Some thoughts after ~40ish hours of play.

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idleray
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:55 pm

Some thoughts after ~40ish hours of play.

Post by idleray »

Not even deep into the early game because of so many restarts due to my compulsive need to play the beginning perfectly (or as well as I can) in strategy games.

First I wanted to say kudos to the devs for such a deep and complex game with so many moving parts. This game has a lot of ambition and I kinda like that, even if the small indie nature Pavonis means that the game's UI/UX flaws are plain for all to see. I'd like to help with that.

These are just feedback on the interface rather than on the balance since I've barely scratched the surface to have an informed opinion:

Alien Threat Meter: This should be out on the main interface instead of under the intel screen since it's such a crucial part of the game. The steam forums are inundated with frustrated players whose shit is getting wrecked by the aliens without knowing why.

Put it under the date-display as a constant reference after the tech unlocks it.

Greyed-Out Pre-requisites: There should be more “greyed out” buttons which show you tech pre-requisites to accessing them, including for: Building Habs/Sending Probes, Hab/Station modules and others.

Federation/Unification conditions: First of all, I can tell that this is going to be a tough feature to implement, but I really wish you had context-dependent borders like in Crusader Kings. Since Unification is such a big thing in this game, it should be plain to the player what their options are: when you click on a country, neighbouring regions that it can Federate/Unify with should be shown in colored borders. Perhaps there can be a "Geo-political Filter" when you have a nation selected, it will be in green solid borders, where neighboring regions it has a claim on can be shown in yellow borders, and further out nations that it can be integrated with Tech unlocks can be in grey dotted borders.

I also find some of the Federation/Unification conditions a bit opaque:
“Must maintain alliance with one member of the Federation for sufficient duration to improve relations again. When exactly is “sufficient duration”? Why is this not indicated explicitly?
“X must be allied or be able to ally with all Federation members” - what does “able to ally” mean? Does it mean off the relations cooldown? Why not express this as “not be a rival with any Fed member”?

Authority Consolidation, being such an important mechanic, should have an icon to itself so players can quickly see it in the dense text.

More Transparency in how things work: Ops such as Public Campaign obviously seem to have diminishing returns. It should show something like “Expected swing in support: 4-7%” next to your success chance.

The order of resolution to your missions should be made very clear. Currently this is shown kind of obliquely through text and, from what I can tell, in the "dotted orbs" in the Mission bar which 99% of players probably don't notice. It should be shown in a much more obvious and logical manner, allowing you to easily compare which types of missions resolve first and which ones after.

General Interface niggles: When targeting a country for a mission from a drop-down list, the screen should swivel to that country. Usually if I’m working through a list of countries with high success rate for Control Nation, I want to know where the target is. (and its adjacent regions are). Many new players are simply not going to know where Suriname or Guyana is :)
Additionally, when performing Control Nation and Public Campaign, the region and its adjacent regions should be highlighted, perhaps with the target in green border and neighbors in yellow, since region adjacency is a major consideration when taking control of CPs.

When selecting a councillor, the screen should NOT automatically swivel to them. That should only happen with a double-click. Oftentimes I am already looking at a target region, and I’m merely selecting the right operative for the job. I shouldn’t have to move the screen back to my target yet again.

Minor quibble: the default income numbers should be shown as monthly rather than daily, since all the other UI numbers are shown as monthly.
tstein
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2022 4:41 pm

Re: Some thoughts after ~40ish hours of play.

Post by tstein »

My humble opinion, I disagree completely on your last topic. I want the interface to move LESS by itself. it is super annoying when the geoscape pans.

The solution for your problem is that the countries should be grouped by continent I think.

Btw.. you had a lousy geography teacher if you did not knew where Guiana is.
idleray
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:55 pm

Re: Some thoughts after ~40ish hours of play.

Post by idleray »

tstein wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:55 pm My humble opinion, I disagree completely on your last topic. I want the interface to move LESS by itself. it is super annoying when the geoscape pans.

The solution for your problem is that the countries should be grouped by continent I think.

Btw.. you had a lousy geography teacher if you did not knew where Guiana is.
I didn't know where Guyana is at all, but I suspect that thanks to playing TI, my geographic knowledge is going to really fill out.

The geoscape doesn't have to pan every time. There already is a "go-to" button in other screens, and it should be there for when you're trying to do Control Nation and other similar missions.
idleray
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:55 pm

Re: Some thoughts after ~40ish hours of play.

Post by idleray »

Another Issue: When picking a new global tech to research in the "Select Technology to Research" screen, the faction projects that are unlocked by it need to be described right there in the screen.

Currently players are forced to look at a slow-to-load, cluttered Tech tree, then forced to click "Full Tech Tree" to access an EVEN laggier mess just to follow the lines and find out what those faction projects do. It's a chore.
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