First impressions and Tutorials

[ru_disa]

Hello,
I finally managed to find the time to try and test the game. Here are my first impressions. I'll post more here as I go:

Some info I'm getting in the tutorial are not entirely clear to me: first of all, what "DPS" stands for is never explained. I understand that it probably means Damage Per Second, but this needs to be spelled out, otherwise it could be confusing.
Another thing I don't understand: during battles, when I mouse over one of the three icons for the weapons, the tooltip says "USE AND SKIP TURN". What does this mean? It doesn't look like I'm skipping a turn when I change weapon. This function needs to be explained better, I think.

One thing feels "unnatural" to me: I don't think the ships should be able to fire all weapons at a 360 degrees angle. The way I see it, different weapons (with different upgrades) should be able to fire only at a 60, 120 or 180 degrees if front of the ship, and some weapons even just right in front (just to give you an example). This would make tactical maneuvering very important. The player could try and flank the enemy, use objects on the map as a shield as he moves in for the kill, etc...

I'll be back with more comments later

cheers!

[x4000]

* Fixed an issue where weapon switching was saying "skip turn" when it should not have been.

* In the tooltip for your ship's weapons, it now says "Damage Per Second (DPS)" rather than just "DPS."  That way in other places it is used there is a key for people who don't know.

Thanks!


Regarding 360-degree firing, trust me, it's integral to the game.  It would be utterly unplayable without it, and your position and facing already matters a TON when you are in hard battles.  The harder battles are anything but simple, for sure.

[ru_disa]

When I pick up a dispatch mission, and then I immediately try to move to another planet, I get the message "CANCEL CURRENT DISPATCH MISSION? You can cancel this dispatch if you need to go take care of something else." The two buttons at the bottom are "Cancel" and "OK". I understand that the button "Cancel" stands for "No, don't cancel", while the button "OK" stands for "I confirm, cancel the dispatch" but this can be confusing.
I think the wording of the message should be changed to something like "ABORT CURRENT DISPATCH MISSION? You can abort this mission if you need to go take care of something else."

[x4000]

Thanks!

* The "cancel dispatch mission" popup has had its wording redone to make it really clear what is being said.  It says "abort" instead of cancel, and "yes and no" instead of "ok and cancel."

[ru_disa]

Another thing (I don't know if this has beed discussed before): I like how the various functions of the game get unlocked as the player progresses, so that he's not overwhelmed right off the bat.
The player is never clearly informed about this, though.
In my opinion, it is important that the player doesn't get the idea at the beginning of the game that that's all there is to it (this is even more important if you decide to put out a demo).
I think that the player should receive a message that informs him clearly that certain features of the game are de-activated (for now) and will become active as he plays on. Also, after all game functions have become active, the user should receive a message to that effect.


p.s. I see what you mean about weapons being able to shoot in a 360 degrees arc, and I think you're right. During the fights, the player is already too busy to consider the facing of his ship.

[Tokyodan]

Hello and thanks for accepting me as a tester.

OK, I haven't read any tutorials yet. And I gave the game a 1st try last night when I was a bit under the weather and tired and probably impatient as a result. So my 1st impression is that there is an awful lot of text to read. So being tire I read some and just skipped through most. I liked the turn-based attack mechanic. But what I saw was very confusing to me. I couldn't tell which (what) objects were enemies nor even what they were. What are those circular formations with cone shaped rays (or what looked to be force fields) pointing away from the center of the formations?

The control of my ship (after I figured out which object on the screen was my ship) was nice. And the game runs perfectly on my late-2009 iMac.

More feedback coming after I learn some more about the game.

BTW. What is the best thing I can read (not in-game) that will give me the best idea of what the game is about and how to play it?

[ru_disa]

I just noticed something that could potentially be very confusing for the player: The event notifications in the top-right corner of the screen appear as icons. These icons are color-coded to indicate which race is the subject of the event described in the notification. The race, though, is not indicated explicitly within the text.

To give you an example, see the message "This race destroyed a manufacturing outpost..." Here the only way for me to know which race the message is talking about is to refer to the color of the icon itself. This greatly reduces accessibility for me, as I struggle with colors.

It could be a good idea to add the name of the race the event pertains to at the beginning of the text. For example, the message I mentioned should read "[Acutians] This race destroyed a manufacturing outpost..."

[ru_disa]

This has probably been reported already, but just in case:
When I right-click on the planet Hari (the destroyed Hydral planet) I can see some text overlapping in the top-right corner.

[Coppermantis]

This has probably been reported already, but just in case:
When I right-click on the planet Hari (the destroyed Hydral planet) I can see some text overlapping in the top-right corner.

I noticed that too. Seems like the word "Planet" is kind of just sitting there partially inside other text.