Yeah what he said, PSIDAR doesn't seem to be doing much...

thats merely a quick fix, the issue will still stand.

so throwing around money will make your couples "work" faster?

yes, but its only 1/4th of the game (one X!) so it should be a normality, not a law.

thats hopelessly naive, just because it doesnt say "X-turtle!!!" doesnt mean that its not a valid, and rather popular, strategy.
in fact, the current allegiance system promotes turtling over expansion in its own way.

thats 15 points, and I would expect at least a couple trade ports, bringing it up to 19! for that you would need almost 5 completely upgraded planets. planets

it works as it always has, it expands your radar from 1 jump to 2 jumps from your planets.

So feedback after 1 finished medium game (4 med and 2 hard AI)
My config 2 GB RAM, core 2 duo 2.9 ghz, 6800 GTS

-music is good. Although could use more tracks
-amazingly addictive game so far
-Game pace is quite Ok , although the time for ships to travel/jump could use shortening
-Very stable - no crashes



Most of the gripes and suggestions I have is with UI

- The rotating look should be remappable - whose bright idea was to put it right mouse button ???? -same button as default action.

-Allied ships show same colors as yours -confusing

-UI desperately need colonies summary screen (like in galciv2) - from there you should at least to be able to order planetary upgrades.

-Summary screen for ships is needed as well -finding where is your particular ship can be very difficult

-Fleet management screen -so you can assign non assigned ships ,reassign ships, change fleet composition.- Desperately needed feature IMHO

-Rally point management screen (assign ships from all shipyard to where you want from central location)

- navigation pane on the left is not very useful. - It could use planet names always displayed (put it with smallish font) .With many planets scrolling is tedious.

-Fleets could use formations

-Better control over ships in fleet. I found it quite annoying that siege frigates always run straight into the middle and get themselves killed. Some customization in term of aggressiveness of behaviour could help

-Speaking of fleet tactics. - for better control following system could be introduced:
On special screen you can select ships and assign them roles and behavior. Such as "capital ship defence", "fighter intercept", " planet bombing", "carrier defence". And distance they roam from fleet leader (stay close, med range , long range, free roam)

-AI generally sucks.

If you want to turtle, sacrifices have to be made. Like maybe you can't have 8 research stations AND trade AND refineries AND culture.

Your homeworld is a gimme. 4 points. As is your bonus asteroid. 2 points. So even if you deemed tradeports necessary (even though you have 3 refineries going and a large tax base - trade is less important than in previous betas), you only need 14 points of 'expansion'. You could achieve that with a desert planet, an ice planet, and two asteroids.

How is there a problem?

Ohh one more thing :

Battles look quite good - problem though you cant really enjoy them as most of the time you are busy (plus this look on right button issue)
Solution :

Make a camera window with preset view setting (say like in galciv2) - directors view ,top down, free look ,etc.

theres a button in setting to change that.

I've never had an issue with it. its that way in countless RTS games.

hear, hear.

???
what exactly do you mean?

use alt





yes yes yes

additionally the AI needs its own bonus in fighting the pirates, its too weak to fight off both pirates and a late-builder human player AON

the point of turtling is to bottle those up, the sacrafice should be in resources (as is realistic and fun), not in "hey, I cant build any more... just because!"

14 points, lets see
at least 6 research
3 construction yards
2 refineries
2 BCs

being absolutely and completely conservative to the MAX, thats still not enough. and keep in mind, this is with tens of thousands spent on expansion.

and lets not forget the ship cap! 5 hangers with 3 gauss and 1 repair platform with absolutely NO fleet backup (not by any stretch a huge force) was capable of taking down a massive portion of my fleet! I sent 2/3 of my entire force at one little asteroid and I lost 1/4 of my entire ship reservoir. thats pathetic, and that was with a dunov firing away repeatedly with its restore shield, two command cruisers SPAMMING embolden and target, and the rest being cobalts and LRMS with MAX upgrades in EVERYTHING blasting away.

Yes, I agree. Apart from the above point, I think one big problem I had was that the Empire Window will get extremely cluttered later in the game. This makes for LOTS of scrolling, especially for people like me who use a small screen laptop . Mind you, I played on a small map - imagine playing on a gigantic map.. the Empire Window would become a nightmare to manage.

Some possibilities to deal with this:
(1) I think one thing that would help when allied with a team and sharing 'map data' is for your planets to be separated (maybe by a bar of some sort) from allied and/or enemy planets. It would also be nice if any planets that contain your own ships (especially enemy planets) could automatically be moved to the top so that I could see 'at a glance' what's going on with any planets I'm attacking and any planets I own. Notifications help somewhat but with so many messages going on at once it's really hard to get a grasp of the entire situation clearly.

