Impression-Journal of more than 15h playtime

[Kordanor]

First to my background: I am playing 4X games for a long time and normally play them in multiplayer and in singleplayer. Started with the first Civ games, Colonization, MOO2, SMAC, and from the more recent games Galciv2, Armada 2526, Civ4, Civ5(mostly multiplayer with a friend, currently at 507 hours in steam) and I also checked out Endless Space (not enough immersion for me) and Eador (too repetitive for me). Besides the preview on Space Sector I did not dig too deep into the game. E.g. I did not read these Forums before starting. So it's a completely unbiased experience.

And here are my first impressions about Pandora:

Patcher/installer:
-installation went fine, even with active anti virus software kaspersky, decent speed at 400-500 kb/s
Did not like it when it automatically started the game after downloading/installing for quite a while as I was playing something else meanwhile. Maybe a „Start“ button would have been nice

Starting screen:
-No Intro? What is the story and setting? Guess that will follow at release or when starting the game
-great background pic in pseudo 3d
-music is nice and brings a great atmosphere, but there is a bad cracking noise
-the interface of the starting menu is minimalistic but very clear and smooth
-When starting the game and seeing all the options I first checked the factions and read all their texts: The divine ascension woman has some very weird breasts on her picture. All the other pictures are decent but a little to „plastic-like“.
-The quotes are nice and explained a bit about the story. Alpha Centauri Players should feel right at home
-I am chosing Togra/medium/continents/medium/medium
-taking a short look into advanced mode but cant really judge the additional settings and leave it
-the intro

The into looks kinda cheap but not horribly cheap. Not impressive but does it's job

First Looks on the map:
-reading through all the available tooltips on the frist two units
-nice music again, but new music fragments seem to end and start very abrupt
-familiar unit actions (e.g. from civ games)
-realzing that the game is fullscreen but does not „capture“ the cursor when I tried to scroll to left so it ended up insecond screen
-glad that there is a windowed fullscreen mode so at least no task switching hickups are produced

Checking the Science screen:
-the window is too small
-I like that there are different branches which are not as heavily connected with each other as in civ 5.
-realzing that the deeper science projects are unknown and remembering that I saw about that in the advanced options. No I am wondering if these are random or not. If they aren't random I think it's quite usless to keep them hidden.

Then I quit the game and started over later:
-It's great that the game saves the last used settings for the scenario
-Started over a few times again to make out the mechanics: Science tree is indeed random each time
-However the trees seem to be too randomly thrown together

Checking out the City Screen:
-Looks familiar to what I know from other games
-It's to be able to move the interface but why can't I resize it?
-Doubleclick on city should open the city screen, even if there is a unit
-Took a couple of minutes until I figured out how to redistribute population. Icons for workers and ressources on the map are too tiny
-It's nice that you can set the tile which you will accumulate next in contrary to civ 5
-On first look it looks like a refreshing mechanic that food is not equal growth and miner and worker are two separate jobs
-I decide to build a Former and assign my citizen to production

Economy Screen:
-Different Worker types don't stand out
-Would be nice to see how much different an additional worker would do in the different categorie

Events Screen:
-different buttons for „goto“ and „open help“ would be nice

Workshop:
-Looks nice and sleek. Enough options to provide diversity without doing overkill like 4x space games tend to do
-Graphical stlye reminds me of Battle Isle 2 unit graphics, would like to have these graphics for own and alien units also in the units segment of the help menu

Checking the rest of the screen before ending the first turn:
-We are starting in the Age 2100 AD? That seems to be too much of an accident. To me a more random year like 2094 would make more sense. And maybe the time should be measured in „Since the landing“, maybe showing the earth year in a tooltip

Turn 2:
-Discovered Ruins and found Xenomorph Pheropod which seems not to be a science
-figured out I can add that one to units in the workshop
-When giving a unit a movement order I would like to see how far this unit can travel within this turn

Turn 6:
-my unit drove into a fungus field and lost some power, on this move it ended up next to a neutral unit, the galeth
-ran out of minerals so I shifted the citizen to mining

Turn 7:
-Seems like the galeth does not want to attack
-Got a new citizen and assigned it to do construction

Turn 8:
-Found a ruin again, this time I got 20 food
-Seeing that the natural growth is „per unit“, so with 2 units the city has a growth of 2 which is a nice mechanic. Now I am wondering if I can bring inhabitants to other cities


