Feedback from Larsenex

My computer build in case its needed.

No issues other than the artifacts and horizontal lines. I do get some hesitation when scrolling. The lines ONLY occur midrange on viewing map, not zoomed in, nor all zoomed out. 

Asrock Extreme 6 Z77 motherboard

Intel I5 3570K overclocked to 4.2

8 gigs of Corsair ram

EVGA Geforce GTX 670 w/ 2gigs ram (Dx11)

I am using the on-board sound which is realteck driver suite. 

I use an accelerated hard drive, using Intel's RST technology, Its a 1 terrabyte drive accelerated with a 60 gig SSD.

850 watt corsair Gold Powersupply.

My monitor is a 27" Asus HDMI 1080P. The game simply looks amazing on this monitor. 

You need Orbital Manufacturing to unlock the Constructor module. It's one of the first techs in the Engineering tree. The Terrans and Iridiums start out with it.

Gaunathor, this is great but what would help is if I hover over Orbital Manufacturing in the tool tip it would say "Unlocks Constructors".

Well, it already does. If you hover it, the tooltip says "Component: Constructor Module" under Unlocks.

Great, I must have missed that. ..DOH>

I started with a large random galaxy with 3 AI. I got located in the SE edge of a spiral galaxy. Within 5 turns I find out 2 of the AI are put right next to me! I had to start focusing on things to get to them and then build up some sort of military as fast as I could. I've got 3 ships parked outside the Iridium capital blowing up their starports each time they are built until I can get that invasion tech going... At least the Drengin aren't nearby that I can tell yet. I was hoping for a start like yours but I only had Mars within range for me to colonize. Of course the Altarians and Iridiums both have multiple planets after 40+ turns and I've only managed to colonize 2... Interesting start to a new game that I'll enjoy playing out.

Yea, I did Occasional on all options. It worked out pretty good. Uncommon would be just that..not enough.

I would like a tool tip when I hover over a resource that says, 'build starbase near, X Tech needed".

Also do we have 'asteroid mining' yet?

Not as far as I can tell.

In Gal civ II they gave us a production bonus, which would also be appropriate here. I love the idea of one starbase 'mining' multiple resources but it also makes them very large primary targets in times of war, this is not a bad thing. 

It would really mimic a real life galactic empires dependence on external commercial production and resources. Great job Devs....

Good stuff, pretty much every issue you mention is known or being addressed. 

The resource mining in particular will be much more fleshed out soon, we just wanted to get it in the alpha so players can start playing with it.

Map generation, likelihoods and such will be getting tweaked forever, so this type of feedback is always welcome. 

Starting cash may go up a bit, to get the game rolling early on, but the amount is still hotly debated. It will probably become a race trait that the player will be able to choose, 

Well I definitely noticed the cash difference! LOL Things are progressing slowly for me in my game. One thing that has happened that I was concerned about when I first heard about starports, once I ran into the Iridians, as I said, I quickly switched to military research and building and soon had 3 furies by their 3 planets. I destroyed all their ports and just parked there. In 200 turns I've now destroyed 99 starports of theirs! I'm just waiting to be able to research invasion techs so I can then take over all their planets without issue. But in multiplayer, if you run into someone this early and do what I am doing there is nothing they can do but conceded the game. Not sure how I feel about this yet...

I think that due to their very high tactical value, they should come with some sort of both offensive/defensive things that would discourage early rushing of the enemy ports. In theory they would be the highest defended object above a planet, perhaps give a defensive bonus based on value and population of the planet its anchored to?

Not sure. I don't just want some artificially feeling construct in the name of game balance. Not saying your idea is, need to play with it active before giving final judgement, but don't want anything that comes across as cheesy. I am almost able to do it to the Altarians , too. I just don't quite have the range to get to all of their planets yet. Though once planetary invasions are researchable look out you little Altis! 

After playing a lot more, I am in turn 233 and I am fielding Paladins and modified Paladins. It is just too easy to cripple another player/AI by destroying their ability to make ships. Any attack ship found early game would really dominate and it should not be so easy.

I am all in favor of military rushes but we are in Alpha. I know if this was done to me in a game I would be pissed as hell. All the other player is waiting for is for Planetary invasion to 'mop up'.

I do not have a solution most would care for but I think the 'Home Planet' Spaceport be given both Defenses and weapons that are separate from the weapons trees. At the very least give defenses. Maybe an invulnerability shield only from home planet while anchored 2 or less tiles away?

To be honest the initial star-port should come equipped with  say 4-4-4 defense and 2-2-2 attack as soon as militarization is completed and the change should be auto upgraded and deducted from both the treasury and production of the hosting planets.  This would give everyone a slight change to respond to a threat in system. Only the starter port would be equipped thusly, Other ports would have to either have constructors add defense/attack modules or have some auto unlock in the Age of War. 

I am asking the Alpha's what they think.....

Another option would be to allow small and tiny hulls to be built planetside but require the shipyard to build medium and up.the shipyard could still build the smaller sizes as well 

this would allow the player to atleast build some defensive units in order to put up a resistance

I'm ignoring the early event.  That is easily removed.  I think you are describing a game where conquering planets is irrelevant,  All one needs to do is rush more ships at their starports than they rush at yours.

