Played v0.42 and 6048

[Brr]

Hi,

I first played two or three rounds the stable version and then I looked at the newest 6048 version (both on a Mac).

First: Really great game! And already such a challenging KI. But it seems to avoid invading.

Here are my first impressions (stable):
I had some problems with the tech tree, was searching 10minutes to find the tech that gives me the ability to build an outpost. Maybe a tag based search would be helpful. There were a lot of techs that does nearly nothing while some few techs have a big impact on the empire. Seems to me that in 6048 some were removed?
In general techs, weapons for example, are unbalanced.
The winner of a combat get away with nearly zero damage.
At round 100 I get more and more production, spamming Ships. I have already seen Threads in the forum about that, in addition I didn't have much motivation to build a lot Shipyard/Drydocks. I think it would be interesting if the amount of parallel ship production would be limited, depending on size of shipyard an size of shiphull.
Graphical issue: The position of the windows doesn't change when switching to fullscreen, so only a part of the screen is used by them.

I have read an idea about the tech tree and would like to make a variation of it as a suggestion.
Splitting the tech tree in categories, for example: Basic; organic, crystal, advanced tech with 55%-70% of techs being basic.
Some basic Tech needed to unlock the other three, so they are available at midgame. Every Tech in a category gives a research bonus on any other Tech on the same category so that players are motivated to stay at one tech category beside the basic techs. More specialized techs/buildings like the bioterror facility will belong to one category.
It would add some complexity to the tech tree, but also strcture it a bit more (early game and mid/endgame) and also add a lot of replay value.

Keep on the great work, I will play some more now .

[Geoff the Medio]

I ... was searching 10minutes to find the tech that gives me the ability to build an outpost. Maybe a tag based search would be helpful.

In the latest builds, if you look up Outposts in the game concepts, the entry says an Outpost Module is needed to create an outpost, and has a link to the Outpost Module part. The part's entry starts by linking to the tech that unlocks that part.

That said, being able to search for text in the pedia entries is on the to-do list.

[Dilvish]

...First: Really great game! And already such a challenging KI [AI?].

Yay! I'm glad to hear it's giving you a good run for the money.

But it seems to avoid invading....

Well, it certainly doesn't *intentionally* avoid invading That said, some of it's management challenges make invasions a bit more tricky for it. I'm still only moderately satisfied with its Production Queue management. Although it tries to make some effort to check if it should re-order items on the queue, such as to allow construction of a few troop ships to proceed even if there most of the PP is otherwise being allocated to some expensive like colonyShips or outpost ships, it still needs improvement there and doesn't do nearly as good a job as a human can with the queue. Getting the AI to build enough troop ships when it needs them, but not winding up stockpiling them, is proving more tricky than I'd have expected.

Also, the coordination between troop ships and attack ships is still a bit mediocre (that's a lot of the reason the AI troop ships are still carrying a weapon, I really need to improve the coordination so they can drop the weapon, now that they have become quite expensive); this coordination difficulty can often lead to significant extra delays for an invasion. Perhaps I also just need to increase the priority given to invasions -- I'll keep my eye on that.

Thanks for the feedback!

[MiniMe]

My feedback (some of this i have mentioned in the last build):

1. ship hulls/parts need an overhaul concerning internal/external slots. AI techs/builds only the organic path. Currently, these are inferior hulls since higher-tech organic hulls mostly add internal slots.
Asteroid hulls are the superior choice atm since they have less internal slots in relation to external slots. The Heavy Asteroid hull is available at tier 1 and equally potent as the highest organic hull (Sentient Hull).
Robotic Hull is far too expensive for a tier 1 hull. Why is that? Who would ever use this hull?
Fractal Hull, my favorite before the weapons/shields/armor modification, now cannot carry a shield = not good
Solar Hull has 9 internal slots?!

2. The possibility to randomize the galaxy (seed) was my favorite addition in the past versions. But systems now sometimes overlap in such a way, that you cannot select ships and it is almost impossible to see starlanes.
There should also be a rule that home planets need to be separated by at last x-starlanes (in my last game two AIs started right next to each other which ended up in both just turtling and not expanding at all).

3. I've been only playing as Eaxaw lately. Giving them Laser 4 from the start is too powerful, imo: Laser 4 is sufficient until mid-game. It costs 260RP and 14 turns to tech to Laser 4. Eaxaw can invest this time and RP and get too much of a head start in other important techs.
Perhaps giving Eaxaw Laser 1 at the start is sufficient.


I'm still very much enjoying the game, although i'm winning 99% of my games on maniacal (as Eaxaw). Therefore, i'm really looking forward to an Alliance-System

[Geoff the Medio]

...systems now sometimes overlap in such a way, that you cannot select ships and it is almost impossible to see starlanes.

That happening (probably) has nothing to do with the ability to set a random seed.

There should also be a rule that home planets need to be separated by at last x-starlanes (in my last game two AIs started right next to each other which ended up in both just turtling and not expanding at all).

The universe creation tries to separate empire homeworlds, but sometimes it can't find suitable places. It could probably be improved.

[Dilvish]

But systems now sometimes overlap in such a way, that you cannot select ships and it is almost impossible to see starlanes.

That's been happening about forever, though mostly just with the Elliptical galaxy shape, which has a somewhat denser system pattern. Sometimes they overlap so much there is no visible starlane at all. The underlying problem is that the galaxy layout algorithm that tries to prevent this gets overwhelmed if it finds 4 or more systems too close together & then it doesn't fully deal with them. Working on that is on my 'someday...' list.

[shivu]

Robotic Hull is far too expensive for a tier 1 hull. Why is that? Who would ever use this hull?

That’s my opinion too. (I am waiting for sale out. Maybe I get them for half price!)