Soronarr Soronarr

Honest Beta Feedback

Honest Beta Feedback

Well, yesterday I finally bought it and played a game.

 

My thought while playing it were basically "this is Gal Civ II". If feels like it, looks like it, plays like it.

Don't get me wrong, I have the highest respect for Brad and the entire Stardock team, but I don't think I'll be playing this game for long. It just lacks "the meat" to keep me interested longer.

 

The races play the same.

The ship designer is nice, but while you can visually create interesting ships, it amounts to nothing. You can painstakingly build an amazing design with turrets, and another person can just make a brick and put guns on it - the play the same. Those turrets won't turn, shoot or track. the only thing that has an effect in combat is how many modules of what type you place (where doesn't even matter. I can make a ship with guns facing backwards it will still act like the guns are front). And there is so little diversity to the actual modules/weapons you can put.

I have probably been spoiled by some other games* that pretty much did every aspect of GalCiv III better - be it ship design, combat, diplomacy, race diversity and palystyles. I quite literally cannot think of anything Gal Civ III does better.

*(Kinetic Void, Limit Theory, Sword of the Stars, etc...)

 

And yes, I realize combat isn't fully implemented yet, but I know how it worked in GC2 - it was pointless and not even that pretty to look at. Unless there is some drastic change (and judging form everything else in GCIII, I doubt there will be).

The game start is boring since you start with no weapons and thus no initial tension. I played the game on default setting, medium galaxy.  I was never attacked. I was the one declaring war despite having a weak military, the galaxy being crowded, border tensions and no expansion room left.

 

All in all, I bought GCIII, but as it is now, it will just be an unused icon on my desktop. I haven't been this dissapointed since SOTS2 (but for different reasons. That one was bugged to hell)

Which infuriates me to a point, because I KNOW Stardock can do so much better. At least I have Sorcerer King to look forward to.

 

205,293 views 37 replies
Reply #26 Top

Yeah combat has alot of stuff coming later this month, range, rate of fire, speed. Etc. And with different weapon categories having different stats and then on and off type defenses, it will be more than filling and strategic. Problem solved...? :)

I'm having a hard time remembering what's being said now, I don't read the forums like I used and am busier too. X(

Still my opinion for the record is I love the simpler tech tree layout but 10% bonuses have become generic. although that is the only thing I can think of giving in this type of game, bonuses. Some could be replaced with something different, like discounted Starbase modules or something.

 

DARCA '_;

Reply #27 Top



Well, yesterday I finally bought it and played a game.

 

My thought while playing it were basically "this is Gal Civ II". If feels like it, looks like it, plays like it.

Don't get me wrong, I have the highest respect for Brad and the entire Stardock team, but I don't think I'll be playing this game for long. It just lacks "the meat" to keep me interested longer.

 

The races play the same.

The ship designer is nice, but while you can visually create interesting ships, it amounts to nothing. You can painstakingly build an amazing design with turrets, and another person can just make a brick and put guns on it - the play the same. Those turrets won't turn, shoot or track. the only thing that has an effect in combat is how many modules of what type you place (where doesn't even matter. I can make a ship with guns facing backwards it will still act like the guns are front). And there is so little diversity to the actual modules/weapons you can put.

I have probably been spoiled by some other games* that pretty much did every aspect of GalCiv III better - be it ship design, combat, diplomacy, race diversity and palystyles. I quite literally cannot think of anything Gal Civ III does better.

*(Kinetic Void, Limit Theory, Sword of the Stars, etc...)

 

And yes, I realize combat isn't fully implemented yet, but I know how it worked in GC2 - it was pointless and not even that pretty to look at. Unless there is some drastic change (and judging form everything else in GCIII, I doubt there will be).

The game start is boring since you start with no weapons and thus no initial tension. I played the game on default setting, medium galaxy.  I was never attacked. I was the one declaring war despite having a weak military, the galaxy being crowded, border tensions and no expansion room left.

 

All in all, I bought GCIII, but as it is now, it will just be an unused icon on my desktop. I haven't been this dissapointed since SOTS2 (but for different reasons. That one was bugged to hell)

Which infuriates me to a point, because I KNOW Stardock can do so much better. At least I have Sorcerer King to look forward to.