(2) Have a grouping option that lets you group planets by a variety of categories. Multiple level grouping would also be really helpful. Some examples:
1. By owned planets then enemy planets then allied planets
2. Alphabetically (Descending or Ascending), with names of the planets showing
3. By population
4. By number of ships present
5. By number of structures (logistics or defensive or all)
etc.

(3) Maybe instead of coloured squares to differentiate the number of your units/allied units/enemy units when a planet is totally simplified on the Empire window, numbers could be used. This would take up less space and allow for less scrolling.

Played my first game on medium with a small set up with 3 ai players and no roaming pirates. Some things on a positive note: 1. AI - nice job even though it is single minded. I found that the ai was heavy on defense and even put up a good counter-attack. Also, the ai reinforces a besieged system. I lost a few battles before I broke through the ai defensive lines. 2. AI tries to dominate culturally. While I really didn't see any real result from this strategy, it's uncormfortable watch the warp lines change to a color other than your own. 3. Battles are nice and tend to see-saw back and forth....they aren't always easy. 4. the AI allies against a common threat. At least that's what it seemed like when I lost a fleet in a 3 way battle. 5. Scouting a system is actually a necessity unless you want to lose a fleet. 6. I had HUGE battles and no graphic or slowdown. 7. Good UI, I could tell how many ships in a fleet, types of ships in a fleet and system statuses, Now the not so good; 1. I really don't like the fact that we are actually only playing in 1 to 4 "solar systems" with lots of planets. I'd rather see them all as star systems. It just makes the Sins Universe seem small. 2. Scale the ships, they are to a rough scale but not close to what youwould expect. 3. Fighters and bombers don't really seem to have much difference between them. 4. Since Fighters and Bombers are used alot, shouldn't all ships have a varying degree of point defense? 5. Auto targeting spreads out firepower too much. If you leave your fleet to autotarget, be prepared to lose unless you have OVERWHELMING numbers. 6. Crystals, please make them a little more available. Even when you buy them, there is never enough. 7. give us a toggle for limited/unlimited metal and crystals. Overall, a nice experience with no system issues at all. I can't wait to see what the other two races will throw into the mix.

There's no reason to support turtling as a strategy. In fact if you use your assets wisely, you can have two capital ships and a group of frigates (above 10, that's for sure) within 30 minutes with your home planet and the gimme asteroid. I don't know how much more of a turtler you can be, two capital ships and a group of frigates can destroy anything your opponent has at that point. You can also get up to tier 6 research.

there sure as hell is. its called the players.

have you tested that?

well either way I dont care. I'm not concerned about turtling: I'm concerned about the overall gameplay, which has crumbled under this new system, despite having a far better AI and pirates.

Great job guys, the game looks very promising. One thing though, could you add another difficulty level that is harder than hard. Maybe one where the AI cheats a bit, a 15% bonus to their economy and construction, or something.

Yeah, a ebil cheater AI would rock.

Noticed a few AI difficulties. They should upgrade their capital planets civilian infrastructure sooner for mo monies. They have a tendency to get their colony frigates killed by sending them in the same time as their combat ships which slows down their early expansion. They also tend to send colony ships out blindly to explore/colonize, which i guess is alright, but is asking for a Pirate Pillager pounding.

The galaxy generator seems to have taken a step back in gameplay. For example, I started a Large Galaxy game (with teams of 2-3-3-2) and 9-10 of the players started in the same system. It also has a tendency to create overlapping and confusing phase paths like so:



Annoying overlaps like this used to be a fluke but now seem to happen in every game.

Also, I ahve noticed the Gimme Asteroids occasionally being linked to enemy home planets, and home planets being linked to home planets, which is all a little weird.

And I rarely see any Volcanic worlds. Other players have complained of rarely seeing any Ice worlds, but I seem to get lots of them. Very strange.

Lastly, a small graphical irritation. When you select a star, the selection circle combines with the naturally white center to make an ugly white circle.

Thought: No selection circle on stars.

I have done it, which is why I am able to tell you exactly what you can get.

And in my opinion things have gotten better. Everything's not so simple now.

