Extended Edition Android Beta Test and Feedback!

3 MAIN QUESTIONS to our magnificent community:

• Is the game too hard now?
  
• What ship are you playing with and what difficulty?
  
• If it is hard: Do you like the challenge or does it make you frustrated?
  
  

Oh dang - black holes eat missiles. That's very cool. I only just noticed that.

More bugs:
- you can still warp for a moment after your ship blows up, meaning that you get the warp screen and appear in an empty sector THEN the game ends. Need to disable warp the instant hit points hit zero.
- the escort mission asks you to pay 400 scrap to take the mission, usually for much less scrap in return!
- if you decline the escort mission then the colony ship still warps into the sector. It doesn't follow you but seems odd.
- you couldn't decline the 'defend' mission when I played a couple of days ago. Not sure if still the case.
- Vulcan cannon damage upgrade reduces the fire rate but it still stays as 0.2.
- if you jump into an empty sector with no inbound enemies, your shield should recharge.
- game quitting exploits still exists. If you quit a sector with a weapon in space, equip the weapon, then quit and re-open the game then the weapon is both in space and equipped on your ship. Can Repeat to get the same weapon lots of times. Assume that the ship and space are saved separately?
- mission timer should expire when you hit 0, not 1.(maybe from a prior version)

Few (well, lots of) suggestions:
- rename the 'fly to sector' mission to be 'scout sector' mission. Fits the theme of exploration better.
- limit the number of times you can decline a mission from a battle station or ship.
- make the Vulcan cannon a weapon that can be purchased and make the nuke cannon a rare drop or reward instead.
- display hull and shield DPS (damage / fire rate) next to each weapon.
- ensure every mission offers a weapon as a reward. That will mean that there is the opportunity to get a weapon drop early from the first battle station mission.
- bring back the mission timers for battle station missions, gives a sense of focus and adds to the challenge. Agree the main missions shouldn't have a timer though, apart from maybe the last one with the unknown race.
- use a different icon to select each part of the race intro screen. Because it's the same as the mission icon it gets a bit distracting.
- have the name of the race as a title on the race intro screen as its not clear what each race is called. Maybe top-left. Keep it small enough not to interfere with the awesome artwork though.
- part of the difficulty and frustration is that most large enemy ships spam fighters which makes hard to get a hit in. If you don't have the firepower to destroy the fighters quicker than they can be replaced then you have to give up. Reduce the maximum number of fighters early game and drop the spawn rate. It is awesome to have large battles but it's too frustrating at the moment in the early game!
- reduce the hull damage values for the rocket. Missile does about 50 damage while rocket does 70 and can be quickly upgraded to over 120. Balance wise player should be trading speed for damage. At the moment the missile isn't a viable choice.

Also I agree with everything that Bailywolf wrote on the last page. The problem is that the early game is just wayyyy too difficult as you need both a way to damage both shields and hull very quickly so you can take on the bigger enemies and if you're not lucky with drops you're not going to have enough scrap to do it. I found normal to be pretty frustrating. Especially when dealing with ships that deploy fighter swarms.

Also yes the main benefit of drones is that they can do multiple roles and act as a distraction. That's a huge benefit to lose if you use a ship without a hanger and I'm not sure that extra hull makes up for it.

Also I'm really enjoying the beta and that you guys are updating so frequently. Nice to see things developing so well! As others have said though a detailed change log would really help us to give you feedback and avoid mentioning things you've already fixed.

Got some more play in, and have leveled from my restart up to 2nd, and unlocked the Raven.

I got to the fourth galaxy on Easy using Nightingale, and eventually had three in my fleet, but fell victim to a sector with four (!!!) Unknown Battlestations. I did get insanely lucky with drops that run, and had five celestial mega-plasma cannons in my squadron. Bolter drones really are the only game in town. I wish we could have rocket drones like the enemy.

I played on Normal and Hard and found it extremely difficult to make any progress with level 1 and 2 ships. Even the Raven's boosted hull didn't let me make progress on Hard. The drone-spam killed me deader than a tinned herring over and over. It didn't feel difficult, just unfair. With only an energy cannon and two bolters, I had no way to answer that kind of massed attack. Too many targets, not enough guns.

