Suggest - Features and Improvements

[PrivateHudson]

You could put a Galactic News Network overlay to report on the Whatever/Those Guys' war.


Speaking of battles, something I'd like to see in this kind of game would be mock battles, I mean, military exercises. You've got an ally, you have an allied fleet in the same system as your own fleet, you get an option to stage an exercise and then battle happens as normal, you can fight against your ally's fleet. Except at the end of the battle, everything is back to how it was, no ship was actually destroyed or captured or forced to retreat, and there was no breach of treaty or declaration of war.

It'd just be something to allow pacifist players to have some non-consequential tactical fun.

But what if you want to practice against non-ally? To generalize this idea, the full-fledged combat simulator would be useful. Maybe a bit much for relatively simple SiS, but in Space Empires V you could form any two orders of battle out of designs already known to you, yours and aliens alike, including planetary defenses, and run mock battle.

[Serenitis]

It'd just be something to allow pacifist players to have some non-consequential tactical fun.

I don't generally have an issue with combat per-se, but I really dislike starting fights even in a made up game with zero consequences.
So having the AI "start trouble" is usually the only faction conflict I see. The downside to this is that the AI in SiS is rather good at threat assessment, so it usually only ever attacks if it has an overwhelming advantage.
Which as you can imgine is not really the most compelling or enjoyable situation for the player to be in, gameplay wise.

A potential alternative approach to this "problem" would be to degrade how good the AI opponents are at threat assessment, so they become more aggressive and thus more likley to throw fleets around. But less cautious about how they match up to your forces, and so will attack with smaller groups.
Basically have the AI opponents attack more, but be less smart about it.

For reference: Most of my tactical "fun" has been had with the Marauders, since they default to hostile and have no noticable consequences to indulging in such activites. And I at least have the pretense that I'm not being an antagonist, what with freeing slaves etc.
(Yes, I am aware that I am... Odd.)

[gaerzi]

You can end up with "ghost ships" (ships that are awaiting refits) forever if you lose control of the planet on which their refit projects are "stored". For example, annex a neutral colony of another race, then queue on that planet some refits for ships, then, to demonstrate, empty the queue and do something else. Wait for the corresponding empire to request you transfer ownership of the refugee planet, comply, and admire your ships that can from now on no longer be worked on. I suppose they'd have to wait for you to reacquire the planet, either through war or peaceful annexation of the whole empire.

A potential fix would be that when you lose ship refit projects this way, the affected ships get stripped down (keeping only their power plant and anything built-in that you can't change) and use retreat logic to go to your nearest system.

[Serenitis]

It would be really neat if there could be an optional setting that would automatically progress to the next turn if there's nothing in the newly generated turn that requires the player's attention.
So pressing next turn could essentially 'skip forwards' over empty turns until something happens.

I've noticed a lot of my early game experience is just repeatedly pressing next turn.

[emky]

You can end up with "ghost ships" (ships that are awaiting refits) forever if you lose control of the planet on which their refit projects are "stored". For example, annex a neutral colony of another race, then queue on that planet some refits for ships, then, to demonstrate, empty the queue and do something else. Wait for the corresponding empire to request you transfer ownership of the refugee planet, comply, and admire your ships that can from now on no longer be worked on. I suppose they'd have to wait for you to reacquire the planet, either through war or peaceful annexation of the whole empire.

A potential fix would be that when you lose ship refit projects this way, the affected ships get stripped down (keeping only their power plant and anything built-in that you can't change) and use retreat logic to go to your nearest system.

I'm pretty sure this is intentional. You've staged your fleet for upgrades, afterall! More than once have I had AI declare war on me the turn after I mass-queued upgrades that would take a few turns.

[Arioch]

You can end up with "ghost ships" (ships that are awaiting refits) forever if you lose control of the planet on which their refit projects are "stored". For example, annex a neutral colony of another race, then queue on that planet some refits for ships, then, to demonstrate, empty the queue and do something else. Wait for the corresponding empire to request you transfer ownership of the refugee planet, comply, and admire your ships that can from now on no longer be worked on. I suppose they'd have to wait for you to reacquire the planet, either through war or peaceful annexation of the whole empire.

A potential fix would be that when you lose ship refit projects this way, the affected ships get stripped down (keeping only their power plant and anything built-in that you can't change) and use retreat logic to go to your nearest system.

I'm pretty sure this is intentional. You've staged your fleet for upgrades, afterall! More than once have I had AI declare war on me the turn after I mass-queued upgrades that would take a few turns.

Since the only way to encounter this issue is to take a series of extremely unusual steps, I don't think it necessarily needs a "fix."

[PrivateHudson]

Suggestion for laughably low (down to 0) resource ultimatums: calculate them based not on victim's stockpiles, but on amounts produced. If agreed, confiscate stockpiles, then pay the rest with amounts that normally go to stockpiles.

[grothmag]

More hotkeys generally, but especially, please oh please, an "end turn" hotkey during battles.

[zolobolo]

Can we have a small text or icon in the planetary refit selection view for each ship/station that is up to date compared to its current template?

This is so ships can be selected quickly for upgrade refit queue from among many ships present around the planet (some up to date some not) when the templates are updated with new weapons/mods/systems

Currently the fact if a ship is already up to date or not is only visible when hovering over the ship/station and looking at the refit to latest template icon if its greyed out or not

Alternatively these existing buttons could be maybe made visible all the time not just when hovering over the ship/base for all ships in the list?

[gaerzi]

The ability to save a captured foreign ship design so that you can apply it to another captured ship would be very handy. Upgrading captured ships is always kind of chore. Especially when you find out that in one of them you forgot to upgrade the armor so you have to undo to redo the refitting...

[zolobolo]

Could "Pirate Base" (Asteroid base) be made available for reverse engineering when destroyed or captured/annexed from a Marauder faction
I have been missing a use case for asteroid bases and the Debris Rin planetary trait since its release with the Tinker faction (as they can rarely be built and do not provide much of a benefit compared to outpost)

But the Pirate Base sported by Marauders is a fine base offering heavy mounts and lots of other weapon hardpoints that make it a true alternative for starbases and could neatly fit as a second stage asteroid base tech to be unlocked and built around planets with the Debris Ring trait

[grothmag]

In ship design, could something like shift-click automatically replace any current small craft/weapons/shields/engines/armor with the one under the cursor? Dragging everything over is tedious (for weapons, perhaps replace everything of a given size class heavy/medium/light/torp/missile/launcher). For that matter, when new armour is developed, it would be nice to auto-upgrade everything, or at least all military designs.

Another minor improvement: the ability to exclude colonists on colony ships from planetary invasions (by choice, not invariably). Or even colonists and space marines.

[Serenitis]

The ability to save a captured foreign ship design so that you can apply it to another captured ship would be very handy. Upgrading captured ships is always kind of chore. Especially when you find out that in one of them you forgot to upgrade the armor so you have to undo to redo the refitting...

100% this.
Even something as simple as an addition to the preset dropdown that is "copy design xyz123".
(Which could appear in the standard refit screen as well as the instant refit option in the fleet info panel.)

[PrivateHudson]

Please, add swamp zones to paradise planets at the expense of forests, to make gremak population a bit more useful.

[PrivateHudson]

Recently, while bombing out another colony to cut enemy's range, I was pondering how to avoid this unpleasant action. Someone already proposed to make range from Fuel Depot greater than from colony. So my suggestion is following: let bare colony to not provide range at all. Colony ship (but not Colonization project) automatically creates Outpost over new colony to reduce micro. Scrapping of threatened Fuel Depot orbitals will slow down offenses a bit.