My thoughts on GC4 Beta

I like a lot of your suggestions, but of course not all of them.

On converting dead worlds, sometimes a race should have a special ability that others don't have. I currently look at converting dead worlds as one of those things.

I always have a hard time making money, and I haven't found out how to do it in GC4.  For a while I was able to, but then a few updates later and I was broke again. There are too few financial improvements to build.  The new mechanic (not just with financial) seems to be "make a district" then "improve the district." instead of building improvements.  You just felt more involved when you built financial improvements (banks, shopping centers, etc.)

Anomalies--I agree 3 turns per each anomaly is crazy. I compensate by making a ton of survey vessels.  And I arm them so they can fight some too.

Monsters and Pirates getting stronger as the game proceeds would make sense.  

Yes yes yes we need more ways to gain culture points so we can make more use of the culture/ideology system.

RE the GC4 economy: Credits are not that hard to come by. I almost never use the print money executive action because of the 10% debuff and I rarely use my planets and shipyards to generate credits because they almost certainly have more important things to do. Here is what I do:

• Spend a culture point to reduce the cost of leaders
• Build trade routes
• Sell uninteresting technology to everyone who will buy
• Join the Galactic Bazaar and sell my excess resources
• Join factions that increase my economy

RE anomalies: I'm going to stand up for the design decision to introduce a delay in surveying anomalies. I think it is a brilliant design choice that improves pacing. Without this delay, everything would be surveyed in the first 50 turns and your survey ships would be useless after that.

My impression of the module vs weight system is very good.   It simplifies what was a tedious part of the game.  I don't agree that just using standard ship models is just as good as designing your own ships.   But of course it took me an inordinant amount of time to figure it out because I have played so much GC3.  I kept thinking that the weight was hidden somewhere and was still controlling things.  

To the list of pet peeves I think that first ones are  QOL improvements that might be good but aren't necessary.  The comment about the trades being offered:  this week the trades I am offerred are often pretty good, and sometimes almost too good.  I should have noted down some of those, but point is that this has been tweaked and probably will be again.

On culture points: I don't think being able to fill out all of the ideologies would be a good idea (I admit he is just asking for more, not necessarily all that would be needed to fill every ideology).  But the limited choice makes the player's choices more difficult.    This is good, hard choices make a game more interesting not less.  Perhaps enough to finish one tree is about right.  So you need to chose who you are going be, not just grab and be everything.   The GC3 system was good in that you could go mainly into one line and perhaps put a few into a second line, but the costs were too high to put a lot of points into more than one line.

The pirates do become cannon fodder too early in the game.  They should get stronger as the game goes on, but not as fast as he suggests.  So that one needs to keep an eye on them and it is useful to wipe out pirate bases, but not so that becomse the focus of the game.  The other civilizations should be the focus.

Well, that's a few comments off the top of my head.

Bamdorf, I agree that you don't want to be able to fill out all of the Culture points.  You need to pick a general strategy.  But I think you definitely need more culture points than we now have.  I like the general method GC3 used in that you theoretically could pick ALL the culture points. But it really became impractical after awhile.  You won (or lost) the game before you  could even think could doing it.

I agree in that the pirates (and all the monsters/precursors) should become stronger as the game progresses.  But as you said, maybe not as quickly as suggested. My basic idea is that if you don't deal with them earlier, you will have a very serious problem. This should be true for those near you and those in other sectors.  If the AI doesn't deal with them, then the AI should be having a big problem to deal with.

I'd also like to see pirates/monsters/precursors take over AI worlds and attack their ships with the same glee they seem to use attacking my assets.

I'd like to see them add back in the Pirate Taunt that "Hey! I just took over one of your worlds.  Thanks!"  And the longer they keep that world, the more of a problem it is going to become, spawning more ships and taking over even more worlds.

I'd like to see monsters/precursors take over planets also, especially an unusally large one. You have to land ground troops to clear out the infestation. A tough fight, but if you do it you get a real prize of a world.  Say Level 50 with some resources and stuff. And surrounding worlds. A big investment, but make it worth the investment.

I'd also like to see GNN back, telling me what is going on. Who started which Galactic Achievment building, who  is winning which war, etc.

And I'd like the old ship design system back with an overall tonnage/volume and you get you tech advancements in different areas (specific weapons, computer tech, engine tech, etc)  so that you have space to add more items to your design.  Seems some people complained about the micromanaging involved here, but this is the type of micromanaging you want.  Want you don't want is to have to go through 100 planets each turn to tell each one what to do. But they solved that with the Core World/Colony trick.

I agree with your discussion for the most part.