 


 

Feels like GalCiv2...?  You bet!  If it didn't, something would be very wrong.

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Reply #28 Top

Just my 2c.

 

1. People who buy early access games and then want to review them as if it was six months after release (dlc etc), shouldn't.  What do I mean? Shouldn't buy them early or shouldn't review them?  Yes.

 

2. 

Quoting charon2112, reply 27


Feels like GalCiv2...?  You bet!  If it didn't, something would be very wrong.

 

+1.

 

 

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Reply #29 Top

Quoting Soronarr, reply 21

Apparently, anything that isn't praise, or isn't a a bug report, isn't proper feedback

Wow you are angry and make a lot of assumptions.

Quoting Soronarr, reply 21

So define constructive feedback then.

1. Not hostile.

2. Informed about the state of game including what features are planned but not in yet.

3. Explaining clearly why you don't like and offering possible solutions.

 

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Reply #30 Top

Well, yesterday I finally bought it and played a game.

Glad you could join us!  We've been here for about six months.
 

I have probably been spoiled by some other games* that pretty much did every aspect of GalCiv III better ...

Pretty much every (valid) complaint you've raised here has already been stated in these Forums in greater depth and detail by other testers :)
 
And yes, I realize combat isn't fully implemented yet ... Unless there is some drastic change ...
Combat (both ship/ship, ship/starbase, and ground invasion) is a placeholder, equivalent to a construction sign.  The "drastic change" is Combat Viewer, which slipped from Beta 3/mid-Dec to Beta 4/mid-Jan(??) (because things slip in long Betas).  GC3 has still stuck fairly closely to the original Beta schedule, which is stickied at the top of some Forums here.
 
... (and judging f[ro]m everything else in GCIII, I doubt there will be).
Well, this is more of a cheap shot than constructive criticism.  You actually have no idea what's in the heads or future-paths of a team of developers, and a half-day of dabbling doesn't qualify you as an expert to make sweeping predictions.

