Hi,
I have a few game suggestions, or maybe just questions as to why things are designed the way they are. Some of these are just small tweaks that will make the package more polished for a first-time user.
1. Why is crystal so rare? Maybe it's just the random map distribution, but every game I play, I am not getting enough crystal. I know I can use the black market to exchange, but it seems weird that the balance of metal to crystal is way off. It's basically acting as a bottleneck to doing anything in my games.
Often with full crystal research, I'm still running behind my requirements (I often wonder if it's actually worth it to invest in this research at all. With the time/cost to invest in it, when will you actually see a net profit?). I'd probably have to play for hours and hours to notice this profit, which leads me to believe the balance is wrong and/or the research costs too much.
The big problem with this design is that other resources become "meaningless". It gets overly simplified - everything in the game pretty much just requires crystal. If you don't have crystal, you can't buy it. It makes everything so one-dimensional. What's the point of the other 2 resources in the medium to long term?
2. This is not an issue for me now, but making the 'unknown' planet have a yellow, bold question mark on top of it will make it much more clear that it's unexplored. Great for new players just sitting down with the game.
3. Add the font mod from the mod library into the actual game. It cannot be stated enough that this is a positive change for everyone, especially for those who are legally blind like me!
4. Ask the player to type their name when the game loads for the first time. I'm still "NewPlayer" :/ I'm sure I can seek it out, but curious why the game just never asked me... Think how Starcraft or Warcraft asks you for your name. Just copy it
5. Make it default that the non-cinematic stuff is turned on (or most of it). Stuff like planet names, phase lanes, and icons are pretty integral to playing the game. It makes things a whole lot easier. This is very newbie-friendly stuff. My PC sucks and I don't notice much of a slow down because of it either. No reason to turn this stuff off by default (new players don't know what any of these options are... they just don't read it all. It's too much to soak in).
6. The "super selector" UI device doesn't work like I think it's supposed to. I tell it to select all the planets with logical slots because I want to build a Military Lab. However, I think the game's only allowing me to build on the 'main selected planet' and not the dimmed grayed-out ones.
It would be better to have a 'planet manager' screen where I can just say, "I want 4 crystal extractors, 2 military labs" - and the game just starts building them on planets with spaces available. Once you get to a certain number of planets, you just don't care anymore where they are located.
Same goes for other improvements. I just want to say, "Increase my population" with a mouse click and the necessary funds will go to whatever planet needs it. I don't want to click every planet to see if I can upgrade it's population. It's okay for the first 10 planets. It's not cool with more planets :/
If no logistical slots are available, the game can just ask, "Create X amount of slots to construct these buildings?" I'm sure some thought on the design of how this works will figure out an elegant solution.
There's a lot of things you can do with a 'super planet' type of UI. It would stream-line things nicely.
7. Are trade routes even useful? I found myself with so much credits (and lots of unused metal that is often converted to credits) that I don't find myself building them. This is kind of related to the crystal problem in point 1.
More to come as I play.
