If anyone hasn't mentioned it, I love the new displacement for planets along the Z axis, makes phasing so much cooler and it also makes ships move in 3D.

Keep on working devs, your making good progress

I didn't even notice!

how can you not notice that?

PS, i actually DID notice soemthing!!!

Lol, guess it wasnt mentioned.

Anyways, still love it

It only served to slow down ship travel in grav wells, and really didn't add anything to the game feel, IMO, but *shrug*

Had an issue with 4 flak frigates failing to kill a Bomber squadron. i wasn't sure what the issue was, i thought maybe it was firing arc, but as yarlen pointed out they have guns everywhere. the scenario was pretty simple, 4 flak frigates in front of a Sova carrier, Bomber squadron from Hangar defense comes out to engage. The frigates were firing, I zoomed in and saw that, they just couldn't hit.

It seems that the AI has gotten quite a bit more, timid? I did a 4v4, 20 planets with one of the AI's my intimate good buddy, all treaties. I went out fast to grab planets/asteroids, had 3 ice planets close by, so after I researched ice planets colonization, I got all 3, 2 were right next to my good buddy. The AI colonized 2 asteroids and after that I couldn't get it to do anything, it just sat in it's system and did nothing. The. Entire. 5 hour. Game. It didn't buld anything after the 1st cap ship and 25 or so cobalts. WTF???? Just accumulated credits and crystal/minerals. It would attack scouts but I didn't see the hostiles send scouts to it's systems. And one of the hostile AI's let an arid planet go un-colonized. I wasn't paying attention to it's planets and in the end game when I hit it with my roll up fleets, it still had it's original militia. Looks like some serious AI bugs.

Took me 5 hours to save up enough resources, build up some fleets (didn't want to get back doored while I was out a-viking) and go after the other 2 AI's + pirates.

pek

yah, the ai's are supposed to be fixed in the hotfix on monday

The AI seem to be put off by certain factors that happen in game. I think its a preset program or a loop that is screwing them up.

Well, I started my own thread. Sorry about that. Here is the link:

WWW Link

Ok , The AI needs to learn to identify adjacent volcanic and ice planets and rush volcanic or ice research by rush-building two Civilian stations. Just like Human players do.

This will give them a chance on small maps such as Close Encounters and Fire+Ice where the Ice and volcano planets are very important. As it is ,it seems they have the same lack of urgency in small map as they do in a large map where its not that important to rush-colonise.

Young Guns ts...
By the WAY, all Thumbs up for the new Planet Types.
Even if you cant control em, I like them.

Hi all

Has anyone discussed boarding actions on capital ships? now that would be cool imagine attacking an enemy capital ship getting the shields down then sending boarding parties (similar animation to colonization) on pods to try and take over the ship, fighters etc would prioritize taking them out,

Those that get on board flight it out with the crew onboard (who may be better at defending depending on ship skill level) who ever wins gets the ship!

Crews get replaced at repair centers,

this would be a capital only option, - i am suggesting this idea because i have noticed some people complaining that battles are just a big slugfest both sides shoot it out them one dies,

this idea would bring some more action into the game what does eveyone think?

Boarding has been discussed a few month ago and this wont be an option.

Whispers -> if you whisper to someone the whisper should have the ones Name in it, so that you can be sure that you wont whisper to the wrong one and it should have his colour.

it already does?

some general gameplay feedback and suggestions:

1.I like it that little icons show why you can't build something, but it appears they only show one condition if you lack several criteria. it would probably help if all of them are listed.

2.with the abilites, before you select them there is too little exact information of how much damage something does or how big the increase will be. you will see most of these stats once you select it, but it would help see it beforehand to make the choice more transparent.

3. I would have liked it for warcraft III heroes and I would like it for sins capships, which are fairly similar: more choice with abilites. no, not more abilites but not being forced to have to spend 3 on each with a super ability on lvl 6. I mean, why not have 10 experience levels and 4 or 5 levels for each ability? that way you can skip an ability if you deem it appropriate and not all lvl 10 capships of the same type are exactly alike. I like choice and it workes for rpgs like diablo and wow so why should it not work here?

on a side note, at first I thought that cap ships could need more passive abilities, "auras" and stuff, but later I saw that some of them do. my point is, if you have a kol battleship then all if its abilites require antimatter, all 4 of them. if you have all of them on autocast you tend run out of antimatter quickly enough (though research helps), but if you want some ability to casted over another, then even with autocast off at some point you have to invest points in an ability you may not even (be able to) use. as I said, it is not as bad as I first thought it was, but just something to consider.

