Loving the beta, some feedback

Better than GC 1 so far but with some nits

First of all..I am totally loving GalCiv II. I wasn't in the GalCiv I beta but take the bugs out of GalCiv II and I'd happily trade GalCiv I for it.

What I like:
(1) Planets on the map. This makes the game a lot more easy to play with and more visually interesting.
(2) Per "tile" influence. You can see influence moving around. I like that.
(3) Designing ships. This is great fun. I wish there were more "extras".
(4) The new colony system. There's actually skill involved now! Yippe!
(5) The pacing. The tech tree makes more sense. No more goofy things like "4D phasing".

What I don't like:
(1) I understand the need for pre-designed ships for people who don't like designing ships. But I want an option to turn them off.
(2) For people who want pre-designed ships, you should have a lot more of them.
(3) I like being able to see ships I previously designed but I want an option to turn that off too.
(4) The planetary colony management is a little repetitive. On the first few planets it's important but later on you're just going through the motions. I would like to be able to research a technology that gives me governors who will let me set up the planets as tech planets, industrial planets, population planets.
(5) Not nearly enough things on screen. Does a planet have a starport? Is it working on something? Does it have empty tiles not used?
(6) Not enough variety in weapons and defense sound effects. The sounds get grating after awhile.
(7) Need more visual differences in the weapons and defenses.
(8) The mass driver behavior is stupid. Mass drivers are bullets. They can't curve to hit ships. They're not missiles.
(9) Invasions are lame.
(10) There's no sort of centralized area to learn about your civilization. You have it split up in tons of areas. Why? Put it together in a single place.
(11) Too much hidden stuff. A planet has an "alien influence" of 4.2. Why? What does that mean? How do I change it?
(12) The AI keeps coming up bothering me with a "Wanna trade?" type stuff. Don't bug me unless you have something specific to say.
(13) There should be some modules to add to starbases from the start. A basic defense, weapon, etc.
(14) More descriptions on modules, improvements, etc.

As for bugs, still compiling that. Will get back to you.

I absolutely love where things are going overall. After playing Civilization IV all last week after classes and discovering that it sacrifices replayability for "ease of use" this beta was what the doctor ordered.

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Bugs:

(1) If you use the GC Config it seems to reset my audio. I think it was the config progrma. But all my audio and sounds were turned off when I started. I had to go to options and turn them on. The slider for volume is difficult to use.

(2) if you zoom out enough, you can't see what is selected. As a more general bug, the selected item should always be th emost apparent thing on the screen.

(3) If you zoom in on the mini map the sector ownership colors get corrupted.

(4) Destination markers for ships are not nearly clear enough and get covered by other things.

(5) Trade goods look the same as trade centers.

(6) Cranking up the tech rate didn't really seem to do much.

(7) Trade tech is missing its little schematically looking thing in the research complete screen.

(8) research screen unveils ship designes that I think were created by other players "2-Freighter M0-1".

(9) On the ship design screen you can't scale components very much.

(10) The quick build list screen always shows the last ship that was being built anywhere rather than looking at what is being built on a given planet.

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(11) The # of planets slider seems to do nothing.

(12) Stars seem to be either full o fplanets or have none at all.

(13) Selecting a hull resets the class name on the ship design screen.

(14) It would be nice to know what % of the galaxy you control since htat's supposed to be a winning condition.

(15) Not so much a bug as much as a nit. Your home world should start out with a LOT more population. Like 10 Million. Suggestion: have the home planet have a "Capital" instead of an initial colony and have that generate a lot more stuff.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

(11) Too much hidden stuff. A planet has an "alien influence" of 4.2. Why? What does that mean? How do I change it?

That particular value is the ratio of your influence vs other races' influences. If it is less than 1, the planet's owner is the dominant influence; if it is greater than 1, someone else is. If it is greater than 4, that someone else has a chance to culture-flip the planet and steal it from its owner. It's also worth noting that the borders you see on the map show where each race's influence ratio passes 1.

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(16) The shield icon on the zoomed out map is too big relative to other symbols.

(17) Culture war is too cheap. Ships have a maint cost. But star base modules do not.

(18) Xeno farming doesn't upgrade basic farminuilg and has a strange building to represent it.

(19) When you finally get to see combat, like between computer players, the game starts to become very unstable.

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(20) what your planet is focusing on is not saved.

(21) Alt-Esc will cause the game to crash.

(22) Other than the default ships, the computer ships always have the human hull.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Thanks for the report. I like the capital city concept. Just added that.

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