Beta 0.910 (Now With Fewer Bugs -- Also Redshirts Wave II)

[crazyroosterman]

also as a side note I'm glade we've got some new blood in I enjoy talking to new players.

[Taikei no Yuurei]

Alright, so played for a couple hours last night and a couple more this morning (give or take) and thought I'd sum up my impressions.  I did a few bug reports on various things, and now I have a bunch of 'general' things that I don't necessarily want to put on mantis.

First off, it seems quite enjoyable overall, though it absolutely took me about 3 runs to figure out how to get off the ground properly.  Made the mistake of building an early science lab in my first game, and basically nothing but fisheries in my second.  On my third I finally realized that building a ton of shopping malls was a wonderful way to ensure plenty of cash, and things have been going much better since.

On to some of the problems/things I've noticed, in the random order that they occurred to me.

1.  It seems to be impossible to complete act I because every single 'task' has required a building that I have no access to.  I'm not sure if this is intentional to keep us in Act I for the time being, or if I'm missing some build bar somewhere.
2.  The Warehouse currently seems to serve no purpose.
3.  I'm not sure why you would ever build commercial offices.  They require more people, power, police protection, and computing power than small shops, and produce fewer crowns, more pollution, and more trash, while having fewer hitpoints.  Perhaps they have some other benefit that isn't documented that would make you want them, but right now they seem to be categorically worse in every possible way.
4.  Pollution death spiral.  I've seen this come up elsewhere, and gotten to experience it first hand as a wave of pollution suddenly crept up on me, decimating my workforce which made it impossible to build and man the Hazmat buildings to prevent it just getting worse, meanwhile my cemeteries overflowed... you know the story, I'm sure.  Perhaps the tools are there to help counter this.  I saw there are sliders for certain parts of industry, including hazmat rate.  Maybe playing with those more would have helped, but it lacks tooltips at the moment, something I know is an ongoing work.
5.  Buildings don't seem to repair.  I'm not sure if this is a bug or there was some step I needed to take, but after some of my buildings got attacked by local wildlife (fisheries and warfs) they never got repaired at all, despite the tooltip saying there was repair available in the territory.
6.  That brings me to combat, which is exceedingly confusing at the moment.  I used fisheries (I think, maybe warfs, maybe both) to attack some local wildlife, and my buildings got destroyed and beat up despite me killing the wildlife.  I'm not sure if this was some counterattack or cost of combat or what.  All I know is I was clicking enemies and they were dying and after the dust settled half my buildings were destroyed or damaged.
6a.  Similarly, I have no real idea how to attack people or anything outside when the game automatically brings up combat and auto selects my buildings to attack.
7.  Territory specific resources.  By which I mean police protection, chemical slurries, and things like that.  It isn't always clear what is and isn't particular to a territory as opposed to something global.  Food and water are global, but prepared meals seem to be territorial.  Chemical slurries and computing power also seem to be territorial.  I can understand many of these things, but it would likely be good to make it more clear that everything besides food/power/population/housing/water is particular to individual territories.  Do warehouses help with this maybe?
8.  Pollution in neutral waters is (currently) impossible to deal with.  I can't build hazmat buildings in neutral waters, and so any pollution that drifts there will kill my people because I can't do anything about it.  Perhaps this is intentional to make me choose between destroying the buildings and suffering the pollution problems.
9.  More detailed information on pollution in general would be nice.  Right now it is a sort of 'I think I need an extra hazmat maybe' sort of thing and hard to tell how much pollution is actually being generated in your individual territories, not to mention how much might be coming in on the wind.
10.  Highlight information.  Some important information in building tooltips and such is highlighted to help point it out.  It'd be nice if things like crown production could be included in that, because it took me quite a while to realize that small shops produced crowns because I missed that the first time.  I don't think every resource needs it's own color, but some of the really prime ones like crowns and power having distinct colors might be nice.
11.  There doesn't seem to be any way to interact with other races yet, though I'm guessing that is an Act I thing.  Oh, except for dumping my corpses on them.
12.  Does dumping corpses/trash decrease the amount of corpses/trash in your buildings?  It doesn't seem to, but I'm not entirely sure.
13.  Thermal strip mines are great in mountainous areas based on their description, but can't be placed on mountains at all.  Don't know if mountainous means areas that generally appear near mountains or what.
14.  Information in general is rather hard to locate in the game.  If you aren't short on something, you don't seem to be able to get a report on how much of anything you have.  Will building a fighting pit require a new police station?  Aside from counting up exactly how much police coverage I'm producing and using manually, there doesn't seem to be any way to check other than building it.
15.  It is very nice that if you destroy a building on the turn you build it, you get a full refund.
16.  It is similarly nice that the overall effects of a building are fed into your overall needs and such right away before it becomes active, giving you a chance to be less blindsided by shortages and such.
17.  Such a small tech tree, and nothing to do with research once you've finished it.  I'm sure this is a 'you are stuck in act I' problem though.

