First impressions "book"

Yes, I know this is a beta and I'm critiquing a partially finished game. If I come off as an offensive, demanding prick with too many complaints, odds are I am one anyways. I do grasp the concept however and everything listed is listed as such.

First, capital ships. Beautiful ability design, leveling system, wonderful stuff that. Unfortunately, it's also my main gripe about them. A level 9 Sova carrier is a wonderful thing to have, there's absolutely no excuse for using the cruiser carrier when you can have six beefed up squadrons with instant rebuild and whatnot for the support costs of five. They are an investment, a lengthy one, but an investment. If you don't build them early and keep them alive, you're pissing away firepower, lots of it. The shield repair, extra damage, range increases, anti-fighter weaponry, it's a massive increase in power. This is mitigated by the ability to purchase levels, but that itself is another problem. I had very few costs late game. I could have built a continual stream of capital ships, upgraded them to level 5 as they were built, and not needed to build any frigates or cruisers at all. Some people are perhaps going to say that in a real game I would get killed doing this, but how sure is that? I had six points of attack, just six. With 1500+ fleet capacity? Multiple hangers and a dozen turrets at every planet, maxed infrastructure to survive the beating from siege frigates that magically survived long enough to hit the planet, I rarely needed my ships at all for defense. A single force of six capital ships was enough to kill everything off, two of the battleship and dreadnaught, two of the shield regenerating frigate, and then one carrier and one colonizer type. I really like the capital ship designs and I find the point usage for their existence to be about right, 8-40 for instance on the carriers. However, the production costs for them are less. It's about five cruisers to equal the strength of the capital carrier at level 3, but you can't buy five of the cruisers for the price of the capital ship. Further, in a fight if the capital ship wins it goes home, if the cruisers win one or two of them go home. They don't need abilities like the capital ships have, but if a frigate survives a hundred fights it would be nice to have improvements, something along the lines of the homeworld system for instance, a frag counter with veterancy and elite status at 5 and 10 kills with minor percent increases in regeneration and firepower would be more than enough. The ships also need to be more reasonably priced. Even if they are a perfect match in firepower, and the capital ships come out with the edge after a few levels, the larger ship should always be more expensive than it's equivilent strength in smaller ones. It goes home after the battle when it wins, most of the smaller ones wont. I was losing cruisers rather frequently, capital ships almost never in a ten hour game against ten medium ai. Being a long term investment that starts out weaker and becomes infinitely more useful than a cruiser class carrier, that Sova should probably be 10k credits. They need to be treated more like heroes in a fantasy strategy game, a tactical nuke, something massively powerful, ridiculously expensive for it's initial value, but when properly deployed will bring a very nice return.

Ship speed. Capital ships are partly problematic due to this. They move really bloody fast. Not through the gravity well of a star perhaps, but really, fast. Fighters being two or three times as fast as frigates, which should be probably about twice as fast as cruisers who are at least that much faster than capital ships would be a much better system. Those capital ships, being an investment, also need to be unable to defend everything at once, and I was taking care of some of the pirate invasions by building them from my solitary shipyard at my homeplanet and having them waypoint to the invasion, kill it after buying the experience to level 5 on the way over, and then join the fight against the ai sides. Everything should jump at the same speed, but they really book it moving around. The psidar tech is nice, but really all you need to do is react late game. You've got enough money to rebuild lost structures, and you can defend your half of a 30 planet solar system with five of them in the same spot. Another, probably more important factor is turn speed and firing arcs. For an interesting combat game, one needs to have definite disadvantages and advantages to work with, formulating attack groups. The beam weaponry on the front of a capital ship that's for dishing out punishment on other capital ships should probably only fire straight forwards, the autocannon pea shooters for plinking frigates are what should be fast tracking turret weaponry. The frigates themselves, favoring mobility over turrets for targetting purposes wouldn't neccessarily need turreted fire at all if they were capable of strafing around their target, a capability I highly recommend. Strafe and turning in place are two things a ship, in space, with maneuvering thrusters instead of a steering wheel, can and must do to actually function, thus should be able to do with equal or greater ability than a radial turn. This way, a capital ship, even after it was a powerful investment of high level, would never be able to use those more powerful weapons on frigates outside of rare instances where they lined themselves up in the firing arc. Cruisers on the other hand could be the inbetweeners. The bitch of a capital ship being too slow to get away from the main guns, but able to keep their own weaponry on the frigates. This way, the neccessity of balanced fleets would be realized, not simply a matter of forced logistics, and ships would have actual roles instead of being more powerful versions of the smaller ship.