The pirates being more aggressive if not dealt with is a good idea.  I have already been in a  situation in which I try to decide if it is worth it to clean out a pirate nest, which might cost me some casualties.   It should definitely be worth it!   It shouldn't be something you can just ignore for a long time without it causing you any difficulties. 

On the question of ship design I think your concern may be handled by providing techs (or perks or whatever)  that can be earned which modify the number of modules on a particular size of ship.  I don't really mind the weight scheme, however... I used to spend a lot of time in GC3 figuring out how to maximize a build, what techs I would need, etc.   

Stream lining the game to reduce the overall mechanical detail is a decent idea and I think that was behind a lot of the decisions in the design, particularly core worlds and ship design.  In a strategy game the bulk of the effort should be in making decisions, not implementing them.  The problem I have with a lot of Paradox games is that chopping wood seems to be all you are doing, so to speak.  (But I still play them!).  It does help if the wood chopped can be build into something impressive.   But I digress.

You have definitely brought up some things that need to be carefully considered.

I am very glad the Tech to unlock Carriers is at least buried way way further into the Tech Tree. I haven’t encountered a carrier yet in GC4 yet I personally refused to use them in GC3 because of how ridiculously overpowered they were. I still think one of the easiest fixes would be to lock them large or even better massive size hulls. 

About constructor and the range ring, one thing that would really help is highlighting the resources, planets, etc. that would fall into their influence radius prior to building a star base. Small quality of life thing that would make a world of difference.

We are adding a full screen to design your own civilization. 

Thats really good feedback, I'll play with the abundant values for hostile entities. 

I like keeping it special to the Baratak. MAybe a event reward or something could provide a few chanrages, but I wouldn't want a tech to do it.

Yes. In particular I think the taxation approval penalties are probably to high right now. I NEVER run with high taxes, so most of GDP doesn't come into my treasury so things that boost GDP don't really matter. It sounds like you player the same. 

Yeah, I've toyed with locking fighters to particular weapons. Something needs to be done for carriers. Especially with their current slot cost they are shockingly OP. 

 Its easy to add spawn events for them in the med/late game. I think you are right. We are also toying with adding news sectors med/late game which would accomplish the same in a more fun way.

Anomalies that spawn at the beginning but are invisible (to you) or ones that spawn when a tech is learned is largely the same gameplay experience. The advantage to spawning later is that its easier on memory and a player who gets the tech early cant come in and clean out all the anomalies you are expecting to see when you get the tech.

Yes, I'll take a look at it.

Eyes of the Universe should be fixed now. I'll check it out.

This should be fixed now too. 

Brad and Cari are doing great work here. Its so hard to do AI for a game that's in development. But its coming along.

Maybe, but it is a challenge I like. In my 0.77A game I run my civ on max tax and my income is plus 144/turn (turn 124).

I had the challenge to increase approval for manufacturing and research at early game and I still have a challenge for income at mid game. Although new core worlds are interesting. They cannot handle max taxes at start. So you either need to temporaly decrease taxes or you prepare yourself with supply ships.

I like to play trade and diplomacy heavy and trade is another motivator to increase tax / approval. Warmongers would have one motivator less I guess

What is a problem for me: very low approval of colonies. But this is only a cosmetic thing right now (no elections).

On that subject, I think that hostile entities should eventually form fleets instead of spamming the map with units, which makes them easier buy annoying to deal with.

I will admit last night I played a single sector game. The AI jumped me before I had learned a single combat tech. They bum rushed me and I spent the next 50 turns teching up and while making crap ships to at least keep my core worlds and a few colony worlds. I ended up forcing them to give up. My ships drasticly changed over 50 turns and they made the same ships and not once tried to counter my design. I do fine it funny the AI build ships exactly how Derek did not want the players to do... All weapons and hps so it took me a bit to counter them. But once I got my defenses higher than their weapon value I won ever battle and took over half of the AI area. They also never tried to build a different type of ship. They went missiles, I went high missile def and armor, with high missile and gun attack. So if they would have went high lasers I would have had to change up.

I now keep my combat techs up to date alot sooner than normal now that I know the AI will attack me. My next game I had a fleet of medium ships stationed at every core world or colony hub. Well the AI did not think to attack me that game... lol

Also noted carriers were way down the tech tree. So I teched up to get them and to my surprise the module is now 1 per ship... Ok yep that is one way to fix carriers.... Now I got to see if I can put them on a smaller haul and just make a fleet of small carriers...

Thanks for the feedback :0 I might have a lot to say add. That is just because I love this series and want it to be the best 4x game of all time. I know with the dev team you have that is an attainable goal. The game gets better every week....

I still want to see the nest grow in strength and spawn not only small and medium versions, but large and massive. Sometimes I just want to kill space monsters and the current versions are not worth the tale at the local space port to even brag about..