The galaxy shape and travel times don't make sense

[BlackGyver]

So, I found out on my first playthrough that the game area was a rectangle. Alright, no big deal, probably to have some kind of perspective effect matching the background image, I'm not a great fan because I then see that means travel times are different along the two axes, which throws off how you perceive distances; a bit annoying. But wait, there's more! I then realize that travel times are actually all wrong. Indeed, if the board represents a circular galaxy seen at a tilted angle, you can assume at first that if the X (horizontal) axis is longer than the Y (vertical) axis on the game board, you'll spend more time traveling ten squares along the Y axis than ten squares on the X axis (because it represents a longer effective distance with the angled view).

Yet, the game does exactly the opposite! You spend more time traveling ten squares on the X axis than ten on the Y axis, which means that if you actually had to redraw a board that did 1 square = 1 turn no matter the axis to simplify distance appreciation, with the current system you'd end up with a map that would look like a very large horizontal map (imagine a map double the size horizontally!).

To summarize and conclude;

-Having an angled view is bad; it's terrible if you want to judge distances if you implement with it different travel times along the two axes. Just go for a classic top-down square area. Please.

-If an angled view is absolutely necessary; don't get your travel times all mixed up between the two axes!

[RobHuntingdon]

I don't think I've seen this effect myself. My ships seem to move about the same speed either up or down. Maybe I'm playing on the wrong maps?

But even if this was the case and I just haven't noticed it, I still think my greatest frustration here is that if there is any way to improve travel times, I sure haven't figure out how to do it yet. My scouts on turn one take just as long to travel the galaxy 500 turns later.

I don't mind the galaxy being "huge" and travel times starting slow. I wouldn't even mind them staying "slow-ish". But remaining the same speed is a disappointment for me.

[BlackGyver]

Well, no matter the engines or ship, you'll see -theroetically- at best a 25% increase in travel times with level 10 engines (49 moves/round instead of 40). However, for 60 points you can grab the Transient trait, which effectively doubles the moves of all your ships (gives a free short-range teleportation plus your normal moves), so if travel times are the issue (at least until stargates, which I haven't encountered yet), you could always grab this.

But yeah, general balance and ship evolution is a bit wonky. So many things are far from finished or simply placeholders in this game, I don't even know why they decided to come out of beta right now instead of spending a little more time polishing stuff up to avoid bad reviews. Ah well.

Now, about my initial issue; can you try and take any ship, then count how many turns you need to travel ten squares horizontally, then see how many turns for 10 vertically?

[BlackGyver]

Also, to illustrate the issue, I made a couple screenshots showing what I mean (I should have done that right from the start);

[Zaimat]

Yes, the distances are shorter vertically than horizontally in the game.

Each sector on the Galaxy map would have to be more rectangular to represent the galaxy more accurately. But for UI purposes (displaying stars, task forces and making selections) we opted for squares.

In retrospect we could have done it differently but at the time and this was an early decision, it had to do with the perspective view in tactical combat.