An update from Firaxis Games regarding Beyond Earth feedback

[rastak]

I knew this game wouldn't be polished but I'm surprised it was released in this state.

Wake me up when the second expansion pack gets here.

Nah, things would be better if we let you sleep I think.


Anyway, back to enjoying BE...

 

[mnf]

- need a way to find new stations when they appear, either a clickable notification or "locate" button on the message window that shifts focus to the station. Would be nice also to have a list somewhere afterwards to find them again easily.

Your map is supposed to pan over to the new station/faction that had just popped up. The problem is (and this is obviously a bug) that they do this when the player turn is about to start. If you have an unit that needs orders in the new turn, the map will pan back to that unit while the screen pops up the new station/faction.

What the game should do is to wait until player turn actually starts before activating the unit.

- add "limit growth" option

This is in the code, but specifically taken out as a game design decision, it seems. The comment read that they are not sure whether they'll put this back in.

 

[dvandyke]

Please, for the love of god sort out trade routes.
The most boring part of the game.

1. There are way too many. One per trade depot is fine.
2. They are ridiculously overpowered, reduce by 75%
3. Interface sucks. Why not manage them from a single screen?
4. Refresh after X turns is annoying and unnecessary.
5. Make it so you can cancel and redirect at any time, but it takes a few turns to do so.

 

[Shaleghi]

They should make trade route management clearer arranged. I'm still shocked that we seriously cannot sort trade routes by Energy or Science output.
I mean, aren't we already past this? We were able to do it in BNW as well.

*sigh*

Also please add a button to make trade route's invisible (or not).... plz

 

[Lucius_]

Also please add a button to make trade route's invisible (or not).... plz

This already exists, unless you are talking about the actual units themselves, not the routes.

 

[mnf]

Please fix the aliens.

• What does it do? Other than become annoying roadblocks that literally require us to have 3-tile Ultrasonic Fences, friendly aliens do absolutely nothing.
• Decouple friendly players from alien hate! Aliens are friendly to me but not friendly to AIs, that means they are able to tell the difference between the various factions. When AI factions kill aliens, it should not then turn the aliens back to neutral for me. Little traps like this mean there's absolutely no reason to avoid killing aliens. Which makes aliens absolutely the same thing as barbarians. I just lost 6 units in one turn because AIs turned aliens back to neutral.
  
  Now if you say aliens treat all human factions as one, then that's obviously a design flaw. What is the chance that the X units coming from N factions all decide to never touch aliens over the course of 100 or even 200 turns?
• Friendly aliens exercise zone-of-control on my units. Friendly aliens block my path. This is ridiculous. I have a friendly alien sitting on top of a Titanium resource. He has nowhere to move. I am deprived of that resource because I want to keep at friendly status.

All considered, the alien system is clearly half-finished.

Seriously. Fix the aliens.

 

[player1 fanatic]

What about not being friendly to the aliens?
Its not like it gives any tangible benefits, even for Harmony player.

 

[Wodan]

No offense to those who want UI improvements, but please Firaxis prioritize bugfixes, game balance, and gameplay improvements. UI that is low level of effort, sure, knock it out. UI that takes some work should be at the very bottom of the list.

 

[Varelse]

I know a lot of people have been clamoring for the demographics screen (and I was very dependent on it in CiV), but I'm actually in the camp that it's immersion breaking and I shouldn't readily know agricultural/economic/production/military strength of others. It adds increased value to spy reconnaissance. In MP, everyone clearly knows who's ahead based on demographics, when in my opinion, it should be more obfuscated.

The demographics screen could be updated as your spies gather information from other players or when you form treaties with them. Plus it helps immersion to know what the population and land area of your empire is, and that info tends to only be available on the demo screen.

 

[mnf]

What about not being friendly to the aliens?
Its not like it gives any tangible benefits, even for Harmony player.

Well it takes no effort to not being friendly to aliens. But it takes a lot of effort (currently) to stay friendly to aliens.

