Hi,
here is my personal feedback of Beta 5.1 so far:
- The research/tech screen needs a revamp. I guess you're pretty proud of the robot animation explaining the new tech, right? Still, it should consume much less of the screen. The actual tech and the advantages that I get from it are displayed too small. Especially, currently my new tech when researched is displayed white on grey in a very small window to the right. This should be changed.
-Influence is too strong atm. I got five planets in a small galaxy just because the poor guys had the bad luck of settling next to me, without me doing anything. I think influence capture should require more activity from the player. Perhaps if the player does not actively order some actions to be taken ("send our propaganda ships over there"), no influence swapping at all should take place. And if it happens, the other party should be mad at me... well somewhat. I just grabbed tons of planets from Altarian and Krynn and they still love me.
-The "zing" and "bling" sounds when clicking "next turn" and during ship movement are a major source of annoyment for me. Please change or allow to mute these two sounds.
SHIP DESIGNER
Some ideas for the ship designer.
- Instead of "Warning, selecting a new hull will..." why not add a "Do" and "Undo" button? It happened several times to me that I accidentially deleted an important part that I had spend two or more minutes adjusting in size and position, only to have to redo it because I clicked wrong.
-Currently we have the option to either have race-specific parts, or all parts. I rather would have the option to also activate specific race parts, i.e. I'm Terran but I want to have SOME Drengin parts. If I want to do that atm, I have to wade through tons of other ship parts which I do not search for. A very nice option would be to CREATE FAVORITE SETS OUT OF SHIP PARTS, i.e. each player can define "Terran Favorite", "Altarian Favorite" etc. and mix stuff in there as he wants. This will help me to identify the parts that I use most.
-The ability to MAKE FUNCTIONAL PARTS INVISIBLE. Why? Once I have my shell of the vessel, adding Impulse engines, sensors, life support etc. distracts me from the envisioned shell of the ship. What I currently do is offset all these parts into the interior to avoid that they distract me from how I want the ship to look like. It is possible, but tedious, and making functional parts invisible if wanted would help that.
- Of course, we will need at some point COMPLETELY CUSTOM COLORS for the ships. Not just preselected styles. Even when we have selected some unique colors for the race, maybe I want THIS ship to be red and THAT ship to be blue, and THAT particular part of the ship orange. Give us that freedom.
-The DIPLOMACY SCREEN should IMO start with the "negotiate trade agreement" subscreen. I love my neighbors. I really do. But the thing that jumps at me first everytime I open the diplomacy screen is "DECLARE WAR". I think this should be a suboption in the "negotiate trade agreement" screen, and not so prominent in the foreground.
-Can we GET ANOTHER STARTUP SCREEN, either in Beta or for the final product? Some nice ships floating in space or something like that? I know the current STARTUP SCREEN shows the CEO of Startdock, and the programming slavelings are ordered to worship im 5 times every day or they will get punished (well, more than usual). But still, having researched "customer persuasion", another loading screen may come about more... friendly.
- Can we get a SYSTEM CLOCK ingame, which can be activated or deactivated in the options? Its "just another turn", but sometimes even Space Emperors have to attend other buissnesses.
- The LOAD/SAVE and DONE button are counterintuitive, at least for me. Personally I would switch positions of them.
- Can we RE-EDIT CUSTOM RACES ? I had it several times that I made a custom race, but then found there was something I didn't like and wanted to change (or had plainly forgotten, Mister Generic Leader). Currently one has to re-edit the whole custom race from scratch if one wants to change just a single detail afterwards.
-In the COLONY SCREEN, can be have the ability to arrange buildings as our favorites? I need factories, labs, markets and then food in that order, and all the rest I rarely use. I would be nice if I had these "important buildings" available at the top of my individual list, without the need to scroll down to them everytime.
CONCLUSION
I think GalCiv3 is on a good road, but it needs more tweaking and fine-tuning IMO. If you want to have a flat 90+ metacritic, I'd suggest you do two or three more betas and release the game later than now planned. PC magazines will not rate the potential, but the IS state, and if the release state is still Beta-like, you will cripple your rates (and resulting sales) unnecessarily. People who want to play the game now can already do so, and people are much more forgiving with early access than final products.
ADDONs
We have the ability to design nice ships, and can watch them fight it out in spacebattles. What would be cooler than that? Well, actually STEERING the ships we've built.
Take a look at the TOTAL WAR series. It is cool to built armies, but cooler to smash them against each other. For GalCiv, this could either be some "homeworld type" ordering the ships around, some "Star Trek Online" "flying my own dreadnought", or some "Master of Orion 2" / "X-Com" /"Heroes of might and magic type" turn-based "Krynn Ranger M2-3 is next" sort of gameplay.
As a turn-based strategy gamer, I like the last one best. Master of Orion had active and interesting space battles where it mattered even more what modules one had put onto the ship (including firing arcs, left shields down etc.). And this was possible 1995 or so. Perhaps as an addon, take a look at the ship battles, and make them more active for the player if he wants that (still with the option to auto-resolve or just watch a nice battle visual).
