Personally, I really like the layout of the tight clusters immense galaxies. You almost certainly have some parts of the galaxy that are physically isolated until a high level of Range is researched.

This definitely gives the game a more epic feel, and an effort to invade someone on the other side of the galaxy becomes an appropriately massive undertaking.

Further then the Far-est place in the Galaxy...............Where no man as Gone Before..................SPACE BETWEEN YOUR EARS!!!!.........sorry all ways wanted to sat that LOL

I sort of like it that way

I like that it takes longer to get there

Nasty

Can anyone confirm if there is actually more stars in a Immense Galaxy than a Gigantic Galaxy on tight clusters, or is there just alot more empty space.

lawl I too hope its only a beta thing also.

I like how spaced out it is. I've found that if you can get even 2 clusters under your control you have a huge advantage (I managed to get 3 as altarians with a ton of buy now work, I grab a bunch of planets about 2 or 2 galactic grid sqaures before other races , talk about nerve racking). The bigger travel distance will give you a sense of security (think US with its two oceans) but if you dont branch out you are in big trouble. I find that it is often a major advantage to start in the middle since that way you will get tons of trade income. I will say that it does feel a bit empty. Maybe with the added efficiency we could go up to 25x25 with more planets, might make the super fast teching games last a bit longer (atm I almost always get to tech victory in some obscenely short amount of time, I actually won a game because I couldnt terminate my research treaties ).

It would be nice to have some eye candy in the void, like the odd quasar or nebula.

SD have said that they are limiting the planets in Immense at the moment while they work on memory issues. The retail version will be immenser.

Good point from Crazy Karl, Nebulas would be nice. Perhaps even ones that slowed your travel down or destroyed ships etc.

Limiting Planets. If you want a larger map but lower planet numbers, play with tight clusters and habitable worlds set to the lowest level. I did this once on immense, and there were maybe 30 stars across the whole map.



Good thing you aren't the only one playing the game then, huh? They CAN and SHOULD design things so everyone can enjoy it. By altering the settings, you can get your 15 decent worlds, but to me, as is right now, Immense feels gimped.



And I feel that until my 'empire' hits 100 worlds, it doesn't justify the title. Until then I'm not building an empire, maybe I'm building a sub-division. Epic fleet battles is why I play. (and yes, I understand not everyone feels this way, but in-game settings exist to make the game more like what you want)

Besides, if you want to play in a galaxy with 15 decent plants...(9 of them being other races homeworlds, leaving only 6 free to colonize) an immense map might be a bit TOO big for that. (it might even be too big if you meant 15 decent planets per side (which is not what you said) which would be about 165 planets)

Everyone that likes large galaxies with a large number planets feels like immense is empty. Some people like everything spread out...some don't. Now when stardock puts the number of planets back to what it normally would be everyone should be happy because the sliders will adjust accordingly when setting up a Galaxy. Atleast thats what I hope.

I like having a lot of room between the tight clusters, mostly so the AI will leave me the hell alone while I am in my 100 turn economic crash. That said, the distribution, especially on immense, is crappy. Most of the clusters end up crammed together on 1/2 of the map, there's a little bit of stuff on 1/4, and 1/4 is just empty. If they were more evenly distributed, you'd still have a lot of space, but you wouldn't end up with 6 close neighbors. There's always one guy who ends up with half the stars to himself, and one poor bastard who gets stuck with three stars and then 20 sectors of empty space.

Don't forget the poor stupid AI who usually gets trapped in a corner with one other planet.

When on Immense vice Gigantic , perhaps the "dark matter" area should be more thought of as the place stars used to be before the Arnor / Dread Lords wiped them out. We are "living" in the remnants of their galactic showdown right?

Just a thought,

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large