Yet another first impression thread

from Sins Forums
I really enjoyed beta 2 and can't wait for the finished product.

Pros
- Epic is the word i believe.
- Looks great.
- Runs smoothly on my year old work laptop.
- Plenty of research
- Cool abilities
- Bounty system

Cons
- Lacking diplomacy options
- The overview bar on the left side is cluttered after half an hour.
- Ship icons are close to indistinguishable on the overview bar.
- Bugs (but hey, its a beta)

So i should probably say something about what i would like to be different in the final release.

I would really like the overview to be different, i have trouble telling what units i have selected at times, and would rather have a standard selected units thingy on the bottom of the screen.
I would love to have a new function that lets groups autoattack enemies entering a system while staying in formation. This would prevent frigates that are fast from getting pulverized when autoattacking.

I also experienced a few unforgivable bugs, such as being completely unable to attack.
This happened on two out of 5-6 games.
My vessels simply fly over to the enemy and do nothing, same applies to the enemy vessels.

I also experienced that when eradicating an enemy presence on a planet they immediately get it back without having to colonize it again. this bug occurred in all the games i had except one, but only on certain planets.



Edit: I also noticed that even when having taken over two of the enemies planets and having them cornered with vastly superior ships and upgrades, and try to offer them peace, they far to often act like they are the ones in a excellent position to wipe me out at the time of their choosing.
So have the enemy give you a hint as to how balanced the battle is by their responses to different diplomatic requests or offers.

3,203 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
For the most part I agree with what you wrote. I would like to point out that them getting their planet back was not a bug. It is a result of cultural influence. That particular mechanic is the subject of much debate and is being tweaked. (link)

I do agree that that AI makes some questionable decisions a lot of the times. I am getting ready to make a thread which illustrates this point. Overall though it seems like you enjoyed the game. That makes me happy
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I had the attack bug a few times also. I found that if I keep the ships selected and zoom out till the planet pips come up then zoom back in I can attack again. It seems to hapen, more often but not always, when you try to attack something that is realy close to your ships. It lessons the likelyhood also if you zoom in closly before right clicking the target.

This is a minor bug in my opinion. I have seen finished games with much worse than this with no work arounds and they never even bothered to fix it with a patch later hahaha. It was so minor I forgot to mention it in my review post, thanks for reminding me. I was very impressed overall with the general lack of buggyness and crashes in a game only in beta 2. This bug has only happened 4 times so far while I was playing but I have only played 2 ghames through so far so I am sure the developers, if they play which I am sure they do, have had it happen to them and know about it and are trying to fix it.
WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I see, I find it highly unrealistic that they get back an uninhabited planet, as the population is dead because of planetary bombardment. all this because of cultural influence.

And I know for certain that in the first game i encountered the attack bug, it affected all units in that game, and therefor I simply started a new game the other times I experienced it.

But you are in the end right, I am the kind of guy that enjoy spending a long long while on a single game.
When I play Civ 4, the speed is epic, in GC2 the research speed is the slowest.
And this game simply provides plenty of playtime per game.

I love it.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
@ Peior - A lot of people have expressed the same sentiments. Hopefully they will re-balance and patch that particular function. Once they have feel free to come back and let them know what you think. They seem to respond to all critisizm, praise, and bug reports with equal intensity. That isn't something you see often in the game industry anymore.

So keep playing and keep comin back and tellin em what's up!
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
The attack bug was fixed on July 12th, have you downloaded the hotfix? Also, we added a secondary empire tree for those who find it too cluttered. It can be activated in the user interface options. There is also an ongoing thread for suggestions to improve the tree, and the one we are testing that I just recommended is the result of a previous forum suggestion. We are addressing the culture problem at the moment though one of the worst culture problems was fixed in the July 12th hotfix. Both culture and diplomacy are fairly new systems in the game so its gonna take us a bit to get them flushed out properly so the comments are much appreciated. Aside from that thx for the praise and support and I'm glad you are having fun  
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Aside from that thx for the praise and support and I'm glad you are having fun


Hope I'm not too late for this thread. I played my fist game last night, and I had first impressions of my own. (SDC had an update when I finished, so my apologies if any of these things have been fixed.)

First off, this game has roughly twelve pounds of awesome in and a ten pound sack. Honestly, a lot of the game is more polished than some release versions that I've played. There were a few hitches that I ran into in my first game, however. Most of my speed-bumps were cosmetic in a way, but I consider that an important part of a game.

-Very little "fanfare" when you kill off a race. I had missed the text on the screen that said I had killed someone off, and I never realized it until sometime later when I was looking at the diplomacy screen.

-It seems strange that 20+ planets are orbiting a single star.

-I agree with the above that the side bar gets cluttered, but I love the fact that there is this ready information there.

-It is very hard to "convince" a unit that it is not in a ctrl+# group any more. I tried to re-org some units into three groups instead of two. I spent most of the rest of the game trying to get on cap ship to realize that it was only in group 3 rather than group 2 + 3.

-When the game was finished, the summery power graph changed several times as I moved the mouse.


Other than this, it was an amazing first run for me. I will probably be firing it up again tonight. Can't wait to see how this game develops over time.