v1.08 is great! I really love the spheres of influence and having the difference in asteroid stats actually affect the strategy. The beginning and middle stages of a game are really challenging and intense, but the final stage (10+ asteroids) is sort of anti climatic because of the lack of strategy required, the redundant actions to keep seedlings at the front line and the lack of detail in the zoomed out views. A rally point for each asteroid would help with the micro management.

I found it annoying that the AI can jump from enemy asteroid to enemy asteroid without attacking them, while I can only jump between my own asteroids, and can’t recall seedlings at enemy asteroids until they have taken over. The result is that the AI can attack any of my unguarded asteroids and bypass roadblocks, which takes away some of the strategy of the game. It’s also difficult to see what’s going on in the final stages, as enemy seedlings are not very visible.

Some small things:
A save feature would be a great addition.

It’s sometimes difficult to estimate the power of a group of seedlings since they will have such varying properties. Seedling count isn’t much help for this, perhaps an overall power stat would help that combines energy, strength and speed to estimate how powerful a group of seedlings are.

Some of the AI colors are really similar and it’s difficult to tell who’s winning when they are fighting as the seedlings look nearly identical and there’s only an enemy count at each asteroid, not a count per team.

Having the trees mature over time and produce more seedlings is a really nice touch, and adds a lot to the strategy.

RPG elements (such as level, attribute modifiers) for the seedlings, trees and asteroids would be a subtle but intricate strategy addition.

Dyson has a ton of potential and I’m excited to hear that you’re working on improvements. I would gladly pay for this game. Keep up the great work!

The scenarios are randomly generated each time you play, within certain parameters. If I recall correctly the third level is most like the original asteroid ring. We will be adding a sort of free-play mode, with level editing tools included, but that’s for a future release.

In the meantime, just pick your favourite level and keep playing that one

Another thing you could do is have a play with the level editing, and change the levels so they suit you more. Have a squizz at the scripting guide and see what you think.

Then I downloaded this version, and found out that it only had those level scenario things. Where is the random asteroid belt conquest game? Why do I have to be set up in certain pregenerated circumstances to play? It would be a very nice addition to add this game’s new functionality to the old Dyson asteroid belts.

Or is this already there, but I can’t find it?

I really think you should nurture the strategic element of Dyson. As it is now, it’s pretty strategic at the start to the middle game, but as soon as you have about 6 or 7 asteroids, you’re producing so many seedlings, that you will win by the bulk of seedlings. Currently, I don’t have a suggestion to how, but I really think the game should somehow be balanced so that strategy is still key to victory even though you have a lot of seedlings in the end game.

I really like the defensive trees you have added, as well as asteroids can have a different amount of trees on them. That does add some more strategy to the game. I also like the ‘ring of influence’ you’ve added, although I really miss a feature like ‘rallypoint’. It’s a bit annoying mobilizing an army by micromanaging seedlings from one asteroid to another. And by adding the ring of influence, it’s now even more time consuming, as it requires even more moving seedlings around. I might sound contradictory, but I believe that it’s possible to have both things. Asteroids have the ring of influence, so you can only attack asteroids inside this ring, but you should also be able to automatically send new seedlings to any of your own asteroids.

Well, that’s my thoughts. Really great game. I look forward to see where this is going.

Best regards
René

I can tell you now though that we have some excellent surprises waiting in future versions.

SPOILER ALERT (but need to write this for the devs to see how i beat it easily so they can do some balancing)

I start of by heding all my seeds to the nearest big asteroid as they tend to have the best stats.
This will be my new “main base” as it will have better stats than my starting one.
Then expand to the next big asteroid and try to block of entrys for the enemy. and you should never have more than 32 seeds on your big stats asteroids as they won’t produce new seeds then. The bomber trees are useful on on low stat asteroids cause trees take a lot of time to destroy. following this tactic i found it easy to beat the levels.

But i really like the concept of this game, and the style is just great keep up the good work.

Have you considered, once the game is developed further, releasing on WiiWare? It looks to be quite amenable to wiimote control, instead of a target the wiimote could shift the -focus- from ‘roid to ‘roid.