Feedback after first few hours of playing

[Lord Fiddlemeister]

Hey all, I bought this game on friday and loved it. After playing it for a couple of hours and having won once, I've noticed a couple of things:

- Acutians are crazy. It doesn't matter what happens, but the Acutians will have a galaxy-devouring fleet available within months after getting space tech and they will not hesitate to go to war. I've managed to exterminate them once, but it took the combined force of the Skylaxians, the Andors and the Peltans while the Acutians were also being on the offensive against the Thoraxians.

- The short-range virus ability is very exploitable; If there aren't any Small of Medium ships available, you can still use the ability without it costing any ammo. This means you can have the protective forcefield thing that triggers on ability use indefinitely.

- Cloak seems very strong, to the point of being stupid for not taking it. It allows you to run through blockades without any risk, attack an opponent for 5 turns with barely any risk at all.

- Scattershot is a must-have weapon too. Apart from the fact that the game nearly always recommends it for having the highest dps, it's also great for clearing groups of enemies and ripping through anything when you're up very close. Loved this weapon to the point of not using anything else in my first win.

- Burlust are really easy to have a high influence with thanks to the relatively easy duels with their warlords. It's really easy to use them as a share tech & raid dump in order to get all technologies yourself.

- The progression of research seems a bit weird. In the first few years, the wealthy races have already researched most of the available technologies, causing a few years of no technological progress.

- In my war against the crazy Acutians, I kept winning those "kill 20 flagships" missions but it never seemed to make a dent in their numbers. Same counts for when I waged war against the Thoraxians.

- I'd unlocked all Hydral technologies but there was nothing really impressive in there. It felt really disappointing to not have anything game-changing after having unlocked everything.

- Something that seems really nice to me, is a game-mode where I have unlocked all technologies and can really play the role of a God over the different races.

- The ending isn't really satisfying. Perhaps some menace from outside the galaxy can invade and pose a challenge to your new federation? This way you might also reach the T5 research levels.

Sorry for the unstructured post, but hopefully this helps improve the game!

[Draco18s]

First point: not in my game.  They've been reduced to not-influential in my game.  They have no tech, they have no space stations, they have the second smallest fleet (trumped only by the Burlusts, who are under orbital bombardment by 700 ships, so anything they build get blown up in 0.2 seconds of relative time).

Second point: I did not find the virus that exploitable.  I've had it run out of ammo, it also doesn't have the 100% effectiveness that it implies.

Third and Fourth points: haven't used it.

Fifth: Didn't care about them, the Skylaxians very rapidly decided that the Burlusts had to die-die-die so I just let them.

Sixth: Tech progression is odd.  I kind of wish that different races would research different things, but it seems that everyone has the same priorities...but different research rates.  It also bugs me that every tech that is beneficial to me is exactly the same: 20% more shields, 10% more armor (oh and the AI gets 20% more damage).

Seventh: Can't comment.  I did one such mission and it was my own fault (attacked the planet on my own, there were 78(!) flagships, no surprise I got killed).

Eighth: See six.

On Ten: I wish it was harder.  Right now it (seems!) like if you can get a race into the Federation they stick around, no qualms.  Oh and you can get them into the Federation, if it exists, without meeting the "form a federation" requirements!  I did a lot of work to get 3 races that liked each other only to find that once I'd formed the Federation all I had to do was go to the Peltians and say "hey guys, want in?  Here's 150 worthless voting proxies" and they go "sure!" and jump right in.  There wasn't even a "Eeeh...we're not so sure about those Thoraxians (Relationship is only 78)" complaint.  This really bugged me later when I got the Skylaxians in: they still had only a neutral opinion of the Peltians (12)!  It'll even let me get the Boarines onboard (according to the Federation Progress screen), even though they hate the Thoraxians (-30ish?), if only I could find the freaking option in their race dialogs.

[Lord Fiddlemeister]

Second point: I did not find the virus that exploitable.  I've had it run out of ammo, it also doesn't have the 100% effectiveness that it implies.

It's not about the actual effect, it's that you can spam it without it costing ammo when there are no SM of M ships nearby. This means that you can always use this ability to protect yourself, as long as there aren't any small or medium ships nearby. The actual virus effect is not that interesting

[Draco18s]

Really, if there's nothing to infect, it doesn't cost ammo?

I'll need to look at that.  If that's true, that's definitely a bug.