*** CLOSED BETA UPDATES & DISCUSSION/BUG REPORTS II ***

When will the next server reset be? And when will the large map be a part of it?

 

I still don't know which Gen ship to progress to

The shipyard website doesn't have the same information or as readable of a format as the shipyard in game. Much more difficult to navigate as well.

 

Rofl

Genari Tactical Officer has 'Sol' Overload skill.

Tactical Officer can only get 5 ranks?!

 

Slaughter has a typo: "no not"
Repair/Skip repair still active after ship is repaired. They should auto disappear.

Would like to suggest space dock prompting player to buy a ship if he has none. As a newbie, felt stuck inside the dock.
Perhaps when clicking on a star system in the galaxy map, a link to dock appears on the side bar? Feels repetitive to navigate into the dock.
Maybe ship should auto repair after leaving a battle scene? Doing mission just to repair and exit seems not legit and repetitive.
During combat, is it possible not to auto-center on the ship from a single click? After much effort to drag the map to a good view, single clicking on ship mess up the effort.

 

I can answer some of those:

-Being stuck without a ship is possible in the beta, be careful to always have a Class III in hangar (don't spend your refund + last bit of existing points on a Class IV or w/e and then lose it! you only get the refund on a Class III) A full tutorial is a ways off, best done after the game is feature complete. That's what we are here for on the forums
-I suggested the same thing about repair and it was noted, should auto-end after all repairs are complete if any points are remaining. There are a few problems with repairs being ironed out still.
-Would love to be able to go directly from galaxy map to dock, now get Vesuvius to agree
-Your ship does auto repair very slowly if idling in a sector or on galaxy map (I think), but I agree it is pretty slow and you would think you could just spend your 'free flight' time making all repairs quickly while there is no danger.
-Unfortunately, every round, you will have the camera re-centered on your ship. You can manage your view quickly using the tab key and spacebar in addition to mouse drag and wheel zoom. It's actually a useful thing on the very large maps, especially when you have a very mobile ship. Takes a little getting used to, but then its all good. I generally prefer a distant top-down view.

 

It's Official: After spending some time playing Genari and reviewing their ships at the shipyard in-game, I hate all Genari ships with the exception of the AF IV. Some come close to being the 'right package' between power, weapons, maneuvering, weapon arrangement, etc., but none are quite right. I look at many of them and think to myself "How pointless" to have X weapons just on the front of the ship that need Y power to operate and you have Z power that is around 1/2 to 3/4 of Y at best, let alone scanners, shields, movement, or marine pods.

Genari sucks except for their Tactical Officer and AF IV.

Genari weapons are horribly short ranged and inaccurate, which after review, the wonderful Tac Officer is poor compensation.

Having 20% bonus accuracy on a 50% accurate range 6 (50% chance to hit at range 3).... you go up to a 60% chance to hit at range 3, have a 78% chance to hit at range 2, or a 95% at range 1 (compared to a 50, 72, and 95% chance to hit at 3 to 1 hex out without the accuracy skills). There is no option when it comes to combat with Genari but to go point blank (making accuracy almost useless, except for the case of select few 60% base acc long range weapons), leaving you extremely vulnerable to counter attack (not necessarily counter-fire weapons, but you have to spend a lot of mobility to get in close, reserving little to none for egress) and reactor explosions. So the Tac Officer affords Genari the option to get much more acc bonus (or others), but those bonuses are required to begin to equal Sol... at 60% (full 10 ranks) bonus accuracy, that 50% chance to hit becomes 80 at 3 range...... eww

Sorry but, Genari sucks. I get that they are supposed to have differences and play to that 'different' strength, but 1-off marines pods sure as hell aren't it.

No way in hell would I play Genari over Sol as is.

These are my very brief thoughts.. if you wish to debate anything, I'm game.

Marine pods are trash, poor compensation for other things Genari lack. I expect this point to be debated.

To be fair, there are few Sol ships (literally 3 to 5) that I approve of as well, but having something to work with at various tiers is better than having nothing good beyond a corvette.

-You might dislike the Genari, but at least until the Heavy Cruiser thru Dreadnought, they are a fine match to Sol. Right now not all the Genari features are set, such as 10 levels of Tac officer, support ships, honorable death, marine pods etc... And marine pods + slaughter is an amazing way to get XP. Sol combat is very basic, standard, while as a Genari player you need a more advanced playstyle to take advantage of their uniques. -Vesuvius

 

On a positive note: I love the new 'Director' and how higher class ships (I've seen up to multiple class 4's, 5's and even a 6) appear as AI defenders the closer you are to capturing a territory.

The fight gets tougher (ok not really if you know what you are doing vs 'A-not-so-I', one tactic rules them all), the bounty increases, and more capture points are awarded with less interruptions (you get tired of the transit phase cut scenes after awhile + it gives away where the enemy ship is).

 

Suggestion: New Captain Skill 'Contemplation' or whatever you want to call it - Adds 10 seconds to combat phase time for rank 1, 30 seconds for rank 2.

Or make a system that allows you to 'bank' up to so much extra time if not used in previous combat/allocation phases.

Moving ~60 tiles with a fast ship or less with slower ships + the annoying stops every time you ID a target (Even if it is already seen by a teammate) really eats up your time.

 

Oh yeah, the AF II seems to be a copy of the IV without the useless marine pods but +2 hull instead. I'd like it better if it weren't for the swanky paint job

Seems to be the only difference, yet the IV is rated slightly higher for defense with less hull??

