Suggest - Features and Improvements

[Arioch]

There will be an alternate way to refit ships with cash, and you'll also be able to refit multiple ships at the same time. You'll still be able to do it manually using wrenches and ingots, but it's a bit of a chore and currently rather expensive compared to building a new ship.

Fighters are due for a big overhaul, and missiles (and frankly all weapons) will receive multiple balance passes before we're done.

[SirDamnALot]

There will be an alternate way to refit ships with cash, and you'll also be able to refit multiple ships at the same time. You'll still be able to do it manually using wrenches and ingots, but it's a bit of a chore and currently rather expensive compared to building a new ship.

Fighters are due for a big overhaul, and missiles (and frankly all weapons) will receive multiple balance passes before we're done.

Yay
And please make ships refittable (is that a word?) to an existing design. If we can do that to multiple ships at once, all the better

[Sarissofoi]

Hello.
I was playing some time(mostly as Humans) and I wish to share some of my experience with this game.

Game play nice I didn't notice any bugs other than a some artefacts on blue stars.
Art look really nice and I really like the Germak ships although I don't really like the race. Other than that human ships looks little trashy but I suppose that was planned. Space Sea Horses have similar ship designs to SotS Space Dolphins - ships full of water tanks.

The game could use more starting options like:
-more/less hostile planets
-more/less organic life planets
-more/less mineral rich planets
-more/less poor planets
It could also use to have some options affecting science progress:
-either by increasing/lowering cost of research for slow/fast teching
-and by having possibility to choose starting era and max era tech like in Starship Unlimited(and Distant Worlds)
Options affecting pirates/minor factions also would be nice to see.

Game play nice but there is some things that could used improvements:
-freshly build colony ships could start with no population so player can choose what population will be loaded from the planet(no more free pop)
-there could be option to build Trade Ship(Transports) that go automaticly into Trade Pool - as I find tiresome to send Transports one by one - unless there is a actual option in game to do that
-the leftovers population unit(less than 1mil) could be taken and transported as full
-population could grow to full pop limits only(so no partial pops), so no more partial populations mixed on fully filled planets
-possibility to abandon planet and evacuate populations if there is enough fleet capacity

I will also support improvements proposed by other people in this thread like refitting to exist design and more polished design ship UI(with different categories colour coded).

The combat feels really unbalanced.
Kinetics with Shield Piercing trash everything as they ignore shields and have long range. Missiles and torpedoes feel useless compared to them, especially that PD counter them hard and have short range and limited ammunition.
Fighters/Bombers feel weak and out of place.
The ship movement in battle is slow and they tend to hug one to another. Ships could be smaller compared to movement and weapon range so battles feel more space than melee.
There could be more ships hulls. The amount now feel very limited especially with pre designed weapon and system slots. Art is great. How they look is a strong point.

Are you plan to change a auto improvement and free of charge units and buildings with the new tech acquisition? I know that it will be probably pain in the ass to improve this manually but it feel as a miss not having manual(and costing something) upgrades. Especially with units as the new ones cost more but the old ones get promoted for free.

Also do you plan to have some more use of outpost?
There could be possibility to build a research outpost that generate some research or mining outpost that mine some minerals. Also shipyards could add some bonus production when building ships(as it make sense).

Some ideas.
The teching speed feel really fast after getting some pop and building some research stations.
Making Science 2 steps like Production but instead minerals research need money could be interesting idea as a money are mostly non issue. Although it probably need slider for money use as it would be global.
Other means to use Production when not build planetary improvements, ships or troops - like Producing Trade goods - Turning Minerals(small amount) into cash. So there could be actually use or free factories.
There could be also focus on mining and food growing but with lesser impact(maybe some +1 per factory/farm influenced by planet ratings?)

Space stations(the defensive ones) could be system's and actually block hostile access into a system(it need to be destroyed before planets could be harassed). It would actually help defend the system.

Planetary defence could be stop taking parts in ship combat and could be take part in ground combat. The idea is for Planetary defence to be first target for bombardments(as more dangerous to the enemy invasion force) and for them to disable enemy(bombardment potential). The Planetary batteries could be destroyed or suppressed(for one turn) by bombardment from the orbit but they can also damage ships and reduce amount of bombs that invasion force has. If Planetary batteries are not destroyed or suppressed they could shoot and destroy landing invading brigades. Also they could be destroyed by ground troops if some of them landed. Also do you plan to make some weapons(missile or bombs) more effective as a bombardment tool compared to beam and ballistic weapons?

