Intro:
Finally played it few days ago (less than 4), already spent 2 nights on the game. What a boring game
Technical stuff:
Using Debian buster's build on amd64 on a crappy screen and old low-end GPU.
Good points:
* good enough to be a version 1 imo;
* nice translations (french at least);
* impressive inteface (despite minor bugs and annoyances);
* fast to run;
* stable;
Bad points:
* it's hard to understand how to move fleets at start;
* AI do not group fleets often enough, it's hard to see which ships are in a system (maybe having a "virtual" grouping that only affect view would fix that?);
* using LANG=C does not allow to have raw strings, which would help for reports;
* default settings are too hard for newcommers:
** starting units die *way* to easily;
** AI is by default either aggressive or maniac;
** disk galaxy with 6 AI means you're alone the fascism;
** possible technologies are not shown;
* SMG (or whatever the weapon before lasers is known) is useless:
** because it cost almost nothing to reasearch laser
*** which is only good for starting turns, can barely damange monsters;
*** which is also superseded with plasma for low cost;
* robots only have advantages (specific shield not usable by others);
* exobots are said useful on asteroids, but can't colonize them without research
** which are all about genetic stuff, that's quite counter-intuitive and not realistic (yes, I know, realism is not a target, and I do like that);
Ideas of improvements:
* add a table with default maximum populations depending on planets/modifier, example at end of post;
* improve window system usage:
** draw window decorations above window content, not under (see after);
** draw active window borders with a "stronger" color;
** increase visual feedback of borders/buttons:
*** resize area is hard to notice, improve contrast;
*** draw borders around buttons to simulate pushed/released states (especially in research);
* do not annoy in starship conception if duplicating an existing one (this one is *really* important imo), just overwrite for that game;
About default (without researches) maximum populations, here is an example (values are crap, I don't know those, I would probably not think about that otherwise...):
Code: Select all
+-----------------+---------+------+--------+---------+
| / modifier | hostile | poor | decent | perfect |
|size / | | | | |
+-----------------+---------+------+--------+---------+
| minimal | -6 | -3 | 0 | 3 |
+-----------------+---------+------+--------+---------+
| small | -3 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
+-----------------+---------+------+--------+---------+
| normal | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 |
+-----------------+---------+------+--------+---------+
| big | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 |
+-----------------+---------+------+--------+---------+
| giant | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
+-----------------+---------+------+--------+---------+