Turn 9:
-Damage Evasion Researched
-Found Scite unit
-Symbol for alien life is too similar to the zerg logo and should be changed
-values for the city on world map are a little to small/hard to read, also due to the light background

Turn 10:
-Drones came into field of view
-Former was produced which I use to build a mine on a mountain
-found a queen with my scout
-starting to build a trooper equipped with the Xenomorph Pheropod to try that out

Turn 19:
-realizing that population->taxes->income
-It should be more visible in the city view which tile is worked at. Maybe even make it visible on the world map so you know which tiles to improve with the formers
-I'd like to queue multiple science goals at once
-finished my second „Xenotroop“. With my 2 troopers and the one starting unit I am now looking to engage into some alien fight
-Former took damage in fungus tile. Apparently he cant remove it, after checking science projects I discovered that he will be able to do it later
-Production of growth should show the ratio in the tooltip like it does with credits
-I like the idea of the mechanics of pollution and morale
-After checking science screen again I have to repeat that it looks like total chaos. Colouring for „Military“, „City improvement“ or something like that would have been helpful besides of being reflected in the small icon. Maybe the random routine generating the trees could then also prefer to connect/group science projects within the same category

Turn 20:
-First fight. Lost one trooper and then won with the second, received drone unit due to Xenomorph Pheropod. Maybe that technology is too powerful and can add to a snowball effect, especially as the aliens don't cost any upkeep

Turn 24:
-On a forest the former only has the option to clear the forest? What is that for? Will do now in order to see if that gives a production boost like in Civ 5

-Turn 26:
-Clearing the forest didn't have any effect at all besides of decreasing the tile yield. Now I will use the former to plant a new forest

-Turn 31:
-First attack from the aliens, they attacked my former. So now I know the alien units DO attack and there is the possibility for a draw

-Turn 43:
-Alien Aggression imminent? What exactly does that mean? Better to move back to the city with my troops

-Turn 50:
-received a message that the game is won in 3 ways: economic, science and military and that I should find further information about these in the buttons at the bottom. But I don't see anything about victory conditions there
-Short overview about my state so far:
one City which has a size of 10
6 military units, out of these 3 aliens
8 finished researches so far (in 4 tiers)
-no sign of an alien attack
-don't see any option to stop growth
-As mentioned before I'd like to know the efficiency of the next citizen assigned to the different work fields. Testing all of them each time when a citizen gets born is annoying. Maybe an approach like in Colonization would be better where you assign them on the tiles and then decide which job they should do. But for that also the tile icons should be much bigger
-Plan for the next turns: try to kill an alien hive and found a second city

-Turn 61:
-Managed to destroy the first alien hive and gained 299 credits. The queen joined my team
-don't see an option to select all units at once except of adding them individually by shift clicking them
-I like that in the science tree the connections mean ways to get to the next project and not requirements. So you only need one of two science projects leading to the third. Effectively this means you don't need to do all researches at all which is a very nice change to Civ 5 (where it actually makes historical sense)


Turn 66:
-Finished building first operation: Field Training. Seems to be a nice mechanic addition to the 4X genre I haven't seen in other games. Used field training on a tile with 10 units...maybe a little overpowered if there isn't a limit...

Turn 70:
-Enemy unit devourer is now next to my city. Will save the game and check whether or not the city is automatically destroyed or has abilities to defend itself.

(Updating to Version 0.20.1 at this point)

Turn 71:
-Seems like the devourer's strength is measured against city population, so reloading turn 70 and putting 2 troops into the city and capturing the already half dead devourer instead
-Apprarently the City UI does not get saved. A bad habit also seen in Civ 5

Turn 73:
-Founded a new City. Got the message that resources are shared (already thought so) but also that new population will move to the city with the best morale, which is a interesting mechanic. That also means that you can't focus on making a mega-city like in Civ 5 where you could even funnel growth to your one mega city to make it even bigger. The mechanic in Pandora isn't bad as long as the city specific bonuses are not getting out of hand (like they do in Civ 5, especially the capital)
-As production is the only thing not globally it probably makes most sense to build production buildings first in new cities. As I already have tons of money and it would take 25 turns to build a reactor array, I bought it instead

Turn 75:
-Realizing that border growth is directly connected with city population. Now that means that it might be necessary to funnel population to a city. But how to do so? Probably the best idea is to do that by creating pollution. Either by assigning citizens temporary to jobs which do not create pollution in the city which should receive the new population and assign citizens to pollution creating jobs in the city which should not receive the population. Might also further help to build recycling centers or to sell them for growth control. Now that mechanic seems to be rather silly
-Realizing that equipping snipers (no retaliation) with heavier armor actually increase their sniping damage which also seems to be quite silly
-Making a plan to create Colonial Troopers with sniper rifles, Xenomorph Pheropod and Zortium Armor: my XenoSnipers!

