Beta Feedback, what felt right, what felt wrong (Terran viewpoint)

Keep the flames at bay please.

from GalCiv2 Forums
Okay so I just played one of the best games I ever played, and it was a TA game. I played a tiny map, 3 player, myself as Terrans (one of many games played as them so far). Ended up with all of us having 4 planets of similar value,and I knew that right off the start this game was gonna be a challenge. I was playing on tough in case anyone wants to know.

Here's what I like/love.
-I dont know if the AI was reworked, or if its just how all the weapon technologies are setup/custom tech trees etc, BUT I found myself having to use fleets a lot more throughly... no i don't mean spamming 1-2 ships together until the logistics limit, but I mean having a Capital ship (with the +Bonus for first attack) was absolutely essential. I found that the little (1st level) armored plating was balanced perfectly. 5hp reasonably expensive enough not to spam, but cheap enough to build it, (love putting 2 of them on fighters (small hull) with a +30%hp bonus .... mmmm 25hp fighters). I found that myself and the AI spent much time trying to get through the beginning of the tech tree before any of us had any sort of ships that could pose a threat if cobbled together. I also noticed that both AI's chose different weapon branches (or I suppose they have to, its probably not really a choice anymore) which is great, because I cannot count how many 6-8player DA games and every AI uses the same weapons tech [thats kinda boring]. Then the fighting started, and with 2 military starbases from the opposing force (Drengin) giving them support, they sent wave after wave of crappy 2-4attack missle fighters, however after the SB bonuses, well started to hurt ALOT. So again, using fleets and thinking things through was great, and this game required much more then DA (no matter galaxy size). I didn't have a chance to see TerrorStars, although I did see that there is a TON of research for them, so Im not sure if I will ever see it because my games usually dont tech up that far. I think that besides some minor tweaks that need to be done, (more on that), I liked the terran side, and nothing really seemed spamable and cheap. (love the sensor arrays too!). Also loved the new building artwork and UI.

Now what I don't particularly like.

The beginning game has way to many garbage "branching" techs. Starting off with 4 techs that branches off into some crazy number is not totally necessary, and I felt that it slowed down the start of the game a lot compared to DA/DL, especially since Terran do not get Stellar Cartography (I think this is way too far down the early tree, but thats my opinion). Another thing, it is not explained really how the fleet defense works, and I did not see any components to add to a ship (unlike say the warp bubbles [which need to be tweaked a bit since they all take the same space]. Does this happen automatically, and if it does, some sort of indication needs to be present(defense values changed in fleet, etc). How much % each level, does it stack, etc.


Lastly for now, since I want to get back to playing, the title screen has a black box that seems to outline what I would assume is the video animation on the title screen(starting from top left corner, encompassing maybe 60-70%, definitely looks like a placeholder.). They are narrow blacklines, but they are not invisible and look very unprofessional. Not too sure how that got missed. (1680x1050 resolution). Also had a crash to desktop, but that has all been e-mailed in along with the debug.err)

What does everyone else think so far? I'm curious to see other peoples perspectives....

Good game so far! And since my metaverse is now working (yay) I cant wait untill you enable metaverse support... (Im guessing launch but who knows).

back to TA I go.

EDIT: some spacing... my keyboard sucks

12,398 views 33 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Next, the Laser weapon tree for terrans. What is the point of that? it seems incomplete, and since the Plasma line prerequisites are the Phase Cannons (Mass driver line splits into 2 tech trees?) why even include laser I-V? It seems like something is missing, or maybe that should just be removed?
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Laser->Plasma is a known bug, mentioned by Frogboy in his news post even.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah I edited that out for a reason

