Calyx Demo 0.0.2.4 Feedback

[Vanguard]

Hi all,

Thanks for creating this demo and allow people to voice their opinion about the game.

I hope you have success with the title - I like the idea of a hostile Tiberium like organism that creeps over the entire surface. With the current state of the game I would like to offer these points of thoughts. I will try to break down my thoughts into sections.

I understand that the Game is very early in development, so if I sound overly negative, rest assured that I understand that most of my Feedback is probably already covered by further development plans and I am looking forward to seeing that development coming to fruition. :)

Minerals and Eco:

• Early Game eco relies on the interaction between Energy, Minerals and Transports to generate credits. Since the transports require vast amounts of energy when loading, you can overbuild mines and toggle them off, when energy for the transport is needed. Thus you can snowball into 1000 minerals per minute quite early on based on the starting mineral blotches.
  
• This depends on the grace period offered by the Calyx blooming. With the starting tanks I can extend that grace period by culling the Calyx. While it rewards some form of micro by allowing you to build almost an endgame eco with your starting position, it feels this way of playing isn't really fun - the UI to toggle isn't as responsive as I'd like it do be (double clicking activate/deactivate is too slow, omitting clicks sometimes).
  
• There are no upkeep or maintenance costs to your army or defenses, thus once you are in a stable position there is no way of losing the game, making clearing the remaining Calyx rather a chore than a challenge.
  
• There is no incentive for splitting your expenditure between eco and military. There is an all-in benefit to playing. You either expand your eco, since there is no pressure from the Kalyx or you spend everything on military, since your base is maxed.
  
• The mineral refinery building feels awkward to use, since it only increases production directly adjacent, encouraging building mines in a diamond shape pattern for maximum efficiency. Or constructing one adjacent to two mines for a minimal endgame boost (Recuperating the 300 Credits cost with two mines boosted takes about 50 minutes, so it probably is not worth it, but I still kind of wand to do it, to maximize the minimal-income rate). Something about the refinery feels off. I am not sure what I am complaining about here, but the refinery feels awkward to use.
  
• Mines that are running out of minerals switch to a lower energy mode. I don't think this is a good idea. It should be a call you need to make what's more important: Saving a bit of energy or scraping the bare minimum or minerals out of the ground. The cheaper energy cost mining minimum mineral deposits makes this a no brainer.
  
• Edit a few days later: Coming back to the refinery: I think what irks me is that the refinery takes up the spot of a mine, thus if you wanted to boost 4-6 mines, you have to come back later and destroy it, build a mine on the spot of the refinery and once the patch has been mining out place the refinery back - it's either that or simply neglecting to mine all minerals which triggers my OCD. That combined with the fact that a mine-refinery complex is hard to power because of the low supply range of the pylon. It is a weird eco-loop that does need fixing. I do not know how, I only know why.
  
• Edit a few days later: I think the entire mining system needs a rework. Patches of ore could be of either size and abundance, allowing you to build a fixed amount of mines on them with a refinery at the center as an upgrade option, mining the entire spot in range, no matter how many mines are on there. Thus the amount of mines just determine the investment you are willing to put on a single spot and your lowest-income isn't necessarily determined by how awkward you can squeeze mines onto the mineral fields. This will also help ensure some sort of "balance" in between players skill when it comes to ecoing and basebuilding, while also looking nicer.

Calyx and the army and strategy:

• Early game harassment of the Calyx feels a bit disjointed, since I need to split my attention between my base and my units - however, unlike a RTS like Starcraft l have the option to pause here, leading to a toggle-pause fest. I understand this is my personal problem, trying to optimize my eco-build time, instead of relying on chokepoints sooner rather than later. It feels a bit too frantic esp. compared to the later parts of the game where you sit mostly behind a wall of turrets.
  
• Shaping the Kalyx growth to block the more dangerous Kalyx from spreading is a cool mechanic and offers potentially challenging scenarios.
  
• The game too heavily relies on choke points. Once a choke point is secured, it is impossible to lose it and it is too cheap to hold those choke points. A few Gun towers can hold back an entire ocean of Kalyx, since there is only a fixed amount of pressure being exerted by the Kalyx Growth.
  
• Walls feel pointless except for their aesthetic value.
  
• The Calyx is way to vulnerable to Artillery, heavily emphasizing player micro targeting the base of the trunks. At the same time, units feel staggeringly incompetent when not controlled manually. Artillery apparently fires randomly into a patch of grass, when the main trunk of the Calyx expansion would be in firing range.
  
• Obv. I expect in future version down the lane for more mechanics to come in to make the game more interesting, alleviating a lot of the concerns raised above, such as Calyx being able to scale walls once enough Calyx has accumulated at the base wall, maybe an upkeep cost or other mechanics to introduce tipping points, etc.
  
• Being able to build anywhere on the map makes it too easy to expand into the cavities left behind by clearing a Calyx flower. I am assuming in future version you can place blueprints, but only blueprints within pylon range will be worked on?

UI and controls:

• Of course it still needs visual polish, but that is to be expected.
  
