My first impressions

[DeepOne]

*The order of following comments represents the actual order of events / thoughts.

1) Setup
Standard procedure, quite simple

2) First launch
- Updater: would be nice to see total download size, not only the percentage (no idea how long it will take)
- Main menu: simple, but stylish, nice pict
- New game -> Error: Could not initialize server. Hm, ok, re-try: now it works.
- Alt-Tab: first time took quite long time, then switched almost instantly every time
- Factions choice: every faction having some kind of heavy drawback is interesting. Custom factions or some additional threats would be nice?
- Loading times: quite fast

3) After 5 minutes (Turn1, started game as Solar Dynasty, medium continents, else default)
- Scrolling: I personally perceive the "jumpy" scrolling on default zoom as a bit uncomfortable, even when scrolling slowly (via mouse btn) - feels like lags, hard to follow with eyes. With closest zoom the effect disappears completely, scrolls fluently. Further away it becomes worse (becomes disturbing as soon as I zoom out far enough for blue fade to appear on main view). Also it lags differently in different map areas for some reason.
- Zoom: terrain/units look OK even on highest zoom. 3rd-4th step from full zoom-in quite comfortable for playing.
- UI: simple, but all important info seems to be there, good tooltips, good selection info window. Glowing buttons and tips clearly explain what to do first. However, I have Civ experience. Yes, the overview/hexes, some basic concepts and parts of the interface logic looks very much like Civ, which isn't neceserally a bad thing - many things become self-explainatory and easy to operate. UI is important, but it's content that matters (oh Alpha Centauri...!)
- Alt-Tab: works fine and fast now
- Research screen: well, I miss a research tree a bit. If 2 topics lead to the same next topic, it's not immediately clear if I have to research both to unlock the next one. IMO, cost shouldn't be listed immediately after header: it's not the most important info. What I'd really like to know, are more or less the exact benefits of certain research projects, not just text description. E.g. "Infernal Pre-Igniter": does it unlock a weapon? Or is it just theoretical research unlocking next topics? Will "Colony Ship Dismanteling" actually provide resources immediately? How many? Or also unlock some building? Etc. The benefits should be clearly stated (either "allows: X,Y; unlocks: Z", or at least "unlock a new itemType X", without exactly numbers)
- City screen: I had to actually re-assign the worker to see how exactly his assigned tile is highlighted on the main map (ok, after city has grown, it was explained in a tip, alright). Playing with tooptips in Statistics block explained where those numbers come from quite good.

4) After 30 minutes (Turn2+)
- Research: well, upon project completion I see what exactly I've got. IMO not knowing it in advance makes planning harder. Unless, of course, you want it to remain a mystery to be discovered by players - element of surprise (well, ok, it IS interesting to try it out). Those who have played it once will know what to expect, but newbies have yet to discover it. Hm, hard to say what's better.
- UI: yes, it's logical. opens fast, provides all the info I need so far
- Saving: singleplayer campaign should open corresponding directory per default?
- Workshop: interesting and easy! Should be able to name designs. Cloning units to create some of other type isn't logical.
- Enemies: wow, encountered few very different types in the first 10 turns, even a huge one - well done (tactical retre-eeat!) Well, they don't attack - yet.
- Armies: hm, how can I select all units in a stack without shift-clicking each one in the list each time? Ah, they don't attack at the same time anyway. Then if I click on an enemy with multiple units selected, those who had not participated in battle shouldn't auto-move to the clicked tile after battle is over (don't want stack to become separated)

5) After 1 hour
- Enemies attack constantly now - but hey, I've got tanks! Not too easy, not too hard (corresponds the selected "medium" well)
- Crash: clicked on unit (Colonizer) in event list (City X built a Colonizer), however, it was destroyed already in the same turn (so link to non-existant object?)

to be continued...

[SephiRok]

Thanks.

What do you mean by laggy scrolling? How many fps do you have? F12 shows a counter. Did it get better since then?

For crashes or other odd things save games would be very helpful to us.

Regards,
Rok

[DeepOne]

1) Crash
- I'll refer to following files in archive: save002, save003 and auto3
- what happened: colonizer was built and immediately destroyed by a group of aliens at start of same turn
- what crashed: clicking on "Colonizer was built" in the event log

- auto3 was the latest savegame (in the turn of crash tonight), I've tried using it, but:
- auto3 is inconsistent with what happened: now it states "built" and "was attacked", but it's still there with 100% -> no crash

- then I've loaded the second to last savegame (one turn earlier), finished some actions and saved:
- save002 is the end of the second-to-last turn
- end turn
- colonizer is built and destroyed like last time
- save003 is the start of the last (crash) turn, after all auto-events were executed

- clicking on "colonizer was built" -> crashes the game

---> Reproducing:
- load save003:
- game crashes on load (so, auto-save at turn start loads inconsistent state, manual-save just crashes)

- load save002:
- quit diplomacy
- end turn
- colonizer built & destroyed (dunno if it happens every time)
- click on "Colonizer was built" in event log -> crash

2) Scrolling lags:
- FPS is at 30, no matter how I zoom/scroll etc.
- It did not get better. At zoom3 it's quite disturbing.
- what I mean: starting with level3 of zoom (from highest) the map movement isn't smooth anymore: in addition to constant movement it now makes small "jumps". Not sure I can capture it with fraps, but I'll try to make a tiny video I can upload in an archive here.

