Hi all Just upgraded the beta to the alpha package and have played a few games and came here to post some thoughts and things I've seen so far. I am aware this is an alpha, but I'm going to list everything anyway and of course anything not an observable fact is just my opinion as a non coding non development strategy game enjoyer. Bugs: Terrain: issues including buildings placed on inappropriate terrain 'underground'. Terrain biomes not spawning. Units interacting inappropriately with terrain by pathing into water/craters or ships onto land. Canyons spawning oddly in ice biomes with sharp odd looking walls projecting into space. Units: several units seem to be having trouble with firing solutions at extended range towards radar blips. Notably the demolisher and lobber. Bombers seem to take an inconsistent time to reload/ retarget while making a pass. Units will become stuck on other units and buildings especially if a factory is bordered by other buildings. Missiles will bug out if tracking a moving target as they get closer. UI: Several of the strat icons are unreadable at range/ during fast movement. No indication if a unit is being destroyed via the 'delete' key. Unit/ building information cards are very small/ hard to read as well as having little information currently. Balance: The catapult snipe is currently unbalanced by having no direct counter, the addition of a t2 anti missile turret could help with this. Artillery: Needs an indicator of negative energy rate per shot so you can plan your economy for constant fire/ slow fire/ rare fire. Bomber snipes: currently have only one direct counter in the t2 asf swarm. A t2 flak cannon would probably solve some of the issues. Anti ground turret: rotation is very slow and while this increases the strategy of placing and rotating them the sheer size of unit swarms dictates a faster re acquire time. Tanks: The current winning method of play seems to focus entirely on many t1 land factories supported by one t2 land factory and the economy to pump out ants/ levelers at a large rate. Its fun and its pretty but it isn't exactly strategically challenging or rewarding. Tanks shouldn't shoot at aircraft, not sure if this is a placeholder choice or not but a t1/2 gunship would go a long way towards forcing diversification of land forces. The destroyer: needs more hp The cruiser: needs more Anti air firepower. The ability of a bomber to take out several destroyers/ cruisers needs adjustment. The t2 battleship: needs a range increase as well as cannon tracking speed and bullet speed increases. The t2 artillery class: needs a clearer unit for exactly what it is. When I first saw it I thought it was an aircraft carrier. I would also suggest more missiles with lower damage than the current balance. Subs: Haven't used as they seem to stick above the water and not fire torpedos. The fab one looks cute though. Suggestions: Upgrading: I heard somewhere (perhaps a reddit ama?) that there would only be two tiers of units and upgrading wouldn't be going in. I can't really see how this would work as it would require excessive micro to for instance upgrade all t1 mass extractors into into t2. The factories I can see being a separate consideration. But certain commonly used and replaced buildings like mass extractors and defensive structures which occupy valuable space need an upgrade ability that doesn't require them to be destroyed and replaced with a useful building. T3: It would seem that t3 is inevitable given the current options, even if there is no t3 fab units the t2 fab units are going to be building things like orbital launchers which will then in turn build satellites/ space fabs resulting in a defacto t3 right? Or at least that's how I see it playing out. Also some of the mega units like space engines don't seem like a job for one or two t2 fabs. Orbital mechanics: I think that instead of making orbit simply another spherical surface which has interaction rules ( like air currently is, not that anything is wrong with air). You should go for the strategic gusto and make them real orbital mechanics. That means that a satellite would be confined to a ring around the planet (that you set) and would only preform its function at its current position around the planet. For instance a spy sat which you would place in a ring over the enemy base would then provide line of sight when it orbited over that area. An anti ground sat would only fire on things that happen to be in a cone beneath it and an anti sat sat would only keep a single orbital band from enemy hands. I think it would add a lot of strategy to the setup of orbital warfare. Overkill control: a suggestion for the UI would be a panel to limit what a unit or group fires at "only buildings" "only ground" "only navy" etc. this could keep your t2 units from overkilling t1 trash and instead putting the hurt on t2 enemies. Also, and I don't know how technically feasable this is in a game with real time bullet simulation, but could we have units be smart about how they target groups? As in instead of everyone firing on the first unit in range and wasting all that dps units wait and pick their shots? Even to me as a non coder that seems hard to do but it would be a huge step forward for rts unit AI. Nuclear play: I would rather see the nukes be fast and counterable than slow/expensive and uncounterable. In a game with an even bigger stick in the form of asteroids nukes should take a step back to more of an artillery role in supressing unit swarms and enemy expansion. Alright that's it so far, will add more/ strike things out as I see them role in. Feedback and discussion appreciated as I certainly didn't give reasons for absolutely everything here. I know its still alpha
I'd like to reference you to this sticky: viewtopic.php?f=71&t=46855 I'd also recommend reading the rest as well.
