Just so that this post isn't so short, I'd thought I'd give a little feedback too
Firstly, I love the game. This is the BSG game I I've always wanted. It captures the look, the sound, and the feel of the series so well, and strategy games are my favorite.
The visuals are amazing. Really impressive. The ships look fantastic, and the autocam replays nail the "documentary style" camera style from the reimagined series. My only gripe about the visuals is the background starfield. It looks too much like 2D black screen with little white dots in different sizes pasted onto it. It's got no "depth". That being said, whenever there is a nebula in the background, that part looks beautiful.
The UI is relatively easy to use, but there are a lot of "steps" involved in doing what you want. For example, if I want to fire missiles, I have to right click the ship, click the munitions, click the missiles, click the target, and then click "okay". Being able to select the missiles then just right-click the target would help eliminate 2 of the steps.
I'm sure this next one will get easier as I play the game more, but the "battlefield" gets pretty cluttered up with all the different indicators of things. Each ship has a "shadow" to show where it's going to be moving, it has an icon over it's head to display its action, the range meter, the fighter squadrons have their little engine-lights, it's own shadow, it's own action indicator. There are explosions, bullets, missiles, destroyed ship skeletons, asteroids, set pieces (stations, satellites, refineries etc). Sometimes it gets hard to see to give my order and ignore what I'm not currently trying to order, especially when the ships start to get close to each other.
The gameplay itself is very easy to use and get used to, which is great because it really focuses on the detailed tactical aspect, which I love.
The ship movement is very well done. The one complaint I have about this though, and maybe I just haven't figured out how to do it yet, is getting a ship to stand still and not move forward. Throughout the reimagined series, Galactica would sit still, present its broadside, and just let loose. I've tried to do that in the game, but wind up with the ship kind of creeping out of my formation. When the ships can't stop and just pivot, I had a multiplayer battle where all of our ships started out in formation, broke into a beautiful ballet with bullets and missiles flying around, ships flanking each other and maneuvering......and promptly fell into chaos with ships narrowly missing collisions with each other because we couldn't stop them or just turn them where they were. We each had 1 battlestar, and they ended up driving right past each other despite seeing it coming a mile away, and then slowly trying to chase-turn to resume fighting until one of us finally got the firing solution before the other. The match felt great up until that point, but in that moment It felt kind of like boats in the water instead of ships in space. At one point I wanted to switch broadsides on my Battlestar, but with the way it has to move forward to make a turn, by the time I got it even halfway around, I lost my firing solution, was taking more damage, and was completely out of position to do anything useful, while my opponent's Battlestar was fledgling around looking like he was trying to do that same thing. The only thing we accomplished was showing each other's Battlestar's asses to each other
.I love the names that the ships come with. Very thematic and poetic. I haven't figured out how to name my ships yet. That would be awesome, especially in multiplayer, where the fleet feels more like it's "mine", but it doesn't seem possible in multiplayer.
The music is insane. When I loaded up the game for the first time and main menu came up with that opening music, I got the chills.
MORE SHIPS!!! I love the ships. You guys nailed the aesthetic. The ships look beautiful but deadly. There's a ship for every role (carrier, destroyer, and scout) and hybrids in between. But not enough! This is a very greedy complaint, I know. If you guys were planning any future patches, I'd love more of a variety, like the Valkyrie. I understand that adding something like the Valkyrie would seem redundant since a hybrid carrier-destroyer already exists, but I think this is a case where "form over function" would add more of a cool-factor. Just more options to feel cool using.
Overall I love the game. It's the BSG game I've always wanted. Thank you guys for taking the time, the money, and gamble on bringing that to us. I hope it's a huge success!