Okay, I think those are my main thoughts so far.  I'm enjoying myself overall, and the main difficulty is one of availability of information, which is one I think is already well known and being worked on.

[topper]

Nice comments, I am looking forward to getting back into it myself in a few days hopefully.

On to some of the problems/things I've noticed, in the random order that they occurred to me.

1.  It seems to be impossible to complete act I because every single 'task' has required a building that I have no access to.  I'm not sure if this is
--snip--
17.  Such a small tech tree, and nothing to do with research once you've finished it.  I'm sure this is a 'you are stuck in act I' problem though.

Quite a few of these are potential Mantis things. Do you care to put them in there yourself or would you like help?

[Taikei no Yuurei]

I'll throw them in, I wasn't sure how much was actual problems, me just not knowing something, or things that were already in there.  I'll start putting them in now though.

[Entvex]

Hello fellow gamers I am the new redshirt guy.

This is my first time i have given feedback on this so please bear with me, the text below is what i was thinking while playing it for a few hours.

First time started the game the music is very nice, and the menu looks nice, feel like a arcen game and that is not a bad thing.

When the game loaded i looked at the game i like the art style a lot, there is good feedback on where i can place the base.

This is my first time playing the game but i have to say that it is hard to find a way to stop the polluting.

When a turn ends it would be nice with a bit more feedback right now there is only a sound, how about a little splash screen with turn number.
The AI seem to be good at building i feel like i am building slower, but it i trying to balance it so i don't have too much problems in my city, maybe i need to plan more ahead.
But i guess with with i will learn how many support buildings i need for each house or other building so i can start building them at once.
One of the AI is building three houses or a or have something like a forest faction going, i need to play as that one soon because i love the style!.

My fishermen is demanding war on the cod, because they fishing building was destroyed, i don't even know what the native cod is. I am thinking maybe the coast guard could help, because i saw it way down in the tech three.

As the game goes on i soon found that i need more ground, but i can't seem to take any more because by now the AI have taken the land.
I need to build more trash dumps to it just seem to be piling op all the time, i wonder if it just stays there or the trash stations burn it. But it just seem to hold the same trash and not get rid of it.

I seem stuck because i can't expand so it goes down hill from there with problems.

Over all i like want i see, i need to get better at the game as well. I don't think i am a fan of the polluting thing in the game, it is so expensive to fix early game.

[crazyroosterman]

Hello fellow gamers I am the new redshirt guy.

This is my first time i have given feedback on this so please bear with me, the text below is what i was thinking while playing it for a few hours.

First time started the game the music is very nice, and the menu looks nice, feel like a arcen game and that is not a bad thing.

When the game loaded i looked at the game i like the art style a lot, there is good feedback on where i can place the base.

This is my first time playing the game but i have to say that it is hard to find a way to stop the polluting.

When a turn ends it would be nice with a bit more feedback right now there is only a sound, how about a little splash screen with turn number.
The AI seem to be good at building i feel like i am building slower, but it i trying to balance it so i don't have too much problems in my city, maybe i need to plan more ahead.
But i guess with with i will learn how many support buildings i need for each house or other building so i can start building them at once.
One of the AI is building three houses or a or have something like a forest faction going, i need to play as that one soon because i love the style!.

My fishermen is demanding war on the cod, because they fishing building was destroyed, i don't even know what the native cod is. I am thinking maybe the coast guard could help, because i saw it way down in the tech three.

As the game goes on i soon found that i need more ground, but i can't seem to take any more because by now the AI have taken the land.
I need to build more trash dumps to it just seem to be piling op all the time, i wonder if it just stays there or the trash stations burn it. But it just seem to hold the same trash and not get rid of it.

I seem stuck because i can't expand so it goes down hill from there with problems.

Over all i like want i see, i need to get better at the game as well. I don't think i am a fan of the polluting thing in the game, it is so expensive to fix early game.

hey there its fine good to see new feed back but any way

1 generally speaking I'm finding that building a hazmat after a construction building is the best first thing to do since the hazmat is so wonderfully efficient at dealing with the pollution 

2 declaring war on monsters generally speaking isn't a good idea unless you know you've got the fire power to destroy it(and if its actually in your way of course they'll only agro on you if you put a building next to them or obviously attack them)

3 yea the ai is pretty grab happy id recommend building up your income enough while hoarding to get the local authority building so you can at least capture one territory or more before the ai grabs it.(although part of me suspecting this is them spawning in I'm probably completely wrong though)

[Taikei no Yuurei]

Yeah, my first two games or so I got all the land around me grabbed, but since then I've learned to build up a strong economy first and try and grab a handful of surrounding territories fairly early.  It's a bit expensive, but you don't have to build anything there till later, so it is good to simply stake the claim.

