Early thoughts

[okreps]

I've played this game for only about 10 hours so this is a rather premature post, but I thought I'd put up a post detailing my thoughts so far (especially since the new Civ 5 expansion just came out and I need to sink my fangs into it). Overall, I think this is a game with a lot of potential that does a lot of things right but could definitely use some improvement.

(Keep in mind that I am an experienced 4X, and space 4X, player and that the balancing issues might not affect most players, only the ones who know what to do right off the bat.)

I'll start with things I particularly liked about the game:

-Technology. The approach to research and technology that this game offers is fresh, interesting, and fun. It feels much more realistic than the classic 'research one thing at a time', and also adds a layer of strategy to the game regarding what you focus on. The technologies themselves are interesting, and give you room to expand so that you rarely run out of stuff to research. Very fun and well done in my opinion.

-Space combat. As well, I am a big fan of the space combat system. Most 4X games either offer very limited battles, even completely automated battles, or veer too far into RTS territory (which is fine, but I'm not a fan of that). The combat system in Horizon is both intuitive and strategic, without losing the turn-based feel. It can allow weaker fleets to gain an advantage with good strategy, and also forces players to focus on what they want to do with their ships, rather than just pumping out a bunch of them. As well, the space combat A.I. seemed very solid (though I have some issues with the A.I. in other areas, as I'll describe later).

-The Economy. The economic system in this game also seems realistic and fresh. Focusing on things that actually impact a real economy - trade, tax, and the like - change economics from being simply numbers to manipulate to a more intuitive, realistic system. It is still fairly simplistic - build better trade buildings to get more trade, build better factories to gain more production, etc - but all in all I like the economy. I also noticed some subtle effects such as trade being lessened the further a planet was from other major planets - was that just my imagination? If not, it's a very nice touch.

-Growth and Pollution. I had such a strong economy in my main game that I didn't need to worry about pollution - I simply set all of my planets to maintain (and brought Earth down to 0 by cleaning for a while). That said, I think the pollution mechanic could be interesting. I also like the growth mechanic, as well as the ability to set up military outposts (though I very rarely did, again because my economy was ridiculous).

There were other things that I liked, but those were probably what I liked most. Now, let's get into my complaints and suggestions for improvement. I've split these into two sections - a gameplay/mechanics section and a balance section. Most of these are relatively minor quibbles, but a few are nearly game breaking.

Gameplay/Mechanics

-Ground Combat. I was never able to get this to work for some reason. I am still confused about what one actually needs to do to initiate it, what is supposed to happen, etc. Perhaps this could be added to the tutorial?

-Ability to play as other races. I saw that this was a feature that would likely be implemented by release. I suggest making it a top priority. Part of the appeal of 4X games is the replay value that comes from playing a whole new species, or country or whatever. This would be one of the game breaking problems but I see that it is already being worked on.

-Shipbuilding. I understand if it would be tricky to have the ability to make truly unique ships, such as in Galactic Civilizations, and I understand the reasons for potentially not doing this. But, at the very least, allow us to rename ships to actually designate their roles (i.e. bomber, troop transport, fighter carrier, battlestar, etc).

-Trading. Why not allow trading of technology for technology, credits for technology, immediate credits for long-term payments, etc? The trade system needs a major overhaul. I was not a fan of 'demanding' tech from allied races, even though I gave them tech on the next turn and it didn't seem to hurt our relationship.

Balancing

-A.I, apart from space combat. This is one of the potentially game-breaking issues, and also one of the hardest to fix, I imagine, but the A.I. in almost every facet apart from space combat seems almost insanely stupid. For starters, they would refuse to treat even when my ships were preparing to blow their home planet to kingdom come. Much, much weaker races decided, totally inexplicably and through no clear action of my own, to declare war on me - given my level of dominance in that game (more on this in a second), essentially committing suicide. The only way they were made competitive was by cheating - for instance, in the story mode game I played, the Kuntari (may have misspelled, the orange guys with the long, insect-like heads) started in a system with 4 rich terran planets, all bigger than earth, giving them a huge head start on basically everything. Another way the A.I is weak is that other races barely colonize beyond their home system at all . In the main game I played, which was a pure 4X style game, no other race had more than 2 systems by the time I had about 20. This allowed me to easily dominate in all facets of the game, because...

-Colonization is insanely overpowered. So long as you make sure to stay in the black for your first 5 or so colonies, you can basically expand without checks, giving you much more trade, more production, more science, and more everything. By the time I quit my main game, I controlled 20 or so systems and 40 or so planets, was gaining 200 billion credits per turn (and that was increasing exponentially), had enough research to get any tech I wanted in a few turns, and largely due to this insane economy, had a fleet that could wipe out any civilization in a few turns. How did I do it? Simply by colonizing early, and making sure I had the money to build up my colonies as I made them. The most powerful X in 4X games, in my opinion, is eXpansion - if you expand enough, you're unstoppable (which is why I normally take the American approach to nation-building - expand, build up production and economy, and then crush everybody). Most games, to counteract this, have some limiting factor to expansion, such as happiness or something like that. This game has one in the form of the potential of your economy cratering, but if you play carefully, it's extremely easy to expand a ton, which is especially bad because the other races don't do it.

