Sidius Nova Beta initial feedback

version 0.10.1 (1)

I'm still getting my feet wet in the game, but I've noted some initial areas that could use some work. I haven't gotten far enough to really get comfortable with the strategy and as such, I'm focusing on more on some details that stuck out with my initial experience.

It's a very promising start, and I'm interested to get a better feel for all of the game's mechanics and strategy. In the mean time:

1. Retina Enabled

   Not sure how much of an investment it would be to upgrade assets, but the art style and setting would be perfect for retina.

2. Text legibility

   Aside from the lack of retina clarity, the white text on dark feels unnecessarily blurry (glow effect?), which hurts legibility. Additionally, the bars on some letters, such as f, are too small, making it difficult to discern the correct letter

3. 'Sticky' mothership/fleet selection

   When I first was playing, it seemed counter-intuitive to lose the selection of the mothership or fleet after every move. The more I play, the more I'm convinced this selection should be sticky, so that you retain the selection until you actively deselect. In this way, you need less taps to make your moves on the map and to build your fleet.

4. A concept that I'm toying with–though it may change as I get further into the game–is a mechanic that allows resources to earn interest over time.

   In other words, right now I don't see a reason to not spend all of my resources as soon as I get them. If the resources began multiplying faster the more you have, it would provide some tension to force you to balance the risk/reward of holding onto the resources. There are potentially other ways to handle this, perhaps with more expensive bonuses or effects that require saving up.

Hey airhead3,

Thank you for your feedback! How does the game feel after playing for a bit? Have you unlocked a few new items in the Research Menu?

Regarding your points:
1) Retina support is very high on our todo list and something we really want to have a closer look at after launch.
2) Which areas are you referring to? Does this text appear in the Main Menu, Galaxy Map, Map, Battle, or Results Screen?
3) Let me suggest this idea to some more testers and see what their feedback is. If a majority feels the same way, we'll definitely change it.
4) I really like where you're going with this. Tension is a great concept in this context. We need something throughout the game that's worth working/saving towards. Something really rewarding. Interest on collected Kryon might provide that extra bit of tension...

The more I play the more I appreciate some of the depth that I feared wasn't there (turn-based map elements, for example); it has the appearance of simply an over-world map to explore, but the positioning of fleets and mothership, action points, probes, etc. move it into more interesting territory that is not entirely evident initially.

I'm still feeling a bit behind the situational awareness curve in the real-time battles (I would love to be able to zoom out to see the whole map - I'm sure I try to do this several times in a heated battle only to be disappointed). If not the ability to zoom out (or maybe in addition to), icons on the edges (both left and right) providing a bit more information would be helpful. I tend to lose track of enemies that are farther left to my current view, and expect to see a chevron on the left side similar to the indication of enemies on the right edge. If those indicated the kind of ships and order (maybe like miniature icons of the ships in a sort of simplified schematic miniature overlay), that would help understand what's going on. (I also loose track of where my ships are, too, but I fear the display would get cluttered to try and indicate all of that in the margins.

I've unlocked the probe, the laser ship and the warp (though made the mistake of restarting on a harder difficulty, so progress has slowed considerably!), and appreciate the introduction of new elements to incorporate into your strategy. That being said, it seems a bit out of place to have the Research button on the main menu, and not accessible within the game view (there is the Buy Now button after you earn enough research points, but no way to go back and research later without saving and quitting the game to get to the main menu.

The text/font I was referring to specifically is the story element text (white text on dark background) the font in question also appears in the in-game elements such as ship types. I found myself having some difficulty in discerning some letters in the story elements.

As I play more, I'm finding that with fleet management, I appreciate the lack of the 'sticky' select, since I'm moving several different fleets around. My initial impression was just based on moving the mothership.

That being said, one thing that I still find myself doing accidentally is when I have a fleet close to the mothership, I typically select the mothership to build ships, then select the nearby fleet to move it somewhere else. Of course this tap on the fleet after the mothership has been selected means that I inadvertently move the mothership onto the fleet, since the mothership was still selected. Normally, when a fleet is more than one planet away, tapping the fleet will deselect the mothership, so I think that is why I expect to be able to do that when the fleet is close. Not sure the best way to avoid this, but perhaps a confirmation before merging fleets/mothership. It seems I'm frequently merge when I intended something else. (Could still just be me, of course!)

One minor graphical quibble: when either mothership is defeated and crashing, it appears the victorious ships are flying over the background layer that makes up the mothership. The end effect is that the ships are traveling through the mothership rather than behind it. (Don't file this as a critical bug by any means!)

I have been enjoying the game - as I discover more I appreciate it more, which is a great sign. I hope that still comes through all of these comments.