Suggest - Features and Improvements

[zolobolo]

Please show clearly what the difference between an interceptor and a strike fighter is.

When going with the tech description, Strike Fighters are interceptors and bombers in one package so there is no reason not to take only this type of craft

It would be logical, if Interceptors have an advantage when it comes to shooting down missiles and being shot down by themselves while bombers have an advantage against large targets

Strike Fighters should be in the middle but this needs to be communicated e.g.:
- Interceptor: Health: 30 ; Uses most advanced Energy Weapon; Evasion bonus against medium and heavy weapon mounts; Speed: 12
- Bomber: Health: 90 ; Uses most advanced Torpedo; Evasion bonus against heavy weapon mounts; Speed: 8
- Strike Fighter: Health: 45; Uses most advanced Missile and most advanced Energy Weapon (depending on the target); Evasion bonus against heavy weapon mounts; Speed: 10

The lack of evasion bonus again Medium weapons make the Strike Fighter less effective when in comes to intercepting in the mids of a large fleet with flak, and they also deliver less of a punch as bombers, but they can attack both large and small targets somewhat effectively and can take more hits then interceptors. When it comes to taking down bombers and missiles, the interceptors would still have an advantage, as they are 50% faster to strike

Notice that the three types of craft can utilize the 3 types of weapons in the game
Kinetic weapons can be used as a race trait: Yoral fighters use the most advanced kinetic weapon instead of energy weapons

If you would like to go non-plus-ultra, the current damage potential can be displayed in the craft's description by querying the corresponding most advanced weapon type available at that time to the player, and accordingly display its damage output.

[bjg]

An option (!) to don't show a terraforming option if:
it significantly decreases total population cap;
it destroys unique biome (some home worlds, Paradise, Gaia);
it destroys a native environment of the local minor race (unless you improve it for them).

[zolobolo]

Highlight systems that have not yet been scanned by a scout when at least one ship equipped with Deep Space Scanner has been selected

Planetary anomalies only occur if a scan has been done on the system or if it has been colonized (according to the description of Deep space scanner)

[victor_D85]

Are there any plans to allow the players to annihilate captured enemy populations, à la MOO2 (where you had this option after conquering a planet)? Of course, this could be balanced by diplomatic penalties (people don't like a genocide) and primarily by immediate and massive uprisings of the populations marked for annihilation, requiring significant military presence to accomplish this.

(Before somebody tells me how horrible a person I am, think about it: you can already wipe out the entire population of a planet from orbit, with no penalty other than having to manually re-colonise the planet. I'd like an alternative option; you could wipe out undesirables (bye bye Gremaks) after invading and capturing a planet and some of its infrastructure).

A corollary: full bombing of a garden planet should somewhat degrade its biomes, making it less useful. This should discourage players and the AI from bombing everything from orbit just to be sure

[zolobolo]

Are there any plans to allow the players to annihilate captured enemy populations, à la MOO2 (where you had this option after conquering a planet)? Of course, this could be balanced by diplomatic penalties (people don't like a genocide) and primarily by immediate and massive uprisings of the populations marked for annihilation, requiring significant military presence to accomplish this.

(Before somebody tells me how horrible a person I am, think about it: you can already wipe out the entire population of a planet from orbit, with no penalty other than having to manually re-colonise the planet. I'd like an alternative option; you could wipe out undesirables (bye bye Gremaks) after invading and capturing a planet and some of its infrastructure).

A corollary: full bombing of a garden planet should somewhat degrade its biomes, making it less useful. This should discourage players and the AI from bombing everything from orbit just to be sure

Bombarding planets results into increasing happiness penalty for all citiezens of the affected pop within the players empire
You can also enslave the pop and "exterminate" them via forced labor and using them for experiments. If you are not playing as Gremak, buy some slaves from Marauders, and think then you can reverse engieneer the slave collar tech. "Killing" slaves also results into happiness penalty

That being said, fully agree with your propsal. Diplomatic penalty should also occur when exterminating pop if a specific empire
Degrading biome also sounds good and maybe have an additional biome: " Radioactive Wasteland" issued as a random results when too much bombing has been done and one too many reactors have exploded into smithereens. Naturally only some roaches can live on that and none of the mayor races

[Chasm]

Load captured (ie gremak for example) into transports. Use them as militia troops for planetary invasions... Buffers your more expensive armor units nicely.

[victor_D85]

Load captured (ie gremak for example) into transports. Use them as militia troops for planetary invasions... Buffers your more expensive armor units nicely.