-Weapons - some weapons feel overpowered. Anything with Vorpal, and anything heavy, seemed extremely overpowered - I was essentially building ships with nothing but heavy neutrino cannons and it kept working (as long as I kept some fighters in the mix). Also, fighters seem somewhat OP as well. They can do tremendous damage, move around instantly to flank enemies, and protect your capital ships from missiles brilliantly.

So, those are my main thoughts on the game so far. Given the new Civ 5 expansion, I can't say how much I'll be playing this week, but I'll definitely look for more things to comment on. Overall, I think it's a well-made, fun game with a lot of potential - if the Colonization and A.I issues are fixed, it could be incredible.

Comments? Has anyone else experienced these things?

[Zaimat]

Thanks okreps, appreciate the great feedback! Improvements, balance will be coming indeed, a matter of time.

Some quick comments:
. Trade traffic is indeed affected by distance between planets (very cool you noticed it!)
. You can rename ships (on ship design) and rename taskforces (on galaxy map, order rename).

[okreps]

Hm, maybe the renaming thing is just user error... thanks!

[Inquisitor]

Great post, okreps! I completely agree with what you think is great about the game. I haven't played it for long enough to say about the not so good things.

[Xenotron]

In order to not create "one more thread about my thought about this game" , I'll add my comments here. Sure, everything is only my opinion.

- I agree with TS that Research is very good. It's cool that new technologies just appear from nowhere as you advance. Ability to focus is good as well.
I miss just a cool feature of MOO2 that you can't research all technologies (if you don't have a special racial perk), so you have to choose carefully and then trade or steal or capture other technologies. As I said, it boosts both Research and Diplomacy areas as well as requires a clear strategy from player.
- Haven't played a lot of space combat battles yet, but I'm annoyed with UI. Too much space for UI and a very little space for actually space battle left. Also I'm continuously try to increase the scale of space battle, as it's not enough to see all required information - ships, planets etc. I would suggest either to allow users to hide UI completely (or partially) or to rework it, so it'll require less space on the screen. Just make all these buttons smaller or/and add drop-down list of available commands to right click on both your and enemy's ships and facilities. In worst case - just copy the same approach with TF's orders from the main map.
Current realization is playable, but annoying and discomfortable.
- Economy system is more or less OK. Sure, it should be more hard for player to create profitable economy. Also, player have to know what's the elements of revenue and costs of this particular colony. Because I wans't able to understand why my Capital world with 9bln people had 2-3 times less revenue than the other colony with less people.
Personally me prefer to see a colony screen with all built facilities, as it was implemented in MOO2 as example. Also, I like approach to limit player in possibility to build facilities on colonies, so he can't build all structures on all colonies or it would be less efficient than concentration on one specific area (Research, Military, Production, ?).
So far all colonies are the same. The difference only in amount of population and minerals - even food production is not so important. So, loosing one of them will not hit you as you have 5-10-20 more the same colonies.
- Fully agree with TS. Pollution system is not working so far.
- Ability to play for other races make sense only if these races will be unique in something besides ship models and flag. The best approach I think is to have truly unique technologies, as all perks like "+20 to production" or "-5 to atttack" are OK, but not fun.
- Shipbuilding. I would prefer to have slightly more types of sizes of ships and that all of them weren't available from the very begging.
I would like also to have possibility to design Starbases as well.
Definetely, it's better to implement drop-down list rather than cycling among available designs by clicking on their names.
Not sure about the feature of possibility to build ships of the different sizes at the same type...
- Agree with TS that trading should be more complicated in Diplomacy area.
Also, it's very strange that Research treaty is available only after Alliance pact.
Also, I have no idea what does "free travel" pact means

Very important text: Please, consider possibility to modify vanilla game or mods support. It's quite important part of the game as you can't create ideal game for everybody and players will always ask to bring some brand's specific (StarTrek, Babylon 5) into the game or change this and that. Mods could be an answer and greatly increase number of players.
It's very important to think about it now, as possibility to modify game resources should be included into its architecture from the very first phases of SW development.
As better approach I would prefer mods support where modders could change as many aspects and resources of the vanilla game as possible.
If it's not possible due to some reasons, at least consider to leave full or part of the code in open format, so it could be modified. For example, UFO:Extraterrestrials was made like that and players corrected some bugs and added a lot of new features into vanilla game using this possibility (with support from devs).
It's always a balance between players to have possibility to tune vanilla game and developers to have possibility to create addons/DLC and earn some more money. But I like, for example, approach of Bethesda Softworks with their TES5:Skyrim - it's very modable game and still devs were able to sell 3 addons already.

Edited: Red text and below.

[Malkuth]

Interesting about the weapons I have the opposite effect.. Im still fielding lasers vs everything else.. Combat wise I can't get an edge at all.. The Race you mentioned that is OP toward even your empire.. I have the same problem. These guys were fielding level 7 stuff and I still had lasers.

But lucky for me your right about the AI.. Other then combat.. They are dumb.. And I was able to survive. Until finally the kuntari feeling sorry for squashing my fleets put up an armistice.

The game is so different Im having a hard time adjusting and understanding what to do.. But starting to get the hang of it I think... I think.