Overall I really like the game. Everything I touch upon is feedback, so it will sound super negative despite that not being my sentiment.
I did a "gigantic" game with 5 NPC factions, I started it on the 13th I think. The game basically became unplayable by turn 250, and I pushed through approximately ~50 crashes before giving up on it. All I wanted to do was spam force turn so I could win by Ascension...but it would just crash when I tried.
Crashes:
-Troop transports would occasionally duplicate after invasions, leading to a "ghost" ship with no pass option, no troops in it and it would be invisible when zoomed in. Any time the ship was interacted with, e.g hitting space bar to pass turn, clicking on an enemy planet, a friendly planet or a enemy ship, the game would crash. I had to send these ghost ships off to the other-side of the galaxy and hope no one ran into them, then time them out each turn by exhausting their 41 moves. ~(6 crashes)
-Issuing battle initiations too quickly would cause ships to cease to be able to do battle. Quick battle and view battle would do nothing when prompted, as ships would fail to interact. It allows you to push "turn", then the game crashes. (4 crashes)
-I had a starbase, that when I tried to modify it, the game would crash. No idea why. ~(3 crashes)
-Hitting spacebar too quickly when cycling through ships would initiate a crash, then be fine upon reload. ~(5 crashes)
-Ending a turn would sometimes crash , but then be fine upon reload. ~(6 crashes)
-Sorting ships in top interface causes crash (1)
-Misc spontaneous/inexplicable crashes (the rest)
I've done smaller maps with no problem. The game ran flawlessly before late-game. I really like the game, but it is absurdly unstable, and I wasn't even close to approaching the largest settings.
Glitches:
-Missing/filler text in tech trees. Misapplied colour highlights of tech tree.
-Missing/filler text in diplomatic interactions
-Planet background graphical glitches in colony menu. Govern menu resets sorting preferences upon exit of menu.
-Star base battles resolve differently if you view them (allegedly). Ships push forward without the starbase being able to support when viewing battle.
-Battle viewer: Free cam controls are sporadic and imprecise, other cams follow action poorly
Design features: Surely in some of these I am just ignorant of optional settings? Please inform me.
-How can I turn off the quick battle fighting animation so it is instant?
-What does quick move do, it seems nonfunctional? What does auto-open battle viewer do?
-How can I stop the camera from automatically moving to the location of every quick battle taking place?
-How can I force a turn to end, and ignore idles?
-No colony sorting settings on right side interface
-No ship sorting settings on right interface
-No adjustable size for screens displaying information
-No text search features in interface (other than tech tree)
-Trading technology will give you options to alter the 1 in 3 path choices you made previously. It is very unclear which technology is additive to your tree, and which replaces things, making trading irritating, needing to reference the tech tree constantly to know if it's a tech you already have. AI will also value tech switches as highly as new tech, so you can keep trading for different paths between AI.
Game design subjective:
-No draw back on large ships other than cost and marginal upkeep. Planet manufacturing increases are worthless on inexpensive vessels, because exceeding manufacturing cost with production does not carry over to next in queue (fairly sure?). Ship combat is pure progression towards larger ships instead of expanded options and utility. Very big wasted combat depth opportunity. Large ships being the fastest ships makes high movement max size, max fleet size optimal.
Consider:
-Mass/speed interaction to prevent loading large ships with engines to be much faster than smaller ships
-Transverse velocity (like EVE) on weapons to make all ship sizes serve a purpose in combat.
- Movement speed reduction in larger vessels, making them more dependent on support
-Movement speed reduction based on fleet size
-Ideology doesn't pace properly on ordinary settings in smaller galaxies, only triggered by colonization
-Late game on large maps the amount of turns allowed in between trades or wars equates to hours and hours of game-play that feels far too long
Planet sliders are very important and very tedious. There should be an option for "optimize research output" etc, where it will find the proper balance between manufacturing and research to provide optimal gains, while running research project. Managing the slider on 60 different colonies is terrible due to this.
AI is poor late game. I've played vs AI on genius, I don't know if this changes on higher settings. There is zero adaptation to my ship design. The Kyrn I played against used the same m6 large escort ships for 150 turns, while I built pure missile defense. I built huge triple escort drone carrier ships with max speed, sensors and defenses and self repair (no rare resources), and none of the comparably sized empires responded with any sort of counter. Each 1 of my ships could not be defeated independently over the course of 70 turns I used them.
-Their planets are a mess with no focus or awareness of adjacency in building (assuming it actually effects them the same way it does a player)
-They upgrade their fleets at terribly poor times, allowing me to kill each ship 1 by one in front of me
-They commit to 0% chance invasions with no follow-up with an easily conquerable, better planet, beside them
-They will trade their last 3 out of 4 planets for a modest amount of technology
-They will trade valuable starbases for multiples of "one per player" resources
