marcOSX wrote:
Game is running great. I tried a few very small galaxies, and I confirm that asteroid hulls are still overpowered. I usually go research first, raising production and military through technology. In this case I usually skip totally mass drivers, go for laser 1 then up to death ray ->4. I also skip armor as rock armor is quite good and comes with asteroid hulls. Exception is if by any chance an enemy planet is up for grabbing in the first 30 turns. But usually I go for a ship able to deal with sentinels and reduce defenses of some Mu Ursh or Hhoh planet before building any fleet building.
One thing I'm loving reading these is the vast variety of different approaches people have to researching the weapons techs, and no one has mentioned using my approach, which proably means we've got the balance of choices about right for the current stage of the game and the different weapon techs available.
I've reduced my reliance on armour research recently, but I still find you need it for planetary assaults, if a system has 3+ planets and each planet can kill a ship in one shot, you're in trouble. I actually think most of the armour parts (especially rock armour) are too cheap...
I noticed there were no Victory message when defeating all enemies. I pushed the game towards transcendance and got no message neither... Is it as intended or did I miss something?
There is currently no message for a conquest victory, I tried to work on one awhileback but I got stalled, I think Geoff's done some more work with some counting/statistics things that I could shoehorn in. There is, and should be, a message if you research Transcendance, there definitely was last time I completed it, I'll check to see if it's working in a game.
I have not seen any experimentors in those games. Playing on maniatical AI as usual.
Experimentors, in order to spawn, need a location at least 5 jumps away from an imperial capital, so if you're playing a smallish map with lots of AIs and/or medium/high starlanes they're less able to start. There is a plan to rewrite the galaxy generation scripts to include them directly if they're selected for use but such coding is beyond my ability. If you want to see the, play on Low starlanes or have more systems per AI.
.1. Fuel tanks. I don't see any interest into developping them as it is far more effective to raise your supply lines than to venture towards out of reach planets. It may reveal somewhat useful in a very poor environment with no planets in many jumps... And truth is that at the beginning internal slots of my warships are filled with a shield and some speed booster. No idea why anyone would even put a ramscoop in a ship... The only exception is if the experimentors live very far away and you have to send a full expedition to get them...
I am now of the opinion that it's too easy to improve supply connections, especially in the late game. However, on a Low Planets/Low Starlanes setting they can be essential, even with the ease of increasing supply, some of the techs will be of less use in some settings (for example, Artificial Planet is probably too powerful/useful on a Low Planets galaxy, but a waste of time/resources in a High Planet galaxy, I'm fine with that).
.2. Spatial distortion Generator/ Gateway to the Void ... Well I have yet to find a game where I am not leader in research and I should use that to deal with some enemy. Ususlly when I get this technology my scattered hull biggies are already ruling the galaxy. Did anyone actually used it? Same thing with Nova bomb... Please say if you really use it, at least against the AI.
Agree with this, I do want to do some work with them at some point as they're definitely fun ideas but they just, well, don't mean much to me. I have seen reports of others using the Gateway, but they're mostly by players playing strategic defence, I tend to want to conquer everywhere.
I used a Nova Bomb once. To see what it did. I decided it wasn't worth it and I wanted to capture planets not destroy them. Then again, there's currently too much strategic emphasis on conquering people and not as much on destroying people, even for Xenophobic species, maybe at some point it'll be more useful.
.3. Moving planets stuff. It is definitely fun and sci fi. I love the idea, and did it for fun in a few games. But truth is the investment is heavy for little real use. If you need a shipyard at a black hole, it is much easier to colapse some red star. It can be fun in heavy big multiplayer tho maybe to remove planets from some lanes so that enemies have no supplies... Never used it recently.
Mostly agree here. I have in the past moved an entire galaxy worth of planets into one system (really bad idea butfun to do), I've moved adjacent Mu Ursh/Acirema worlds on top of a Blue star or a Black Hole a few times, and did one experiment with a mobile shipyard, but it was too silly. But it's definitely fun.
.4. Mind control. Again it comes late into play, and at that time I almost never get my planets bombed by enemies, let alone organic species... I would love that to be effective. It comes too late and is too limitative to be the gameplay alternative it should be.
I'm of the opinion the current implementation is a Proof Of Concept feature that we need to expand on, in a lot of different ways, at some point, but it's not a priority for immediate work for me. If someone wants to play around with the ideas, especially implementing the ideas hinted at in the Translinguistics tech, I'd be very happy to playtest it.
.5. Sealth. I tried a few games raising sealth early, anad have yet to find any real use (against AI, it could be fun against players). As an enemy annoyance it is a bit effective if you neglect to raise your detection. It does not protect you from space monsters. Can anyone comment how you really use it into play to get something you won't get easier with well armed warships?
At the moment, stealth as a strategy isn't up to much, it is something I've been working on and want to do more on, but we're discussing changing the basic stealth mechanics, in part in order to make it more viable as a strategy, so I sidelined that work. It definitely needs more done.
Go on with the good games. Do you plan any translation to French?
Options/UI
Change the stringtable file from the default en.txt into fr.txt, it's not complete but Ouaz has been doing sterling work trying to both complete the translation and translate all the new features we keep throwing at him, I think it's probably the most complete translation but given I only speak English myself I don't know.
Thanks for the feedback, very much welcome.