Extended Edition iOS Beta Test and Feedback!

I was playing on iPad Air with Easy setting BSE Valhalla (since it has two fighter slots) and two Liberators. Feedback as follows:

The original game already has a lot of re-play-ability, thanks to the randomly generated maps feature. This extension edition added better graphics in ships and background and more space themes, smarter AI... the list goes on. The game has absolutely became better and harder now. Great work and deserves a big thumbs up! Love it even more! This is why I backed you guys in Kickstarter.

Some improvements to suggest:
- When finishing 3rd map, the message is still "End of Map, good job commander!" Which to be changed to "Travel to next map, with X/4" as this will let me know which depth of map I am in.
- Mission/Quest logs are hard to follow, expect to be more specific as I do not know why a particular mission is not completed.
- In asteroid fields or hazardous areas, almost all my fighters got killed. Suggest to lower the damage or fighters try to avoid collisions.
- Ships movement is almost stalled, I don't mind that Human ships moves slower than Alien ships, but at least make it turning faster.

No major bugs experienced during my game play. Thanks and good job in controlling the game quality!

Iphone 5s
Just finished a few rounds on normal and a few on hard using primarily the resolution and valhalla , here is what stood out to me.

Bugs:
1) Many mission types seem bugged for me. I'm not sure exactly what causes this. I do the mission, but it just doesn't complete. I can only finish about 25% of missions due to this.
2) Occasionally when an enemy capital ship is killed its fighters freeze.
3) I beat the final unknown sector with a few mercenary ships helping. When I started my next game, the mercenaries were still there following me around.

Small Tweaks: (These aren't really bugs, they are just things that seem odd to me and distract from a great game.)
1) Not sure if this is a bug or just strange balancing. On one of my normal games I had wanderers on the first map. They brought enormous capital ships with 2-4 flak cannons to the first few sectors and I got annihilated. This was different than the other times I have fought wanderers, they seemed much better balanced in most other playthroughs.
2) On one of my playthroughs I had celestials for the first map. They used almost entirely repair beams and repair drones. Barely did any damage at all, it was wierd.
3) Repair behavior is still odd. So frustrating to watch a ship die as drones repair themselves. Repair NEEDS to prioritize capital ships. We should also be able to repair allies including mercenaries during combat.
4) The shield reenergizer weapon. I can't quite tell what is going on with this weapon. It seems that it wants to be the shield version of the repair beam, but the stats show that it does both shield and hull damage. Something is fishy here?
5) Why are shield bars twice as long as hull? This is just kind of annoying, makes it a bit harder to gauge the damage.

Balance:
In general the module environment feels better balanced. There aren't as many items that are clearly superior (like the old projectile cannon). The game difficulty feels way different. Just my opinion but it seems that the beginning is much more difficult than it used to be. Sometimes you are just outmatched. Near the end of the game, when I have a complete fleet, I sometimes get into situations where the enemy damage is so high I can't help but lose ships. This doesn't feel difficult or challenging because it doesn't feel like there is much I could have done in battle to avoid it.

My general impression for combat balance is this:
1) Most base weapons are a little too good when you buy them, but the upgrades aren't great. As an example the projectile cannon does 25 dps with no upgrades. For the early game this feels really strong and can kill fighters in just two hits. If I max hull damage it does 40 dps, not a bad upgrade, but hardly exciting. 40dps is probably a fair amount for a starter weapon, but buying it at 25dps with no upgrades feels out of place.
2) Point defense and rockets/missiles. I'm explaining these together because they are closely related. To put it simply rockets and missiles are frustrating to play against right now. They should have three practical counters, repair, point defense, and drones/fighters. However, repair beams are too weak and repair drones repair each other while your capital ships die. Bolter drones and fighters seem to be ok at shooting down missiles, I wouldn't change them yet.

The actual point defense weapons I think are in a slightly better spot than they were before. The bolter and the gatling are both viable, but I wouldn't say they are balanced yet. The bolter is really only as good as the gatling when it has maxed hull dmg AND burst, so it is way more expensive to use. The lasers still aren't working for me. I've tried four fully upgraded lasers on the side of a resolution all shooting the same missile and they still can't take it out. I suspect this may be bugged. Until this is fixed it's hard to make a balance suggestion.
3) Rockets are really hard to shoot down because they are so fast. I've only had success with using drones as a screen to block them. Maybe lower rocket hp a little?
4) I really think we need two more blue slot modules. One for a hull upgrade, and the other for speed. These are both indirect counters to rockets/missiles that can be used at the cost of having fewer smaller guns. This creates excellent choices for the player. This hull module should probably be slightly weaker than the shield equivalent since it helps to counter rockets/missiles. The speed module has been discussed before.
5) Repair feels neglected. It isn't balanced right now, which is a shame because it should be a huge part of the game's strategy. Shield repair drones are very effective, hull repair drones are good, both repair beams suck. These should all be similar, but have some slight differences to let the player decide what suits them best. Enemies in the last few maps can do a ton of damage, if you go in without repair it will be incredibly difficult. This is good, but it means the player should have good repair options. I won't suggest exact numbers here, but this is what I think would feel right in gameplay:
- Shield repair is stronger than armor repair because shield repair can't counter rockets/missiles.
- Repair beams are stronger than repair drones, but they can't repair the ship they are mounted on. This way if the player wants really effective repair beams, they have to either spread them out, or protect their repair ship.

Now beams are great because they are very effective and can't be destroyed. Repair drones are great because they have longer range and can repair any ship. Additional changes may be necessary, but I think this would put repair in a better spot.

I forgot the mention something. Right now it is super hard to use ships without drones. This isn't because guns are bad, it's because drones are the only good way to repair, and one of the most effective counters to missiles/rockets. The changes I proposed above fix both issues, and should be a huge part of making gun only ships more effective.

One last thing.

I gave a lot of suggestions, but the new update is amazing! The graphics and new weapons are fantastic. I love the new stations, they are much more challenging. And the environmental effects add so much interest and strategy to the game.

The Wanderer fighter sprites themselves flicker from time to time.

Agree with Draikan, also a 4th or 5th ship slot will add a lot more tactics to the game. eg: Start with carrier and adding cruisers instead of carriers all the way. Need more balancing with single ship strategy.

Played for a couple hours so far and the difficulty has increased. I play withe Val halla carrier and I tried the easy and normal and am finding them both challenging. Starting out with more scrap would make the beginning of the game less tedious. I noticed that in the easy some of the systems are green and I have found Pirate stations. Once I have defeated them I don't get are ward and the systems stays green. I'm not sure if this is intentional but getting a reward for defeating a Pirate and then the system changing to yellow to show that it was cleared made more sense.

Bug report:
- Possible loop: While at EMI field cleared hostiles then tap map screen to end turn. Beacon triggered, enemy ships arrived, back to ship screen for battle, EMI detected again, can't jump after killed enemy ships. Been back and forth may times like this. started on Map screen after battle and don't switch back to ship screen, then jump away.

Super weapon: Death Ray is awesome! I saw an unknown enemy ship mounted 3 death ray, one of my ship was killed in 1.5 seconds... I got two in one of the game, almost invincible.

Bug:
Playing in normal mode, using BSE Achillies. After 10-20 jumps, ship movement stops. Weapons still fire, but tapping has no effect - ship is stuck and will not move. Has happened in every game so far, which is about 10 tries. Each time was in combat, so was killed before I could try jumping out.

@N8QQW. Were you being hit by yellow energy balls? Those turrets take the power of your ship engines away, and ships hit enough by these eventually stop.