[SephiRok]

Thanks, it's okay, you don't need to record it. Did you try turning off vsync or toggling fullscreen once to see if it gets better? I think you should have above 30 frames but vsync is probably lowering it down. We haven't focused on optimization yet and graphics options are missing, so it should get better before release.

P.S. You can control+click on a tile to select all your units atm, we plan to make it easier.

[DeepOne]

Scrolling lags:
*following FPS numbers are for lowest zoom (on highest it normally caps at 60 FPS with vsync on, around 110 FPS with vsync off)

- fullscreen (1680x1050), vsync on: starting situation, lags moderately like described (30 FPS)
- fullscreen (1680x1050), vsync off: worse, lags and flickering, also some distortions on fast scrolling (45 FPS)

- windowed (1680x1050), vsync on: low lags, scrolling results in some flickering (30 FPS)
- windowed (1680x1050, vsync off: absolutely no lags, smooth scrolling (44 FPS)

- windowed (1280x800), vsync on: very low lags, weak flickering (38 FPS)
- windowed (1280x800), vsync off: no lags, no flickering (45 FPS)

- so for fullscreen vsync helps, for windowed modes it hurts more
- windowed w/o vsync seems to be best for me currently

* strangely enough, if I turn on FRAPS, the lags/jumps happen more frequently (not 2-3/s, but maybe twice as often), making the video look a bit smoother (but they're still there). But FPS also drop a bit with FRAPS, so not really a good way to measure lags quantitatively

Other notes:
- many (if not all) of the tips seem to reset each time I load a save game. A save file should probably contain info on which ones I've already clicked away.

[SephiRok]

You should try switching to window mode (alt+enter) and then back to fullscreen (alt+enter) and see if that makes a difference.

[DTC666]

Good start up screen. Took a while to initialise. Screen layout good. Research would be better on a tree. 5 mins in enjoying it bloody aliens everywhere. 1 hour in seems to be a loop build trooper unit, get wiped out by the alien horde, build trooper unit etc. Start again., must be doing something wrong. 1 bit I dont like if you want to end turn without giving orders it's not immediately clear how perhaps a dedicated end turn button. Game looks good and play flows the multifunction prompt is superb.

[DeepOne]

Scrolling lags:
- switching with alt+enter makes no difference

Colony management:
- I have a feeling that managing population, assigning people to different jobs play a more critical role here (than in Civ): I have to constantly re-assign the colonists to balance the resources out. And just auto-assigning new population to next job doesn't help much. I probably have to use those locks more often - which is kind of equal to selecting a focus area for a colony. Not sure it's easy to implement a list of city development profiles (at least a hard-coded list), so a colony can be set to "focus on mining", but all colonies together would still try to keep food gain non-negative.
- Those re-appearing (after load) tips are especially bad here: button "return to map" is missing till I click all of them away

Aliens:
- I got quite a few of those "enemy detected" messages every turn, because I was constantly wiping out alien lairs. So at some point I just ignored them (yeah, I know they're here, I'm attacking them after all) and then got some critical situations where small alien groups just sneak to my colonies and destroy some formers and improvements. Maybe "enemy in our territory or adjacent hexes" should get an own warning?
- @DTC666: did you try to build better troopers or more advanced units? at the beginning it's actually quite easy to get a technological advantage, at least over normal aliens (even the flamethrower is fine). also, in my case, aliens didn't attack me in the very beginning. also, try having more units than them, retreat with injured units and heal them - they gain xp with every battle and their power growths. if you're under constant siege - hm, maybe very bad luck or hard difficulty?
- well, after an hour maybe, aliens became more and more aggressive, so I had to protect my borders with tanks (which are quite effective at that) and then wipe out those lairs. Soon after that I've got the sniper weapon and could take down the big dudes without any harm to my troopers. I think I've eliminated all aliens and lairs around my borders before turn 100.

Other empires:
- encountered two so far, had good relations with both at first, then one of them declared war on me (cause I "hurt the planet too much"). Their military is a bit weaker, but they got navy that attacked my coastal colony immediately.

Workshop:
- as I and many others already wrote, it should be possible to name designs. It really becomes confusing as I'm constantly adding more and more combinations of platform/weapon. It's very inconvenient to look at those small icons each time (sometimes even hovering mouse over them to read the tooltip). Proposal: auto name generation based on selected components (maybe checkboxes to control what exactly should appear in unit name), e.g. "Steel L-15 Trooper", "Titanium Hammerhead Tank". Or, if I want I could disable the armor prefix. Or just overwrite that proposal with a custom name. AI empires should also use some kind of naming scheme: currently I see some enemy units of same type and have to click them one by one to see what weapons they carry.

[SephiRok]

Thanks for the input.

You can force end the turn with button to the right of the big end turn one.

