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Repost from the GCIV forum:
This are my observations they may well not coincide with yours.
Will add to these as I play more.
Game one: Medium map, most settings normal, four major enemies, easy difficulty.
At least three of the four majors were in the next star systems to mine. The fourth may have been to Galactic north, but space monsters ( at least three) destroyed my fleet before turn 55.
In none of the previous versions did these things happen to me. Remember this is easy difficulty as I am trying to learn this versions quirks before going higher.
This playthrough felt more like a FPS rather than a 4X game. As I have 70 year old eyes ( yeah I tried to give them back to the 70 year old ) the UI can cause me problems.
Problem one, the blue on black makes it extremely hard to see what turn it is. Problem two because I get Ocular migraines I need to zoom-out to the icons instead of the cute graphics, in 3 the zoom level reached this stage well before I needed a magnifying glass to see the screen ( note: my monitor is a 34in "Smart" tv) currently in this version I can not tell the difference between the survey or the colony ship. This could end up a " game breaker" for me.
As for other aspects of the game they are either good or will be rectified by climbing the "learning curve"
Overall grade is a solid C not bad this being early Alpha.
I've played 3 games to date. 2 on medium and 1 on large. The medium maps took 500 to 550 turns, and 10 to 12 hours to complete. My large map took nearly 850 turns, and 18 hours to complete. I think that is a bit too long. Especially with the lag. I had to push my way on the last bit of the large map. In GalCiv 3, I could finish a large map in the fraction of the time and turns.The lag got pretty severe on the last bit of the large map. It at times felt like it was taking minutes for the game to respond to my instructions. At times, I would have been happy for the game to take extra time to do an end turn so long as it promised to provide me with a responsive turn.
I really think that when the game informs you that a space-ship doesn't have any orders that you can center the map on that ship. As I'm in a sector with no pirates I'm using colony ships to explore for new worlds and I have no idea where they are when they've finished moving to where they want to be. Its frustrating trying to locate them.
At this stage I have 1 Core World and 4 Colonies and have finally identified another Core World suitable for colonisation on the far side of the sector. My existing Core World appears to have reached its limits in terms of developing its regions and I keep keep getting prompted to improve something. And I'm like 'Governor so-and-so, what am I employing you for?"
The creation of 'core worlds' is problematic, and I have to now echo the complaint of tb801 regarding how the invasion of Core Worlds. In my case I had finally found my dream planet. I established a military starbase next to it with two phantom 105s on board. I also had a heavier frigate stationed near it. I had two colony ships on their way and moved the frigate away and the Mimot Brotherhood snuck in and declared the planet a core world. My colony ship arrived the next turn but the game would only allow transports to attack a core world. Hold on - somehow they have settled the entire world in one turn! I'm not allowed to bombard an unarmed world, and can't invade a core world without transport, which in tb801's case weren't available until turn 300-ish and I'm only at turn 104!
So, declaring a colony a core world makes it unattackable.
I would suggest that you need to allow:
Yeah, sorry, I'm a bit pissed off here. The game's really sucking me in.
Turn 300-ish. Finally I have been allowed to research planetary invasion. Time to load the transports with - 1 population? That doesn't seem enough. Does it make a difference if they are soldiers or farmers. Oh well, it's only alpha. Better build some more transports.
Off to the enemy core worlds to bring down death from the skies! Hmmm... this is just like attacking colonies, except with a transport. It is slow and boring. Bring in the reinforcements! What? It appears I can only attack with one at a time. Why? What possible reason could there be?
Turns out this is the most tedious planetary invasion ever. Even the enemy want to get it over with. Peace? There will be no peace. Once I can figure out how to invade you successfully with more than one farmer and his electro-spade you'll be sorry. This is really disappointing. Oh well, alpha, as I said, but I am beginning to lose the will to live. At least the space pirates and monsters were entertaining for a while. Now you just have to send an escort with your colony ship - job done.
I'm just waiting for the invasions to finish and hitting the spacebar. Not as mush fun as I'd hoped.
Not much fun at all, sadly.
If the random tech choice system (which I have previously expressed my distaste for) is kept, and changes are made to weight the probabilities of the different tech options appearing, I hope that techs required for missions are included in the weighting. I had one mission that required me to research a particular military tech, and it appeared for me to research precisely once in an over 600 turn game.
I hope something is done about the notification system. Aside from the already reported bug where notifications either do not appear at all or flash and then disappear, I find them too cluttered with notifications that I don't care about and I miss notifications that I do care about.
Not all notifications are created equal. For example, I don't care about a notification that tells me I've just won a battle where I was the attacker and just watched that battle. Similarly, I don't care as much about a notification that tells me one of my worlds has completed an improvement it was working on when in the normal course of the game I'm going to be prompted to build another improvement on that world. However, as another example, I do care about the expiration of an open borders treaty, because I then want to immediately go trade with that AI again to negotiate a new treaty.