Easy feels about right for Normal now. Normal feels like hard. Hard feels like an insanity challenge level that unlocks after you beat the other difficulties.

If I was higher level, with better ships, it would help a little, but with alien battleships attacking within 3 jumps of start, then even with a capital ship there's no time to arm up enough to answer those threats. Multi-rocket barrages and drone swarms are impossible to deal with when you only have 800 scrap worth of kit.

Oh! There really needs to be a way to distinguish your command ship from allied ships. A color difference or a the ability to change ship names would help.

For this new update ive cleared the entire map for all difficulty but done of then shows the main mission, 1st one you get in every map fails even after eyup clearing all systems.

Also I do notic after you enter the map and the message hostile in sector appear then disppears then you can fire weapons while enemy's ships could fire at you all the way while you enter the system. Well the enemy ships repair themselves now that's good.

For this new update ive cleared the entire map for all difficulty but then it shows the main mission, 1st one you get in every map fails even after eyup clearing all systems. The systems that are supposed to be cleared still are marked green. Telling us it is not done. While it's empty and I tried everything possible to complete it. While there is not yime/turn limit
Also I do notice after you enter the map and the message hostile in sector appear then disppears then you can fire weapons while enemy’s ships could fire at you all the way while you enter the system. Well the enemy ships repair themselves now that’s good.

Pls,reduce the cost of point defense twice.Now 6,10,14...would be good 3,5,7 and ect.Cause now this cannons are useless to upgrade - range short,damage weak,but upgrade cost is like its a BIG gun!BTW,the idea with missile drones is just awesome!

Is the game too hard now?

Hard is fine now. Played on Hard with the latest update. The firsts rounds are challenging but then is a bit easier than previous versions.

What ship are you playing with and what difficulty?

Game difficulty Hard. Starting with a BSE Guardian followed by a BSE Genesis and another BSE Guardian. First weapons for the starting ship always Projectile cannon + Energy cannon. And then Bolter drones + Gatling.

-Game still crashing. Even more than before. I cannot finish the game in the 2nd galaxy now. Every time I jump the game crashes.
-BUG. Impossible to complete 1st mission in the 1st galaxy (clean sectors). Cleaned all sectors but the mission was still pending.

I agree that having 'push' opjects as well as 'pull' objects regarding enemy fleet movements would be interesting.

Hazard beacons to make enemies jump a few systems away from your current location, which would help greatly if you go and decide to clear the whole galaxy - clear out more open areas so you can mop them up, without enemies sneaking around you through a chokepoint - at the expense of more concentrated enemy encounters later.

False orders, making every enemy in range select a random system on the map and begin jumping to it - to scatter and thin out fleet encounters. Right now, distress beacons can only concentrate the enemy. If you have a fleet of fifteen ships looking to jump on you, all you can do is jump around hoping they split up, while the factory keeps pumping out ships.

I disagree with making the nuke cannon a drop-only weapon. It's really kinda useless to me. If you hit 100% of the time, only a few weapons match its DPS, but if you hit 50% of the time - really an optimistic estimate - many of the purchase/drop-only weapons outperform it. Ion cannons, photon torpedoes, flak cannons, vulcan, tesla coil all outperform it on DPS with no upgrades. That and the fact that upgrades are so much cheaper on other weapons relegate it to the category of novelty weapon, to me.

I agree that upgrading point defense is useless - at most, I might upgrade lasers once, so they have the hull damage to reliably take on missiles and rockets, with better accuracy than gatlings.

Projectile cannons, without refire rate upgrades, need shield damage upgrades.

Fighters still chase missiles and rockets, even if they don't go off-screen. Having to cross the entire map because your idiot ship refuses to sent drones out for a mere fighter, and your gun crews refuse to stop firing rockets, is amazingly irritating. Perhaps pop a ring up around the ship when selected, just as when you select enemies, permitting you to turn off certain weapon systems?

I would still like a 'move to this' option when selecting enemy ships - chasing a missile ship down often takes a lot of micromanagement of move orders, especially when they're faster than you.