Now, I love this game. I have been playing it nonstop since I picked it up on Sunday.
Despite what I like about it, there are still a lot of things that need to be changed. What do you think would make it better?
Here are some of my ideas:
Transports for the Civ section
Not so many damn pirate attacks and ecological disasters in the space portion. Really, just making the whole thing less monotonous. I want to explore, abduct, terraform, etc. I don’t want to kill a pirate horde, go to another planet to heal, then go back again to attack the other one.
Anywho, those are just two off the top of my head. I’m interested in what y’all have to say.
Upgradeable parts. When I have my creature looking the way I want it to why can’t I spend X amount of DNA to give it +1 to bite instead of putting on a new part I might not like as much.
A minor quibble, really, but something that would have been so easy to do correctly: Accurate gravitational lensing effects around black holes. It’s not like there isn’t software out there to simulate this already. Use that instead of reinventing the square wheel.
Lose the cell phase. Or keep it. I don’t care. It seems to have little to do with the Creature/Tribal/Civ/Space stages.
Everything from Creature through Space is basically a RTS game with different ‘Epochs’ or ‘Tech Levels’. The only difference is that you design the creatures and units and buildings with the editors and the map is wrapped around a sphere. All RTS games basically follow the same resource collection/ rock/paper/scissors formula so it should be pretty straightforward:
Tech trees and upgrades - everything from spears to nuclear missles
Multiple unit types - how you design your unit should determine whether it functions as a scout, tank, artillery piece, transport, anti aircraft, etc.
Multiple resource types - farm, domesticated animals, gold, stone, iron, lumber, oil, rubber, spice. What you can build will depend on what you can collect.
Colonies not tied to ‘Epcot Pavillions’. I’m thinking more like AOE2 or Black & White 2. You plop down a ‘Colony’ as you do now, but houses, factories, resource buildings and defensive walls and structures can be places anywhere just like in any other RTS (once the atmosphere supports them).
Roads and possibly rail might be nice
More automated trade networks between planets. I don’t want to make every trip myself.
How about the creation of a fleet of spaceships? So like I don’t have to deal with pirate bullshit all the time?
Now I realize this is somewhat of a tall order. I don’t believe it’s possible (yet) to have a game consisting of thousands of planets, each with it’s own ecosystem running a completely 3D Supreme Commander battle with tech trees starting from dumb animals up to laser armed robots and space marines supported with orbital bombardments from your spaceship in orbit (all user customized). However, I do think Will Wright could have added a lot more depth to the game.
Just the obvious - bring back the stuff that didn’t make this version like the aquatic stage. And of course get rid of the awful DRM they picked. Also wish it could run on a non-leopard / non-intel mac.
Well, i havent had much time to play it past the cell stage so for now I’m going to go with the limited downloads - c’mon, 3x max??? WTFudge?! I usually upgrade my computer every 2 yrs, plus my gaming laptop, and then the children’s computer(s).
Had I known that was the route AE was going, I would’ve passed on the game. Shame on them.
Oh, and I really would rather be responsible for my own actions, not having to tell my tribe what to do. ugh.