As you move the fleet out towards the edge of the gravity at the beginning of the basic gameplay tutorial I think it might be good to insert an instruction on how to group assign ships / fleets. There isnt an instruction on how to do this currently and while most of us already know how to do this from previous RTS experience other may not and its bound to be a vital tool in playing this game.

Also, just after this I warped my fleet to Novalis and destroyed the pirates there .. the hint text then informed me that my capital ship had gained an experience level and that I should give it a new ability. Upon entering the ability management screen all the ability upgrades were greyed out and unselectable, I spent a good minute looking at this and reselecting the ship before deciding to move my fleet a little further in towards the planet, as I did this the graphics and sounds triggered that indicated the ship had leveled up and I was able to choose an ability. The delay this time was too long and would leave players confused as to whats meant to happen. This didnt happen the first time I played the tutorial and I will see if I can recreate it.

Ok, finished the tutorial at the second attempt. It seems that the hint text stating 'Another trader faction has established a foothold here! Detroy it immediately!' is meant to appear as you phase jump to the third planet, this didnt happen the first time I played it. Also I didnt receive the siege frigates the first time which, incidently, made destroying the planet much easier It seems that something snagged and didnt allow the tutorial to go through its sequence.

When I did finish the tutorial at the second attempt and clicked ok to continue it crashed and created a minidump file (have sent this in). I'll play through it a few more times to see if the errors recreate.

Combat seems slow to me. Ships (except fighters) just stand there and shoot at each other. It's pretty slow to me. I'd suggest making at least frigates move similar to fighters while fighting - this'll make fleet combat a lot more lively and seem more fast pace IMO.

Also, ships should have to move to the side of the gravity well with the space lane that they will be traveling before going into phase warp. Right now, they can phase warp through gravity wells as soon as they arrive, and it bugs me to no end when I see it.

One last thing - the tutorial, though informative, could be so much better wit a little voice acting. Just have someone read out what the tutorial tabs are saying and it'll be easier to follow it while learning.

Aside from that, it's pretty fun to play - even in this first beta! I am very impressed!

For the tutorial, a little "back" button would be handy in case you wanted to double-check something on the last box. ... or if you are clumsy like me and accidently give the ok button a double-click and skip one of the boxes.


Also, in the research, diplomacy, etc. screens the little X to close the screen could stand to be a bit bigger. I keep trying to click it quickly but slide off the X before releasing the mouse button and it doesn't close.

Almost forgot this: Sound channels are very low. I only get a few sounds going at a time - very annoying at times. I have a sound blaster audigy 2 wih the EAX turned down to nothing (it's amazing how much video card time that took up!).

[EDIT] Oh, and the background nebula absolutely must be more varied. It's disconcerting to have a gull 360 nebula at times. I'd suggest making smaller nebulae with different shapes and color separated by space with little twinkling stars. More atmosphere then anything. [/EDIT]

The economics tutorial seemed super short... And didn't even let me build a trade station...

Loving the game so far! Bit of feedback of my own.

1) The focus-lock prompted by hitting the 'M' key should be automatically unlocked if you hit any of the arrow keys or move the mouse to the sides. Currently I think it sticks in that mode until you hit 'M' again.

2) Keeping track of selected units across numerous planets is tough. The only indications right now that you have a unit selected is a little gray blip on the side-bar, and occasionally a white notch on the planet's overview. When you have a ship or a group of ships selected and you're zoomed out past mesh-level, you should have a gray or white arrow pointing to each planet at which that/those ships are located. Ideally, that arrow should have the icon(s) of the ship(s) selected, but that could get too crowded.

3) Also about ship selection, I always organize my fleets using number assignment. By that token, however, when flipping between groups, I have a very hard time keeping track of what ships I have selected and how many of them there are. Having a little list at the bottom of the screen that tells you how many of each ship you currently have selected would be a lot easier than counting ships on the side panel. That way if you lose one of your ships, you can more easily notice and reinforce that fleet with an additional unit. Maybe it could pop up for a few seconds when you select a ship or a few ships (or hit a number hotkey) and then fade after a moment or two if the screen gets too cluttered.

4) After playing Supreme Commander, I got very used to moving around the map with the costant and vigilant use of my mousewheel. It's great that you can do this in SOASE. The one beef I have with this is when you accidentally slide your mouse over the information/chat box and you scroll up or down in that rather than moving the camera. I'd suggest that instead of using the mousewheel on that box (which I'll admit is very convenient), you use PageUp/PageDn to navigate that box, and any mousewheel-scrolling over that box still controls the camera. This could be an option, perhaps?

