Had a good test game today and here are our observations:
1) One defect in the fun of playing this game is the time it takes to expand. We had an extreme example in that races close to each other decided to form an alliance. It then took over four hours before getting into a combat. That was once the Dominion managed to expand to the alpha quadrant. Here is where a mid range wormhole would come in handy. We also considered an option to start with a shipyard in place. I could even see having a minor member in your empire a boot. An example of this would be the Vulcans already in the Federation. We took advanced tech level to start the game but build times were still very long for basic items like a shipyard. It was frustrating.
2) We had an unhandled exception crash the game. It came, as best I can tell, when a Dominion ship that was destroyed in ship to ship combat was set to also assault a system. After ship to ship combat finished the system assault window came up and clicking even a stand down crashed the game. Error file attached.
3) Again there was a request for drag and drop within the build queue items.
4) Again it was requested that all structures consistently turn on when adequate power is available.

1)
Wormholes have not been implemented yet.
Starting items have not been implemented yet either.
The game is still in alpha, we need a few more things to be implemented in order to make the initial game less "frustrating".

4)
What do you mean? They do.
Or do you mean turned off when power is not available?

1) until then we could save an online multiplayer game a few turns in and put it up for download

4) Not in all new circumstances do structures needing power turn on when power is available.

1) That'll only work for the same players playing the same empires, and starting locations will be known.

4) It'd be nice to have those new circumstances identified. Is this in MP only? Haven't noticed it in SP.

4. So far only in multiplayer. We can keep an eye on it.

1.) I just reloaded a saved multiplayer game and was able to play as any of the five races.

You mean as the host? And were you the only one reloading? I can't really recall how reloading works in MP.




Can you list the situations where it happens?

1) Reloading I could jump into any race and play. We can test the reload for online multiplayer further. I have already been through several crashed in online Multi player where we reload the autosave and take the same races. We have never tried to remixe the selection in those games but so far it looks doable.

2) I will ask Luke and Steve for feedback. He noted it while playing the Cards in the last mulitplayer. Hold off on the bug report until we have a chance to see it again in multiplayer. Then we can be more specific.

more on #4) Luke reports that it was a matter of building power structures like solar and charge collector that did not take population to be allocated. He thinks this time it was at the Card home world where structures needing power to run were then started by clicking. He offered to watch closely when we play again.

If you mean that you have structures that have no power to run, and then you build a power structure and the 1st structure doesn't automatically come online, that's expected behavior I think.

Yes, and Lukes suggestion is make it automatic.

A couple of notes:
If there are several off-line facilities and only one can be turned on, that kind of decision making is not easy to code. It'd probably require adding a priority tag to buildings.
You might not actually want to turn the facility on (at the time), like with -1 Morale buildings. This event would be invisible to the player, and might have unwanted effects. With priorities as mentioned above, this could be set to zero.
Instead of powering other facilities, I might want to remove population from energy production facilities instead. It'd be counter-productive in this case.
Can't recall how the turn processing order goes, but this would probably allow some kind of benefit (eg dilithium if the Dilithium Refiney goes online) in the turn that the power facility finishes building, which would not be "legal".