4. there was a discussion once about flagships, I cannot remember the result. do flagships (not capships, but your first capship which has the flagships label) have any bonuses? I would favour some kind of passive fleet wide ability rising with ships level. like a 1-2% damage boost or maneuverability bonus to nearby ships. it would not be unrealistic from a lore point of view as having a supreme commander on board a ships usually does profit fleet coordination. it is also not an overly extreme effect as it results in about 6 - 12 % for a level 6 ship. noticeably, but not too unfair. if destroyed, a new flagship can be designated, but it takes some time and possibly ressources.

5. is there an easy way to get an overview of what and how many ships you have currently selected? if you by chance have to planet tab open in the empire tree there is but I am talking something that is always at the same place, so you don't have to search your planets. you can of course designate a selection as a crtl group and have the selection at the top of the empire tree, but its not quite what I was thinking, though it would do if there was no alternative.

6. there isn't any way of making the empire tree with two columns is there? with large systems of 20+ planets it can get confusing scrolling the list around and remembering which planet is which.

7. is there an icon that shows that a planet has production capacity? it wouldn't be too hard to do and help organisation if you start having ship factories on multiple worlds.

8. when you select a factory directly, why still have to click on capital ships? why not have the menu directly on the screen when you select? for frig facility it may make sense, but you could just as well make frigs first page and do a "flip page to cruisers" button and back. quicker access, because a lot of players are coming from rts games and are used to click on factories to produce stuff.

otherwise very enjoyable game so far are a good bit of depth and options to play around.

Hi,
Okay, I have put in about 10 hours of playing a large campaign with 5 star systems and I have to say, my overall impression... this is the most fun I've had from a 4x game since Masters of Orion 1 & 2...and no offense to anyone, but that includes GalCiv, so its saying alot. I even sneaked in an hour before I went off to work today As well, I've finishedplaying through all the tutorials, and a small 2-3 hour campaign before this. In my large campaign, I've researched all the techs available, so I feel ready to give some overall/general feedback regarding gameplay. I was not in beta 2, and I know this is mostly a tech beta, but I've posted some tech issues already so here it goes (I apologize if some of these things have been posted before):

1. PIRATES
Keep the pirates, they are fine. Yes, they can be annoying at first, but in my games they've essentially provided a motivation for me to build a large enough fleet to actually take them out. The added income from taking the pirate bases is welcome too. No need to nerf this, pirates become a non-issue after you've grown in strength enough to wipe them out.

2. STAR SYSTEMS
Theres a few things about the star systems I don't like...and thats well, they just don't feel very 'astronomically correct'. The planets feel like they are sort of haphazardly placed around their stars. It would be alot nicer if each had an orbit around their star, complete with an orbital trajectory that they follow. In short, basically modelled after how star systems like our own solar system work. This is one of those 'immersion factor' things that in my opinion would improve this game significantly.

3. SHIPS
When I first heard about this game, I was sad to learn we can't design our own ships. But after playing a large campaign, the reason is evident, there is just to much going on in a larger scale game to take time to crank out a new ship design every time you research some new techs.
Having said that, some sort of ship customization would be nice. Here are some suggestions:
A. Capitol Ship Naming: Add a button on the capital ship menu that allows us to rename the ships. The fact that capital ships in this game level is a wonderful concept that really makes you feel invested in the ships, so being able to custom name them would just be the icing on the cake.

B. Capitol Ship Design: Taking customization a step further, a capitol ship design interface for making some basic design choices would be nice. It would work on a point system basis, where a new capitol ship design would be allocated X number of points to spend on various abilities and attributes that we currently see available in the game. The choices would be restricted to the options available for the race, off course.
First, you'd pick a ship model from a library of capitol ship design models available for that race. Then, points could be allocated to ship armor, shields, hangar capacity, antimatter capacity, number of gun/missle batteries as well as the special abilities we see on the different ships, such as colonization, ion cannons, reactive shielding etc.. Available points would be such that designed ships would be on par with the current ships, but this would allow you to design ships geared to the task you want. I could, for example, design a carrier capitol ship with more hangar capacity then the stock carrier and only defensive abilities., but with none of the offensive abilities that the stock carrier has.
Since the ships level, your designs won't become obsolete as the game progresses, hence you won't spend too much time re-designing ships all the time. The only time you may redesign is if you researched an ability in the game that unlocks a new capitol ship ability...but I havent seen too many of those in the game so far.

