Hi Lex. I'm glad you decided to join the forums and post about the game!
Feedback is always welcome, and don't worry about retreading old ground, 97 pages is way to much to read, yes
Nope, the project was never dead. We're still churning out patches and builds, as time permits. Sometimes things go slower due to RL constraints, but we'll keep at it as long as there's interest in the game.
I'll try to address some of your points.
Lex wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:45 am
2. I'm a fan mostly of the new planetary assualt system, however I do find that the processing time is far too long, you sort of just wait for the sound effect to go off and it reminds me of when I used to play the original on a P133 and I'd leave to do something in between turns, hyperbole obviously, but you get the idea
I hear you. That's why there is an option in Settings, in the Main Menu, to disable all soundfx in the planetary assault screen
I was suffering from the same problem and decided to add that, quite some time ago. There's also a file in the \Data folder where you eventually will be able to set the durations and other stuff for those sfx - but I haven't managed to get the game to read that file properly yet, so it's on standby (low priority as there's another way to get around this as mentioned above).
3. I'm not sure if you're intending on implementing a space combat system similar to the original or not, but I will say that for me, that was pretty much the best part of the game, I know some people whined about different ship movements not making a difference and you could just click anything, but I have hundreds of hours of different fights in that game that conclusively prove that wrong, you could genuinely turn the tides of entire wars in that combat system - the space combat made the game
The plan is to have such a space combat screen, yes. That part is on hold for now, but not forgotten! It's not going to be easy, but some discussion has already been made on the topic. We're mostly working on the AI now, but we'll get there.
4. I like the new resources for building ships, original was a bit broken and ECM way over corrected, this feels like a good balance to me
It still needs some balance passes; we're addressing issues as they come up. Feedback is very important so that we can get it to be interesting/balanced - neither too easy/irrelevant, nor too hard/frustrating.
5. I don't know if it's fixable, but for me, everything delays for just a split second before an action is carried out and some times it just seems to freeze and break when you're trying to select or deselect a ship before eventually working again, not game breaking, but can get annoying after a long period of time
Can you be more specific, like in which screen(s), and if there's a specific action?
6. The new way shipyards work is nice, I like that upgrading adds more shipyards and the ability to build numerous ships at one system, however it would be nice if there was some sort of queue system for them as well so there's a little less micromanaging
Yea, that's in the ToDo list. We just need to implement the UI for it, the AI uses the queue already.
8. When I played as the Cardassians I could go to a system summary by clicking on the center of the context menu after right clicking, but as the Romulans I couldn't, I also found the summary just a little too noisy, I'm not exactly sure how, but grouping/simplifying that section would be helpful - I found the one in the original was pretty easy to follow
Unfortunately, we do not have context menus for all the civs yet. The only final versions are the Borg, the Klingons and the Cardassians. All the other civs still use the old Federation menu, which needs to be re-done. You wouldn't happen to be, or know someone that is, a talented artist, now would you?
We really need those done.
BTW, for the civs with the old menu, the Intel screen in only accessible through the hotkey (F6 in this case). Intelligence is not yet implemented though.
9. The Borg are broken as hell - I played two games, one where I was steamrolling half the galaxy as the Cardassians and the Borg just showed up with a mixed fleet of spheres, diamonds, cubes and tactical cubes with about 8 ships total and just instantly annihilated the fleet I'd spent 400 turns building. My other game they showed up on turn 70 when I had 4 Destroyer I's and 2 Cruiser I's and assimilated Romulus - I know they're the Borg, I get that's how powerful they are, but it's a game, I don't want to play it if I have no hope of winning
Heh, the Borg do still need some work. And they should only be played/included in a game with some restrictions in place. Initially they were supposed to be just an event like in the original BotF; but then they evolved to a civ that you can play as, if you so choose. That balance is extremely difficult to reach, if not impossible. Making them an interesting playable civ is another serious challenge, if they're to feel anything like THE BORG (as opposed to a regular civ).
Them showing on turn 70 is odd. Someone must have "woken them up" from their (forced) stasis; you were probably playing a Small or Medium map? An AI empire probably bumped into them when exploring.
They're really only "viable" if/when playing Large+ maps, and probably with Fast research rate and/or Advanced+ starting level. Starting facilities at Best might also help a bit.
BTW, you can disable the spawning of the Borg by setting Special Events to No in the SP start screen.
11. I love that you can build minor race ships, that was always something I wanted to do in the original, however, I don't quite know why I can only build troop transports at some systems - if you're going to separate out construction ships and troop transports (which I'm all for) you have to make them buildable everywhere, or at least have some easy and understandable explanations for why they can't be built so you can plan better.
Troop Transports - your own designs - can only be built in your
native colonies, as they load troops from that colony's Garrison. If there's no Garrison left/available, you cannot build TTs until it regenerates. Some minor races have a TT design, which you can only build in their homesystem, again if enough Garrison is available.
Notice that a similar thing happens with colony ships, you can only build them in native colonies, and a minimum population is required (though this is usually not a factor).
12. Envoys are nice, it's a little more interesting than just throwing money at a minor race until they love you, although I did still love doing that, lol.
We still need to implement the other assignments: Officers for fleets and Operatives for covert missions.
13. Will there be an automatic build queue introduced like there was in the original? - when you start to get a large amount of systems it starts to get pretty hard to keep rifling through every so many turns and adding new things to so many build queues, I always started with manual and stuck with it for any important systems, but the crappy 80 pop ones that I stole from the enemy, it was just not worth my time to manually control
Yes, governors are also in the ToDo list.
I know I had other thoughts while I was playing, but these are the ones I could remember off the top of my head, I hope that's useful in some way, if not, ah well, sorry for the long read, lol
Thanks for the long read, feedback is always helpful. Whatever else you remember or find during a game, please do post about it!
TLDR:
There's a lot of things done well and a number of things that still need work in my opinion, I hope this project finds a good completion eventually, great work so far
Hope you had fun so far, and keep having. And thanks again for taking the time to post your observations. I hope you keep posting, that's a good sign.
