New to Anacreon online - observations so far

General discussion for the game Anacreon
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Lastpiper
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1. This is a great game. So don't interpret anything below as criticism.

2. The Game Universe is incomprehensibly huge. Up to a point that's a good thing. But I think there may be a point of diminishing returns.

3. I understand it's Alpha, but information about what does what is pretty hard to come by. Perhaps the wiki will help, but only if folks add to it. I've been able to figure things out reasonably well, I think...

4. That said, I'm still struggling with the user interface at points:
a. What is this galaxy icon on the left top supposed to do? I know the galaxy icon on the right side returns me to a larger-scale map. But if I click on the one on the left, everything appears to lock up.
b. In the tactical view (zoomed in on a battle), the window at the bottom of the screen consistently covers up some of the squares indicating my formations

5. Tactical view needs a lot of work.
a. It's not intuitively obvious how you control your ships.
b. It doesn't seem like all enemy space forces are actually available for targeting - just HEL/GDMs; not satellites. I haven't yet attacked another player with a lot of ships so I don't know how that works.
c. I'm not sure this tactical screen is actually necessary to the game. It adds a little when attacking neutral worlds, but it might not be worth the effort for that. I'm not sure it will add anything for attacking other layers, since the odds that we're both online and both respond to and zoom in on the same battle are probably slim.
d. Accordingly, I would recommend not working on it further. Offline Anacreon was fine without a tactical view.

6. I started after the Mesophons were added so I can't compare - but so far I think they help a new player get started in an established universe. I captured a couple of worlds that had a lot of hexacarbide, and by selling it I could buy ships and expand my empire faster than I otherwise could have. Then, I ran short of ground forces and now that is the limiting factor.
a. On the one hand, you could say this argues for the Mesophons having ground forces or equipment available to sell...
b. On the other hand, I fear that doing so would make the game too fast-paced

That's what I've got so far... this is offered in the spirit of open discussion, so I'm not the least offended if someone thinks my comments are ridiculous!
Lastpiper
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Oh, and let me add... for me, to a point the lack of clear documentation is a good thing. It's kind of fun to explore and figure things out. However, that fun only exists for the first few days and of course it makes for a very unequal playing field.

One wild idea that might be able to recreate this fun is to have each instance of the game change some variables, and have some of the changes be a surprise. Some folks would like this and some wouldn't.
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george moromisato
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Thank you--that's really good feedback.

I'd like to hear more about the game universe being "incomprehensibly huge". What is it about the game that makes it huge? Is it the number of units/resources? Is it the complexity of the production tabs? Do you believe this is a problem for experienced players or only for beginners? [I don't disagree with the point--I'm just looking for more details.]

I also agree with the UI complexity. There is lots that I can do to help (e.g., tool tips). And I've been thinking about putting together an introductory tutorial scenario. [FYI: The galaxy icon on the upper-left is supposed to bring up a large image of the whole galaxy in a pop-up window. It's not particularly useful, but sometimes I use it to snapshot the current galaxy. I know it's buggy on certain browsers.]

Tactical view definitely needs works; but I agree it is lower priority. One thing I'm planning on adding is a way to select multiple groups. Right now it is too hard to command large forces.

I'd love to hear more about your initial experience. What were other confusing things?
Lastpiper
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By "huge" I mean the distances and number of worlds. One of the issues I had with the windows version of Anacreon is that I could only play the smaller scenarios or the games would become unmanageable.

Another observation from today: time scale for the population changing its mind may be too quick. In one day at work I went from a certain world being happy to it having successfully rebelled against me. The broader question of whether the time scale is too fast or too slow is complex and I can't argue one why or another right now... but this specific example is a bit too fast for the casual player who has a "day job!"

Tactical UI - you have to figure this out. I just recently attacked a planet, forgot I had some explorers there in a separate fleet from the attack fleet, and lost them all before I could give them an instructions as they kamikazed their way down to attach the GDMs and HELs. Or maybe you could create a new ship class called the kamikaze...? ;)

But again, you've got a great product here, I'm hooked, and I hope you find a way to monetize it (if that's your choice) because you've earned it!

