Feedback and observations.

[DasTactic]

I'll just get this off my chest right from the start - please #NoSpaceHalflings in the coming expansions.

I've been streaming Planetfall on Twitch every day since before release and have been recording a YouTube series so have been fairly heavily immersed in the game. I'm loving it! There are some great aspects about the game that raise it above the very polished Age of Wonders 3 experience but there are other aspects that could be tweaked.

First of all, the changes and innovations I absolutely love:

• Lower tier units are still the backbone of the armies all the way through the game.
• The way colonies now use sectors and provinces forces you to plan your expansion ahead.
• The unit mods are brilliant. You can develop task-specific units.
• The pacing and victory conditions seem right on the mark but I haven't played at the highest difficulty yet. In AoW3 the AI could get the non-domination victory too early on the high difficulty but Planetfall seems better.
• Love the balance between the factions and how they each feel unique.
• Love the balance between melee, ranged and flying units as well (I was worried that this was going to be an issue before I started playing).
• I really like the balance of resource costs and income such as cosmite and influence. It keeps you tracking along without running rampant in certain areas.

Issues and annoyances that I've come across while playing:

• Many of the pre-game settings aren't being saved for future games. I would like the game to remember what I did last time.
• I would also prefer the customised leaders to have the default to save them rather than have the default to not save them.
• When randomising the look of custom units I would like to have the gender included in the randomisation.
• Really need to be able to loop production in cities.
  
• Would be good to have a setting on-screen to speed the end-of-turn animations other than right-clicking for each AI movement. Gets tiring in the late-game.
• Some of the units in tactical battles automatically activate actions if you click on them. This is OK for buffs and self-healing but some of these are offensive. There is a Promethean tank that toasts everything around it that has caused more damage to my own troops than it has ever done to the enemy because of clicking on it to make evaluations. Most other range-zero offensive actions allow you to plan properly.
  
• In tactical battles it would be good to have a small percentage number appear over targets as you hover over potential movement hexes. The colours aren't really clear enough - especially for those of us that are colour blind.
• In tactical battles, it would be good to somehow know which hexes are in affected by cover. Maybe a tint as you plan your movement or if you select a unit in cover.
• Would love a movement UNDO button as it is difficult to select ground and air units when they are close. Also I often accidentally move units into the wrong place - especially when setting the facing.
• I'd like to see something like the Champion levels from AoW3 where units could keep getting more health as they develop. Also feel the top level for units isn't all that impactful. Would prefer the top level to have more impact.
  
• It would be awesome to have more of a cloth map for planning than just the informational map which is extremely difficult to decipher. The existing zoom out map doesn't zoom out far enough and it doesn't display clearly terrain features - which can be critically important. I definitely want to know the base terrain and terrain overlays but also to be more clearly able to see borders etc. AoW3 was perfect in this regard.
• For city construction, I don't think there are enough helpers to make specialisations clear. Not sure how this could be implemented but city specialisation is a great feature within the game but the mechanics are all but hidden to the player so it is a real chore to micro-manage this. As your empire gets larger you lose track of what you wanted specific cities for other than renaming them. Each city needs a more in-depth summary I think other than just the resources it generates. A great mechanic but not handled very clearly nor intuitively.
  
• At the end of the game, you can't get a good view of the graphs (too small at the bottom of the screen).
• End of game should expose all the map and also show all the remaining units, cities, build queues etc. Presently the fog of war remains.

I had a lot more but I can't remember them, sorry. They seemed to come up as I was live-streaming so couldn't jot them down.

Some things I'd love to see down the track:

• There is no Underground but I would love to see teleport pads on the map that take you to other locations such as orbital satelites, moons, planets, asteroids etc that provide other boosts (acting a little like the Underground used to in other AoW games). The way Warlock 2 handled this would be ideal for Planetfall.
• I'd especially like to see absolutely zero Space Halflings in the future.