4. Enemy AI

My first campaign had the AI set at Medium. Honestly, I found this setting to be pretty easy. I have only had to retreat from one battle, and I found that none of the other factions made an attempt to take any of my planets or asteroid complexes, with one or two exceptions. The only time they attacked is if I conquered one of their planets or asteroids via culture. My next grand campaign will be at Hard setting so we'll see how that goes.

5. Diplomacy
This is kind of meh...but the rest of the gameplay is so strong that I can live without a more robust diplomacy system. I like the little messages I got from other empires, that its kind of silly for an empire to tell you 'you should evacuate X planet' cause they are pretty much telling you where they are going to attack. I really haven't seen a good diplomacy system in a game since MOO series (Civilization games are an exception), to be honest, I wish someone would make a new and improved system that follows that model.

6. UI Stuff
I'm generally fine with the UI, I just have one request... have a cinematic button somewhere that just gives you a full screen view with nothing of the battles. I love watching the battles, and I don't want to have to go into the options menu to toggle the unit cards and other things off. Just put a button on the screen, or use a hotkey, you press it, all the UI stuff goes away so you can watch the battle full screen. I think Star Wars EAW had this feature, it was one of the few good things about that game.

7. Sound & Music
I love the music in the game, dont change it. The battle music actually gets me pumped up and I feel like I'm almost watching a Star Wars movie!

The sound effects, on the other hand...could use improvement. The Cobalt Light Frigates sound really weak, as do some of the other weapons. I like the distant thumps you get from orbital bombardment though, those sound good.

Okay, so thats my long winded feedback for now. I'll make another post after I've played some more. All in all, a very good game, and it will be great with just a few improvements like the ones I've suggested. About 4-5 years ago, after I finished playing Homeworld 2, I made a post on relic forums saying that it would be great if Homeworld 2 were essentially made into a 4x/rts hybrid. Though I'm sure thats not why this game was made lol, I'm so glad to find out that the folks at Ironclad were thinking the same thing! Thanks again, keep up the great work!


PS: For those that think the game is too slow, try playing a large campaign, it picks up speed with the more territory you control.

Was allegedly in in earlier versions of the game. Got taken out because it's "too complicated."



Is already in but disabled for the beta.



The AI sucks. The devs are aware of this and promised a better AI for beta 4.



Press ctrl-shift-Y at the same time. Enjoy.


Oh, btw. welcome to the un-fun of beta 3.


Edit:

There are two parts of this. First multiplayer is slower then single player because of lag/stutters.

Secondly small maps are slower, can take lower than medium maps, because of a lack of resources. Speed of large maps is imho fine, but small and medium maps are too slow for short matches.

Okay...devs, people who play 4x games are generally smart people...we can handle realistic star systems...pleeeeeaaaasseee put it back in for beta 4 and let the players be the judge of how complicated it is.



Thanks for the heads up



Thanks again

For balance reasons, this would be really time consuming to implement, making it unlikely we're going to see this.



The AI is really basic so far, don't expect a challenge.



They're currently working on a better diplomacy system, the current one could be called a placeholder.



Its not a matter of how smart, its a matter of it not being practical. If the planets rotate as a purely asthetic matter, its going to look really ugly with the phase lanes stretching the way they are, even if you ignore the difficulty with remembering which planets are whose (most people don't use the names, they use the positioning...). If the phase lanes change as planets orbit, you've got a real headache (an impossible one) on your hands.



Ctrl-Shift-Z

Let's not start a discussion about this in this threat.



Oh, yes. Sorry about that. He's right of course. I've got another keyboard layout.

I don't necessarily agree that it'd be too time consuming, I imagine it'd be about as time consuming as creating a character in a simple RPG creation system like in WoW, which is all of about 2 minutes. What you are designing is really a ship template/type, not a specific ship that you'd have to scrap and redesign later.

But, for the sake of argument, lets say it is too time consuming.. I'd settle for a toolset external to the game itself that is point and click driven... no coding or modding experience required. You could then load custom ship sets into the game as you are selecting your game setup options.







Ok, thats good to know.



Well, I agree with some of this...ya, the phase lanes would be kinda ugly stretching over the place. Off course, open system movement with no phase lanes would solve that problem. You'd just have ships entering 'phase space' from their location at the edge of a gravity well to wherever the destination planet would be.
Players would still be able to track which planet is whos by position still, but in this case it'd be which orbit it was in (how many rings from the star it is).

I honestly seem to remember a 4x game that pretty much used a realistic system design, I just can't for the life of me remember what it was called.



Ctrl-Shift-Z

Thanks

Phase lanes are here to stay.