I'm not sure if its supposed to be like this, but I loaded up a 2vs2vs2 on Twin Giants the other night, and nearly all the gravity wells had only 1 phase lane connecting them. Basically, my ally was at the end of a tail with no access to anything beside the core worlds near it, and it would have had to pass through my territory to go anywhere, I was spawned in the middle of the tail and was close by an enemy and from there I had lanes going into the star area. It wasn't until around 1.5 to 2 hours that a whole bunch of phase lanes opened up. The enemy closest to me drifted completely away, but its ally drifted heavily into my area opening up multiple lanes into my core worlds and one of the gas giants finally drifted close enough to my ally which then opened up phase lanes toward the center of the map, whereas before that ally was completely isolated for most of the game(would have been nice if they had sent some of their fleet to help defend my gravity wells).
In anycase, I just thought that that was an odd configuration for the map, to have a spawn point which would remain isolated so long, and for there to only be 1 phase lane for each gravity well for most of the map, for the first couple of hours of gameplay.
A bit of feedback:
I haven't really had time to go through a full playthrough of the Twin Giants system yet, or even a random 2vs2 or something, but I am really enjoying the future orbits mechanic. I have kept to keeping orbiting planets on no matter what in my ~130 hours of playtime so far, as I find the mechanic to be very immersive and entertaining in drawn out games, so it is nice to finally be able to click a button and get a sense of what gravity well is going out and what is coming in.
The planet bombardment effect seems to be fully working on asteroids now and looks pretty good, unfortunately I havent had time to do a full game lately so I haven't been able to check out that it is fully working on other planet types, but it is good to finally see it on the asteroids, I hope effects like this can get beefier in the future when more of the development is done and some attention can be paid to finely tuning visuals.
Did the AI get buffed or have its logic tweaked? I used to be able to hold down the fort and turtle up against Unfair AI, but since this last update it definitely jumps me before I am prepared. This is probably my own doing as I'm always trying to get away with rushing some upgrades and garrisons early on instead of building up a massive fleet, but it just seems like the AI is fielding its fleet even faster than before and able to power its way through level 3 derelict guardians without much trouble. I will have to go back down to Hard AI until I'm up to the task again, aww shucks, a game that actually makes me learn how to play.
Pirates are still pretty menacing and annoying in the early to mid game, but I'm glad their fleet sizes were nerfed a bit, it was real alarming watching them show up with 1k supply. I had a scenario where some pirates invaded my territory, bombed a world, and then I went and recaptured that world, and the pirates turned around to go back for it? I didn't see the whole thing play out because an enemy AI jumped into my system and wiped out my main fleet so I ended up rage quitting there before seeing what the pirates were doing. I understand there is already a visual indicator for what gravity well has a bounty, but I still end up looking around for it sometimes, like its obvious, but not obvious enough. You know when a planet is underdeveloped and it has a border that glows at varying intensity around it, something like that in addition to maybe a more recognizable pirate-like symbol would be make it much easier to notice and grasp in my mind that I need to do something at that gravity well. Just a thought.
I still need to put some more time into this update, but I have a feeling I'll probably be putting well over a thousand hours into Sins 2 as time goes on. Its another solid update that is building the game up into something fun to play, and I hope as time goes on, something fun to watch in cinematic mode during big 2000vs2000 supply fleet battles. I see you got place holders for Watch, so I'm hoping replays and streaming will be a built in feature in the future. I don't watch much game streaming, but Sins 2 I would check out just to learn from people who are better at it than I am, so I know what I can do to not get crushed so easily by the AI sometimes. I would probably even stream Sins 2 just because I think the game is so underrated and undervalued right now, really hoping it will draw a crowd as it gets closer to release. Keep up the great work, looking forward to the next faction being added and all the other cool things you will hopefully be able to do with this game!
Update: I went back and played against the AI(Unfair - Defensive) for a longer session and it turned out I was just mucking about with a bad build order, it is still very reasonable to field a large enough fleet for encounters with the AI in the early game while expanding and teching up.
Some additional feedback. I know this is a rather subjective thing, but the star background for the new scenario Twin Giants is extremely "busy" or "noisy" if you will. To me, it distracts and detracts from the overall aesthetic of the hud and 3D objects in the game. I played a 4 player random gen and was pleasantly surprised to see more star maps as I normally play the 5 player random gen. I like that there is a variety of star maps, and I thought it would be cool if we could get random star maps assigned when loading in, and eventually be able to just cycle through the various star maps with a key or menu option as we play. I really enjoy rotating around and looking at the whole map as I play and seeing my fleet in action from the different points of view. I will have to try out more of the random gen maps and scenarios to see all the star maps. Just another wish list idea.