Notes from a devotee V 1.0.20
Published on Sunday, December 11, 2022 By
I've played a bunch of games with the latest version 1.0.20 (TechPreview_2_RC5), and these are my thoughts:
The good:
1. Progress has been made!
2. Its a beautiful game.
3. Repetition of the good stuff from my prior posts
4. Still very stable. Only one crash out of a bunch of games
5. It's destined to be a great game
6. There is never a six (keeping with tradition)
7. I like new layout where planet excavation discoveries have little descriptive tiles.
8. I've noticed changes brought about from players' comments
9. All the developers hard work shows and is appreciated.
The bad:
1. I miss the scuttle button. (I was able to edit the input bindings to add a key to scuttle) and was pleased that when I scuttled a fleet it asked if I wanted to scuttle 57 units)
2. The glitches / bugs (see below)
3. Resources are challenging to balance, even when focusing on them. (I wish trade ports had an option to select focus)
4. When attempting to build in a hurry, it is very frustrating to wait on exotics. (perhaps they can auto refill to a set level)
5. I think the scroll wheel direction was inverted from the prior version, because now it seems like I'm always going the wrong direction (on the colonized planets screen)
6. There is no six. Hurray!
7. The bright beautiful back background makes it hard to see the important stuff (perhaps an option to select background image)
8. The research tree needs to be compressed vertically to fit on one screen or at least reduce scrolling.
9. The AI is almost useless and if a good aggressive opponent existed defense would be impossible. (five maxed out starbases in an asteroid well still let about 1/3 of a 2000 supply fleet through -- see glitch #8)
Things it took me a while to figure out and I wish were in the "manual":
1. Envoys can establish dominate culture for NPCs, which combined with the right research gets large frequent rewards.
2. To rebuild a fleet quickly, control+click on a planet to select all the planets, then right click on a rally point. Then with them all still selected build the fleet, all ship factories will spread out production.
3. Planet Structures and Capital Ship Components can be gotten rid of by dragging them out of their tile's location
6. Of course there is no six.
Glitches / Bugs:
1. Crashed while reordering the research que
2. Using custom scaling will allow you to scale up to a size that hides the option to scale back from
3. Team selection doesn't do what is supposed to. When I drag the human player to team 3 so I can play solo, I still end up on team 1
4. Sometimes multiple factories in the same gravity well produce at the rate of one factory.
5. Planet Credit Income Cultural Bonus doesn't seem to do anything, despite having dominate culture 100%
6. There is no six. Hurray!
7. Trade Port Culture Income Bonus doesn't seem to do anything despite having dominate culture 100%
8. Control+Shift allows you to place five starbases at once ignoring the limit (I kind of like this glitch and hope they don't take it away.)
9. Pirate mercenaries research doesn't seem to do anything despite having dominate culture 100% (achieved by sacrificing envoy ships)
10. Planet development in progress shows up on the research screen
11. On the colonized planets logistics view when there's many different orbital structures, their tiles are overlaid with surface structures tiles
12. Starbases frequently don't have a trade partner and wont trade with each other
13. Free miners and Crystal Merchants attack each other's trade ships (not really a glitch, but why would they?)
Final Comment:
All in all, I'm very pleased with the way the game is progressing. I've played way too many hours of it already, and wish I could get paid to test and debug. I look forward to the next release.