As you move the fleet out towards the edge of the gravity at the beginning of the basic gameplay tutorial I think it might be good to insert an instruction on how to group assign ships / fleets. There isnt an instruction on how to do this currently and while most of us already know how to do this from previous RTS experience other may not and its bound to be a vital tool in playing this game.

Also, just after this I warped my fleet to Novalis and destroyed the pirates there .. the hint text then informed me that my capital ship had gained an experience level and that I should give it a new ability. Upon entering the ability management screen all the ability upgrades were greyed out and unselectable, I spent a good minute looking at this and reselecting the ship before deciding to move my fleet a little further in towards the planet, as I did this the graphics and sounds triggered that indicated the ship had leveled up and I was able to choose an ability. The delay this time was too long and would leave players confused as to whats meant to happen. This didnt happen the first time I played the tutorial and I will see if I can recreate it.

Combat seems slow to me. Ships (except fighters) just stand there and shoot at each other. It's pretty slow to me. I'd suggest making at least frigates move similar to fighters while fighting - this'll make fleet combat a lot more lively and seem more fast pace IMO.

Also, ships should have to move to the side of the gravity well with the space lane that they will be traveling before going into phase warp. Right now, they can phase warp through gravity wells as soon as they arrive, and it bugs me to no end when I see it.

One last thing - the tutorial, though informative, could be so much better wit a little voice acting. Just have someone read out what the tutorial tabs are saying and it'll be easier to follow it while learning.

Aside from that, it's pretty fun to play - even in this first beta! I am very impressed!

Almost forgot this: Sound channels are very low. I only get a few sounds going at a time - very annoying at times. I have a sound blaster audigy 2 wih the EAX turned down to nothing (it's amazing how much video card time that took up!).

[EDIT] Oh, and the background nebula absolutely must be more varied. It's disconcerting to have a gull 360 nebula at times. I'd suggest making smaller nebulae with different shapes and color separated by space with little twinkling stars. More atmosphere then anything. [/EDIT]

Loving the game so far! Bit of feedback of my own.

1) The focus-lock prompted by hitting the 'M' key should be automatically unlocked if you hit any of the arrow keys or move the mouse to the sides. Currently I think it sticks in that mode until you hit 'M' again.

2) Keeping track of selected units across numerous planets is tough. The only indications right now that you have a unit selected is a little gray blip on the side-bar, and occasionally a white notch on the planet's overview. When you have a ship or a group of ships selected and you're zoomed out past mesh-level, you should have a gray or white arrow pointing to each planet at which that/those ships are located. Ideally, that arrow should have the icon(s) of the ship(s) selected, but that could get too crowded.

3) Also about ship selection, I always organize my fleets using number assignment. By that token, however, when flipping between groups, I have a very hard time keeping track of what ships I have selected and how many of them there are. Having a little list at the bottom of the screen that tells you how many of each ship you currently have selected would be a lot easier than counting ships on the side panel. That way if you lose one of your ships, you can more easily notice and reinforce that fleet with an additional unit. Maybe it could pop up for a few seconds when you select a ship or a few ships (or hit a number hotkey) and then fade after a moment or two if the screen gets too cluttered.

4) After playing Supreme Commander, I got very used to moving around the map with the costant and vigilant use of my mousewheel. It's great that you can do this in SOASE. The one beef I have with this is when you accidentally slide your mouse over the information/chat box and you scroll up or down in that rather than moving the camera. I'd suggest that instead of using the mousewheel on that box (which I'll admit is very convenient), you use PageUp/PageDn to navigate that box, and any mousewheel-scrolling over that box still controls the camera. This could be an option, perhaps?

5) This could just be my impression, but the upkeep penalties are brutal. Rather than a percentage, they should be a static number in my opinion. It seems like there's little difference in penalty to having thirty ships and one planet, and having thirty ships and twenty planets.

There is a blue and green background that I've seen so far also...

Hi there, I just finish the tutorial. The game is good so far (but a little bit like haegemonia). only some suggestions/requests:

-It would be great native compatibility with the Logitech G15 Keyboard's LCD.
-a star-trek like shield glow when a shielded ship is hit.
-A better use of 3d movement (for 3d tactics)
-More ship movement when in battle
this until now.

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by the way, run just fine in a pentium 4 (2.8@3.2), 1GBRam, asus gforce 7600 GS.

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Regards

Ok, another suggestion for the pile: How about providing a toggleable window in the upper right corner that has two modes: either we can lock it to a view of something we want to keep track of or, alternately, have it display a realtime view of the unit or planet we are mousing over in the Empire Box? The latter would be particulary helpful, as it would cut down on a lot of the useless moving back and forth between planets just to see what's going on.

Suggest an option to hide icons for friendly traders/refiners altogether, to make it easier to select stuff in zoomed-out view.

Thats weird , my last game players 2,3,4 were different color and names...

Refinery ships need to ignore rally points, otherwise we end up with a pile of braindead freighters piling up and loitering about.

Oooops! My bad. Wheres my dunce cap?

Anyway, is there a 3D star map in the works? That would be very interesting to play on in this game (It's already in SOTS, but thats turn based).

Agreed. Until we get around to making it easier, you may find it helpful to activating the stacking icon so that your ships are shown more compactly (less counting little icons). By default they stack in sets of 5.

I don't know if I like the white box method currently implemented. As its hard to actually see what kind of ship it is, lol. Could we have an option for text as a replacement? Else I'll prolly just get used to it. In homeworld it used to say 16 x "type of ship" selected or something like that... I haven't played HW in awhile.