There are, however, some resources unlocked in one branch that are required to build items unlocked in another branch.  So there is some level of interactivity even if it is not a direct link.

After playing a few more rounds, the problems I had the first time around didn't seem as glaring.

*After using and getting familiar with all the battle actions you get a good feel for what works and what doesn't. Especially since you're able to see what the enemy loadout is before a battle, so you can plan accordingly if they have overwhelming strength or weaknesses in any particular area. What I'd like to know now is if you play a successful "counter" card, if that completely negates the other card's actions or just lessens the effect.

*The pace of the game has improved dramatically the more I play, simply because the first few times through I liked to read all the descriptions, look at the icons, play every single battle, etc. Now that I'm more familiar with the game things get done twice as fast so the pacing isn't really a problem anymore. The first game I played after 8 hours I had 6 fully developed systems and a couple of fleets on a medium map. Now after 8 hours I can pretty much win the map.

*The rock, paper, scissors still bugs me. Heroes are so overpowered anyways, so all you need is a decent fleet with protection in each of the three areas and you can just steamroll the opponent even if he has multiple fleets twice as powerful attacking you 5 times in a turn. It is an alpha though and the website says they haven't really balanced or tweaked anything so it will be interesting to see how the game evolves.

I see what you mean, but for me, this beautiful girl got me laid. I've loved every minute of it so far, and I just met her!
Also, if the game is good and pretty, why not play it? You can't get STI's from Steam, can you?

I tried to warn you guys. As soon as I get some free time I am going to play the hell out of this game. I also wonder if it is being made by Brad's French evil twin. Most evil twins are from France.

I lol'ed

That game is just too good to avoid

Spaceship customization is fairly straightforward. Basically you choose a hull type (Corvette, transport, destroyer, cruiser, battleship, dreadnaught... I'm not sure if there's more but usually by the time dreadnaughts are unlocked I've won the game), each of which have a certain amount of space/weight and special bonuses for certain types of modules (defenses, weapons, support, etc.). Then you select what modules you want on each ship hull.

You aren't really regulated by anything though right now other than the tonnage of the stuff you put on, so you can have a ship with nothing but weapons, nothing but defenses, support, etc. It allows for a variety of custom ships, but at the same time since there's only better versions of the three weapons and three defenses (rock, paper, scissors), there's not a 'true variety' of ships like there is in, say, Sword of the Stars II. Each race has a single ship model for each class. Mods will probably help this out though.

The cards in battle supplement your ship's attack and defense strength during the three battle phases (long range, medium range, short range). You choose a card that symbolizes your strategy although you have to make sure you have the ships to properly execute it, aka using the "Deflector" defense card if your ships have no kinetic defense will not help you one bit. Basically you should be playing cards that support your ship's strengths or exploiting the enemy's weaknesses. Also remember that each card can "counter" another card type. If your card matches up (counters) the enemy's card, then you will get a bonus to your attack and he will get a penalty.

Playing the "Camoflauge" card (gives missile defense but lowers kinetic weapon dmg) during the first round (when missiles are the most effective) when you're playing a missile heavy fleet is usually a good idea. Of course it's an obvious card to play so your opponent might play a card to specifically counter the camoflauge card.

That was probably more long-winded than it needed to be, but yeah. My initial "ehhh" for combat and ship design has been mitigated by how fun the game actually is.

You can see the ship customization and combat in the video I posted on page 2.

I always thought of myself as a 4x veteran, so when i brought the game i whacked the difficulty on to hard; expecting a dumb AI that i would beat easily...40 turns later i was defeated.

2nd game defeated again. Although i put up a better fight i last 120 turns

3rd game i turned the difficulty down. ><

The AI, although glitchy and bugged in some places is very good, Its an alpha but its more playable than a lot of games that are released these days.

Just played the Alpha 2. They nerfed my repair strategy for the United Empire of Romney so now I am going for a tech-turtle with Sophons. On normal difficulty I thought I was totally owning everyone, until a surprise Craver fleet came out of nowhere and sacked the whole center of the galaxy. So pretty good AI, although the UE and Sophon AI seems to build too few ships in the early and midgame. Cravers are still playing very well. Perhaps I will play on hard now that I have a perfected research strategy. The AI overall though is looking quite good. Using warp lanes instead of free space for much of the game must be easier to code. I could see this game eventually having AI on par with GalCiv2:TA. This is already a must buy in my book. Not to mention that there will be MP and mods. It's nice to have a game to play now when I need to have some time off from FE.

Don't you know that Sophons are the best race for the repair strategy? They get support modules at %50 off and get the special repair tech Adaptive Glue (way better than any other repair tech until the endgame). They're pretty much unstoppable unless you get hammered with 10 gadgillion missiles that also happen to find their way through a camoflauge barrier and high missile defense.

KlaxXxon's reply was pretty on-point. The first couple of games I played the pacing was very very slow because of all the stuff to read and experience. Once you get the hang of what works, you can streamline your empire building to go pretty fast. There's also a pretty big difference between types and sizes of galaxies. Playing a small map with few "constellations" (clusters of stars separated by wormholes) will play out like some cage-fight skirmish whereas generating a large/huge galaxy with 8 spiral arms will end up being a large, epic battle between empires.

The UI also makes it a breeze to micromanage a large empire (without actually leaving anything to automation). I wish I could compare it to DW, but I sadly haven't played it (been waiting for a cheaper version, maybe a bundle with all the expansions). Even turns with lots of stuff to do rarely exceed the 5-10 minute mark once you're familiar with everything. This seems especially fast because I made a mistake of playing a Dom3 game as LA Ermor when my later game turns are taking up to an hour to do everything that needs to be done (gah, why can't these mindless zombies just use their brains?).

Wait...I thought it was, "In space, no one can hear ice scream.".