Nothing more to say Kryo? Surely Stellar Cartography being so far down is a mistake?
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nothing more to say Kryo? Surely Stellar Cartography being so far down is a mistake?
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i tech traded the Arceans for it pretty easily.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I also remarked at stellar cart being at the end of a tree branch...but it's a non issue for anyone but the terrans, as everyone starts with it. This leads me to believe its designed to be a significant flaw for the terrans. With their diplo powers, it's not a hard tech to trade for, and maybe that's the intent.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
+2 points for Binjack!
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
bah. I don't play with techtrade. the AI just trades freely with each other and the game becomes homogenized. Oh well.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

bah. I don't play with techtrade. the AI just trades freely with each other and the game becomes homogenized. Oh well.
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Generally, if one is playing with tech trading disabled, there's not much point to playing as the terrans, as the diplo screen is their bread and butter. They are designed for a certain type of game.

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What happened to every race having their own weapons? That seemed to be a big point pushed in the TOTA trailer. All that seems to have happened is renaming of the tech tree weapons for the races but they all have the same animations. If that's how it's going to be don't even bother giving each race "different" weapons.

Otherwise I'm drooling right now.

Bug I saw: I had the option of adding the fleet warp bubble modules before researching the warp bubble tech. After I researched the tech I saw the added module that would make the ships in fleet go +1. I could already add the +2 and +3 module before researching that.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What happened to every race having their own weapons?
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Drengin have unique weapons and weapon techs, with some branching "bonus" weapons similar to the evil alignment weapons.

Arcean have different weapons. The labels are not the same in every category, and I *assume* this brings with them different stats at different points in the tech tree than the other races.

Have not explored the terrans yet.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What happened to every race having their own weapons? That seemed to be a big point pushed in the TOTA trailer. All that seems to have happened is renaming of the tech tree weapons for the races but they all have the same animations. If that's how it's going to be don't even bother giving each race "different" weapons.
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I haven't had a chance to check it out yet (waiting for some wierdness with SDCentral to be sorted out by sales) but I imagine that the point is that the weapons are speced differently. Different eye candy would be nice, but the lack thereof doesn't make the whole thing moot.

It's also nice for giving more flavour to the races.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Generally, if one is playing with tech trading disabled, there's not much point to playing as the terrans, as the diplo screen is their bread and butter. They are designed for a certain type of game.
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i didn't especially care for diplomacy until the possibility of, ahem, aquiring race-specific techs came along. now i'm loving it, except for a CTD that seems consistently related to trying to trade unique techs in the diplo screen - emailed SE/debug already - i also noticed some of the original planet skins are creeping in still, but again not sure if it's just in the works (it is the first beta after all).

nonetheless i've already got a modest espionage system going, though i can't figure out how to target a race with a spy instead of a building, has it been implemented yet?

as for the point of the OP, on the whole i'm still very excited. haven't had much time to play very far, but i'm loving what i've seen so far.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Heh, as much as I hate the terrans being crippled regarding Stellar Cartography (I tend to play with tech trading off - though as has been mentioned that makes humans pretty crappy even in DA), it is a clever idea. In GC1, humans (the only playable race) were crippled in that they didn't get to see the planets until they rushed to get SC, which wasn't huge, but did take a fair amount of time. And the AI's biggest (maybe only?) cheat was that it got to see the planets and knew ahead of time which planets were best-suited to colonization.

Sounds like our devs are aiming for terrans being more like GC1 players at first Clever idea. Evil and sinister, but kinda funny.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Heh, as much as I hate the terrans being crippled regarding Stellar Cartography...
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It's simply not that big of a deal. I wouldnt use the term 'crippled". 1) If youre not "into" diplomacy for some reason, you're not playing as the Terrans, and 2) Stellar Cart isnt *that* big of a deal. It's not like it tells you were the habitable worlds are...just gives you a general clue as to where they "might" be. One way or another, you have to go out exploring, and you'll encounter another race about the same time you'd be able to tech up to it in DA.

As near as I can tell so far, the Drengin infrastructure "sucks"( their "factories" are really weak compared to the other races), they have anemic influence, couldnt trade for a bag of peanuts diplomatically...but they have a truly scary range of martial technology. Are they "crippled" because they're designed to conquest to improve themselves? Racial differentiation is the whole point of TA.

