my feedback: thanks guys, a great beta!

from Sins Forums
First off, an awesome beta with great potential; I would pre-buy again in a heartbeat

A few comments after 3 hours of game play.

The orange background does not give a sense of deep space.

The controls to pan and zoom still need some work.

A lot of "homeworld" feel which is a good thing; however, the control system for ship selection is not as smooth or intuitive as HW. I had problems selecting desired objects in order to zoom as well as grouping ships.

Wish I could name fleets.

Cockpit view would be fun.

Wish I could automate the tech tree branches – too many trips back and forth to the tech tree screen.

Wished I could create formations.

Some of the repetitive voice comments grew annoying "time for war, etc."

The only option to take a world is to nuke morbid? That seems rather extreme and wasteful. Should have some other options – blockade, enslave, enlist, forced exodus, take hostage for trade, etc.

Sound effects need work; rat-a-tat- tat not good for space combat.

Kept wishing I could do more in 3 dimensions. Has a very 2-D orientation.

Not sure pirate thing is working for me. Why would pirates fight to the death when confronted with a superior fleet? Pirates should create problems buy picking off traders, raiding resources, taking hostages. In essence, be a thorn in your side. They should flee and be evasive. When you finally find their home base, after much searching, then it’s a great fun to wipe them out.

The linear approach to navigation runs very counter to one’s concept of space travel.

The idea that you’re blind to the stars and planets until you’re adjacent to them also runs counter to the reality that any space faring race would know their space.

3,198 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Wish I could name fleets.

That would go real well with the group listing they have of the last patch.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with almost everything you said. I feel that the game is good, it has good game play, it just...needs aesthetics. I do realize this is a beta to test for technical and graphical errors.









The orange background does not give a sense of deep space.


Ugh. The background looks like it's a low pixel image, and hey maybe it is. I wouldn't mind seeing just the blackness of space. The best game I've ever seen with blank space backgrounds was Freespace 2. Sometimes in a big battle I would fly my ship to a safe location and sit there and watch the battle pan out across the darkness of space. I also feel it needs more stuff going on the screen, for example, space dust. It's a little touch that I think would add a lot when moving around.

had problems selecting desired objects in order to zoom as well as grouping ships.


When zoomed out fairly far I try to click on a planet, but half the time I accidentally select a ship passing through the system.



Wish I could name fleets.


That's in the game...just not in the beta. If you click on the yellow arrow it says that it has features that aren't in the beta yet.

Cockpit view would be fun.


Seems like it would be a stretch, right now I'm still trying to figure out how to lock the camera onto a fighter. Sometimes it works...sometimes it doesn't? For now I live with just locking onto a bomber and watching it dive bomb a ship.

Some of the repetitive voice comments grew annoying "time for war, etc."


It's really starting to bug me too. It all sounds like the same guy, so I'm assuming it's place holder, some programmer who recorded it and they added for the mean time. Previous games that have had great voice overs- Conquest Frontier Wars. They had six admirals that could be assigned fleets, and each admiral had a personality and different accents. I loved the admiral with a thick russian accent, or the cowboy that would say yee ha. A game that I kind of despise, but enjoyed the voice overs-Sword of the Stars. Ok game, not quite my taste but all the voices of the human ships sounded like they were talking through old fashioned radio signals. It sounded like Battlestar Galactica. Garbled battle voice overs would be great, fighter squadrons getting shot down, a real military feel.


The only option to take a world is to nuke morbid? That seems rather extreme and wasteful. Should have some other options – blockade, enslave, enlist, forced exodus, take hostage for trade, etc.



For now I think that's the only option, I know some of the other races have the ability to use psychic powers to turn the population over to them. I also think one of the races has a super device that wipes out a population. I think the developers don't want to end up with one of those tide of wars where it keeps switching back and forth ad nausem.

Sound effects need work; rat-a-tat- tat not good for space combat.


Ya....my sound effects cut out periodically which is driving me nuts. I like the the way the guns fire, I just feel there needs to be more variety. I mean, to make the game truly classic is to have amazing sound. Bombers could have a really cool dive sound effect when they swoop in for a bombing run. Sound effects should change based on where you are. The farther out you are, the less you can hear, as you zoom in more sound effects should be heard. When you're right on top of a ship you should hear the engines humming.

Not sure pirate thing is working for me.


Gah the pirates. Right now, the pirates feel like....something in an RPG that's placed there just to make you have a reason to send ships out to gain experience. First time I encountered pirates I pulled my ships back because I wasn't I would win the battle. I sat there at my homeworld waiting for their counter attack. Nothing.

The pirates should become their own entity. I don't mean make them a second entity but make them a part of the game play. I assumed pirates would make appearances throughout the game but once I had finished expanding all pirates were wiped out of the universe...? I also figured that all of my trader ships and refinery ships would come under attack from pirates....or even my enemy, but rarely were they a threat. They definately look cool, and help make the universe feel more alive. If you added more aspects to the pirates-the ability to hire them to attack the enemy, for them to develop and grow, not a little just a little, building pirate bases, perhaps in a pinch you could buy pirate ships and own them out right, or even offer bounty to pirates to just attack the enemy in general?


Other then that the game is fantastic, I play a six hour game on a Core 2 Duo 1.86 with an ATI 1950 pro and 2 gigs of ram. Didn't crash once, I had it on max settings and almost had a constant 60 frames, except when huge battles were going on the game dropped to 10 frames every here and there.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Lets not mention the orange background, its the worst of them all, and ofcourse we were all forced to play thru it in the tutorial...
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Lets not mention the orange background


Interestingly, at least based on my own experience (I could be totally wrong), it seems that the color of your starting system is related to the faction color you get assigned. My last three games I've played as red, and every time I started in a blue system (yay!).
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Lets not mention the orange background, its the worst of them all, and ofcourse we were all forced to play thru it in the tutorial...


this is true, if your own color is orange.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Orange is evil I shall never be that color again, but I will always tell my noob friends to be that color, hehe....
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top


Wish I could name fleets.



Same here - and better still - design a fleet template and auto replenish the named fleet when units are destroyed. It would take out a large part of the micromanagement IMHO.



Wish I could automate the tech tree branches – too many trips back and forth to the tech tree screen.



I kind of agree - in as much as I feel I'm rushing back and forth between the game and the research area. I just wish the game played out much slower so that I could carefully select my research for a given purpose rather than snatch a branch on the tree to make 'any kind' of progress against an AI that probably doesn't miss a millisecond of research due to the support of its algorithms.




The linear approach to navigation runs very counter to one’s concept of space travel.



I think the issue here is ... to quote an earlier thread .. 'whack a mole' tactics.
I've had a thought about it and the only way I could imagine it working would be to have bonuses for direct routes via established lines (in terms of journey time and recovery) and penalties for travel via non established lines (3 x travel time + penalties for recovery - or perhaps jump in but minus shields).

Any of these suggestions any good?


Just some thoughts .. peace, no flames.



Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
[edit] Sorry - problems with private data in Firefox and caching causing forums issues - didn't mean to spam [/edit]