Logistics, capacity, all of them. I read that eight page gameplay thread, a lot of talk about logistics caps being this and that. The main complaint is that they are too low, but when I see people listing the numbers, they are talking about unupgraded numbers. At twelve for my capital and nine for a single asteroid, something I can take and defend with my starting flagship immediately, those are not numbers that lead me to believe turtling is impossible. Six would be of course, that's barely enough for function, let alone advancement, but 21? Six research stations would leave you with fifteen left for economic and production requirements, off just two places. With the current, very limited logistical pool to build from, if anything they are far too high. The start is slow of course, but when has a 4x game ever not had a slow start? If you want an advanced start, one simply needs to create an advanced start with a small empire already running. I had nearly a million credits and about a hundred thousand of crystal and metal both, it was ridiculous, and I wasn't even maxing the planets out, I built lots of defenses, but some of them didn't even ahve the mines built. The 1500+ fleet capacity I maxed at the end just to see how high it was, but I was only using 800 of it, and probably could have gotten through with half that. I was using a two stage strike force with regenerating, cease fire creating capital ships in front and a more balanced fleet in the second stage to try and keep my cruiser casualties down, the first stage was almost always enough to finish the job though. I do not like dead asteroids on the other hand. A minimum of one on anything you can settle would be nice, a colony of zero population? Combining tactical and logistical capacity is an acceptable method of doing things, but the entire system needs rebalanced. 20+ economic buildings in a core world that doesn't need heavy defense would be retardedly powerful. A turret being one point would need to either being extremely powerful, or match up to a refinery in a group of 20 for capacity usage. I would like a far more complex system of world development, happiness, income, corruption, and attributing planetary structures to build from in planetary capacity, perhaps with planetary defense structures in there as well, and then have all space based installations work from their own capacity and include orbital defenses, production and economic installations. Capital shipyards should also be exceedingly rare by neccessity, the neccessity of taking up most of the capacity at a prime location. I'm not asking for galciv civic and military upkeep costs, but as a 4x game, not having upkeep is detrimental. It might be a good option for a quick multiplayer game, but money is completely meaningless once you have a large empire unless you really suck and lose units like no tomorrow. A full capacity, maxed out empire should be sitting somewhere near neutral, not raking in more income than it could ever use. I could build a new capital ship every minute and never run out, and most of my logistical upgrades aren't even purchased, let alone used up.

Off on a tangent from capacity. Tech. Particularly in the form of how one uses the capacity. There isn't much there to start with. There are no technological advancements that increase ones capacity, they are all planetary upgrades that you start with. I find this one of the worse traits for the game. The seperation of combat and empire technology is ok, but the selection is simple, mostly pointless, and inevitably useless in the long run due to an abundance of resources and nothing to spend them on. A much much higher scale for capacity, hundreds, with the smallest buildings taking several points, and research in structural technology to better utilize that space knocking 10% off or whatever would be a much better system of space advancement. The research system of requiring x labs to research this and that is also fairly weak. I would much prefer population based or static point additions per research labs to the overall pool of research, and a proper tech tree to limit advanced technology from being researched early. The research limitation brings me to capital ships, ships in general really. There is no accomplishment here, at all. You start with the best you can get. If you can't research them without ever leaving your home planet, you've got a screw loose and don't know how to build a lab because it only takes two. It's not even very expensive, far less effort than researching the much less powerful cruisers take. As a technology to open up massively expensive 12 or 15 lab requiring capital ship designs, sure, but right there at the start? The cruisers don't really suck, they are just antiquated by a pre-existing behemoth of a capital ship in most cases. It really takes the point out of a flagship game unless you're playing with assassination mode too. Your flagship is just one of several capital ships a couple hours in. If you lose it, it's no big deal. If you'd had to keep it alive for hours before you could get another one like it, the ship would be far more important. I like the improvement research, but the new units are accessed in a rather flaky manner that gives little in the way of effort to aquire them. The civic improvements, as opposed to combat ones, are rather terrible though. Limited, mostly useless, typically a new way to pay for increased income you already don't need by the time you get them.

Combat! Formations obviously. Collision detection is a nice thing to have too, friendly fire would be a very nice option, if not a standard setting. Wall, line, delta, whatever, a custom formation that could be triggered to free them in their current formation would be really nice too. That way you could set up repair and command cruisers in relative safety, guarded by heavier capital ships and more offensive cruisers, with the long range weaponry and carriers in the back. Aside from ship move speed and firing arcs previously mentioned, not a lot here that I have a problem with. Collision detection really would be nice though. I'd much prefer a hands off approach to micromanagement than turning a 4x game into a click fest, I don't play starcraft already, a long drawn out version of it has no appeal, so inherent tactical use of different types of ships and competent ai is preferable to focus fire killing the enemy one unit at a time. Composition and structuring determining the winner would be ideal, true strategy as opposed to detrous appendages.

Lets see, user interface... I really like this empire tree, but the scroll bar being on the outside and capable of shrinkage is neccessity. Some times it's a life saver of a convenience, other times it's a pain in the ass, particularly when managing a large scale invasion where I'm not real concerned about casualties, but real concerned about my idiot dreadnaughts running through the two dozen turrets to kill the lone carrier on the other side of the gravity well who's bomber squadron was shot down before it ever got near me. Having full, unhindered acces to my view screen at times is something very nice to have, and being able to view battle fleets from the tree on single lines so as to get as large a picture as possible by taking up the entire screen is equally nice to have. As is, it's functional, but some times annoying, and others less than adequate. Viewing ten fleets of 20+ units each would take about four screen lengths, rather than one if it could be dragged across the screen.

Oh right, culture and conquest... I read that a more advanced system is being considered, whatever happens, immunity for a new colony is neccessity to me. I also find it odd that the cultural impact is based from a planet, but doesn't dissappear with the planet. Conquest is also absent from this game currently. You do not conquer the enemy planets, you exterminate every living being and repopulate a dead world. Troop transports and morale flips from bombardment are preferable to mass extermination. It's nice to have the option to be a genocidal maniac, but we needn't kill every living thing to take control of a planet. Morale in particular would be a good thing to consider for culture flips as well, have a happy planet that really likes the enemy way of life? no biggy. When someone gets mad though, poof, no more colony, they ditch you for the enemy when you start taxing tea.

I think I'm done for now, I'll have to play more and experiment with things to post more.