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Author Topic: Just found this game  (Read 5837 times)

GiantPotato

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Just found this game
« on: December 02, 2018, 09:12:55 PM »

I've just gotten this game as of 0.9 and having an absolute blast so far. So: Here's my feedback (in order of importance):

1. It takes too long to understand the concept of avoiding larger fleets in the beginning of the game. A big part of this is that the UI doesn't give you much feedback as to another fleet's relative strength. Later on, when you learn the various hulls and can understand a fleet just by looking at the ships, it all becomes clear. But in the beginning it can be frustrating. I would suggest having some indicator for new players when mousing over another fleet that indicates whether you can reasonably engage it or whether you should run away.
   1a. Also I would decrease the fuel cost of emergency burn for small fleets and increase it for big fleets.

2. The player ship's "speed" indicator in combat makes no sense, it only shows the overall speed without showing the direction. It would be very useful to replace this with (or add) a 4-directional speed indicator showing speed forward, backward, left, and right. That way it's apparent at a glance whether you're advancing or retreating relative to your other ships.

3. I've changed "combatSpeedMult" in settings from 1.0 to 0.5 and this made the combat work way better for me. It should be an in-game setting I think, for people who can't keep up with normal speed.

4. After I bought my first cargo freighter I noticed that my daily supply usage also went way up. But storing more supplies takes up cargo space, which require more freighters, etc. etc. This becomes a real irritant for long-haul trips, where I always feel like I'm either about to run out of supplies or going to lose critical salvage. It seems like it would be better if supplies had a separate inventory cap and 0 weight, the same as how fuel and crew works. Maybe there could be some dedicated supply ships also, so that all 3 fleet resources work the same way and there's more thought to be put into how to balance your combat and non-combat ships within the 30-ship limit.

5. It would be nice to have some way to put resources into hunting down those pirate/path bases that keep raiding my colonies, instead of having to hunt for them personally.
   5a. BTW there is currently a bug where "Show system infos" from the sector map will display pirate/path bases even if they are not discovered yet.

6. "Shift" key aligns the front of the ship to the cursor, but some ships need to fire broadside (Conquest, Odyssesy, etc.) There should be an option in the "Weapon Groups" dialog for each ship to align to left, front, or right.

7. There should be a way to spend resources to entrench nav buoys/comm relays/sensor arrays points so that some 1-ship enemy fleet can't reclaim them. The problem is that the fastest ships in an enemy fleet will always escape and cannot be eliminated by the player fleet (Tooltip when trying to pursue: "The enemy fleet is too fast for your forces to catch up to"), and then that fleet will make a beeline to reclaim these structures and claim them for the enemy. For now there is no defense against this and so no reason to claim these points.
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TaLaR

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2018, 10:40:13 PM »

2. The player ship's "speed" indicator in combat makes no sense, it only shows the overall speed without showing the direction. It would be very useful to replace this with (or add) a 4-directional speed indicator showing speed forward, backward, left, and right. That way it's apparent at a glance whether you're advancing or retreating relative to your other ships.

You mostly need speeds (both your and enemy's) for targeting projectiles - leading pip mod helps with that.
I also had a mini mod that visualizes both own and target speed vectors (among other things), but I haven't updated it to 0.81 yet (and probably won't anytime soon).
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SCC

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2018, 01:20:13 AM »

1. It takes too long to understand the concept of avoiding larger fleets in the beginning of the game. A big part of this is that the UI doesn't give you much feedback as to another fleet's relative strength. Later on, when you learn the various hulls and can understand a fleet just by looking at the ships, it all becomes clear. But in the beginning it can be frustrating. I would suggest having some indicator for new players when mousing over another fleet that indicates whether you can reasonably engage it or whether you should run away.
You can always notice that they have bigger ships and more of them. Mousing over a fleet already tells you its composition.

4. After I bought my first cargo freighter I noticed that my daily supply usage also went way up. But storing more supplies takes up cargo space, which require more freighters, etc. etc. This becomes a real irritant for long-haul trips, where I always feel like I'm either about to run out of supplies or going to lose critical salvage. It seems like it would be better if supplies had a separate inventory cap and 0 weight, the same as how fuel and crew works. Maybe there could be some dedicated supply ships also, so that all 3 fleet resources work the same way and there's more thought to be put into how to balance your combat and non-combat ships within the 30-ship limit.
Freighters bring in massively more cargo space than their maintenance. If you are annoyed by maintenance, take the skill "Fleet Logistics" to level 2 or use dedicated freighters instead of combat freighters. At the moment I would rather have supplies share the same space, as it means sometimes you have to leave them to make space for more valuable items, and so that just filling the bays with them isn't an auto-pick.

6. "Shift" key aligns the front of the ship to the cursor, but some ships need to fire broadside (Conquest, Odyssesy, etc.) There should be an option in the "Weapon Groups" dialog for each ship to align to left, front, or right.
I suspect that it's more important for Alex to have consistent control scheme. You must remember that turning to the side changes your mobility a bit, since acceleration forward and in other directions are different. Odyssey also has a ship system that propels it forward, to it's important to remember where is forward.

