I was also hoping for more.  Endless Space/Legends style with heroes that level up with new skills and are separate entities.  What they've done is the easiest way to put it into the game with making as minimal changes, particularly to the UI.

I already have the opinion that the expansion was significantly changed/gutted post 1.4 and I do wonder when exactly Mercs was added to be a feature.

I have to agree, personally I am more interested in the starbase fix in 1.7 than the whole expansion.

I like that it adds two races so there will be more variety but the mercenary thing feels like a gimmick.

Preface: I love GalCiv3 and have played it much more hours then Civ5.

Opinion:

If you want to add heroes to the game, you need to do it at least as interesting as the Endless series did. Note 'interesting' not copy / paste. IMHO Stardock didnt succeed yet.

Founders are begging at least since BETA for an easier use of starbases. I really, really cant understand why they add two new races instead of making the gameplay of all others races better. Scrap one race and add starbase management ... but i am sure that opportunity is missed by now.

 It is the same with invasions.

Mercs are a nice idea, but are at this point completly besides everthing i wanted form an expansion. Because it doesnt matter if they are good, or the races are designed brilliantly i stll have to hassle with starbases and invasions.

Well, invasions are just stupid, i can ignore stupid. But starbases kill the very fun out of the game for me atm.

Yeah agree with XWerewolfX also.  It's interesting, we play games in very, very different ways, but seem to agree almost always on these sorts of topics.  It took me a while though, my first reaction was positive ... then I played mercenaries some more.

I just noticed in the 1.6 patch notes that the ability to upgrade mercenaries was removed.  Does anyone know the background on that?  What I'm finding is that even the best mercenary ships (i.e. including those in the Age of Ascension) quickly become obsolete from a single ship military perspective.  I'd much prefer that I could place that Hero on a better ship design, which I could do in many other games.  That said, I would speculate that this leads to a potentially overpowered situation.  Rather than remove the ability to upgrade, a better solution might be to reduce the bonuses a mercenary ship provides.  Let's face it, some of the bonuses are probably way too much anyway.  And ensure the AI upgrades those ships effectively as well.

With respect to the AI my experience on Godlike is that I have vastly more mercenary ships than all the other AI combined.  To be fair though to mercenaries, this is probably more a symptom of the diplomacy system which allows cash to be farmed too easily and the Malevolent motivation line which allows us to build constructors so quickly for resources.  It does worry me that this may be an addition to the smorgasboard of ways a human player can exploit the AI to a ridiculous degree without these other issues being solved.

Yes, there were.

I never tried when it wasn't disabled but would being able to upgrade a merc even matter?  The important stats are from a special ship part that the player has no access to. 

It would be nice if you buy a merc it unlocks the part so you could upgrade or switch them to new ships.  Make the ship part so it can only have one active at a time to keep it unique as well of course.  It would also need to be able to handle scavenging and trading.  I guess it would mean you can't kill a merc, which I'm not sure is a good thing or not.

It's worth considered the three classes of mercenary ship, as each case is a bit different.

For ships that provide planet related abilities (e.g. production boosts), yes the military stats of the ship itself don't really matter.  However, what I've always enjoyed in other games with "Heroes" is being able to level up their abilities over time, unfortunately that's not possible here.

For ships that are pure military, with individual ship bonuses only and no wider effects, those ships are useful briefly but then very quickly become obsolete.  

For ships with special fleet related abilities, it's similar.  They are useful for longer, as you say they have fleet wide bonuses, but then also become obsolete.  

A good specific example is "The Bitte" which is an Age of War ship that provides a 50% movement bonus but has 5/8/4 attack and 9/12/12 defence.  For my first fleet, that's pretty useful, and the 50% movement bonus is huge.  However, before long my ships are much faster and stronger, then much faster than the 50% movement bonuses and so "The Bitte" becomes obsolete.  For ships with other fleet wide bonuses (e.g. accuracy), if you want those benefits, you have to gimp your fleet movement speed.  Even the Age of Ascension mercenary ships are hilariously slow before long (they don't seem to stack components so the top movement speed for any ship is in the mid 20's by the looks).

So what I end with is a whole bunch of military mercenaries parked at my homeworld doing nothing (or dead while my normal ships all survived).  Why the mercenary called Watterson Bitte wants to hang out in his banged up old 1980 Mitsubishi Magna while everyone else is cruising around in their 2016 Lamborghini Huracan's is beyond me!

I have to say, not even considering what your post entails, that I think it is poor form to go onto a public part of the forum to complain and put down a product that hasn't even been released yet... As an elite founder, you were given the opportunity to check it out and share your findings with SD, not to go to the public part of their forums and express your opinions about something the public hasn't had a chance to see for themselves yet. Is this how you feel you're going to get Stardock to listen to you? If I were them, I'd be a bit upset with you for doing this as you can be affecting their sales due to your "bad press" and goes against what is implied, if not stated, keeping things to yourself until the product is actually released. Not commenting on any of your opinions but just wanted to say that I feel your post, in the way you did it and where you did it, is in bad form. I think this should have gone on the Founders Forum and then pubic after release.

Perhaps then Stardock would be accused of censorship... he paid $100 for the game he's entitled to an opinion.  Stardock hasn't asked anyone to sign an nda it would seem they can take a bit of criticism especially if it's merited which I'm not saying it is or isn't.

