Galactic Supremacy - Looking for beta testers

Hi guys,

I'm looking for volunteers for beta testing. Can you test and give me a feedback on the game?

Galactic Supremacy is a free multiplayer space strategy game on Facebook that allows you to build an Intergalactic Empire.

The game has been developed by Blue Turtle, an independent video game studio formed by 4 people.

Galactic Supremacy is a space management game (i.e. 4x game: eXploration, eXploitation, eXpansion, eXtermination) that beyond the fundamentals renews the genre thanks to major innovations:
- 9 playable alien races: Characteristics, Attributes & racial Powers specific to each
- New range of combat system: Spying, Interception of fleets, Carrying of light ships, Planet conquests
- Management of resources: Raw materials, Population and Money
- Technology tree: Discovery and development of technologies coming from player’s previous specializations
- Persistent universe: Visual evolutions of buildings, 35 kind of planets and moons, Musical themes,...

At the head of your empire, you define your own strategy: build alliances, manage your trade, exploit asteroids, and battle your opponents.

We invite you to discover the application:
https://apps.facebook.com/galacticsupremacy/

Feel free to give me your feedback on the game!
The Blue Turtle team

Hi everyone. I gave Blue Turtle approval to post. Advertising is not something we've done before but I'm happy to allow a trial.

Blue Turtle, good luck with your venture.

Fails when trying to register. I get HTTP error 500 (some is wrong at your backend).

I can open the link, accept the app terms for facebook and view the first 4 races.
I found it very confusing on how to pick a race and annoying selecting another race was a regular new page load - ie. page jumps to top and music starts over again.

Apparently my registration did go through, so when I returned later I could finish my account setup.
If anyone else is playing, then am I in "Sector 1" and founder of the alliance "Firefly".

I tryed to play for a bit but i did not spend much time.
I will try it spending some more time and i will revert.
It slooks good to especially for those who like Galactic Space and action heppening in this kind of space.
To be honest I personally don't like games in this kind of enviroment but i will give to this game a chance.

Paul Atreides wrote:Apparently my registration did go through, so when I returned later I could finish my account setup.
If anyone else is playing, then am I in "Sector 1" and founder of the alliance "Firefly".

Yes we had a conflict this week-end due to our last update with a Facebook function.

The problem is solved. You can log in

Down yet again. This time due to a database error, most likely out of bounds value.

Yesterday and today, we have been hacked twice in a row just by a player that has blocked the database. I am really sorry for you.

Havent you secured the database connection from injection attacks (I am guessing this was the type) ?

These are my comments for now. Might edit new ones in later.

CSS:
".miapic15" class need to be "-675px 0px".

Missing translation:
Daily bonus screen. Only day 7 is in English
Shipyard. Button next to title in each movement box.
All 4 advisers (Engineer, Admiral, Economist and Scientist) regularly switch back to French
Pillage report title. "Rapport de combat."
Build time above 24h is shown as "Xj Xh Xm".
Fleet movement overview. Button "Soute".
To recall a fleet there is a button, but its translation says "Previous". It should say "Abort", "Recall" or similar.
Chat message box title says "Preview". "Message" is more fitting.
The building "Cultural Centre" ("Cultural Center" is better) is named "Institution" on the empire overview.
"1 Planets" should be "1 Planet".
"Go To" (between own planets) should be "Transfer".

Other issues:
FIX language detection!
It might be a good idea to have language per player.

All adviser messages have their timestamp for when _I_ saw the message, NOT when it was done (server time). This means it will look like I finished/did X number of things at the SAME TIME, but in reality not.

Admiral overview screen show the wrong planet in the 3rd column. It shows where FROM I attacked, instead of TO. It should be the other way around.
Also the report for a fleet returning seems redundant.

Only returning fleet reports show "Mission : Return.\nBack to <Planet Name> [X:Y]:Z". Pillage/Combat only show "<french report name>". No mission. No from where.

Add button hover text (title) to the overview bottom delete button. "Delete all reports (for all pages)".
It should be nice with a new delete button that only deletes current page reports.

All Admiral report arrows (last column) take you to the fleet movements. If thats all it does, then its useless and should be DELETED!

Add image hover text (title) to all icons!!!

Where does one DISMISS/DISBAND fleet ships ?

ALL shipyard units more descriptions* show an incomplete text below the Statistics box and its the SAME TEXT for any unit: "battle, up to 70% of damaged defence systems are repaired."
* Find a shipyard unit, click its Plus button and then the More button.

With fleets distance is a HUGE number like 1,000,000 for an adjacent planet while trade lists it as 1.

Fleet movement overview show both from and to planets in each their box, but neither are links thus forcing you to use the map again.