Naming will be added soon. We tried auto naming but we didn't like it, the icons are a better indicator. For enemy units you can see what they have when you hover over the terrain; you don't need to click anywhere.

Cheers,
Rok

[DeepOne]

Naming:
- ah, ok, right, hovering shows a compact summary. After I've learned what the icons mean, it was no problem to identify what enemies carry. So you're right, naming is only critical for own units.

AI:
- I've defeated the AI (Medium, Imperium) that declared war on me. Strangely enough, it only had two colonies (18 and 11 population I think, quite well-developed). So after spamming it's existing units on me (number and quality of units was OK for only 2 colonies) it simply had no chance to protect it's cities. I mean, at that point I've had 6-7 and another AI I've met also got a lot (I only see a long border, haven't explored his territory) and is much stronger (at least comparable to me). Not sure why he didn't expand.

Colony management:
- OK, became accustomed to using locks to assign roles to colonies, works good

Crashes:
- crashed on disembarking of 3 units: manually, from same water tile to same land tile, 2 disembarked ok, 1 crashed after moving to land tile visually (not reproducible whatever I tried)
- same type of crash as before (link in event log to non-existent unit), but now I've disbanded an obsolete unit that was finished in a captured colony in the same turn, then clicked the line "tank was built". I think it would be enough to just make a link to non-existent object do nothing and disappear once it's clicked

Misc:
- a Leviathan!
- a Goliath with laser is cool

[SephiRok]

The crashes on events should be fixed with the next version.

[cdwjava]

Initial impressions with only two short games:

Nice graphics. No problems in loading or startup, and even during about half an hour of game time no technical glitches were observed. I did find that even with "low" alien interference, I found myself being compelled to build troopers and tanks constantly simply to survive the seemingly endless waves of aliens. Concentrating on production, research, expansion, or territory improvement was difficult in that I had to constantly struggle with the alien infestation.

I was not sure what research stations did in game terms, and never did see city boundaries expand. Perhaps I am thinking too much of Civilization? I will try and do some more reading on the function of units and management of cities before I make my next foray this week.

So far, my initial impressions are that the game runs smoothly, the graphics are pleasant, but the constant onslaught of aliens left me with an impression that the game was solely about beating back an alien menace. I will run the next game with the "very low" alien activity level and see whether that changes things.

[DeepOne]

Hm, well, as I already wrote, I had no big problems with aliens on medium aggression level. Maybe at the very beginning - with only Troopers available - I've actually lost some units.

I've switched to flamethrowers quite fast, it helped a lot. Positioned some of them along my borders, they got attacked from time to time, but was OK (I mean, at the beginning, the aliens attacked only on rare occasions).

Then I went directly for Tanks - and a L-15 Tank is a VERY good defender vs. wildlife - set it to "defend" somewhere, it will never get destroyed (by normal aliens) and will level up in no time. L-15 Tanks became my main land force, 3 of them wipe a lair with any number of defenders, then spend few turns healing and are ready to roll again. Did not train Troopers anymore, did not built ATVs (my territory was quite compact, no need for fast vehicle).

The last important research at the beginning was the sniper rifle (SWS) for Troopers - they became very useful again (no revenge!). Good tactic: 1 SWS Trooper, 1 L-15 Tank move together, Trooper attacks first, Tank finishes. Absolute alien killer. Three such defending groups at key spots of my territory border - and not even bigger (4.0) aliens stand a chance. I would say, alien threat to my troops became zero at this point.

But I have to admit, that all was accomplished almost at the same time as aliens became aggressive and started perma-attacking any adjacent troops. So if you still have L-15 Troopers at that point (going completely into civics in research) or don't build troops in advance - they could actually overrun you. Also, if you stick to defense only long enough, I could imagine they'll also overrun you - you have to actually wipe out their hives sooner or later. The sooner the better - but that's limited by either your tech level or your army size. Sorry, but you won't live very long if you only concentrate on farming, industry and research - peacefully. But hey, this game is about survival on an alien planet! I also enjoyed occasional peaceful development games in Civ series (way of pacifist, research, industry, whatever) - but here it's not an option. You can't be a pacifist on Pandora

[DeepOne]

Bug: Unit model (Strike aircraft) is missing on the map (IMG)
- Enemy aircraft is visible (lower-left part of screenshot), so model is loaded.
- Before that turn this aircraft was in tile 29:38, which wasn't enemy territory - but in the next turn then colony borders expanded and the aircraft was pushed to a neutral tile
- After that, the unit becomes invisible
- Moving the unit makes it visible again
- Saving game with invisible unit, loading it again -> invisible
Reproducing:
- Load save file
- Navigate to top of the map (like in IMG), end turn
- Borders expand, aircraft is pushed and becomes invisible

Pandora000b.jpg (248.42 KiB) Viewed 3716 times

[DeaconD]

My first impression of this game is the colors are rather amazing.
I'm still trying to get the hang of it. I have only gone about 100 turns, but it seems interesting.
The aliens are a little too strong at the beginning, but the techs start catching up to at least hold your own.
Would I buy this game....probably.