First Impressions - Unormal

[unormal]

Here's a stream of consciousness of my very first play-through, roughly 30 minutes. Overall, I had a positive first impression. I'd give it another shot after this one, which isn't all that common for me. My biggest concern is the opacity of the tech tree, which really tweaks me the wrong way.

*It should ask if you want updates or not before it downloads and applies them
*Maybe some preset game sizes that have appropriate numbers of players and map size combinations?
*I like to play fully randomized games as well, so I'd like to have an option of a set game size and other attributes being fully random "small random" "medium random" "large random"
*I'd make the "tip" window title a different color, to make it stand out more when it appears
*Research descriptions need to be much more detailed
*There's no reason to hide the tech tree unless it's different from game to game
*Make the tech tree hidden an option, at least; experienced players can enable a full tech tree view
*Does terrain provide combat bonuses? There's no indication on initial glance at hills tooltip, for example.
*Are there combat odds displayed? I see some red/green numbers when hovering over a hive with a trooper selected, but it's very unclear what they mean.
*Are there flanking bonuses? If there are it'd be nice to get a tip the first time I move units near each other.
*I'd like to be able to hit space on a unit to pass it for purposes of "stuff to do till your next end turn"
*The farmers/miners icons are tiny on a 2560x1600 screen, it'd be nice if they were bigger.
*Maybe display what effect each worker would have per slot type when I hover over it, so I don't have to slot them back and forth to see?
*How do I rename a design?...
*It'd be nice to have a radial menu for units instead of having to mouse all the way over to the corner to fortify them/etc, though I'd eventually move to keyboard shortcuts
*The city 'tablets' should be bigger since they're important click targets.
*I can't change a worker's build type (agriculture, mine) immediately after I select it as far as I can tell; bad if I just misclick
*It's too easy to accidently replace my trooper, or whatever, with a new kind of unit, it should start you with a new copy in the workshop
*Oh wow, I can stack units? That wasn't obvious at all, coming from Civ 5
*It's really unclear what the numbers on the units mean. 1.5 and a 1? hm...
*Well, bugs destroyed my city

[whaleberg]

*I can't change a worker's build type (agriculture, mine) immediately after I select it as far as I can tell; bad if I just misclick

This is one of those minor details that is driving me crazy. Units with actions that won't take effect until the next turn, should not be committed to their actions until you actually hit "Next turn." This is similar to how auto-moving units move at the beginning of your turn. They should instead wait to move until you hit end turn, to allow you to manually re-direct them.

*I'd like to be able to hit space on a unit to pass it for purposes of "stuff to do till your next end turn"

This gets me every time. It's been a civilization standard for a long time, it should be the default key binding in this. Also "B" to build cities would be a good default. In general, the key bindings in this should conform to the genre standard whenever the functions are identical. (The ability to remap hotkeys would be nice too...)

[Jorgusson]

Mostly I agree with Unormal, I felt like I was playing ALPHA CENTAURI , but there is one more thing that annoys me. It is production window - I can't reorganize the queue by moving items up or down without deleting them. There should be UP and DOWN arrows or I could dragging items up or down.

[SephiRok]

I believe space should go to the next idle unit. If that's not the case, it's a bug.

[unormal]

I believe space should go to the next idle unit. If that's not the case, it's a bug.

I believe that it does; and it's perhaps a minor niggle, but I think it'd "feel" better if the unit was removed from the "units that need to do things" queue, rather than control skipping to the next idle unit. The way it is now, if I have a few I want to skip, I have to move all the ones I want, and then hit space a couple times through the remaining units, to be totally certain I moved all of the ones I want.

[SephiRok]

I think that would be unstreamlined and potentially annoying. Space, at the moment, is the same as pressing the "turn button", which makes you do the next task -- you can't skip assigning production or choosing reasearch. If you want to Skip a unit, it's an order, which has the key S bound to it.

[whaleberg]

I think that would be unstreamlined and potentially annoying. Space, at the moment, is the same as pressing the "turn button", which makes you do the next task -- you can't skip assigning production or choosing reasearch. If you want to Skip a unit, it's an order, which has the key S bound to it.

I think your thinking on the purity of actions is good. The issue is that it works differently in Civ and AC, where pressing space is both end turn AND give the skip turn command. Since Civ and AC are the established genre standard bearers, the expectation is that similar features work the same way in Pandora as they do in AC. Every time something works differently, it is jarring and unexpected for the player. If the difference is significant and meaningful, than that is a game design decision and will separate Pandora as a game. If it is just different without any clear reason, than it just forces the player to learn yet another set of conventions, which is irritating without adding anything.

The audience for this game is pretty much exclusively the audience for alpha centauri, so knowing EXACTLY how AC works, and making sure that your implementations are equal or better, is essential.

Also, I'm really not sure why you can't skip assigning research. It's stockpiled anyway. It would also be completely reasonable for the AI to just pick the cheapest research option and do it for you, which is pretty much the way players are choose now anyway, since it's so hard to tell what research does and leads to. A point to consider about research also, is it possible to research 2 techs in the same turn if you have the points? If not, why not?

Edit* Civ has a "Wait" command which shuffles this unit's turn to the back of the queue and moves on. That's what space is doing at the moment. In general wait is used less than space in Civ.

[SephiRok]

Actually each tech has it's own persistent bucket you have to fill up, so you can't generally transfer research from one to the other unless it's left over from excess research. If you could stockpile research, it would be cheating the system.

You can't research two techs in the same turn atm, just because there isn't any research queuing yet.

[unormal]

I would suggest considering allowing overflow; otherwise you end up necessitating fiddly (unfun) micromanagement if you want to play "perfectly", in this case, backing off workers to the exact amount of research you need to finish a tech at the end of the turn, if you lose the overflow; and then micromanaging them back up to full. That sort of micromanagement isn't really fun (at least to me), and I think it would be better to not incentivize it.

If space is the same as pressing end turn, then I think pressing end turn on a unit should issue a skip command, rather than just putting it at the back of the queue. (Presuming I can manually "unskip" a unit before I process to the next turn, which is related to being able to uncommit a worker.) From a player perspective, once I'm smacking end turn, I'm presumably thinking I'm done with the turn, and any units I'm pressing end-turn on here are (presumably) one's that I'm pretty sure I don't need to deal with, and I'm end-turning through them once per unit to make sure I didn't miss some guy out doing polar exploration that I forgot about.

P.S. Be mindful of things you consider 'intuitive' at this point in the project. At this point you've probably been playtesting the thing for 18 months, and have thousands of hours into it. It's hard to keep perspective, and I think there's a lot of great feedback here on the board that, if well considered, will lead to a really solid game. You have the absolute right idea here, and the makings of a really classic game, just make sure you listen carefully to the feedback you're getting from the people who are actually going to be playing your game, try not to get too in love with any individual design decisions that were made before real users got their claws into it, and you have a shot at something really great here, I think.

[whaleberg]

I would suggest considering allowing overflow; otherwise you end up necessitating fiddly (unfun) micromanagement if you want to play "perfectly", in this case, backing off workers to the exact amount of research you need to finish a tech at the end of the turn, if you lose the overflow; and then micromanaging them back up to full. That sort of micromanagement isn't really fun (at least to me), and I think it would be better to not incentivize it.

I might be wrong, but I think extra research is already overflowing. I swear I've seen a new research project start with a bunch built up already. If that's not happening it definitely should. I hate having to manage things to avoid overflow. That's the problem I'm having with managing food supply and minerals vs production already.

[SephiRok]

Yes, research does overflow, you just can't stock it up without picking a tech to research.