War in general is super confusing for me at the moment.  No idea what is going on with combat or monsters or anything.  All I know is sometimes my buildings die, and sometimes the monsters die, and often both happen.

[crazyroosterman]

Yeah, my first two games or so I got all the land around me grabbed, but since then I've learned to build up a strong economy first and try and grab a handful of surrounding territories fairly early.  It's a bit expensive, but you don't have to build anything there till later, so it is good to simply stake the claim.

War in general is super confusing for me at the moment.  No idea what is going on with combat or monsters or anything.  All I know is sometimes my buildings die, and sometimes the monsters die, and often both happen.

about war I think the way that works is when you attack some of your buildings attack but not all then the thing/things your fighting counter attack it could definitely do with some clarity though.

[crazyroosterman]

so I was mulling away quite happily when this happened out of no were......

[donlol]

One more thing came to my mind - from what I understand, to progress to act 2 you need to complete the objective you are given when selecting the landing site, right? So what's gonna happen if you deliberately don't pursue this objective? In the current game I just could fill every possible spot with buildings, without completing the goal. If progressing to act 2 won't be forced on you, I'm afraid players will quickly find a way to exploit that. Though I guess we can't know that until we actually see the second act

Also, Taikei noticed some interesting things:

5.  Buildings don't seem to repair.  I'm not sure if this is a bug or there was some step I needed to take, but after some of my buildings got attacked by local wildlife (fisheries and warfs) they never got repaired at all, despite the tooltip saying there was repair available in the territory.

Yeah, regarding repair - After my early game "megalodon incident", my hub was being repaired for like 6 or more turns, sucking all my income - for a few turns I had 0 starting credits. Imo the fact that repairs are taking money should be indicated much more strongly - it took me a few turns before I realized that that's were my cash is vanishing.

6.  That brings me to combat, which is exceedingly confusing at the moment.  I used fisheries (I think, maybe warfs, maybe both) to attack some local wildlife, and my buildings got destroyed and beat up despite me killing the wildlife.  I'm not sure if this was some counterattack or cost of combat or what.  All I know is I was clicking enemies and they were dying and after the dust settled half my buildings were destroyed or damaged.
6a.  Similarly, I have no real idea how to attack people or anything outside when the game automatically brings up combat and auto selects my buildings to attack.

Exactly - I'm sure noone who's new to the game knows what's going on in the combat. Shouldn't there be some indicators floating around, showing what exactly has been damaged by the enemy and by us?

7.  Territory specific resources.  By which I mean police protection, chemical slurries, and things like that.  It isn't always clear what is and isn't particular to a territory as opposed to something global.  Food and water are global, but prepared meals seem to be territorial.  Chemical slurries and computing power also seem to be territorial.  I can understand many of these things, but it would likely be good to make it more clear that everything besides food/power/population/housing/water is particular to individual territories.  Do warehouses help with this maybe?

Yeah, maybe some overlays could be added for local resources (like crime and fire protection etc), to show demand vs supply? In a bigger city I can't easily tell where the crime is high and a police station is needed. Maybe it could work similarly to the polution indicator - just highlight slots where crime is high?

13.  Thermal strip mines are great in mountainous areas based on their description, but can't be placed on mountains at all.  Don't know if mountainous means areas that generally appear near mountains or what.

Those are the tiles that look like red crystals and have a 75% mining bonus. That's where you can place thermal strip mines. But yes, it took me more time to realize that than it should have. That stuff should be explained somewhere. Similar thing with harvesters - It took me some random clicking to find on what type of things I can place them.

[crazyroosterman]

I agree with you pretty much although I should mention that you can put mines on gravel as well.

[donlol]

I agree with you pretty much although I should mention that you can put mines on gravel as well.

Well then, after playing for few hours I still had no idea I could do that. Shows it should be better explained somewhere.

[crazyroosterman]

I agree with you pretty much although I should mention that you can put mines on gravel as well.

Well then, after playing for few hours I still had no idea I could do that. Shows it should be better explained somewhere.

have you come across any gravel hexes? it makes it pretty clear when you find them?.

[donlol]

I agree with you pretty much although I should mention that you can put mines on gravel as well.

Well then, after playing for few hours I still had no idea I could do that. Shows it should be better explained somewhere.

have you come across any gravel hexes? it makes it pretty clear when you find them?.

Now that you mention that, I can't recall seeing them tbh.

[crazyroosterman]

I agree with you pretty much although I should mention that you can put mines on gravel as well.

Well then, after playing for few hours I still had no idea I could do that. Shows it should be better explained somewhere.

have you come across any gravel hexes? it makes it pretty clear when you find them?.

Now that you mention that, I can't recall seeing them tbh.

well there you go the game doesn't really mention them but moussing over them literally says the same the thing as the red rock things with a lower percentage rating.