Suggest - Features and Improvements

[DanTheTerrible]

The "stellar surge beam" seems lacking in flavor to me, a bit too obvious an imitation of MoO2's stellar converter. "Really big pew" is kind of lacking as an explanation for why this weapon can destroy planets.

The game could use an additional siege size weapon or two so the player doesn't feel driven to the path to stellar surge beam. In addition to singularity torpedoes discussed below, there might be meteor guns (projectiles) or sunbeams (lasers).

I would like to suggest implementing a new planet destroying "ultimate weapon": the singularity torpedo. This creates a small black hole and launches it at a target. If the target is a planet, the planet-destroying mechanism is clear -- the black hole falls into the planet and rapidly starts growing from infalling planetary material until it eventually swallows the whole planet.

If the target is a ship the damage might be scaled to ship size, the gravitational effects having little effect on small destroyers but having much greater effect on large ships like mobile planetoids. This could act as a counter to empires building monolithic fleets of the biggest ships, which would be vulnerable to this effect. The singularity torp might have a damage over time effect as the black hole absorbs some of the target's mass and grows.

If the singularity torpedo is accepted as the game's new ultimate weapon the stellar surge beam could be reduced in importance, losing it's planet destroying capability or maybe just being removed entirely. However, the singularity torpedo should have a large research cost and lots of prerequisites.

[zolobolo]

It was mentioned before that late-game tech might get an overhaul at some point as they havent been finetuned as much as early to mid-game tech

The description can indeed be improvied upon a bit at elast as igniting the core is likely not possible withouth oxygen to maintain the reasction

The concept of destroying a planet within in-game technical map would be cool and if was done via torpedo it mcould be intercepted - in case of a beam weapon this mechanism would almost ceartanly lead to planet destruction independently from defenses

Note though that late game tech is very-very rarely used in my opinion. At least wit hthe setting I am using (Ellipse huge map with default settings and normal difficulty) I never make it beyond 220 turns before the game is over. To make late game tech really relevant the game needs to keep on going for around 300 turns with these settigns in my experience

[PrivateHudson]

1. Scavengers revolted the instant I had colonized their planet by building colonization project in another colony in the same system, not giving me chance to transfer tanks at the ready from that colony. Could the order of end-turn events evaluation be slightly altered to place riot checks before colonization? Or implement one-turn delay to revolts for freshly established colonies.
2. It would be convenient to have in population breakdown area of the colony management screen an indication of incoming pop/units in transit in the form of dimmed icons subscribed "2,000,000 Phidi ETA 5 turn(s)".

[PrivateHudson]

There is a window to abuse alliance mechanic. When you attack someone's colony without DoW, the colony owner automatically DoWs you, and you appear to your allies as a victim, while you clearly are aggressor. Suggest to equate attack on a colony (and, possibly, even outpost) to DoW.

[nweismuller]

I've had some thoughts about the (excellent) refugee mechanic.

1) First, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be extended to Ashdar splinter colonies as well. I'd expect they'd likewise be somewhat technologically regressed relative to the major star nations, and some time to rebuild their tech base would make sense.
2) Second, I think adapting the refugees mechanic as a simulation element for minor races without significant native technology (and without the Primitives) trait would make them more convincing. Primitives are basic unskilled labor, it seems the amount of 'bringing them up to speed' on modern technologies would be minimal, but other races, such as the Tarib, the Wrem, and the Scavengers have similar economic outputs to spacefaring species but are specifically noted to lack advanced native technology. I think adapting the 'refugees' mechanic to represent the process of developing the local economic infrastructure needed to get them up to modern productivity levels would help make them more convincing.
3) Not directly related to the refugee mechanic, but a note on the AI- it seems to me the AI is quite eager to spread primitives around their planets, even when they only tie for other races in environmental suitability for a biome. I'd think the AI should be significantly more reluctant to use primitives as settlers, given that primitives represent a fairly major reduction in economic capacity compared to races with modern technology.

[gaerzi]

Speaking of refugees, an idea: if an empire is getting curbstomped by another, an event could trigger where refugee transports appear in a non-hostile third (but probably not Gremak or Tinker), asking for asylum. You might take a relationship hit with the aggressor if you take them in, though.

[PrivateHudson]

Suggest to upgrade missile auto-retargeting algorithm (and fighter pilots instructions, for good measure) to ignore disabled ships. Especially if they are mine, peacefully waiting recapture on the battlefield.

[PrivateHudson]

Why there is diplomatic penalty for "You are trading with our enemies", but not for "Your open ports treaty provides range to our enemies", after all the latter is potentially much more offending? In my current game I maintain uneasy peace with neighbour outrun megaempire, while purposefully giving its hot war opponents access to significant portion of the latter's backyard to both spoil and divert from frontline efforts, and hopefully collect devastated systems.

[Serenitis]

There's two things which have been bugging me a little in a past few games.

It can become really hard to identify scouts in a large fleet.

