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Feedback/Suggestions

camael
Tue, 27 Dec 2016 02:43:46 GMT

Greetings. A few hours into the game, I'd like to share some observations and make a few suggestions: The interface is a menace. This is an amazing game, offering lots of depth, but seriously, aurrrrgh. I never know which of my ships is selected. I have to switch between map and normal view using a tiny button ("Q" seems to do nothing), and can not scroll the map properly, nor zoom out far enough. The targeting pop-up when left-clicking something tries to sneak away constantly... (...) and to round it all off, my ships just loooove to crush into things. So. Suggestions: 1. Make the map mappier. More overview, quicker zoom, quicker scroll. Do away with the nav-computer idea. It's hard to handle. If I go into a map, I want to do all those things, place waypoints, use them, and so forth. Let me do it directly. 2. Give the A.I. some collision detection. Pleeease. 3. Give me an option to use the "jump" speed without having to go to a specific target. I want to go fast, why force me to first place a waypoint using an atrocious "enter coordinates" interface? 4. Give me a bet ter fleet interface. Formations and groups don't seem to do anything or are so hard to use that I can't figure them out being a space-tactics-stuff veteran of many years and games. Separate the fleet from the general "friendly/neutral" interface, give me quick-access buttons using the number keys, and some basic info screen showing the status of all the ships in the fleet. 5. Do away with cargo-per-ship. It's only a slight benefit in "realism" to have a specific ammo/missile count per ship, but it is gruesome trying to transfer this cargo ship to ship (drop and salvage) and it does not work properly either (can pick up and use dropped missiles, but not sell them, i.e.), also a central game mechanic - namely combat - suffers from this. Ammo and minerals are always needed. I do not want to micro-manage every bullet and every piece of ore between ships, not for shooting, not for repairs, and much less for trading. Remove the trade skill from hired captains, pool all cargo space on ships, give all ships access to this cargo pool. Mechanics streamlined, issue resolved. Also, You'll always want to sell stuff with the captain that has the highest trade skill. Not a good idea to give "hired" captains this option, should be main character exclusive. Otherwise I can just hire a guy who does nothing but skill "trade" and put him in charge when I dock somewhere. Also, it's lots of useless micro-management. 6. Early-game radar is too tiny, and there are too few valid choices to improve this. As there are some targets that'll just vaporize my fleet in seconds (who put those hydra-things next to the pirate-target in the first sector?) it would be nice to get a chance for avoiding them. But putting a radar on my ships that have barely enough slots for drones, cargo, reactor and engines is impossible. Either move radar as an extra slot to the bridge/AI section, or give me some kind of rather cheap EW/recon frigate I can afford early in the game. Please. 7. Try to make the interface less fidgety. There are a billion possible variations to most commands, and they make sense, but it's too hard to really use them, especially for lacking tooltip-reminders. The tutorial just bombs You with info that does not stick. Maybe add an "idiot mode" option to the tooltips, for beginners, stating exactly which combination of active commands and clicks does what. That would be super awesome. 8. A better refit interface would help. Show me firing arcs, show me what type of slots I have even while they are occupied, add "minimum sane range" tooltip to missiles. 9. The saving times are insane. I have no idea if this can be optimized, but it would make life a lot better, given the hit-and-miss nature of setting out for adventure. Meet an unfortunate monstrosity with missile range beyond twice Your radar, ooops... You did not save because it takes forever? Back to square (-1) You go. 10. Generic, random missions would help. I find very few chances for growth at the moment. I can neither train new captains, nor go looting and salvaging, because hunting pirates/monsters roughly on my level is super-dangerous, and often them pirates are already all dead. All I can do now is mine asteroids, sell that stuff and upgrade my fleet until I feel ready to take on the next bigger threat... and that is tedious and boring. And dangerous, because of my kamikaze-helmsmen. I understand that this is a rather small project and still in development, so please don't take this as a "this is junk" comment. The breadth and depth of this game seems amazing, and I can't wait to meet a "machine god" or just my first live space-whale. A lot of ambition and complexity, but this game won't be able to benefit from these strengths if one has to fight the interface constantly. Streamlining, usability, accessibility. Will make me happy, probably some other folks, and very likely improve reviews and sales by a lot. I hope this project stays alive and really becomes a success. It's a really cool game.