If one has a diplomacy/tech trading hangup, one probably shouldn't play the "super-diplomat" race.

Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


As near as I can tell so far, the Drengin infrastructure "sucks"( their "factories" are really weak compared to the other races), they have anemic influence, couldnt trade for a bag of peanuts diplomatically...but they have a truly scary range of martial technology. Are they "crippled" because they're designed to conquest to improve themselves? Racial differentiation is the whole point of TA.
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I played a Terran game until I could no longer load the saved game. I also played a Drengin game. I thought the Drengin were a little over powered with their techs. They have so many techs that give +10 growth bonus, + to research, etc that their stats tend to get amped way up. Granted, they can only get to Research Academies, which might actually balance out the research bonuses a bit. But I added +40 growth on them at the beginning of the game and with all the +10s that I picked up on it, their growth is absolutely insane. When I was playing Terran, I didn't notice if they also got so many +10s, but I will check that next time I play them. On Tough, Immense, I have about twice as many colonies (maybe 3 times as many) as the other races, and everyone is still exploring. I am picking up colonies considerably faster than any other race; but that may be due to my playing style. I also did not feel their production was crippled. I think all the growth may have canceled out any crippling, though.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
As near as I can tell so far, the Drengin infrastructure "sucks"( their "factories" are really weak compared to the other races), they have anemic influence, couldnt trade for a bag of peanuts diplomatically...but they have a truly scary range of martial technology. Are they "crippled" because they're designed to conquest to improve themselves? Racial differentiation is the whole point of TA.
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Yeah, I was playing TA last night, first with the Arceans until I reached the 'can't save medium hulled ships that you design' bug - and with both the AI in my space with fleets of 3 small hulled ships, I kinda wanted to whip out some bigger ships and start wiping the floor with them. So I started a new game with the Drengin and build their planetary infrastructure like I normally do with the other races. The thing that struck me the most was how pitiful their numbers were for production and research, even with a fully built up planet. Teching up just felt painful as even fairly far into the game the shortest time to research a tech was 10 turns and building small ships was still 4 and 5 turns. The one advantage I noticed they had was with their black markets not costing any upkeep, plus their slave pits and research facilities also cost very little to maintain. So even though black markets are only 8% instead of 12% (like the arcean) bonus to economy, I was just pulling in gobs of money each turn. My thought on that would be then to just queue up military ships on 6 and 7 pq planets that might take 15 turns to build and just buying them every couple of turns (once I made up the cost of buying the last one). Build enough slave pits to make upgrading your buildings not a 200 turn painful experience and then black market/arena the rest of the tiles so you keep a high morale, and good income. Plus maybe a farm or two even on low pq planets, which I normally *never* do in DA as then I have to build a lot of +morale buildings that tends to prevent my industry/research centers from being built. Well, with the dregin having free money in the black markets, high populations and high taxes (with arenas keeping morale up) would be good for just buying their ships and good for when I want to start cranking out troop transports - more bodies to send off to war!
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

As near as I can tell so far, the Drengin infrastructure "sucks"( their "factories" are really weak compared to the other races), they have anemic influence, couldnt trade for a bag of peanuts diplomatically...but they have a truly scary range of martial technology. Are they "crippled" because they're designed to conquest to improve themselves? Racial differentiation is the whole point of TA.


