Ok, since I have the beta, I should as well participate in the forum, isn't it?
So far, I'm in my third beta 2 game (no crash or big bug so far), and here are some "oddities" I found while playing (I hope none of them have already been report) :
- I got the Disease mega-event, which reduced all stats to 0% (If I remember well, it didn't include trade routes). So, everyone had 0 logistic. But my friendly neighbours the Koraths kept their fleets. It didn't mattered anyway since none of my ships could scratch the paint of their.
- About those Koraths, while they use their spore ships, they still use transports. Aren't spore ships better in all situations than the transports (except moving population around)?
- I also got the increased tourism (5x) and the increased trade mega-events. They should be renamed the "0%-tax-rate-and-huge-amount-of-money" events.
- The second game I was the still considered good Drath, and I was the neighbour of both Drengin and Korx. Even while I wasn't at war with them, the Torian and the Altarian were quite happy to give me some ships in support of my "war" against the evil Drengin and Korx.
- In the same game, the Altarian and the Torian declared war against the Drengin very often. Is Drengin super-ability exponential? Because they kept getting more and more ships, so I had a lot to mop when I attacked them. (And since they never got anything better than 2-attack ships, it was more tedium than anything.)
- Both the Drengin (earlier) and the Torian (near the end of the game) got the Precusor-artifact-that-boosts-stats event. While the Torian had a lot of 1~2% bonii everywhere (like in cabinet), the Drengin had ~200% bonii in economics, research, social and military. So it isn't a mining starbase I missed. Even if they had the artifact for quite a long time, how likely it is that they had those huge bonii in only those 4 fields? Is there a mega-event I'm not aware of?
- Third game, playing as the Thalan with a racial bonus of 1 in speed. I got the limited speed event. It isn't that bad (large galaxy), but with Impulse and Warp drives bonii to speed, I don't need engines anymore. Maybe the event should either reduce the speed to 6 instead or apply the limit before applying the racial bonus.
- I built the conterspying building on many of my planets. Well, it didn't kill the ~20 spies I already had, too bad. But since then, one spy was planted on a planet who had the improvement already. I guess this is either a bug or simply the Krynn super-ability at work (if this is not the case, it could be a nice addition to it). Note that I only got 1 new spy in a protected planet, so maybe the building is only partly working.
- I also got the Pirates!!! mega-event. ... Ouch ... They were able to kill all ships in the galaxy. That is not the problem. The problem is that they kill all the new ships I put in orbit, taking some casualities. So the only way to kill their frigates is to build bigger and more advanced ships than them. Their presence last too long. They should instead get more smaller, less armored, and quicker ships. This way, they will still be able to destroy everything in the galaxy. But after, it will be easier to finish off. (Note : I believe such a change will help the AI more than the player.) In the same subject, it would be nice if they didn't used only one model for each size and only one weapon. Pirates ships should be more varied (thus harder to defend against).
- Is there a way to look at full battle involving starbases? I tried every options and nothing worked. I ask because the normal battles (those in the strategical views) looks very cool with the starbase shooting tons of weapons at its attackers.
- The technology tree may be better, but there is one thing for which it behaves poorly : when the prerequisite for a tech is not the last milestone in a tech. The best example is Logistic -> Life Support. Looking at it, you can't see which milestone is the prerequisite, and you have to look at all of them to check.
- Oh, a small last thing : I don't remember which exactly, but there is one armor which is better than its successor. I think it is Tri-Strontium. The last milestone of the tech before the prerequisite for Arnorian armor.
Well, that's it for now.