Keep up the great work, Devs. Loving it. Blown away the game is as polished and as balanced as it is at launch

Cheers

DasTactic

 

[DasTactic]

One more peeve from today's live-stream.

• It would be good if the game kept your selections when zooming from the strategic map to the information maps. For example, when you are developing a city you have the city selected and the sector tab. You want to evaluate the surrounds so zoom out to see the Economy map. When you zoom back in the city is no longer selected.

 

[HisRotundity]

I agree with almost everything DasTactic said, but would like to add a few observations of my own:

I think that the way Secret Technologies and Factions interact is, on the whole, really well done. I love how different factions make use of their Secret Technologies differently, a prime example being how Prometheon Amazons, Vanguard, and Dvar players all have different Purifier variants. The Amazons have Inferno Bows, the Vanguard have rapid-firing plasma guns, and the Dvar have extra-powerful, but singular, plasma blasts. I like that attention to detail. What I'd like to see in the future, though, is that idea expanded upon, because as of now some factions have no interesting synergies with some secret technologies. For example, while Psynumbra Amazon, Syndicate, and Kir'ko players all have subtly different Psynumbra Initiate units, there's nothing whatsoever that distinguishes a Dvar Initiate from a Vanguard Initiate. The Xenoplague is also like this in that all three Xenoplague units are unique unto themselves rather than being "racial" units, but given how differently the Xenoplague functions I think that's probably fine.

 

[Greyclouds]

Hey DasTactic! I'm a fan and subscriber to your YouTube channel!

I agree with all of your points. The one I feel needs restating: I feel that Unit experience rewards need revamping. The level 4 bonus trait is only "nice" for most units, and the level up bonuses tend to only comprise additional health and some small amount of accuracy. How about damage resistance channels for some units? Or maybe more armor/shields in addition to small health bonuses.

A couple of things that I feel need addressing or would like to see down the line:

• The Society tree's "middle" section: The problem with the society tree, in general, is that it has only a small faction-specific track that makes only a small difference on gameplay, yet provides a huge "busywork" section for filling out sectors. I understand that you need to pace the benefits provided by the society tree, but it feels less like a "choice" as all four types of sectors are necessary and the terrain-specific sectors are tiny blips in the tree. Why not condense this down and give more faction-specific benefits/techs? I would love to see some factions get unique bonuses to specific climates or terrain that are exclusive to that faction. Additionally, if they can get strategic ops that terraform to that terrain, that fits very well with the themes of past AOW games
  
  
• I'd love to see more factions and secret tech! There are so many more sci-fi tropes to explore! Like a "Xenomorph" faction that carries automatic negative diplomatic status with other players, but can infect their colonies and steal resources.
  
  
• I'd also love to see a procedural "campaign" made up of skirmish maps. Something like a "league mode" from Bloodbowl, where you play the same faction and can carry persistent benefits from map to map, and face a set of opponents on each map. To keep things very interesting, there should be a choice between planets to invade (similar to the galaxy map from FTL, or other games) and each planet could have wacky global modifiers. Like a high gravity planet that "grounds" all flyers or a "hot planet" that "chars" all non-fire resistant units but removes fire resistance from all others.

I've been playing non-stop since release and I'm loving the game! Amazing addition to the series!

 

[DasTactic]

I'd agree that there is a lot of scope to flesh out the uniqueness of the factions more as well moving forward. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't start to see mods that address that in the future.

I jotted down a couple more items as I was recording yesterday:

• Pathing of units when they try to enter the water isn't optimised. The highlighted hexes are shown correctly yet if you try to move to one of the hexes the stack will enter the closest water and run out of movement.
• When building units etc it would be nice if the selection stayed where you were rather than resetting to the top of the list. This is annoying if you are trying to build multiple of the same type.
• If you take over an enemy city and replace the faction the original turret type remains but you can build your new type over the top. Yet when it is built the original turrets are still there and your new turrets are nowhere to be seen. I think I'd prefer to see the turrets destroyed when a city is captured and need to be re-built.