Hmm, there should be a little white plus sign on the ship's icon and around its mesh view should have a big glowy white particle effect.

I'm going to ramble a bit about the production/economic aspects, since that seems to be what takes most of my concentration, and not in a good way. Also, I hate making comparisons to other games, but I will anyway. Blair asked specifically to post my opinion on this, since I guess you guys disagree about it a lot...

Now, a lot of this could be alleviated by some UI improvements, which I don't think we're supposed to provide feedback on yet, so I'll shove those comments to the bottom. The main source of my aggravation is having to, constantly, stop what I'm doing whenever I get enough $$$ to build a ship, find an unused shipyard, and build it. Not doing this is wasting my production capacity, and letting my opponents build ships/research tech/whatever sooner while by buildings are idling. The two obvious ways to alleviate this is the SupCom way, which might be a little overkill (and require a lot of UI work in addition to coding), and a global production queue way.

The SupCom way, for those unfamiliar, is that building something drains the resources out of you over the construction time, so if you have a $100 ship that takes 10 seconds to build, it drains $10 per second. If you run out of money, construction on everything slows to what you can afford. So if you're building 3 of these ships in 3 different shipyards, and are broke but are making $10 per second, you'll finish building all 3 in 30 seconds (or you could pause/cancel two to finish the first in 10 seconds). This is actually a lot like how most 4X handle spending, now that I think about it. Bonus points if you could intentionally slow a facility's build rate and loop build queues, so that you could say "I am going to spend $5 per second on ships at this factory, and build 3 scouts, 2 flak frigates, and a siege frigate over and over".

The global production queue, I'm not sure if I've seen before, but it's something that could be more directly thrown on top of the standard RTS resource system. Everything works normally until you try to spend resources you don't have. When you try to build something that you don't have the resources for, or if something is already in the global queue, it gets thrown into the global queue. As soon as you have enough resources to pay for the oldest thing in the queue (whether ships, research, facilities, whatever), the resources are paid and it is removed from the queue (construction starts as soon as the constructing unit becomes available). So exactly like now, except that you can queue up stuff to build once the funds are available. You should also be able to add stuff to both ends of the queue, so that you can go "I need these things now, and then go back to whatever I had queued up before." Now that I think about it, actually being able to bring up a display of this queue, maybe pop in/out horizontal bar from the sides, to manipulate it would be awesome. Like middle click to zoom-to construction location, left+click+drag to reorder, right click to remove or something. Yes... for this game, I might actually prefer that.


Minor random UI stuff. Could list lots of things if I wasn't trying specifically not to thing about it
Icons indicating whether a planet is has idle constructors or shipyards. An indicator of infrastructure level would be nice, with an additional indicator if population is at maximum while infrastructure is not. Indicators on ships with unspent ability points/unallocated squadrons without having to select them.

I've seen a big glowy white particle effect when it levels up, but it only lasts a few seconds, and so that doesn't help if I'm managing things in another system (darn CPUs won't just take turns fighting me ). Haven't noticed a plus sign, I'll look for that in the future. Most of the time, I have to go to all of my fleets and select every capship to see which ship it is, since the level up message doesn't say where the ship is, and the planetary force mouseover doesn't have capship names (since they're grouped by class).

yeah sorry should have been more specific, i have seen that particle affect but it is temporary. i have seen the plus signs but i always group my ships and there is a plus oven all the ships in the group i was wonder what they where i will see if i can get a screen of it for you.

i went back and looked more closely at what at i saw i think it is something else it looks more like a cross hair and its red. i cant post a screen the forum is being funny.

I’ve managed to find the time to play a bit more last night and I have a couple of suggestions.

UI
I would like to see some indicators that blink where each warning message is coming from. On large galaxies it’s quite difficult to discover where the action is. I would like ships to blink on the strategic view whenever they are under attach or about to jump. I would like some sort of visual recognition if a planet detects inbound enemies.

Queue-able build orders would be great too without needing the supply of money beforehand.
The ability to give an infinite build order for certain types of ships. As is the case in Galciv. I.e. just build flak frigates till the end of time.

Graphics
Larger size variations, I would love to see different sizes of ships. Scout-frigate = small, siege frigate = 2 * Scout-frigate, destroyer = 8 * Scout-frigate, battleship = 16 * Scout-frigate.

At the moment the largest ship is roughly 4 times the size of the smallest ship. Which adversely affects the felling of the game. A battle ship should be the apogee of military, economical and industrial might, at the moment it’s visually just a slightly more impressive frigate.