I want this
Easy (ai at a disadvantage)
Medium (no ai dis/advantage)
Hard (ai has small advantage, 10% resource or so)
Harder (ai has a big advantage, 30% resource or so)
OMFG this AI cheats. (ai starts with two planets, huge resource bonus of 50% and is rarely attacked by pirates)

also I want a part of the empire window set apart simply to hold all of your capital ships, its annoying to have them dissapear or to search through countless fleets only not to find one that needs upgrading.

that sounds good to me

Few things I noticed:

AI in ships and guns and stuff (when auto-selecting a target) will ALLWAYS favor light corvetts over anything else - when in reach.
This is only beaten by fighters going for the bombarding corvettes (koslov?)

The reason for complaining is because I see flak-corvettes as dealing much more damage (according to infoboxes) thus being a much more formidable opponent to take down.


AI does seem to travel between Star-systems, but in the one long game(29h++) it didn't even bother to take over planets in the razed system. Leaving an entire large Starsystem only spotted by several pirate nests.


Which brings us to pirates.
Boy can they be annoying. Small parties (up to 15-20 ships) can usually pop up in any planets gravwell boarder from ANY heading - is this a perferable thing?
GOOD for the pirates: When staging larger raids (with more then 30-40 ships) they start in the local Stars gravwell - where they come from? Oh well.


Which brings us to Jumping:
Pirates seem to be able to jump simultaniously - I/my fleets are very inept in doing so - and if I have a bunch of Ships grouped together I'd expect them to be travelling together... and not come drippling - crucial when facing an array of 20Gauss-Cannons


Cap-Ships AI is sooo dumb. When ordering to bombard a group of Caps (~15) they tend to fuss around, making another looping, turning here, turning there...until finally (if the moons phase is right - or...haven;t found out yet) they start to hit it. The Marzas on the other hand are MOST reluctant to attack planets. They need to be told to special-attack the planets, then they drift real close, do some magic and be done. Ordering them to normally attack results in them circling back a loooonnnng way (which can take up to a minute) until very reluctantly (see above) beginning the bombardment.


something else:
Autoplacement for structures... when playing a huge game you tend to concentrate your forces on your frontline, and building up (or rebuilding) captured systems via the autoplacement feature sure is a fast and very useful thing, but not when it comes to pirate attacks. Locating the Gausscannons at the space-lane entrypoints is a nice thing for normal adversaries, but pirates tend to jump in from another vector, and - if this system is not their real target - going for the jump-inhibitor and possibly the planet/shieldgenerator and fighterhousings which are completely unprotected.
The ideal solution (or close to) seemed for me to cluster those things in a tight knot
with the gauss-cannons surrounding the bunch - works for raiding parties (fighters have to take care of bombarding folks) - and will for players too, as when wanting to leave a system the gravwell (usually at the very center) needs to be taken down.
Greetingparties at the spacelanes can be made up from stationed bombers, which are effective for hunting down intruders.


So thats it for now,
maybe theres some useful stuff here;
Cheers
-Jonathan

Is their a reason the Turrets on the Kol were changed to these new ones? In all honesty the other turret models were far superior, made the weapon look imposing. These new ones look ok but where are the textures?

But honestly I would like Ironclad to improve the base AI first so they can provide a good challenge for an average player before sorting out to cheating. Cheating AI should be the highest tier to provide a challenge for hardcore player.


Plus, without a good algorithm behind them it won't make a lot of difference no matter how much advantage you give it. Right now, it's not like the AIs don't have enough money, they just don't use it effectively (ala spend all their fortune on bounty instead of developing planet), its not like they don't have ships, but more like they don't use them effectively (ala send the ships in one by one instead of in group).



It doesn't matter if you give the AI more resource if it doesn't use it. It doesn't matter if you give the AI more ships if it still send them in one by one. The way I see it the current problem with the AI is not about acquisition, but with management.

The current AI isn't even as challenging as the beta 1 AI, granted. Thats because of several factors. It doesnt effect whether you have an insane AI or not, though.


Although it doesnt show in the interface, flak frigates are simply terrible against ships owing to their damage type. Mostly this is hidden but rather logical. For instance, light frigates plink for very little damage against gauss cannons, but missile frigates and capital ships can rip them up.


There is a button that looks like a green arrow. Right click it to cycle between formation and dribble jumping.

what aabout adding spacestations

well obviously

but cheating should still be in there

mostly pirates, otherwise they are much better than the beta1 ai.
turn them to hard, they are capable of fighting off the pirates with ease after that (granted, they are still WAY too easy... I find hard mode to be what easy should be in the final product)

precisely.

