does it have the potential to be a good and worthwhile expansion from this ground work?

hem ... i like it for single player ^^

i'd like to know how good are the vicious ai's ... cuz i just defeated 4 in one battle and it didnt seem any different from unfair ROBOCOP!!!

But still asking myself how it can add something to multiplayr game

no one will ever use 24 supply for something that ppl will kill before it can do crap ^^

and 1 allegience per shoot of the embacy (forgot the skill name) isnt enough, you'd need 10 (240 supply) to use it realy

i'll wait for multi playing to tell more impressions this is a first view after one game

(I WANT DEADLIER AIS seriously, change that siege spam crap, its useless, make em spam more lrf or hc directly, make em use repulse and subvs, make em spam hoshi kody and use it good, stop ai from runing into a battle ball)

i know its tough stuff

edit : a little suggestion btw

Check lum dmg its broken, i'm adv player and a little sick of seeing ppl cry on lums

same for kosutra and nova and delivrance engine, all broken novalith does way too much dmg (4500 ...) and pop reducting is deadly when you sb planet so you don't loose it, kosutra is the same, way too much damage on ships, 5 shots same time is crazy, 8 shots dead, 12 its the end no way you'll get up again and 6-7 shots is generally enough to take any fleet

its the contrary for delivrance engine, its useless, i needed 20 to take over a system ... and a LOT OF SHOTS to take down the planets, the 25% damage boost is ridiculous compared to the rest of canons i mean seriously ... oh and btw, the kosutra is so simple to get, you could rush it first thing with neutrals and credit feed from allys, if you're in pocket with no fear of attack, you can spam 3 for 20 min in game and end it like that

A little suggestion for diplo too it would be nice if you would make a deadly ship in par with canons, like a ship with 2000 dmg output (i'm sure someone asked for it first but i luv big guns T_T)

According to the tech description, you can not kill the envoy cruiser until the cruiser uses the Undermine ability.  Thought it was a nice touch allowing empires of the same race able to communicate without any need for diplomancy techs.

balanced stuffs? seriously? ^^ no way illum kosutra delivrance and nova are broken thats for sure

i even think repulse should be nerfed again so it can only be used as an instant push but not a constant

same for subv, once you have eco rolling just spam them non stop and keep a fleet all you want, last game i left subs alone locking fleet, made a sb and attacked the player with rest of fleet

only way out of subv is scuttle the ship targetted or hole fleet

You have no idea what the Deliverance engine is for, do you? The Deliverance engine gives that planet your own culture bonus and removes their culture bonus. Also, it boosts the DPS of friendly ships. It is extremely inefficient to use 20 all at 1 planet at the same time. It is NOT meant to be used that way. The effects of the Deliverance engine has a cap. "Staggering" shots is a much better way to use them

Its a super weapon. Its SUPPOSED to do lots of damage. Also, getting Kosturas within 20 mins. will mean that you will have no fleet and get steamrolled. Superweapons don't win the game. Also, the subverter should NOT be nerfed under any circumstances. It is weak and dies very easily.

Anyway, this is not a balance thread so these thoughts do not belong here. At all.

The new envoy cruisers look cool, but they should get a unique ability imo. However, the the devs said that not all Diplomacy features would be available in the beta so it is hard to say exactly what should be changed.

Ok, just got to play a couple matches (both crashed after defeating the first AI, I already sent the minidumps. Normal difficulty, faster speed, medium random maps, FFA unlocked teams (all my usual settings but difficulty -hard- and speed -fast-). Some impressions and suggestions, focusing mainly on the new mission system:

• My missions are never accepted. After trying several mission goals and rewards I always got the same "Not good enough" reply. Here's the problem: while I know that they don't want to do it (wait, since when can you _reject_ a mission anyway? I know I can't) I'd like to know the specific reasons of why they don't want to do it. Reasons like: I like that guy too much, your reward is crap, my military sucks, I'm busy, etc. Some feedback here from the AI would help. Right now all this just makes me not want to issue missions, as those AIs are extremely picky even with deals that I'd accept on a heartbeat (not to mention _way_ better than any of those crappy rewards the AIs used to bait me with up to Entrenchment- I'm talking about rewards of thousands of credits and hundreds of each resource, with requeriments as low as killing 5 ships in 15 minutes).
• Mission presets. It'd be nice to have some kind of "Mission presets", be it already built-in the game or letting the player decide that a particular mission is used frequently enough to be saved somewhere to be able to reuse it again later with just a click of a button. Right now you have to set up to 6 parameters each time for every single mission. Missions that will be rejected by the AI anyway.
• Hints on the chances of the mission being accepted. I'd love to have more hints about how good my "advisors" think the mission I'm issuing is. Resource buttons could change it's color (say, from red to green) once I'm approaching a reward that the AI probably would accept, or a text in the lower part of the screen stating if the mission so far has any chance of being accepted (be it a: "poor/normal/good/excellent" or a percentage or probabilities).
• Diplomacy system maybe too complex for small/medium maps. My view here may be myopic due to the fact that I haven't yet been able to finish a game properly but, so far in those map sizes, none of the new dyplomatic options get into play but creating embassys (in fact, it seems AIs rush the construction of diplomatic vessels for some reason). There hasn't been any other diplomatic relations beyond that, which is both ironic and sad. Not the usual trade alliance, nor the sometimes elusive Cease Fire, which I always got with at least one AI when reaching the point where my games crashed. To be precise, no AI has approached me for absolutely nothing (AIs not issuing missions Hmm...). That said, that new diplomacy screen uses to show "love level" between the AIs between 20% and 40%, so it seems there's something going on behind the curtain. Unfortunately, it seems all the AIs keep their diplo-love for themselves.

That's all so far. The rest I can think of has already been mentioned here or in other threads.

I love the faster speed. I got my homeworld to make 25+credits a second LOL Its pretty good, those pop ugrades were worth it

I thought I saw something at the bottom of the info card that appears when the planet is selected. It was at the very bottom and said Embassies Created with a list of players under it, if I remember correctly. Also possibly you can only establish an embassy on one planet or only the home planet. Can't say for sure because in the one game I tried, I sent my envoy directly to the enemies home planet.

Currently you can only establish embassies on another player's homeworld.

So, this Envoy ship that culture bombs other planets--it can reduce allegiance to 0% but cannot kill the colonization of the planet?  What happens if it reduces allegiance to 0% and hostile culture from a culture center at another planet is hitting that planet?  Could the planet then be lost?

Yes I killed Vicious AI 1v1 with culture and 20 envoy cruisers.

I really dig this. Just asking "hurt this person" is too vague, especially for an AI. Having that extra bit of qualifier would really help out.

Agreed; this will be interesting to see how people counter-act these threats.  Although on the other hand we may just see each pocket player becoming the clean-up crew...