-That is something I need to fix in the Admin on my own. I'm finalizing some changes to the AFII and AFIV (as well as two of the Mendi ships) so their ratings equate to their original data, not their new data. -Vesuvius

 

Marine pods are a great concept to make Genari the 'melee' faction. But it doesn't seem viable in large multiplayer fights being 1 time usage and it seem to have low damage to power cost ratio. Wanna suggest 2 ideas.
1. Have a cooldown timer of about 2 turns before the pods recharge. People who specialize in pod attack can use the recharge time to scout for the team? With this change, ships with multiple pods will have lesser pods, but more marines per pod to keep the same strength but feel the cooldown limitation too.
2. I think currently crew members are 'repairable' is it? To make pods worth the power cost and danger to use, maybe crew members should only be able to repopulate slowly outside battle. This way, the pod players' role in a team fight is to help degrade a large ship.

 

Genari's tactical officer's sensor boost doesnt seem to work. My First Honor 1 had 12 range before. After getting it, it still says 12.

 

(Faction)

No, one-off abilities/weapons are not very good in large scale, long duration conflicts.... unless your objective is an alpha strike and then retreat, not necessarily domination/conquest.

Marine pods are extremely power hungry and of little effect when they land. Then considering you cannot use them without dropping shields first, makes them even harder to use on the lighter more agile ships that dont have the punch to break shields. The larger ships that DO have the punch to break shields... lack the mobility to get in close enough to use the pods reliably!

-Take note that you can launch a pod from any side of your ship, so its as simple as finding a vulnerable side with no shields and launching it no matter which direction you happen to face. Power has been set to 5 for the pod, but it can always be changed. However, it could be potentially OP if it was reduced in power costs -Vesuvius

Overall, Genari ships are poorly powered (AF II and IV aside) and their shorter ranged/less accurate weapons are a huge drawback. Though there are only a few I truly like, I don't mind Sol ships being expensive if they get work done.

 

No science skills appear to have been working since many updates ago, nor are several other officer skills. Some were recently brought online, but they still have issues.

 

Yes, you have the ability for omni-directional weapons, which is exactly why I suggested having ships with an upper and/or lower turrets, capable of firing in any direction. Add some flavor and choices to ships! Pods firing in all directions at a range of 1 isn't really that useful though, nor is the effect of the pod. Not having to spend MP on rotation isn't really an issue. You still have to spend a ton of MP to get in close, manage to down a shield, then have spent a ton of power on pods and use them for minimal effect.

 

Then there is the whole problem of the 'last hit' in a team game..? Without the option to share bounty with teammates (yes option, not mandatory), people will be much less inclined to work together and instead always try to score the 'last hit' for themselves in order to get the big bounty.

In order to facilitate cooperative play (at least among friends/clan mates), perhaps you should allow partying where everyone in the party gets a share of the final XP (damage XP is still per individual output) split evenly with the bounty modified by +10% per party member (or some other factor, wouldn't go beyond +25% per member).

2 people in party, 110% kill bounty value, 55% goes to each member on kill (or capture), you only get 'damages' XP based on what you do.
3 people in party 120%, 40% each
4 people 130, 130/4
5 people 140, 140/5
6 people 150, 150/6
etc.


Oh and troop transports... UGH!

I get the concept but damn... no way would I want to have to link up with another ship to reload abilities vs just blasting away as with any other race. Think about it... You have to meet all the previous conditions to use your pods, then you have to spend a turn retreating?! to meet up with a troop transport and resupply, then spend another turn re-engaging?! Meanwhile, troopless Sol ships will continue to operate at full power and focus on doing what they do without being bogged down by such interactions.

If one repair point does 5% of your crew or up to 20% of your crew with Med Officer and marine pods kill like 10-20 AT BEST... A ship with 100 crew counters ALLL that effort and energy of marine pod use with one repair point (out of a max of 11 with rank 5 engineering once base repair is reduced from 2 to 1) OR... I could just do more useful hull damage with the energy (costing 1:1 repair) and maneuvering, with weapons receiving bonus damages from officer and proximity, even a 1-charge weapon for 1 energy is generally worth 4 damage and requires no reloading.

Not to mention what I told you about tactical positioning and being able to bypass other ships and alpha strikes, a troop transport is an easy kill. There is no way to play this game defensively except for being far away or sticking to the border of the map. You cannot form a ring of ship or other formation. You are not protected from fire by objects/other ships from certain angles/surfaces because of the presence of an obstacle.

I get that space is huge. Even so, it is also entirely possible to fly one ship in the shadow of another, thus being obstructed from line of sight, and thus detection and attacks (at least from point-based/directional weapons, we still have no AoE weapons, which makes sense if each tile is 1000 km I suppose, no fighter drones, no seeking missiles, no ability to place minefields or other AI-operated deployables, no specialization for or against a particular aspect of combat, no stealth/detection combat).

Right now, the game is whoever moves first and finds the other guy wins, especially if you are Sol. Maybe you can only get in and destroy a single ship then you have to leave or retreat for awhile, so what? You caused extreme losses for minimal risk. You don't have to dominate the battlefield to win the war, just one battle at a time.

 

Really need increased quality of Marine Pods as ship size increases, not just increased quantity for the same effect and unit cost.

If any Gen ship powers up all its marine pods, it is unable to move to use them.

If they only power up one pod and maybe enough weapons to down a shield while retaining the ability to close distance, they are doing little to no hull damage and 1 pod's worth of troop damage is easily repaired.

I've been seeing this huge Catch 22 with the Genari since I first looked at their ships and armaments.