Suggest - Features and Improvements

[PrivateHudson]

Please add hotkey to dismiss notification, it constitutes a large portion of mouseclicks total.

[PrivateHudson]

It would be convenient if diplomatic capital counter at the top of the screen doubled as indicator that new diplomatic options (treaties) have become available, either because of aliens' attitude changes or as a result of diplocapital accumulation. For example, a little looped animation where hands move towards each other for handshake. Popup help should in this case list something like "Research treaty with Phidi available \r\n Alliance with Yoral available \r\n Open ports treaty with Humans available". I routinely forget to forge treaties, sometimes by tens of turns.
By the way, don't you think that the trade treaty wording "Our ports are now open to your trade goods" causes a little confusion with Open ports treaty?

[Dragar]

I wonder if ships larger than heavy cruiser should require more infrastructure to build. If Battlecruisers etc. needed 3 or 4 construction modules instead of 2, you'd be much more limited on where you could build them. That might make fleets a bit more 'natural' looking (mostly heavy cruisers) until significant investment was made. It also makes defending key infrastructure locations more interesting.

But... I don't know how the AI would behave.

[grothmag]

Please add hotkey to dismiss notification, it constitutes a large portion of mouseclicks total.

A hotkey would be nice. I would also very much like the "x" for closing the active report/notification to be locked in place. Currently, the position of the "x" varies a little based on the length of the message title - further right with long planet names, for instance. This means, when going through many reports, one has to keep moving the cursor to "find" the "x", sometimes drifting into the right-arrow instead.

Basically, I'd just ask that the "x" be placed at a set position, rather than shifting based on message title length. But with a "dismiss" hotkey, this is probably unnecessary.

[PrivateHudson]

The new inter-faction relations panel in Intelligence is a bit confusing. Seems, it doesn't show any lines besides Alliance and War. I surmise, if I understand correctly, lines represent treaties, and hence player is allowed to see only those in which he can be sure from observing individual factional info. I think, it wouldn't be a big security breach to show all treaties between all known factions (including Marauders), along with their current mutual love/hate ratings. IMHO, this will heighten situational awareness, lower micromanagement of checking this info faction by faction, and allow players more visually enjoy watching your excellent diplomatic AI.

[Serenitis]

Something to consider...

If the the AI cedes a colony to the player via diplomacy, the AI can and will ask the player to return that colony, and will incur a diplomatic penalty if refused.

Suggest that either of the following could be the case instead:

• Ceded colonies can be asked to be returned as now, but refusing does not give a diplo penalty.
• Ceded colonies are never asked to be returned, only colonies aquired by conquest or splinters can be requested.

The latter might possibly be better as it is not pushing the player through a potentially unnecessary interaction.
Although the former might be useful for the opportunity to improve relations with that AI.

[sven]

The new inter-faction relations panel in Intelligence is a bit confusing. Seems, it doesn't show any lines besides Alliance and War. I surmise, if I understand correctly, lines represent treaties, and hence player is allowed to see only those in which he can be sure from observing individual factional info. I think, it wouldn't be a big security breach to show all treaties between all known factions (including Marauders), along with their current mutual love/hate ratings. IMHO, this will heighten situational awareness, lower micromanagement of checking this info faction by faction, and allow players more visually enjoy watching your excellent diplomatic AI.

Yeah, the problem is, if I add too many more lines, the graph will just become a scrambled mess. Even just drawing one line between every pair of factions on an 8 faction board is 28 lines. And if you consider that there can be multiple different kinds of treaties and attitude states, it becomes a real information overload.

The correct solution, maybe, is to add different "modes" to the graph. So you can have like an "attitude" mode, and "treaties" mode, and a "war/peace" mode. Then, maybe, in the "attitude" and "treaties" modes, limit the displayed lines to just the lines connected to the currently selected faction, rather than trying to show everything at once.

Not sure when/if I'll find more time to experiment with this, but, I do agree with your basic point -- the "faction relations" pane is pretty unpolished as it stands. If nothing else, it probably needs to be renamed to something like "Wars and Alliances", just so it's more obvious what it's actually displaying.

[zolobolo]

Suggest some options for faster refit:
1. Under Hardpoints have the latest available (Combat) layout be selected per default for a ship as it is most likely tha ships wil lbe refit ot be brought up-to-date to the latest design status. Also do not have non-combat vessel be the default here nor in instant refit as it is unlikley players will upgrqade scout ships or downgrade combat ships to scout ships
2. When selecting refit on planet production UI, have buttons or dropdown be avaialble righ within the bracket of the ships avaiallbe for refit to issue the refit queue command for a specific hardpoint layout. Meaning: when wanting to upgrade all the ships of the fleet, click on refit on planet UI and then click on refit to default for each ship to add them to the queu (can be a separate button ove each ship) as this is likely the most common action taken from here.

