Suggest - Features and Improvements

[nweismuller]

I propose that Viscids are created as Sterile, as per discussion in the bug report thread. Their current implementation encourages a great deal of artificial, 'gamey' behavior and further doesn't make all that much sense. (Sure, you're not able to wipe them out, but it staggers imagination that they'd continue to grow and choke out settlement on the planet to the extent that they do.) Being Sterile, they're easier for the AI to handle and the incentives for very strange behavior around their planet are removed, making them 'merely' a negative planet special.

Don't get me wrong; I don't have any more love for the Viscids in their current form than the next guy, but "sterile" really doesn't make sense for them from a conceptual standpoint.

Programming challenges aside and embracing their intended design, I would:
* add a trait that makes them immune to Cloning / Longevity
* reduce their population from 3mil to 1mil

I believe those two changes would allow them to function as they were intended (a nuisance species) while reducing the negative play experience inherent in building a colony on their planet.

I think 'sterile' works, in that they're subject to constant efforts to eradicate them, which offsets their natural growth.

[gaerzi]

On the colony project screen, right-clicking on stuff puts it in the queue.
On the technology screen, right-clicking on stuff erases the current queue and selects whatever was clicked.

It's inconsistent. I'd rather that right-clicking in the techno screen would queue stuff as well.

[zolobolo]

Propose to switch back to torpedoes instead of missiles as bomber loadout

Reasons:
1. Originally it was switched to rocket to combat the bomber spam exploit of the time also used by the AI. This exploit is not relevant anymore thanks to the AI updates that preserve PD shots making for much more effective bomber protection and the economic rebalance which has made spamming of carriers especially large ones very difficult and rare on the AI side
2. Torpedoes are very rarely used and thus researched thanks to the unique hardpoint they require. Most races dont have capacble torpedo carrying designs and the heavy hardbpoints that they have can almost always be used for heavy weapons more effectively as torps can be intercepted, are slower and need munition
3. Fighters do not really have a good role to fill now as their numbers are not enough to make them good anti-cap weapons, their aim against rockets and torps is very bad and they get quickly annihilated by PD if they fly to close to other ships + all ships having PD capacity evne the smallest ones. If bombers would be more dangerous to capital ships, fighters would regain their primary role of being anti-bomber weapons

Thus if bombers would be carrying torps again, they would become a force to be reckoned with, large carriers would be worth the upkeep, and both torp ressearch and fighters would be relevant again

[gaerzi]

I'd like to see the little "Choose production for <PLANET>" header become part of the window decoration instead of being part of the window content.


The reason being that, with the way it is right now, it disappears when scrolling down:


and you don't have the planet name visible anywhere anymore on the screen.

[gaerzi]

When a custom variant of an outpost transport arrives at a star system, the message is always "outpost transport at <system>", even if the ship class is actually named something else. Using the actual ship class name would be better here.

[Serenitis]

When creating a game with duplicate instances of the 'same' empire, those second empires ALL share the same colour scheme (cyan), with the sole exception of orthin who use black.

There are currently 14 colours defined.
Would it be possible to 'mix up' which colour schemes get picked for duplicate empires so they all don't look exactly the same on the map?

[e]
Even better would be semi-random colours for every empire which change every game.
It's such a shame you just don't get to see how great some of these ships look in 'alternate' colours all that often

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On the colony display when clicking on a particular 'race' to bring up the colonist details, would it be possible to move the population summary (growth rates, population space etc.) up to the top of the display, or at least above the descrpitive 'fluff' text?
Having to repeatedly scroll down past, sometimes quite lengthy word blocks to see how many more extra spacemans I have room for is a little bit tedious.

[gaerzi]

In blueprint mode, when you leave a design and go to another, it remembers the component list type (such as "weapons" or "all compatible equipment") but it doesn't remember the status of the view/hide obsolete equipment toggle.