As it is now I find myself hardly ever looking at the notifications and thus missing the ones I want to know about.
In some games you can 'check' what notifications you get in game which is handled in the options menu. This would be nice as I agree with Publius some notifications are way more important than others. Ships being destroyed by monsters/pirates, treaty expirations both should be colored to grab attention and possible links so we can 'click' on the notification and in the case of my ship being eaten, it will take me to where the location was so I can 'PIN IT' and remember not to path that way unescorted or to send a fleet there to 'fix' the problem.
Agreed. I just mentioned in another thread that perhaps we could have some sort of filter for the notifications so that we could decide which ones we wanted to see.
I nearly forgot. Some ship modules can only be added once. For some reason, defense modules are in that list, such as shield generators and ECMs. I don't know why this is a new thing. You can add as many weapons as you want, but not defense?
Hi there. Don't mean to duplicate but would like to post a link to a post about leaders going AWOL:
https://forums.galciv4.com/505861/leader-goes-awol-without-notification
See for detail, cheers!
Just to note FYI my fans are kicking on a lot more than usual when I play. Have Alienware Threadripper 16 core 32gb NVida 2080 16gb I believe both liquid cool processor and graphics. Plays other 4X w/o kicking on very often.
. .....
question goes unanswered yet again.....and no I was not trying to break the game, I had been working through the Test part with out the console...I discovered that i could use it and was using it in Pre-Alpha and switching between both too see how they both played out and yes I wanted to use the new ship parts and play around with some designs....@ Frogboy I would still like to know why the console and screenshots stopped working.......
One of the purpose of testers is to try to find crashes, so it doesn’t crash when it comes out. This breaking the game.
Sorry admiral I should have been more explicate i am testing the game i found that the console worked and decided to test the ship designer of which using this gave me a quicker access, I started playing GC III from day one as a Founder and slowly progressed through the Alpha Beta ect game reporting bugs and making suggestions on things that i had found. With GC IV I wanted to look at how the the ship designer was going to work something I enjoy doing having spent many hours designing ships for GC III......so I am back to that question if there is a bug with the console why has it stopped working.....that also goes for the screenshots working then stopped....there has not been an update so my question again is why...??? I am waiting for some replies from the devs as to if they are aware of this and why it happened......
I have entered the shipbuilder trough a shipyard by clicking the plus sign in lower right and designed a few ships with no problems. If you are entering from some where else perhaps that entrance is not yet fully activated causing your problems.
Hi gypsy thanks for your reply, It's not the ship yard that i have the problem with I have been using that from day one, have you used the in game console from GC III this is what i am talking about i found i could also use it here but for some reason it stopped working and my question was why.....Bug...dev...override who knows that was the question that i was looking for an answer to......
Now you have really confused me.
No I have not tried to use the GalCiv3 ship designer to design ships in GalCiv4.
I would not expect it to work so haven't tried.
The console in GC4 works correctly for me. You also mentioned screenshots not working, but they work correctly for me. I was using both yesterday. I have to guess the problem is in your computer somewhere.
I've played a few games on this version and am loving the updates.
Apologies if any of these notes are listed elsewhere.
1/ My rig (gaming laptop) runs on full fan, even when I am doing nothing in the game or in a different window. This starts a few hundred turns into the game, then it just gets slower and slower.
This was observed on the default galaxy size.
Full rig details available on request.
2/ Text in almost all contexts is overlapping the borders and jumping around the screen
3/ Tooltips seem to show out of date information, especially on multiple-choice dialogs
4/ The limit to 5 random tech choices, especially without a tech tree, is a killer - and for me, one that will put me off the game. The penalty on research for generating new techs which may be worse is unfair - it should be free for the first X tries
5/ There are -way- too many space creatures to be fun and they seem far too powerful - I had to restart many times as my starting ships kept getting killed off when I was surrounded by them
6/ I had an AI spam influence bases which seemed invulnerable, rendering their planets impossible to take as the bases flipped them back quickly
7/ Mentioned elsewhere, but it is really difficult to find how to increase logistics with random tech and no tech tree
8/ Mentioned elsewhere, but the point of control seems highly limited - why aren't control points used to gain leaders instead of much-needed currency?
9/ The game badly needs the return of the galactic trader
10/ AI trading seems very unbalanced right now - offering randomly terrible deals and not accepting seemingly great deals even at good relations
11/ The multi-system idea seems cool, but you end up focussing on your home system and an AI in another system storms to victory before you can get a foothold - players need to be better spread out, and the system travel tech needs to be a default, otherwise a player can be in a system on their own and take it over completely
12/ Ship upgrades are nice, but get very boring very quickly - being unable to do the same upgrade indefinitely feels silly. Crew quarters improving HP also feels silly.
