Another Early Impression of the November Beta

[underwhelmed]

I'm not going to bulk this out with a lot of words and instead get right down to what I like, and what is really killing the game for me. I have some familiarity with Alpha Centauri, but it has been a number of years since I have played it to any degree.

I like the look of this game. The landscape looks alien without being so mystifying as to require a lot of close inspection to tell the difference between a forest and a fungal bloom. The color palatte is a little overly blue/purple especially when you start including oceans and arctic environments into the mix, but I think it looks pretty good, especially against some of the special terrain features like crystals and mushroom forests. Menus are for the most part where they should be, and the drop downs make sense. Some of the menus seem a little small, but I am guessing this is a concession to lower resolution setups and not likely to change. Almost everything is self-explanatory, and anyone with even a basic familiarity with a 4X game will be able to use the UI with minimal help. I am guessing none of this is information you don't already have so let me skip right to the items I find less favorable. Also hexes, grids get used in this style of game all the time but hexes look better, and preserve distances better so thank you for doing that.

Unit selection is problematic. I really do not like that the default action is to select the first unit in the stack; this seems backwards since a far greater amount of the time I (and probably most players) am going to be moving the entire stack at once. Inverting the selection process to require one click to select the stack, a double to select the top unit, and then allow clicking on the stack list to toggle individuals seems like a faster way to do things. I really shouldn't need to touch the keyboard at all if I don't want to.

AI seems so erratic as to be almost random. I have factions offering me partnerships one turn, and then immediately declaring war a couple turns later. Cease fires or praises are created, only to have denouncements and war to follow a short time later. Once war does kick in, it seems to stay that way, but as long as the relationship is in that neutral range it just feels like cards are being pulled out of a hat until the relationship lands in in strife or firmly in an alliance/treaty of some sort.

Combat in some circumstances, is so opaque as to be completely incomprehensible, and this is what is ultimately turning me off to the game. I have nests of aliens, that when viewed with one of my units will return a victory estimate of 100% with predicted casualties of less than 40%. When I launch the attack I get wiped out and not a single loss is inflicted on the target. I thought I had made a mistake the first couple times this happened, but repeated observations have shown this over and over. I am guessing that there are factors that are not being displayed in the estimate calculator. I am fine with the idea that the projection is just that, a projection, but it having no basis in reality, and any other numbers associated with the units showing me at an advantage only to have the battle go catastrophically wrong is not endearing in the slightest. If there is some other mechanic at play here, I cannot find it explained in game, and in consideration of this game as a product, I can tell you that most people playing the game aren't going to go hunting outside of the game to find it either. Do units have different numbers of HP?

Another dreadful and annoying thing about combat, is that fights occur off screen all the time. I realize that in a multiplayer game, some degree of hastened resolution is required to keep the game moving, but there is no reason for this in single player. I really need to see what happened in a given battle, not make a guess based on what is still standing around in the area after I click the "go to event".

So I guess right now after a couple hours, my impression is "interesting, but not likely something I would by at a premium price". I really like the base ideas of the game, but it hasn't really grabbed me yet

[SephiRok]

Thanks for the input!

If you find something odd, like victory chance being 100% and not inflicting any damage, please attach or send use save games, it helps us so much more.

Cheers,
Rok

[HitmanN]

Another dreadful and annoying thing about combat, is that fights occur off screen all the time. I realize that in a multiplayer game, some degree of hastened resolution is required to keep the game moving, but there is no reason for this in single player. I really need to see what happened in a given battle, not make a guess based on what is still standing around in the area after I click the "go to event".

Absolutely agree. I would prefer that during opponents' turns, whenever they initiate combat, the view centers on that hex. Same thing with any offensive operations they might initiate. Battles shouldn't happen simultaneously with operations either, though I haven't observed if that is so already, because annoyingly both always happened off-screen in such cases so far. It just felt like there was nukes droppings and enemies attacking at the same time. I want to see each thing that damages my military in any way, one thing at a time.