I played the game on default setting, medium galaxy.  I was never attacked.
The AI is also a placeholder.  We've all been stomping it the same way since Alpha 0.31.  As we've (since) crowdgrasped, it's still complete enough for us to test whether major game mechanisms work (or break).  We're not yet at the stage where it's even meaningful to discuss play imbalances.  We think our best contribution at this stage is to tag/flag these imbalances as obvious flaws, and bleep over them without further venting.  We know lots of these flaws by now:
  • AI diplomatic trades not valued correctly
    • Exploit: You can easily buy out every AI: all of their ships, all planets, etc.
    • Good: Negotiations work.  Traded items do change ownership.  Treaties work, and can be broken.
  • AI ships squat on rally points
    • Exploit: You win any fight.
    • Good: It builds ships, and moves them.
  • AI doesn't maximize adjacency bonuses, approval, population growth, influence, lossless production
    • Exploit: You win.
    • Good: It does build all planet tiles full.  Low approval penalties work properly :rofl:
  • AI doesn't maximize starbase bonuses
    • Exploit: You win.
    • Good: It can plan to build constructors, send them, and select starbase module upgrades.
I infer that all of these have the same root cause: There is no AI yet.  All of the mechanisms are in place that would let a smart-computation-engine sit in the middle and tweak all of the knobs every turn to be an AI.  What we're seeing is those mechanisms in place without the the smart-computation-engine in the middle.  The AI itself was just started in December (which is right on schedule), and it will only gradually get spliced in.  Hence I expect the AI to massively change in epochal fits and bursts from here on out -- and I'm sure it will :sun:
Analogy: Modern surgeons can do a complete arm graft.  The human forearm/wrist/hand is mechanically two bones and about 57 vessels (blood & nerves).  "All" you need to do is enough microsurgery to make those 59 or so connections.  Some recipients gradually (over years?) regain partial hand function, with tactile sensation, hairs raising, goosebumps, everything.  Before that surgery, the donor arm is sitting in a shallow tray, connected to oxygenated blood supply and nutrients, and it's (still) alive: warm, quivering, the fingertips twitch when you poke them.  GC3's AI is like that donor arm: the knuckles/bones/muscles/nerves are in place, but there's no brain behind it.  Keep this analogy in mind (actually, you won't ever scrub it out of your mind :)) during Beta testing.  As of Beta 3, we're still testing whether the tarsal bone is connected to the wrist bone, not how smart the brain is.
Some of your comments could gain traction if you flesh out your ideas more concretely.
  • Tech tree.  Your (ahem) contrary view is useful, and the specific examples you cite from other games are enlightening.  You're among a minority of testers who have raised similar grand-level objection to GC3's incremental techs and relatively branchless tree.  Be aware, though, that Stardock has a lot invested in the current tech trees (including pride & joy, not just time & effort), so a total scrap-and-redo is probably outside the scope of this Beta.
    • More "enabling" techs that offer totally different play-paths (and thus arch-strategic choices) would, I think, draw widespread support.  (I would love them!)  But that also imposes a dev burden for ... more mechanisms!  We can gently nudge Stardock that way ...
  • "The races play the same."  A valid charge (for now), and I've even made the same remark myself.  However, I think this superficial similarity is also a placeholder, awaiting a couple of game mechanisms to mature:
    • Racial traits.
    • XML bug fix/balancing pass.  The tree-of-buildables (including all techs, hex improvements, ship components, and starbase modules) is a monolithic Excel spreadsheet, which gets emitted to XML files.  This is itself a quite spectacular meta-game SDK resource, whose power and flexibility will keep GC3 vibrant for ... years!  We probably don't even grasp the sheer power of this infrastructure.  But for right now (GC3 Beta 3), it's an inherently fragile dev pipeline, and the XML files have dozens of small flaws throughout, e.g. Drengin improvements are weaker than Terran, high terraforming techs are mixed up, tangled prerequisite loops, missing prerequisites, etc.  These are play-balance issues, and ultimately they're just "typo-class" bugs, requiring only typing.  "All" we need is for somebody to holistically grasp the entire tree(s)-of-everything, sweep through every detail, fix all of the broken edges, and balance all of the numbers so that the races emerge as "balanced".  Anyways, since this is just a glorified typo-hunt, it's way at the end of the schedule (and always has been).  Look for it in Beta 4+1 at the earliest.  Ergo, we Beta testers have learned to not howl or gripe constantly about these XML bugs.  Just note it, flag it, mod it yourself if you like (which is also a very useful meta-test of the entire moddable-XML "SDK" aspect of the GC3 engine), and move on to test something else.
    • Actually, maybe we could suggest (more) ways to distinguish races.  I suspect that the current vision is that racial differences are simply baked into the tree-of-buildables, i.e. you differentiate a race by simply customizing its tree (specifically, its techs and hex improvements).  Outside the tree-of-buildables, there (gasp) might be no differences (i.e. the game engine has no axes or bones/nerves to even look anywhere else for a racial difference to be encoded).  Conjecture: A race is its tree-of-buildables.  Should it be?  Can we maybe steer or nudge Stardock by offering new ideas so juicy they'll want to add them?
      • racial ship components
      • racial starbase modules  (they're simply the 2 other things in the tree-of-buildables)
Anyways, thanks for visiting!  Your half-day of experience is not enough to distinguish GC3 feature placeholders from release candidates, so some of your gripes were not warranted.  If you're still here for Beta 4, assess ship/starbase combat and ground invasions then.  (I'm guessing Beta 4 will be out within 2 weeks, which would put it at Thu Jan 23.  Stardock's Fri Jan 12 dev stream would say only "sooner than you think", so it might be earlier.  We all kind of expect a Combat Viewer sneak peek in this Fri Jan 16's dev stream.  Hope to see you there!)
Reply #31 Top

In world war two there were different generations of planes fighting next to each other. This is because there were so many planes being produced they didn't have time to test them. 

As far as randomized tech if you haven't heardI think is a bad idea.

Galactic civilization is into the idea of tech specialization, so ideas on this are constructive.

