Extended Edition Android Beta Test and Feedback!

@steph. Are you playing with the internet connection on? Please do if you don't. We might be able to catch the crash information that way.

New game early this morning. Hard level, 1st galaxy, cleaned all the sectors, not possible to complete mission 1. Jumped to 2nd galaxy with 3 BSE Guardian, briefing, CRASH. You should have received a report at 03:30 CET.
If you want I can send you the save file (rooted device).

@steph. Do you have the Android XT910 device or? We got crashes collected for that one at least. It is the Android virtual machine memory running out. How devices allocate that memory is device specific and Android OS version specific.
So it is not your RAM, but the Virtual Machine memory running out.

We would really want to help but unfortunately there isn't much we can do about it at the moment, except from starting to dig deep in our game engine code and optimize. There are over 10 000 different Android devices in the world and it is impossible to get a game running flawlessly on all of them. If you can update your Android OS that might be something worth trying.

Very sorry about this, hopefully you find a method to play the game somehow.

But this problem is only present with the beta not the original.

And please, DON'T add my device to the unsupported devices because I still want to update and play the game even with some crashes. Thx
(At least I will play a bit more with the PC version)

I found the problem on my device. The max CPU was set too low (to preserve battery). I have increased the max CPU a bit and I have already easily cleaned half of the 2nd galaxy without a crash (on hard with my last save).

some more thoughts on the difficulty question.

I find the difficulty wildly variable based on the quality of the random equipment drops from destroyed enemies and loot crates. One run, I score a death ray or mega-plasma early on, and clean house. That boost early in the game means less damage, which means more scrap saved on repairs which means better weapons and point defense which means less damage etc - get that rolling, and the difficulty setting doesn't seem to matter very much. But get stuck trying to build your fleet without decent drops with all the increasing repair costs sapping your resources, well... even Easy can seem surprisingly difficult.

I really really like the different alien weapons that drop. Finding a new gun is a hoot. I'm not sure how the drop frequencies figure into the difficulty setting, and how different weapon drops are weighted. Right now, the difficulty seems very swingy, and "easy" and "normal" and "hard" somewhat arbitrary once you pass the first half-dozen turns, and make up the scrap shortfall Hard gets you.

I don't know if this stuff is actually bad though. It does make the game seem pretty arbitrary, and less about my skill, and more about the random number generator.

I tend to restart the game every time I find myself in trolgar territory, in the first map, on hard. They're brutal.

I love the changes. A couple of notes on the newest version:
- I love that close range (blue) turrets are more effective for defense now.
- Agree with above comments that alien drops make the game more fun. I'm biased in favor of alien turret trial and error rather than human weapons because it ups the replay fun.

What I'd still like to see (that I think is feasible to develop):
- Hull and shield ship upgrades that don't take slots. Let me spend oodles of cash on upgrading my shields and hull please!
- Can someone publish the effectiveness of different turrets for incoming missile defense? I've been using gatling and laser, but pretty much the only time I die late-game is from piles of incoming missiles.

Thanks!

Mike, I find Gatling works best for me because of extended range. Lasers can be more effective, I find, especially with the range boost on the celestial variant, but require a hull damage upgrade to effectively handle multiple missiles and fast rockets.