first impressions

A space strategy macromanagement game with turnbased battles.
biff
Young scout
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:37 am
Location: Toronto

Re: first impressions

Post by biff »

Hi again,

Could be a bug or maybe it was just two actions happening at the same time but I'm pretty sure that's how it happened. I tried my idea of just sending a scout into the enemy home system to see if I could win that way and it didn't work but maybe the rest of teh game conditions were a bit different than when it happened to me.

In the mean time I have a few more comments.

In the battle screen I noticed that the area under the "active ship" status box doesn't accept mouse clicks. Perhaps this is because the this area is reserved for the "target ship" information box even if there is no target ship selected. This made me think that maybe one other solution to the space taken up by the active and target ship boxes would be to always have this space reserved for it and to make the battle map that much smaller, this way you could also move the options and end turn boxes there as well to get them out of the way. You could also use this for a small overview map of the entire star system showing planet and friendly ship locations. I don't like loosing the screen space but I though it was worth mentioning.

Also as an alternative to group movement how about selecting a number of ships and giving them a waypoint or a grid space to move towards. Then they would just automatically move in that direction until they were given new orders. It would make fleet movement much easier.

I noticed that when I invade a star system I have to put my ships along one edge of the map but when the CPU invades my system they come from all directions. It's more interesting but it seems a bit inconsistent to me. How about letting players place ships along any edge they like rather than just one?

Using the cursor to scroll in the battle map is slow. I know you can use the up/down arrow keys but maybe cursor scrolling could be adjustable or the longer you hold against one edge the faster it scrolls in that direction.

I sometimes find that I accidentally remove a good ship from my fleet when I actually mean to add one in the military screen. perhaps a warning window should come up to confirm that you actually want to delete a ship.

Lastly, have you thought about adding the sun to the system maps? It might make movement more interesting if there was a penalty for getting too close to the suns gravity well. Mind you it might be hard to do given the huge size difference between the sun and the planets.

Thanks.
User avatar
jack1974
Pack leader
Posts: 15470
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: first impressions

Post by jack1974 »

Could be a bug or maybe it was just two actions happening at the same time but I'm pretty sure that's how it happened.
Yes I did a test here, and it happened if you successfully defended your homeworld, but had just 1 turn left before the enemy would conquer it: happening at same time was always making you lose, now I've fixed it, so on next update there won't be this bug anymore.

About the other suggestions, I agree on the map movement and the waypoint system, on the other features I need to think about it better, probably reducing the visible map isn't a good idea, unless I can also implement the zoom so you can still see a larger portion of the map without having to scroll too much :)

I'm still working on the custom ship, but probably won't make the update in time for end of month, but shouldn't be too much longer.
biff
Young scout
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:37 am
Location: Toronto

Re: first impressions

Post by biff »

Hi again,

Good to hear that version 1.03 is fast approaching. In the meantime I have a few more comments.

1 - Despite what I posted earlier it seems that you do get to keep one or two of the opposing ships that your transports capture. Several times now I have had one or two (but no more) added to my ship inventory. I think this is great.

2 - On a couple of occasions now I have built ships but not had them added to my ship inventory when starting a battle. I know that there is a limit on how many I can control in a battle but I have had 4 transports in the Military screen yet only one available in the ship placement screen at the beginning of a battle. It seems to be that (somehow) the ships in the Military screen show as being 200% built and then don't show up in the ship placement. Bug?

3 - One small bug. Normally when a ship is selected in the battle screen you can click in open space to deselect it and hide the ship status box so that you can see more of the battlefield, however when a captured ship is selected you can't do this. You need to select one of your own ships and then click in open space.

Looking forward to version 1.03
User avatar
jack1974
Pack leader
Posts: 15470
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: first impressions

Post by jack1974 »

Yes seems to be a random bug where sometimes you get the captured ships passed on the military screen :oops: And bug 2 is related to that, in practice the enemy captured ships that remains in your military even after the battle create that other bug (I just tested it and they are related).

About version 1.0.3 I'm going to release it as beta probably in 3-4 days max. The custom ship is done, need to balance it, and add a few new technologies. The beta probably WILL have some bugs since as you will notice, the game now is totally different (IMHO I think way better than the original now).

So before releasing the official update I want first to have the beta out for a good time until I'm sure there are no more bugs :)
User avatar
jack1974
Pack leader
Posts: 15470
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: first impressions

Post by jack1974 »

Beta is out, check the announcement in beta forum :) if any of you has the chance to play the game let me know, because if there are no bugs I'm going to release it (so far didn't find any myself).
Post Reply