As far as tactical combat which this thread is not about, before this game came out they very clearly said this game is not about. I can argue stradegy vs tactical till I'm blue in the face. The problem is Paul feels this game is not about. Personally I feel tactics does none thingto gameplay. Which I repeat doesn't make a game better or worse. Even after this grim announcement about tactics. They didn't calm down, but kept argueing for tactics with limited success. This is where options for combat came in. 

I love the idea for picking one tech excludes one or two others.

Multiple customised tech trees maybe all the custom tech trees different from the stock factions.

 I would like to add multiple paths to one tech. 

I like the idea of splitting up points along research patwhere if you want to you could put all the points in one path. This could be changed throughout the game. How many points a path gets affect how fast you research a tech. You could add that the points affect how good the tech is.

I like the idea of combining tech research. You could have techs that could only be researched this way. Affected my how many are researching together, and the factions. When applicable the most primitive civilization would dictate the techs when the tech were on the tree. Meaning to pull this off you may have to research techs others have to catch. This is not always applicable when the tech is not in domes research path due to tech specialization. Besides what I mention the tech you research could only come from one of the parties involved. What I'm talking about is it has to be the next tech to be researched in some one's path. This would either and, require a research treaty or alliance. 

This idea sparked the previous idea which was to be able to suggest that a faction to research a tech. To do this the tech would either be the next tech in your tree, or in theirs. If bothTech's exist in both tree's then the guys researching the tech would have advanced enough to where it is the next tech in their tree. This either and, require a research treaty or alliance.

The idea of sharing sparked an idea in rudy of sharing production. His idea was lending someone edtra production points which would be minused from you. I just came up with an idea of lending economic points this would be aid. I guess you could help someone with research. Now my idea was to build units for someone they might pay you for wages. This would require an economic treaty or an alliance

Lets say we had a free trade agreemen it wouldn't give you a 10% economic increase, unless your economy was less than the trade partner. It would probably do the opposite if your economy is better. In whoever had the better economy businesses would start closing down, and opening up in the lesser economy. Market centers would start increasing in the greater economy while factories and entertainment buildings would start closing down in the greater economy. Banks and stock exchanges would increase in the greater economy. Due to investments from the lesser economy. There should be a resource sharing. In the lesser economy banks, market centers, entertainment buildings, and factories would increase. Among other reasons due to outsourcing from the greater economy. This is more like free trade than what distant worlds.

Also inspired from the idea of sharing tech research and races having different tech trees is the cold war which is very different from what endless space came up with. Instead of attacking people in nuetral territory. When diplomacy reaches a hostile level , and when you have enough espionage when we get that system. The one who is hostile gets a different kind of units than normal when they research the tech. The units came about from spying to counter the units of the civilization who you are hose idea for custtile against. This would apply also with war.

Customsized tech trees. You could make your own tree. You could just pick techs, but more probable would be trees from a pot of everyone's Tech's. There would have to be a limit on both tree's, and how many Tech's you can have. How I would come up with this is use the average of all the Tech's of everyone. Now to make this idea more work able as you pick techs, or tree's this would eliminate other's.

 That idea sparked an idea inside of me to pick my starting techs from a number of tevhs for major factions. This could be left likethis or, connected to different starting trees. The above idea, also inspired exclusive tech idea.

I like the other ideas for specialized techs for different factions. I would like to hear more please no randomized tech picking, unless it is an option I can shut off.

Anotheridea I just remembered is private sector research where both the government and private sector do research. This inspired the idea where different factions the private sector would research differently.

About the idea where the governmentdoesn't do research. Tell that to NASA. There's another I don't know the name. Tell that to everyone we have a defence contract with. Where part of a team of international scientists. That is in our economy other ones take a more active role. 

I support the governor system more for the late game to may not useit, so please keep this optional, and make it where I can make changes globally, so I only have to change this once. It would be better to have both a global, and on a planet basis in game options. Micomanageing is not a problem for me. I just don't like how they have the colony setup. A better idea would be to have it like civilization, or call to power city screen. With similar citizen management. Using things like resources and population caps and approval for class. Endless space did not do citizen management right.

I like the idea of right clicking menus to run a planet.

