After playing a few hours of early access, and I promise, totally not having any fun *shady eyes*. here are a fw observations. It's hard to know what is actually a problem, and what genuinely isnt finished yet, but here goes:
1) ships moving directly up look goofy swerving back and forth between hexs
2) when the galaxy map is zoomed out totally, some of the clouds flicker
3) I colonised a planet, and the surface image was missing (construction places were there, just on a totally black map)
4) on construction tiles, I feel the bonus should be summed (ie, if it gives a +1 research, and then another +2 research, just say +3 research)
5) I preferred GCII's automatically upgrading buildings - please make this an option.
6) I noticed factories can be upgraded, but I found myself having to bulldose and create farm upgrades
7) Alterans should have pink skin.., it looks blue. This ruins the whole 'Just like us due to some cosmic coincidence' fantasy.
8) I miss the start of turn reports from GCII, I want to know whats finished constructing this turn!
9) I can't end my turn until all planets are building, all ships have moved, and everything is done. I want to be able to skip this. Sure, warn me, but let me end my turn whenever I like.
10) a really 'cool' addition to the game would be 'random techs'. Where you point your research at a general field, and it doesnt tell you which actual topic is researched, until it is complete (obviously strongly biasing those fields with lower number of turns to research)
11) about 50% of the planets I colonised had those research pods which cause pain. seems a high number?
I will post more later as I think of them or notice them
Cheers,
Smak
1) AI for survey ship is awful. I have to manually move it to the closest dust cloud, debris field, cargo pod. otherwise it will take turns moving from one side to the other of the sector.
2) same issue but it tends to be in a specific area of the map. Usually wherever enemy ships are located.
3) issues with being unable to colonize a planet posted elsewhere.
4) The descriptions can be confusing. Can you provide recommendations for what to build in the tile even if it isn't researched yet?
11) I have colonized eight planets and all of them (100%) have the research pods which cause pain. What other options do you have besides the pods? In every case I took the pragmatic option after two times of this I was able to start on the pragmatic option tree. I am not sure how to enter a different tree or if there is an advantage to what i am doing, yes I know this is alpha.
12) when I am in the same system can you add a cheaper cost local ship to colonize nearby planets? Why I am I using a colony ship to colonize Mars from Earth?
I have colonized eight planets and all of them (100%) have the research pods which cause pain. What other options do you have besides the pods? In every case I took the pragmatic option after two times of this I was able to start on the pragmatic option tree. I am not sure how to enter a different tree or if there is an advantage to what i am doing, yes I know this is alpha.
The other colonisation event I got a LOT of was precursor ship buried under ice, So the choice is to wreck your planet for a free ship, or get +25% research. This annoyed me because I was going for pragmatic, but didn't want to mess up my planet.
Here are my thoughts on this...
1.) I agree the zig zagging to go in a straight line is kind of ridiculous, I know it is because of the hexes but it still seems a little silly and offputting.
2.) I have not really noticed this so much, must be lucky I guess, then again I do not spend much time all the way zoomed out, I prefer to look at the visuals up close, which look very nice so far.
3.) I have done two complete plays through the Alpha and colonized and conquered many worlds and never saw this issue.
4.) I find that the bonuses are completely different for the same icon then they were in GC2 it took me a little while to get used to them, though I do like that most provide more than one bonus, but nothing provides more than +3 in a specific category, what about precursor factories or libraries? Will those be making a return I remember them giving a +700% to production and research respectively. It also seems that more than half provide an economic bonus while only one or two provide a research or production bonus, this seems like a major departure from the bonus system from GC2, just an observation.
5.) I strongly agree with making auto update a feature again if it isn't going to be already, I find it more than a little tiresome to cycle through all the planets to upgrade buildings once the requisite tech is researched.
6.) I also find it a little annoying that certain improvements cannot be upgraded (market centers, farms, ideology based influence buildings, and ideology based special buildings) and must be destroyed prior to make way for the clearly superior building of the same type. I also found it a little peculiar that the enlightenment center costs less to build than the missionary center for the benevolent ideology when the former is clearly a superior building and by the logic of most buildings should cost more, just a thought.
7.) I do not very much mind this, it could be explained by the lighting (you know because Cardassians really liked deep blue lighting for some reason, maybe the Altarians have developed a similar affinity?), or a the result of some species wide genetic mutation, or even a massive species wide re-pigmenation project because blue is cooler I guess...? Either way an explanation to the new altered Altarian appearance might help with credibility of them being similar to humans, but not really. Either that or change the race description I suppose, it does not really bother me just making some suggestions to fix this for those that do...
8.) Definitely agree with this and mentioned it in another discussion topic.
9.) I think that this is a welcome new addition as you can select continuous production on wealth, research, population (not sure how that works exactly, cloning I guess...?), culture, or some ideology based production to keep those planets busy that you have nothing else to do with. I think this is far more preferable than the alternative which is to have them do nothing and waste all that spare production every turn.
10.) This reminds me of setting research focuses in Alpha Centauri I liked that feature, kept me on my toes because I did not now what new technologies would be discovered next! I still think it would be good to set a focus though so the feature can be tailored to a particular play style (i.e. quick expansionist, research heavy, military domination, etc...). Could also be helpful to new players that might be intimidated by the tech tree or players that would rather focus on something else. Again just a thought take it as you will...
11.) I noticed this in very high instances as well, it was either this or the precursor ship. I know this is just the Alpha and from what I remember from GC2 getting the research pods was far more likely than the precursor ship which rarely if ever happened on a play through of a large galaxy in GC2, so this is probably just a case in which there are currently only two random colonization events with the pods being much more likely than the ship. I am sure that this will cease to be noticeable with future updates as the development team will likely add all the random events from GC2 back in and add some more to boot! On the topic of random events I wonder if there are plans to implement galactic wide random events like in Endless Space, I think that would be a nice feature if not already in the works...
