Since Erik stated that wishes are only save to be remebembered when in this thread I copied together all my suggestions from all my posts other than this one. I apologize for the resulting long and difficult to read post [;)]
- Ability to set a maximum and minimum number of troops per planet. Troops are automatically recruited until the maximum is reached. When a troop transport fetches troops the minimum number is left at the planet so as to not strip it of all ground defenses. Of course the AI should be able to uses that system also.
- Troop transports keep the "load troops" order until they are full. For that they stay at the planet where they began loading troops although that may last longer than going somewhere else but prevents them from scattering and moving far away in search of troops. Or even better, make it two separate commands so that the player (and the AI) can decide according to the situation at hand.
- Ideally there should be an option whether the most or the least experienced troops should go on board of troop carriers.
- Show the destination of a selected ship or fleet in the main view as an arrow that connects the current location and the destination.
- Slow down hyperspace travel or increase fuel consumption (or provide a slider for those two). In my eyes the galaxy feels too small from mid game on despite having 1000 systems, because it's no real problem to fly to the other side of the galaxy in a comparatively time.
- Let the AI not choose targets half a galaxy away. In my last game it happened quite often that the AI proposed such targets although there were enough other targets in much shorter distance.
- More special objects (in the sense of variation, not number; but I admit that I may not have seen everything since I played only two games so far). Decrease number of derelict ship fields and let explorers stumble about things like abandoned research stations, hostile robot space stations, alien fleets of another galaxy with varying intentions, secret spy stations of a long gone empire, a planet without sun in deep space, a damaged freight ship without crew, but valuable goods, etc. I would like the possibility to discover a lot of different things, some with very small probabilities so that they are not in every game.
I like the idea that not only the highest tech can be traded but all lower techs as well. Would it be so difficult to just list them together with all current techs the empires trading which each other don't have yet?
I have another idea which I fear is much harder to implement but which models "real life" behaviour much better in my opinion: make it possible to trade *components* instead of the tech itself! How would it be to approach another empire and ask them: "Please give me 10 death ray cannons in exchange for x"? Those cannons would then have to be produced by the giving empire and actually shipped to the receiver's next starbase (and are prone to pirate attacks and whatever on the way ...).
The receiver could then use those components to build ships or bases, or he/she could decide to disassemble one or more of them to boost his/her own knowledge of that tech a bit (but not too much; I think, the more advanced the tech is the smaller the gain should be. Imagine you give a tank to a tribe of barbarians running around with bow and arrows, what could they do with it?).
And one suggestion as well: if we have an agent in deep cover within an empire, give us information about the number of enemy counterintelligence agents.
About colony spamming: I suggested in the wishlist thread to increase the distances between the systems or at least the fuel consumption. Right now the galaxy feels really small because you can travel from one end to the other pretty soon in a relatively short time. Apart from making the game feel bigger, more epic, greater distances (or strongly increased fuel consumption) could also help avoiding colony spamming, because when there are only a handful of colonies in range as opposed to now, when there are dozens and dozens, there would be nothing to spam to ...
Edit: even better: make fuel consumption an option so that every player can adjust that to his/her liking. That would be a very minor change in my opinion with the potential to vary the game tremendously. It would be a very big difference if distances take ten times as much time to cover than now, the game would develop much slower and in another way, also resupply ships would gain a lot of strategic importance. And again, make it an option with a slider where you can adjust fuel consumption for travel (not for weapon usage!) between 1 (the current consumption) and, say, 20 (use 20 times as much fuel).
Edit #2: Or make fuel consumption at least moddable!
I just managed for the first time to destroy an enemy empire. But: is it normal that there is no message whatsoever about that fact? I just received all their remaining ships and the empire disappeared silently from the diplomacy screen, but nothing else happened ... feels a bit disappointing
I don't know the solution, but have the problem myself: how can I retrofit (privately owned) mining stations at all? I mean, I don't want them to have the ability to self-retrofit like Astax, but do it with a constructor, but I seem not to be able to find a possibility to do so ...
