First off, again... love the game, I feel like it has a lot of potential and can go a long way with enough support, feedback and new additions.
Below I will post some things I noticed during my time, be it campaign suggestions, bugs, quality of life changes I believe can improve user experience etc.
General mechanics
1. Army position at start - I've had a few missions where army positioning at the start was a pain due to the number of units in my army, the limited number of allowed grids to position my units and the fact that when I pick up a unit I cannot move the camera with my mouse or WASD keys. It proved especially frustrating during one mission (forgot the name) where I only had 2 or 3 empty slots to position my units. I suggest maybe making sure each map has enough rows for perhaps a 25 -28 stack with 3 rows in length and allowing you to move the camera when you picked up a unit (both mouse and WASD would be preffered), makes it easier and more intuitive.
2. Cancel toggle abilities - This is also something unintuitive, abilities such as the jump packs for example. I've had numerous moments when I picked an assasult marine, clicked on his ability, looked around the map for a space to place then only to unselect the assault squad, move a different unit (to make room so they don't have to use the jump pack) and then go back to the assault squad and try to move them normally with a simple right click. Sadly, it seems that the game keeps tabs of the toggled ability. please don't do that, it's not intuitive for any ability to still be toggled after unselecting the unit. The moment I unselect my unit ALL abilities should be toggled off, from a user experience I find it more intuitive to actively WANT to activate my abilities and NOT have to keep a mental note of which unit's ability I already clicked and unselected afterwards. It's just more simple that way.
3. Pistol reaction attack - I love this ability but I have a hard time wrapping my head on how it works. I haven't noticed what can reliably trigger it besides facing your attacker... sometimes it activates other times it doesn't, it feels a bit random at times which is weird since it feels like a fairly powerful core ability for pistol users. Might I suggest expanding on the information? Perhaps as a passive in their status slots? I would do the same to all other 'hidden' abilities.
4. Encyclopedia - The tutorial hasn't really done a good job explaining certain mechanics, the aformentioned pistol reaction attack, suppresing, cover system, just to name a few from the top of my head. If a better tutorial is not an option or too time consuming I would at the very least suggest adding an ecylopedia to better explain how these core mechanics work. It is very important if you want your players to learn all the intricate mechanics of your game. The game seemed simple enough at first but that's because I can't really couldn't wrap my head around the more subtle mechanics since I don't know how to make them work properly. Having a page with information about it ingame would be good, having that at a click of a button or hover over, is even better. Being able to look up such mechanics is always good, since you might need to refresh your memory every now and then.
5. DEfault melee attack for melee units - I would suggest makeing it so that units that carry a melee weapon would have their melee weapon attack as default when they are right next to their target (square right next to them and in melee range). I know the pistol can also be efficient at that range but it just feels less intutitive to have it as a default attack, at least that was always my first thought since those are melee specialists. Seems insignificant but I've had quite a few cases when I right clicked with my Lieutenant selected and he started shooting instead of wacking with his chansword. I believe it should be the default for melee units.
6. Hellblaster's Supercharge - I tried it a few times but I can't say that I consider it a good ability, mostly due to the penalty, a 25% to lose 40 hit (40 is half my current Hellblaster's health, so using this twice at full health WILL kill them) points is quite big when the damage increase goes from 6-9(x20) to 8-11(x20). I would lower the 25% chance for self damage to 20% (I always get at least two units damaged when using the ability) and drop the self-damage on the Hellblasters to maybe 20-25 damage per model. I could be wrong about this but it's an ability I hardly used since it didn't seem that cost effective for the damage it did and the risk, I think I got my Hellblasters killed more times by using it than from getting killed by Tyranids.
7. Tactical map and visual icons - Gate switches, destructable walls and Tyranid nests. The main objectives always have this big arrow and green circle but the rest do not. I didn't even know I could use the gate switches in one mission until I accidentally placed a unit near one. I would suggest adding a toggle button for each of them in the tactical map screen; for the switches it would make the interact button appear over them, even when you don't have a unit standing near the switch. For descructable walls I would make it a red bullseye symbol on them and as for the nests (the ones in the mission where you have to destroy all 100% of them) I would make them appear on the tactical map since they are really easy to miss.
8. Objective HQ points - It would be nice to see (during the mission) how many points do the bonus objectives give (or lose if we fail). I know you can see the main mission point during mission preview but it would be nice to have a constant visual of both main and bonus points during the mission.
9. Delete save button - Would be nice to have a "Delete save" button to clear up all the cluttered saves.
Bug
1. Sister Verity - I noticed one of ther abilities called "SIster Verity" has the name of the unit it applies and the name of the ability switch positions. Small bug but eh, the ability is called "Sister Verity" but it was supposed to be "Plama Pistol" probably due to the mix-up.
That is all for now, I'll continue to play the game in skirmish mode and share my thoughts and any other bugs that I may encounter.
I'm very excited to see what the future has in store for Battlesector and wish you all the best of luck!
If I do sound a bit nitpicky I apologise but I consider intuitive mechanics a must for such games since it improves user experience dramatically.
In the end, the devil's in the details. ^^