Yeah, I was playing TA last night, first with the Arceans until I reached the 'can't save medium hulled ships that you design' bug - and with both the AI in my space with fleets of 3 small hulled ships, I kinda wanted to whip out some bigger ships and start wiping the floor with them. So I started a new game with the Drengin and build their planetary infrastructure like I normally do with the other races. The thing that struck me the most was how pitiful their numbers were for production and research, even with a fully built up planet. Teching up just felt painful as even fairly far into the game the shortest time to research a tech was 10 turns and building small ships was still 4 and 5 turns. The one advantage I noticed they had was with their black markets not costing any upkeep, plus their slave pits and research facilities also cost very little to maintain. So even though black markets are only 8% instead of 12% (like the arcean) bonus to economy, I was just pulling in gobs of money each turn. My thought on that would be then to just queue up military ships on 6 and 7 pq planets that might take 15 turns to build and just buying them every couple of turns (once I made up the cost of buying the last one). Build enough slave pits to make upgrading your buildings not a 200 turn painful experience and then black market/arena the rest of the tiles so you keep a high morale, and good income. Plus maybe a farm or two even on low pq planets, which I normally *never* do in DA as then I have to build a lot of +morale buildings that tends to prevent my industry/research centers from being built. Well, with the dregin having free money in the black markets, high populations and high taxes (with arenas keeping morale up) would be good for just buying their ships and good for when I want to start cranking out troop transports - more bodies to send off to war!
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Yeah, the Drengin early game infrastructure units are gimpy, and I'm certain thats by design, as their military tech is so scary, the idea is you want to knock them out before they get all teched up. Those starter "factory" units are practically worthless, but at least theyre cheap to rush buy. They do get some nice researchable passive bonuses to make up for it, but the bonuses are scattered here and there ( no nice fat all-in-one Planetary Improvements global payday...though you appear to be able to trade for that). The tiles are a bit cheaper on the upkeep, but not enough to avoid the early game crash... I still ran myself into the red and only survived off anomalies.

I suspect they probably get a lot better when they get their death furnaces up, but I havent been able to make it that far with them yet in two games...it seems a bit painful to get teched up to that point. Each slave tech is a significant jump in cost, not a smooth curve. Im usually going planetary invasion much sooner, and gobbling someone else up to shore up my infrastructure and tech library.

Their inherent approval bonus is nice to keep the population growing, but I had to layer on social and military abilities in race creation, and go industrialist to keep them competitive. Of course, once you do build that infrastructure, you're a juggernaut war machine with some really big guns.



Im sure theres a ton of balancing to do, but it's a blast to be able to talk about the individual races like this. I usually only have this sort of fun in RTS's.

Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Im usually going planetary invasion much sooner, and gobbling someone else up to shore up my infrastructure and tech library.
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I beleive that might be slightly intentional. But that is already how I play in DA, in TA it seems more amplified.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So even though black markets are only 8% instead of 12% (like the arcean) bonus to economy, I was just pulling in gobs of money each turn.
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Wait a tick, the Arceans get a economy booster in the beginning? When I started a game as them, I noticed they had neither an economy booster nor a morale building... just a factory and a lab... am I missing something major here?
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
am I missing something major here?
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he was talking about the Drengin.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wait a tick, the Arceans get a economy booster in the beginning? When I started a game as them, I noticed they had neither an economy booster nor a morale building... just a factory and a lab... am I missing something major here?
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Er, I think so. The morale booster isn't an 'off the bat' building, but it is reaaaaaly early in the diplomacy tree, I think. Like the tech after the universal translators if I recall correctly. The economy building *may* have been a tech-up, but I am fairly sure I was building the marketplaces within a few turns. I normally put down a few factory style buildings, a lab or two, and then an econ bonus building to try and staunch the bleed slightly from that planet.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hrm, I was thinking the wrong direction come to look at things. With the Drengin the very first xeno communication tech has the normal morale building in it (which I think is kinda wrong when you read about how they don't like the terran way of entertainment. I say arenas should be their only +morale buildings) and it was probably the same one for the Arceans.

he was talking about the Drengin.
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Er, for the last half yes, but I also directly compared the drengin black markets to the Arcean marketplaces.
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

With the Drengin the very first xeno communication tech has the normal morale building in it (which I think is kinda wrong when you read about how they don't like the terran way of entertainment. I say arenas should be their only +morale buildings) and it was probably the same one for the Arceans.



