further comments beta4b

Further beta 4b comments

Question –when you change manufacturing, is it really supposed to return ‘zero’ progress, to the next selected item? Military progress seems to include progess towards current item if you change it.

Re - the Major and initial yearly reports – about the background and progress of the Terrans. – It would be nice if these had voice over narration (like hitchhikers guide?).

When the planet sidebar is up and you cycle through the turns, the progress toward your target is still not shown next to the planets, and I really think it should be.

On the research screen, a pop-up would be very worthwhile showing the value of what the research article does.

Smoothing the ‘hold and scroll’ on the mini map browse would be nice as it’s a bit jerky at the moment.

All discoveries for anomalies are currently 5%. Boring! Why not between 1% and 10%? Add some drama!.

Ship list – what’s going on here? When I click on a ship from this list I should get a response, not a complex bounce-back to the list depending upon what the ship is doing, it should over-ride the current orders.

Trade ship range is FAR to long twice as long as it should be.

Early-game ship range is still 25% to long, de-valuing research and exploration, reducing the sense of exploration greatly.

Monthly reports – better as bar charts.

Hang. Threading? – In game year, Sept 2189. Colony ship sent to unusual situation:- Star Hinura with 5 planets with 4 of 5 at class 16, one class 16 selected for destination of colony ship, game hung until I clicked about a bit.
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Reply #1 Top
I agree on the range issue. I liked more those set in GC Gold for OS/2. Starbases should work as planets for ranges if a "ship support module" is added.

I'd also like to have, randomly, permanent wormholes (between two of them, and have them marked on the minimap to be used by any ship as a way to fast move. Obviously you should also consider the passage in your range calculations.
Reply #2 Top
for the range add another thing...

with the UP i get a planet very far from home... so i was able to sent my coloniship over there but my two sectors range didn't touch

so to get there my colships travel on sectors where i've no range...

i don't know if i'm getting clear here! :(

so i'll explain a little bit more... i was playing on gigmap and where contain in the right bottom of the map and i gain a planet in the left-up corner... i didn't have any range techs!!! but i was abble to send my ships over there travelling on sectors i couldn't send them normally...

so this thing is very nice but i think it's little bit strange... and not very realistic!!! LOL
Reply #3 Top
Gherardo,

Great ideas.

Regarding ship support modules, I like this idea from a gameplay perspective but logically for a starbase to function it must be able to receive crews, accodomdate ore carriers, re-supply ships etc so it must already have a ship support ability anyway with basic facilities for repair, re-fueling and resupply.

We talked about permanant linked wormholes in another thread months ago. If the ship ranges are reduced and starbases become more important than now, you may end up with starbases sitting next to permenant wormholes to defend them and to enable linking-on and through them and they would become very strategic points, like DS9 and its wormhole into another quadrant of space.

S
Reply #4 Top
I like strategic option...
Starbases, permanent wormholes and minefields would add texture to a naturally flat universe :d
Reply #5 Top
I played a game on gigantic map until 2198, when it froze and I had to reboot.

I won't even mention the out-of-time reports.

Until about mid-game, everything was fine. But as I got into late-game stage, I noticed a number of problems:
1) Usually when you move one ship, the game takes you to next one, right? However, many times, in late game stage, the game forgets to bring the player to ships that are ready to move. The game also forgets to move some ships that are in autopilot. This happens to AI ships aswell. This problem continued until I used the "view ship list" interface and manually selected all the damn ships. That fixed the problem, but the AI still have it.
2) After I selected some ship, I got this to appear on screen: http://64.60.177.194/pic/glitch.PNG
It stayed there nomatter what I selected. After I reloaded a saved game, it went away.
3) This picture speaks for itself: http://64.60.177.194/pic/research.PNG
4) I know the reports in Beta 4 are out of sync, but sometimes they don't appear at all. Sometimes I just don't get the "this turn the following things were made" interface.

About performace: by about year 2189, I had to wait a minute or two, which is pretty good considering the number of ships involved.

About AI behavior in late game: they are making tons and tons of ships. But for some reason they don't get far from their border. Also, I noticed they have a tendency to build weaker ships even tho more powerful ones are already available. That needs to be fixed. Weak ships serve only 1 purpose - increase experience of enemy ships.
Also, given the quantity of war ships AI produces, the number of transports is very low. And to make matters worse, they use regular transports instead of Combat Transport. This undermines AI strength considerably.

Right now I control about 1/3 of the galaxy, my ally controlls about 1/4, my 2 enemies control 1/3. In terms of military power, the 2 enemies outnumber me greatly, but it's very rare that they cross my borders, why? So they just sit there, doing nothing in particular, waiting until I decide to make some ships and invade them. What's the fun in that?
I can send you my save game file if you want, there's absolutely no challange left in the game.. (and all AI are genius!) Even if I declare war on my ally, that wouldn't make life that difficult. I'm only playing for the sake of tech research.

And I have 1 question: how to make wormholes?
Reply #6 Top
Master Lame

I agree with you there is a ploblem late game with ship movements. Here is something I posted elsewhere in the forum. Hopfully you might see something interesting.

Just finnished 1st game beta 4b. Excellent, However I am experiencing some frustrations with the auto pilot option. When you move large numbers of ships from one side of the galaxy to another, I get the feeling that some of the ships arn't moving. So I put view autopilot ships and they are moving, but it takes a long time. So I take view autopilot ships off. when I press find nothing happens but there are ships with move points unused. I think that when auto pilot is moving ships nothing happens on screen to tell you, so although my orders were being carried out. I pressed end turn button.

Somehow we need a visual confirmation that ships are moving without actually seeing them move to keep the game flowing. If the info screen at the bottom where the ships info comes on flashed the ship number we would know that although nothing was moving on screen things where happening, and to wait until all movements were finnished.

I don't see this as a problem in smaller galaxies or early in a larger galaxy game. It is just in the last third in huge and gigantic