Some Early Access Feedback
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2022 12:09 am
Hi there! I come to Terra Invicta by way of familiarity with the Long War mod and to turn-based strategy games by way of the Paradox Interactive games (for which I've done quite a bit of modding - which I'd love to do for Terra Invicta, but sadly I can't quite figure out the format). At any rate, after playing through a couple of games (a couple of hundred hours, all told) I thought I'd give some feedback.
Overall
- Before I get into the issues, I just want to say that the game is incredibly addictive. The short-term loop of smaller goals needing to be met is great, and I end up obsessively trying to get things done in "just one more turn" until it's 3am and I'm bleary-eyed and wondering where all the time went. So take the issues with a big grain of salt. There's some frustration to be had with the early game, but once you have headway? Managing tech and research is fantastic, managing my ship designs and my fleets and slowly turning the tide against the aliens? All great stuff.
Some Bigger Issues
- The balance on the drives seems a bit off, in terms of how they affect the game experience as a whole. By that I mean you have a whole lot of drives which are effectively only good for defense. Meaning you simply can't get enough cruise acceleration for them to reach anything, so they're good for plunking on stations in case an opponent arrives and... that's it. Then there's a lot of drives where you can, potentially, get a ship to be able to transfer between planets/moons, but it'll take a long time. Meaning the point of doing so is a bit hard to imagine, as you'll never get anywhere in time to respond to alien attack. It's only once you get to the verrrry end of the list of drives that you'll be able to build ships which can actually chase down aliens in orbit or transfer between planets with any degree of usefulness. Maybe this is intended, and all those drives in-between are meant to be used for fighting ships of other factions, but that just doesn't happen currently. The other factions lag so far behind in terms of tech and production, they're hardly competitive (see below), so my in-game experience has been spending a good part of the game just sucking up alien incursions and managing alien hostility until I finally reach the Triton Reflex drive and I can turn the table. Which would be okay except that there's not a lot after that. You hit the antimatter drives, which speeds things up, but if you intend to now start dealing with the alien bases you'll spend a lot of it having already researched everything you can.
- The AI for the factions are horrible at managing their countries. It might be understandable if this was just the Servants, intentionally sabotaging Earth, but they all run their countries into the ground in short order. My experience so far has been that there's a point where the part of the world I control is more or less functional... but the parts I didn't reach in time almost aren't worth taking any longer. In my last game, I didn't get to Japan in time, and by then it was down to maybe $80 bln GDP and 0 cohesion. Practically a third world country. If a country has a large population, it can be worthwhile investing to build it back up, but otherwise? A good part of the world just becomes useless... both to me as well as to the AI. They put almost nothing into Economy or Knowledge or Unity, meaning those countries aren't able to give them any kind of meaningful income and is likely a large part of why they lag terribly behind in the long run. It takes the AI controlling really big economies like USA or China or Brazil to stay in the game, but even those they will run into the ground given enough time. At the very least, it seems like the AI should learn how to sell resources.
- It would be great if there was some way to eliminate a faction. If they've lost all their control points and their off-world habitats, they still manage to be pests that you can do almost nothing about. I've tried assassinating all their councilors, taking away their orgs, they still come bouncing back and are constantly swarming countries to influence their popularity or purge the control points. It becomes a constant, and annoying, management game of having councilors trying to keep control of those countries and swatting them off. Even the ability to ally with a faction or negotiate non-aggression would be nice. Right now, getting a faction to "Tolerance" maybe means they won't actively try to kill my councilors or sabotage my facilities... but they're still perfectly willing to try to take away all my control points and if I do anything to stop them or take those control points back? Now we're "In Conflict" or at "War". I realize there's an element where I'm the most powerful faction, by far, but this is the kind of gopher-hammering micromanagement gameplay that's not the greatest experience.
- I'm sure you're well aware of this, but controlling fleet combat is almost impossible. If I'm not using Autoresolve, I'm more watching the fighting happen with most of the ships (if not all) turned to AI control. Managing even one ship can be pretty complex, but an entire fleet? With all their paths all over the screen and it not always easy to tell which ships belong to whom at a glance? It's a UI/UX nightmare. Even so, watching combats is super fun.
