[0.3.47] Player Experience: Thoughts, suggestions and changes critique

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Maty83
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2022 10:20 am

[0.3.47] Player Experience: Thoughts, suggestions and changes critique

Post by Maty83 »

First of all, a disclaimer: I've played this game for a while now and I very much enjoy it. Over the course of the last two months I've spend a ridiculous amount of hours on the game, with the first 20 being the baby steps to then complete a Resistance and Exodus playthroughs with some help from the guides Perun makes. Some of the parts I made mistakes in, others I managed to claw through with enough grit. As this is still an early access game with the devs actively working on strategies, I would like to discuss what from my POV works and doesn't while providing some suggestions, even to wider topics. I will attempt to avoid the statement "This needs a complete rework", but put my faith in the devs that IF some of these are considered the systems they affect somewhat are assesed and in proportion changed.

#1:Early-game space race
This is very much an early-game gripe, but one which in my Exodus playthrough slowed everybody down significantly.
Usually, the Moon is frankly a terrible colony site-The only occasional exception being a 5+ fissile site (From my baby attempts I have something of an idea about that), but it has a huge impact for every faction since it takes pressure off your Boost income and allows setting up some mining. For this only time, there should be a lower variance for the sites-Making it essentially a stepping-stone for future colonies. This could also tie in very nicely to the acquisition of space orgs, making every faction get theirs as soon as someone gets to the moon instead of the Alien Operations special project-This would serve as a 'Space race' enticement where the weaker factions get a comparative leg-up and can at the very least compete for Mars.

#2: Ship class balance
From my observations of my two games, I rarely stray into the more exotic ships: First shootdown being a Monitor, first (useful) equivalent craft being a destroyer. Station-killing from Lancers/Titans and line ships consisting of usually Battleships and Dreadnoughts, with the occasional show of Frigates and Cruisers for colonizer and Marine Carrier duties. The big issue here is with smaller ships generally not having a huge lead due to larger weapons with longer range having improved utility (Outside missiles, but the larger ships still have hardpoint advantages there)

As such, here is a somewhat experimental thought I had earlier: Splitting Fleet Combatants into two separate researches with the corresponding MC increases. The current Cruiser and Battlecruiser hulls are now the Light and Heavy Cruiser respectively (At 3MC). In naval terms these are the pre-WWI armoured and protected cruisers. One being a line-of-battle unit, the other an independently operating ship capable of long-range deployments with most guns being dismountable to supress any colonial discontent.

A new battlecruiser with an additional hull and utility slot is added to be a Battleship counterpart (Now at 4MC with the bigger ships being upped by one too). This fixes some of the current issues with the type, making it an interesting choice of running an overall better, but more MC intensive battlecruiser or some less powerful heavy cruisers. Lancer thus also gets another hull slot to keep some sane progression sense.

#3: Ground Base assaults and bombardments
The changes to ground base assaults in validation release coupled with bombardments being fixed have made the lategame an absolute slog, where any doomstack sent to diminish mining capabilities will simply perish to a ground base when a similar amount of station defences poses no issue to the fleet. This is simply not fun and I see it as a huge step back for the game.

Bombardments should be meaningful. They are a punishment mechanic for not keeping control of the space around asteroids and that's how it should be. I don't mind my ships getting swatted out of the sky as long as we keep one vital fact in check: The fleet will always be able to choose an engagement window. Make bombardments cost some dV to set up, but a ship always gets at its first shot off (Before being frankly overkilled by an alien LDA). Consequently nukes in space have to be nerfed a bit for bombardments-Making them take out the sector and allowing the core to only be destroyed as long as there are no other functional modules on a station. This means you still have to commit significant and long-lead resources to a (probable) suicide mission, but it is a suicide mission with a reasonable chance of success.

Now, looking at the compounding problem to this: Marine assaults. The recent change to these is theorized to be a function of many Mars strategies taking out any and all competition by commissioning marine transports early around the red planet and taking it over entirely. This is a bit cheezy I must admit and I do not enjoy it being possible in the slightest. However, rather than disabling their ability, a simpler method is in order: Marines can either assault landed on a space body at an unimproved, or friendly site, or, from orbit need to be onboard a ship capable of landing (Combat acceleration greater than gravity) and taking back off (dV must be 2x the amount necessary to land and take back off,with one half spent immediately and the other being spent on completion of the assault action) with the actual marine resupply needing either a space station marine module, or a timer of at LEAST 90 days in a shipyard (Representing the training/transfer time). This ensures early takeovers are very slow and stop most of the early denial strategies effectively while still allowing late assaults to be carried out successfully. Local alien presence should also ALWAYS attempt to intercept a landing force unless they are hopelessly outnumbered (Thus cause a dV loss at least). If this is felt to be too easy, then add a 1-3-5 score per defence module against the assault success (Those weapons can definitely target the ground assault)

Either one alone makes the game feel good again, but both together would be wonderful.

