Hmm.... cant test any further until another patch here. Certain Missions are super-glitchy. The ones that I've tried so far all bug out, in particular the "raid pirate freighters". It just resets and restarts. Pirate base missions do not end when the base is destroyed. EDIT: I said this, but I ended up jumping into the game again ANYWAY. I can give you this right away: This game is very enjoyable so far, or I wouldnt so quickly jump back in like that after encountering too many large bugs. Missions that arent those 2 pirate types seem sorta fine.... Most of them still need work in some form or another, but I'll go into that on Mantis in detail. It's mostly those 2 that seem broken.
The biggest problem though is the solar map.... there's next to nothing for the player to do early on. I end up just sitting there holding down the x2 button for most of it. The only real things to do are the pirate missions, both of which are glitched. Specifically, there's only pirate missions as far as "friendly actions" go with any race at start. There's not much to do to gain influence; most political actions seem to only give +1 or +2, which is very little.
Or at least, it SEEMS like there's not much to do, anyway. The tutorial-ish bits are alot better than they were before, but there's still alot of info missing, which is probably why I dont really know what to do with most of the political options and such. I must apply more science!
Also the planet inventories are confusing. Cant tell what any of the stuff does. Also makes trade routes confusing... if I've got one giving microbes to another in exchange for helium, well.... I've not the foggiest idea what this actually accomplishes.
There's some of the political stuff available, but the vast majority of it seems to have no purpose that early on, aside from telling them "focus on the environment" or things like that. For example, I have no idea what moon colonization does. The one and only other option that I can think of a purpose for is the "increase your armadas!" one, but that one is glitched and doesnt work. Some options seem to need. EDIT: Getting a bit of a better idea as I go along, sort of, but most options remain confusing.
Also noticing that allies seem pathetically weak, so far their flagships do pretty much nothing. The enemy farts out about 10 zillion ships of various sorts, but allied flagships dont seem to do this hardly at all, which ends up meaning that I have to do absolutely everything.
Again though, that's in the pirate missions. Havent done non-pirate ones yet.
....and the minigun, that's a really awful weapon. It cannot defeat things like interceptors whatsoever, because it's not going to hit them. I end up using my own summoned fleets as well as things like nukes to kill most things since that gun just cant do it. Pretty useless. It's all still doable, but very annoying. The best change would probably be to speed up it's projectiles dramatically. At least 2.5x faster than they are now, probably 3x faster, though keeping the same range. A direct fire weapon like that simply isnt of any use if it's projectiles are that slow; that shot speed makes alot of sense for something like the spread gun, but not the minigun.
With bugs fixed though and a couple of balance issues dealt with though, this should be pretty darn good even in it's current unfinished state.
One question I have though: Enemy flagships, can they simply create as many fleets as they want? As best I can tell, they do not run out. A good strategy in some situations would seem to be to allow some of the fleets to be created, and get them to come to me so I can pop them before then going after the enemy flagship, which would now be reduced in strength due to being low on fleet summons. Doesnt seem to work though.
