Edit: Whoops, this was supposed to be over in Early Access Feedback. I can't seem to change it myself. If a moderator sees this, could you move it over there?
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These are some random fixes and minor suggestions that I'd like to see in no particular order:
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1. Ships automated to do surveys will end their turn upon getting an anomaly, even when they have a lot of movement points left. They should pick another anomaly and go for it instead of just stopping.
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2. When you can see an anomaly outside of your survey ship's maximum life support range, it'll still go and explore it if it's been automated to survey.
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3. When I tell a ship to "pass" it's turn it loses all it's remaining movement points and there's no way to get them back. In other similar games such as Sid Meier's civilization 4 and 5 when you tell a unit to pass it's turn then they won't be considered idle for the rest of the turn, but if you change your mind and reselect them manually they'll still have their movement points. It's a better system, imho.
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4. Ships automated to scouting sometimes and are very unintelligent. They'll often explore back in forth in such away that they waste a lot of movement. I'd think they should Focus on exploring the areas around stars first, then focus on exploring the in between areas as efficiently as possible.
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5. When ships travel from point A to point B they should have a number of priorities that they follow. Currently they just pick the fastest route, but there are usually a number of fast routes.
I think they should prioritize in this order:
Priority 1: Fastest route. If there is more than 1 route that has the least number of movement points figure out the best option by going to priority 2.
Priority 2: The route that will explore the most unexplored tiles. If there is more than 1 route that has the max tiles explored (such as when all the tiles on the way are already explored) then go to priority 3.
Priority 3: Pick the route that keeps the ship closest to allied planets and starbases. (it'll be presumably safer)
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6. I'd like the option to be able to set the game so that when I rightclick for movement, it first shows the planned route, then I have to rightclick on the spot again for them to move there. Sometimes I find the suggested route isn't to my liking, but once I see that, it's locked in.
The other option would be to make it so that if I hold down the right mouse button, it'll show me the route and when I move the mouse it'll keep coming up with paths to wherever I move the mouse pointer. Then when I release the button it'll move to that spot.
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7. The galaxy generator seems to be broken. I set it to abundant planets, occasional asteroids... but asteroid belts seem to be much more common than planets.
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8. When you attack something it says "Confirm Battle?" but the only available option is "done". I'd think there would be "yes" and "no" buttons.
Oh, and it also says "Confirm Battle?" when you get attacked, which seems a little funny.
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9. Every time I colonize a planet I only get the "Pods" event, and always get it. I think this is probably just because we're in alpha and it's the only colonization event made yet, but thought it might be a bug. Either way, adding only 2-3 more events in the next update would be a very noticeable and welcome change as it would make testing the game a lot more interesting, because getting the same event literally 15 times in a row is a bit funny.
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10. The AI seems to be able to expand at frightening speeds. I got a gunship in a anomaly, and I was close enough to the Altarians that I sent it to their home system to keep them from expanding. They were building a starports very quickly, which was fine, but if I left a starport up for a turn it's invariably spawn a ship, usually a colony ship. I figured they were buying ships so they'd run out of money, but it never stopped. Even though I had them "stuck in a corner" they managed to successfully get a colony ship away every third turn or so while I was putting them out maybe once every 30 turns or so.
While stuff like this is to be expected in an Alpha, this made it pretty hard to test the game because by the time I had 4 planets colonized, they had quite a large empire running even though I hadn't lost a single unit and had killed maybe 60 ships and 50 starports (not exaggerating, their new starports they were making's names numbered into the 50s.). Later on once I had maybe a dozen planets I had destroyed more than 150 starports, and I'm guessing about as many ships.
If this was on purpose because the AI can't function well without it then I'd suggest giving the AI two testing difficulties. "Hard" where it cheats for large numbers of ships as it is currently, and "Easy" where it does not. You could also make it "Hard" and "Very Easy" if that's all the AI can bring so far.
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11. When you use the arrow keys to move around the map I think the sensitivity should scale with your zoom level. It seems to be static from a tile per second perspective which means when I'm zoomed way out it goes slower then I'd like, and when I'm zoomed way in (say looking at just a planet) its goes at lighting speed.
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12. I'd like to see survey events have choices.
For example, when you get the event where you find a lost colony ship with intact frozen people on board, you could have a choice of what to do:
Benevolent: Repair and resupply their ship, and encourage them to preserve their culture. -30 credits, colony ship will travel to an available planet and found a minor civilization which will be friendly towards you. (assuming we'll have minor civs before expansion packs)
Pragmatic: Repair and resupply their ship on condition that they become citizens of our glorious civilization. -30 credits, receive a colony ship.
Malevolent: Free slaves! Your nearest planet gains a +20% manufacturing bonus.
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13. When selected on a fleet you can't see it's movement speed unless you mouse over it. I'd like to be able to see how much movement I have left by just glancing down at the bottom of the screen like I can with individual ships.
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14. Right now it's very hard to split fleets apart. It seems that when you do it you can only select the ship at the "top" of the stack. I'd like to see some more work on this front soon.
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15. I'd like to be able to press "C" to centre on the currently selected unit.
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16. Scrolling the build queue in the planet screen with my mouse roller goes really slowly. It should be sped up. Also, there should either be a scroll bar added or an option for one to be added for people who use a mouse pad. (I don't personally, but the guy who introduced Galactic Civilizations to me back in the day does, he would find the lack of scroll bars very frustrating)
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17. Holding shift when giving a move order should allow you to give multiple move orders at a time, like in most strategy games.
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18. When a battle takes place the screen should centre there. Sometimes I'm attacked and don't know where the battle was or whether or not I won it.