#4:Alien AI
This is quite a big point, but it comes down to a simple problem in reality: Alien MC use. The alien MC stays near-enough constant during the game progression, same for their Exotics income. This, along with no real improvements in alien designs save for incorporating more lasers and plasma makes for quite a static enemy you can easily overpower, especially after their bases hit the MC cap. This coupled with their incessant need to send single ships into places they will die contributes to sometimes trivial counters to the ships.

The simple parts of the alien AI fixes should be fleet grouping and MC-specific. All alien fleets should be powerful enough to deal with space-based assets (Say they need to be within 25% of the total fleet power around a planet from the highest fleet power faction around the planet to consider transferring there). Their MC cap (And Exotics income) should also increase after these events (Starting lower than it currently is): First alien operative killed, first space battle where humanity destroys an alien ship, first alien surface base destruction and finally, the first alien station destruction.

Even though the Hydra are clearly complacent about their chances at winning, each should represent a new step in their plan: At the start, they only need to infiltrate, exfiltrate and build some earth attack capability. If an alien operative is killed, it means their Earth efforts are performing below expectations and they should increase their commitment (Perhaps also going up from four to all six councillors only now). If they shoot down a warship, then those Earth infiltrators need a group potent enough to engage the enemy. If the humans assault, or nuke a base they should invest in more industrial capability and fleets to put a stop to it. And if the humans can blow up stations, then they have to ramp up substantially to claim back from only space superiority to space supremacy. And if someone is in orbit above the (Spoiler), then all hands on deck, merge all fleets and try to dislodge those bastards.

Aliens should also burn off a part of their hate as a percentage instead of a fixed value, so to prevent alien hate spirals for newer players.

#5:Game starts
I'm not gonna lie: I restart if I see awful councillors at the start. Getting stuck with two scientists and nobody useful to recruit is terrible. This is probably my shortest point, but if we could either choose from a pool, or at least pick the profession of our two first councillors I'd absolutely love that. People will cheeze this anyways (As they would an XCOM start so they get better soldiers with Not Created Equal), so might as well. Restrict it to "At least one councillor must have Investigate Alien activity" and you have a winner.

#6:Research and gateway techs
I'll group this into one large group since it makes sense: In essentiality, I'd like to see a system with more gateway techs for upgrading your ships, which guarantee a basic component (Say you have a torch drives tech and the unlock gives everybody a basic torch to research). This is essentially a catch-up mechanic for any faction, so they can go on ahead and upgrade their designs (It makes no sense for the Servants to go after me with NERVAs if I can build an antimatter torch drive).

Adding to this, I believe there is space for more research projects in the game which would make it deeper:
>Splitting certain unification techs from Greater Nations into more projects (And having one more society tech to lock the last pieces)-PAC, USNA, Caliphate, Greater Europa and SA+African Unions are extremely powerful entities whose unification should be somewhat stalled (As is done with the Caliphate). As an example, India could have the first tech be Bangladesh and Himalayan States while the second unlocks not only Pakistan, but also looks at Myanmar.
>More advanced weapon types: Another brand of kinetics, this time with similar damage, but higher speeds at the cost of smaller bursts would be a very good counterpart to the big draw of plasma-Speed. Magnetic-accelerated missiles add dV effectively and allow shorter travel times. Or just bolting a nuclear thermal rocket to a conventional missile and fusion drives to torpedoes. And particle lances to expand the under-appreciated particle weapons, with PERHAPS a better, albeit short-ranged PD weapon ideal for self-defence but not fleet coverage.
>Expansions on some components and shifting general ship components to unlock later. I had my Tin Droplet radiator by 2028 and have not gotten anything better outside the Exotics one? Really?
>Repeatable faction projects to waste excess research on lategame (+mining, -ship build time, +economic priorities on Earth, etc.). Is it efficient? No. Would it mean it pays to keep those scientists working once you have your final drive and weapons? Yes.

All right, this is it. All the major things which bug me about this game. The game already demonstrates incredible potential (And as a Unity project the modding potential is very good). But it is still in development and I hope at least some of these suggestions and critiques are picked up and considered.

Is there anything I missed? Leave it below, everybody has a blind spot!
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