Okay! Time for feedback:
The new.... everything.... for the combat is great. This is much better. It's alot more satisfying to dodge everything with this setup. It's that much more satisfying to complete a battle while hardly getting hit, or not getting hit at all. Particularly on Misery difficulty.
That being said, there's still some problems.
The biggest issue:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=13495Lance-type turrets are a complete mess. Granted, they kinda have been for awhile, but with the spawning issue in previous versions I never got a chance to properly test these. Considering the way the combat works and the things it emphasizes, having turrets that can *always* hit you.... as opposed to being dodgeable... goes against all of the concepts. In addition, their range is absurd, and... lots of other issues.
Gave a detailed suggestion for replacing them with something that'll fit this combat model much better, while providing an interesting attack pattern to add to everything else that's flying around.
Next up: The "search for Hydral tech" missions. The golem things are a mess. Their mass driver shots are too perfect; because of the nature of the player's movement, their ability to perfectly lead their target makes for an undodgeable attack, no matter what you do. The only way to get around that is to be at extreme range, but obviously you cant do much from there. Combine this with their high range and the fact that there's generally a bunch of them in each of these battles, and... yeah, it's a mess. I've found one way, and only one way, to beat these on this difficulty level, and it's *very* tedious. Involves drawing them away from the tech thing, which takes about 5 zillion turns. There's more to it than just that, but that part alone takes forever.
Even if you could fight them, their health is so extreme that doing the "draw them away" bit would actually take alot less time. They should definitely have alot more health than your typical flagship, but not THAT much.
Some abilities also definitely need some work. The virus one for example, completely useless. The range is WAY too short. Getting stuck with this as one of your starting abilities is pretty bad. Some other abilities should be strengthened a bit as well, so they have more impact on the situation and are more satisfying to use.
Solar map: Non-spacefaring races are a bit of a problem. Bad stuff happens to them.... either they get attacked (frequent) or they get some horrible disease (not AS frequent, but still often enough), or something like that, and because they're not spacefaring yet, there's nothing that can be done. They can get wrecked before they're even fully in the game, so to speak. In addition, races that become spacefaring very late are bound to get wrecked as well, as they wont have the strength to defend themselves. This is the biggest balance issue I'm aware of so far, particularly considering that spacefaring races are often attacking other planets very early in the game.
Loot Pirate Convoy missions: I just realized something.... these do not give any loot. Maybe have them give a bit of some sort of material? Also, I notice that you are supposedly helping a given race do this, but that race currently doesnt actually get anything at all for it...
Uhhhh..... there's more, but I cant remember what it was.
Obviously they still need to be a powerful threat, but their current setup just doesnt work. I'll attempt to think up a suggestion for an attack pattern for them but I dont have one yet.
