Suggest - Features and Improvements

[Serenitis]

A potential feedback improvement to consider:

When a ship is fitted with a boarding pod, selecting the move command will highlight boardable ships in orange whenever the destination marker is moved into an appropriate range.
This is good feedback.

When a ship is fitted with assault shuttles, selecting the move command will not produce any highlights at all when the marker is moved.
This was likely omitted since the shuttles have a non-zero range and don't require the ships the be directly adjacent.
However, if a ship with shuttles is moved right next to another ship the shuttles don't get 'used' (appear on screen to be shot at) so they function indentically to a boarding pod.

What I would like to suggest is that if a shuttle armed ship is to be moved directly next to a suitable target in the same manner as you would use a boarding pod, the same orange highlight be displayed on the target indicating the same behaviour will occur.

[PrivateHudson]

It has been noted, that in a war where you can not win decisive fleet engagement, you naturally split the fleet into groups barely sufficient to overcome planetary defenses, and go on a rampage against enemy colonies, not caring to defend yours. In this case the outcome is determined by who are destroying or capturing enemy colonies faster (and has more colonies). The AI correctly chooses best enemy colonies in range, but seems a little impeded by its tendency to clear a entire star system before going to the next. On one hand, this tactic can cut enemy's reach, but in a late game range techs and allies make this goal unfeasible. More destruction could be achieved by considering for each following attack not just colonies in the system where fleet currently resides (if any), but all enemy colonies attainable in one turn.

[andy]

Sorry if this has been raised before. I've played many many games now and I find that one faction (usually me) runs away with the game (on normal mode).

I have a suggestion regarding science progress. Technology from captured ships can be reverse engineered. That's great. To further balance the progress of the game, I suggest the following: allow % completion of certain techs to travel across borders, perhaps small % chance per turn. It seems that this would occur if ships and people move between empires.

For example: if the Teros border (or are within a certain distance of) my empire and I'm way ahead in tech, then each turn there is a small % chance that a % of a tech would seep into Teros.

Maybe limit it to non-military techs. Maybe make the feature optional in the setup screen. Maybe knowing about the tech and how it works gets you part of the way there. But actually producing the tech will require some of your own science investment.

Commerce between empires could also result in tech seep. Maybe the foreign trade benefit should be boosted if it also risks tech seep.

Other alternatives would be implementing some sort of tech theft or espionage into the game. Master of Orion 1 had this and I personally didn't really enjoy dealing with the investments in intelligence and counter-intelligence, probably because it didn't seem to matter much and I didn't really understand the mechanics of it in that game.

Another and much easier to implement option would be to make techs get cheaper as they are learned by other races. For example, if 1 of ten races learns Terraforming, then it is 5% or 10% cheaper for all other races. If 2 other races learn it, then it is 10 or 20% cheaper. Adjust numbers to suit. Again, the feature could be made optional during set-up.

[andy]

I know this has been discussed before and I haven't read everything. I love the biomes and the race benefits related to them. I just spend too much time in the game micromanaging this, especially on large maps.

I think migration should be automated. And there could be an option to prohibit migration, empire wide or on a planet by planet basis. You could still manually move population if you want to. Migration would occur when there is a significant disparity of race specific growth rates between planets within the empire and/or a range mechanic. Maybe limit the transfer of population to one ship to a star a time so you don't get AI suddenly moving pop all over the place when conditions change. You might need to have room in the commerce pool for it to occur. The mechanic could be made optional at set-up.

If it includes a range mechanic, maybe even allow migration from nearby foreign stars, unless that empire or yours has forbid it.

[Arioch]

I know this has been discussed before and I haven't read everything. I love the biomes and the race benefits related to them. I just spend too much time in the game micromanaging this, especially on large maps.

I think migration should be automated. And there could be an option to prohibit migration, empire wide or on a planet by planet basis. You could still manually move population if you want to. Migration would occur when there is a significant disparity of race specific growth rates between planets within the empire and/or a range mechanic. Maybe limit the transfer of population to one ship to a star a time so you don't get AI suddenly moving pop all over the place when conditions change. You might need to have room in the commerce pool for it to occur. The mechanic could be made optional at set-up.

If it includes a range mechanic, maybe even allow migration from nearby foreign stars, unless that empire or yours has forbid it.

Perhaps a less disruptive alternative might be to introduce a lower-level migration mechanic... whereby if a planet has a population group whose growth is restricted, but there are active trade routes that access a planet where there is available biome space for that population, perhaps some or all of that local lost growth can appear on the new planet as a sort of automatic migration. There would probably need to be the option to quarantine individual planets or disable automatic migration entirely.

I'm not sure the gameplay effect would be worth the trouble to implement this, but it's worth thinking about.

[andy]

If I turn on AI control for one turn, the AI does some stuff, then there is an AI "do-end-turn-actions" that moves all my fleets around and adjust all populations and also adjusts all my planet's productions, then the next turn starts and the AI does some stuff before I can then turn AI off. I can't undo all the production changes without cancelling all the ship movements since it all falls within "do-end-turn-actions".

Would it be easier to code an option to turn on AI just for the population management?

[Arioch]

I'm always reluctant to add AI governor features... we have made an effort to try to limit the game mechanics that the player is required to manage to only those that involve important (and hopefully interesting) decisions. I'm aware that when the map sizes get really huge, some of the game mechanics can become tedious to manage... but the game really isn't designed to be played on maps that large. I know lots of folks like to play on the largest possible maps, and we don't prevent you from doing so... but past a certain point it kind of becomes a different game. If you find yourself wishing for the AI to manage parts of your empire for you... maybe consider maps that aren't quite so huge.

