First impression after half an hour of play

[Stilgar84]

Setup was perfect: fast and simple, without problem.

Game startup seems quite taxing on my harddrive (which was seeking everywhere), packing the resources would probably help here (but I understand it is not a priority for beta). Anyway startup time is still very acceptable (lot faster than Civ5 for exemple).

30min of gameplay:

Things which put me off:
* combat computation seems wrong or I had a long strike of very bad luck. Basic colonial marines versus alien (same stats) each time I do 0.7 damage but the alien do a full 1.0 damage to me (it happened 3x in a row). Then I upgraded my marines and attack with a strengh of about 2 vs 1.3 and I do 1.0 damage bu I took 0.87 damage myself (2x times). I would like to understand the logic???
* Research choice. Not putting full information when choosing only make a difference for new players (other will know the effect from experience) and make it harder to get in the game (at least its my opinion).

Things I liked:
* Separating minerals from production is interesting. It allows to specialize city and a city which has nothing to build does not waste its minerals. However I did not understand the factor affecting city growth, I always have +8 from food whatever the food production is?
* Customisable units and the small icons allowing to know the equiped modules directly from the unit icon.

Minor remarks:
* in the tooltip displaying production, food..., the total line should be separated from individual sources (put a ----------- under it for example)
* I found an observation tower with +50% research but its unclear how it apply: to a city build on to of it? to any city in its adjacent cases? or do you need a worker on it?
* I found two hives. one attacked me on sight, the other didn't send any alien after me. is it expected?

[SephiRok]

Thanks for the feedback.

For battles you have to take a look at the numbers that appear on the bottom, terrain can have a big effect. You also could have just been unlucky indeed.

[Stilgar84]

I was speeking of the number at the bottom with terrain and weapon target effect applied (and health effect). So it seems I understood the number correctly and was unlucky, however the result seemed strangely constant... I will play more and come back to you

[SephiRok]

Okay, thanks, there could always be something wrong.

[Stilgar84]

Ok after playing some more, I did not see more combat problem. I still think I lose too much health given the difference in power but it may only be an impression.

Some more remarks:
* The game was very stable during my plays: no crash, no bug
* After a combat, the small number displayed do not correspond to the health you lost. They seems to be more like the health lost divided by the power (if we suppose unit have a health of 1). I think it would be more understandable if it was the health directly (maybe as a percentage) which was displayed. Moreover, The combat result should be shown in some kind of log as sometimes it goes too fast/outside screen and you can't readily check the results.
* I now understand that several worker can work the same terran hex and get half the productivity of the previous worker of the same type. Maybe it would be better to show 5+2.5 on the hex instead of 7.5 to clearly indicate that 2 worker are working here
* City production icons becomes hard to read fast. 5's or 10's should be indicated using bigger version of the icons or a number should be displayed next to it to avoid having to use the tooltip each time.

[whaleberg]

* I now understand that several worker can work the same terran hex and get half the productivity of the previous worker of the same type. Maybe it would be better to show 5+2.5 on the hex instead of 7.5 to clearly indicate that 2 worker are working here

It might get a little unwieldy to have lots of +2.5's all over the map, maybe a worker count next to the tile number would be good if there is more than 1 worker though. 7.5(2) seems a little cleaner to me while still conveying the same information.

* City production icons becomes hard to read fast. 5's or 10's should be indicated using bigger version of the icons or a number should be displayed next to it to avoid having to use the tooltip each time.

I like this idea. It would be good to have production sums written next to them, especially since things don't actually round to the nearest integer like the symbols make it seem.