The way I see it, being friendly to aliens is like a supercharged Purity 1 bonus. But the fact that aliens will block your path, cause zone-of-control issues and sea aliens actually blockade your city even while friendly, more than doubles the effort you're investing in keeping friendly.

If friendly aliens at least don't exercise zone-of-control and don't blockade my cities, then yes they don't have to do anything else. I'm perfectly fine with a guaranteed all-units-immune-to-alien-attack benefit.

 

[Lord Tirian]

If friendly aliens at least don't exercise zone-of-control and don't blockade my cities, then yes they don't have to do anything else. I'm perfectly fine with a guaranteed all-units-immune-to-alien-attack benefit.

I'm starting to think Harmony should allow players to ignore native life ZoCs, it would give Harmony a stronger incentive to be friendly which would be thematic.

 

[Tomice]

So I made a list of UI bugs and requested changes as I was thinking about this the last few days. Seems like this would be an appropriate place to post, hopefully the Firaxis team will find feedback helpful.

main screen
- make miasma more easily visible (or provide toggle view to highlight miasma, as with resource icons and tile yields)

diplo/victory
- on defeat or victory screens, show player that won and type of victory (at the very least)
- on the diplomacy panel, show each leader's strategic resources available for trade
- when an AI requests a non-editable trade, show how much of the desired strat resource you have available (sometimes can't adjust trades offered by AI, so can't cancel and then re-offer to see your total amount of that strat, as you would in Civ 5)
-Make Exodus Gate generate settlers automatically each turn
-add a demographics screen or some equivalent rankings system

trade route screens
- need a way to find new stations when they appear, either a clickable notification or "locate" button on the message window that shifts focus to the station. Would be nice also to have a list somewhere afterwards to find them again easily.
- make it possible to order available trade routes by highest bpt/ept/fpt/ppt yield in assign trade route panel
- place previous trade route at top of assign trade unit panel
- make total empire trade routes (used : available) visible somewhere on main screen, rather than just separately in city screens
- allow us to move idle trade units to any city regardless of available routes in move trade unit panel (useful if trade unit finishes before depot/autoplant in city where you want to use it; hard to keep track of idle trade units otherwise)

notifications
- "construction completed" notifications should include the name of the constructed unit/building (fix announced)
- add notification card (not just text notification) for your trade routes killed by aliens / other civs
- add notification card for when a worker building an improvement / explorer doing an excavation is about to die from miasma
- make affinity unit upgrades appear before move orders in card queue (so you don't attack first and then later discover you have an upgrade)
-include spies in headquarters in "spies that need orders" number on spies panel icon, so we know when new recruits need to be placed

quest screens
- on the quests panel, make a button to open current quest decision if there is one available this turn (in particular for building quests)
- show affinity quest stage completion yields when I am making the decision (not just which affinity the decision will lead to)

city screens
- add "limit growth" option
- show whether specialists have been locked by player or set by governor
- show whether manual specialist control is on
- allow governor to place food tiles when on food focus and unhealthy (currently governor will avoid growth when unhealthy, even on food focus)

bugs
- Solid State Citizen quest jams on final decision for Supremacy/Purity path. Should create a station and tell you to destroy it or trade with it; station never appears and final decision checkbox gets cut in half on quest screen
- quests occasionally require you to build structures that are not available in a city because the required resource is not in workable distance
- in MP, occasionally production notifications do not show an icon in the focus window; clicking on the empty window does not send you anywhere, so you have to find the city and select a building manually
- veterancy notification cards appear as the "next turn" icon in the focus window
-in large cities, some tiles cannot be locked. Last 1-3 pop will move to the clicked tile, but won't lock, and governor will change them upon exiting city screen

This is an awesome compilation! Hope this gets printed and handed over to the UI devs.

 

[omniclast]

Your map is supposed to pan over to the new station/faction that had just popped up. The problem is (and this is obviously a bug) that they do this when the player turn is about to start. If you have an unit that needs orders in the new turn, the map will pan back to that unit while the screen pops up the new station/faction.

