Hello, a while back I posted this comment as feedback on 1.05, but that was not the latest version of the game, now I have been running 1.1Beta2 for a while and most of my original comments are still valid, so I am posting it here, plus a few new comments/suggestions. If you already read this post before, the new items have "$$$" infront of them:

$$$Impulse:

It took me a while to get the 1Gb of free disk space I needed to install Impulse. While I agree its nice from an anti-piracy perspective to StarDock, this application does me little good except clutter my system with files I don't want and it forces me to also share more data about myself than I would have liked. I'd rather have a light update check, or something just built into the applicaiton that checks if updates are available, without impulse, but still by checking my account name/pw.

interface / usability:
- move the retreat button to the 1st screen [not a submenu item] - in the heat of battle, do you really want to have to dig it out of a submenu?

$$$If you really can't have it on the 1st screen, at least have the 'R' key already 'hot' and waiting for my keystroke, as it is I cant hit the 'R' key until I am showing the sub-screen.

$$$ the new addition to the interface to sell/buy crystal is nice, but its also too big and clunky, i want more space on my interface for the action, can we make these buttons smaller?

- make it possible to select just ONE ship via the serach screen instead of selecting ALL ships of the same type. this way one can select and control individual scouts and colony ships [alt+click on search?]; OR add a button so I can toggle between all the ships of the same type and have the camera move between them.

- you should be able to see the build progress of a sub-menu on the higher level menu as a little bar that fills the box. example: the frigate building is constructing a seeker: without even clicking the frigate build button I should see its at 33%.

- $$$ Ships that are in 'jump' should at the BOTTOM NOT the TOP of the side list because as it is their addition and remove to the top pushes and raises the list up and down while you are playing and this makes it sometimes really hard to click on the right unit if its moving up and down the list as you try and click it!! Shold be a simple change and it would fix the UI issue.

game play:

- Another action that is missing is simply 'evade'; sometimes I want to the ship to stay in the area but avoid damage by flying away, around the system - this could be another button/toggle.

- If I recall fighters so that I can jump quicker to the next sector, have them auto-launch again if there is a threat, or repair faster if docked, or at least provide some benefit to docking/launching.

$$$ It's also odd that not yet built fighters are already in flight...??? they should stay docked until they are built.

- If I issue a move order, and there are targets I can fire upon within range, and auto-attack is on, it would be WONDERFUL if the ships would still fire at possible targets while moving. As currently there is no way to move your ships around in combat to a specific location without forgoing their attack abilities! example: sometimes you want ships to move closser to your capital ship while still firing on [previously selected] target, other times you want the ships to move within range of a repair station and still keep firing etc.

- $$$ almost the same issue, but there should just be a way to tell ships to 'attack' without telling them to attack a specific target, so that they select targets themselves. This is an important yet missing command that you would need to do if you had previously issued an attack command for the fleet, or a move but now you want them to auto-engage.

- $$$ one really annoying tactic that humans se to trick the ship targeting is the 'run in circles' tactic... if I have one ship and you are attacking it, all I have to do is plan a move in a circle and I can outrun-live you for the time it takes my fleet to arrive... How annoying and unrealistic is that? We need a solution to that problem, this shouldn't be a game won by micro-management of using loop-holes in the gameplay logic. One way to fix this, other than adding the 'fire at other targets too while moving' gameplay fix as listed here, is to not auto-assign ALL ships to attack one ship, pound with some of your ships on the structures too; and if a ship is staying out of weapons range for too long [whic would only occure if the enemy is running in a long-circle], have that ship auto-select another target without me having to do that for it.

AI improvements:
Playing on hard AI, I noticed some basic issues with the computer AI that a human player can exploit to no end. Fixing these shouldn't be too hard and it would greatly improve the AI's performance.

- the AI completely ignores neutral mines that you capture, and makes almost zero attempts to capture, steal and claim neutral mines. This not only gives you a significant economic advantage, but it also gives you permanent scouting information on the locations with neutral mines, making any map with neutral mines an easy [borring] win for a human player.

