Hopefully, because I tend to be overly verbose when writing stuff down.
Anyhow: I like the game so far, it’s really nicely done - again.
I did suffer some CTDs - two different kinds as far as I could reconstruct - one apparently tied to some beam/laser asset that has already been reported and the other upon saving a design. Nothing I was able to securely reproduce up to now - sadly I don’t have that much time to test that thoroughly.
I’ve seen in the changelog that two issues I had have already been considered and taken care of (that’s the deployment bar - I like the chosen solution - and the customizations not saving when overwriting a unit bug).
I also saw in the preliminary patch notes for 1.003 that double (same type) augments are to be forbidden. Sad, but okay, I’ll have to replace them.
Accuracy Augments seem to either not affect accuracy, or it isn’t properly reflected in the weapons info. (Like damage, range or rate of fire is, by putting the augmented value in brackets.)
That mostly leaves me to ask for a few features:
- In lane-selection mode, please show the currently chosen route for the unit, even if none has been set by the player, yet.
- A possibility to select a default lane for any unit moving through a specific field. In longer, more unit-rich (and more lane-rich) battles, it can become very tedious to have your units move along a specific path. Being able to set a path that all units passing through a specific field should take would make things a lot more comfortable to control. Of course, this would have to adhere to the same rules as selecting lanes for specific units, and it should be override-able by issuing a different order to a unit directly.
- In unit design, there needs to be more infos on the hull selection, like amount of Armor/Shield or Augment slots, anything that’s variable by hull type, really. There’s blank space in the info window, and anything players can already see on that level might be helpful. Also it’d be interesting to know - didn’t have time to experiment - if turrets with more barrels (dual or triple turrets) have any different behaviour than other ones, like having a greater calibre or shooting more frequently, or anything at all. Also, I noticed that support units don’t go on the same slots as turrets, but are there differences between the very light emplacements and the rather heavy looking turrets as well, or is their balance simply that the former are more quickly deployed?
- If deployment speed/time for turrets isn’t 1:1 measureable by cost, it might be a good idea to include it in the units base stats, maybe instead of movement speed (while that may conflict with infantry, being useable on both sides, it doesn’t really matter, as infantry deployment seems to be pretty much instantly).
- In unit customization - if it’s possible - right-clicking on a saved “favorite” color should probably remove it instead of saving it yet again. While I see how the current form can be used to rotate the colors around (in order to move one to the end you may wish to replace), a simple removal on right-click seems more straight-forward for the user, but I don’t know how hard it is to implement.
- Where are recordings stored? I didn’t find a way to load them, yet.
- I think the internal damage augment is a tad weak - may be a misconception on my part, though. How is it better to put in 10% more internal damage over putting in 10% more general damage? Except if using both at once, when Patch 1.003 disallows double use of one.
- Splash Damage Augments should be disabled if a weapon without splash damage is selected. Or it should add a default (maybe relative to other variables) value splash damage and range to any weapon.
Just a few of my quick notes, but I’m seeing that the beta is going rather well.