Turn 77:
-Find out that I can select all units on a given tile by ctrl-clicking on this tile
-My devourer is now fully healed and has a strength of 11.2, nice! But probably overpowered. Also makes a nice scout unit, being able to fly over water

Turn 80:
-Gained 4 additional alien units in one single turn, including one queen. These Xenomorph Pods are really overpowered
-Now I am considering not to destroy the hives at all but to use them to breed an army

Turn 83:
-After defeating an alien drone my devourer is now able to claim ruins on a different island and found 59 minerals
-After sacrificing a few drones my XenoSniper granted my another devourer

Turn 85:
-Starvation problem. Need to relocate some citizens
-Seems like I am going to go over the planet from north to south...a north-south wrap is a very unusual way to represent a planet

Turn 90:
-First Contact with another civilization: Lady Vermillion aka „The boobs-woman“
-Created a trading pact. 10 turns seem to be pretty short though. Hope it autoprompts to renew it (though I am only gaining 0.1 per turn and probably don't want to renew that)

Turn 92:
-Was asked for a non aggression pact and accepted it

Turn 98:
-Using field training on a tile with 18 units just feels too strong

Turn 100:
-Seems like units and buildings can't be swapped within the building queue, not cool
-as recap: I currently have 2 cities: one with 17 and one with 7 inhabitants
I have 20 military units. Out of these 12 are of alien race (2 devourers), paying a total of 12.5 unit upkeep
I have researched 19 technologies, bordering technologies with a different color now

Turn 104:
-Contact with the second other faction: Terra Salvum

Turn 106:
-Got research agreement offered by Vermillion and accepted it

Turn 107:
-Terra salvum offers non aggression pact. I don't accept as these guys will be my first victims. My army is almost infront of their doors

Turn 109:
-Seems like pacts are automatically renewed which is cool. Ended trading pact with Vermilion

Turn 111:
-First Former has nothing to do anymore
-AI was next to ruins but failed to collect them...now they are mine, a Galeth was next to it but likely the AI couldn't see that

Turn 112:
-Terra Salvum wants a withdrawal of my units, I reject
-Would be nice to see in the science screen which weapon fits to which unit type

Turn 114:
-Contact with Noxium Corporation
-Declared war to Terra Salvum and started attacking their units, first with “no retaliation units” then with alien units

Turn 115:
-Realizing you can use enemy roads...don't think that's an good design idea
-Met the Imerium

Turn 118:
-Two Ais declared war on each other
-Used orbital bombardment
-Captured first City from Terra Salvum. 10 Citizens

Turn 119:
-Both Ais made peace again

Turn 120:
-Captured second City from Terra Salvum, the capital and probably the last one, another 9 citizens

Turn 121:
-Terra Salvum eliminated
-discovering first leviathan. Would be a nice addition to my collection

Thoughts after first real day of playing (maybe 10 hours or so):
The game feels overall surprisingly stable and polished. The main problem so far is the balancing in different regards. While there is definitely a “one more turn” feeling, it feels already a little boring because it's too easy to just roll over everything.
Problem with Xenomorph Pods:
While currently I mostly used built units to destroy the enemy and the alien units mostly stood aside, they are much too powerful. Probably could have killed a faction with alien units alone.
As countermeasure I'd suggest to give them not 0 maintenance cost but double maintenance cost instead. Maintenance cost reflect logistics, repair parts and so on. But these are domesticated creatures. Think about rescue dogs. You can't just tell 10 dogs to “fly” to an recent earthquake and do some rescuing by themselves. Every rescue dog needs a keeper. So the effective cost of such a dog is pretty high. Should be the same for “tamed” units in the game. Would still give a nice boost for a rush but does not offer the opportunity to make aliens to your main force, having 3 dudes standing in the back and “recruiting” everything coming from the hives.

