I played this game 3 times.
First I won, second I lost, third, I played against 4 opponents and it got stuck due to resources running out, and everyone having guard units, I did have roughly half the map however.
Basically this is a fun game, it is just not there yet, as there are some problems, and I am not sure how to fix them.
As already mentioned, this game can get stuck if players harvest all the resources, mainly the farms. Problem is that guar units are too strong compared to attackers. I had two attackers going against guard unit, and they got only half the HP off from the guard. Now basically that is actually good proportion, as in, Guards should be stronger that attackers, but when resources run low and everyone has guards, then game gets stuck.
This problem could be solved if three would be a way to choose when attackers attack, intead of them independently, and in practice, instantly they get done they start attacking.
Perhpas there should be minimal control of having attackers either stay at their home bases, or attacking. This way you could build an army before launching an attack, and this way also the guardian power problem would be solved, but I wonder if it then changes the game too much.
Two other options you could try are either to make more resources randomly appearing somewhere, theoretically one way would be that each time a resource planet gets dried, you could go and drill there to seek if there happens to be more, and then randomly there could come more.
Another option would be for bases to start producing stuff themselves, for example, make base become level 3, or even 4, and it starts slowly producing food.
Another problem was that it felt too much out of control of where my units were going to. And dont misunderstand me, I dont mean there to be a way to control where they are going, since that would ruin the core concept of the game, but I mean that there wasnt any meaningful way of making strategic decisions about in way of, if I now choose this one to make attackers, they will likely attack either point A or point B.
Or, to illustrate this bit differently, and this is also possible solution, as in, right now you have completely open space there.
But what if there are routes? Imagine a simple grid kind of pathway:
+++
+++
+++
(imagine those pluses right to each other, this way forming pathways where there are junctions with 4 different ways to go)
Now assume you start from a corner, and each junction has some resource/base.
First junction from corner has farm, easy to predict sending farmers will go there.
Since it is corner junction (say, bottom-left corner) then the junction has only 2 paths, up or right. Up has mine, right has base.
If you decide to build miners from your base, not hard to figure out they are going to go to that mine, and if you make attackers, they will attack that base.
Similarly behind those junctions are more pathways, and more resources and this way you would have some idea where those units of yours are going to go, even you still would have full control. Like if two junctions ahead, there are three farms in three different pathways, you wouldnt know which farm farmers would go, but you woul danyway have some idea that it is one of those three anyway.
This way you would have some bit of strategic planning, as movement would be bit restricted and you would have bit of idea on possibly trying to emphasise on the right bottom side of grids, instead of top-left side of grids.
By having some routes/paths, you could give possibility for all kind of levels.
Also, I would suggest some levels to be either completely seeable from beginning, or then like in this grid case, it could be that you always know that there might be resource on a junction, and no where elsewhere, so you see the map that it is a grid, but you dont see the which exact resources there are on the junctions, if any.
Also, I misunderstood during first game one thing, which I think could be way to make some levels different.
I thought that all my bases are always producing the same thing. I didnt realise they were independent from each other.
But I think that could be interesting option too, that instead of being able to produce farmers on one, attackers on other etc. you could only choose what all the bases are doing at same time.
By the way, those plunderers are otherwise excellent idea, but they become too weak when those guardians are in game. Perhaps there should be something like that plunderers avoid guards or something to make them hard to destroy, potentially idea being that if guard is around, you need more plunderers, so that couple of them are making guard chase them, while rest are plundering.
This way guard would still be useful, but not rendering plunderers useless, since after guards are around, I saw no point in having plunderers anymore.
Also, in rules it says that farmers can attack too, but in practice I had several farmers around planet waiting for a farm to appear, and there came a single attacker and killed them all. Didnt notice them do any damage to it.
This game has potential, but it is not there yet. Not sure how this game needs to change, but I liked the idea, and it was fun for those couple of games, but now it already shows too much of its lackings, and hence it is not that fun to play anymore.
Good start as long as you can make it work.
And I assume this is a playtest version, so not pointing out those things like wanting to be able to click the map and instantly get there etc. Since I assume you are still planning on working on those things more, as long as you plan to work with the game more.