[Arioch]

1. Under Hardpoints have the latest available (Combat) layout be selected per default for a ship as it is most likely tha ships wil lbe refit ot be brought up-to-date to the latest design status. Also do not have non-combat vessel be the default here nor in instant refit as it is unlikley players will upgrqade scout ships or downgrade combat ships to scout ships

I would think that would be very confusing to bring up the ship design screen and see a configuration that was not currently on that ship.

You can already refit ships to the current design with one click via Fast Refit. The production queue system doesn't lend itself well to this kind of one-click action.

[gaerzi]

You can already refit ships to the current design with one click via Fast Refit. The production queue system doesn't lend itself well to this kind of one-click action.

The fast refit is expensive, though. Sometimes we'd rather have a planet that doesn't have anything better to do to take care of upgrading ships for a while, instead of spending money on it. Of course an alternative would be to have said planet be full set on producing money and then fast-refitting the ships after a few turns, but it's not the same.

How about adding a separate project that would be "upgrade ship", which would take one of the orbiting obsolete ships and update it to the latest design? It would solve the two main issues I have with the "refit ship" task, which are that you need to manually select the design for each ship, and that it immobilizes all the queued ships instead of just the one it's working on. Something that just takes any upgradable ship in orbit and upgrades it, then repeat until there are no obsolete ships in orbit anymore would be simpler and less cumbersome. If there's suddenly an emergency and you need your fleet (even the obsolete ships) elsewhere, then you'd only operationally lose the one that's currently in drydocks, not the rest since they would technically not be queued.

[Arioch]

I don't think the average player would have any idea, intuitively, of the difference between "upgrading" a ship and "refitting" one. One presumably doesn't refit a ship unless the refit is an upgrade.

We're working on ways to reduce the number of clicks required to queue production refits, which we agree is kind of awkward, but the current "queue" system in the Refit menu is already kind of a hack. Piling hacks on top of hacks is not a good way to get a usable and intuitive UI. We think we may have a solution that doesn't make the UI very much worse, but we need to test it out a bit.

[zolobolo]

The new button is brilliant

Two notes:
1. There are 3 buttons now on hte right hand side and the tooltip of the bottom one is overlapping with he geneal tooltip of the ship itself (might be 4k only issue)
2. When canceling the refit, the ships ramin is sleep mode. It is good that their refit orders can be issued again but can we cancel the refit altogehter to have them engage the enemy?

[Arioch]

2. When canceling the refit, the ships ramin is sleep mode. It is good that their refit orders can be issued again but can we cancel the refit altogehter to have them engage the enemy?

If you put your car up on blocks and start pulling it apart, you can't just jump in it and drive away.

If enemy action is imminent, it's not a good idea to start queuing up refits.

[Centurion XXI]

Есть идея... Как насчет специфического для расы здания? Как продвинутой вариации существующих или же вовсе уникального... К примеру, для жестянщиков (в которых я души не чаю 8)): машинный алтарь может быть абсолютно уникальным древним строением, существующем в единственном экземпляре! А в их колониях требовалась бы постройка антенн для связи с галактической компьютерной сетью (с суперкомпьютером, управляющим автоматической фабрикой в столичном мире). Это сделало бы игру за разные расы еще более увлекательной... Спасибо Вам за игру!

I have a idea... How about a building, exclusive for the race? As advanced option for existing ones or fully completely unique... For example, for Tinkers (I dote on them 8)): the machine altar could be an absolutely unique ancient building that exists in a single copy! And in their colonies the aerials would be built for communication with the galactic computer network (the supercomputer running an automatic factory on Dzibix). This would make playing for different races even more fun... Thanks for the game!

[Arioch]

I have a idea... How about a building, exclusive for the race? As advanced option for existing ones or fully completely unique... For example, for Tinkers (I dote on them 8)): the machine altar could be an absolutely unique ancient building that exists in a single copy! And in their colonies the aerials would be built for communication with the galactic computer network (the supercomputer running an automatic factory on Dzibix). This would make playing for different races even more fun... Thanks for the game!

The problem there is: if the Tinkers have to use slots for extra buildings just to operate normally, that's actually a penalty. The current Machine Altar also functions as a factory, so this is a bonus rather than a penalty. To justify having a completely unique building, it would have to offer some kind of specific advantage.