Reply #32 Top

Quoting peregrine23, reply 29


Quoting Soronarr,

Apparently, anything that isn't praise, or isn't a a bug report, isn't proper feedback



Wow you are angry and make a lot of assumptions.


Quoting Soronarr,

So define constructive feedback then.



1. Not hostile.

2. Informed about the state of game including what features are planned but not in yet.

3. Explaining clearly why you don't like and offering possible solutions.

 

 

Pray tell, where am I being angry or hostile?

Seems like somebody is making a lot of assumptions alright. :fuzzy: :fuzzy:

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Reply #33 Top

I would like to hear an opinion on some ideas I borrowed, and came up on my own based on some of the ideas. I agree with 2. And 3. If you don't give examples then you risk your idea getting reinterpret, or not considered for lack of understanding. Their has been good examples like different kind of drive systems.

Reply #34 Top

Quoting Soronarr, reply 32

Pray tell, where am I being angry or hostile?

When someone disagrees with you you accuse them of being a "fan boy," instead of actually addressing their arguments.

Also, you just asked me to define constructive feedback, which I did. The problems with your feedback are much more #2 then #1 or #3.

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Reply #35 Top

I'll wade in and add my 2 penneth worth:

AI is not in so even on godlike AI players are retarded even I can play against them! ;)

Paul said in dev stream the race specific weaponry/tech has yet to be added such as the psyionic blasters for the drengin :D

The Different races will have their own tech trees/personalities/AI >_>

I have asked for turrets myself in the ship designer :cylon:

 

I'm not a fan of the adjacency system but when in Rome/Stardock..... :rolleyes:

As this game is in development and only got its bare bones on it I say "patience is a virtue,sometimes a lesson in life,sometimes a lifetime lesson" :grin:

Rather than give up on it after a short play I suggest you hang around and put in some more playtime and see if it grows on you failing that wait till the full release and give it another go? But what I will say about stardock is they own up to their mistakes and given that Gal Civ is Brads baby and what Stardock is founded on he will not give up on GC3's development unlike certain other games developers who only half finish their games and call it a day!

As Seilore said " Either way,whether you stick around or comeback we'll both be around to give you a game on multiplayer or you can admire our scores on the leaderboard! ;)

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Reply #36 Top

There is also a lot of potential for modding as well as lots of planned DLC and expansions. 

Reply #37 Top

Quoting peregrine23, reply 34


Quoting Soronarr,

Pray tell, where am I being angry or hostile?

When someone disagrees with you you accuse them of being a "fan boy," instead of actually addressing their arguments.

Also, you just asked me to define constructive feedback, which I did. The problems with your feedback are much more #2 then #1 or #3.

 

And you accuse me of not being constructive and that reporting feedback ON WHAT I SEE RIGHT NOW is somehow wrong because OF WHAT IT WILL BE... MAYBE.

Your problem is that you assume "2" makes criticism invalid or unhelpful.

I can only comment on what is. Not what might be. This can inform the developers on what to do. If they are already addressed it or have plans, great. No harm done, only extra feedback and suggestions. So where exactly is the problem?

 

***

Now, for suggestions, I did provide a few. I can provide more if necessary.

 

for example, let's say that when placing weapon, you can decide the weapon size (small, medium, large) and/or type (hardpoint, turret, heavy turret). Each has it's own benefits and downsides.

Size increases power at expense of mass.

Hardpoint is fixed in a single direction with a low FoF, but has more range and/or power with no extra mass.

Turrets enables a greater coverage, but comes at the cost of mass.

Heavy turret is armored, so weapons in it are hard to disable and weapons lack a bigger punch. But it comes at a high mass+$$$ cost, and maybe big turrets have a harder time tracking nimble targets?

Actually, weapon size is no really needed if you have a normal and heavy turret. Either way, turrets would either have a fixed fire arc (180°? 270° 360°) or adjustable one (in steps), with greater arc = more mass.

Once you design a ship, you set it's combat role and tactics depending on how you build it - is it a flanker, a brawler, a standoff design? Does it favor frontal attacks? Broadsides?

The AI and auto-resolve then take what you made and run with it. You have no control of your ships in tactical - the AI will use it according to your inital instructions, but that's it.