1st Impressions, my turn

from GalCiv3 Forums

Got the game ca. 2 weeks ago, want to give a bit feedback too. So far it's limited to certain aspects, mostly handling/interface since I have not played soooo much yet due to lack of time. Also, I guess I don't have figured out everything so some "issues" might just easily go away once I get a better hang on this :)

But here we go.

 

1. General Impressions

Everthing looks way more shiny than in GC2, which is great. No stability issues so far, not even a single CTD. Things I miss: easy quick save option, option to take screen shots (or is it there somehow?) and a real time clock in the UI :)

 

2. Ship Designer

Most impressive. Designing own ships was nice in GC2 already, but being able to toy around with offsets or to manipulate objects' XYZ axis independantly is just great.

Only one prob: use of middle mouse button to turn the view around is IMO both counter-intuitive and uncomfortable. I guess like me many ppl I use a mouse with "clickable mousewheel" instead of a "real" middle btn and I think it does not work too well (tested even my second mouse, wasn't better).

Pls. add an easy alternative, like right mouse btn use or even some UI elements.

 

3. Map

- I miss the somewhat bigger Civ logo for a civ's main planet/home world (compared to other colonies) on the map.

- Not sure if I should be able to see other civ's rally points? Esp. when my scout/survey ship moved out of sensor range again.

- I had one issue with a ship "disappearing", it was still displayed in the UI list, but no icon visible anywhere. Turned out when I set a move target somewhere it came out of a field of asteroids. IMO would be better to have the icon always on top, regardless of "terrain" below

-Speaking of icons, I find those for nebula are somewhat confusing, as they look similar to asteoids when zoomed out, but maybe that's just me

- What I didn't like in GC2 was that sometimes useful stuff (resources, planets) was clustered in one area, with way less in others. Regardless of difficulty level this often meant either a rather easy game or a pretty tough one dependign whther you started near such a cluster or not. Wondering whether this is the same in GC3 because I had two black holes next to eachother and quite many of resources nearby. Maybe on map generation there could be options for more or less balanced distribiton.

- If there's some eye-candy still to come, I wonder if we get planetary systems with planets evolving around their sun(s), planets with real ring systems and may be some other stuff besides black holes, asteroids and nebulas. What is there right now looks really cool though, esp. in close-up views

 

4. UI

Sometimes I wished certain things were easier. Example:

To cancel a building or ship in the qeue it has to be selected to hit "cancel" = usually two mouseclicks. Could we just get a "close" icon (like the Windows x) after each entry in the qeue? Or simply use right mouse btn here too?

Also, when you rush stuff, then cancel it, you should get the money back? Otherwise it's just lost.

Back to streamline usage - it's seems generally RMB is never used. Is there a specific reason for this? IMO RMB use could improve a couple of things, like above.

 

 Ok, that's all I can think of now. More later when I played more :)

2,856 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I also had my survey ship disappear in a nebula.  I knew where it was because I had just moved it to that particular hex and if I selected that hex, I would get the information showing my ship was there, but the actual ship was not visible until I moved it out of the nebula.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Yeah, had another case recently. Actually, when you know what's going on it's not really a serious prob, but still I think it would be better to have the ship's icon visible. Maybe slightly shadowed in a nebula or semi-transparent.

 

However, had some time to play 0.61, still feel a bit overwhelmed, but love it already. Played ca. 200 turns as Earthlings, so a few more points:

 

1. Ship Designer

Saving as template does not work for me so far. I can choose that option, but the game does not display the template later again.

Also I miss the clickable GUI stuff from GC2 that displayed your ship's top/side/front view quickly (maybe add back/bottom too). Ship design can get way more complex now (which is great) but that also means it's easier to misplace stuff. Being able to quickly check those views could help a lot here IMO.

Another point I'm wondering about is that some parts get automatically doubled/mirrored, and some not, and the buttons to "unmirror" parts are inactive sometimes. Is that related to parts attached "before" (whether they got mirrored already on some axis). It can get quite confusing, esp. with parts that have a real function and use up mass (are they then placed twice really, or just visually).

2. AI

Just as a general observation - it seems rather passive, I guess that's due to beta state.

3. Tech Tree View

If I select  to view the tree it would be nice to be able to zoom in/out by mouse

4. Visual Nitpick

Leader anims are really well made, but why does the Yor guy have a breathing anim when he's not biological? Maybe he's just fakin' it? ;)

 

 

Edit:

 

To add #5 a number of tooltips are not fully displayed (top and bottom "cut off") I guess a known prob?

Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


- I miss the somewhat bigger Civ logo for a civ's main planet/home world (compared to other colonies) on the map.

- Not sure if I should be able to see other civ's rally points? Esp. when my scout/survey ship moved out of sensor range again.

- What I didn't like in GC2 was that sometimes useful stuff (resources, planets) was clustered in one area, with way less in others. Regardless of difficulty level this often meant either a rather easy game or a pretty tough one dependign whther you started near such a cluster or not. Wondering whether this is the same in GC3 because I had two black holes next to eachother and quite many of resources nearby. Maybe on map generation there could be options for more or less balanced distribiton.
4. UI

Sometimes I wished certain things were easier. Example:

To cancel a building or ship in the qeue it has to be selected to hit "cancel" = usually two mouseclicks. Could we just get a "close" icon (like the Windows x) after each entry in the qeue? Or simply use right mouse btn here too?

Also, when you rush stuff, then cancel it, you should get the money back? Otherwise it's just lost.

End of quote

I've been wondering about the icon size for capitols & if it was bad memory myself :).

I don't tend to queue up too many long queues making the cancel move not really bother me (iirc it was to the side of each queued item?), the process of rearranging the queue is freaking maddening though.  queue a few tier1 industry/factory buildings, start a bunch of other stuff behind them.. Research tier2 factories, try moving the zeno factories above the research labs, hospital, embassy, entertainment network, farm, etc.  I seem to remember a set of up/down arrows you could click to move the selected item up/down the queue.

The clustered distribution is pretty cool actually since having $race in game doesn't always mean they will start a war with any neighbor they find since they will hit points where the gaps are no longer uncomfortably close I suspect a different galaxy/cluster type will effect it  as well

 

As to the visual Rally points, I'm not sure if this is a bug.  There is a lot of emphasis on improving diplomacy capabilities & such, I can think of more than one type of situation (diplomatic/espionage/trade/tourism/media/technological differences/governmental types) that could provide enough detail to indicate that ships are massung towards point xyz.  Think of it like cold war style mobilization drills where massive forces move into places that could be prep for a strike/counterstrikebecause the other side might/might not be doing something considered saber rattling-worthy/exposed underbelly.  Having started thinking on it, I wonder if perhaps there should be two types of rally points... One that has a big bright spotlight on it similar to the sort that happens when the us navy masses forces in the middle east just after 9/11 or well... this.  A second type that is harder to detect, but sends ships of a random & indirect pathway.  The big question of merit is if the AI will use them & how they will react to the different uses

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

O yeah, I absolutely agree that rearranging the queue can be a pain.

 

Re the rally point issue, I would like it better indeed when espionage/diplomacy or similar efforts reveal those.

 

A little visual prob I had with rally pts.: the anim over it sometimes also seems to "hide" an enemy ship present there, at least with zoomed out map view.

Wondered why my fleet could not pass this hex -  after zooming in turned out there was another ship.