FreeOrion

Hi !

I played FreeOrion a two or three years ago, and just returned to it, I love it then, I love it now. I have mostly v4.7 and v4.8 in mind

• The UI is amazingly good for an open source game.
• I love the economy. I usually love complex economy, so FreeOrion is very simplistic for me, yet it manages to achieve a lot : meaningful short term choices and long-term planning, in interaction with all the other facet of the games (science, military, expansion, growth), and with a localized component (supply line). Its simplicity is perfectly suited to the game as it also allows to play long games on huge maps without being too bored by a ramping eco MM.
• I am mitigated about Imperial Stockpile. I first have to say that the implementation is nickel chrome, for the UI, the balance, the small amount of flexibility it offers, and the slightly different play-styles it enables with god IS species. But As I've read somewhere, the balance makes it either irrelevant, or takes a lot from the supply mechanism, making raid even weaker that it already was. In practice, it manages to do both in the same game depending on the tech level, which I guess is find, it does nullify a big part of the supply line aspect, but comes with a pricey strategic decision to tech it.
• The Monsters. Ah! The monsters... They are really well designed, well balanced, it feels like they actually roam with a purpose, they feel really great. Two big complaints though :
• 1, the AI can't handle them. It is excruciatingly slow to clear them even when it would makes sens for him to hurry and settle/conquer very good land they protect. And it is excruciatingly slow at out-posting nest, and when it does, it does not grow the monsters. For all these reasons, as much as I enjoy monsters, they always feel like an additional handicap to an already mediocre AI.
• The second complaint is that they no longer harass supply line. I know you changed it for a reason and my opinion is probably not very popular, but it further reduces the relevance of the supply mechanism (which is an awesome one). With the upcoming upkeep rework, I hope allowing monster to raid would be more acceptable as you can afford a couple corvets to guide the fire of your planet (mines are already quite good at dealing with roaming monsters)
• Still on the monsters, is it really useful at all to let Kraken eat krill? I failed to notice any growth compared to camping around a gas giant.
• About the AI, they are very decent, they don't pose a challenge to veteran, but they do to newcomers. I could make post longer than this one about all the flaws of AIs, and I might at some points if I naively think some of these points don't require a full Deepmind team to work on, but overall, the AI is quite decent and resilient.
• The military aspect is quite interesting and diversified, I already held this opinion before fighters, now all the better. And the diversity is not just about rock paper scissor, it's also about logistic, having superior mobility and greater regneerations to achieve victory in details, or steamrolling with brute force to force confrontation or defeat.
• Still on the military aspect, I fail to grasp the purpose of bombardment. Currently it feels rather weak. Most of the time, if you can bombard a planet, you can capture it, and you want it to keep a decent pop (I can see guardians being a significant exception). Even xenophobic would much rather have people to field their camps. Or maybe a good use might be to snipe young colonies in the crib.

4xel wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2019 5:05 pmis it really useful at all to let Kraken eat krill?

Whoa, I didn't know that. I'm failing to find any effect regarding eating krill in the FOCS files, so maybe that is only fluff in the Kraken's description?

I fail to grasp the purpose of bombardment. Currently it feels rather weak. Most of the time, if you can bombard a planet, you can capture it, and you want it to keep a decent pop

Bombardment will be more interesting once we have influence (another meter like production or research that will help to control snowballing) and colony upkeep as well as species opinion on empires, so that you may not want to acquire a planet with its current population because they hate your guts and will be constantly revolting or because you don't have at the time the necessary influence to pay for the upkeep.
Anyway, bombardment has a relatively useful purpose with current implementation: completely destroy populations while raiding behind enemy lines. If you have ever had a flock of black krakens (was it the name of the monsters that come from Experimentors hidden system?) roaming all over your empire and wreaking havoc on your populations while you were confronting another empire on your borders, you can get a glance of what you can do with a few squadrons of fast bombers. It might be a good strategy when you are not the dominating power in the galaxy.