My first impressions

from Stardock Forums

I just had a go playing through the tutorials, thought I'd leave some feedback. (0.0.4281)

Why I was interested immediately in the game... it's a non-violent competitive strategy game. Sounds really fresh!

What I did was start up the game, play through the "upgrade HQ" tutorial, and then the "win expansive" tutorial. I played about 90 minutes so far, and succeeded both those tutorials (though I failed the expansive one multiple times). Here are my observations, most important first.

  1. The upgrade your HQ tutorial "helps" to get the aim of upgrading... but it also hid the "normal" victory conditions so...
  2. ...I had no idea how to win in the expansive mode tutorial (when I, on the 3rd attempt, noticed the "buyout" button, I won fairly fast)
  3. ...and that was odd. Things appeared in stalemate in both my previous games, when suddenly I was bought out. This felt unpleasant. If I'd known my primary aim was to prevent a buyout/attempt a buyout, I would have focused on that, but I still had no idea I was about to lose.
  4. ..and I'm not sure how my stock/buyout value is calculated. I'd love to have some idea where the numbers come from, though I understand the importance of hiding the gritty details. Vague things I'd like answered would be like "Is stockpiling a valuable resource increasing my stock?"
  5. Map randomization in tutorials is... tricky? On Expansive tutorial, I started on a world with barely any resources the first time. The second time I had a glut of aluminium. I'd tentatively suggest focusing the tutorials on the environment rather than the faction. For example "Tutorial 1: Rich in all resources", "Tutorial 2: dealing with extremely rare iron". The "faction" impact on game play is relatively minor in comparison.
  6. Something flashes up when starting.. like "these resources are valuable for export", but it fades too fast. Is it important?
  7. Why is the black market there in tutorials if it can't be used?
  8. The importance of the colony is unclear - is it worthwhile keeping food prices low? Why? Can I cripple an entertainment focused opponent by shrinking the colony? How do I know the size of the colony?
  9. Building "linking" seems a bit weak. I'd really like to see that developed - is there no benefit from building iron mines close to steel mills? Or IS there a fuel cost? I didn't notice it.
  10. Electricity might be overpowered. Either that, or it's "essential" - you can lack iron, you can lack carbon, but if you have no electricity you are doomed. This isn't made obvious anywhere, and it's the reason I lost Expansive Tutorial twice... Also, solar panels seem useless compared to wind and geothermal, though I've not played long enough to be sure.
  11. There seems to be no value to steel in the late game. Is this by design? If so, it's another thing a tutorial might want to touch on... the "right time" to sell up all your industry.
  12. AI seems a bit characterless. I'd like to know a bit about their drives... and feel like they are "people", rather than minimaxing bots. Also they react absurdly fast to you buying their stock!

Then some minor things I noticed

  1. It's tricky to work out what's yours and what is theirs (and I have full color vision too!)
  2. The resource icons on the map don't look the same as the icons in the UI
  3. The close button on the patent/engineering menus is tiny
  4. Scrapping something doesn't "sell" the claim. Is this by design? If so, can we somehow buy up claims without building things? (say if you want to monopolize carbon early on, but can't spare the steel). 
  5. No stockpile on electricity, I think, is meant to simulate the "grid" system. Sell power in the day, buy it at night. But this concept is unclear, and I wasn't sure it was what I was MEANT to be doing.

These are all fairly small matters. I really liked the look and feel of the game, it ran extremely smoothly, it met my expectations, and I'd tentatively recommend the game to friends. Great work so far, and I'm very excited to see how things go on from here!

3,621 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the feedback!

There's a lot to process, but I'm going to touch on a few things that you mentioned:

9 - If you build iron mines next to steel mills (or they're connected by buildings/plots) then there is no shipping of the resource. It can save you a lot of fuel and energy to have buildings connected in that way. We need to have the interface reflect that "hey, this is a pretty smart place to put something"

3 - That close button is too small. If you click anywhere on the map or press escape it should close those windows as well. We'll fix that button.
4 - No selling claims currently. You can scrap buildings, but you can't get rid of claims. They're good to use for extra power or something else.
5 - There is one patent (energy bank, I think. not at work) that allows you to store some energy, but otherwise you are exactly correct.

Thanks for all the feedback! Let us know what else you think needs to get fixed and how to get that "tentatively" to "enthusiastically" recommending to friends. :)

-Scott- 

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Aha! I originally built expecting some benefit from "9", but didn't see it, so I didn't use it. I'll see if I can exploit it now :) Maybe, like the "affinity" suggestion when placing two similar buildings that says "+50%", there could be a similar hint "Free shipping" or something of that sort. On that note, if shipping costs more over longer distances, that might also be nice to see during placement.

For 5, I'd maybe expect an "advanced" tutorial on power somewhere, as it's a fairly novel mechanic. (a loading screen tooltip would be reasonable too)

To get the tentative to enthusiastic is mostly a matter of seeing it finished. I tend not to recommend games to friends until they're released, just because they're not as tolerant/persistent as me :)

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

12. I believe Soren is currently working on the AI "personality" The first task was getting the normal AI at a reasonable baseline. IIRC, he touches this on a podcast somewhere.

11. Steel does fluctuate in value over time. Initially demand (geothermals cost alot of steel!) far outweighs the supply, which drives the price up. Note that the Offworld costs a ton of steel to build. Easy to have it overproduced.

10. Power is important, but it is possible to skimp on it. Sometimes it sits at $1 the whole time, so there's more value producing other resources. Sometimes it goes basly.

6. These are the high value resources to ship with the Offworld. It is very brief.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Having played a bit longer... I'm so happy.  Every game so far has been totally different, and trying to predict the scarce resource is really exciting. Somehow on one map water got up to 600$, at which point someone.. probably Ms Sabotage who kept blowing up the water wells... made an absolute killing. I lost, but it was fun.

Having played a couple more games, I'll take back my words about steel and power being over/under useful. It really depends on the map and to some extent on the personality. (though not having a any power supply seems to get you beaten pretty hard on most :D) Steel is the lifeblood of robots... and near useless for scavenger. It adds an interesting imbalance that makes each map-opponent combination really fresh.

The biggest problem for me right now, is the end game buyout phase.

AI players seem to be buying me out for a lower value than my cash balance (as I am waiting to buy THEM out and tend to have ~200k when it happens). I've spent a few end games hovering over the buy out button, and have lost a few times "on a knife edge" just before buying them out. This doesn't make sense because if they buy me... how can I possibly be 5k away from the 200k needed to buy them? This has also happened when I own my stock 100%.

Also, the end game seems to spiral ludicrously fast once a buy out occurs - everything is going well, then suddenly: Mr X buys out Ms Y! Then 5 seconds later Mr X also buys out Ms G! Then, game over! Are they getting the opponent's liquid funds in the buyout, which bankrolls their next purchase? In a 4 way match, if an AI makes a buyout before you, even if you're close to making one yourself, they will (in all of my games so far) buy out every other company within minutes.

 

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

when you buy someone out, you don't get their cash (or their resources). Also, your stock price is not just a question of cash on hand, which might be why they bought you out first. (next version will provide popup help on stock price valuation...)