There is no direct linkage to my planet buildings. The link? above "Rang X" or the dropdown menu above "Alliance" button should do it.

The game is NOT friendly towards SMALLER screens. Even 1280x800 is too small and forces horizontal scrolling.

The research tree does not support click and drag for UP and DOWN. Instead the blue arrows MUST be used.
Annoying as hell.

The building "Cultural Centre" is not possible to build.

Tutorial moving double arrows can overlap a wrong screen.

Birthrate needs more explanation. Mine kept going DOWN no matter what I did.

Chat message sender is not a link. Nor is the optional alliance.

Whats up with the switching icon, on hover, inside a chat message ?

Where does archived messages end up ?
There is a button for archiving a message, but clicking it does NOTHING.

When replying to a chat message, then it should by default include the message you are replying to so when the receiver gets your reply, then the ENTIRE message history is there. Dont forget to include timestamps!

In the happiness help text, show much pollution is being reduced by research.

In your profile, show how far you are from gaining an achievement like "X of Y". That way I will tempted to go for that/those which I am close to getting.

Please explain what the profile Expansion percentage are ?

What is the profile Reputation area for ?

Where is the link to my facebook page ?

Why can I ONLY see planet +/-% on the empire overview ?

Please arrange empire research topics differently. It might look like they currently are from lowest to highest topic, but very difficult to tell. At least add "Requires: A, B, C, D" to their hover text.

Why does neither empire "Buildings" or "Shipyard" show queue when "Research" does ?

Please explain what the researches "Scanner" and "Espionage" does ?
"Scanner is a field of research dedicated to the improvement of the efficiency of the detection systems. Level 2: +1.41 Range of Scanners". What scanners?
"Espionage refers to all collecting and treating devices of information. Level X: Espionage X". Is this for planet/moon spy action, but that action screen show NO relation to it ?
In fact the that screen is very mysterious. Aside from being able to spend all my credits on it - I know nothing from it, except that it takes equal time for 100 or X credits.

How can something be a planet when you can only build a station and not colonize it ?

Are asteroid belts good or bad to have in a system ?

Where do I disband a planet/station colony ?

With just 2 planets/stations in the top center dropdown menu, the bottom border is hidden. With more than 2 the border is fine.
However I do not like the placement, because its styling causes it to blend too well with the other orange stuff thus making it harder to see the menu items.

Instead of having fleet reports say "Your fleet has returned to X", either drop the return "mission"/rapport or make it say WHICH fleet units did WHAT (mission) and WHERE and drop the stupid picture.
In fact, I never read them - just delete because I find them useless and they take up valuable screen slots (of 7 per page).
Also, the current text is missing LINKAGE!

Dont jump to the planets building screen when changing origin on the map.

Credits should also be summed for the current planet. There is space after "X of the planet: <HERE>".

(new) Planets/stations (<name> [X:Y]:Z) in the drop down menu is NOT listed according to creation, but instead looks like: Y ASC, X ASC, system spot/location DESC
Please correct to creation, or conquer, time ASC.

(new) I dont know if its facebook, or the game, but there is a continuous cpu usage while not doing anything. On machine this amounts up to 25%. Once in a while there will be network usage as well.
Memory usage is also very high, about 130KiB, which is higher than flash games. I use Google Chrome (stable).

(new) It is not possible to see which spot/location a planet/moon has in a system. This makes spy reports very hard as you are taken to the system itself but you can find the Z spot/location as indicated in the report.

(new) What effects will happen when happiness < 50 ?
Riots, revolts and secessions are mentioned in the hover text, but what does that actually mean ?

Military:
Are all buildings lost of the previous owner, when you conquer a planet/station ?
Resources dont seem lost.

Research (new):
When starting a topic, it immediately increments to level X+1 which is good, but with Cybernetics (-X% research cost) its effects do NOT apply. This means the 2nd topic you select, and is put on queue, actually costs 1% more than it should. I doubt you have accounted for this when the queued topic starts the 1% cost is returned to you, but I havent able been to confirm this since this topic takes a long time to do.
Refunding the 1%, upon research start if the earlier topic was Cybernetics, seems like the best way to prevent cheating like this:
1) have no current topic researching
2) begin any Cybernetics level and queue the highest topic you can afford
3) cancel Cybernetics topic, and then the queued topic
4) 1% gain of the queued topic

I think the research topics are being sorted by time, which is why a queued topic could suddenly become the current topic.

If another topic (A) has unlocked (shown in the tree) a research that the current topic you are looking at and shows in the "Unlock" section, then there is no "jump" link on it/them. But if you select the A topic then the jump links works fine.