More blinking lights would also be appreciated. Also city lights would be cool, especially if they grow with the population.

But other than that It’s an amazingly stable and enjoyable demo. Congratulations to everybody who worked on it.

I’ve tried to create a number of screenshot for text problems but even the low res ones seem to be insanely huge in JPG format. Probably something tot do with the 2560*1600. I’ll see what happens if I cut down the resolution.

One thing which would be nice to have is some kinda of victory point / galatic conquest indicater to show how close you are to winning the game. Other then that I'm loving the game

Once you take all the planets I guess you win, lol... It was mentioned before having a capture and hold certain planets for a victory point type of game, but I forget where I saw it on this forum....

I would like to be able to form my fleets into formations, it just looks cooler having a large fighter squadron fly in a "claw" formation instead of the way it is now when they just fly around, acting like bees

When I double click a planet, it would be great if the game centered the camera and zoomed into that system.

make the planet bombardment weapons appear from like a turret or something, insteda now the shots is just appering next to my ship, flying towards the planet.

an icon showing how much of a tech you´ve researched when you are not at the research screen would be great.

fighters shouldnt be able to fly through planets and no ships should be able to phase jump through a planet either.

I think it would be cool if your fighters had to dock with its mothership before going to phase jump. becasue I think smaller ships shouldnt be able to fit a warp engine.

If you have made a group of a bunch of ships they should wait for each other before making a phase jump, instead of just jumping as soon as they can. at leats some sort of command to have them wait.

how about some physics; when a large ships hits a smaller ship with a large weapon, the smaller ship would be pushed aside by the force of the weapon impact.

boarding ships? smaller ships, like assault shuttles could be launched, trying to either take over an enemy ship or try to destroy or disable it from the inside.

make the orbital factorys etc connected to the planet and more "orbital" than they are now

I must say I think the gravity well is to small. since its only in these you fight and move your ships, it feels a bit like little arenas for ship more than it feels like space.

maybe a variety of size of the gravity wells. like some planets would have a stronger gravity and thus making it harder to escape.

special planets or just areas that could either be usefull or harmfull to your ships. like an ion cloud area that would disable your shields etc.

maybe some space amoeba like in MoO2

oh and please change the sound effect: Weapon_TechCapitalLaserLight_Muzzle.ogg 1, 2 and 3. It doesnt sound very great.

Regarding the point about having to stop, find a shipyard and build something, I might have agreed with it when I first started playing the game but I now find myself going straight to the empire control panel on the left, selecting a stardock or construction frigate and building from their control panel at the bottom of the screen no matter where I am in the system rather than jumping to the planet. Its much easier and is (Im guessing) the way it was intended to be used? If thats the case then maybe the question should be 'Is everyone picking this up? Are people finding that an easy way to build across the solar system all at once? In reference to an earlier point, more distinctive icons for each ship / module type in the empire panel would make this easier.

I agree with TherilAlPenn's point on idle unit icons, perhaps they could be a different colour in the empire panel to make them stand out? This would be handy for your construction units in case you miss the announcement regarding construction finishing, especially if in a fight at the time and/or having queued construction.

As Ch0Arrim mentioned before:

When I've grouped a number of ships with ctrl+# it would be nice if they waited for each other before jumping. As it is the ships (even when they are all at the edge of the gravity well) kind of straggle into phase space and arrive at the enemy planet in detail.

Also for the repair modules/stations. It would be nice to see an indication of their range, as it is I'm unsure when placing it if it will cover my defenses. Perhaps a simple circle indicating its range?

Different sized planets? Larger/more massive ones with bigger gravity wells.

Lastly, an option to set the background nebulae color before the game starts would be pleasant. I keep seeming to get peach and green, when I really want to try the blue.

I found the inverted horizontal rotation to be very annoying. I think that at least there should be an option to switch it to normal.

My Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 processor running at 2.4 Ghz
approx 1.3 Gigs of RAM
128 mb integrated graphics card

I think that an auto save function should be added in, for when glitches mess up the game, and for other instances.

Great Game

In contrast, I like jumping 'through' a well, and would like to suggest one change that will get more people in tune with this feature.

The change is to show people in advance, in the tutorial. If it comes as a surprise people _will_ be unhappy, the game looks 2D enough that it's unexpected. If, in a tutorial, an enemy scout does this to the player, and the popup tutorial box says to guard the entry point close, or build inhibitors, that would be fine.

