Hi all.
I just wanted to stop by to give my first impressions after roughly two hours of playing .818 and .819.
I will update this thread whenever I have got something else to say.
All specific bugs and suggestions will be properly mantissed, rest assured
.
So, here we go:
First off, I am thoroughly enjoying myself
.
I think the move to the WeGo combat system was the right one. The turn-based combat really integrates best into the overall strategic gameplay. I kinda ask myself what the 'Pause' button is still there for, though.
Second, the game really scratches my 4X itch, which has been nagging on me for endless times. This is good!
It took me a while to get the hang of
Combat, though (presuming I even "got it" now). The overall flow and controls are explained reasonably well at this point , I think, but a couple of important concepts do not seem to be explained very well or at all until now (presuming I did not simply miss them) as well as some crucial intel missing (see Mantis for this). Tooltip quality in general is definitely really good at this point, though.
The stuff that made me stumble is:
- The concept of momentum, i.e. what factors define which kind of turn I am able to make at a given point and/or how long it will take until my flagship actually stops moving after the location I marked as my original target location has been reached. I have not been able to figure this out yet, really. Could be related to map locations or how fast/far I was going the previous round, but I don't know.
- The algorithm used by automatic power management in case I do not touch. I often feel like I missed out some opportunity to max out damage and/or shield regen here because I don't realize what the automatic system will do. I know this is in the patch notes somewhere, but some kind of short summary would have helped me at lot to ease my anxiety .
- Projectiles no longer seem to be destroyable (aside from by using the blast spawned by special abilities)? This might only be a problem because I followed the patch notes, but still - some pointer might be good here. Especially the fact that missles don't seem to be destroyable seems counter intuitive to me (I can understand this for energy projectiles for some reason ).
- Waypoints. I only know of them from the patch notes
.
Finally, regarding the speed of combat, I can't imagine ever wanting to use normal speed let alone fast forward. If anything I feel like I would even use a speed slower than the current slow motion to really make sense of what I am seeing, which projectiles are roaming around fire by whom, etc. I don't say you should remove the other options mind you. I just want to point out that I see use for an even slower speed. And my ship would feel much more like a flagship/Bat-Behemoth to me this way, which feels appropriate
...
Speaking of (the passing) of
time: This one is still a weird one for me in this game. For some reason I feel like I should pause the solar map whenever I am checking out some data or planning my next move. Every time I call up some dialog and realize that I have not paused the game, I feel bad - out of control. Kinda silly really...
I am not sure whether this is what you intended. I also don't know what could be done to alleviate this feeling. Always pausing the solar map does not seem to be a good idea and feels wrong as well. Maybe make the default solar map speed substantially slower, so that the only way to reasonably advance time would be to engage in some action or mission? That would cure the feeling that months are passing within seconds while I looked away
. Hope this makes some sense...
The new dispatch interface definitely greatly alleviated this issue for me as far as dispatch mission go, so that is good
. I just seem to be looking for a more thoughtful experience in general here
...
Overall I am looking forward immensely to play more.
I can't think of a much better first impression I could have
.
So - onward - to Mantis
!
