First thoughts of a blueshirt

[steelwing]

For the most part this is a very cool looking game.  Awesome work, Chris, Keith, and everyone!
Just a few things (three of which I think are Mantis-able)...
1. When I change settings from the games options, if I tell it to save/apply, it seems to take 3-4 seconds to do so.
2. If I click anywhere in the area where the lander is, I get the city management screen for the city.  Even if something else was actually clicked on, like a menu.
3. When I discover a race I hadn't met yet, the notification of the discovery takes longer than I would expect.  It should appear with the other notifications of interturn events, but each new discovery notice is 2-5 seconds after the start of the new turn.  I suspect this is related to interturn update times.
4. This is more than in the nature of a question/suggestion:  What do negative "unfulfilled jobs" mean?  Is that a number of people unemployed?  If so, it needs to be better represented.  Not gonna make a Mantis post about this one until I know what I'm posting about.
I'm about 30 turns in, playing as the Skylaxians.  Overall, my experience has been positive, but I haven't seen combat.  Hazmats don't seem to make much of a dent in pollution control, especially for how much they cost to build.  Not sure yet whether that needs adjusting or not.

[jerith]

4. This is more than in the nature of a question/suggestion:  What do negative "unfulfilled jobs" mean?  Is that a number of people unemployed?  If so, it needs to be better represented.  Not gonna make a Mantis post about this one until I know what I'm posting about.

Yes, that's unemployment. The confusing display is a known problem, but it's been lower-priority than the gameplay work so far. It's worth searching for and commenting existing Mantis issues regarding this sort of thing (I've learned several things about the game that way) and making new ones if you don't find anything. Reports are valuable even if you aren't entirely sure what you're talking about -- your confusion also indicates that something's wrong.

[steelwing]

Yes, that's unemployment. The confusing display is a known problem, but it's been lower-priority than the gameplay work so far. It's worth searching for and commenting existing Mantis issues regarding this sort of thing (I've learned several things about the game that way) and making new ones if you don't find anything. Reports are valuable even if you aren't entirely sure what you're talking about -- your confusion also indicates that something's wrong.

Thanks for the confirmation.   Mantis searching is a bit unintuitive for me, but I'm slowly learning my way around it.

[jerith]

Mantis doesn't have the best search interface. I usually pick a few keywords and search for them in turn, looking at a few issues that seem similar to what I've seen. (About half the time I find my exact problem reported by ptarth anywhere from ten minutes to several days previously. )

[ptarth]

(About half the time I find my exact problem reported by ptarth anywhere from ten minutes to several days previously. )

I know. I've been slowly down recently. I'll try to do better.

 >D

[tadrinth]

I'll tack my first thoughts here also:

So far, really neat!  Haven't played a ton of different 4x games, and I haven't had a chance to get too deep into this one yet, but I'm excited by both the current state and by where this game is probably going to end up.

Here are things so far that made me go 'bwuh?':

* Race select at start doesn't really tell me much about the races, or why some are harder. 
* Agree negative employment is a weird thing to render, would like to see entertainment in UI as well so I know when to build holocenters
* warehouses could use a tooltip, I've built one and I'm still not sure what they do
* Research interface doesn't really tell you anything about the buildings you can unlock (which is okay, especially for stuff deep in the tree) or the buildings you just unlocked.  The popup for research could tell me which tab to use to build my new building, and let me view the tooltip directly from the notification. 
* Apparently TAB flips to the underground view?  A button (or a bigger button) for that in the UI would be nice, esp with a tooltip that tells you the hotkey
* Would also be nice to have hotkeys displayed next to the map filter dropdown options, so I can learn them
* No music, despite it looking enabled
* Police and hazmats don't seem very effective, but maybe the UI is not rendering very well? My science labs seem to be crime hotspots even with two police stations adjacent. 

[crazyroosterman]

I'll tack my first thoughts here also:

So far, really neat!  Haven't played a ton of different 4x games, and I haven't had a chance to get too deep into this one yet, but I'm excited by both the current state and by where this game is probably going to end up.

Here are things so far that made me go 'bwuh?':

* Race select at start doesn't really tell me much about the races, or why some are harder. 
* Agree negative employment is a weird thing to render, would like to see entertainment in UI as well so I know when to build holocenters
* warehouses could use a tooltip, I've built one and I'm still not sure what they do
* Research interface doesn't really tell you anything about the buildings you can unlock (which is okay, especially for stuff deep in the tree) or the buildings you just unlocked.  The popup for research could tell me which tab to use to build my new building, and let me view the tooltip directly from the notification. 
* Apparently TAB flips to the underground view?  A button (or a bigger button) for that in the UI would be nice, esp with a tooltip that tells you the hotkey
* Would also be nice to have hotkeys displayed next to the map filter dropdown options, so I can learn them
* No music, despite it looking enabled
* Police and hazmats don't seem very effective, but maybe the UI is not rendering very well? My science labs seem to be crime hotspots even with two police stations adjacent. 

1 yea Chris says he's going to be adding more information in the racial selection screen some time I've personally been complaining asking for racial toltips of and on for quite a good while now 2 no comment never found unemployment confusing my self 3 absolutely agree and also with all the other resource using buildings as well perhaps even when your checking its details in the build menu 4 no comment never had a problem with it personally 5 I think that could be solved by having key bindings be a thing I don't know why they aren't already really 6 same thing as 5 7 going to be added Chris has enough shit to deal with as it is 8 yea crime explosions are the quite the thing these days reminds me of the old times when pollution bombs were a thing.

[tadrinth]

Okay, so I think I have just realized that to benefit from resources, you have to harvest/extract them and then build the appropriate facility to deploy them.  Otherwise, no bonuses.  That's not nearly as obvious as I would have liked. Also, very tech dependent; be nice if the tooltip made clear that you can't get the bonuses until you have BOTH the associated techs.

[crazyroosterman]

Okay, so I think I have just realized that to benefit from resources, you have to harvest/extract them and then build the appropriate facility to deploy them.  Otherwise, no bonuses.  That's not nearly as obvious as I would have liked. Also, very tech dependent; be nice if the tooltip made clear that you can't get the bonuses until you have BOTH the associated techs.

I agree I haven't really been sure of that my self.

[steelwing]

Yeah, the tooltips for the various research-point type things (science, linguistics, government, culture, etc) really need to make clear where/how you can get those resources.