Problem with cities:
Cities don't feel like they have a real value. I could have done basically everything with just one city. The second one just did some buildings within the city and provided some credits via taxes.
The tiles on the planet feel uninteresting and like it does not matter at all where you place the city.
This could be solved by adding additional minor resources. There are already resources in the game which increase production, science or gold output of the city by 50%. These should stay rare. But there should be a lot of tiles which have like +3 food or +3 minerals. Think Civ 5. There you want to place a city next to a river (which don't seem to exist in Pandora) with a lot of sheeps, wheat and of course the luxury resources. If Civ 5 only had luxury resources it would not be that interesting either to look for a decent location. In addition the resources which are available in Pandora are not really standing out. On top of that the graphics are also overwritten: If there is an observatory with a farm on top of it, the observatory will no longer be displayed.

Problems with population/borders:
I think the population and borders mechanic need an overhaul. Having cities with specific ressources will make you to want to focus on specific cities. So founding a new city would be stupid as it would shift the population growth out of the “good” city where it was needed.
Personally I like the population mechanic from armada 2526 the most, where each planet has an individual growth. The more people you have on the planet, the faster you get new ones. And then you can use transporters to locate these people to planets which need more population and don't have such a growth like barren planets which are used for industry.
Maybe it would already be enough to have toggles for “allow people to emigrate out of this city” and “allow citizens to emigrate into this city” to direct the population flow.

Problems with map:
The map is too big and too empty. There is too much open space between the different factions on the normal size map already. Especially with the problems mentioned before (that you don't feel like you need to build more cities) it feels like a lot of “useless space” in between, taking out tension.

Problems with AI:
The AI proved to be very stupid. They did not take ruins when being infront of them. They also did not attack my stack of doom with splash damage or rocket artillery. Overall they had almost nothing in their based besides of a couple of very week units providing no challenge at all.

Turn 127:
-Noxium Cooperation offers me a gift, which I accept

Turn 128:
-Reaching Mechanization Era
-far away my devourer found 2 ruins each with 4 drones. Now there is a little army of mine right beside the opponent
-with splash damage and Xeno Pods it's possible for the artillery to convert multiple aliens at once
-I would like to see the empire borders on the minimap, not just the city

Turn 131:
-As long as the AI is not collecting ruins you get an insane boost from it. I have my troops spread out over the whole world now and getting a new ruin every 3 turns or so.

Turn 133:
-Contact with Solar dynasty, the last undiscovered faction

Turn 135:
-Seems like the effect of both Food production enhancement buildings stack. Stat is +25% and +50% on top of it. Doubt that is a good mechanic.
-Field training does not seem to increase the level higher than 8, probably a good idea
-I am now going to produce aircrafts, as the other units feel too slow

Turn 138:
-I like that you see the summary of a past fight in the tooltip and not just “won” or “lost”

Turn 141:
-In addition of not being able to re-arrange the production queue your progress also gets lost if you cancel a project, which is also bad
-discovered an Apidoch. Nice to have such a diversity

Turn 143:
-Movement animation of Stacks of Doom should be increased. Takes forever to move my 29 Unit Stack

Turn 144:
-Game Crashed the first time when moving my stack of doom while hovering over turn timer in the top right
-Did not happen when I tried to reproduce it

Turn 145:
-Attacked Vermillion
-Dont see the point of a non aggression pact if you can just cancel it anytime
-Captured first city from Vermillion

Turn 147:
-Captured second city, wouldn't even need oribital borbardment. Still no casualties

Turn 148:
-Captured third city

Turn 149:
-Captured fourth and probably last city from Vermillion
-Now I finally see the victory conditions when hovering over the buttons on the bottom on the screen

Turn 150:
-Divine Ascension/Vermillion eliminated
Overview:
got 8 cities now, a total population of 84
got 50-60 units and paying an upkeep of 32.5, most of the units are alien
got some tanks stationed at enemy hives to convert the new spawning aliens
Victory conditions: Economy 3%, Military 65%, Research 6%
I am 3 tiers into the mechanization era
-Now moving my stack of doom to Noxium Corporation

Turn 154:
-Seems stupid that aircrafts get damaged by fungus tiles

Turn 160:
-Declaring war on Noxium Corporation

Turn 162:
-Captured first city from Noxium Corporation

Turn 163:
-Captured second city from Noxium Corporation

Turn 165:
-Captured third and last city from Noxium Corporation

Turn 166:
-Got a message that I am approaching victory though I didn't really understand what this news message should mean. I am already at 80% victory progress from 75% needed