There should be a better way to do it:
- Provide constructors with a respective command
* and / or *
- Make the private sector update their assets regularly (and provide the player with some feedback about that, because I don't like when I don't know what's going on in my empire; it's ok when I elect to not micromanage, but there should be the possiblilty to find out what happens when I choose to do so)
About the tech tree: I'm definitely for expanding it a lot!
Perhaps this would then also solve two current issues? They are:
- Messages appearing very shortly after one another so that the first message gets auto-replied with the default answer
- Game not really pausing when the AI "does" diplomacy. It happens very often to me that I pause the game and 30 seconds after that the AI begins nagging me with several diplomatic messages with on top of that un-pause the game on answering ...
If there is a scrolling list as suggested then I suppose it should function in the way that as long as a message is in the list the offer is valid, and it clicked on, the normal diplomatic screen appears and the game is paused until the screen is closed. But then the game is only un-paused when it was running before the message was opened, otherwise it stays in pause mode.
I'm against detailling more and more specific resources, that wouldn't bring any new strategic elements into the game imo (perhaps apart from food, but to simulate that adequately a lot of work would be needed).
But I'm all for making more of the resources already in the game. I too experienced no special difficulties from lack of certain resources. A game concept you never need to care about is unnecessary, so change the resource handling to make it important again.
First step could be to increase resource costs for certain components *or* reduce the abundance of certain resources. I would prefer the latter, then I would again *enjoy* finding planets with those resources. As it is now, one planets looks like every other and the resources on it don't really matter. I miss the sense of wonder I had when finding a Gaia planet in MoO2 or a quality 20 planet or one with a 7 x research tile in GalCiv2. I want something similar in DW, either by making some resources scarce and / or decreasing ruin abundance and make their bonuses more varied and / or ...
Second step could be to introduce new resources that are not raw materials but semi-finished products that have to be generated in specialized factories (which need new components and a new branch in the tech tree) out of raw materials (e. g. 10 steel + 3 gold + 1 nekros stone = <insert fancy name here> alloy). Would be more work than step one but still less than introducing a food system i think.
ORIGINAL: taltamir
the safest method would be to make the chances of each resource to appear on a plaent 1/A what it is now, but increase the production by a factor of A, with A being probably 5 to 10 (except for the three 3 super resources, korbebian spice, loros fruit, and zentabia fluid which remain the same)? overall the same amount produced AND consumed in the entire galaxy, but they are concentrated to individual planets, making said planets valuable and most planets are consumers only. Thus there are actual "strategic planets" instead of "how many ocean planets I own" its "do I own one of the few ocean planets that exports dilithium crystals?)
This would be interesting... it would be a drastic change though... not sure how well it would work. Not sure if I am for it or against (I have mixed feelings about the idea)..
this would certainly make mining bases less useless. (in fact, they would become very useful!)
That's quite good an idea and along the lines of my first step. And to mitigate any unpredictable game changes coming from that: make your "A" a moddable variable
ORIGINAL: Astax
ORIGINAL: Yarasala
- Make colony spamming impossible
I wouldn't go that far. There are some races/governments that should still have the option. It makes the game more diverse.
That's why I wish they make the mechanism moddable
Edit: better still, make it moddable on a per race base
ORIGINAL: Barleyman
ORIGINAL: taltamir
10x the cost for a colony ship with 10x the pop when you require that it REMOVE said pop from the planet that built it makes NO SENSE!
If colony ships stop producing colonists out of thin air, then there is no reason to EVER pay more for a colony ship... because passenger ships could and would easily make up any deficit by moving people around.
It also makes the loss of a colony ship devastating, its very expensive AND carries many precious citizens...
You're talking like colonizing another planet shouldn't be expensive undertaking with failure being devastating? That's how it is in most 4X games and it seems to work pretty good too.
Let's say the aim is to slow down colony spam - Making the ships expensive and fresh colonies resource/money sinks would force you to consider your options instead of spreading through the map like a proverbial locusts. Cf sword of the stars how this can work.
