some mixed up thoughts after 12 hours

[MortyxX]

hi there,

first i have to say that this is an awesome alpha ^^. You have done a great job in rebuilding this "moo-feeling" (1 and 2)

some thoughts you may think about.

* auto recollect fighters after battle, i even didn't figure out how to do it manualy ^^
*planetary fighters, like the fightergarrison in moo2
*absolutly need for designing your spacestations
*why there is a max fleetsize of ten ships? may be you want to change this to one mothership, some tier3 ships, and unlimited transporters and scouts
*whats about spezial recourses? for example do build ships with antimatter engine you have to have a source of antimatter on a planet. this would also improve diplomatic posibilities.

at this stage of the game, there is no need for war, i won my first game with only building transporters ^^ (colonizer) made everyone my best friend, ignored their complaining about expansion and ruled with out any fleet.

second game, i disabled tutorial and mission and played classic.
same game
for now there is one winning strategy in my opinion thats work every time
go for money (industry first, than trade and tourism) if you can spare the money start building researchlaps after industrie is on cap, than trade and tourism and rush trade and tourism while the laps are build "normaly".

build some scouts and explore the systems around. dig whenever possible. while your scouts (later on, you can use colonizer insted of scouts but at the beginning scouts are faster to build)

this basic strat was working for 2 games till the end and several games not finished ^^

this strat leads to another "problem" focused research is not useful, only the very first turns if you realy must have ONE tech or later on if realy must have one tech asap on maxlevel like shields asap when you get acces to. but otherwise it is the better way not to focus. you will relativly fast come to the point where you research a whole field (bio, weapons) in e few turns even hightier research.

warfareing seems not to give you any profit nor speeds up our win. it is much easier and faster to pay and bribe other races with money or tech to settle alliance with you. much faster than bombing and invading hostile planats. buy them not fight them ^^

So that are my first impressions on this great game, i realy love the idea of the missions, some random events might be cool,... for example a "spacehulk" enters the galaxy. you have to intercept it on its way through galaxy to analys it and gain techs or knowledge of its travels, even there may be the possibility to enter a different galaxy if you find the right tech, or you can encounter a very hostile spezies or or or.

please excuse my spelling, english isn't native to me but hopefully you get my points ^^

MfG
MortyxX

[jorgen_cab]

I assume that the game still being in Alpha state that the AI still have a few miles to go before being finished.

The AI is very passive and since I'm also a passive player that like to build rather than fight wars I have the same experience as you. I have yet to get into a war after three games. The only time I have been in a fight was when I declared war in a faction just to test out the combat mechanics.


I would like to see some mechanic to stymie the expansion of empires so even a small empire can be a strong force. Currently my economy will expand more or less exponentially and I leave the AI factions way behind very early in the game.

One thing I have done is that I don't build any shipyards at all, they are so expensive. My plan was to build them when I needed them, that time never came though. I can build small and medium ships just fine without shipyards.
I think that this strategy will have a profound effect on my economical strength in the early game. I also scrap my colony ships once they deployed their colony. It's not worth it to keep a star-base around just to replenish colony modules. This might also be an advantage the player has over the AI.

Even if the AI were more aggressive I would probably scrap my shipyard after each war, along with most of my warships. Ships can be built rather quickly once you have a few good industrial worlds. Expanding your economy currently has too many advantages and too few drawbacks.

Perhaps worlds should demand military presence and perhaps there should be some threat system. The larger and the closer a world is to an aggressive race the more protection they demand or unrest will build up. That is one thing that would put a cap on your economy since you must divert some resources into having standing warships around.

[Lithari]

Erm, not in my game, they seem to be ultra aggressive, for no reason at all, the aliens all went hostile to me, its quite weird.

Also, I do not recommend having unlimited scout class ships in a fleet, cause that would mean players that have the credits for it can have the fleet of doom (I took that was civilization 4....the stack of doom) though I do agree the motherships should be limited to 1 per fleet.

Also, designing the starbases is a big must to me too.

[jorgen_cab]

Does it reall matter how many ship you can have in a TF.

There is no limits to the number of TF you can engage with anyway, or is there?

[Madbiologist]

Does it reall matter how many ship you can have in a TF.

There is no limits to the number of TF you can engage with anyway, or is there?

You are correct, I had once 5 TF of 10 ships attack the Kamzecks (sp?) homeworld (this is funny because in an other thread I said I tend to play diplomatically, but doesn't mean I don't enjoy the odd warmonger game). That was 10 Mother ships, with the rest being Cruisers and Transports (supply and troops). So if you limit the number of Mothership per Taskforce, it means nothing. You will just have multiple TF with 1 Mothership each, which defeats the purpose of Taskforces (more on this after).