There is also diplomacy matter. Do plan to implement it more as a MoO I where there could be skirmishes or limited/cold war state where AI try to probe or take weak colonies without declaring war and small scale conflict is possible or are you gonna go the Civ route where even small hostilities turn into total war? I ask because it would make more sense(and better gameplay) to go MoO route - so shooting down enemy scout over my home world would not start total war(sure sometimes it could as some race could just looking for a fight but I feel MoO diplomacy was clearly superior in this aspect. Recently I replayed old MoO and have many amusing situations where AI accuse me(rightly) on many things9stealing tech or destroying their fleets) but was to afraid to declare war as I was much more stronger or they were busy somewhere else. Relations suffer though.

There is also a issue about lack or info on system screen. I let myself to prepare some mock up. I hope you would find it helpful. It allow easy access to all system informations without need to check all planet one by one. System name, planet name, Types of populations, military garrison, planetary buildings, planetary mineral ratings etc.

sis 001.png (1.81 MiB) Viewed 22876 times

Also it would be helpful if there could be possibility to sort or rearrange planets in planetary report tab.

Sorry for my English and if I make some unclear comments. Game look solid even if unpolished but I hope it will go into the right directions. Did I mention that art is great? Thanks for reading.

[NullVoid]

With the increased metal costs for shipbuilding, I've been having build a lot of mining colonies by mid-game for ships and tanks and orbitals. Can we get a list of known planets we could sort by mineral abundance? Ideally, It would be closer to MoO2's planets list, with filters and all, but just being able to see planet statistics in a single screen would already be incredibly helpful.

[Arioch]

Thanks for your feedback.

We will definitely have a variety of map settings and game settings (such as the mentioned "auto-send transports to trade pool" feature). What we probably won't have are deeper settings which let you change game variables (like tech research speed, etc.). Options are good, and being mod-friendly is good, but there is a point past which deep settings can turn a game into a game construction set, which is not what we're going for.

Are you plan to change a auto improvement and free of charge units and buildings with the new tech acquisition? I know that it will be probably pain in the ass to improve this manually but it feel as a miss not having manual(and costing something) upgrades. Especially with units as the new ones cost more but the old ones get promoted for free.

This is something we'll think about. A coin cost to upgrade might make sense, but we'd have to add systems to support this.

Also do you plan to have some more use of outpost? There could be possibility to build a research outpost that generate some research or mining outpost that mine some minerals.

There may be a few additional module options for the station hull.

Also shipyards could add some bonus production when building ships(as it make sense).

Shipyards already do reduce the cost of ships (to 70% of normal). It says so in the tech entry, but there needs to be more informative descriptions in the build menu.

There could be also focus on mining and food growing but with lesser impact(maybe some +1 per factory/farm influenced by planet ratings?)

We will probably do something like this.

Space stations(the defensive ones) could be system's and actually block hostile access into a system(it need to be destroyed before planets could be harassed). It would actually help defend the system.

The Warp Interdictors and Warp Wells will do something like this, when implemented.

There is also diplomacy matter. Do plan to implement it more as a MoO I where there could be skirmishes or limited/cold war state where AI try to probe or take weak colonies without declaring war and small scale conflict is possible or are you gonna go the Civ route where even small hostilities turn into total war? I ask because it would make more sense(and better gameplay) to go MoO route - so shooting down enemy scout over my home world would not start total war(sure sometimes it could as some race could just looking for a fight but I feel MoO diplomacy was clearly superior in this aspect. Recently I replayed old MoO and have many amusing situations where AI accuse me(rightly) on many things9stealing tech or destroying their fleets) but was to afraid to declare war as I was much more stronger or they were busy somewhere else. Relations suffer though.

We're currently working on the diplomacy system, which is the largest missing piece from the current game.

There is also a issue about lack or info on system screen.

With the increased metal costs for shipbuilding, I've been having build a lot of mining colonies by mid-game for ships and tanks and orbitals. Can we get a list of known planets we could sort by mineral abundance? Ideally, It would be closer to MoO2's planets list, with filters and all, but just being able to see planet statistics in a single screen would already be incredibly helpful.

It would be nice to have a dedicated "empire management" screen, and I have that on my list of "nice to have" things, but I don't think we will have time to do this for the initial release.

[enpi]

I would love to have a change in the metal mechanic. The full cost of metal should be deducted in the moment the ship is beeing ordered. The current mechanic of a tiny fraction of metal deduction each turn has no real advantage, just more math and additionally sometimes annoying building delay alerts which are cumbersome to manage.

[NullVoid]

I would love to have a change in the metal mechanic. The full cost of metal should be deducted in the moment the ship is beeing ordered. The current mechanic of a tiny fraction of metal deduction each turn has no real advantage, just more math and additionally sometimes annoying building delay alerts which are cumbersome to manage.

I disagree. In early game I often build my colonization fleet taking into account the number of turns to build the ship times the metal per turn production. Also, there are no metal or wrench refunds for a partially-constructed ship; you have to finish and then scrap it to get a fraction of your resources back.

