Stream of thoughts from a new (orange?) shirt

[donblas]

So I played for about a half hour or so. I filed a few minor papercut bugs, but I wanted to post a stream-of-thought first impression anyway.

- Ok, we're picking a landing area. Well, in some games you get extra production for being near forests so let's go there, also next to water (fishing? sea trade?). (An idea what you are picking would be awesome here. I'm assuming a tutorial is way down the todo list).
- First thing I looked at was the tech tree. Seemed kinda random where stuff was (Ship building, flight, and brewing at the same level?). The building descriptions were useful, for the few that had it. OK, most games want you to expand your population early, so let's go farm + water.
- That wasn't smart, now I'm out of currency. Apparently you don't make currency based on pop. Slowly tick that up, and then say build a factory. The description says "jack of all trades", and since I didn't know what, let's go with that. Oh wait, polution, let's build the engineering firm things.
- Ok, now I figure out I want banks. Badly.
- I throw down a random spattering of buildings, playing wack-a-mole with the numbers. Researching the lowest cost non-mility tech.
- All of the government bonuses, seem to be about military. I don't care about that right now, I haven't seen anyone yet 75 turns into the game. Commerce looks interesting. It is hard to see what leads where, since you have to mouse over to see the links. Why is it so compact?
- Now, I'm 75 turns into the game and haven' t met anyone. I'm making 10k a turn, do I just keep dropping bank + police station combos, adding in people + farm + water where necessary until I bump into someone? I have little idea how to proceed (I would attach save or screenshot, but I can find neither).
- I can't seem to scout in any direction, now that I placed my first 4-5 exploration huts? Can I blow those up and replace? Nope. How do I bump into other people? Known which want to expand?
- A bit of google searching gives me some help that I'm removing the link to at advice. I guess we should let other people bounce off the game before pointing to a quickstart game.
- Game looks really interesting, but despite a history with AI war / Civ 4&5 / and a bunch of strategy games, I don't "get it".

[donblas]

I'm poking around the fourms and seeing all of these things about teleportation and underground buildings and monsters, and I feel like there is an amazing game under the surface.

Also, there was some early building I unlocked that had to do with resources, but I could not figure out where / what it was referencing? What _are_ those resource nodes it is talking about? I didn't see a tech to unlock them?

Ok, I just unlocked diplomacy and asked about technology. I got a bunch of gibberish back, but the filter let me pick a specific thing even thought i didn't understand them (bug?).

[Eternaly_Lost]

I just started my game the exact same way. Poking around it looks like you want factories as they are sold as jack of all trades. (Tends to be a good way to start as you get the lay of the land and then aim to specialize).

But no, in this case, you want Banks, more banks and even more banks. It trival to get more buildings slots to build then you can afford to drop buildings.

[Captain Jack]

Diplomacy is working normally, you need to translate alien languages before you can know what they're saying. If you're feeling lucky you can pick options at random. 

Resource nodes should really just be called resources. Basically they're little placeables. To see where they are, press "N", anything that isn't a place is a resource.

Scouting is behind interior ballistics. Exploration camps are to get you a wider picture of your starting area.

There's no beginner's guide because we want fresh eyes playing the game. Knowing how to play the game according to those directions gets you playing like us, while finding things out on your own lets you make mistakes we don't because we "know better". Fixing those improves the base game a lot.

Under surface game? Press tab. Not very interesting until you have sonar or the underground constructions, really.

Also PM'd you something small. 

[donblas]

So, I agree that diplomacy should be gibberish until I learn their language. Which is why i can click "filter" and pick "increased population" and get the one gibberish that is selling that.

[Captain Jack]

Yeeeeeeep. That's a mantis issue all right. You have an account with the bug tracker? You need a separate account, but you'll be able to report issues in a way that the devs can't forget about it.

[ptarth]

Saves are in: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Stars Beyond Reach\RuntimeData\Save
Screenshots are in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Stars Beyond Reach\RuntimeData\Screenshots
You'll probably want to transform them into jpg's so the mantis and forum autodisplay kicks in.

I started my first game with factories too. That ended poorly. Although, to be fair, the income from factories is now more than it used to be.

Screen resolutions have to work for 1024 x 768, so if you are playing at high rez, suffer .

Is it just me or did the graphics change a lot since .810?

Exploration Camps are for science, the fog of war clearing is just a perk.

Read the tool-tips, ctrl-clicking buildings gives you pop up information.