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I was wondering where the heck those came from. I looked through the tree and couldnt find where the normal enetertainment buildings came from, didnt think it might be Xeno Comm. They both appear in my menu at the same time...the normal entertainment buildings , and the Arenas...with the Arenas seeming to be slightly superior to the standard early game morale buildings. I wonder if they have a downside, like a -influence aspect.

In any event, Im leaning towards thinking this is a bug, and not intended.

Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
with the Arenas seeming to be slightly superior to the standard early game morale buildings. I wonder if they have a downside, like a -influence aspect.
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From what I gather from the XML... they are slightly more expensive to build at the very beginning, but cheaper than comparable buildings and cap at +morale bonuses MUCH less than the top entertainment buildings (+25 for the top arena compared to +40 for the virtual reality center).

Also, the Arena (+12 morale) is an "upgrade" of the Arena of Agony (+20 morale)... *scratches head

Lastly, I'm wondering what race the unimplemented (I think...) Temple (it's a basic +morale building on par with Entertainment Network) is supposed to be for. Arceans maybe? It seems like a good fit flavor-wise for them, and it seems odd to me that they don't start out with a basic morale booster.
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What happened to every race having their own weapons?


Drengin have unique weapons and weapon techs, with some branching "bonus" weapons similar to the evil alignment weapons.

Arcean have different weapons. The labels are not the same in every category, and I *assume* this brings with them different stats at different points in the tech tree than the other races.

Have not explored the terrans yet.
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As I posted earlier it was stated that new weapons and animations would be included for the races. If Stardock has suddenly decided not to do that then they better inform all the gaming web sites that are saying otherwise.

here are the links to the gaming sites saying GC2:TOTA has new race specific weapons

WWW Link(I-MOD)

WWW Link(IGN)

WWW Link(Yahoo)

WWW Link(RottenTomatoes)

WWW Link(PC Game Zone)

The list goes on and on. I have already read those previews. They all mention new race specific weapons. Perhaps I have a distorted definition of the word "new." I thought "new" meant something that has not been seen before. It also means something that has not been heard before but the sounds are the exact same as well.

I understand that this is a beta. It's also a beta with a really short time table. This expansion is supposed to be finished in December. From what Stardock has posted about the beta, including the short time frame given to develop it, I was led to believe the techs for the races that the beta would start with and those added about every two weeks would already be sorted out. The trailer shows them. I figured the trailer showed weapons for races not included as of yet but also showed weapons one of the three current playable races would have. So naturally I think giving the weapons slightly different names and then shuffling them around on the tech trees of the different races and then giving them the same animations as the original GC2 is just lame. Either there are new race specific weapons or there are not. I thought the whole point of weapon animations is so players can tell what they are being attacked with, besides looking cool. I feel it's just lame to have a battle with another race and our animations are the same but I know they have, or should have, a different weapon.

This is a very over exaggerated example but it shows the principle I'm having an issue with:
"Sir, they are firing disruptors!"
(Captin)"Those are photon torpedoes, not diruptors."
"Their disruptors look like our torpedoes, sir."
(A long pause while the captain wonders how a pcp drug addict became his tactical officer)

Or course I haven't had any of the playable races attack me with animations from a different weapon category from the one they are using but it's silly to have weapons do different amounts of damage values for each race and have the same animations for each race. Just make each race have a different color of the animations then.

And if each race is going to have more of its tech added as the beta progresses; as I said earlier I thought each race the beta starts with and when its added would have its full tech tree, then please spell it out for stupid idiots like myself.

Having said all that.... the game is great, love the new planetary screen graphics, as I posted earlier I'm drooling right now concerning the game in general.

I'm just disappointed I was led to believe by what the devs posted, the I-MOD trailer of TOTA, and all the previews and reviews about this expansion introducing new race specific weapons and it is obviously not happening.

The AI is much better. The races are better at playing political games, to my detriment.