Hello everybody. I bought GC-3 on steam when it showed up at a discount because I enjoyed the previous incarnations a lot and probably sank too much time in them back in the days or yore. Because GC-3 is currently in a beta phase and the design team asks us to provide feedback and bug reports I thought I'd open this topic to report my experience with the game.
After installing the game I quickly booted it up and enjoyed the sharp menu screen and the interface. They look nice. I then started a new game on the biggest galaxy setting I could choose and began as the Terrans. I had wanted to set the pacing to epicly slow tech research but that wasn't enabled yet. Opponents were set to normal mode.
While playing for roughly two and a half hour the game crashed twice. The second time it asked to connect to the internet, so I assume it automatically sent a bug report / crash log. The first time was when I selected a newly produced constructor vessel and wanted to move it. When I loaded the save the Constructor was gone, and it turns out it had joined the Shipyard's fleet for some reason, acting as a defense for it. I have no idea what triggered the crash - perhaps this report helps someone identify the issue. While playing I also observed that the music stops and then begins again sporadically. This was particularly noticeable with the button click sounds and the research breakthrough / discovery. It went entirely silent and then after a little while the sound came back again.
Gameplay wise I was able to go for an easy economic victory and take over a little more than half the map without building a single combat vessel. After solidifying my gains and building my culture I was then able to annex new colonies the Krynn were founding in my imperial domain. They didn't like that much. After they lost around four to five worlds that way they declared war on me. At that time the Krynn were the third most powerful race. They had a decent one fifth of the map. The Altarians only had one planet. The Drengin had two or three. The Irdium and the Yor were the top civilizations - although really my economy and imperium dominated over half the map. The power rating emphasizes military might and not industrial and economic soft-power.
Because I had no combat vessel I decided to try to save my imperial domain another way: bribery. Fortunately I had a lot of money, having developed my economy very strongly, and so I made a peace treaty in exchange for around 9000 credits. But it was not to be. The next turn the Krynn declared war again. Fortunately they were still open to more bribes, so I paid them off again for another turn. And then another, another, and another.
Finally I decided that since I still needed around twenty to thirty turns until I had a decent fleet I might be better off paying them per turn. Perhaps they would keep the peace then? The Krynn didn't think about it that way. They kept declaring war, but I thought: "Hey, it doesn't matter, they get way less credits per turn, since the treaty only lasts one turn". Except it turns out that peace deals aren't canceled if the other side declares war again, so I ended up paying 5000 credits a turn to the Krynn, and more each turn until I went bankrupt and noticed the discrepancy.... I hadn't needed to worry about money on account of my super economy.
So... I looked around and found a screen in which I could cancel all treaties I had with the Krynn. And after a few turns my debt was gone and production resumed. By now my fleets were ready, so I took the offensive and crushes a few ships the Krynn were using to attack my resource collection space stations. I quickly destroyed them and then they retreated. After a few more skirmishes I made peace with the Krynn and they were content to keep it.
My observations:
- AI: From the story its obvious the AI is still being developed. I believe this is normal with most Stardock games so it isn't particularly remarkable. The AI usually gets a lot of polish and development when the game is near feature complete. That stage still lies ahead I think.
- Crashes & Bugs: The game is already fun if you're into empire building, and not particularly crash prone for a beta. The two crashes I had were unfortunate but the auto-save alleviated any frustration it might have caused. I also noticed that the text sometimes falls between the popup panel room and becomes illegible.
- Ideology: I like the idea but some of these effects appear to be really overpoweringly strong. Its clearly (partly) inspired from the Civilization series, which isn't a bad thing. The ideology screen itself needs more polish. The text descriptions are often illegible because other ideologies are directly displayed in the text background. It needs a separate description text panel.
- Station upgrades: When one of my constructors reaches a station and triggers an upgrade if I press next-turn the upgrade screen automatically opens. While this is logical it also confused me because I had to remember what station I wanted a particular upgrade on for several turns until the constructor arrived. This works fine so long as you only have constructor at a time but when you have many more it becomes very confusing - like for me. I had to escape the upgrade window and look at the starmap situation, and then go back into the upgrade.
It might work better if we can either designate the desired upgrade in advance (for whenever a constructor might arrive). Or perhaps add an option which shifts the starmap & selection to that upgradeable station - but which doesn't immediately open the upgrade screen.
- Combat: I was only able to auto-resolve so I believe that combat is still a work in progress. What I noticed is that ship combat appears to be a lot like GC 2. What I disliked about that setup is how the game emphasizes a rigidly simple rock-paper-scissors approach to ship building. I felt somewhat bad when one of my loyal fleets perished after engaging a Krynn fleet that had contained new beam focused ships. They originally had used guns and armor. Fortunately I could build adapated ships very rapidly - so it didn't matter strategically. But in-game there was still loss of life, and it made me feel bad for the crews. It also made be wonder why this separation between armor / point defense / and shields is so rigid.
I'd like to see ships have all three defenses by default, for example by reducing the cost of the defensive components (and their value). I'd also like to see each defense work differently, in that armor is chipped away and melted normally by each subsequent impact, whereas point defense and shields need to be overwhelmed. This way I see a lot of room to make combat more engaging and exciting both at the strategical and tactical levels. With the technology tree still underway I don't think its too late to examine at this approach. You could even think of developing some sort of shield which also partly works as armor, and armor which reforms sort of like shields. Think of liquified repair substances for instance, in combination with 'material memory'.....Also, why aren't beams stopped by armor? That always makes me wonder.
- Diplomacy: My impression of diplomacy is tied with the AI in general. Its passive and currently relies largely on player initiatives. I think that this will be okay once the AI development gears up, like how decent it was in GC-2. I would like to see more information, and in particular more specific information. ("you trade with an enemy of ours" = which enemy!?)
What I miss from the game is the ambition to take diplomacy one level beyond what was done before. What I am thinking of in this regard is to use the goals and aims the AI no doubt identifies for itself and to present those in a diplomatic format. For example, the Drengin AI might have identified a Yor planet near its borders as the logical choice of conquest to expand its empire. I would like to be able to discover this goal, and to forge a better relation with the Drengin by helping them get it. I could give them money, or I could distract the Yor away from the planet / destroy their ships. Or I can double cross the Drengin and warn the Yor their planet is going to be attacked - in which case I'd expect the AI to prioritize defending that planet (which could draw ships from else where and so also serve as a feature which lets you lie to the AI).
An obstacle with this idea is that the AI probably has defined goals but players don't. There'd need to be a way for players to designate some goals of their own in so far as these aren't created by interactions with the AI. If memory serves something similar was already conceived of in GC-2 and I'd love to see it taken to the next level. If enough of these diplomacy hooks are available it becomes to possible to really have the AI behave geo-politically, because each diplomatic act can be used to build trust and good relations. It would be a relatively small step to teach the AI use those hooks itself, after all.
Thank you for reading, I hope it helps. 
