Frozen Fallout's First Impressions

[FrozenFallout]

So thought I would do a write up after I tested out the game for the last 8 hours or so.

First off I would like to say this is one hell of a game. Even at alpha I really had a blast playing through the game. This is a worthy successor to Moo2 and I say that because I really feel like Im playing Moo2 and its just much more advanced. I have almost every 4x game you can get on Steam and really like what you guys have done. Its much more out of the box thinking with a 4x game with the strong story set up and having races start out at different starting positions with some being already long established. Feels way more real that way and makes diplo so important. I look forward to putting in thousands of hours of game play into what you have made. There are some areas though that could use some improvement.

Secondly I will go over how my game went. Making some comments on different aspects of the game as I tell my tale of victory on my first real play through. (A little disappointing that I beat it so quickly as I like things like Dwarf Fortress and see losing as fun but winning is ok too.)

I started off with the tutorial which I think a few other people have gone over any issues I had with that already.

After the Tutorial I restarted since I had learned allot with just a hour or two of game play.

I started out by exploring new planets and colonizing a few Terran Planets before I even got around to getting Mars under my control. Lucky seed Im guessing. I was able to expand quickly and make friends easily. Diplomacy is nice but I hope it gets expanded on. Currently I cant find a way to ask for a trade in tech but I can offer then request or request and see if they counter or just give it to me. Other then that I found it easy to understand how to make friends quickly and keep them as friends.

The diplo part of the game is what I concentrated on for the most part and also making sure that all of my planets where making a profit. I quickly made friends with the trading race and got a cool mission to trade with a bunch of people. This worked out perfect and allowed me to quickly build up friends. I found if I offered a simple tech I could quickly make friends and they would in turn give me gifts of tech. It was an interesting system and also found if I befriended a group who hated another my status with the other would go down. Which made sense but wasn't so OPed that it ruined any chances of making friends. Speaking of Missions they where good but need to be allot more and need to really make you feel part of a living galaxy.

After a short time the ooze looking things had ticked off a few of my friends and even though we where on good terms I felt my long standing friends could use my help in their war and after a request I quickly built up an invasion force and moved in on the ooze things. This is another thing though, I have had a few requests to war with this race or that with my friends but had no clue who they where talking about. I had no way of finding out my relations with that other race or any info on that other race other then their name. This needs to be fixed. You should get a break down of the stats of the guy they want you to attack. There should also be a wait to ask me again in 10 turns option or the like. Some times you don't have the forces in place to go to war with a race and you only need a little time. It just feels wrong to reject.

I found combat to be fun although I did find myself doing auto allot since the controls are a little clunky. I hope this will be improved as it gets to Beta and then release. One thing was the need to scroll when you get to the side of the screen. Also a zoom in and out would be really helpful in combat mode.

I really like how theres a map phase then a combat phase that is the full galaxy. However this did cause some issues such as friendly ships being near my base triggered the game to go out of auto causing me to shoot some friendly ships.

Also speaking of shooting friendlies it was some times very hard to target enemy ships if mine where close and I ended up shooting some of my own ships. This should be removed unless you feel you have a really good reason why I would ever need to shoot on my own ships (also if its just 1 or two conditions it might be better to set it up so they can only be shot under those conditions instead of all the time)

Combat was awesome though and really brought me back to Moo2 like no other game has really done. Space Empires IV came very close and was great but I think your way of making a secondary galaxy map for all combat to take place on is just epic.

However this also causes a few issues like not understanding at all where everything is on the combat map. I some times found my self feeling like, why did the game auto pause where is the ship it sees. Or where the hell is this, I thought that scout was with a big group (big group is behind the scout on the next screen over). Things like this can be fixed by 1 making enemies on the min map really pop out. Second get that screen scroll and zoom in and out going in combat mode so I don't need to click all over.

Also there should be a way to easily unselect being in target mode in combat mode. I also found that auto mode was very simple which Im hoping is an alpha thing but it didn't launch fighters or launch assault craft.

After smashing their space forces and the ground got blasted by my space force I moved the troops in. Not very impressive but ground combat makes sense and looks like it can be expanded on a bit more. Options are always good here to boost or minus your combat score. Such as using Nukes (damages more structures, environment and people more but makes it easier and can get you condemned, Bio weapons for more condemning but less structure damage. Careful force and full force to either improve or diminish you not to blow stuff up when you invade.

After that I found they had built up a bit of a force and stopped me from taking or wiping out all but their homeworld which survived much into the late game. After the war all but ended (they didn't even try and take my offers of peace until I had just about landed my troops on their last world) I found my self looking to improve friendships and my econ. After having payed off everyone for Alliances I only had 2 left to get and via tech offers and trade packs along with everything else I found it was just a matter of time before I won.

The Ending was a bit underwhelming which no stats or even credits at this point and a very short cinema. I hope this gets improved. The end of the game should give you some voice over saying what happened at the end of the story based on how you won. Please also make sure to give stats. Also if you are really looking for people to post up full write ups on what they have done in the game a text log that can be accessed in and out of game would be awesome.

