Hi Guys,
I happen to be off for the Christmas holidays earlier then some so I was able to get a very strong and long play through on 5b48 (the newest at the time of writing this). I got about 300 years into the game and was very impressed with the over all fixes that PDX has made. In a rather rapid period of time they have indeed fixed a very large portion of what I thought was very wrong with the game. That work is not done and I am grateful that they are making it clear that more patches are coming.
I have unfortunately returned to the forums to complain however because I am still unable to really enjoy this product to a degree that it should be enjoyed at. Here are the main reasons for the blockers.
1) It seems the AI pack is still required to make the game function correctly to make a reasonable game experience for me in the late game. I tried a play through without it and the differences are quite noticeable. I want to add though that the recent changes made a serious serious dent in the problem. Here is what I noticed for things that are now working reasonably well:
a) The AI actually builds big ass fleets.
b) The AI seems to actually bunch them together.
c) The Ai seems to actually ally together against me albeit still not to a degree that I would want.
What i see as a problem with the AI.
a) The AI is still thinking to about itself rather then about the global state.
b) over 300 years into the game the AI has a 30 pop planet that was available to it early on the game, it has 70 jobs available, and over 150 housing space and it has decided to "halt population growth" on this planet. I mean i am glad it cheats because that just makes me wonder.
c) I notice that the AI lacks the ability to declare wars correctly. I mean. it can make in some cases (luckly probably) the right alliances but it needs to actually attack the human players. I suggest you add some kind of bias to the logic that makes the computer players want to see computer players survive and human players die. Perhaps make it an option for the players who struggle to keep the game challenging.
2) I have a state of the art intel processor and even on 400 stars, 300 years into the game, its completely laggy. I have to go down to slowest speed the game provides, i believe its called slowest, and the game is 'reasonable' but its so dang slow it makes any challenge for organization against the computer to easy. As a result the fix for one makes the above worse. I did notice that the AI pack was part of the lag here.. but its not the only part of it. I know this has been recommended before but you guys really need to use the modern processors better through multi threading and similar technical topics. I have my computer lagging and its 85ish percent unused. That just is not right. I know the klauswitz engine (which is genius for the record) is not a multi threading engine but if you want your games to continue to gain traction in the global markets and have gamer like myself scream your game i suggest you fix this and pronto. It destroys the experience and ultimately the big selling features to your game is the big mega structures and the coolness behind them. What is the point of having them in the game when you get to the point of using them that the game has reached an unplayable level even for a extremely modern and powerful processor with a 1070 gtx etc. For those that wonder, i have a 9700k, m.2 hard drive, 2400 mhz ram,..1070gtx.. i mean the machine is just stacked stacked stacked. Cant play your game past 300 years and enjoy it.. I want to make a meme for this!
3) I found a bug that indicates some foul play by the paradox team. this one is good. It appears to me that the team has chosen to 'just give' free ships to some of the computer players. I took a system from a computer player and was preparing to cap the planet but saw a non stop steady steam of coverts coming out of the top corner of the sector view.. roughly 1 every 60 seconds on normal speed based on my memory. While its not a lot, it was rather annoying as it kept poping up saying my station was under attack. The corvets, just kept coming. It was.. uhh, rather rather rather disappointing. I mean, not only is this a blatent cheat by the AI, its also buggy as at least turn it off when the human player enters the system or the AI has no fleet there or something, that was just WTF.
All in all though the game is just good enough to be considered a pass and I would no longer rate it the expansion as a down vote. It is however not yet enough to give it my up vote.
Thanks.
I happen to be off for the Christmas holidays earlier then some so I was able to get a very strong and long play through on 5b48 (the newest at the time of writing this). I got about 300 years into the game and was very impressed with the over all fixes that PDX has made. In a rather rapid period of time they have indeed fixed a very large portion of what I thought was very wrong with the game. That work is not done and I am grateful that they are making it clear that more patches are coming.
I have unfortunately returned to the forums to complain however because I am still unable to really enjoy this product to a degree that it should be enjoyed at. Here are the main reasons for the blockers.
1) It seems the AI pack is still required to make the game function correctly to make a reasonable game experience for me in the late game. I tried a play through without it and the differences are quite noticeable. I want to add though that the recent changes made a serious serious dent in the problem. Here is what I noticed for things that are now working reasonably well:
a) The AI actually builds big ass fleets.
b) The AI seems to actually bunch them together.
c) The Ai seems to actually ally together against me albeit still not to a degree that I would want.
What i see as a problem with the AI.
a) The AI is still thinking to about itself rather then about the global state.
b) over 300 years into the game the AI has a 30 pop planet that was available to it early on the game, it has 70 jobs available, and over 150 housing space and it has decided to "halt population growth" on this planet. I mean i am glad it cheats because that just makes me wonder.
c) I notice that the AI lacks the ability to declare wars correctly. I mean. it can make in some cases (luckly probably) the right alliances but it needs to actually attack the human players. I suggest you add some kind of bias to the logic that makes the computer players want to see computer players survive and human players die. Perhaps make it an option for the players who struggle to keep the game challenging.
2) I have a state of the art intel processor and even on 400 stars, 300 years into the game, its completely laggy. I have to go down to slowest speed the game provides, i believe its called slowest, and the game is 'reasonable' but its so dang slow it makes any challenge for organization against the computer to easy. As a result the fix for one makes the above worse. I did notice that the AI pack was part of the lag here.. but its not the only part of it. I know this has been recommended before but you guys really need to use the modern processors better through multi threading and similar technical topics. I have my computer lagging and its 85ish percent unused. That just is not right. I know the klauswitz engine (which is genius for the record) is not a multi threading engine but if you want your games to continue to gain traction in the global markets and have gamer like myself scream your game i suggest you fix this and pronto. It destroys the experience and ultimately the big selling features to your game is the big mega structures and the coolness behind them. What is the point of having them in the game when you get to the point of using them that the game has reached an unplayable level even for a extremely modern and powerful processor with a 1070 gtx etc. For those that wonder, i have a 9700k, m.2 hard drive, 2400 mhz ram,..1070gtx.. i mean the machine is just stacked stacked stacked. Cant play your game past 300 years and enjoy it.. I want to make a meme for this!
3) I found a bug that indicates some foul play by the paradox team. this one is good. It appears to me that the team has chosen to 'just give' free ships to some of the computer players. I took a system from a computer player and was preparing to cap the planet but saw a non stop steady steam of coverts coming out of the top corner of the sector view.. roughly 1 every 60 seconds on normal speed based on my memory. While its not a lot, it was rather annoying as it kept poping up saying my station was under attack. The corvets, just kept coming. It was.. uhh, rather rather rather disappointing. I mean, not only is this a blatent cheat by the AI, its also buggy as at least turn it off when the human player enters the system or the AI has no fleet there or something, that was just WTF.
All in all though the game is just good enough to be considered a pass and I would no longer rate it the expansion as a down vote. It is however not yet enough to give it my up vote.
Thanks.