The reason it's great is that it creates an epic, science-fiction feel. It shows the player that the designers know very well it's a 3D world, by showing a ship flying 'over' the gravity well. It creates more tactical choice by making the areas of a gravity well close to an entry point a bit different from the rest of the well. There's a reason to manually place ships / defenses there.

In a way it fits in with the micromanagement argument. If you do no micromanagement, better have an inhibitor or you'll get scouted. If you hand-place some units in the right places you can help against this.

Possibly it could be emphasized by having arrivals appear deep inside the gravity well, to give the defenders a fair chance at stopping an escape.

Otherwise - yes, people are being surprised by it, but take away the surprise and you have an elegant design feature.

Two things - First the mouse control feels a bit odd the zooming in and out doesn't feel as smooth as the way Supreme Commander's works - for some reason sometimes when I go to zoom in it doesn't always go exactly where my mouse pointer is - it'll end up just a bit off (if per say the mouse pointer is at the far left but i'm already halfway zoomed in) - the game really needs to prefer to strafe (move the camera left/right/forward/back) over zoom in.

Secondly - not really a beta 1 issue but - has anyone noticed what 10 bombers does to ANY fleet sent against you?

If you right click on the move icon you can se if the group should wait for each other, that way all ships in a group arives at the same time.

I agree on the fighters part. but so far fighters seem a bit wiered. Id like a option to simply say they should stay docked unless enemys are around, or even another option forced em to be doced even with enemy around. As it is now fighters dont automaticly dock. I would hate having to dock em manualy whenever i had to jump.

Id like to see some basic formations to, just to get some cohesion in yout fleet when they are floating around.

I agree sjet, an autosave would be great.

A small thing that would be nice also is to allow us (when we start a custom campaign) to choose the color of the background of the solar system we start in. So far I preferred the Blue and Dark one, I think the red background reduced the visual impressiveness of the battles. So would be great to choose.

I find that panel to be almost totally useless in its current state for controlling my empire once I have more than about 10 planets or so, which is where a little help starts getting useful. It takes too long to click every planet to see which one it is, and expanding one of them takes up about half my vertical screen real estate if it has any decent amount of things in it, so I can't just leave them expanded because then I can only see about two systems without mad scrolling. Since I usually can't remember where all my planets are by name and what order they appear in the list, I have to zoom out anyway to see where the planet is, since where I build things is kinda important. For defenses I'd have to go to the planet anyway, but I should just be able to lay out my defenses once when I colonize the system, not a piece every 10 seconds as the money comes in. Can this list be reordered manually? If I could put systems in order the way I want, I could probably use it much more effectively.

Also, it is really irritating when the list jumps around while I'm shift-clicking ships in it. Being able to drag-select ships out of this would be nice too; often I just want to grab all or most of the ships of a particular class out of a system, or all non-fighters and non-colonizers, or something like that, and the ship sorting in the list is handy for that.

About all I use it for after the very beginning is selecting an individual ship out of a crowded system.

Not sure whether this goes in Gameplay or Technical, but: how come I can't access games I've saved manually from the main menu? The only games I can load there are autosaves. I have to actually start an autosaved game and then access the Load screen from within the game to load a manually saved game. Also, "pause" persists over game loads. Iow, if I pause the game and then load a saved one, when it starts up it's paused as well. I'm not sure whether that's intended or not.

That would be a technical one. You should be able to see your save games...

Thanks for your input! There have been several other related comments about the empire tree as well. We have some helpful fixes in the works that should make the tree easier to manage for you.

Geez, I'm an idiot. I figured it out. Sorry.

I've noticed that I can issue build and research orders while paused, but not movement orders. Maybe that's intended, I don't know, but in either case the scroll button on the Empire Box should work while paused and it doesn't (the button moves but the list doesn't). Also, when saving a game, a list of my previously saved games isn't visible. I can only manually type in a name.

Actually, you can issue movement orders(and most other actions), there just isn't any visual indication of the order until you unpause. Also if you open or close a branch of the empire tree, it doesn't actually change until you unpause as well.

What exactly do shields do(i know they protect the ship) are they simply an extension of the health bar. i see on the info card about shield mitigation but the hull does not seem to go down until all the shields are gone.

There doesn't appear to be an option to clear rally points completely once one has been set for a planet. That would be something good to have somehow.