This makes sense, and would explain the buggy behaviour when new civs land and the screen momentarily refocuses and then goes back to your unit.

However, with stations the screen doesn't seem to move at all before refocusing on the unit... so there might be two separate problems there.

In MP, there is no station popup, so the main issue is that clicking on the new station card does not refocus the screen like it should.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I know a lot of people have been clamoring for the demographics screen (and I was very dependent on it in CiV), but I'm actually in the camp that it's immersion breaking and I shouldn't readily know agricultural/economic/production/military strength of others. It adds increased value to spy reconnaissance. In MP, everyone clearly knows who's ahead based on demographics, when in my opinion, it should be more obfuscated.

Make obtaining the demographics for foreign powers a spy activity

 

[Esperr]

I don't know if anybody has said it yet, but the holochamber gives you a free tech when you build it. This is not mentioned on the tech web anywhere nor in the civilopedia.

 

[ImperialGuard]

Please add back the "unit rename button"

 

[BeZol]

- multiplayer game above 6 players most of the times crashing, only with max 4 players working good
- I am interested only in multiplayer mode, I am playing singleplayer only for strategi making, and as far as I played, it's too easy to take cities, it should be harder, and with the use of more ranged units, cause now i need only melee.
- if I set strategic balance at map details, we get always titanium. With purity battlesuit focus it's too easy to beat anyone, cause I need only titanium, but with harmony xenomass, with supremacy firaxite for the 38-40 strength special units, and thats more complicated to get.
- if I science further for 7 purity points Aegis, that has same ranged strangth like Battlesuit, but very weak, easily dying against 4 point battlesuits. (again +1 why its not making sense to build rangeds, LEV tank also same story)
- with 4 purity lvl battlesuit I get such a strong unit, thats strong enough unitl 12 purity lvl, but it gets updated somewhen, so I have to build only battlesuits whole game, nothing else, and with 3-4 attacks I am taking the cities, not a hard job, like in civ 5 was
- cause of the production pump of trade routes in every city its only 2-5 turns to build 1 battlesuit, not like in civ 5was, so I get really fast really big army, and none of the players know that, cause no demographics. It's like I do an army, step at the neighbours border, and we are already at -1 players on a playable 4player map...
- I have to fight with aliens most of the time until 100th turn, but in some games I got no aliens next to me, meanwhile others got 3-4 nests next to them, this is too much luck factor, I dont like that, its unbalanced.
- in civ 5 I could rush at begin with archers, and I could take out my neighbour at turn 25-35 (quick mode), or I could focus on composite bowmans (turn 45-60 to capture neighbours capital), or I could focus on crossbowmans, which was long time in game, but usually from turn 65-85 I already got them. In beyond earth I cannt rush my neighbour, I have to fight with the aliens until 100th turn, IN A MULTIPLAYER GAME. Then I have usually from turn 75-85 my battlesuits, kill all aliens and rush my neighbours, who are instantly dying and quitting. All this for playing 2 hours online, if no crash or freeze with reloads.
- It's also bad, when 2 players spawning next to eachother, and they can make trade routes with eachother right from start, cause no aliens next to them, meanwhile other getting 3-4 nests and cannt trade, this is also an unbalance, too big luck factor.

 

[bladex]

I'm starting to think Harmony should allow players to ignore native life ZoCs, it would give Harmony a stronger incentive to be friendly which would be thematic.

i already stated this needs to be changed. it should be when you get to a certain harmony level aliens will never attack you again and get out of your way when colonizing.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

i already stated this needs to be changed. it should be when you get to a certain harmony level aliens will never attack you again and get out of your way when colonizing.

I think that should be limited to friendly aliens
(Harmony should get a bonus to that... Instead of everyone getting 0.25 per nest, the base should be 0.15 per nest, Harmony 1 gets 0.3 per nest)

 

[Cyon]

when will the patch come? Soon?