[PrivateHudson]

Proposition for hands-on (as opposed to "pool warfare") espionage system akin to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Certain tech unlocks a Spy Vessel - light hull with built-in Cyberwarfare Package and Stealth Generator, but no weapons. Identical for all races, as their ownership will not be shown on the map (except yours, of course). If such vessel arrives to unprotected colony (whether ground defences and starbases offer protection or not is debatable), it can unleash a 50 grades of covert ops - from simple credits drain to outright colony capture (the latter requires hefty credit toll). Chances for success, as well as probability to blame the [mis]deed on another empire, are varying (could be based on racial abilities, attacker/victim spying technologies, number of Spy Vessels in attacking fleet vs colony size, fleet/colony heroes, etc). After attack, successful or not, victim chooses whether to DoW the (perceived) offender or ignore for now. Some thought is required about aliens-framing-you mechanic, as in MoO2 it was somewhat frustrating.

[Serenitis]

Honestly, espionage systems of any description are kind of frustrating.
If one is adopted for SiS, could there be a game setup option to just disable it entirely please?

[nweismuller]

I've been fairly unsatisfied with high-fertility hiveworlds, and find the heavy agricultural infrastructure on Ashdar Prime perplexing as games go. Would it be lore-appropriate if the Ashdar Imperial start were shifted so that they have a low-fertility hiveworld with no farms and an agricultural colony on Kisk?

Related to Ashdar starts, it continues to bother me that the planets in Rastaban have no proper names. Shouldn't the worlds in Rastaban get named? (I'm honestly not too bothered about the lack of proper names for the planets in the Bacabs system, even though I wouldn't mind them getting such names; the Orthin are just the sort of nerds who'd settle for planets just having star-based catalogue numbers.)

Also related to names in starting systems, but less important, I suspect that the Humans in Fargone may have named the useless planets in the Fargone system just from their years stranded there. Possible proposals: 'Tombstone' for the barren world and 'Lost Harbor' for the gas giant anchoring the fueling and logistics base there.

[gaerzi]

They probably have excellent hydroponics installations as well as genetically tailored hyper-efficient crop species. Imagine they have low-fertility which halves food production but also always have the supergrain special which doubles food production so that we're back to high fertility in practice.

[Serenitis]

Just thinking about how streamlining the ship outfitting might be done.
I'm really not a fan of the 'kitchen sink' mega-scroll list. And the filters, while functional are clunky and forgettable things that I barely touch because it's quicker to just 'brute force' the main list.

Would a context selection be possible?

In other words, flip the system over so it runs 'backwards'.
Selecting a module slot on the left or centre display auto-truncates the list on the right to only show the items compatible with that slot.
And then just a single click of the desired item on the now filtered right-hand list installs it onto the ship.
So outfitting each slot is at most 2 clicks, and maybe a short scroll in a couple of cases.


Alternatively...

Lean into the Ascendancy vibe even harder, and replace the dropdown parts filter with graphical UI elements for each part category.
1 click to set the filter.
This is specifically what made the 'everything' lists feel at least somewhat manageable in that game.

For ref, the component filters in Ascendancy look like this:

Spoiler: show

And it sits at the top-right of the screen much as I imagine it would in SiS.

[gaerzi]

When a refugee colony is at war with an other empire, they have pretty much no chance of survival. In this circumstance, it should be possible to offer them a protectorate status -- basically your choices are being annexed by my empire or being genocided by the other empire, so perhaps you don't have the time to wait for a random event to beg for food/gold/metal from me so that you get a higher opinion of my empire and accept annexation...

[Arioch]

Honestly, espionage systems of any description are kind of frustrating.
If one is adopted for SiS, could there be a game setup option to just disable it entirely please?

We won't put one in unless it's fun. But it's not imminent anyway.

[gaerzi]

When you have an outpost transport in a system where you have a colony, the colony's activity will be hidden by the "build outpost" button unless the orbits are full.

I've tinkered a bit with the code and obtained something that's not very polished (I hoped the "build outpost" text would be blue and inside a box, like when there's both the "colonize" and "build outpost" buttons) but that's good enough for my needs:

Spoiler: show