No one is accusing of censorship, He's just stating there is a time and place for this type of post.  The time in this forum is after release.  The place currently is in the founders portion of the website prior to release.  Mainly because there are certain things we're given access to and can discuss there which they have asked us not to post/talk about until post release.

And and as founder who enjoys early access, I will respect what they ask and try not to disclose things publicly until release.

Well worse case scenario is Stardock doesn't give early access anymore, i'm sure that would go down well...  From a consumer stand point surely it's better if things are as open as possible.  Stardock haven't removed this thread and its been up a while... perhaps its not as big a deal as avatar137 thinks.

To be fair until a week ago there was never any mention Founders weren't allowed to talk about the game publicly.  It is incredibly easy to miss the post where we are asked not to post publicly about the game, a fair number of Founders didn't even know there was a Founder's forum until recently.  In the future if they want Founders to communicate a specific way they should tell them upfront and not tack it on several days after the fact.

If this thread had been nothing but positive I suspect no one would not have jumped in and hassled XWerewolfX about posting in the incorrect forum (of which it is questionable he would know he is doing).  Though Stardock did remove XWerewolfX's post on Steam which was a copy of his post here, so make of that what you will in terms of censorship.

EDIT: The above statement was an incorrect assumption by me.  XWerewolfX has stated below he deleted the thread and it was not the mods as I wrongly assumed.

Well, it seems to me like it's a very well-intentioned thread with some fine constructive criticism for Stardock to consider. It's not as though anyone's given away state secrets; in fact I'm not sure I've learned anything about Mercenaries that hadn't already been mentioned in a few places where I already had access as a non-founder.

I'm guessing it means that SD believes that posts on Steam have a greater impact on a game's popularity, than threads that are posted here.

Founders were always to talk about pre-release content in the founders portion of the forum.  Post release can be whereever.  This was designed to help keep our comments on how it can be improved/issues/bugs can be talked about openly in the founders forum where the unfinished parts of the game weren't trashed.  That way once the finished gold version of the game was released people didn't have preconceived notions that the game sucks and is full of issues.

If that's the case I'm not sure how well known that rule is.  It definitely isn't well policed.  Nor have I seen it be an issue on Steam before either.

I really don't recall it ever coming up here.  I've far from read every thread, so maybe it did multiple times and I've just missed it.

That may be, either way I think the OP was just expressing his frustration and hope most of his issues can be addressed

I requested great people a better leveloping up system and heroes in a nimber of posts.

I agree with the original post


Heroes should be implemented more like hero's from Elemental...

I like the Hire a ship  option, but there should also be a Hire a leader option...  you then assign the leader to the world or fleet etc.

The ships should upgrade like the carrier fighters.   they come with X techs which never change.. and as you get better tech they auto upgrade everything else.

1.5 was a major improvement and 1.6 with Mercenaries seems to also be a large improvement... but it simply doesn't feel like an expansion...  it feels more like DLC that adds a few new features.

Wow, I guess the point of my post went right over your head... I'd explain further but Seilore has already tried and some how I feel it would be in vain anyway.

First, I deleted my post on the Steam forums as I realized that it wasn't appropriate to post about the beta in the Steam forums. Secondly, I thought this WAS in the Founder's forums. My apologies to Stardock for putting this in the general forums. Doh!

However, if it bothered SD, they would have moved it. 

I appreciate how civil this conversation has been, despite my accidental forum placement. The blind white-knighting is expected, so I'm not surprised. However, I much prefer the rational and thoughtful discussion than the blind defense of the current state of things. If you do like the direction, why not support that position? 

This being the case, you mistakenly posted this here thinking it was the appropriate forum, then I apologize for accusing you of being in bad form. Everyone makes mistakes.

I hope that is the case. However, it doesn't negate the fact that we had been asked not to share things we get early access to right from the start. Maybe it's because of my history of being a beta tester for other games and desktop software that has made me always err on the side of caution, but I also just feel it's common sense to keep things "in house" until told otherwise out of respect for the wishes that were told to us when we joined the Elite Founders program. I don't need constant reminders but some appear to need them. Not talking about you here XWerewolfX, to be clear.
 

I can't help but feel the use of the terms "blind white-knighting" is some form of mild insult. I find it funny that people who do as they're told and who remind others of it somehow makes them "bad" in some way, or that makes them a "fanboy", which has never been used in a positive light that I know of... When I read that you posted this on the Steam forums, I didn't feel this post was mistakenly put in the general forum and that's when I decided to post what I did. Not knowing you, I'm taking you at your word that it was a mistake. So no harm no foul.

Was this directed to me? If so, I haven't been commenting on the latest DLC as I haven't played with it much at all, been too preoccupied with XCOM2 at the moment. I've never said that I'm all for keeping things the way they are. I did start a new game last night and plan on getting some good time in on it soon, then I can comment about this particular DLC. Am I happy that the things I'd like addressed haven't been addressed yet? Heck no, but I have faith that they will get a lot closer to what I'm wanting, if not exceeding it, before they move on to the next big thing they want to do. Just like they did with GC2 for me. But I tend to be optimistic in general.

To move threads click on the edit icon of first post and change category. Of course only the thread starter can do this.

I'm going to buy this expansion with the hope that it will help fund the improvements to invasions, starbases fix, and even better AI. I'm hoping the political side of things will develop over time, too.

Heroes I don't care about at all.