TL;DR: Will ships level with experience? How much will ship experience affect combat? Will there be a feature to auto name ships or will it at least be modifiable.
First, yes, I am a noob and I get that. A lot of my in game decisions will seem completely irrational. I am writing this to simply pass my thoughts on the "fun" thing from the point of view of someone who is not looking to min/max or be efficient. So, with that out of the way let me tell you about my world, what happened in it, what confused me and what I loved about it. I am playing on a tiny map, rare habitable planets, no resources or anomalies, and on normal. Its me, Terrans, and the Altarians alone in this empty pocket of space.
MY EARLY GAME. I first name all my ships, more on that later, give them each a captain with a corresponding rank. They receive the command to boldly go... and they are off. I look at my beautiful planet earth. After talking to its governor, we decide on a strategy to rush produce a few factories and then build some happy places for the blue collar citizens to take their families after work. A talk with my science director and mind blown. Talk about a tech tree. Kind of intimidating. Like any good leader, I show no fear. Half lying to myself I adamantly implore my constituents that xeno entertainment should be our first end state to research towards. They fall to my charm and agree. Click. Click. Click and all is under way.
*Some points I would like to make.
- What I like: Morale. Its simple. Its easy. I understand it. No complex formula. Thank You. I have X amount of people. Producing X amount of stuff. And will stop growing at X amount of food/farms. If I want this trend to continue build more happy places. That is it. Once again thank you for simplifying this.
- What confused me: When I was done rushing my factories and building my pleasure centers, I wanted to stop construction and focus on ship building. It took me almost 10 mins to figure out how to get the "next turn" button to stop reading idle colony. This was very frustrating. I am not sure if my work around is correct. I ended up going to govern tab and changing the production palette to 100% wealth. This changed the idle colony to next turn. After that discovery I continued to fumble through with my brilliant "strategy?".
- What I would like to see more of: I love the Morale system. Even more I love the production palate and the economy system. Its easy to understand. I just have to remember to change the palate back to whatever production value i want when I am ready to upgrade my buildings. I burned a few turns wondering why I could not build anything.
MY MID GAME. At this point, Capt. Janeway of the TSS Voyager has reached as far as our ships will take her. She discovered a precursor artifact and a wormhole (how fitting). I decided to bring my colony ship back to the Sol System and colonize Mars. A few rush builds later it becomes a research planet. My victory conditions are set for conquest and influence. I decided to focus on influence. I rename my ship yard Deep space 9 and give it an Admiral to command it. We start pumping out constructor ships at the cyclic rate. Building starbases seemed like the logical next step. Thankfully the game is on normal and the Altarians do not seem to be doing much. I look up their leader using the diplomacy tab and see what they have to trade. Come to find out, they have been researching war tech and have two small ships. I buy both ships for a small price and trade for some of their war tech so I can catch up. I feel like I dodged a bullet, my people believe me to be some great protector bringing them alien tech and protection.
*Some points I would like to make.
- What I like: I think the tech tree is great. On higher difficulties I see how tech trading can really keep you from falling behind. I wonder if things like alliances will determine if the A.I. will want to trade with you or not. More than this, I like how all the tabs are setup. It makes things neat and logical. I do not feel like anything I want to do is a chore of opening and closing and memorizing information from one tab to the next.
- What confused me: Not much here. Even the rally point and shipyard governing systems were easy to figure out. Nothing was really to overwhelming at this point. I was having fun naming my starbases and figuring out what tech actually let me build a dag on space fighter.
- What I would like to see more of: This part of the game was smooth, I was having fun. Managing my cities, building my ships, keeping an eye on what the Altarians were doing by looking at what they had to trade. It was great! Oh and the galactic events and moral choices were pretty nifty and gave some depth to my evolving story.
MY ENDGAME. The Altarians control the U.P. council. They shove their agendas in my face, taunting me with their supremacy, dressing it with talks of the greater good. Both of our influence is growing at the same rate. I consult my admirals. The starbases under their control are running at full capacity. The additional influence they are producing is a minimal advantage. We agree, influence victory is taking to long. I promote Capt. Janeway to Admiral and give her a military starbase. I push it as close as I can to the Altarian home worlds, they offer no resistance. I crank out ship after ship sending them to my line of departure under Admiral Janeway. I attempt to make fleets only to realize I need to research logistics. Click. Click. Click. Finally ready. 2 starbases destroyed, a shipyard and two planet invasions later I have my conquest victory.
* some points I would like to make
- the A.I. being on normal really prevented me from enjoying the end game. I will up the difficulty on future plays as the altarians just waited for me to invade.
- my only gripe with the entire play through is my ships, fleets and starbases dont have any personality. They are just stats and numbers. I want them to evolve into the champions and heroes that inspire hope and fear into the universe.
- my suggestion for this is 2 part. 1. Will ships level with experience? How much will this experience affect combat. Can a wryly veteran captain that has managed to survive 20 battles. Inspire a rag tag fleet of frigates and defenders to overcome odds and break through an enemy blockade. Can I grow so attached to their heroics that I will want to name newly conquered planets after them. Which leads to number two. 2. Will there be a way to auto name ships. Either by mods or by use of an editor? Can I add ranks according to experience levels. Naming each ship is fine on a tiny map but on larger maps it would get quite tedious.
Thanks for a great game.
