I have similar thoughts like Sayanel. I think some gameplay elements were rushed or not considered well while adding great depth to game on other levels.
I respect that AdmiralGeezer has done so much work by himself in these 14 months. He created a very valuable product. But sometimes valuable products are not appreciated well, because we customers are only expecting to be happy for the amount we pay. If not happy, we are just bashing the product without knowing how much investment (money, sweat, time, etc.) had been done on it, but as reviews get negative, ratings get low, product doesn't sell well too.
What to do?
In Sector Siege's case, more time needs to be invested in Concept Design, Gameplay Design, Coding, Marketing. If it is an indie studio, delegation is the answer. (Such as getting assistance, sometimes in form of freelance work, sometimes voluntary, or getting partners. Sometimes I am able to find 10 times cheaper freelance work from somewhere with same quality than a more expensive place, we need to find the right platform sometimes)
Therefore some tasks we discuss here can be handled better thus Admiral Geezer can spend better time on Game Development with ease too.
I always believe the power of delegation, because we have limited hours a day to use it for efficient work, when we humans get together and delegate the jobs well, we are able to fulfill bigger works and produce more successful results.
I would like to share my feedback about several topics:
1) Technology:
I don't agree with current Tech system, because Tech is always a "Knowledge" Asset. Once it is known, you own the knowledge and you can apply it in everywhere.
You don't reinvent the wheel everytime.
But in every Campaign Mission, researching same technologies again and again is not meaningful. Same applies to Upgrades. Let's think, we have a Fleet, we upgraded it to the full, now we want to send it to another sector to invade it. It won't be meaningful, when your fully upgraded ships reach to their destination without any upgrades, any tech they owned previously.
Also in this point, I would like to suggest you using Battlevoid Harbinger style Main Fleet in Sector Siege.
When we invade a Sector, our Main Fleet (Let's call Invasion Fleet) jumps alongside the Battlestation, similarly our enemy can have its own Invasion Fleet when Attacking (We start with a single big capital ship representing the invasion fleet, we develop it throughout the campaign and we add ships to the invason fleet with glories we earn or with campaign income from sectors). Battlestation can offer smaller ships. We upgrade them, but they don't move to next Sector, because they stay in the defence of sector next time the sector is invaded. When enemy attacks, our already captured mining stations stay with us, but they arrive with an Invasion Fleet instead. When we attack, they own all the Mining Stations and we need to capture them with help of our Invasion Fleet. (Currently, when I attack to Trolgar territory, Mining Stations are not owned by Trolgars, but some by neutral or Guardians).
2) Start Positions:
Sector Position in every Campaign restart is not meaningful. I would like to start at random position in a galaxy, which all races are distributed randomly on it and they fight with each other too regarding to where they are.
You can give Galaxy options like Spiral, Elliptical, Irregular, Scattered. So each gameplay can be different and galaxy formation can change game experience very differently, increase the replayability highly.
At the moment, each gameplay is identical and offers repetitive experience.
3) Illogical Difficulty - Intervening Fleets
Currently, battles in both Skirmish and Campaign are ridiculously difficult.
For example, let's say we are fighting against Trolgars. Seeing Wanderers or Schillae making a parade (with most advanced ships) across the map and moving directly to Player Battle Station and capturing Mining stations along the way in every map I played are not logical to me.
I am fighting against Trolgars, invading Trolgar territory, why and how Wanderers or Schillae intervene my invasion everytime? This question is valid especially when they are on the other side of the Galaxy.
Such occurence can be acceptable as a rare event (and a reason is given: An event message pops out "A big Wanderer fleet warps in to this sector commander, please be careful, we don't know their motives" or something else)
No need to mention their intruder fleet contains at least one very strong ship with many support ship next to it. They easily disturb the balance of the battle.
Such usual disturbance creates added difficulty to Normal difficulty, which makes the game like Insane difficulty for this reason. I had to restart campaign for 5-6 times (I usually play games on Hard level in average) and everytime I started again, I experienced similar visitor factions, therefore now I play on Easy just to experience the game before I stop playing any longer or until a new update comes to fix the problem.
Therefore, seeing 3-4 parties in every Sector Siege battle destroyed my motive to play Campaign anymore.
Also for example seeing Guardians warping when we attack to a Mining station is not meaningful, why this is happening about Guardians needs to be mentioned in the game as a Lore.
After I finish my letter, I played another session, this time I was sieging a Wanderer battlestation, Guardians warped to my defenceless station nearby, when they attacked, they directly went to assault Wanderer Station. It was meaningless (OK, they warped and captured a Mining Base. Stay there and defend, or attack to other weak stations. No. They wanted to suicide through my fleet and then die next to Wanderer station.)
4) Sectors - Variations
Battlevoid Harbinger's levels/scenes (location nodes) were designed very well, every location were offering variety of different environments like Asteroid fields, nebulas, blackholes, factory planets, all were adding value to our strategic decisions "where to invade, move our fleet next?"
But in Sector Siege, there is no such thing. All sectors look identical to each other, only threat levels get higher.
5) Boarding system is not feasible, buying a Boarding Ship module is expensive (1200) and boarding is risky (host of boarding ship gets weaker) to use, requires too much micromanagement in order to capture, needs more simplifications (maybe a more direct UI button instead of choosing Hangars).
6) Squad Buttons: I still couldn't succeed using Squad Buttons on Mobile, I need some explanation if possible or if there is.
7) Repair
When a Unit needs 7000 cash to get repair, but we have 5000 cash, it should start repairing the 5000 amount. (After repairing complete and we open repair menu again, it can show "1000 more repair" is needed)
This is especially important, when we need immediate repair while under attack and we don't want to lose the ship, but still waiting the cash flow reach to 7000 leads me to lose that ship very easily and unncessarily.
_
I am hopeful Sector Siege will be great soon.
Best Regards