Turn 167:
-Checked in the forums: Looks like I need 100% as this represents 100% of the 75%...alright...
-On the way to my next victim
-Would like to have bonuses active in city due to tiles showing up in the Economy screen

Turn 168:
-killed a Leviathan and gained Leviathan Hide – cool

Turn 172:
-reached transcendence era
-the two remaining factions just reached mechanization era

Turn 175:
-declared war on solar dynasty

Turn 176:
-first city from solar dynasty captured

Turn 179:
-second city captured

Turn 183:
-Saw “Pre-emptive Strike indicator”, unit takes no damage if attacks successfully, that seems pretty strong for just 25% more production costs
-Killed an Aspidoch, another improvement, nice!
-third city captured

Turn 184:
-Deploy Pod is a pretty cool thing
-Military Victory

Statistics from the End, only from myself and the one faction I did not attack yet:
Myself:
Total Score: 113106
Diplomacy: 3024
Economy: 54400
Military: 21875
Research: 33808

Imperium:
Total Score: 36708
Diplomacy: 9524
Economy: 7808
Military: 7040
Research: 12336

Final Thoughts:
As I wrote before the AI is extremely weak and stupid. Maybe it becomes stronger on a higher difficulty but it's stupidity is apparent. It behaved like a paralyzed animal waiting to get slaughtered.
It didn't even try to do any damage. They could have easily done devastating damage with some splash damage units or planetary bombardment.
Also besides of the first 100 turns when you really have to manage resources and focus on what to do in each city and what to research next it felt almost random and non essential after that. If the city had a special resource for a percentage bonus I focused with the city on that, otherwise I just assigned the workers to the tiles which offered most in the city. I locked everything but scientist assignment and after each growth I assigned them manually. But you don't have a really good overview and it doesn't feel as “good” as it does in civilization or colonization.
I think this is also one effect of the global resources, a system which is backfireing at this state. Once you have your first city up and running you are fine. Each new city is basically ready from the getgo. You plant it, you assign some citizens as workers and everything in addition is just for a little efficiency. To give the most contrary example I'd take Colonization which has very local resources. City A has two tiles with good wood. So you assign two workers to the wood. A third worker might not work without the proper field. Then you have a lumbermill, you assign, you assign one dude to cut the wood. If you assign two, it increases the efficiency by 100%. But you can't add a third because then you would be out of wood to cut. And then the carpenters are making the wood into tools. In the second city you might not have wood. But instead you might have cotton plantations instead and that works the same. But every individual citizen you assign feels important.
This is at least partially true for the Civilizaton games. It makes a big difference if you assign your citizen to a mine or to a wheat field. That effect goes away after maybe five citizens in Civ, but it comes back as soon as you start a new city. And this does not happen in Pandora. Once your first city is “done”, it's done.

And as mentioned before the map feels too empty and characterless. The features of the tileset feel minimalistic and it doesn't feel like a “living world”. Neither graphically nor mechanically.

While the backbone of the game is good and very solid, there has a lot to be done to put some flesh on the bones.

[SephiRok]

Read through it, thanks for taking the time Kordanor.

I think the main issue you had was that it was too easy for you. When there is no challenge, resources become abundant and nothing really matters anymore. Judging after that point is misleading. If you would be kept on your toes by the AI or another player, I think you would look at research, globalization and population allocation differently.

Obviously you are a more advanced player, so I'd love to hear your opinion of a game on very hard difficulty and alien aggression. The AI is far from perfect, so if you find particular areas he should do better at, that could be helpful. You might also enjoy a small world more. We are doing some bigger changes regarding movement and line of sight with the next update, so world sizes are still up for tweaking.

Cheers,
Rok

[Canute0]

The AI is far from perfect, so if you find particular areas he should do better at, that could be helpful

My first idea are, the AI should form Army's like his "Stack of Doom". Single moving units are ok as Scouts but they should avoid attacks.
Unless the Unit is a brainless Drone, Unit or Army shouldn't attack when they don't got a chance of Victory. Exception are sniper or Artillery.

