I think people will be shocked at the next build. It's significantly different and based largely on feedback.
The problem si that hwen you're putting in 90 hour work weeks it's tough to find time to chime into these threads.
I've been commenting on some of them.
I will say that espionage is not really open to discussion as it is something I (as the game designer) feel very strongly about.
However, we now have counter-espionage in where players can build a counter-espionage building on their planets to keep agents off if they so choose.
In the classic game, Twilight Imperium, having agents on your worlds was a fact of life and it worked out well because players had to get used to finding out what tolerance for disruption they had.
Moreover, it creates an incentive not to get too far out and front. It's certainly a drawback to the player who plays on the gigantic galaxies holed up in a corner building the mega fleet because the other players will tend to gang up on you.
One of the major changes I've put in is that difficulty level now affects how much spying is going on. My view is, if you're playing at a high level, then yea, expect there to be agents. But new players will likely see relatively little of it.
We also changed it so that your diplomatic relations are taken into account.
But the next beta will likely bring angst for some players. While we did indeed add the "disable super abilities" option, I think people will definitely want to use them. They're just too cool not to have now that they're getting fleshed out.
I played a game tonight as the Korx as the Super Trader and was making $1k PER WEEK in trade revenue on a medium galaxy. Now before someone says "cheese!" bear in mind that we've changed it so that races don't necessarily have such great abilities elsewhere. The Korx, for example, are terrible at research. So even as I had plenty of money, I was having to put all my efforts into research and using the money to fast build improvements and ships to enact my influence take-over strategy.
In another game, I played as the humans who have the super diplomacy ability which makes it much easier to get good trade deals. I was able to get all kinds of things in negotiation. But ultimately lost because I made the Drath mad at me and they paid off other races to go to war with me. Lesson learned: Keep the Drath happy.
The Altarians are really tough too now because if you try to zing them, others will tend to come to their aid.
Engines have been heavily tweaked and that will no doubt cause some angst (to which I say "if you want to move at 80 moves per turn, just edit the XML file to make engines go as fast as you want). But they feel a lot better (a lot mroe fun) I think.