Some QoL Things
- Using your councilors to defend your control points is already a bit of a slog. What would be nice is that, if you're using the mission to defend fewer than the full control points belonging to a country, that it "resets" the shields on that country's other control points at the same time. The control point shields can get out of sync quite easily - sometimes (especially for a large country) you're fighting for control one control point at a time. Sometimes one of the other factions comes in and purges a control point and you'll need to take it back. Or the country's economy grows enough that POOF suddenly you have a new control point added. In any of these cases, now you'll have two or more times a year when a councilor will need to visit the nation to Defend Interests. I've noticed it sometimes gets to the point where the shields can get back onto a single cycle, but that seems to take a long time and there's no indication of how (or if) you can make this happen.
- Nothing is more irritating than jockeying for control over a single control point in a situation where you have multiple factions swooping in also trying to take it. There seems to be an order as to which councilor's mission will fire first, but what that order is? No idea. It would be nice if there was some way to tell. and nicer still if there was some way to affect it... like adding more resources to the mission will move your councilor's mission up in the order.
- Weirdly, while it's quite reasonable to contact an AI in order to give them gifts (to bring up relations) or to buy resources off them (the amount I offer them feels very realistic in terms of value for value) whenever THEY contact me to offer a deal their idea of value is complete lunacy. "Here's 10 influence and maybe 20 money, please give me this 3-star org and a high level tech".
- Nothing is worse than the aliens landing armies in countries that you aren't allied with and who won't let you send armies in to try and deal with the aliens before they come out and conquer them first. That may simply be WAD, but you think they'd be screaming to high heaven for ANYONE to come and help them before they're conquered. Dealing with the Aliens once they've established a nation can happen anyhow, especially once the aliens have five landings at a time (or more!), but dealing with at least SOME landings when you're in a position to do so would make this less of a "load earlier save, hope for better" situation.
- I find dealing with Unrest a bit weird. Some countries seem to have no trouble controlling it. Others, even with high cohesion, it's like sand falling through your fingers. In each game, for instance, Australia constantly has Unrest problems almost like it's been programmed to. High education, high cohesion, and yet I still need councilors to constantly go back and lower unrest. Even pumping money into Military does nothing. It's possible I just haven't grokked how much Military % is required for a country or why, in order to keep Unrest under control, but I honestly can't figure out why this works well for some countries and not for others.
-------------------
Think I'll leave it at that, for now. Thanks for a delightful game! I look forward to seeing it develop further.
Overall
- Before I get into the issues, I just want to say that the game is incredibly addictive. The short-term loop of smaller goals needing to be met is great, and I end up obsessively trying to get things done in "just one more turn" until it's 3am and I'm bleary-eyed and wondering where all the time went. So take the issues with a big grain of salt. There's some frustration to be had with the early game, but once you have headway? Managing tech and research is fantastic, managing my ship designs and my fleets and slowly turning the tide against the aliens? All great stuff.
Some Bigger Issues
- The balance on the drives seems a bit off, in terms of how they affect the game experience as a whole. By that I mean you have a whole lot of drives which are effectively only good for defense. Meaning you simply can't get enough cruise acceleration for them to reach anything, so they're good for plunking on stations in case an opponent arrives and... that's it. Then there's a lot of drives where you can, potentially, get a ship to be able to transfer between planets/moons, but it'll take a long time. Meaning the point of doing so is a bit hard to imagine, as you'll never get anywhere in time to respond to alien attack. It's only once you get to the verrrry end of the list of drives that you'll be able to build ships which can actually chase down aliens in orbit or transfer between planets with any degree of usefulness. Maybe this is intended, and all those drives in-between are meant to be used for fighting ships of other factions, but that just doesn't happen currently. The other factions lag so far behind in terms of tech and production, they're hardly competitive (see below), so my in-game experience has been spending a good part of the game just sucking up alien incursions and managing alien hostility until I finally reach the Triton Reflex drive and I can turn the table. Which would be okay except that there's not a lot after that. You hit the antimatter drives, which speeds things up, but if you intend to now start dealing with the alien bases you'll spend a lot of it having already researched everything you can.
