Rift bug and suggestions

[RubenKraken]

I picked up this game this weekend through Steam and convinced a friend to pick it up as well so we can play some multiplayer. She is having a bug where the rifts do not show up at all. Just empty space where a rift might once have been. She can't pass through the area where the rift should be so it seems purely a graphical glitch, but I did not see this particular issue reported anywhere. I can probably get more info on the machine or any log files you would require to help track down the cause.

I also want to say thanks for such a cleverly simple game. Honestly when looking over the game I thought for sure it wouldn't be able to sustain any sort of deep strategy, but gave it a shot anyways and was pleasantly surprised. I was also a little surprised to not see some common 4x things that I am not sure if you considered implementing and decided not to or just have not gotten around to them, but I figured I would throw them out there anyways.

Natives/pirates - The first time I attacked a native planet after a long play session to see something like 600 ships I was a little confused, not knowing that the native planets have their own factories. What do you think about natives having some sort of rudimentary AI where they will attack a player who has attacked them, or maybe simply attack because they are pirates or gone mad like Reavers. This should, of course, be optional in the custom map as pirates seem to be a strict love or hate feature.

Detailed Logging - Maybe an option you can flip on to get a more detailed log of turn results. As it stands now if I have 5 ships and lose to a planet of 2 natives it would nice to be able to see if it is because of dice rolls and what their results are or what decides the outcome of battles. Alternatively, a secondary log of details so it doesn't bloat the main log with huge battles?

Enter to End Turn! - Hehe, it may seem very minor, but every 4x game I can think of has had the default End Turn button as Enter so I constantly hit it and get the chat window instead. If not making it a default, at least giving the option to change key assignments would be awesome. The mouse, as well. I'd really like to be able to set rally points using the Mouse 3 button.

Rally Point Networks - The ability to build rally point networks is what really makes the game stand out to me. It is such a simple yet powerful mechanic. Are there any plans to expand this in anyway? I know the premise of the game is keep it simple, but things like being able to split networks seems so tempting.

Rally Point Percentages - To follow up the previous point I'd really love to see the ability to set the amount of ships to leave behind by percentages instead of a constant to make it easier to deal with swelling. Stuff like 30% of overall fleet count so if my total fleet is 100 ships then the planet will cap at 30 ships, but as it grows to 200 it will automatically grow to 60.

Hexmap - I expected the hexmap in the background to be useful in getting a rough visual clue of how many turns it will take to get from one planet to another, but it seems purely ornamental since it doesn't resize when you zoom in and out. Anyway to make it a little more useful?

Minor stuff not that important but mentioning anyway - I was messing a little bit with map making and I made a map with 2 planets (uh...don't ask!  ) but accidentally left the number of AI players at 2 so the game crashed saying not enough planets per players. Probably not a very common issue, but getting an ingame notification instead of crashing the whole game would be nice. Also, as it stands it is possible to build a map that can never be beaten using rifts. I only mention this as it could be used for griefing in online games, particularly if automap downloads are or will be supported.

Phew, sorry.. lots there but hopefully good stuff. I look forward to seeing how this game develops.

[Chris]

Thanks for the detailed crits.

I picked up this game this weekend through Steam and convinced a friend to pick it up as well so we can play some multiplayer. She is having a bug where the rifts do not show up at all. Just empty space where a rift might once have been. She can't pass through the area where the rift should be so it seems purely a graphical glitch, but I did not see this particular issue reported anywhere. I can probably get more info on the machine or any log files you would require to help track down the cause.

A dxdiag log from that computer would be great. To get one, click Start, then click Run. Type in dxdiag and press enter. Once it's finished loading, click "Save all information" down the bottom. It will create a file called dxdiag.txt, which by default is saved to the desktop. Email dxdiag.txt to me, or send it via Private Message on these forums. Thanks!

Natives/pirates - The first time I attacked a native planet after a long play session to see something like 600 ships I was a little confused, not knowing that the native planets have their own factories. What do you think about natives having some sort of rudimentary AI where they will attack a player who has attacked them, or maybe simply attack because they are pirates or gone mad like Reavers. This should, of course, be optional in the custom map as pirates seem to be a strict love or hate feature.

I hadn't considered that. Not a bad idea. I'll add it to my growing list of feature requests.

Detailed Logging - Maybe an option you can flip on to get a more detailed log of turn results. As it stands now if I have 5 ships and lose to a planet of 2 natives it would nice to be able to see if it is because of dice rolls and what their results are or what decides the outcome of battles. Alternatively, a secondary log of details so it doesn't bloat the main log with huge battles?

It's just dice rolls, essentially. (Except there aren't any dice as such.) Not really all that interesting, and it would create a big log file.

Combat works as described here, in case you're interested.

Enter to End Turn! - Hehe, it may seem very minor, but every 4x game I can think of has had the default End Turn button as Enter so I constantly hit it and get the chat window instead. If not making it a default, at least giving the option to change key assignments would be awesome. The mouse, as well. I'd really like to be able to set rally points using the Mouse 3 button.

Allowing that kind of customisation over the mouse would be tricky with the current setup... but I'll note down the request for reassignable keys at least.

Rally Point Networks - The ability to build rally point networks is what really makes the game stand out to me. It is such a simple yet powerful mechanic. Are there any plans to expand this in anyway? I know the premise of the game is keep it simple, but things like being able to split networks seems so tempting.

I think it works OK as-is.   There are a lot of ideas which sound tempting to add. As you mentioned, I don't want to lose sight of the premise.

Rally Point Percentages - To follow up the previous point I'd really love to see the ability to set the amount of ships to leave behind by percentages instead of a constant to make it easier to deal with swelling. Stuff like 30% of overall fleet count so if my total fleet is 100 ships then the planet will cap at 30 ships, but as it grows to 200 it will automatically grow to 60.

I like the idea... I'll think about it.

Hexmap - I expected the hexmap in the background to be useful in getting a rough visual clue of how many turns it will take to get from one planet to another, but it seems purely ornamental since it doesn't resize when you zoom in and out. Anyway to make it a little more useful?

Nah. It's stuck to the background. Even if it did give you an indication of distance, it would be difficult to use since there's often not much difference between, e.g., a 1-turn journey and a 2-turn journey.

Minor stuff not that important but mentioning anyway - I was messing a little bit with map making and I made a map with 2 planets (uh...don't ask!  ) but accidentally left the number of AI players at 2 so the game crashed saying not enough planets per players. Probably not a very common issue, but getting an ingame notification instead of crashing the whole game would be nice. Also, as it stands it is possible to build a map that can never be beaten using rifts. I only mention this as it could be used for griefing in online games, particularly if automap downloads are or will be supported.

The maps are drawn from whatever the host has on their computer, so there's not much chance for griefing unless the host puts those kinds of maps on their computer and then lets other people change the game settings, in which case it's their own silly fault.

As for impossible maps, caveat cartographer.

Phew, sorry.. lots there but hopefully good stuff. I look forward to seeing how this game develops.

Yeah, that's all good stuff. I hope you like wherever I end up taking it!