7. There should be a way to spend resources to entrench nav buoys/comm relays/sensor arrays points so that some 1-ship enemy fleet can't reclaim them. The problem is that the fastest ships in an enemy fleet will always escape and cannot be eliminated by the player fleet (Tooltip when trying to pursue: "The enemy fleet is too fast for your forces to catch up to"), and then that fleet will make a beeline to reclaim these structures and claim them for the enemy. For now there is no defense against this and so no reason to claim these points.
In enemy systems, it's better to hack them to get the same benefits. You claim them only if you want to lure enemy fleets from their planet/station. In a system with your colony, your fleets sooner or later will take space infrastructure sooner or later.

Goumindong

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2018, 02:26:08 AM »

1) The size of the circle of a fleet corresponds to the amount of deployment points total in the fleet. Fleets that are much larger than yours on the map will be significantly tougher, sporting larger and more ships. This should give you a good idea of whether or not you can take something at a glance

2) if you press tab your ships will have a direction indicator of where they’re going it trying to go (it given orders). Otherwise a directional indicator on speed doesn’t help much. You’re going to get a much better idea of how fast and what direction you’re going by watching combat.

A tip to make this easier. If you hold shift while in combat your ship will always attempt to align to your mouse cursor. The arrow keys will then work like FPS controls (forward, back, strafe left/right) and this will make controlling fast ships a lot easier as it’s much easier to understand the relationship between two points ( your cursor and your ship) than it is to between one and a direction. Plus then you always know which way forward pushing you (towards where your cursor is)

4) yea supplies and the cargo required is a tough balancing act. I think it’s fine however to force you to make the choice. Most really valuable salvage is very small anyway so you shouldn’t have much of an issue with cargo space once you’ve got a reason to get a hauler. The extra hauling space is far outstrips the extra supplies per day. If you fill up a cargo ship with supplies and only had that ship it would run for about 100 months or 7.5 cycles before running out of supplies. It’s your combat ships that are supplynhogs

5) yup. Probably on the way. This is the first patch with those balancing issues out front so it doesn’t have a lot of play testing/feedback

6) I don’t understand this issue. The broadside ships tend to be slow to turn making them fairly easily to pilot without using shift. I don’t see how an “align side” key would make things easier for me compared to manually aligning. It seems like it would make things harder. Weapon groups can be set on auto and can be setup so that each side is in an appropriate grouping.

7) fleets can run away if their slowest ship (burn speed) is faster than your fastest ship. If you have a ship of equal burn speed you will always be able to pursue once. Look for ships with high burn speeds (tempest is the fastest) and make sure you have a few in your fleet in order to prevent those stragglers from getting away. If they run away and you need another shot at pursuing them you can immediately interdiction pulse as they try to burn away and then catch them again with an e-burn
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Histidine

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2018, 04:16:08 AM »

I wouldn't mind some sort of toggleable "this fleet is estimated to be considerably stronger than yours, you should stay away" GUI indicator of some kind on the campaign map, as a learning aid for newbies. (I also thought of displaying the fleet point sum or even a string like "very strong", but I'm not sure if that would be particularly meaningful for the newbies we're trying to cater for here)
Although at some level, this is kind of a thing best learned by getting bitten at least once.
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GiantPotato

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2018, 07:36:55 PM »

1) The size of the circle of a fleet corresponds to the amount of deployment points total in the fleet. Fleets that are much larger than yours on the map will be significantly tougher, sporting larger and more ships. This should give you a good idea of whether or not you can take something at a glance

I get it at this point in my campaign, the relative strengths are clear to me now just by glancing at hull outlines and I don't need more info than that. But in the very beginning this is not intuitive, and I think it might cause people to bounce off the game that might otherwise enjoy it. I put this as #1 just because I think this is the biggest improvement that will help new players understand relative fleet strengths and stick with the game even after their first few defeats. In most games you are not even allowed to pick a fight way above your level, so I think it should be made clear for brand-new players whether A) you did not fight well enough in your particular battle, or B) you were hopelessly outmatched and should have just run away. In my own first game this would really have helped me understand what was happening and get better more quickly.

2. The player ship's "speed" indicator in combat makes no sense, it only shows the overall speed without showing the direction. It would be very useful to replace this with (or add) a 4-directional speed indicator showing speed forward, backward, left, and right. That way it's apparent at a glance whether you're advancing or retreating relative to your other ships.

You mostly need speeds (both your and enemy's) for targeting projectiles - leading pip mod helps with that.
I also had a mini mod that visualizes both own and target speed vectors (among other things), but I haven't updated it to 0.81 yet (and probably won't anytime soon).