- The AI for the factions are horrible at managing their countries. It might be understandable if this was just the Servants, intentionally sabotaging Earth, but they all run their countries into the ground in short order. My experience so far has been that there's a point where the part of the world I control is more or less functional... but the parts I didn't reach in time almost aren't worth taking any longer. In my last game, I didn't get to Japan in time, and by then it was down to maybe $80 bln GDP and 0 cohesion. Practically a third world country. If a country has a large population, it can be worthwhile investing to build it back up, but otherwise? A good part of the world just becomes useless... both to me as well as to the AI. They put almost nothing into Economy or Knowledge or Unity, meaning those countries aren't able to give them any kind of meaningful income and is likely a large part of why they lag terribly behind in the long run. It takes the AI controlling really big economies like USA or China or Brazil to stay in the game, but even those they will run into the ground given enough time. At the very least, it seems like the AI should learn how to sell resources.
- It would be great if there was some way to eliminate a faction. If they've lost all their control points and their off-world habitats, they still manage to be pests that you can do almost nothing about. I've tried assassinating all their councilors, taking away their orgs, they still come bouncing back and are constantly swarming countries to influence their popularity or purge the control points. It becomes a constant, and annoying, management game of having councilors trying to keep control of those countries and swatting them off. Even the ability to ally with a faction or negotiate non-aggression would be nice. Right now, getting a faction to "Tolerance" maybe means they won't actively try to kill my councilors or sabotage my facilities... but they're still perfectly willing to try to take away all my control points and if I do anything to stop them or take those control points back? Now we're "In Conflict" or at "War". I realize there's an element where I'm the most powerful faction, by far, but this is the kind of gopher-hammering micromanagement gameplay that's not the greatest experience.
- I'm sure you're well aware of this, but controlling fleet combat is almost impossible. If I'm not using Autoresolve, I'm more watching the fighting happen with most of the ships (if not all) turned to AI control. Managing even one ship can be pretty complex, but an entire fleet? With all their paths all over the screen and it not always easy to tell which ships belong to whom at a glance? It's a UI/UX nightmare. Even so, watching combats is super fun.
Some QoL Things
- Using your councilors to defend your control points is already a bit of a slog. What would be nice is that, if you're using the mission to defend fewer than the full control points belonging to a country, that it "resets" the shields on that country's other control points at the same time. The control point shields can get out of sync quite easily - sometimes (especially for a large country) you're fighting for control one control point at a time. Sometimes one of the other factions comes in and purges a control point and you'll need to take it back. Or the country's economy grows enough that POOF suddenly you have a new control point added. In any of these cases, now you'll have two or more times a year when a councilor will need to visit the nation to Defend Interests. I've noticed it sometimes gets to the point where the shields can get back onto a single cycle, but that seems to take a long time and there's no indication of how (or if) you can make this happen.
- Nothing is more irritating than jockeying for control over a single control point in a situation where you have multiple factions swooping in also trying to take it. There seems to be an order as to which councilor's mission will fire first, but what that order is? No idea. It would be nice if there was some way to tell. and nicer still if there was some way to affect it... like adding more resources to the mission will move your councilor's mission up in the order.
- Weirdly, while it's quite reasonable to contact an AI in order to give them gifts (to bring up relations) or to buy resources off them (the amount I offer them feels very realistic in terms of value for value) whenever THEY contact me to offer a deal their idea of value is complete lunacy. "Here's 10 influence and maybe 20 money, please give me this 3-star org and a high level tech".
- Nothing is worse than the aliens landing armies in countries that you aren't allied with and who won't let you send armies in to try and deal with the aliens before they come out and conquer them first. That may simply be WAD, but you think they'd be screaming to high heaven for ANYONE to come and help them before they're conquered. Dealing with the Aliens once they've established a nation can happen anyhow, especially once the aliens have five landings at a time (or more!), but dealing with at least SOME landings when you're in a position to do so would make this less of a "load earlier save, hope for better" situation.
- I find dealing with Unrest a bit weird. Some countries seem to have no trouble controlling it. Others, even with high cohesion, it's like sand falling through your fingers. In each game, for instance, Australia constantly has Unrest problems almost like it's been programmed to. High education, high cohesion, and yet I still need councilors to constantly go back and lower unrest. Even pumping money into Military does nothing. It's possible I just haven't grokked how much Military % is required for a country or why, in order to keep Unrest under control, but I honestly can't figure out why this works well for some countries and not for others.
-------------------
Think I'll leave it at that, for now. Thanks for a delightful game! I look forward to seeing it develop further.