Running the linux 32-bit client. Build 0.29.1
Two monitors, both running 1920x1080. (game wanted to start on mon2, i moved to mon1)
Install/setup/first run:
- Setup and patching was clean and painless.
- Graphics in the UI looked sharp.
- Music was good, but basic (in a not-distracting-way, not in a bad way)
Crash: I moved the game from monitor 2 to monitor 1, setup a game and while it was initializing I moused out to make a note...and everything froze. Had to hard-reset the computer. sad face.
Restarted, reloaded the game. Set-up the world again (faction: solar dynasty. world size: huge. shape: random. difficulty: very easy. aliens: low. pace: standard. Adv Setting: temp: random)
Opening video: Not bad, but felt like the kind of thing we've seen many times before. Did like the specifics of the visual of the pods ejecting from the 'mother ships'.
Into the game...
- UI/graphics: quote "oohhhhh prreeetttyyyyy".
- UI looks pretty standard. All of the 'expected' buttons/controls/etc for a 4x game. Buttons, etc all nice and crisp. Initial reaction was very, very pleased.
- Tech tree seemed heavily militaristic. Very little in the way of non-mil techs for the first several 'levels'. Couldn't see anyway to queue up research or to select a 'target tech'. Means a lot of unnecessary trips back to the tech tree window. (not deal-breaking, but seems annoying/unnnecessary)
- Production: Found I could inadvertently cancel production before it's done by clicking on it. Lost an expensive item mid-production and didn't see any indication that there was any recovery of the invested resources. Three things: Make it a little harder to cancel production (add a confirmation dialog, or add an explicit 'delete' button or something). Two, It would have been really nice to be able to reorder the queue. Three: The queue window feels too small, at least at this resolution. I would have liked it to be a little larger, or even better, if the border between the queue pane and the list of buildable items was resizable.
- First combat: As mentioned in some other first-impression posts, early combat against aliens, even on easy-mode, was painful. Very all-or-nothing. Was on easy and "low" alien presence and there were enough alien hostiles that I couldn't even touch that I really, really felt penned in for quite a while. I eventually overcame this, and there are probably some things I could do differently to optimize in those early days, but this was probably the most negative part of the experience for me.
- Diplomacy: First contact was with Gardinier. Options in the dialog were nice. Good effort to make the text "role-playing" friendly, but at the same time each of the options were clear in terms of what the impact would be. The exception to this were the demands I would occasionally get for tributes. I was asked to approve/deny a demand without knowing what the actual demand was for. I may be willing to pay, if I know whether or not I can afford it.
Another diplo' note: the closing/non-committal response of 'walk carefully' is *right up* against 'declare war'. This, especially at my resolution, looks crazy-easy to misclick. (is there a confirmation dialog?)
- Naval Tech: Got the basic naval transport tech, but couldn't figure out how to build a transport ship. Wasn't for several rounds that I clued in that I just had to move the land-unit onto water. My bad for not reading more closely, but it also could have been clearer. This would have been a good place for a nice, clear tutorial window that would flat-out say how this mechanic worked.
- Workshop: I found the workshop easy to use, but that the unit list was too small. It was hard to organize and track once you got past about the third generation of unit, when you (or at least *I*) started getting a number of more specialized builds, etc. Just moving the list to the left of the dialog (a three-column layout), or something like that, would have gone a long way toward making it easier to use. Some kind of filter option might have been nice too (e.g.: "show me only tanks").
I then proceeded to play for four more frickin' hours...stopping only because I was confused as to why I was having trouble keeping my eyes open (it turned out it was 2am at this point). So, all in all, a very good sign.