5) This could just be my impression, but the upkeep penalties are brutal. Rather than a percentage, they should be a static number in my opinion. It seems like there's little difference in penalty to having thirty ships and one planet, and having thirty ships and twenty planets.

I agree about upkeep. If it has a hard number, its based on your economy more than -50 percent economy for 20 ships

Also, are there any other backgrounds than that rosy orange one? And if so, is there an option to get them? The orange gets extremely annoying.

There is a blue and green background that I've seen so far also...

I too would like to see options for:

1. Slower/Faster phase space jumps
2. Slower/Faster research times
3. Higher/Lower upkeep costs (limiting or raising the unit cap basically)
4. Enable/Disable Phase space disruptor (currently sometimes I really DO want the enemy to leave and have to scuttle my inhibitor)


5. And this is really out there, but I would like an option to put all of a ship's power to its shields and engines. That way I can have a valuable capital ship (or the flagship in the last flagship standing mode) make a run for it with a higher chance of getting away.

Hi there, I just finish the tutorial. The game is good so far (but a little bit like haegemonia). only some suggestions/requests:

-It would be great native compatibility with the Logitech G15 Keyboard's LCD.
-a star-trek like shield glow when a shielded ship is hit.
-A better use of 3d movement (for 3d tactics)
-More ship movement when in battle
this until now.

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by the way, run just fine in a pentium 4 ([email protected]), 1GBRam, asus gforce 7600 GS.

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Regards

I agree with the ship movement, they just sit there... So I now manually try and move them around for a little more action, lol....

Ok, another suggestion for the pile: How about providing a toggleable window in the upper right corner that has two modes: either we can lock it to a view of something we want to keep track of or, alternately, have it display a realtime view of the unit or planet we are mousing over in the Empire Box? The latter would be particulary helpful, as it would cut down on a lot of the useless moving back and forth between planets just to see what's going on.

An issue I found:

Ok my ally has a planet and the crystal and metal mines associated with it. The planet is invaded and bombarded till it reverts to neutral. I retake the system and colonize the planet.

However, my allies old mines are still there so I can't use those resources. And it doesn't appear they are using them either. So those resources are lost to everyone until and enemy AI invades and destroys them. (Teams were locked so I couldn't just back stab them and take the resources.)

Suggest an option to hide icons for friendly traders/refiners altogether, to make it easier to select stuff in zoomed-out view.

One thing about game setup, when you make a game the same TEC Colour and Name are used for Player 2, Player 3...etc every time. Maybe the name could be linked to the colour and then you can select to colour of you enemy.

Thats weird , my last game players 2,3,4 were different color and names...

I know this is more the UI category, but adding a window or something that allows you to see what ships you have selected would be very useful in tactical battles. Right now I have to do it all by memory and eye - which makes it hard to compose uniform fleets.

Refinery ships need to ignore rally points, otherwise we end up with a pile of braindead freighters piling up and loitering about.

The ships you have selected should appear on the left side of the screen with white boxes around them.

Oooops! My bad. Wheres my dunce cap?

Anyway, is there a 3D star map in the works? That would be very interesting to play on in this game (It's already in SOTS, but thats turn based).

Yes, but there is only limited distinction between those ships and the other ships at their respective systems. It's not always easy to catch all the ships. Also, you're forced to count each little icon to see how many ships you have. Having a little window at the bottom of the screen similar to the one seen for planet overviews like:

12x Heavy Frigate
1x Kor Battleship
2x Bomber
3x Scout Frigate

would be immensely helpful. Also, as I said before, it's never very clear where all those ships are when zoomed out past mesh/icon level. Yes, there are little white blips on the left of the screen and sometimes over the planet itself, but you have to be very tuned into the interface to catch them all. Outlining the planets or marking them with arrows when you have a ship currently selected in their orbit or jumpint to them would be a wonderful help.

Agreed. Until we get around to making it easier, you may find it helpful to activating the stacking icon so that your ships are shown more compactly (less counting little icons). By default they stack in sets of 5.

1.when an event happens and is displayed in the text box i would like to click on it and take me to that event.
2. when a cap ship levels up i would like a star or some other signal above it so i can find it really fast in the middle of a fire fight.

I don't know if I like the white box method currently implemented. As its hard to actually see what kind of ship it is, lol. Could we have an option for text as a replacement? Else I'll prolly just get used to it. In homeworld it used to say 16 x "type of ship" selected or something like that... I haven't played HW in awhile.