[Arioch]

If you want to avoid shortfall delays then you can simply choose not to start production on an item until you have enough metal to complete it. Forcing this even when you have plenty of per-turn metal income to cover the production would force significant and unnecessary delays. Managing resources is an important part of the strategic game.

[SirDamnALot]

If you want to avoid shortfall delays then you can simply choose not to start production on an item until you have enough metal to complete it. Forcing this even when you have plenty of per-turn metal income to cover the production would force significant and unnecessary delays.

I like the current way (not paying up front but "consuming" metal as you build), but a button to pause/resume construction would be helpfull if you hit a bottleneck and need to prioritize.

[Arioch]

I like the current way (not paying up front but "consuming" metal as you build), but a button to pause/resume construction would be helpfull if you hit a bottleneck and need to prioritize.

Your progress on ship production is saved even if you switch to another production target; in the case of metal shortage you can switch to Research or another production target and then switch back to your ship production job without losing progress on it. Pausing construction would be wasteful.

[SirDamnALot]

I like the current way (not paying up front but "consuming" metal as you build), but a button to pause/resume construction would be helpfull if you hit a bottleneck and need to prioritize.

Your progress on ship production is saved even if you switch to another production target; in the case of metal shortage you can switch to Research or another production target and then switch back to your ship production job without losing progress on it. Pausing construction would be wasteful.

oh, good to know. I was under the impression that my metal investment would be lost. (no refunds! )

On a reletated note: my advisor had in his end-turn warning sometimes the message, that if I don't select a new production,
the next production would be "stockpile". (the autobuild is out of things to build)
Is there a way to see how much work & metal we have "stored/surplus" on a colony?
(e.g. like the science "stockpile" is shown in the top row of the galaxy screen)

And have a button to activly produce stockpile. If the autobuilder is doing it, I want too
Is there a limit how much can be stockpiled? Probably should, maybe related to techs. The finance tree could need some more branches

[Arioch]

"Stockpile" was a legacy feature that existed before the addition of metal, when you could switch between production targets and apply the accumulated wrenches to any new project without losing any. It was deliberately removed because it was game-breakingly easy to abuse; you just stockpiled wrenches forever and then instantly spit out whatever you wanted in 1 turn.

If the auto-build feature is still using Stockpile, that's probably not intended. Normally it would switch to Research.

[Captainspire]

Sarissofoi! You seem to be another fan of the MMO universe. Thank you a ton for your input. I know a lot of these points, to too many flavors and degrees were things being addressed. I even talked about having a drop-down to select pre assigned ship designs so you dont have to upgrade each slot for each new refit. Having a large fleet makes this quite time consuming.

I did like how you placed the planet layout so you can scan over the solar system and see exactly what you have/need.


I was always hoping for mining research upgrades
Mineral Exploration 25% mining increase
Mineral Refinement 50% mining increase
Mineral replication 75% mining increase

A bunch of updates ago, they had a similar Mining boost that was like with Research and Trade and Urban Planning.
But you could have a crazy amount of minerals and spit out a death star ship in 1-2 turns on 4-6 plants in a small galaxy
Maybe just having a small, researchable increase may (pretty please) be a good solution?

Also I thought that the scale of the ships were not the issue but the actual viewing of the battle field or star map. I think we talked about this how it is not possible or not on the table? It's been about a year since I asked that one too.

I also think the way to fix the shield/armor piercing of the mass guns and energy weapons is just to have an option that adds Harden shields and heavy armor to protect both shield and armor piercings? More things to research!

I'm also looking for the "Assist" option when seeing two fleets fight. If I "Intervene" I end up being attacked by, well both sides. I was too afraid to see what would happen if I got in the middle of a 20 vs 20 space battle with the Maruaders and some other race..

[mharmless]

Really like the Human Refugee integration idea. I know morale isn't implemented yet, but they integrated rather rapidly. The final integration was some 30k colonists that had grown while the parent 2 million were integrating over a few turns. It might be interesting if the refuges integrated at sub-million rates every turn, instead of having a chance to trigger a conversion of a solid pop worth. Higher morale would be higher percentage converted per turn and higher conversion floor; make it into a constant flow instead of a series of conversion spurts.

[Captainspire]

The Human battleships seem at a disadvantage.

Most battleships have 6-8 Heavy weapons but the humans only have 2

Most other Heavy slots have a X2 so they having three Heavy slots means they have 6 Heavy guns.
The Human Battleship only has X1 and two slots That’s only 2 Heavy guns.

Yes, they have four X2 standard Turret, but that doesn’t make up for a massive first strike ability of the enemy.
When I researched the dreadnought ability, no additional ship shows up so Id have to almost have 3 human Battleships to take on one Yoral Battle ship.

Also, on about all my games, the Yoral seem to overpower everyone else and have a more aggressive expansion. That’s just how they are it seems