So i decided to put few words about graphics, as finding the bugs in game complex like this, unless they are too obvious as the Occupation planet Rebel bug, is not really my forte. I mean i have no idea, how can anyone spot, if some research gives you promised 5 percent increase of something or not, things like this are totally beyond me.
Starting with nebulae, i love the new skyboxes. Hope there is more of them in the final game, there were some pretty good looking in that teaser, even if it was not gameplay footage. BTW please, remove the old green nebula skybox, its atrocious.
One more thing, messing with the Deep Space/Colored Skybox toggles in the Effects options can make the skybox go away completely. The green/purplish/reddish hue on ships stays, but the background goes totally black. This can be easily fixed by more toggling on/off, but if you play multi-star map, you can find yourself in situation, when no matter, how much you toggle it on/off, skybox in one of the star - systems remains black. Anyway, i suppose, it should not be happening at all.
The new phase-jump effects are very nice and i like that jumping between the stars looks different. I wonder, given the fact, that in original game, the effect was blue and now it is greenish, whether the other races get different color of this effect?
The special abilities effects, especially on the Ankylon, are over the top. That huge blast, bigger than planet, wtf is that? And the shield ability for surrounding allied ships, the green circle is too visible. Please, tone these down, i can barely see any ships now in battle, because its full of various effects like these.
Hulls of Vasari ships - i already talked about this in some other thread, but i assume it went unnoticed, so here i go again. Please, remove the "reflection" effect of them, so they stop looking like they are made of glass, oiled, lacquered, etc... this is especially unacceptable for the Kultorask, the texture makes it look organic, bone-like, yet it reflects like glass....
Reflection like this is fine for the chrome-like looking hulls of Advent units, but please, make Vasari different, give their hulls some plastic or rubber-like or organic low specular/semi-rough look. I suppose those shaders of yours let you achieve this, right?
So, recap: TEC - rough metal feeling
Advent - high spec, low roughness feeling
Vasari - some other non-metalic material please
Other than these few things, the explosion effects are still kinda weak, but it was like this since 2008, so i am kinda used to that. Just make sure, that the planet-eating animation is cool enough.
Finally I like the job on the weapon effects, as i wrote elsewhere both TEC and phase missiles now look superb. I think you got here some good balance, you made the effects look better, but did not go over the top, as some of the previous mods. I was watching Argonev firing those salvos of those new missiles yesterday and it looked absolutely stunning, love this kind of attention to detail. Really good work.