As I have more thoughts I will keep adding them to this thread.
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george moromisato
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Thanks--definitely please continue posting your observations. I read everything in the forums and use it to guide my development. Some of the things you're describing are definitely bugs; others are design problems that I need to work out.

As for the size of the universe (thanks for the clarification): I think the size should be proportional to the number of players. If the galaxy were a little more crowded, I think the current size would be about right. And, of course, at some point I'll support different scenarios with different sizes (some could be much smaller).

Ultimately I want to get even bigger. The current scenario has 5,000 worlds and supports 100 players. Eventually (once hardware and software catches up) I want to get to 1,000,000 worlds and 20,000 players in one galaxy. At that scale the scenario would be 100,000 light-years across: approximately the size of the Milky Way.
Lastpiper
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Observations for today:

Not really clear on what the limit is for traffic through a trading hub. There appears to be one.

Definitely seem to need a lot more consumer goods autofacs than I expected. I have 1/4 of my worlds set to that now and it doesn't appear to be enough.

Again, went to work with happy planets, came back and they were in civil war. Don't know why.
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Lastpiper
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Today's observations:

Rebellions are the biggest issue challenging me.

I understand in principle the idea that citizens need food, luxuries, durable goods, and life support equipment.

1) food, luxuries, durable goods - I get that the idea is to manage production and distribution of these. One thing I don't get is that if a planet can't import enough of these, it seems to automatically shift effort from its primary production to consumer goods. But I can't adjust this. It doesn't always seem to adjust enough automatically.
a) related to this is my earlier question about understanding capacity limits for trade hubs. I think not understanding this dug me in a hole for a while.

2) life support equipment - without the ability to control production of these items directly, I think my only option is to look around for a world with extras and move them manually.

3) other stuff - I get messages like "citizens protest hard working conditions." I'm not sure what I can do to address this. In some cases I can't find a shortage of anything specific. In some cases I've built everything I can life support wise (arcologies, floating cities, etc). Not sure what factors drive this sort of message.

4) And finally, with all this, the dynamics can change too quickly to where I go to work, I come back, and 1/4 of my planets are rebelling.

This is the biggest challenge to me right now. In some aspects, it's good to have a challenge, so really #4 is the only critical one in terms of playability. The others are a balance between being too prescriptive in the instructions versus letting players figure things out for themselves.
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Lastpiper
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And again, a full day away at work, come back to find that two perfectly happy planets have gotten unhappy, rebelled, and declared independence. one was my trading hub, and I lack the energy right now to tediously recreate all the links it had... the other was a sector capital, and ditto on that. Not a bug, but something I strongly recommend fixing in gameplay - or at least better explaining prevention methods.
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george moromisato
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Lastpiper wrote:And again, a full day away at work, come back to find that two perfectly happy planets have gotten unhappy, rebelled, and declared independence. one was my trading hub, and I lack the energy right now to tediously recreate all the links it had... the other was a sector capital, and ditto on that. Not a bug, but something I strongly recommend fixing in gameplay - or at least better explaining prevention methods.
I totally agree with you.

I definitely think there is a bug here somewhere. And even not, I need to make some design changes. I'll look into it this week.
CaleyM
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With 9 worlds the lowest I see social drop to is content. I always set the revolution index crazy high in 2.1d. So this is too easy...
Lastpiper
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A few more thoughts in random order:

1) I am going to have a tough time playing this game due to my schedule. I don't think there's a decent workaround for this. The only thing you could really do to help me would be to have turns execute once or twice per day or something, which would totally change the game, so that's not really an option. Some people have a schedule which supports playing a game like this; my schedule is marginal. So I have been playing less, but this has only a little to do with game mechanics.