Interesting, I use it mostly to determine whether I can chase an enemy or whether I need to retreat. I see "106" speed and I want to know how much of that is already lateral thrust (broadside cannons, facing towards the enemy) and how much is forward thrust that can quickly be reduced. Usually I see some enemy ship moving away in a diagonal direction and I need to make a quick decision whether I can pursue without putting my other ships in danger.

Do you have a screenshot of this mini-mod?

6. "Shift" key aligns the front of the ship to the cursor, but some ships need to fire broadside (Conquest, Odyssesy, etc.) There should be an option in the "Weapon Groups" dialog for each ship to align to left, front, or right.
I suspect that it's more important for Alex to have consistent control scheme. You must remember that turning to the side changes your mobility a bit, since acceleration forward and in other directions are different. Odyssey also has a ship system that propels it forward, to it's important to remember where is forward.

I am talking exactly about the Odyssey. This ship would always align left. So shift+left/right would move the ship clockwise/counter-clockwise, which in the case of left alignment means backwards/forwards. Hitting F would burst the ship forwards (counter-clockwise). It is definitely confusing, but it is consistent with the current control schema.
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Goumindong

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2018, 07:54:02 PM »

I don’t understand how you would get that to work.

If I have this alignment pressed and then press “left” what happens? (And where is the mouse?) why not just not hold shift and let your mouse free float?
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JustALittleGravitas

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2018, 08:08:18 PM »

I wouldn't mind some sort of toggleable "this fleet is estimated to be considerably stronger than yours, you should stay away" GUI indicator of some kind on the campaign map, as a learning aid for newbies. (I also thought of displaying the fleet point sum or even a string like "very strong", but I'm not sure if that would be particularly meaningful for the newbies we're trying to cater for here)
Although at some level, this is kind of a thing best learned by getting bitten at least once.

There's enough info for the CANINE algorithm.  If it's pursuing you you should run and if its running from you you should chase it.
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zaimoni

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #8 on: December 03, 2018, 10:14:55 PM »

Not really...there's this middle ground where it's chasing you but you can take it down fine -- in isolation.

Beware sucking in their allies into the fight.
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Alex

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #9 on: December 04, 2018, 11:35:01 AM »

1. It takes too long to understand the concept of avoiding larger fleets in the beginning of the game. A big part of this is that the UI doesn't give you much feedback as to another fleet's relative strength. Later on, when you learn the various hulls and can understand a fleet just by looking at the ships, it all becomes clear. But in the beginning it can be frustrating. I would suggest having some indicator for new players when mousing over another fleet that indicates whether you can reasonably engage it or whether you should run away.

First off, hi and welcome to the forum!

Just wanted to say I appreciate this bit of insight - definitely not something I'd think of on my own. Made a note; could maybe pull off some sort of "danger" indicator on the tooltip.

Edit: gave it a go, pretty happy with it I think.

Spoiler

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« Last Edit: December 04, 2018, 08:06:39 PM by Alex »
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Cosmitz

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #10 on: December 05, 2018, 05:04:24 AM »

While nifty, any chance of also unifying the sector map 'fleet triangle' setup which deals reasonably well to show 'sizes', into the minimap shown in the campaign map?
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Gothars

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #11 on: December 05, 2018, 07:45:18 AM »

Just wanted to say I appreciate this bit of insight - definitely not something I'd think of on my own. Made a note; could maybe pull off some sort of "danger" indicator on the tooltip.

Edit: gave it a go, pretty happy with it I think.

You know, now that's that there: why not use the danger level to reward going after superior fleets? It could, for example, get you additional reputation to collect bounty for a fleet that's much stronger than you. It would make sense for a faction to be more impressed by that.
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The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

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Alex

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #12 on: December 05, 2018, 11:55:14 AM »

While nifty, any chance of also unifying the sector map 'fleet triangle' setup which deals reasonably well to show 'sizes', into the minimap shown in the campaign map?

Unfortunately those don't look good at all when used there - at that scale plus movement, it's extremely... not shimmery, what's the word? Ahh, can't think of it right now. It's when antialiasing is inconsistent from frame to frame, so when something moves, instead of looking smooth, it looks like the sprite keeps changing.


You know, now that's that there: why not use the danger level to reward going after superior fleets? It could, for example, get you additional reputation to collect bounty for a fleet that's much stronger than you. It would make sense for a faction to be more impressed by that.

Hmm - well, this is extremely approximate, and is bound to be wrong (or just, er, less right) in some scenarios. So it feels like that might introduce some weird incentives. Still, let me think about it - it's an interesting idea!
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2018, 01:09:25 PM »

So that 5 star danger rating on the tool tip is relative to your current fleet, and not on an absolute scale?  I.e. if I was flying with an end game capital fleet of 6 capitals plus assorted cruiser support, that would go down to 1 or 0 stars or become green stars indicating easiness?
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Alex

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Re: Just found this game
« Reply #14 on: December 05, 2018, 01:54:34 PM »

Correct!
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