Notes (new):
Technically the game is playable, but in terms of enjoyment it seems very geared towards warring which contradicts the building part. Build to unlimited level X and the waiting time tends to appeal to sim city people.
While this may be an effort to cater to multiple audiences, I see it failing.

I going to read all your comments carrefully.

Thanks Paul.

I have more coming. But right now, about 14:00 CET, the game server has begun giving HTTP time out responses so impossible to play now.

Having not been playing for several days do I feel absolutely nothing for the game, which is a bad thing when you want to keep players around so you can make money on the sale of premium game money.
I want quests, tests, hero(es) to improve upon, or something else long term that allows me to overlook this game is "build and wait" game like so many other. You do have achievements, but like I pointing out earlier, you do nothing to make them interesting as I only see their dark inactive images - no showing of my progress.
You MUST focus on the "fun factor" if you want this game to successful. Having no budget for advertising is a BAD thing, and try not to sexiness (like half naked women) as a lure - it is a no-go for me if a game must use this tactic while such characters are not present in the game. Other no-go's include: Facebook only (red flag for me), no game site with info (game intro, screenshots/video, forum, history, game details) mixing up languages and of course game bugs.

As I will not be playing any further, here is my incomplete second set of feedback notes.

---

Research
Abort research returns 50% credits. Would have been nice to have as a hover text

Synthesis Techniques. "Gaz" to "Gas"

"Asteroids Exploitation improves the processes to the harvast of the asteroids."
to
"Asteroids Exploitation improves the harvesting of the asteroids."

"Coque Vaiss. & Def."
to
"Ship hull & defense"

Why does "Space Colonization" have "Colonization level X" in its description ?
Aint it redudant ?

"Force Fields" research descriptions is missing a "+" before its X%


Shipyard
It is very hard to delete numbers inside a ship input field. Cursor keeps being set to after LAST character when I want to delete the first character.

When using the slider, I often see the results being 1 ship less after releasing the slider (usually at the far right), than what is shown while dragging it.

"Ion weapons generate twice more damages to shields."
to
"Ion weapons generate double damage against shields." or
"Ion weapons deals double damage to shields."

"Technical Data" of a ship shows +37% to "Top speed", but my research is only at level 2 (+10%)

"Technical Data" instead of just listing your research bonuses after the base amount for a ship/defense unit, then it will more helpful to should the actual value.
Maybe like "base (<green actual>) +X%", or "base +X% (<green actual>)"


Session
Alerts show longer than screen height messages with errors. Like:
"Une erreur est survenue lors de la requète auprès du serveur.
Status: 0 |"


Map
Highlight/mark systems where you have planet(s)/station(s)

When cancelling an attack I get an alert with a 404 page not found message and raw HTML code.

How can 100 credits be enough to spy out an empty planet/moon, but 20k credits arent enough to spy out an occupied planet ?

How does one harvest the asteroid fields ?


Planet
Building speed is reduced by 35s when the queue is empty, and only when empty. So queuing up after the first will not give the reduction

Engineer reports for buildings incorrectly says "X pending construction" when queued buildings already are done when logging in. This is linked to the incorrect report timestamp issue.

Building credit cost, or production, is not shown on the overview page (Intratructure and Resources buttons). You MUST open the "Plus" screen, which is annoying.
Likewise should the special effect increase also be shown.

The "Plus" screen shortens the cost if above a certain amount to "Xk". Looks like >5 digits.

How can Industry and Economy buildings have a combined building construction time reduction above -100% ?

I found it confusing to see credit income listed near the costs (and workers), as it let me to believe the building level would cost me this much credit per hour in upkeep.
A "+X" would have been very helpful.

"Economic Sciences" increases your credit renevue, but does it also reduce building levels credit cost ?
Like on Research Laboratory, Government, Administration buildings.

If a building has a negative credit number on the "Workers:" line (I assume this is a total number line), is that a one-time or hourly credit cost ?


Other
Will you post raw game numbers like building level costs, ship/def build times, research level times etc ?
This will allow people to make offline tools for themselves. Like how to project which path is best for you style.
I already know some data is formula based, but not all.

You do NOT abort previous ajax request when multiple calls for the same thing is made. This causes multiple responses, like alerts or screens opening later when you continued onto something else
It gives the user a bad experience and it is not impossible to prevent the user from seeing the multiple calls despite the server will have to process each request. I made such code myself.


Admiral
It is impossible to tell if you lost or won a combat from the report, without opening


Empire
Research tab. Each topic only shows its level and on hover, its name. Effect should also be included and link to itself in the research tree
Research tab. Should list total number of units working for research

Note to self: Contact Paul for any new game I make....