Hey there, I have some notes after a few hours in the alpha:
MOVEMENT:
At first I was annoyed at how the train moved after getting so used to Sunless Sea, but quickly got used to darting around, dodging rocks, bullets and Depressed Space Fish. The more complicated movement mechanics gave me a feeling of mastery (or at least improvement) over the simpler system in SSea.
COMBAT:
Combat is improved, the heat system is another great addition that I feel will be useful when we get more shipbuilding options later (i.e I might take a gun that generates lots of heat but also some cooling contraption instead of heavy armour). It will certainly stop the old SSea gaming of mechanics where you just bought the bum torpedo launcher and stunlocked anything trying to hurt you. Indeed, my only real problem with the combat is that there wasn’t enough of it! :P
It seems strong enough that you could really expand on it, with multi-ship engagements, perhaps larger battles between the Tackities and Stovepipes. Obviously combat isn’t really the main focus of the game, but the system is a lot stronger than in SSea, and I think the sky is the limit really.
STORY:
But my favorite bit is the story of the War between the Tackities and Stovepipes progressing without me. Sunless Sea was great, but one of the biggest dissapointments I had was that none of the large scale stories would progress without my involvement. The Khanate, Dawn Machine and Admiralty would all just sit on their hands until I gave them a shunt in a direction. I’m glad this appears to have changed. Really reminds me of the old Star Control II system, where the endgame would come closer and closer without you even realizing.
SIZE OF THE BLOOMING MAP:
I’m not going to lie, the sheer size of the map is amazing at first, but quickly gets dull. I think because you can’t check the map or tab out whilst moving, you are sitting there watching the ship crawl across space for long stretches of time. Perhaps this could be adressed by incresing the parallax of the stars, so the ship appears to be moving faster than it is. Also I suppose in the final game there will be things out there in deep space to interact with, similar to the storylets in Zubmariner. Or Space Monsters.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Aside from the occasional too-long-travel sequence, and a few common bugs that other people have reported, I am really, really impressed with the game so far. Look forward to see what comes next.