2) Here is a fundamental issue with game mechanics you should address, though: What now?
a) Background: I've got 36 worlds now. I got about 2/3 of those fairly quickly, then built up strength and thought about it for a few days before going a little farther, building a new sector capital, and taking over a few worlds around it. Ive got the trade routes reasonably stable, but I haven't had time to optimize them. I've got one starship producer, two capitals (jumpships), an infantry academy, and the rest of the worlds set up to support them.
b) The problem: now what?
c) Discussion: the obvious thing is to just keep conquering more worlds, eventually taking over more and more. But this really gets repetitive. I had this issue with the offline version of Anacreon, too. You can argue it's an issue with a lot of games. But for example, with the Civilization series there were always things changing, so it only tended to get repetitive and boring toward the end of a game (and then only if you were winning). In Anacreon online, I was very intrigued as I felt out the game mechanics, but now that I'm getting the hang of them (although not optimizing them, to be sure), I wonder - what now?
d) Suggestions:
i) from what I can see, you really haven't explored what's possible in an online world. I encourage more experimentation with this. A lot of my suggestions are around this theme.
ii) put rare resources in various parts of the galaxy to encourage exploration. Maybe these rare resources could be used to build certain special weapons
iii) Allow some customization of ship classes. I really liked the game Stars! for this, as it allowed empires to differentiate themselves by pursuing different technologies. I don't think you need to go as far as that game went. But if you could make a slightly better basilisk cannon or missile by using unobtanium that's only found on a handful of planets in the entire galaxy, that could spur some interesting strategies.
iv) Give more avenues for players to interact. I have discovered the messaging option by clicking on another player's capital. I have yet to get a response. Not sure how I would see a response. I can see where we could develop informal alliances and such, but so far there seems to be little such interaction going on.
v) Trade routes between players? Could work well especially if you go with the "rare resources" idea.
vi) Game events that encourage cooperation? Perhaps you could let everyone know that a massive alien fleet from another galaxy is approaching and will arrive in our galaxy at 16:00 Eastern Daylight time, for example.
vii) Game events that encourage conflict? For example, a given star could be about to go supernova and create a bunch of rare resources, which we would have a limited time to gather before they dispersed/decayed.
viii) an in-game message forum, sort of like a "United Nations" or "Galactic Confederation?"
ix) in-game news about major events - maybe a daily or weekly report - give you a vague idea of what other players are up to, not enough to be of tactical or operational significance.

Anyway take or leave the suggestions - as long as you understand my underlying point about more fully exploring the possibilities that the online experience gives you.

And finally, I know it's a hell of a lot easier to make these suggestions than to implement them, by several orders of magnitude! I appreciate what you're doing here - hope you can keep it up.
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george moromisato
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Thank you for this feedback--there are a lot of great ideas here.

I wholeheartedly agree with you about needing more things to do, and you've laid out some very interesting ideas. In the next update I plan on implementing nebulae, which will have effects on movement and combat plus be a source of new kinds of resources. This will add a little more on the exploration front.

In general, though, every single one of your ideas would fit the game, and I intend to eventually tackle them all. As always, it will take time to evolve the game to that point, but I've incorporated a long timeline in the business model.

BTW: In terms of time-commitment, I eventually plan on supporting private games (though likely as a premium/paid option). Among other things, private games will allow you to control the pacing and will let you pause and restart at will.
NIGHTHAWK620
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I wish the Infantry deployment can be established, so troop movement ( Academy and/or Imperial Guards) for one planet to another can be like the resources and/or trade routes. Since some planets stop creating infantry for whatever reason. Transporting with ships can be a little ruff.
NH620
george moromisato
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NIGHTHAWK620 wrote:I wish the Infantry deployment can be established, so troop movement ( Academy and/or Imperial Guards) for one planet to another can be like the resources and/or trade routes. Since some planets stop creating infantry for whatever reason. Transporting with ships can be a little ruff.
I agree. I'm trying to work out exactly the best way to do that. Maybe some kind of rallying orders using trade routes.
NIGHTHAWK620
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george moromisato wrote:
NIGHTHAWK620 wrote:I wish the Infantry deployment can be established, so troop movement ( Academy and/or Imperial Guards) for one planet to another can be like the resources and/or trade routes. Since some planets stop creating infantry for whatever reason. Transporting with ships can be a little ruff.
I agree. I'm trying to work out exactly the best way to do that. Maybe some kind of rallying orders using trade routes.
Yeah like when the black and/or red (!) comes up on screen or when a world starts to rebels. May be u can use both, Capitals and Sector Capitals can move Imperial Guards and/or Infantries directly and Academies troops must use trade routes seeing that their new recruits about to be introduced to war.
NH620
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