The entire trade and diplomacy system is still under massive work, so *shrug*.

[TheVampire100]

I was told to not say anything. So I'm quiet now.

[ptarth]

In general the theme seems to be to not stop the Orange Shirts from jumping on land mines. So the red shirts will try not to help out too much. It's hard to resist though.

So instead, I give you this link to a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWZHfXP41TM

[donblas]

I started a new game, not nestled next to the ocean and built banks first, and behold. The game is more fun _and_ I've actually run into another race. Progress!

And - http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=16514

[MaskityMask]

I landed so close to skylaxians that they keep bombing my buildings right next to northside of my landing space with their planes, so I'd be glad to be in "Everyone is far far away" situation

I haven't tried building any factories yet, but I haven't really payed attention to any other number than powers so maybe I have screwed up things spectacularly already :'D Haven't built any banks, just farm, what I think is housing, solar panel and anti air gun in attempt to protect northside of my town Hasn't really been working, skylaxians are just switching the place they are bombing from..

Ah, I should probably start reading since this does kinda go agaisnt "Fresh eyes" things, eh?(even if its reading another orangeshirt's experiences) Ah well, I'll just stop being lazu start paying attention to numbers(read: Check whatever each one is but then ignore them :p) since I wasn't even aware there was currency if there is <_<; I thought buildings were built with "power" whatever you get that from, maybe I'll build one bank maybe I won't... Dunno if I really need one since so far I've been able to build buildings without any problems

[Captain Jack]

Make your own impressions thread! With hookers and blow!

And make a point of posting anything that seems artificially difficult or confusion on mantis. We've internalized a bunch of the issues, so your eyes will see better than ours.

[MaskityMask]

Well, I definitely had no clue that Sonar/resources or underground existed <_< But I have bit of a problem were I'm not aware of bugs since I don't know how things are supposed to work, like I don't know if I should have been able to land on top of natural wonder at start or not

Also, since I'm lazy(well to be fair, I didn't really have time on my first playthrough, but I'm lazy too) as heck I'm not sure what any of buildings are supposed to actually do I usually read tooltips(which don't exist at the moment for everything) instead of numbers to see what I'm building so yeah xD In my defense, I kinda had to leave to the bus running fast as hell since I was almost late, so I didn't really have time to read through everything well and think about what they might mean. Anyway, I'm also not aware of what source gives me those points for social planning stuff, I guess some buildings I built?

Like I said, I really should actually read through what are names of each resources xP I think I'll do that when I get back to home and don't have to keep my eye on clock so I wno't miss a bus(I seriously was almost late as in only reason I made it was that there was second guy running to the bus and he stopped the bus first slowing it down so that when bus was leaving again I managed to make it. Annoyed the bus driver though :'D)

[Captain Jack]

That's why you should ask the question. We're too good about taking the game as it is, and not how it could be. We don't ask "is this working right?" We just check to make sure it's not going to send us into a death spiral, and then move on. If you don't think something's working right, check the bug tracker, then report it. Use your judgment, something that feels wrong might turn out to be wrong.

[donblas]

More playing this morning. Additional thoughts:

- Building bank / shopping mall first feels silly from an immersion perspective - "We landed on this planet, who wants to go shopping!". I think the pop based requirements for additional banks (which I didn't notice before) is a good mechanic to prevent spam.
- I never have enough jobs for people. I could be some factories to employ people, but those seem mostly useless. What am I missing here? Where do you stick your people? Waiting for holo-resort things to keep growing pop is really slowing me down.
- It would be useful for the language screen to have some kind of value to show which languages are "closer" to you and thus cheaper. Mousing over every one, then remembering that X Y and Z are the first priority is sub-optimal. (Will file in tracker tonight).
- I love how fast I can play turns / end turn processes. Coming from a Civ background, where a turn can take seconds to process, banging out 5 turns while waiting is awesome.
- I got a language up the level 5, and yet I still can't understand them?
- I feel like there should be more of a progression on costs for languages instead of mostly linear. Learning the words for "people", "rock" and "money" should be easy for example, and would make understanding trade requests easier (while complicated treaties would still be guesswork).
- Zoomed out, we should have labels on the map showing who lives where. I can't keep the races straight yet. (See http://wizzywizzyweb.gmgcdn.com/media/products/endless-legend-classic-edition/screenshots/large-15-640x350.jpg for example).