I know this is long but I noticed quite a few things that I have a fairly strong opinion about or just wanted to put my input in on. Hope this helps the development team I really appreciate the work you did on the Alpha and think you sell yourself a little short when you say it isn't fun, because even in this early state a thoroughly enjoyed my play throughs and eagerly await the release of more features to give it the depth and polish the game deserves. I hope I have not come off as mean spirited or condescending because my intention is anything but. I greatly appreciate the work done so far and the promise the project holds.
Just wanting to highlight a possible benefit with the manual upgrading of buildings... and that is by building the most basic building first you get an operational building more quickly and then the subsequent upgrade should technically be quicker or at least be producing something much sooner than if you had to build the more advanced building which might take twice as long (or more). I like this added option but I would also like some (global?) setting that I could tick that would allow them to auto-upgrade (as was the default in GCII).
Frogboy explained the different look of the Altarians in the announcement thread for Akari Malara.
Quote 1:
Quote 2:
It's explained in the Meet the Altarian Leader, Akari Malara thread. There is more than one group of Altarians.
Wow! Thanks for all the feedback on my feedback (feedback-ception?) guys!
The issue (3) I had, where the planet terrain wasnt assigned, theres a screen cap at : https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/111230192355757329982/albums/5997313403885589905/5997313403933629426
I know there are different types of skin to the Altarians, I guess I am just used to them being Caucasian with tattoos. I know people can be blue, hell, the term 'blue bloods' literally came from royals turning blue from consuming too much silver. I guess if humans existed on a planet where there was a background level of silver in the flora, fauna, water, etc, then yeah.., blue would probably be pretty normal also... But I digress.
In GC2 you could always go back and build the basic structures instead of seeing just the Newest buildings
i agree with this for sure
Gee, really, only just had a game recently and have never realised I could do that, will have to follow that up, thx for the heads up.
i believe this is designed to speed up the alpha testing in particular research testing im sure that when it gets to beta or actual release the chance of these colonization options will drop significantly
On (7) a slightly different skin pigment is hardly a hudge difference in pysiology after all humans show variation in skin pigments why can't Alterans and why should their variations match ours? After all even if they share a common ancestory with us they have evloved in isolation for some time.
Anyway if you follow Ware of Magic Fallen entrantress she is clearly descended from the wraiths .
The main point is minor differences in variation of skin pigments is not a biggy among populations that have been geographicly isolated for some time. The lore also makes clear that while humans and Alterans are remarkably similar they are not identical.
I would have thought that they should have pink skin like us despite evolving in isolation for millennia, that being the mystery. That's where I'm coming from
Re: point 1), good call! Just wanted to chime in to add my agreement too. I don't mind the zig zag so much with smaller ships like the scout, but it looks a bit odd when the Survery Ship does it, and I think it's going to look really weird with massive battleships darting about all over the place...
A gent over on the Steam boards mentioned the movement of naval vessels in Civ 5, so perhaps they can serve as a basic (starting) reference point for the movement of ships in GC3 to help get around the hex conundrum without breaking the immersion factor.
I reckon we need a bit of thruster glow when the ships are in motion too!
Why all it would take is a mutation in skin pigmentation? Why do you find that particularly hard to believe. Mind you if you except the semi official Elemental connection the fallen where geneticly altered from the race of men and had the same blue skin so it wasn't an accidental pigmentation mutation at all more genetic manipulation that is obviously still present in part of the population.
P.S. speak for yourself my skin is sort of lightish brown not pink, see what I mean we show skin pigment variations why shouldn't they.
Hello All,
I have only recently bought the GalCiv III FE and played it for a few hours. So far it looks great, even at this stage with the 0.20 update.
A few of my observations echo what has been noted of the same bugs and graphical glitches...maybe a few haven't.
1. Wiggly ship movement !!! - erm, not inherited from GalCiv 2 from what I can remember. Devs! It is easy to plan a straight route even when using hex boxes. Hopefully, wiggly ships are not permanent...pretty please.
2. On a few occasions, when trying to place a building tile (colony building screen ofc), another tile of the same type suddenly appears adjacent to it. It shows up on the cue as a second choice, but not from me.
3. A lack of in-depth descriptions and statistical information when choosing to build ships...I know this is a 'soft' context issue, but if SD want us to test 'graphical stress test-memory handling, etc.' it would be more prudent to add what will be perceived as standard content.
4. Battle action...or lack of them so far !! I had one of those found 'gun ships' attack a Dren scout. Nothing happened, my ship just moved onto the tile where the scout ship was - no explosions, no battle information, nada. Hopefully, not a permanent situation.
BUT..all said and done - glad they have finally released Galciv III !!!
This is when you try and place a building on a hex outlined in yellow meaning that you can't use it yet the version of the colony view in the founder vault as being the version in an internal beta they have would prevent the confusion over this, and I agree it is confusing and they probably should have just done a pop up warning that you can't build there rather than selecting a random near by green hex.
The wiggly movement is a result of tring to plot a course passing through a set of whole hexes for a direct up or down movement so it tends to waggle back and forth. Using octogons instead would have prevented this. the only alternative I can see to move straight up or down would be to plot a straight line that ignores moving to whole hexagons between the start point and the destination. In practice I found I didn't move straigh up or down much personally but they should consider fixing this it does look silly when triggered.
On (3) there is a lot of place holder stuff at the alpha stage both text and graphics wise it is after all a year away from release.
(4) yes the battle viewer won't be in until the 2nd or third beta I believe they've said although a simple battle animation on the galaxy map until then wouldn't go a miss.
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