Finally back to the game after release... My initial impressions:
Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2022 7:44 pm
I decided to return to the game with the 1.05x series of beta updates, now playing a new game with 1.060. I have to say, the developers have improved the game drastically in terms of stability; I experienced very few crashes with these updates and the game seems to work well.
After a few tries, I set up this game as follows:
-Classic galaxy, 1500 stars, 10x10 sectors.
-Extreme difficulty, restless galaxy, starting expansion, level 0 tech, very slow research speed, tech trading on.
-Very few pirates, few space creatures. Normal colonies, very few independents.
-For my empire, I selected humans with a normal starting system, pre-warp start, starting expansion.
-I then set up 16 custom opponents, selecting a reasonably aggressive mix of races with only a few random races. All AI opponents started at level 0 tech with random expansion, excellent home system, random proximity to my empire.
My starting position was horrible, with no good quality colonizable planets and no independent colonies within range. To top it off, my closest neighbor was your average friendly Boskaran empire, filled with hordes of murderous bugs. Furthermore, I was surrounded on three sides by several other AI empires, all generally stronger than me. The only redeeming quality was I had a deposit of zentabia fluid in my home system.
This start was a blast! I had tons of fun fighting off the Boskarans pretty much from as soon as I got out of my system, with my puny escorts dishing it out savagely to defend my very small territory. The war dragged on for decades, with only some off periods in which I somehow managed to beg for peace. I held on, but I have to admit it was fairly challenging and at one point I was about to give up on this game. The Boskarans were almost an order of magnitude stronger than me economically and I had to put pretty much every ship I had in a single fleet to compete locally; good thing my territory was very small. Eventually, in one of the last early game wars, I took away from them a couple of planets, enough to give me a fighting chance.
I am now approaching the midgame; the galaxy looks good, with several large empires and some smaller ones; I have expanded enough to compete with my neighbors and protect my borders effectively. I have to say, the game with these settings worked well up to now and it was, above all, a lot of fun for me.
That said, with the knowledge from my previous games, I deliberately put myself at a disadvantage. It was fun, but without the atrocious starting conditions, it probably would have been too easy. At a minimum, the AI should prioritize larger fleets over smaller task forces, improve its target selection and do some focus fire during battles.
Related to the AI performance, I have a question: AI empires seem to be slowing down their expansion now and some are fielding smaller fleets than I would expect from their size. Checking with the game editor I found several AI economies seem to be badly wrecked: half of the empires seem to be running a deficit in the millions of credits. In total, out of 16 empires, only 7 have a positive wallet currently, the others range from -700k to -9 million credits. The economies of most of these empires would appear to be strong when looking at raw GDP (for example, a Mortalen empire has a GDP of 2 million, but 8 million in debt). I would not be worried except that these empires seem to have meager fleets compared to their theoretical size. Is this normal? Will they manage to come back from their extreme debt, or could this be an issue for the remaining game?
Despite this, I think the devs have done an excellent job patching the game after release; there is undoubtedly a lot of work still to be done, but the game seems to be shaping well!
My 2 cents.
After a few tries, I set up this game as follows:
-Classic galaxy, 1500 stars, 10x10 sectors.
-Extreme difficulty, restless galaxy, starting expansion, level 0 tech, very slow research speed, tech trading on.
-Very few pirates, few space creatures. Normal colonies, very few independents.
-For my empire, I selected humans with a normal starting system, pre-warp start, starting expansion.
-I then set up 16 custom opponents, selecting a reasonably aggressive mix of races with only a few random races. All AI opponents started at level 0 tech with random expansion, excellent home system, random proximity to my empire.
My starting position was horrible, with no good quality colonizable planets and no independent colonies within range. To top it off, my closest neighbor was your average friendly Boskaran empire, filled with hordes of murderous bugs. Furthermore, I was surrounded on three sides by several other AI empires, all generally stronger than me. The only redeeming quality was I had a deposit of zentabia fluid in my home system.
This start was a blast! I had tons of fun fighting off the Boskarans pretty much from as soon as I got out of my system, with my puny escorts dishing it out savagely to defend my very small territory. The war dragged on for decades, with only some off periods in which I somehow managed to beg for peace. I held on, but I have to admit it was fairly challenging and at one point I was about to give up on this game. The Boskarans were almost an order of magnitude stronger than me economically and I had to put pretty much every ship I had in a single fleet to compete locally; good thing my territory was very small. Eventually, in one of the last early game wars, I took away from them a couple of planets, enough to give me a fighting chance.
I am now approaching the midgame; the galaxy looks good, with several large empires and some smaller ones; I have expanded enough to compete with my neighbors and protect my borders effectively. I have to say, the game with these settings worked well up to now and it was, above all, a lot of fun for me.
That said, with the knowledge from my previous games, I deliberately put myself at a disadvantage. It was fun, but without the atrocious starting conditions, it probably would have been too easy. At a minimum, the AI should prioritize larger fleets over smaller task forces, improve its target selection and do some focus fire during battles.
Related to the AI performance, I have a question: AI empires seem to be slowing down their expansion now and some are fielding smaller fleets than I would expect from their size. Checking with the game editor I found several AI economies seem to be badly wrecked: half of the empires seem to be running a deficit in the millions of credits. In total, out of 16 empires, only 7 have a positive wallet currently, the others range from -700k to -9 million credits. The economies of most of these empires would appear to be strong when looking at raw GDP (for example, a Mortalen empire has a GDP of 2 million, but 8 million in debt). I would not be worried except that these empires seem to have meager fleets compared to their theoretical size. Is this normal? Will they manage to come back from their extreme debt, or could this be an issue for the remaining game?
Despite this, I think the devs have done an excellent job patching the game after release; there is undoubtedly a lot of work still to be done, but the game seems to be shaping well!
My 2 cents.