Wow I've finally got my issues sorted with this game and what an accomplished piece of software, ver 1.11 is. Thank you Stardock for getting it right.
This might be a long article so bear with, things I Love....
Love the customizable ship screen and parts, great job, awesome idea, really works pretty tight.
Love the what I'll call "macro managers" you'll all call em governers, the one where you can tell every planet to build this type or ship or selectively which planets are building this to now build this. I LOVE THIS! You can also go to each one individually via the list rather then actually taking your spacecraft to each planet and clicking the planet button. WORKS LIKE A CHARM!
I also love the way the game looks, it just looks polished, even in the some of the areas where the content could use some more depth, it doesn't really look rushed in any particular area. Nice job.
Things I like, I like cutscenes, but there are enough of them, if I were stardock and I'm not obviously, but if I was, I'd stop "window dressing" as it was referred to in another post, and focus on other improvements that will have more of a return then adding more cutscenes. Most of them look pretty good but they are expensive to make and really dont add too much beyond the first time you've seen em. Core gameplay is much more important. But I do like them. I also like the variety of the races, I like the mouse click interface, for moving the main map, and moving ships around. I also like the way economics is handeled. In fact I really love it except, what I wish was more controllable was the tax rates being selectable for each planet. I know i know, it's hard to make that happen, its got to be rewritte in the code, you're just adding needless complexity, but I think you'd have better control over the empire you're building, i.e. being able to control growth rates as well as income better. I understand the value of adding morale modifier infastructure and this is a great way to achieve the same thing but it costs you building space and you can't quite achieve the right tax balance between new and developing colonies and core worlds as the game progresses, it's an efficiency thing and it would be great if we could individually adjust planet taxes. I like the pace of the game too, and the difficulty settings, love having this kinda control, also it doesn't take 15 min to set up a game, just make a few selections and go. But if u want to nit pick on each thing there is also that flexibility. Just great.
Minor improvements I would make...
I'd make the minimap more incrementally zoom and unzoomable. The zoom levels seem to be pretty fixed at pretty big increments, it's hard sometimes to achieve the level of zoom on a region that you want, it's the perfect size on the screen but for those of us running on 1024x768. The zoom control could be fine tuned at the closer levels if possible. Perhaps adding additional zoom increment levels, maybe doubling the number available would be just right.
It appears you cannot upgrade freighters once they are elderly, for example if I build an FRT-1 with speed 5 and I then 2 years later build FRT-2 with speed 10 I cannot upgrade the existing class, not sure if it matters at all, or if the computer automatically does the upgrade, I don't think so, but you cant click on one of those mini-freighters and then click upgrade. Why should anyone want to upgrade a freighter? Well faster moving freighters should be less seceptible to enemy intercept, and also it's easier to have 1 FRT design in the ships window then 3 or 4. I'd make em upgradable, if you obsolete an entire class you have to redo those trade routes, and theres nothing wrong with that I guess, it's just not as convienent I guess to have em upgradable.
Another thing I'd improve would be the initial loading screen, it's playing the song but as it's loading from the hard disk into ram and back into the harddisk, the music is getting all choopy. Bad driver? or is this a common thing?
Another thing I mixed feelings on is the espinoage implementation. I really like how in Master of Orion how you could use spies and resources to covertly attack another empire, espinoage to steal technology blow up factories, incite rebellion. What fun !! I'll refrence startrek as it is a space based genre and also starwars, but espionage and sabotage are very critical elements to have inside the arena of space conquest. Take for example the plans to destroy the death star, discovered via espionage, star trek, romulans, the tal shiar very secretive, cia type agency which conducted special ops, their entire race was secretive. I like how there is an espinage element and how you have to spend money to learn about the other race, but once you got a certain level invested you're in and there's no pushing you out, as far as I've yet discovered with the game, meaning if you just set the sliders to one or two clicks in, less then 1% of GDP basically in two to three years you know everything but what color underwear the enemy's leader wears. This is at the normal difficulty it may be different at the higher levels, haven't had the stones to try yet, been focused on building up an empire and the contruction aspects to be honest, but I'd love the ability to knock down another race by blowing up a ship, or a piece of infastructure on one of their planets, a starbase, maybe start a plague or something.
It think it would be a great STRATEGIC ability to tell your spy masters, based on your level of espionage, at low level, maybe you could tell them to attack any target just try to cause some damage, and your spys would probably die, and if they succeeded they'd be found out and you'd suffer diplomatic ill will, as you got better, moderate and then high you could target with more precision what precise type of structure to attack, on which planet, or on a sector by sector basis for fixed structure such as planets or starbases. You could also have a counter spy agency which would reduce the ability or even elminate it for the other race. Unfortunately how it's implemented now, you don't even have any real idea what's under the hood of the espinoage engine, and I suspect that's because there isn't much to look at in that dept. I've played about 10 games now and it seems like if you start two races out they both get to the same level of espinoage at the same year or two later, regardless of how much more or less powerful the other empire is, and how much harder it should be to penetrate a xenophobic empire, one thats upset at you or one that's you're ally.
Things I don't like, I really don't care for the way tactical combat comes into play, I do like watching the engine draw a fleet vs fleet battle, and I know it's a strategic game and not a tactical simulator, but it feels too much like the Birth of the Federation mode of combat except even more limited. It's cool to see your custom ships in 3d battling it out but it's basically just eye candy and pretty much useless. Another area for more development, why not make it real time tactical? How had would this be to do? If you give the human player a more involved role in the process, i.e. the ability to do more to prevent the losses of their ships, and also to actually hold the dagger in their fist as they slay the computer fleet/ship. I'm not saying it has to be super long or super detailed. Overkill would probably be Starfleet Command OP or even SFC 3 if you've ever played these games, they have real time tactical down, and in SFC 3 it's all about the manuevering less so then who's got the most ships cause you're limited to 3 on 3. In SFC OP it was much more elaborate with skill and manuevers combined with tactics and abilities. A happy balance might be like the new Starwars way of handling the tactical combat in short skirmish/battles with lots of ships and fighters but low hitpoints and battles that resolve themselves in about 2-5 min. Even this isn't worth changing though if you can't get options added in for the human player, more interaction is what's needed, decision making in real-time along with allowing the AI to just handel it while you watch or just auto resolve it if you dont even feel like watching. Would make for a more rounded game I think in general. Certainly more depth and feel regarding these ships you've spend a few min designing or thinking about.
Overall I hope to see more features added in the next expansion. I'm really looking forward to multiplayer, should it arrive, I think it would be awesome to play this kind of strategic game in time with another player. Or a group. Perhaps even a gigantic conquest game.
