General Feedback - Feel and Enjoyment

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

First of all - Thanks for letting me participate in the Alpha!

I could not be more excited for another game from the people who brought us Sins of a Solar Empire. You have made many happy memories for me and my friends.

 

Now to business...

I try to keep my feedback light and sweet. I focus on the "feel" rather than the technical glitches, etc. Though I will mention one of those "glitches" below.

 

U.I. -

The user interface feels nice to me. Everything is where it should be. I don't use the unit groups on the left side of the screen much in Sins, so I don't see myself using them here either. I would prefer if groups only appeared when I assigned them a hotkey.

The mini map is nice, it has a nice territorial feel to it. Its more of a guide to how much of the area you have explored/conquered rather than a useful warning against incoming attacks. It is too small for that, and does not provide any sort of eye-catching alert when enemies enter my territory.

Personally, I would prefer the U.I. to be less transparent, and the text bigger. I like being able to view my resource levels at a quick glace, rather than having to focus on them, just so that I can read them. Also, more color!

Tech upgrade U.I. is meh. I like the simplicity, but dang, its too simplistic. The icons need to be more obviously different from each other.

 

Game play - 

I like the pace of base expansion and resource gathering. I think the unit build times are pretty good. The tier one units movement speeds are nice, but everything else is too slow.

The movement speed only matters to me because the A.I. driving these things is completely stupid. If its going to take a long time for my units to get into position, they should not randomly back out of the fight. I mean, really, why do my units start moving around like jackasses when the fight starts? Half of them actually pull themselves out of their own weapon range and become utterly useless. Sins felt good because even though it took longer to get a Titan into position, it just kind of pushed everything else out of the way and went exactly where you wanted it to go, and it stayed there. These units seem allergic to contact with each other, and it causes some pretty bad pathing when moving large groups, especially with the big guys.

Is that the extent of the tech upgrades? seems kind of boring with so few options.

 

I did encounter one glitch. Not sure what happened but my resource income went to "-1" across the board, and everything I built was free and completed instantly. I tested the limits and produced eleven Tier 3 units in under 3 seconds. That MIGHT be something worth looking into. Unfortunately, I have no idea what caused it. I was building logistics buildings on opposite sides of the map when it started. 

 

Forgot to add...

Overall combat felt frustrating with bad troop movement. Also, the buffs need to be explained. Units that are buffed are much stronger, and it is not obvious how to get those buffs. Sometimes i lose fights badly and I am not even sure how or why. I would have enjoyed it more if units had more health overall. Hate to keep comparing to Sins, but, I like long battles because they give me time to see what units are helping and which aren't so much. I need that info in order to adjust for the next fight.

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Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Some thoughts...

The unit frames on the left provide a quick way to assign battle groups. This is far superior to trying to move them all into a single blob and hitting Z.

I also have been trying to decipher the unusual movement you get in groups of units. Many times in a fight units will hang back out of range until you explicitly attack a unit. So far I've found attack-move (Ctrl-right click) to be decent, but frequent click orders are needed as the battle shifts locations. It still needs work. Wish I could make and share videos :)

Units get buffs from the units in their battle groups. T2 and T3 units provide the buffs to the groups (hovering over the buff helps you figure out which). One unit gives the battle group speed buffs. I think it is the Aegis, but it is labeled Hyperion or something like that in the tool tip. Also, it might not be battle groups but proximity for giving buffs. Should be simple enough to figure out.

Having never played sins but having watched some Let's Plays, I hope this game can achieve the same level of complexity and beyond, because it seems awesome.

 

 

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Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I definitely agree that the AI could be improved in the game. This is the alpha though, so I can overlook a lot of the issues like this for now. If they still act like this moving closer to 1.0 then I will have issues. The area I would love to see immediate improvement is unit pathing and the hilarious bounce the units have when hitting. I literally had a capital unit bounce over the mountaintop into another region after hitting another capital next to it. I know each unit needs its own personal space but the bounce is a bit much right now.  

I honestly didn't expect too much with upgrades at this point since the game is so early in development, but I do agree that its rather bland. I am very interested in seeing what all they do with it in the near future.

Since buffs are a huge part of the game, I would like to have more control over my meta units. I do understand the reasoning behind the current structure, but I would love to be able to put multiple capital ships into a single meta battle group.

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Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Not sure if i want more AI controlling the units themselves or more individual control on the units, because at the moment the unit AI is not very good i know its early and stuff will get better and i know one of the unique selling points of the game is the meta-unit ai but i would enjoy more control like manual force target on individual units inside fleets/squads, fire on ground, hold fire, prioritise player commands over meta units actions e.t.c..

I still dont know if they want to remove micro and have everything controlled by AI and the player just decides the unit composition and A-moves towards the frontline, its something that kinda confuses me at the moment.