We did end up including some AI production automation for individual colonies, but at least that is something with very local and isolated effect. Empire-wide population movement is a far-reaching mechanism with the potential to dramatically affect your trade fleet (and thus your economy) and the strategic disposition of all your colonies. I'm concerned that in many cases the AI would be working at counter purposes to the player's own strategy, and to work properly in a way that would not be infuriating to the player, it could require an entire management UI of its own. I fear that the possible edge cases to worry about may quickly spiral out of control. Hence my hesitation to add this kind of potentially disruptive feature.

[DanTheTerrible]

The naming conventions for transports and troopships is confusing. I have several times clicked on a troopship intending to send its ground unit somewhere, only to find that it doesn't in fact have a ground unit on board after it gets there, because it is labelled a troopship even though it is no longer acting as one.

For all game purposes, an unloaded troopship is identical to a transport. Likewise, a transport loaded with a ground unit is identical to a troopship.

Why can't we make the names fit the role rather than the hull? I'd like to see a troopship that unloads its ground unit automatically change it's name to "transport". When a transport loads a ground unit, I would like to see the name change as well. However, this is messier as a couple of races have more than one type of ground unit. You could just ignore that and rename it troopship regardless. Or give it a name distinct from initially built troopships, such as "troop carrier". In an ideal world, the game would scan the player's existing ship designs, and rename the loaded transport whatever the player named the class that is built with that ground unit.

I am aware the ship graphic changes with role. But training yourself to recognize the difference between the two graphics for all of the 8+ races is a real chore. Currently I am playing humans, whose troopships change appearance quite slightly when they unload, it's easy to overlook. It would be nice if the human ships changed appearance more dramatically when acting as troopships vs acting as transports. Perhaps the unloaded cargo modules could change color instead of remaining grey.

[andy]

If it said what it was carrying followed by Transport, that'd help. Marine Transport. Mech transport. Human Transport. Thresher Transport.

A little graphic of what it's carrying stamped onto the ship would be even better.

I do find myself clicking to see what transports are carrying quite often.

[DanTheTerrible]

If it said what it was carrying followed by Transport, that'd help. Marine Transport. Mech transport. Human Transport. Thresher Transport.

A little graphic of what it's carrying stamped onto the ship would be even better.

I do find myself clicking to see what transports are carrying quite often.

I like this. You could also rename colony ships based on what race they are carrying.

[DanTheTerrible]

In light of the above. I mulled this over a bit, and suggest a change as follows.

Any normal one cargo space ship (not military transports or Phidi trade ships) that is carrying a military unit should be auto-renamed as needed to "troopship." Those carrying a unit of population or no cargo at all should be auto-renamed as needed to "transport". When the ship is rolled over in the fleet window, the tooltip that pops up should list the cargo so the player doesn't have to click the question mark to find out what it is carrying.

Troopships should list cargo by troop type; most will be "armor brigade" but Gremaks could have "marauder" and Humans could have "power armor".

Transports carrying population should say "X colonist", where X is the race (Teros, Haduir, Orthin, Yoral, Phidi, Gremak, Human, Tinker). Alternately, the population icons might be used instead of the text words. Transports carrying nothing should say "no cargo".

Colony ships should follow the transport convention, the rollover tooltip should say "X colonist" or "no cargo".

Military transports should follow the troopship convention, and list the troop type or "no cargo", but never change the name from whatever the player set in the design window.

Phidi trade ships should always display the name the player set in the design window. If they are empty the tooltip should say "no cargo". If they carry cargo I lean towards not displaying the contents in the tooltip, to avoid the complexity of separately displaying single or double or mixed cargoes -- in this single case I say leave it to the player to drill down to the information window. Loaded trade ships might say "unknown" or "?" on their tooltip in order to avoid confusing them with empty ones.

[DanTheTerrible]

Siyoa's UI improvement mod seems to include most of what I was asking for above.

Edit: Look in the modding subforum for the thread labeled "fleet pane showing embarked unit". Siyoa, that lovely git, has produced two different mods, one that produces the text rollover I described above, and another version that simply shows the loaded units as the same population icons used elsewhere in the game. Warning: the icons are more elegant but can be hard to see.

[DanTheTerrible]

The current version of the planetary report, and Siyoa's/harpy eagle's mod of it, the population report, show a single pane of planets. With my monitor's resolution, these panes can show 12-13 planets, depending how carefully I adjust the slider. However, it is nearly inevitable, in even very small galaxies, that the player's empire will expand past the number of planets that can be displayed at one time.

My suggestion is to expand the existing reports to allow two or more panes, so more planets can be displayed at the same time. Furthermore, having two panes would make it easier to use the move population function directly from the report panes; this would involve scrolling one pane to show the donating planet, scrolling the other pane so it shows the receiving planet, and using the usual clicking and selecting to issue the order. The extra space would come from the map pane, which is currently so much wider than it is tall I don't see it suffering from some loss of width.

An additional strategy for expanding the report to show more planets simultaneously would be to allow a "long" report pane that extends to the bottom of the screen, taking space from the fleet display pane. Loss of fleet display space strikes me as more of an issue than loss of excess map width, so this might be presented as an option rather than an "always that way" feature.

Two panes is probably adequate for most purposes, but in my ideal world I could see allowing the player to choose any number of panes so long as they don't overrun the width of the screen.

[Arioch]

The current Planet Report is meant to be a simple quick reference that can be up all the time without cluttering up the main map. I would rather add a dedicated full-screen planet report that can be all things to all people rather than continue to try to cram more and more into the quick reference pane.

[DanTheTerrible]

The current Planet Report is meant to be a simple quick reference that can be up all the time without cluttering up the main map. I would rather add a dedicated full-screen planet report that can be all things to all people rather than continue to try to cram more and more into the quick reference pane.

Makes sense to me. I'll just struggle on for now. But maybe starting a new game with 120 stars wasn't a great idea.