Spoiler: show

Doubly so if you're playing a race which uses a variant of another ship type as it's scout craft.
This leads to the player being encouraged to keep scouts separate from thier main fleet just to make them easier to identify, which for the Haduir player is less than great. Because keeping idle ships anywhere but the 'home' gate is a huge disadvantage.

It would be nice if any ship ship equipped with scanners gets either:

• - Some form of overlay which re-colours some portion of the ship to orange (or other suitable colour)
  - A glow/highlight behind the ship icon in the fleet view

Ally/Annex design templates.

Spoiler: show

When the player faction annexes/absorbs another empire, they gain the ability to build thier ships.
And the player will also likely gain control of a non-trivial number of ships which will almost certainly need to be updated.
Which leads to an annoyance.
Ship types in the new fleet which share the same name as ship types in the existing fleet do not have thier designs passed to the player.
Which requires the player then go into to the design screen and make new designs for the ships he already has in order to update them. And this needs to be done for multiple ship types for every annex event.
It is very annoying having to re-design things from scratch when I know those designs existed for my ally to have built those ships in the first place.

The duplication of names is really not important at all, simply because different races ships look different.
Visual identifation is both quicker and more intuitive than trying to identify ships by class name.
When the player annexes an ally, please can ALL the ally's current ship design templates be transferred over. Duplicate names really don't matter, and it's far less effort to delete designs than create them.

[e]
(added spoiler tags to hide textwalls)

Expand derelict exploration event.

Spoiler: show

There may be the opportunity to expand on an existing feature - the derelict ship exploration event.
As it stands, if disovered the player is presented with the option to gain either money or research. Nothing wrong with that, it's simple and easy to parse.
If there were a desire to expand on this, a third option could be added to a number of these events where the derelict is intact enough to be explored.
And this might result in a number of outcomes, such as the ship being intact enough to:

• - be recycled into useful materials (Gives money and metal)
  - allow your explorer to add partial credit towards a single technology (weighted toward any 'unknown' equipment still on the ship)
  - be recovered and reparied for your own use (Gives an almost empty hull)

Not all options will always be available.

The ships could be drawn from the Ashdar, Gremak and Human types (to represent the previous war), and could be any class from destroyer up to heavy cruiser. Any of the larger ships might be 'too much'. Although the larger ships could be included in any 'rolls' which do not allow the recovery option.
The ships themselves would be mostly empty of equipment, with only a few equipment slots being occupied, and incapable of independant movement until they are repaired at a colony.
To this effect, choosing to recover a derelict would add that ship to the scout's fleet and automatically set course for the nearest owned colony at a reduced speed as the scout tows the ship home.
It could then be refitted manually as if it were a captured ship.
It may also be useful to consider flagging any such ships so they only ever produce generic research progress if reverse engineered if you wish to prevent the player circumventing the initial exploration choice.

Not really a super important thing, but may be useful to add some 'fluff and flavour' to the game once more vital tasks are completed.

[dearmad]

I suggest (may have already been)-

Totally minor thing: When I click on components in right side of ship design, part of the display should show energy usage. Or better yet the space that lists the items on the lower left side should simply have: [Labor. Metal. Energy.] required by that component when added.

[PrivateHudson]

Does it make sense to not end tactical combat while there still are missiles/torpedos/fighters flying to their targets, even if all that side's ships/orbitals/ground installations have been destroyed? Could make battles, especially early ones, more 'fair', allowing loosing side to do more damage to the winners, and limiting chicken tactics to fire missiles in the hope they blow up all enemy targets before their torps arrive. At least do last favour to kamikaze pilots left behind by retreated/destroyed carriers. Or tie this ability to Dauntless Guidance tech. Or new Relentless Guidance.

[Serenitis]

Potential QoL improvement:

Currently if a fleet contains ships with both standard and long range ships, the entire fleet including the long range ships are limited to the standard range.
If sending any long range ships to a distant location is desired they must be individually selected before the order can be given.

Suggest looking into allowing any long range ships in a fleet to be dispatched to an extended range location by auto-separating them from the fleet and leaving the rest behind when the fleet is given an order to move to such a location.

[Arioch]

Potential QoL improvement:

Currently if a fleet contains ships with both standard and long range ships, the entire fleet including the long range ships are limited to the standard range.
If sending any long range ships to a distant location is desired they must be individually selected before the order can be given.

Suggest looking into allowing any long range ships in a fleet to be dispatched to an extended range location by auto-separating them from the fleet and leaving the rest behind when the fleet is given an order to move to such a location.

The problem in that case is that you might not notice that ships have been left behind, which could lead to some unfortunate occurrences, especially if you're sending the fleet into combat.

[gaerzi]

Perhaps a popup screen could be shown in this case, displaying the ships that would go on one side and the ships that would stay on the other, and asking to confirm the order.

[Serenitis]

Perhaps a popup screen could be shown in this case, displaying the ships that would go on one side and the ships that would stay on the other, and asking to confirm the order.

That would be far quicker and easier to deal with than explicity having to select all my long-range ships from the fleet display (which can become somewhat cluttered).