Dominus Galaxia -- MoO 1 spiritual successor; free game build and KickStarter.

[rho21]

Some initial thoughts on the beta build, which I’ve not played a vast amount of. I’m a fairly experienced MoO1 player.

Overall, it still feels very MoO, which is a high compliment in my book. Almost all of the interface changes and bug fixes are a big improvement. One additional change I’d like to see is the ability to postpone a choice of tech to look at other information in the game.

The biggest thing I’m not convinced about is starting with a chunk of treasury. I understand the economy isn’t identical to MoO, but I can’t imagine any opening can be optimal if it doesn’t start with stimulus spending at the homeworld to get more factories built sooner. Just on the first turn it will approximately triple the produced number of factories, and they pay off pretty quickly.

In fact I suspect that being able to pay for lots more things using the treasury now may be a bit of a misstep, but I’m going to withhold judgment on that until I’ve played more.

The pirates feel like a good replacement for MoO’s ability to stake out ground using scouts, and necessary when colony ships are off meaning that the cost to set up a new colony is very low. I’d like to see a guaranteed habitable and unguarded planet close to the homeworld though.

The AI (I was playing on the second hardest level) seemed to take an age to challenge the pirates, even relatively weak groups. As the best planets are blocked by these pirates, that gives a player who builds an early fleet a fairly significant advantage.

Starlanes I’m slightly in favour of at the moment, ditto wormholes.

I disliked the cost in time and money to design ships (and promptly disabled it). Mostly it’s because when I get a shiny new weapon, I want to be able to get it deployed to the front lines as soon as possible. There’s already a lead time for shipbuilding and transit, adding another for ship design feels annoying.

It appears you can still prebuild using big ships. Not sure if this is a good thing, or a bit of a hidden feature for power users.

Anyway, thanks for releasing the beta build. It’s enough to convince me to back the project even though I doubt I’ll play the beta much more - I just have too much backlog. :)

One bug to report: when you’re playing “without” starports, the AI can still sabotage the starport on a planet, forcing you to rebuild it.

And one UI issue: it can be difficult when zoomed out to select a planet which has ships near it. Some context here would be a good start: if I’m choosing a rally point, ignoring ships and highlighting the planet beneath them would be advantageous.

[RichVR]

@rho21

I disliked the cost in time and money to design ships (and promptly disabled it). Mostly it’s because when I get a shiny new weapon, I want to be able to get it deployed to the front lines as soon as possible. There’s already a lead time for shipbuilding and transit, adding another for ship design feels annoying.

@rho21

And one UI issue: it can be difficult when zoomed out to select a planet which has ships near it. Some context here would be a good start: if I’m choosing a rally point, ignoring ships and highlighting the planet beneath them would be advantageous.

Agreed. Otherwise I’m enjoying it. It feels like MoO 1.5. Nice work.

Edit: And on that note, backed. Looks really good.

[jeffgraw]

@rho21

One additional change I’d like to see is the ability to postpone a choice of tech to look at other information in the game.

You can change the research topic after the fact in the research screen. Keep in mind that you take a 50% (iirc) haircut on any RP already invested, but the same turn that you pick a tech you won’t have any investment.

Well, most of the time. If you somehow overflow 100% chance to research a tech that turn, any RP above and beyond that is carried over.

(And while that’s nice… a lot of little touches like that, which practically never end up mattering, only exist because I’m a dumb perfectionist idiot. Ideally I’d be spending more of my time on more important things.)

@rho21

I’d like to see a guaranteed habitable and unguarded planet close to the homeworld though.

This should be the case. In fact, you can tweak some of the parameters for starting conditions in the plain-text data files (currently min of 2 and max of 4 habitable within starting range). It may be possible that some edge cases still get through though – like having a habitable undefended world on the other end of a guarded wormhole, or starting really close to another empire (eg. 25 stars and “crowded”) so that their starting position overlaps your own.