Agreed, like stated in another thread. Obviously that is an important point that a lot of players (at least of those who write in this forum ) want to see changed. And again I vote for a (moddable / optional) possibilty to reduce the range of ships drastically.
But I also like the possibility to (optionally) increase the price of colony ships. To make them take their pop from the planet instead of from thin air would be preferable, but surely harder to implement.
Btw, independent colonies *do* benefit you because the pop is higher and the colony gives you more profit faster.
I would also like an option to increase unrest the more different species are at the same planet (what may be further influenced by a tolerance setting per race and / or government type), but along with a possibility to somehow control which species goes where. This control doesn't need to be absolute, just a setting like "prefer colonists of race X" per planet would do if then passenger ships try to gradually ship race X to the planet and ship all other races away.
And, about the problem that you need certain races to colonize certain planet types: introduce terraforming tech like in so many other 4x space games (whatever terraforming is for a specific race ).
Point defence!
IMO the best solution to that would be if the AI just maintained a common list of explorable locations and every explorer would just pick the next unassigned location from there and mark it as assigned. Of course then the AI must keep track of explorers not fulfilling their assignment because of pirates / space monsters / enemy ships etc.
ORIGINAL: taltamir
ORIGINAL: Yarasala
ORIGINAL: taltamir
I agree, I don't like it either... but it the only passable way of having a system where "newer" components are not better/the same in all metrics, instead having a "next gen" tech sacrifice one area of performance for another.
Either you go with the multiple windows and very complex but robust system... or just drop that nod towards "realism" and just have it where every component is in every way shape or form superior to the previous generation component (which is how I prefer GAMES to play)
If newer componenets are better in every respect than older ones, you take away a decision from the players what would not be a good thing. I prefer the current system but the handling of components of different tech levels in a design needs to be much better, to that I agree fully.
It IS a good thing to take away that decision... Too much "decisions" means cumbersome micromanagement...
There are lots of design decisions you can and should be making, using obsolete tech because its in some way better means having to deeply analyze and understand every single tech component, and then calculate which one to use... it is a PITA and it is VERY frustrating when you try to implement an "upgrading" system (click a button to upgrade all components on the ship), a working AI (normally the AI would just use the latest gen tech), or just play the game without having to understand it to that level.
Tech X > Tech X-1 is one of the most fundamental things for a game. We don't need this kind of "choice" where tech X might or might not be better than tech X-1 (because it might be a trap) thank you very much.
By "we" you mean "you" ...
Obviously we have a different opinion about that matter, we'll see what route the game will take.
Anyway, I would like those decisions that are in no way cumbersome to me.
And about the AI and upgrading, yes, it would be more difficult for it to find the best solution, but I don't find it too hard to implement. Just give the AI some "focus" attributes per component area, e. g. "speed" for hyperdrives so it will always upgrade to the fastest drive.
I described elsewhere how the upgrade button could work: if pressed, check the design(s) and upgrade only those components that are most advanced and leave all others alone. But if the player could also specify "focus" like the AI, then the upgrade button could follow the same logic.
ORIGINAL: taltamir
Now, if you want to implement different "types" of components, thats where differentiation comes into play... you could have it as different types of weapons (aka, lasers, mass drivers, missiles)... or you could have some other sort of categorization... such as "long range lasers" vs "short range lasers"... but its better to have those as "modifiers" like in MOO2 (maybe somewhat improved)...
ideally you would want them both to work off of the same tech and be a design choice the player applies; such as bigger mount or small mount. And each weapon tech should be better then the previous one (something that sadly was not the case with moo2... i just finished a game of it this very second...)
I could live with those modifications but I think that would need to much alteration of the current system to be viable (but of course I may be wrong). Furthermore I do not see the difference in AI decision finding and upgrading per button with those modifications compared to the system with components that are not better everywhere than their predecessors, it seems even more complicated to me ...
