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