Ive noticed that if you upgrade the colonization ability the recast does go down, i think a level 3 is only 60 seconds. AM cost doesnt change thou, as to the ionbolt from what i can tell its effects last longer, cost/recast stays the same. only annoyance ive found, is when your upgrading a Caps abilities, when you mouse over the button for say colonization 2, it shows the effects of col 1, instead of what col 2 gives you. Same pattern for all the other ones. Along the same lines, research shows you what the next level would be, when it shouldnt. For example, if you have no points in the gauss cannon RoF research, and queue all 3 at once, if you mouse over it, it shows a 15>20% as if there is a 4th upgrade to that tech. Should either show 15>15 or max. IMO both are bugs, not balance issues. And both are carried over from B2.

On the topic of colonization, the only time colony ships are useful is as stated, before you can use an akkan. My first Cap is usually a Kol, to clear systems out. Maybe if the colony ship had a drastic reduction in its AM cost(from 100 to say 20) it would help. It takes way to long for them to be able to colonize a system after jumping in.

Off to play another couple of games, Also what happened to the ability to pick other settings like pirates on/off, flag ship death loss, etc...?

They're disabled temporarily only.

Which makes the list very useful to me now, before I've never used it because of the jumping. Now I use it quite often.



Easy. The Akkam sucks in battles. It's a waste of a lot of resources and fleet points which could have been used for a Kol Battleship or a Sova Carrier. Besides that, colony ships are very cheap, so there is nothing stopping you from using 2-3 colony ships at the same time for faster colonizing.

Game speed needs to be addressed. I have other issues, but if this was fixed, the game would be 10x better than it is now. Else take out the RTS part and call it a 4x, and make it turn based. The fun factor is slipping away...

Happiness -1

Also , as I've seen in my few multiplayer games, people aren't building fleets, they are building 1 MASSIVE fleet all the time, and just steamrolling with it... The AI never did this and its not fun to be on the other end of the steamroller...

Fleet size needs to be addressed in a different way from what the empire can support...

Maybe make a fleet limited to 1 capital ship and X number of support ships... ?

How about allowing some minimal orbital construction around gas giants ?
ie say a ship building facility or research facility or the like.

Just got into beta 3 yesterday and have been playing some single player to get up to speed for multiplayer (can't wait).

Two things...

First, just a comment, I read some posts a while back during beta 2 about pirates being a huge pain to deal with. I would have to say that of the 2.5 games I have played so far they are hardly an issue. matter of fact I think they could be harder (and maybe they do get harder) the first 2 games were on easy then medium respectively. the other half of a game that I just started tonight before I came to work here is with 5 comps on FFA all on hard... the comps nor have the pirates caused any really big problems for me (I make it a habit to make sure my bounty is always lower then someone else not sure if thats whats helping). Anyways just a comment on that.

The second thing is a issue I ran into that is a bit more technical. I invaded an enemy homeworld and crushed it, but they managed to queue up a metal extractor. they never got a chance to start building it, it was just see thru by the time I cleared out the planet. Unfortunetly as the planet died the extractor that was queued up didn't expire. So I had to wait till I defeated that whole comp before the extractor was canceled and I could build on that rock.

I guess it could be possible that it was canceling and would have gone after a while (the last enemy colony was only one jump away and had no defences) but I was shocked to find it didn't expire right when the world fell.

As I only read a few posts into this threat I apologize if this is a repeat.

P.s. I feel I should add one last thing, every thing is pretty damn cool in this game, my only large complaint is with the rally system, I feel like I need more control I.e. a way to send a ship it a fleet as i queue it up, not just have all the ships from one yard go to one fleet or rally point at a time. I think Earth 214..something or other (came out a year or 2 ago) had a system like that. Anyways I might make a post later if I can articulate what I am thinking about a little better.

Make it adjustable... some of us enjoy a calmer pace. If it slips too close to the RTS click-fest, then you do a diservice to your goal of crossing Strategy with RTS action.

Their embargo ability is powerful, and don't forget that while they aren't as powerful as the other capships in close combat, they are far from being "pure" carriers. They have a nasty broadside to swat any frigates that get too close, and their little missile pods can be... quite fun. On top of that, the ability to instantly manufacture replacement fighters (and accelerate all other construction in system) is useful for both defensive and offensive purposes. (Rebuild defenses quick in the middle of combat, or get your carriers to replace lost fighters now instead of after the fight).

Well, I've only had one game so far but that isn't (quite) what I saw. My ally did that, sure, but Blair pretty much kicked his behind, and held me off by using three fleets (one for each "front" plus another one that would jump into the star now and again... fun for everyone!)



Well, in my multiplayer games they've shown up as a massive problem, if only because I was too busy to stomp them -- I trying to keep Blair too busy to stomp me!

They pretty much flattened my homeworlds defenses, then sat there and killed trade for a while (thankfully, the repair centers kept my economic buildings alive so I just lost trade ships, and lots of 'em). And when my ally forgot to mention to me that his planet had gotten killed, and his defenses were gone, they got into some of my "rear" systems and I lost those...

That sucked.

You could have just sent a frigate along and blown it up, ya know.

Traditionally in lists like that shift selects everything between the two click points -- see if "ctrl" click does what you want.

Yea, this bugged me at first too. Then I realized that they color-coded it! Green number means there is more to be researched.

As Ron Lugge pointed out above regarding the 2v1 game against me, one massive fleet is probably not the best way to go. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, more often it's not. We expect as people get more experienced and as strategies and tactics evolve, the one mega fleet will become obsolete. It may work fine against the AI, but not against an experienced human player. If you try that with anyone here at Ironclad they will likely turn you inside out.

Why would/should they be?

It's akin to having the sufficient % of culture in the galaxy in Galactic Civilization 2, where the rest of the alien races adopts your culture because it's the most dominant one, and thus viewed as the "best".

It's a strategy just as conquest is. And serves as another factor to defend against.