• What is WAY more important is that the game lacks shortcuts and cool control options. Suggestions here:
  
• Allow hovering over an unit/building and by pressing a key control the state of the building. For example "E" could be used to enable/disable a building while "Q" could control it's "activation". For Solar panels this (the "Q" action) would be triggering the upgrade, for Transports this would trigger the load, for artillery this would enable sending an attack command to the unit, etc.
  
• The formation controls are nice and work well, I think. Maybe an additional option to control the distance between lines would be fun, so that the medium tanks could be either directly part of the front line or fall back even further.
  
• Dragging a line of power pylons should not construct them back to back but instead only plant a pylon, once the maximum construction range is reached.
  
• Cancelling a building below 5% completion or so should refund the refund the entire cost of the building, not only a partial amount.
  
• Unit listing when having a group selected should allow for picking out individual types of units (such as picking out the artillery from a group of units more easily)

Units and defenses

• Unclear roles of units. The medium tanks serves no purpose at all. It is worse at clearing light overgrowth or distant branches. For close combat light tanks excel, for taking out branches the artillery does a way better job. Their low rate of fire combined with their (when not manually controlled) habit of shooting the grass makes them pointless.
  
• Useless Mortar turret - Mortar turrets do not do anything useful as they don't even have enough range to engage the red flower spitters. They are basically in the same spot as medium tanks. They don't have enough firepower to clear a significant amount of growth.

Early game vs. late game

What it boils down to early game is: Overbuilding mines, toggling mines to conserve energy and maximize output to transports, microing tanks, etc - the game is too frontloaded due to the eco options I have, leading to a lot of pausing the game early on, while the later game feels more like a cleanup on aisle three. The best is the (very short) phase of the mid game, where you get to strategically expand and construct new defensive lines.

So far the game is, like you said, more a proof of concept rather than a complete game and I look forward to further development. Best of luck, I will follow this game's development.

[Ady M]

Originally posted by Vanguard:

Cancelling a building below 5% completion or so should refund the entire cost of the building, not only a partial amount.

Wouldn't you prefer to get the full amount back regardless of when you cancel during the building process?
That's how it works in other RTS games like StarCraft and Command & Conquer.

[Vanguard]

Originally posted by Ady M:

Originally posted by Vanguard:

Cancelling a building below 5% completion or so should refund the entire cost of the building, not only a partial amount.

Wouldn't you prefer to get the full amount back regardless of when you cancel during the building process?
That's how it works in other RTS games like StarCraft and Command & Conquer.

That is untrue. Starcraft has a 25% cancel fee and you cannot deconstruct finished buildings with a few notable exceptions since the latest patch. Supreme Commander has a flow-eco and it also only partially refunds eco invested.

I am fine with having a tax on finished buildings being deconstructed, but Buildings which are in planning and whose construction hasn't started yet not refunding fully is not good. If you misplaced a mine and need to cancel it, you will not be able to get another mine until you shipped more minerals off planet.

[Ady M]

Originally posted by Vanguard:

Originally posted by Ady M:

Wouldn't you prefer to get the full amount back regardless of when you cancel during the building process?
That's how it works in other RTS games like StarCraft and Command & Conquer.

That is untrue. Starcraft has a 25% cancel fee and you cannot deconstruct finished buildings with a few notable exceptions since the latest patch. Supreme Commander has a flow-eco and it also only partially refunds eco invested.

I am fine with having a tax on finished buildings being deconstructed, but Buildings which are in planning and whose construction hasn't started yet not refunding fully is not good. If you misplaced a mine and need to cancel it, you will not be able to get another mine until you shipped more minerals off planet.

Hmm. I never noticed that in StarCraft. Probably because I only play single-player (I play the old games, btw. I don't own the new ones).

In C&C: Remastered you always get a full refund during construction, but maybe that's because you construct buildings magically off-screen then place them.

I like your idea for Calyx, but I think I'd prefer it if you had to cancel the construction within a few seconds to get a full refund.

[Vanguard]

> Hmm. I never noticed that in StarCraft

Actually, I think I was talking about Starcraft II - I watch frequent Casts by a Streamer called Winter. Let me google that. -> Found a post referring to Broodwar, also confirming 75% refund.


> I like your idea for Calyx, but I think I'd prefer it if you had to cancel the construction within a few seconds to get a full refund.

I would be fine with a 5 second rule or something, as it would also help players who do not prefer to pause the game. I usually make judicious use of pausing the game for microing eco, etc.


Edit: Added my thoughts on the refinery complex into the original post.

[Caboose]

Loved the demo, truly addicting game.

My only feedback is that I accidentally double clicked all my Pylons and deleted them.
This was also in late game and all my tower stopped working, it definitely gave me a scare but I was able to recover.

Maybe important things like Pylons should not be able to be mass deleted.

[Vanguard]

> Maybe important things like Pylons should not be able to be mass deleted.
He, the Pylon thing happened to me too. At early game start, so it wasn't as bad, but it was still a nuisance.

Maybe it would be good to have some kind of confirmation pop up if you want to delete multiple units. You could still disable it via Options in the menu if you are always sure about your control and actions. :)

[Esse]

Regarding mines being tricky to power, one solution is to give all buildings a one space power distribution, similar, but smaller, to the starting base. Then all adjacent mines/solar cells would power each other.