That is a mistake actually Those turrets are a stubborn older version that came back to haunt us. This will be fixed in the next patch. Good eye!

Ok played quite a few games , time for some feedback...


- "research complete"...which research? should flash the icon.

- If something is greyed, do I have to place mouse over at it and check out the info as to why I cant build it?, or can a grey dollar sign tell me instantly that you cant build that because of no cash,or mabbe a 4/4 shows up instantly in the grey box telling you its a slot problem and how many slots you got.

- When scouts move to other systems..I want them to be automatically evasive , not aggressive. Even tweaking the range is not enough cos ships can be in range . need some sort of "return fire" option for ships.

- Obviously diplomacy needs more stuff. Cant avoid pissing potential cpu allies since your ships automatically wipe their scout frigates. Also ,you need to be able to send premade messages that the cpu understands , like "back off -select planet-" .

well thats it for now...theres more but I cant remember. Overall tho , the gameplay is fantastic and performance wise is very good.

Ok a couple of things that are bugging me some of them are leftovers from beta 1.

1st I'm really starting to dislike the light carriers. Mainly because the AI spams the hell out of them. Which brings back the issue from beta 1 of fighters not attacking the bombers. I tried to counter with my own light CV spam. Low and behold i watched 1/2 of my planetary defenses get wasted because the stupid fighters went after the carriers, and other cap ships instead of the bombers. I had to manually force them to attack bombers 1 at a time because once 1 wing got destroyed they defaulted back to attacking cap ships again. Solution could be to force the fighter AI to only target, and attack fighters, and bombers

2nd which is a similar issue to above. I had flak frigates in that fight as well. Did the flaks try to shoot down the bombers? Nooooo they went after the enemy frigs ffs's! Again i had to micro the hell out of them to attack bombers. Targeting priority's need to be worked on for these ships since they are supposed to be anti fighter/bomber frigs.

Right now if you leave your fleets, or hanger defenses on their own they are sitting ducks to the AI light carrier spam, because fighters or flaks wont attack other fighters or bombers until they are the only ships left. An AI fleet with 6 light carriers damn near wiped out a 30+ ship fleet of mixed caps n frigs, and if i left them on their own they would have been completely wiped out. Im sure microers would rejoice over this, but if you have multiple battles going on at the same time i dont want to have to chose which fleet survives. Bomber spam is good, but not if you cant rely on your fighters to defend against it.

Just from my experience playing:

1) Logistics needs to be increased to allow use of the more advanced logistical structures such as the refinery and even just the trade posts. In a long game, its very hard to balance in either of these with your research and broadcasting centers.

2) A boost in the Defensive capabilities would be nice. Either a numbers increase to allow more of a static defense to be built, or more effective defensive structures. I understand there is/was/may be a bug with the fighter/bombers not prioritizing targets correctly, but beyond this... it seems that the defenses are not adequate enough to stave off say... a larger pirate attack.

My adaptation to this was to keep response fleets in a general area, this however cripples my overall ability to attack.

Further adaptation actually led me to increase the range on the defensive turrets to that around 10000, which makes them more easily able to defend multiple angles in those hard-to-cover areas, such as the dead asteroid planets with 6-7 jump points. This made them more adequate for defense of those systems, but they are still a bit underpowered and not much of a threat to a single capital ship (granted that bombers are.)

If there was a missile, beam, larger artillery based upgrade or emplacement, that would greatly increase the chances of fighting off all these pirates

May want to think of a larger more expensive class of defensive structure that does missiles, beams, and guns like a mature defensive platform might. Think of the GOD platforms from babylon 5; had fusion rockets, a powerful long range beam weapon, and several gun turrets to defend itself from fighters and incoming rounds.

Which leads to...

3) An increase in fleet capacity would also be nice for those of us who want to use massive fleets. Having to fight off massive AI fleets would be quite fun as well.

Conversely, it may be a good idea to make the all the capacities multiplied via a drop down box in the game starting dialogs, as it appears many of us have differing opinions on this.

4) It would be nice if you could tell ships that are not in the gravity well of a planet, to go to a specific area of the desired well (if you can see within it), or to attack specific things when they jump in. It is somewhat frustrating not to be able to select another group, and have them jump from wherever they are to where they are needed. Right now this is a zoom out, right click, zoom in, wait affair... unless i am missing something.




Other than balance issues, i can't really complain about the game. Didnt figure i'd get near this level of fun with a preorder beta, but my purchase was definately well worth it. VERY addictive game. I will continue to play and reflect here, especially since i think i am forgetting a few things.