Since there are no Explore command for the unit, i think the AI just move their unit without big plan around the map, looking for trouble or this kind.
Serveral people report that the AI don't concentrate on ruins or maybe ruin's are general just for player maybe. But i think beside the native lifeforms all other AI's should investigate the ruins and get the benifits.

[Kordanor]

Will do another run with the next build with a higher difficulty then.
But Canute is right, there are just some points whith the AI which don't work at all. The exploration of ruins is probably the most obvious. Leaving all ruins to the player makes it feel really silly and gives the player a huge advantage over the AI. Not only that it does not concentrate on ruins, it does not even collect them if it knows where they are and when it is next to them.
The second big thing is splash damage. There is only one thing anyone can do against a stack of doom, and that is damage on all units on this tile. But aside from Spitters, which only the aliens had, I have seen no units using splash damage. So the most dangerous attacks I faced came from a unit with a force of 1.0 which actually killed some drone units I got shortly before. A human player would have easily killed most of the units by using bombardement a couple of times. But the AI didn't use it at all. In the ideal case the AI should not form a stack of doom though, exactly due to that reason. When there was an enemy stack of 3 or 4 units I happily used the 4 spitters and my 2 built artillery units within my stack to erase the whole enemy stack.

This was my very first try in the game. Next time I would heavily focus on exploration and collecting ruins right away. With that I would get a free army of drones, and so many resources that I might not even need to put any citizens on extracting minerals for dozens of turns and let them focus on production and science instead.

Looking forward to the next build, I'd like to see how that goes.

Edit: Oh, and the Xenomorph Pheropod mechanic needs to be fixed. That thing is totally insane.

[SephiRok]

Not sure what is going on with AI not collecting ruins, he should be doing it. I agree he doesn't go for splash damage enough, he needs a strategy for that, currently it's random if he goes for it afaik.

We're doing a bunch of tweaks in the next version. Base movement will be increased to 2, line of sigh will be a thing, different terrain will affect movement, artillery is getting nerfed (no longer affected by armor and opponent weapons), defense buildings will prevent all operation damage, ruins will scale to less and slower, Xenomorph Pheropod is getting +50% cost, -50% power, and some other minor things.

Xenomorph Pheropod might still be too strong in a regular AI game, we'll see after. Might give aliens some upkeep.

[Canute0]

Not sure what is going on with AI not collecting ruins,

I think they collect ruins, but only when they accidently move over them.
So far i notice Alien and some Empire movements, it's pretty random.

Xenomorph Pheropod might still be too strong in a regular AI game,

1. You need to be lucky to aquire the tech, you don't get it allways at the 1.ruin you investigate.
2. When you got the tech pretty early it can be very useful.
3. But, you can't improve Alien lifeforms and then they become beside targetdummys pretty pointless. Ok you can rush your neightbour with your Drones and splitter at the early game. But later with some research when even your infranty got 10 Power, the drones with 2 power becomes pointless even when they got no maintance. They can't even protect your Artilery because these allready got more power then the drones.

[Kordanor]

Not sure what is going on with AI not collecting ruins, he should be doing it. I agree he doesn't go for splash damage enough, he needs a strategy for that, currently it's random if he goes for it afaik.

We're doing a bunch of tweaks in the next version. Base movement will be increased to 2, line of sigh will be a thing, different terrain will affect movement, artillery is getting nerfed (no longer affected by armor and opponent weapons), defense buildings will prevent all operation damage, ruins will scale to less and slower, Xenomorph Pheropod is getting +50% cost, -50% power, and some other minor things.

Xenomorph Pheropod might still be too strong in a regular AI game, we'll see after. Might give aliens some upkeep.

That sounds really nice!
Just one question. Isn't it incredibly hard to make an AI to use the Xenomorph Pheropod properly? I mean for the player it's nice to have another toy. But if there are toys the AI can't really use it throws the game out of balance.

[SephiRok]

It might not be easy, but I'd hate to not have things based on that premise. I think it's a lot up to how balanced it is. If it's too strong, I agree. The goal is that it's not the superior strategy, but an alternative. It has to be a compromise.

One possibility is that using the Pheropod compromises your overall economic development or military to a degree, but allows you to a create a higher army value at a certain point in time, allowing you to do a timed attack, after which it starts to lose effectiveness.

If everything else fails we could always just nerf it so bad it becomes flavor, something people can play with but is not effective, but I'd also hate to do that.

We'll also add upkeeps to the aliens and we'll see how it plays.