13/ Multi-purpose starbases are really cool., but the need for modules & crystals cripples expansion
14/ Having a battle take place with the loss of your ships and absolutely no feedback is no fun
15/ I loved the drag & drop prioritisation at first - but it gets very cumbersome - bring back move up/move down buttons please
16/ Why are the keyboard arrow keys disabled for map movement?
17/ Default map movement is very sluggish
18/ Advisors give really bad advise - like telling you to colonise a world you don't have the tech for, or telling you to build a colony ship when you can't see a colonisable planet
19/ Needs a contextual in-game issue report button
20/ The loader returning to the store when you open a game from the library is really annoying when you are restarting regularly
21/ Will early access purchases carry over to Steam?
22/ When will we be able to save the starting trait decisions? It is really annoying having to enter them every restart
23/ I had this in 3 sometimes, but the guns sometimes fire from off the side of the map across the whole map instead of ship to ship
24/ There -needs- to be an option to stop asteroid miners if you are sure you want them to mine!
=> a "mine nearest" option would be cool - explore the automatic ship options for each ship type
25/ How on earth do you invade "core worlds" - I was some way down the invisible tech tree, but still no transports
26/ Why is there a difference between core worlds & colonies for invasion anyway?
27/ It is often not clear what you need to do to complete missions, and when they involve research there needs to be a button to pin that tree as a bonus for finding the mission rather than being at the mercy of the random engine
28/ Is gamepad support planned?
29/ Graphic options seem to be limited - could use being able to lower the minimum a little further with the current GPU consumption
30/ When you capture a planet, the fleet settles in for a rest and drops off your radar. Would be good if it stayed on the alert list until you told it to go to sleep there
A few observations:
One, even if you have 10 million hours playing GalCiv you should play your first games on normal and below difficulty till you get the hang of the new systems.
2,The game is in early alpha development.
Some of the things you do not like others do. I for one am leaning towards approval of the random tech selection.
Your # 10 see my #2.
#11 You can build a couple of probes to explore, use your survey ship to scarf-up anomalies, and spend the rest of your time exploiting your home sector. Choosing Alien colony ships and putting them on trash worlds that have extra minerals should speed production.
#12 Speed increase tied to adding command bridges seems silly also.
#18 when have advisors ever given good advice in a 4X game? Also see my #2
#20 does not happen to me.
#21 they have not said officially, but it may not be possible.
They believe they will, but have stated they are not 100% positive they will even sell this game on Steam.
#25 I am on turn 20 and when I finish my current tech the next one (if it comes up) is planetary invasion.
Hi gypsy,
Many thanks for your response.
I should have added I was on normal difficulty. Also, it is my choice what difficulty I play on.
I know this is alpha - this is raw feedback to take or leave
As I said, I like the random tech idea but as with all new ideas it needs some improvement such as seeding, or free resets every so often / as rewards.
This is a -very- long thread, so "see my #2" is not helpful - please elaborate.
I'm not sure how your reply to #11 is in any way connected to my post.
#12 I disagree - I suppose you could say engines, but bridge upgrades could help too.
#18 plenty of times. Most of the time. You need to know how to use them - but here, they are just plain wrong, which is bad.
#20 - good for you, but odd - please elaborate - maybe there is a setting.
#21 thank you for your maybe response!
#25 also good for you - but without knowing your tech choices, this is not helpful - and points out the flaw in the current tech system.
In short, please only reply if you are adding to the post I was providing feedback to the devs, not seeking your feedback
JD
My # 2 was my comment about it being early alpha.
Your #11 was about being stuck improving your Home Sector while others expanded out of theirs I was giving a simple solution to you build a couple of probes and explore other sectors probes have unlimited range.
12 I did not disagree with you just pointed out that speeding up your ship by adding bridges is just as silly as adding crew spaces to increase HP, consider however that many SF writers put CQs just inside the hulls therefore creating a dead space between it and the inner parts of the ship. No crew are going to be in bed at Battle Stations.
18 I have always found advisors as much use as auto exploring none. We can however to agree to disagree on this one.
20 I maybe wrong on this one as I should have read it closer. I have a link to Epic on my task bar and go directly to the game through it, I do the same with Steam games. So I never actually go where you do. I do have a gripe with start up but it and this one of yours is actually one we have with Epic not Stardock.
21 Check out the Stardock forums the CEO has stated he has not made a final decisions on this subject. As for transferring to Steam no definite answer has been given that I have seen.
And I am trying to give you answers gleaned from these forums and Discord where most if not all of your concerns have been discussed by others including Derek and Cari the main developers as well as Dragonal the CEO of Stardock who is very involved with this project.
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