In the game you control all TFs in a single system (unless you do Taskforce lock, then the others are still controlled but by the AI). They don't sit there passively, and will engage hostiles that enter into range. Like TFs that are in none engaged sectors. So as said, nothing stops you from having 10 Motherships attack one system, so forcing them to be in separate TF is... well... pointless.

TF are only an organisational tool, making you able to give a group of ships the same command. So you don't need to select "Go to Orbit" 10 times, and also allows you to manage large battles by autoing everything but one TF. So the limit will only serve to bog down management, as you will need to manually give orders to each Mothership to do something on the galaxy map, yet still have 10 of them in the same battle.

Unlike other games, TF are not what engages enemies, but all ships in an area does. You as the player can control one sector at a time with the others being on auto, you make also use the com menu, or the message window on the top left to jump to another sector. So if you are winning a fight but know there is another hard fight elsewhere, you can let the AI finish up your first sector as you jump to another sector that need your delicate touch to win. As I said, TF are a management tool. Though ships in the same TF do try to stay grouped together.

Another in game benefit is shared supply. Since you are unlikely to use Motherships as supply transports, you probably have each of your TFs contain a few supply transport ships (usually mediums).

As for the OP and fighters, I read they are still very alpha at the moment, so they do things that are not... desirable for the moment.

[jorgen_cab]

Yes, I view task-forces and a group with a specific purpose and group ships accordingly.

Now, I have not done much fighting yet but at least some just to test combat out.

So far each combat TF had some mission ships such as assault ships, troops transports, scout, combat cruisers or battleships. There would then be some escorting ships and support ships.

I never saw the reason to max out the full ten ships just because I could, each TF had ships according to what I intended them to perform.

[MortyxX]

I am totaly aware of the game being an alpha and love it ^^

i think it matters how much shipsyou can have in a TF, in my opinion it is unrealistic to have a fixt number of ships in a TF. May be you can regulate this with CnC (Command and Controll) Ships. Every TF must contain ONE CnC ship in dependence of techlevel and shipequippment it allows you x ships in the taskforce.
The point against unlimited scouts because of fleets of doom i can not understand. If you have a big empire you should be able to blow a way everyone weaker then you, thats nothing about balance its about warfare ^^
Secound point on tfs, i am lazy ^^ if i want to controll only one big fleet of doom i want that be possible.

Some points of my first post got changed, i have to say.

In my actual game, the first race i met declared war on my (for no reason but which human can understand whats going on in a plants brain ^^) destroyed some colonizers and tried to attack sol system. Great
But the attacked with one ship, rushed to earth, got blown up from the nukes.
They send anoher ship some turn later, rushed to earth, got blown up from the nukes and the station
some turns later same
some turns later same
---
---
---
---
---
i think you get the point

they hat three planets in one system, two of them bigger than "standart", not sending any taskforce. Victory felt something like not earned.
that leads to some other points i noticed.
There are many techs, and i love the research system, the different steps of research are a great idea but ome of the techs give me no reason why i should prefer them on other techs. Fighters and Bombers for planetary attacks for example. Why should i rush fighters and ignore bombers?
Same problem with the different weapons. The differences between some of the weapons are so little, thats no big difference with weapon i use. on level 10 lasers are nearly equal to neutron streams or even the cristal cannon. Ok there are some spezials but the raw damage is high enough at both of them to singelshot the most ships the ai uses.
in my games the ai nearly never uses shields even they got the tech from my self. Tried it several time, giving them shields, decleard war, waited nearly 100 turns, no ships with shields. Victory felt somethink like not earned.

You realy need diversety within your tech tree.
Some quick ideas on that.

Antimatter engine and generators coud provide ordonance for your antimatter weapons but are likely to loose dampingfield and cause malefunktions.
Graviton engine can not installed with cloaking or stealth cause of emitting strong radiation scannable even with a pocketcalculator.
Mechs, Tanks, Landers, Adroids and handweapons all increase "only" battle value, this dear developers is realy boring ^^

I say it again, i know this is an alpha release and reading again what i was writing, it may sound like i hate this game but i realy love it and i want it to be the real MOO3 ^^ if the devs do not get angry with this ^^

MfG
MortyxX

[Zaimat]

Thank you for taking the time to write the excellent feedback. As long as it's constructive feedback (like yours and so far everyone in our forums) we like hearing it! Some excellent suggestions which we will certainly be considering.

[MortyxX]

I have to thank you for this game

first time i started, i was somehow overwhelmed seeing that you placed b5 and sigma7 in the startup screen. I am realy a great fan of babylon5 and even there won't be a real b5 4x game you did a great work to take the best ideas from all the good 4x games, mixed it up with some own great ideas and i believe that the final version of horizon will be one of the best 4x games ever created so far.

Its pleasure and honor for me to play and test and comment your work.

Great work done, please continue the way you are on.

MfG
MortyxX