orange, which makes it very difficult to see my empire markers over planets. Zoomed-out ship icons are easier to see, probably because they have a dark outline and some dark shading in them (the empire markers are just flat orange). Even those, though, could use a little more contrast.

4. Furthermore, a lot of the ship/structure icons look very similar to each other and are hard to tell apart, especially at high resolutions (and double especially against a space backdrop that is the same color as the icons). My advice would be to make them simpler--perhaps more of a flat, iconic affair (like the empire markers over the planets, with a drop shadow or outline to make them pop against a similar-colored backdrop) rather than the detailed, two-color renderings that you have now. At 1600x1200, it's impossible to distinguish much of that detail anyway--it just makes the icons harder to read.

Here's a touched-up screenshot, to illustrate:



I really like what I see so far, though. This game has lots of promise--keep up the good work!

Great game so far. I think one "small" improvement I would made to the combat would be to make the ship move around when in battle. Right now when a ship engage combat they just stay there shooting without moving. I think if ship were moving around when fighting it would improve a lot the visual of the game and would also bring more tactical challenge.(think of nexus the Jupiter incident)

Since this is a space game, lets use all that space so that it doesn't feel like static turret shooting each other.

I also agree with maybe an option of.
Of a Slower Pace
Slower Ship speeds

Maybe also make planet bigger, I think by making them bigger the size of the ship will also feel bigger perceptually.

I think creating a "cruiser" kind of ships would also be a good idea, and would made the capital ship even more rewarding since the step would be frigate, cruiser, capital ship.

(hmmm, why not also but destroyer...)
But of course, it's already good as it is.

It's sometimes hard to tell what research options are available. It might help to, for instance, put a yellow box around all research options that can be researched, but haven't been yet. The 2- to 3-level techs are quite confusing at the moment.

Anti-Matter:
-Problem:
I know it is Beta and perhaps this is just something that was not gotten to before release. The Colonization Frigate takes forever to bring its Anti-matter store to a high enough point that it can be used for colonization. Often I have to wait a couple of minutes for it to colonize since it is using anti-matter.
-Suggestion:
either eliminate the useage of anti-matter and just use the cooldown, or switch anti-matter usage for Col. to something like Colony Points or something. These points will not be drained when jumping from planet to planet and may or may not replenished at a repair yard or something similar.

Fighter Bases and Carriers:
I have notice an incredibly small number of fighter Squadrons stationed and Bases and on Carriers. It was stated that cap ships level, what is the highest level attained and how many fighter Squadrons will a Carrier be allowed to carry once leveled?
Given that WWII saw CV(carriers) and LCV(Light Carriers) hold 80 and 20-40 fighters respectively, it stands to reason that the carriers even though in space should be able to carry more. Carriers should start out holding like at least 4 squadrons and fighter bases 4 aswell. Perhaps maybe scale down the bases maybe? I say this because when my fighters are sitting outside the Fighter base, they look as though they are flys to a bath tub. THe station is huge by comparison. As for carrirers, they should be the biggest of hte Cap ships and carry at least 4 squadrons.

Minefields:
Will they be presant in the game?

Oh yes an easy one. Let us pick our colors. It is annoying that I have to repetedly change my symbol to get a color I like.

The hint text in the tutorial is set against a semi-transparent background and is quite intrusive in its current location smack bang in the centre of the screen to the left. Am playing on 1280 x 1024 and the box is just too large and too central for my liking. I believe it would be better served being smaller and more towards the bottom of the screen and perhaps the right as the control panel on the left gets hidden behind this box and at one stage I had my fleet hidden behind it.

The hint box currently says 'Another trader faction has established a foothold here! Detroy it immediately!' ... Firstly, where is here? Im having trouble finding it and there doesnt seem to be any way to identify where the information came from or refers to. It would be nice if you could click on the hint and it re-focuses the camrea on the location for if people get stuck or want to move quickly to that point of interest.

Great suggestions MCommander. Any other comments on the tutorials are appreciated.

I'd like to see a small tooltip pop up with the name of the item when I mouse over icons in the Empire Box. Trying to watch the info box in the bottom right corner of the screen while mousing in the upper left is too cumbersome.

   you cant compare a game like this with real world stuff like WW2 aircraft carriers. But ill admit i agree that the capital ships in beta1 dont feel like they pack a punch(the do ofc but enough?) for me id like to see em as a cruiser class and then they made a new class called battlecruisers which are even bigger and more expensive. And yes the hangers look very big when you see the 2 fighter squads outside he he.
About the colony frigate it uses antimatter when it performs a phase jump. Imo i think its ok since you cant spam jump from planet to planet. Also later you get the cruiser which can colonize.

gif mindfields plz, it could be cool if its implementet right. But id be carefull since it could end up being to much micro if you have to watch every step you take.

As far as zones go, I would like to see a 1: Planet buildable area. 2: a larger grav well, perhaps with some room for ship manouvering. And 3: an even larger "arrival" area, outside of the grav well. Also I would like to see an option to actually pick the arrival area when phase jumping, you click the actual place where you want your flee to arrive and they try to get within a close distance of the spot, (and optionally, if you pick an area too close to the well, if they over shoot and end up in the well, when they emerge, the grav forces tear the ship apart.