@rho21

It appears you can still prebuild using big ships. Not sure if this is a good thing, or a bit of a hidden feature for power users.

Actually this is an interesting case. I believe RoTP handles it by throwing away any existing investment when switching designs, but for myself I find that a bit… harsh… where I feel like the majority who wouldn’t abuse the loophole end up taking collateral damage. Even though there’s still a bit of a micro-management aspect which I find distasteful, for DG I ended up leaning into the tactic since I think that’s the lesser evil.

So you don’t actually need to pre-build on a huge (or otherwise expensive) hull. Just select “none” on the starport and you’re able to store up to 10,000 BC production there. And after the colony reaches its capacity you’ll get a notification and production is automatically reallocated elsewhere. No need to check every few turns to make sure that the “donor hull” never gets built.

That said, don’t be surprised if in a later version of the game there’s a sabotage op that will reduce or destroy this pre-built production ;)

@rho21

One bug to report: when you’re playing “without” starports, the AI can still sabotage the starport on a planet, forcing you to rebuild it.

Yup, thanks. Will be fixed in the next version.

@rho21

The AI (I was playing on the second hardest level) seemed to take an age to challenge the pirates, even relatively weak groups. As the best planets are blocked by these pirates, that gives a player who builds an early fleet a fairly significant advantage.

Yeah, I know about that but I probably can’t get around to it in the KS period.

@rho21

And one UI issue: it can be difficult when zoomed out to select a planet which has ships near it. Some context here would be a good start: if I’m choosing a rally point, ignoring ships and highlighting the planet beneath them would be advantageous.

Yeah, a major annoyance that existed in MoO 1. This could maybe use some visual feedback, but in DG you can just keep clicking on or around the same area to cycle through overlapping targets.

[jeffgraw]

@RichVR

Agreed. Otherwise I’m enjoying it. It feels like MoO 1.5. Nice work.

Edit: And on that note, backed. Looks really good.

Thanks for backing, and also for the kind words! “Feels like MoO 1.5” is very much something I like to hear :)

KS seems like it’s starting to slow down a bit though and it’s going to be more of a battle I’d like to pass the funding goal. Nothing is in dire straits yet, and to some extent plateaus should be expected here and there, but if you can also help pass along word of the campaign that could help a lot.

[robc04]

Not sure if this is affecting participation, but when I follow the kickstarter link from itch.io, I get a weird mix of english and french. I’m in the US if that matters.

[jeffgraw]

I’ll check with my KS contact, thanks for the heads up.

[BrianRubin]

@jeffgraw

KS seems like it’s starting to slow down a bit though

That’s not abnormal. Things can slow a spell during the mid-point of a campaign, only to seriously speed up as the deadline nears.

[jeffgraw]

@BrianRubin

That’s not abnormal. Things can slow a spell during the mid-point of a campaign, only to seriously speed up as the deadline nears.

Yeah, I think it’s somewhere above a 50% chance… Although backerkit’s projection of the campaign looks like a stressful ride.

[rho21]

Apologies if my previous post came over as negative. I know I have a tendency to spend one sentence saying I really like something and then a large post listing all the flaws I can see. :)

I’m actually very positive about it and looking forward to seeing the final version. Best of luck getting to the funding goal.

@jeffgraw

You can change the research topic after the fact in the research screen.

Ah yes good point, I suppose that would generally be safe to do on the first turn of a new tech.

I like the new tech system for not requiring as much management, though I did think MoO’s option to get a tech extremely cheaply if you didn’t mind waiting a long time was very interesting. It’s just a shame it was so fiddly to actually do.

@jeffgraw

@rho21

I’d like to see a guaranteed habitable and unguarded planet close to the homeworld though.

This should be the case.