- when the AI decides to retreat from a system, usually the instant you have a larger force, he will not re-evaluate that decision even if your fleet leaves the system before his is in position to jump back away. This means that you can effectively stave off several AI fleets with just one bigger fleet by moving it between your systems back-and-forth and then send a smaller recon force to mop up the computer's home on other planets/asteroids he is un-attending with his strike force [or witha  jump inhibitor you can then mop up his ships too!]. I've been able to fight  off two computer opponents with a combined fleets twice as big as mine by utilizing this 'failing' in the computer AI, better still, the retreating force can be picked-off by structures while it runs away and you can keep lots of computer ships in this 'run away' mode concurrently.

The solution is fairly simple: if the computer starts retreating, have the computer AI re-evaluate his retreat at least once before he actually jumps: is the human player attacking him? Is the human player moving away too? Is there a base of the computer's that is under threat instead? If so, should I split my forces, perhaps retreating only some? When AI-retreating, avoid parking/moving your ships within range of turrets if you can to escape. If the AI could also decide if a planet/structure was almost dead before running that would be great too; soemtimes it just needs to shoot for a few more seconds...

$$$- I noticed that in Nebulas the computer will NEVER retreat, even if he just has 1 capital ship and you have 10 times more forces, this is a bug because he will retreat just fine in other sectors.

- when attacking planets, the AI is very predictable in where it moves to attack. the path finding affects both your units, and the computer's units.   There are a few algorithms needed:

* When siege ships enter a planet, have them move around the range of turrets to the 'gap', and bombard from there.

*$$$ if there are lots of planet defenses but the attacking fleet is still larger than the defender, consider not moving in the siege ships until AFTER your other ships kill off the defenses.

* If there are no turrets around a particular target [structures without protection] have those be the first priority for destruction of the fleet and have the fleet maneuver around the turrets to reach it. Strike squadrons should have their own target priorities: example: enemy hangers being top-priority.
* defending ships [human-assisted AI or computer AI] should always seek to remain within the healing range of repair ships and their own turrets when defending a planet, whenever possible.

$$$ My ship in my own system should move within range of a repair ship if it is damaged but iddle with no order!

Fleet formations:
$$$ Fleets suck. The Auto-join fleet should be off by default as it leads to critical problems when you have two or more fleets in the same location. A support fleet set to 'hold position' that adds in a capital ship is going to make the capital ship completely useless... suicide-killing it or your fleet. Alternatively, make the 'auto-join' only work if there is at least ONE ship of that same type ALREADY in the fleet. Meaning that if I have a fleet of siege ships, only new siege ships in the gravity well will be added to the fleet.

Instead of just 3 attack modes: gravity well, local and hold position; which I find useless if not frustrating [hold requires intense micro-management to use effectily]; I'd rather see different attack modes: aggressive, normal, evasive.

Aggressive means you hunt enemy ships you are best at defeating: even if this means moving through or into other enemy ships range, Normal means you attack ships in the gravity well, but you also try and stay away from enemy ships - especially those with an advantage over you. Evasive means you attack ships you are good at, but if any ship is good at killing you attacks you, or if you are within range of a stronger force: you run away.

Another thread talked about retreat as auto-cast, I think this is an essential addition that would greatly reduce micro-managing battles. At the moment I have to watch the display and any time I see a ship that is under attack I click "retreat" as soon as the shields are down, the AI can surely do that for me. Vasari might want to get a slight tweak to their auto-cast retreat to be something like 'hull at 90%' and Advent might want to retreat at 'shileds at 10%' - would need playtesting to set exact % accuratly but this is probably close enough.

Ship movements:
battles are very static, ships line up and just slug at each other. To make them more exciting, realistic (?), and tactical, consider changing the physics so that ships can't drop to zero speed in an instant [deceleration rates equal [or less] to acceleration rates]. Ships would fire on targets within their arc and if they have a specified target, they would make passes to fire at it. And fire at other targets while manuvering; if possible.

A toggle mode can then be created to switch between three modes of speed: "Erratic maneuvers', 'Normal', 'Static'. Where Erratic maneuver ships will maintain maximum speed at all times and just turn to get targets in arc, 'Normal' ships will slow if they want to maintain arc on a target and speed up if they need to chase a target and 'Static' ships will only move if they have no more targets, and attempt to stop again whenever possible - resorting to turning in place when possible. Alternatively: hard-code these modes into the different ships instead of allowing a user to change them; at the moment all the ships seem to behave according the the mode of 'static' where most ships should be of the 'erratic' or 'normal' type - so I find this strange, except the strike craft which look like they are behaving as 'erratic' but because they can turn so quickly they don't really need to switch targets. Ships also seem to be able to stop so quickly no matter how fast they were going, this is neither realistic [in physics terms] nor much fun to watch.

