First impressions

[redcoat22]

Today was my first day playing so I wanted to share my impressions if they are of any use. I am an affectionate BARIS vet and typing from my iPad so bear with me.

First, the game is going to be fantastic and I am very happy with how it plays. Here are my suggestions:

Obviously I cannot wait for the historical campaigns and frankly the game currently seems hard in respect with me trying to keep the known real life schedule. I barely completed or even attempted many of the non essential programs and didn't even launch one Saturn V rocket by 1974. The game seems to have so much to offer but really rushes me to the moon and ignore the other cool rockets and missions.

The staff, astronauts, etc; I wish I could easily see which ones are not assigned so I can train them. I know it's possible but the system in place requires tons of clicking, too much really

Music and sound effects are great but some additional variation would be nice

Catastrophic events need at least a few graphics I think

Old r/d programs clutter up the screen. We need a way to remove them after we close programs. By Apollo I had to scroll down through 15 obsolete pieces of equipment.

It might be nice if we could sort staff by skill level in order to help plan out training.

Failed unmanned missions could arguably increase reliability not take it away (learning from mistakes). Perhaps the penalty for a failed test launch is the cost of the launch and forcing a player to redo the test rather than reduce capability by 12% etc. this might help the game keep moving yet still punish players for failures. Right now when I got to Titan II and had two failed test launches the R/D penalty cost me years of research and my program never recovered. Failed Manned missions should still result in a R/D loss as they usually result in redesign.

The astronaut list should show their number of flights. I also wish I could edit their names.

I had a blast!

[Sabratha]

The staff, astronauts, etc; I wish I could easily see which ones are not assigned so I can train them. I know it's possible but the system in place requires tons of clicking, too much really

I agree. Perhaps there should be a sortable list of personnel, being able to sort them by name, skill, current assignment, morale etc.

I know this will be easier when they have graphics, but sometimes at the end turn screen there's an event about one of my employees without stating if he's an engineer or MC and I spend a lot of time looking for that individual within the various complexes.

[redcoat22]

Obviously I cannot wait for the historical campaigns and frankly the game currently seems hard in respect with me trying to keep the known real life schedule. I barely completed or even attempted many of the non essential programs and didn't even launch one Saturn V rocket by 1974. The game seems to have so much to offer but really rushes me to the moon and ignore the other cool rockets and missions.

One clarification. I am not suggesting I want to take a lazy path and go to the moon in 1980... merely that some of these in depth programs (Gemini) takes years longer than historically and the player should enjoy that content. i.e. I want to research the Redstone rocket to launch a mercury capsule and not merely skip it and go to Atlas because I know wont use the Redstone more than twice.

Perhaps research should be sped up a bit more or make going from one rocket project to the next and not skipping programs give big bonuses to R/D. Maybe consider even more turns per year? The game needs to be hard but more horizontal and not "stove-piped".