I think in my current game I had one hidden away beyond a planet guarded by pirates. And still getting used to starlanes, I didn’t think to try to get there the slow route. It’s possible I had a more accessible one at the end of a big nebula. Whatever, definitely none of the planets “adjacent” to my homeworld was available.
It looks as though the initial colony ship (if playing with that option) costs a lot of maintenance relative to your economy size, just like in MoO, so it’s good to be able to get the new colony founded quickly. I was pretty unlucky in this game to still have it after 10 turns.

@jeffgraw

So you don’t actually need to pre-build on a huge (or otherwise expensive) hull. Just select “none” on the starport and you’re able to store up to 10,000 BC production there.

Handy tip! I hope that’ll be in the in-depth strategy guide you’ll be publishing to rival MoO’s. ;)

One bug I just ran into: I bombarded a colony to zero population without destroying it. This certainly isn’t always the case though. The next colony I targeted got destroyed by bombardment. Perhaps population went to 0.3 which rounded down or something.

Edit: Or maybe that isn’t a bug. Next time I showed up there, the colony belonged to the zero people.

And another: if you have non-aggression, trade and research pacts, the words overlap on the diplomacy screen.

[cicobuff]

Backed. Supporting your vision and for being a member here =).

[jeffgraw]

@rho21

Apologies if my previous post came over as negative. I know I have a tendency to spend one sentence saying I really like something and then a large post listing all the flaws I can see. :)

Ah, I didn’t get that impression at all! Sorry if I came across as terse making you think that I thought you came across as negative :P

Also I accidentally quoted the wrong section once, which I’m sure didn’t help things.

@rho21

And still getting used to starlanes, I didn’t think to try to get there the slow route.

Right, the starting condition parameters don’t take fast vs. slow routes into account. Maybe they should, since for a new player they’re likely to take awhile to figure that stuff out. Or at the least guarantee that one habitable, unguarded world is directly connected.

@rho21

One bug I just ran into: I bombarded a colony to zero population without destroying it. This certainly isn’t always the case though. The next colony I targeted got destroyed by bombardment. Perhaps population went to 0.3 which rounded down or something.

Probably a UI rounding issue.

@rho21

And another: if you have non-aggression, trade and research pacts, the words overlap on the diplomacy screen.

Good to know. I’ll get that fixed for the next build (the one after the one I’m releasing as we speak.)

@cicobuff

Backed. Supporting your vision and for being a member here =).

Thanks! You guys are great :)

[jeffgraw]

First linux build is up but there’s an issue with AMD GPUs + Linux so that the game isn’t really playable with that configuration.

It might just be the open source AMD drivers though. I’ve yet to be able to convince anyone to test with the proprietary drivers.

If the KS succeeds, I’m going to need to build an AMD/Linux box.

[RichVR]

How do you update the game? Am I missing something?

[jeffgraw]

@RichVR

How do you update the game? Am I missing something?

You can use the itch app to auto-update. Otherwise, you need to download the game again.

Never fear though, the Steam page for the Dominus Galaxia KS edition should be up soon. Just waiting on Valve to put their rubber stamp on everything.

[Grifman]

@jeffgraw

@RichVR

How do you update the game? Am I missing something?

You can use the itch app to auto-update. Otherwise, you need to download the game again.

Never fear though, the Steam page for the Dominus Galaxia KS edition should be up soon. Just waiting on Valve to put their rubber stamp on everything.

If you can get this up on Steam soon, I would think you’d get some new KS supporters quickly.

[jeffgraw]

OSX and Linux version are now available.

[RichVR]

Joined the reddit. Need more people in there.

[RichVR]

I know this is a minor thing. But when I close the game I dislike clicking “Nah” when asked to donate to the Kickstarter. :)

[jeffgraw]

@RichVR

I know this is a minor thing. But when I close the game I dislike clicking “Nah” when asked to donate to the Kickstarter. :)

Good thing I thought to expose this in data ;)

In:
Dominus Galaxia_Data\StreamingAssets\GameData\Variables\Variables.txt

change EXIT_GAME_PROMPT to 0 or 1.

[jeffgraw]

We’re in the final week!