This would open up many new strategy avenues such as getting an enemy out-side of his weapons arc [chasing his rear] and the strategic advantages created by turning rates, speeds, acceleration and weapons-arc.

If this mod is implemented there are other new tactical changes that can be made such as projectiles [missiles, pulses] have a limited endurance - if your missile is chasing the enemy and doesn't hit him in time, it depletes; pulses could loose damage over time. To compensate for the negative of endurace, these weapons can have higher damage output.

Another change can be to give faster moving ships a slight modifier to their to hit chances, both when firing and when being fired at. This could be a factor of speed/100. So a ship traveling at 400 has a -4% chance to hit and a -4% chance of being hit. This same ship firing at a target moving at 500 would have -4% for its own speed and -5% for the target's speed = a -9% chance to hit. Fighters in this model would get less basic hit modification because their speed would account for up to 27% of it. Presumably the fighter's own speed would not affect its to-hit chance when firing at its target [though the target's speed still would].

Racial differences: minor:
1. Make similar hull ships between the different races have speed and turning differences. The Advent could have higher speeds/acl and less turning, the vasari higher turning and less speed/acl.

2. Add (more) research relating to ship speeds, acceleration and turning abilities.

3. have some ships/races jump at faster/slower rates.

4. Have some research in one area make research in OTHER areas impossible, this would force you to make decisions, and it would also mean that no two players, even if playing the same empire, would be exactly the same. Alternativly, make the dependancy sequence more constricting, so that I have to plan ahead where I am going and make lower-level research more expensive and higher-ranking tech cheaper so that all tech choices are ore equal and the real choice is what path you are following. To be a strategy game, this should be a game about choices, not speed-of-click-to-top-research.

Racial differences: major:
1. It's a shame that all the races are actually quite similar in mechanics, only the details change and some of the technology. Personally I loved the dramatic differences in feeling that one got when playing star-craft. It would have been possible to mix up the systems to a far greater extent that currently employed. One of the races could have had ships built by their capital ships & the research structures could also be ingrained in the capital ship[s] [think mother-ships]. More specifically though: Each empire should have had a far greater difference in their building types and ship types. example: maybe one of the races doesn't have strike craft but instead it has flak ships and detonators [against structures]. One of the races could have ships that are half the size and cost of the other - while another has ships that are double the cost and size. Another unique ship ot just one race could be boarding parties [for capturing ships]; defending crew has a chance to (auto)'scuttle' before capture. The vasari could salvage their enemy ships for cash while the advent increase their 'fleet size' via their mind control abilities instead of 'fleet purcahses' [obtained by mind controlling enemy crews or enlisting populations] - whereas the vassari fleet size could be dirrectly tied to their mineral output etc.

$$$ Cinematics:

One thing that is really missing in this game is a reason to get up-close. There are beautiful ships in thsi game, but game-play preceeds funciton, so I almost never zoom in or around ships to look at them at close range unless I am already clearly winning... the solution is both simple as well as enthrawling to our sense of value and meaning: cinematics.

When key events occure, like a capital ship is destroyed, pause the game for a moment [for all players] and show a realtime camera zoom/pan of the ship in question being blasted by the other (capital) ship.

When my fleet engages another fleet, show a random ship from my fleet, or even a fighter and have the camera trail behind it for a moment as it sets off to attack. When I bombard a planet, show my ships bombing the planet from the ships-close-up view.

If you want to take this further, you can add additional material that is not already in the game, like views of the cock-pit inside of a ship, visual-radio messages from the specific ship in question, people running around the inside of a capital ship as it is exploded etc.

This can then be a mode that is 'on' for all players, and if you are watching a cinematic, the gameplay pauses for the 5 seconds or so it takes to show it.

I hope that some of my feedback has been of use and interest,

With kind,

Sebastian.