Super duper early (10 minutes) impression

[Billick]

This is basically a really quick first impression without reading very much about the game (other than a few threads on the main forum).  I may put some things in mantis after I spend some more time with the game.

- Theme music is great (very Pablovian  )
- Lack of sounds is pretty jarring, so it'll be good to get those into the game
- Okay first battle what is going on?  Okay, I'm auto-deploying stuff.  Where are the bad guys?   I'm zoomed all the way out and I can't see any thing... oh there they are.  What do I do now?  Will zerging their flagship work?  It did, but I'm guessing that won't work later on?
- Solar system screen - What am I supposed to be doing here?  Granted I didn't spend very much time here, but there doesn't seem to be any direction as to what I can do.  I found a menu with stuff that requires influence.  How do I get influence?  I definitely need to dig into this more. 

[JAlfredGoodwin]

Nothing to do but avoid turrets and zerg in combat?

What do you mean I need an outpost?  Where and how do I get one?

Oh!  I got shares and can make deals... but still cant fight any of the missions I tried to accept...   Why cant I get any bargaining power?

[Volkira]

I've had 2 games both ended with fatal errors at about the 2 hr mark.

The first game I skipped a lot of the text as I just wanted  to get into the game.By doing this I had no clue how to customize skills I had bought from the merc's.I also had no idea about the Government options and I was at a loss when it came to the universe map.I worked it out in the long run.

The second time I had more time to concentrate so I read the majority of text and this did explain and help me get started.

So the moral of the story is to make sure that the tutorial pulls you in Visually and  not pushes you away with walls of text.

I do like how you slowly introduced the UI.

Times have changed since the commodore 64.Back then you would lay on your bed reading  a proper paper manual (at times 100's of pages..Janes/microprose manuals)from front to back to learn the game.Today we just seem to want to start straight off without reading and being visually taught the game as we go.