Hi all!
First off, I'd like to say I enjoy Harbinger for the PC a lot. It seems quite solid, and the gameplay is a lot of fun - even if it has a nasty tendency to end abruptly in fiery death.
Now, there's some things I've noticed.
1: When starting a new game, the AI gives info messages. These are nice for the setting, but once you've started ten games, you usually just want to get past them. It's then quite noticeable that the 'start 'next' etc. buttons change location for each click. It might be better to have a fixed location for them, or condensing the various minor messages into one.
2: Information on various weapons and such. (Actually, never mind. While double checking this, I finally noticed the ? for the text description toggle.).
3: The ships lack a certain something to make them more unique. It would be cool if each ship had a 'special' slot with a unique piece of gear that can be upgraded - either a small selection of gear available for each class of ship (Liike an engine booster or accuracy buff for scout ships, a drone/fighter/bomber HP booster for carriers, free (but slow) hull repair for cruisers (or improved fire control systems).. that sort of thing. Something that affects other items on the ship, or basic abilities. This is .. probably something that has been suggested before, and it would be quite a bit of work to make it good, but ... it'd be nice.
4: Ship control, targeting priorities, etc. While playing I notice that I'd love to be able to tweak the AI for weapon mounts, either by assigning them a 'stance' or priorities for point defence, targeting ships, or always closest, etc. Also, especially when controlling only one ship, I can't really see why it shouldn't always be selected for control. Instead it's deselected constantly. Now, it is still somewhat selected for movement (If you have the formation move on if no ship selected thingy) but not for targeting enemies. Also, the focus X weapon on target circle tends to disappear when I click something on it instead of selecting it. (Not always, but it's annoying.).
5: Tradeoffs vs improvements.
Upgrading weapons is cool. However, some of the weapons has tradeoffs while upgrading (MIssiles reload slower if you improve range or accuracy, for instance.). Other improvements are pure improvements, and it's not consistent. Improving missile damage reduces reload speed, but improving projectile shot damage doesn't, for instance. Other things, like nukes and (at least it seems that way) fighters has just one tradeoff. So far, that's fair enough. But it costs the same wether it's a tradeoff or not. That seems .. a bit off, at times. Case in point, missile turret. If you improve damage from 50->70, you get +.2 recharge. If you add a missile, you get 2 missiles with 35 damage each - so the same total damage - but a slew of other, larger penalties as well. (Of course, two missiles are harder to shoot down than one, and increasing the damage then is more effective, so I can see why, but.. it's a fairly situational advantage for all those penalties.
6: Info on fighters etc - their stats, like hull etc - isn't visible anywhere that I can tell. WIthout that kind of info it's kind of hard to tell which point defences are good and which are not. I've guesttimated it to be around 70, though, which is just enough to make it rather useful to upgrade projectile turretts' damage a bit.
PS: I'm writing this after having played the bloody thing for way too long. It's noon and I haven't slept today. Fantastic. I'll blame spelling errors and brain farts on the game.
