some bugs and polish suggestions

[CAPSLOCKBANDIT]

Hello,

First off - EXCELLENT game. 10/10 on the fun scale and that is all you need to make a smash hit. I won't go into detail about the cool stuff, you guys have a good handling on that.


Here are some bugs I found along with some very glaring/odd omissions that should not be removed from a strategy game. They exist in nearly all strategy games for a reason - because they work and add to the experience.

First thing I noticed was the near complete lack of hotkeys - unacceptable and WEIRD. The hotkeys that do exist are not listed in the control menu which is also very odd. For example all buildings, and unit production should have easily navigable hotkeys that reduce the number of clicks necessary to build quickly. These hotkeys should make logical sense and be highlighted in a tooltip for easy player access. Let me select the barracks and then build an archer with R [Ranger] etc. there also needs to be an easy cancel key and keys for the buildings. At one point I accidentally hid the UI and I searched all the controls, googled it, tried dozens of combinations to get it back, couldn't - had to reload. It is just awkward not having the existing controls listed for a player to familiarize themselves with.

There are no way points. The game needs basic waypoints, patrol, and attack way points controlled with shit + attack move/move. It is okay now since there is pause but this game is really challenging to play in real time without constant stops. It just adds unnecessarily to the near constant pausing.

Double click select all is bugged and does not work like any other strategy game I have played. You should dclick on a wall for a example, click upgrade - and it should upgrade the items closest to the center of the screen. It is very annoying to order an upgrade on a crucial wall only to have the game randomly decide to upgrade the wall on the other side of the colony. Sometimes it seems to work correctly but there is definitely some issues there. I would also prefer if it ONLY selected the units or items on screen instead of everywhere - it just adds again to so many unnecessary clicks and micro that distracts from the larger picture. For the end game building upgrades I think combining all the buildings of a type into a tab would work best, so that late game you say click on food and then on a farm button and it would automatically upgrade your highest producing farm. This would also eliminate one of my chief complaints - needle in a haystack syndrome. For example, when you are upgrading your mills to tier 2 it is easy at first when most are tier 1, double click and upgrade them all -great --except when you are running out of regular mills, finding that normal mill to upgrade when you have 40 of them is unnecessarily difficult. As I routinely search for the last couple rogue mills to select and upgrade, I would routinely think "there has to be a better way."

Control groups do not function correctly. Sometimes it takes 3-5 repeat orders to initiate a control group. I found my units often dying because new units added to my clearing squad control group would not be assigned to the group so that when I move the others stand behind and die. At first I chalked it up to player error, but it happened dozens of times even when I was consciously taking time out to hard press the keys and redo the groups over and over again. There is also a weird bug that happens sometimes when you attack move it deselects all units leading to unnecessary deaths - and because the unit selection circles are tiny and blocked by the ranger's attire I sometimes wouldn't realize that the units had been randomly unselected.

All units and attack structures NEED a kill count and/or and exp gauge (ideally both) for two reasons: 1: it is cool and interesting (and potentially useful info for the player) to see which of the units are doing dps and positioned effectively. It was always cool in starcraft to have a marine survive the game with good micro and have 100s of kills. In a game where you have to exterminate so many zombies I think a kill counter is an obvious addition. I want to see my ranger with 1000 kills, not just wonder. I want to know that shock tower X is positioned better than Y because it got 2x as many kills while I was distracted.


There are some typos and grammatical errors, strange sounding English sentences. Ex "A hord of zombies" should be a "horde of zombies."


Some suggestions: Add another rank of veterancy for all units.
Make the billions appear 2-5 days later than they do. Having them appear at day 92 on a 100 day mission leads to either you winning or dying more than a week before the game is supposed to end. If you want a 92 day game, then make it a 92 day game.


I very rarely give feedback but this game captivated me. It has a huge amount of potential so please polish it and make it great!