Do you think the pacing on the solar map should be sped-up again?

[Professor Paul1290]

Sort of branching this off from the other thread. Do you think the speed at which the races can do various actions relative to the player should be sped-up again to some extent?

I remember before that some players complained about the solar map being too chaotic so the speed at which a lot of things progressed was dialed back quite a bit.

Now that a lot of refinements and fixes have occurred and the player now loses a lot less time to various miscellaneous things (pause when returning to solar map and other things like that), I feel like the game is much too "passive" early on and the player can react to and resolve undesirable situations a bit too quickly and easily compared to how slowly they come up.
I don't know whether I'm alone in that or if other people have been getting that impression as well.

I can understand giving the player time to get their bearings, but I feel that the current default difficulty is overcompensating there too much to make a good impression.

Perhaps some people may disagree with this, but I believe the scenario where the player is overwhelmed and does badly their first time is better than the scenario where they are more in control of what they are doing but feel the game is not challenging at all.
I think in former situation even if the player is frustrated, they're more likely to know there is a game to be played and can simply turn down the difficulty a notch or persist. In the latter situation the player is likely to just go do something else and never come back because the game doesn't seem interesting.

[x4000]

FYI, I'm working on some major additions (sigh), which should help with both the feeling of lack of direction for some folks on the solar map, and also I'm sure the pacing.

[doctorfrog]

FWIW, Chris, it's a project worth working on (your major additions, whatever they may be). Assuming that the underlying machinery is as functional, detailed, and brilliant, it's something you definitely want to show off, while also keeping it from being overwhelming.

It's no easy task, but again, it's damned necessary.

[x4000]

Yep, for sure.  The thing that is lacking in a lot of cases here is context, so I'm building in a little quest system that gives you missions with context.  And you get two at a time, and can only take one.  So, also opportunity cost.  It increases the feeling of aliveness by quite a bit, also increases your choices, and gives you an obvious UI element to interact with.  The results also are nontrivial on the game, to say the least.  The combat involved is the same kinds of scenarios overall that we already have, although with different stories to them a bit.  The combat is already plenty of fun, it just needs more meta context rather than "just because."

[Hyfrydle]

I for one enjoy the relaxed pace of the current alpha release it's really enjoyable watching the races gradually become more powerful then deciding who to help and who to gang up on.

One of the main things I feel is lacking is motives for the AI's actions which although probably there behind the scenes are largely invisible to the player.

I'm sure as the game becomes more polished this will improve but I certainly don't want to return to the days when things raced along and it was super difficult to make any strategic decisions.

Looking forward to the changes, lot's of interesting things in the patch notes 

[PokerChen]

...are they optional? Batman don't have to answer the phone if he doesn't want to.

[x4000]

...are they optional? Batman don't have to answer the phone if he doesn't want to.

Yes.  Although various consequences happen if you don't answer.  Which may actually be something you think is awesome -- haha, fools, see if I help YOU! -- or might be something you care to do something about.

[Misery]

I for one enjoy the relaxed pace of the current alpha release it's really enjoyable watching the races gradually become more powerful then deciding who to help and who to gang up on.

One of the main things I feel is lacking is motives for the AI's actions which although probably there behind the scenes are largely invisible to the player.

I'm sure as the game becomes more polished this will improve but I certainly don't want to return to the days when things raced along and it was super difficult to make any strategic decisions.

Looking forward to the changes, lot's of interesting things in the patch notes 

Aye, this.

The previous pacing made it outright impossible to apply any strategy... for any decision you made, the smallest bit of a dispatch mission would wreck it as every race had 100 actions/events go by in that short time.  Was a little absurd.

One thing that occurs to me about the current build's pacing is the dispatch missions, there's quite alot of them but at the start you have so very few of them actually open to you.  It doesnt help that some of them dont entirely make sense (What do I need ground troops for?  They must be pretty important as there's a whole bunch of different things that boost them) and stuff like that.  And during this early time, not all of the races will be spacefaring yet.

Quest idea sounds pretty neat though.

[Shrugging Khan]

Since my thread probably contributed to starting this discussion, let me just say that I found nothing wrong with the pacing of the galactic map itself, but rather with the difficulty of the first half-dozen battles and the slow speed at which new game mechanics were introduced. I also mentioned that the issue was likely heavily subjective, and that an old strategy gamer like me would hardly belong to the target demographic of the Mechanics-Gated and Tutorialised Quick Start.

[x4000]

The first battle was definitely pathetic, and some of the other ones as well.  Both of those are being addressed in the next version.  I'd rather it be too interesting than not.

[GenScorpius]

A pacing setting for the advanced start might appease all the players who dislike the standard pacing ... 

[Professor Paul1290]

Unless I'm misinterpreting, I'm getting an "it's just me" impression.

That's a relief I guess, after release I'll just crank the difficulty a notch and be on my merry way. 

[GenScorpius]

I haven't finished yet a full game so I'm not sure if it picks up own it's own enough. Tentatively, I think the pacing at the beginning is a bit slow but I just cleared an AFA insurgent mission in about 300 turns and quite some time passed away. I assume combat missions will suck more and more time away the more ships there are.

I have no doubt that Chris can make things way harder very easily. Finding the right balance for a normal playthrough is the really difficult part. 

[nas1m]

I also prefer the relaxed pace of the solar map, especially considering that the player may speed up the game as much as he wants by doing dispatches *and* reap benefits from it. Slowing down the game (aside from pausing), on the other hand, would not be possible given the current framework...

[GenScorpius]

So far I had the most fun in the multifaction battles and the early game should deliver that experience before new players quit out of boredom or whatever. 
I'd propose to give the races some substantially increased rate of fleet construction for a while once they become spacefaring. E.g. you could explain that story wise that this is part of the space race. In the beginning each race wants to be the first and strongest spacefaring race and devouts near full construction effort to fleet construction. Later other construction projects become important and so the fleet construction buff can reside. That way when the fleets clash there will be quite some action, the more ships on each side the better. 

Second, there should be conflicts between the races so several factions are hostile to each other e.g. when battling out who will get that sieged planet: Acutians sieged and will probably loose? Then the races who attacked them would have now to decide amongst them who will get that planet either peacefully (perhaps by swapping RCI values, techs) or by battle.