Decades have passed since the war erupted between the United Space Federation and The Alliance of Free Worlds. A bloody conflict that seemed to have reached a stalemate is now about to change, when a thrid faction suddenly appears. Take control of a fleet commander returned from exile, rise through the ranks of the United Space Federation forces and join an epic war across the stars. Start with a small group of frigates, and climb your way to controlling battleships, carriers and planetary bases, in huge space battles and boarding actions. Build space stations and orbital facilities to fortify your position, build your fleet, extract minerals and research upgrades. Execute boarding actions using marine special forces, and bombard your enemies with orbital long range cannons.
Okay, after playing I think it's only fair to give some suggestions:
Hud/Controls:
-I'm seriously missing doubleclick-selecting a single shiptype, especially with many frigates flying around.
-Military selection: My construction frigates like to play hide in my frigate groups as well, military selection could be helpful.
-Is there a button/Hotkey to scuttle/Decom ships/Defensive structures? I don't feel like leveling enemy ships just so I can free up ship slots.
-Can I shift-queue orders? I tried this in combat, but did not see any effect. It is something I am very used to in RTS games, so not having it seems odd to me.
Ship behaviour:
-Ships only keep defensive stance until they get a move order, and stop moving the moment they are set to defensive stance. This is kind of annoying. I'd prefer if the player had to swap stances manually.
-I have seen instances where newly bought ships would block the next ship in queue from leaving the Military station, getting blocked into place themselves in the process. Improving the pathfinding right there may help.
-Carriers and their fighter-groups are tied together very loosely. The Carrier can be destroyed or leave the planet and the fighters just go on fighting for ages. In the meantime the jumped-away carrier is defenseless as long as the fighters exist since he cannot reproduce them. Also, seven battleships with anti-fighter weaponary cannot kill a single leftover fighter?
-Large groups of cruisers and battleships moving in phalanx formation is kinda hard to keep organized. At a certain number of ships it would be helpful if the ships changed formation to something more... feasible.
There are other small things that would demand improvement, but since the character limits is already reached... If you guys work on one or two of the things I mentioned above my rating would already go up to 8 ;).