Missions where fun and gave me some extra things to do. Exploration was fun at the start but I found I gave up on it after mid game as I just had many other things to worry about and the cryptic nature of the missions would mean I just stumbled on the complete requirement. Also it needs to be easier to understand how which planets need exploration/digging and which ones have already been surveyed. Its a really big pain to go 3 menus deep on each system to see if something is explored or not. Exploration button that showed all exploration info for each planet would make that much easier. Also an auto explore system would be nice. Something like scouts can be set to auto explore nearest systems.

Speaking of going into menus to get to something design needs to be on the main map screen maybe by tech. Having to go into a planet to get to design screen just doesn't feel right at all. Leave that button there but add another to the main screen somewhere. Also auto update is going to be required. There is just to much tech in the game to force me to always be updating all 4 ship types every few turns when you get to Mid/End game.

Also getting from one planet to another that I own should be much simpler. I like that I can pick any planet in a system but there should be an arrow on the right and left side of the screen that takes me to the next planet I own so I can quickly cycle through all my own planets with out needing to make a ton of clicks just to make sure I have checked out all my planets.

Another thing about the map is it needs some options to take things like trade routes off and things like that. Late game allot of the map is just a bunch of lines with dots and symbols. Needs to be able to be cleaned up so that it looks nice. Also a influence radius around planets would be kinda cool to see. Even if you didn't do anything with the influence radius until maybe an expansion or the like. Just cool to see a map of the galaxy and easily see via influence radius' where everyone's empire is. Also taking over planets like and Galactic Civ II is really cool. Conquer by your culture is always a great option for those who don't want to use brute force to attack an enemy.

Planet Managers would also be nice to auto control making things on that planet and maybe a bit more culture and the like to you planets. Moral is always a great thing to have in games. Little things like this can really improve the management of the planet. Also it seems a bit simple to upgrade planet structures and have no really options here it feels like. I just upgraded everything and all my planets kicked butt and it shouldn't be that simple. I should have some choices to make here.

I would also like more info on the aliens. I found just acting nice and giving stuff away worked for everyone. Shouldn't be that way. Diplo should be all about working differently with different races. Also you should be able to interact with races a bit more maybe ask questions or get different insight into other races. Also please say that spies will eventually make it it. Spies are super awesome in games like this and should give you more ability to interact with and learn about races. Your knowledge of a race should build over time and also help you understand how to interact with said race.

I hope also that options to turn off different win conditions are able to be done. I really want to have a game that goes over 2000 turns as I build up a crazy empire and work with other races to create an epic game.

I also read some where I think that Multiplayer is not going to happen. I hope this gets revised. I think I would spend days on end playing this game with my friends. Even in alpha it would be awesome. Sure some games might take forever since its a set up to be a very tactical game but I think it would be worth it.

And as for glitches I didn't run into any that I really noticed. Maybe a few here and there that I cant really think of or didn't notice or know about. For an alpha this was very stable.

The only other then I would like to add is End game was getting a bit slow with the combat turns taking a good amount of time while I waited of others to do their thing. With the way its set up though thats expected. But I hope this can be improved on.


Thanks for your time
Frozen
Fallout

PS: I also was wondering if anyone has considered changing up how much time goes by after a turn. 1 year just seems way to much. Would it at all be possible for it to be changed to .1 year per turn?

PPS: I really hope your going to open this up to the Modding Community? This game would do well to have strong modding support.

PPPS: Minor Races Please? That would really be cool and I think greatly improve the mission system.

(I plan on updating this thread with more comments and info as I continue to play in the Alpha)

[CyberMage]

PS: I also was wondering if anyone has considered changing up how much time goes by after a turn. 1 year just seems way to much. Would it at all be possible for it to be changed to .1 year per turn?

PPS: I really hope your going to open this up to the Modding Community? This game would do well to have strong modding support.

PPPS: Minor Races Please? That would really be cool and I think greatly improve the mission system.

Thanks for taking the time to compose such a lengthy analysis! Having less time available, I will only react to the very end of your lengthy post.

Your PS > I agree : 0.1 year per turn would be more realistic than a full 1.0 year per turn.

Your PPS > I agree : just look what the modding community did with the Endless game.

Your PPPS > I agree : minor races, if strong enough, can act as speed-bumps to excessive expansion, and if associated to original and significant ethnocultural characteristics, they can enrich the story-line and the diplomatic dimensions of the game.

[Grogger]

Very informative and entertaining post, thank you


Just to comment on a few things:

Modding: We do intend to make the game friendly for modders, many systems are already in place for this, and most assets are exposed for alterations.

Minor races: I can't promise anything, but minor races are still on the table at this point

Wait x turns to ask again: This is currently in place, but it is per race and is automatically applied (eg. the Kuntari will not repeat itself for 10 turns, but the Barsig can repeat what the Kuntari said).

Attacking your own ships: This has been disabled in the current version (0.0.2) [or at least, should be]

Launch Fighters: This feature is still in the works, so do expect some misbehaving or lacking functionality

End Game: We plan to improve this further (in time), probably with some stats and details of what happened


Thanks again for your feedback, it was a good read