First impressions

[ronan]

Hi,

I just bought HORIZON from steam today and I'd like to share some early impressions. Perhaps they are already being addressed, but here it goes. My background is an experienced 4X player, all the MOO's and everything else like it, so I'm not a newbie.

1) planet development seems strange. First it's hard to track what's happening on each planet... it'd be nice if you could run through planets easily.. I've seen that mentioned elsewhere in the forums. More strangely, at an early stage, there doesn't seem to be any choices on what to build on the planet, other than the order in which you want to build things... that's disappointing as planet development is one of the things I enjoyed most.

2) combat is strange but this is, for me, is due to a lack of information rather than the mechanics. I don't know why engage sector sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I guess it must wait to the end of turn perhaps. More importantly I wasn't aware that combat was for the entire system and not just in the area of the planet. Many times I was not aware of why I was in combat when what I saw my ships on screen but no enemy. That comes to my biggest issue.. I don't know where my enemy is when I am in combat or why I am in combat.. that needs more flagging in someway - particularly to say who your enemy is and WHERE you are being attacked

3) in diplomacy when the comms screen comes up when the aliens want to talk to you, it does not mention WHO the aliens are. Unless you can recognise them, there is no obvious way to figure out who is talking to you. Even a banner that said the "envoy from ..." would be a great help. It's not a long term issue as long term players will learn... but why make it hard in the first place.

4) why can't you rename ships that you've designed?

5) how do you repair ships?... bring them back to shipyards?

6) i'm using a high end laptop using an integrated intel HD4000 at 1600x900. The game is burning up the laptop... running very hot. I don't see anything in the game that requires such a high power graphics capability.. it'd be much nicer to be able to tame the graphics and allow me to run the game on a laptop without being plugged in.

7) the aliens seem to move into alliances VERY quickly.. seems strange.. but i'm sure there's rebalancing to be completed


there are a bunch of other stuff that is just rough.. but I am sure they can be polished. The game definitely looks very promising and I look forward to the improvements.


Ronan

[Cumberlow]

Hi,

4) why can't you rename ships that you've designed?

You can. Just Click on the name in the upper left of the screen and rename.

[ronan]

Hi,

4) why can't you rename ships that you've designed?

You can. Just Click on the name in the upper left of the screen and rename.

thanks.. found it... I had clicked literally everywhere else.. the ship name in big letters on the top-left, the sub-titles in the different categories.. never thought of clicking what I thought was a stats screen as nothing else on that panel is clickable.... I was sure it was somewhere.. but perhaps there is a way to highlight that for new players.

and thank you very much for the quick reply.. it really helps make you feel better about taking the risk on an pre-release game.

[Zaimat]

Thanks Ronan for the feedback. I really like your suggestions about setting the context for the player, whether it's combat or diplomacy etc. Ship repairs are always fastest at starbase/shipyards but ships can repair to a certain extent between turns or with special tech between combat rounds.

6) i'm using a high end laptop using an integrated intel HD4000 at 1600x900. The game is burning up the laptop... running very hot. I don't see anything in the game that requires such a high power graphics capability.. it'd be much nicer to be able to tame the graphics and allow me to run the game on a laptop without being plugged in.

We lowered the fps cap to 100fps in the last update, you can also set a vsync preference to lower it further to 60 fps at the cost of some performance if you are getting frame rates over 60 (CTRL+F displays the built-in fps meter). Your experience should be similar to other games though, if it's not let us know.