This was avoided in GC2 by requiring Planetary Invasion before you could destroy someone's production.  If you provided sufficient defense, it would protect the Starport long enough to survive a couple early fleets, but you are still introducing a high value vulnerable target that may dominate gameplay.  It still pushes me towards an early arms race over the Starport.   All I have to do is have one good ship/fleet before everybody else to dominate the galaxy.

Here's a thought, a starport within a minimum distance of a planet shares the planet's defenses.  If your starport starts wandering, then you need to defend it big time.

Erischild, 

That is something I also thought of. Give the initial starport on the capital planet defensive traits shared by the planet or make it tied to the fate of the home planet, meaning its indestructible unless you can invade and conquer the capital planet. This trait would ONLY apply to the one home planet star port and no others. 

I am trying to brainstorm ideas that keep the game moving and proceed into the next Ages. If anyone has a better idea lets hear it. 

I agree that something needs to be done.  I followed the exact same strategy of finding, destroying, parking a ship that you did before I even starting reading the forums.  It's just too easy to do (especially when two of the three other players on a large map started next to me).

My first thought for a fix was arming the starports to prevent an early rush, but this could happen in late-early, mid, to mid-late game if the tech imbalance is high enough (especially if playing on higher difficulties).  Someone suggested indestructible starports, but that seems cheezy (if they're in space, why couldn't you destroy them?).

A possible (well, not fix) path would be to add range to starbase defenses, maybe 2 hexes in a planetary system.  Then the starport (and planets) could be "covered" by the starbase's defenses.  Still doesn't fix early game where there are no starbases.

Like others, I'll keep thinking on this one.

I'm not sure I agree that starports need inherent defenses. When the AI is further developed, I have a feeling they won't leave their starports undefended.

On small maps, defending starports will be more difficult--granted. But even so, within fewer than 10 turns, it is easy to have your first military ship built and stationed.

I loaded a tiny map with everything set to abundant. I was 10 hexes from the Drengin. I rush purchased a research improvement on Earth and Mars, then managed my research and production levels. By turn 19, I was able to easily get both a Fury M1 (with attack of 2/4/3; 20 HP) and a Fury M2 (with attack of 2/4/3 & 5 shields; 20 HP). And I'm sure this strategy could be improved.

But on larger maps, it will be even easier to go up the tech tree to build defenses for your starport than it will be for other players to build offensive units that also have the range and also have the movement to get to your starport.

If you are worried about being rushed, it isn't too hard to build up some defense to attach to your starport.

All that said, I'm sure some tweaking and balancing will have to take place--but overall, I love the strategic implications of starports and how they will force some tough research decisions, strategic placement, and careful early build-order.

My point was that once you destroy a Civs star port in the early game, they are defeated. They cannot field units against you. This simply does not feel right. In Gal civ II the enemy would put up many ships into orbit of its home planet.....wait i have an idea....!

So your home star port is sponsored by a planet,. Lets make the defense of that Starport tied to the planet. Each race would get one or two fighters at start(?) These would be in orbit around the home planet. Call them the Home guard. The would be 'interplanetary' and NOT capable of interstellar movement. (could not move to another planet or system)

In order to destroy a Starport you must clear the ships in orbit around the primary sponsoring planet. 

You rush to destroy the dock but the enemy has two ships in orbit. You then proceed to the attack screen and you get a picture with both the Star port and planet. While a battle ensues. 

At the very least the aggressor runs the risk of losing some ships. 

Which brings me to my next idea. Can we get an option to have Starports withing two tiles of a planet to auto launch its ships INTO orbit around the sponsoring planet?

Ok so they sounded good when I thought of them, what are the holes in my logic?

"All is fair in love and war" . . . well, maybe not all, but anyhow.

If you pursue conquest and weapons and that's it early in the game, as opposed to, say, colonization efforts, you might be able to rush one civ and win. But in a game against multiple civs, you may shoot yourself in the foot as the other civs spread and accumulate resources and planets--then they'll be at the advantage and you'll be behind.

Furthermore, right now all we are seeing is conquest victory. If that's all you want to play and you go and attack AI as soon as you can, and you kill them with little or no effort, that's because you pursued an aggressive course and gave no quarter--that should be a valid strategy. But like I said, the AI is not complete, and I doubt they'll be defenseless like they are now.

Also, once other victory options are in the game, and once diplomacy is fleshed out, I highly doubt you'll have civs charging toward you within the first 20 or 30 turns.

I get your main point that once you destroy a civ's starport in the early game, they are probably toast. I don't disagree with that, but I don't think it will be as easy to do as it presently is once the AI is further developed. And once the game as a whole is further developed, I think the costs of going straight to weapons and conquest will be greater than the benefits of expansion and building infrastructure.

Rushing starports may be a valid strategy, but I'll wait to pass judgment on whether it is a cheesy strategy until the AI is further along and the game includes diplomacy. And in any case, rushing starports should be an option, IMO.

Trumpeter, thanks for a well thought out reply. I too will wait and see. There is still a long path to go before we see how thing stack up. 

Yes, that was my point also, we need to wait and see how things will go as it's too early in the development stage to get all bothered about some game aspects, IMHO. There are some good ideas in this thread but we'll just have to see how things start to flesh out as it may make our current concerns a moot point.