You can't remove the last unit of i.e. Gremak population from the planet, as far as I know. But I want them gone, completely. I even tried to sell the Gremak home system back to the remnants of their empire (so that I could invade them again and wipe them out from orbit), but the AI wouldn't accept the system, even as a gift, for some reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To make me absolutely happy, I'd like to be able to to free the poor cute Enfi and make them masters of enslaved Gremak. Justice must be served.

If you are not playing as Gremak, buy some slaves from Marauders, and think then you can reverse engieneer the slave collar tech. "Killing" slaves also results into happiness penalty

There are no marauders left, I am afraid So I won't ever be able to research the "slave collars"? That's too bad.

[blazenclaw]

You can't remove the last unit of i.e. Gremak population from the planet, as far as I know.

I'm pretty sure that you can, so long as you order them to board a transport when there is between 1 and 1.2 units of population remaining; any more and the leftover 200k or so will remain. Not sure what the specific cutoff value is though, and it is kinda annoying to check every few turns to see if the population is in the magic range for it to work.

[Chasm]

if the last unit of pop is less then 200 k they disappear. Just wait till that increment, and strip them off at that point.

[pseudonym43]

An intercept mechanic would be really interesting. As far as I can find, it hasn’t already been brought up or suggested.
The ability to intercept ships in travel and engage. A player could intercept an enemy fleet before it reaches a planet and engage in combat. This would give the sense that a player actually has a semblance of control of the space between and around their worlds. Factions would no longer be able to skirt ships right past enemy forces with no consequence. You would no longer feel safe sending transports between worlds on the edge of your territory if a pirate world happens to be nearby and force more complex strategic considerations.

The intercept would only be possible if a ship can cross the other ship's path fast enough to meet them while remaining within its own strategic range. So if a faction doesn't have any ships that are in range or fast enough, an intercept wouldn't be possible. As a mechanic, at base technology the player would get a warning that ships on an intercept course have been detected and they're 1 turn away. Additional sensor technology could increase the warning time to 2, 3 or more turns. A player could, if possible, attempt to reroute the ship out of potential intercept vectors. Another option, friendly ships that are close enough can be sent to join the moving fleet and help fight off the attackers. Naturally, all factions and especially pirates would be able to perform this. Favor could be curried with neutral factions if you help them fight off pirate intercept and the like.

From a lore consistence stand point, the ability to intercept other ships could be tied to a technology, something general like “Warp lane disruptors” or some similar technobabble. But I wouldn’t recommend requiring a ship system to allow it. That would probably force unnecessary ship specialization.

The actual combat phase could look the same as standard battle with both sides facing off, or the start positions could resemble the actual courses the ships took. If a fleet is overtaken from behind by a faction with the right technology to be fast enough to do so, the attackers would be behind the defenders. If it’s an intercept from the side, that side is where in attacking ships show up. Any reinforcements that happen to arrive at the same time could be like wise position on their approach vector. A retreat for a defending ship would just continue it along its existing course. A retreat for an attacking ship would direct it back to where it the nearest friendly planet. If the attacker is victorious but some enemy ships “retreated” and continued on their course, the fleet could pursue if they’re faster and within their faction’s strategic range.

This mechanic, while using all existing frame works, would cause a shift in how players would need to analyze their own lines. Having transports wiz by pirate or enemy worlds would become very dangerous, which makes perfect sense. In war, it gives factions the ability to intercept supply lines or harass retreating enemy ships. For me, it seems like a natural fit to the existing game mechanics, although I have absolutely no idea if the game engine can handle it nor how difficult it would be to implement it from the developer end of things. But like I said at the beginning, it sure would be interesting.

(I may follow up with graphics showing how it would work when I have some more time.)

[zolobolo]

Reduce Point Defense capacity of large ships the larger they are - especially for Battleship, as they can currently take on a huge number of small craft and/or torpedoes. This is also enhanced by the options available. There is no strong reason to put offensive weapons on small hard points, as the heavy ones already do the trick, leading each battleship to be an effective anti-small craft and missile PD boat

This is to support combined fleets of vessels that rely on each other and their tactical role. Large ships should be carrying the heavy guns and be slow (this is already done).

They should also be an easy target, while the chance that smaller vessels get hit by large weapons should be at least somewhat smaller

The above would make small craft necessary even in late game (to fight off other small craft) and help avoid the pitfall of Galciv where you only need to produce the largest available hull

[nweismuller]

I understand capturing ships and repurposing them for your use; being able to make use of military units loaded on transports, however, doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense (as a great deal of the effective power of a ground unit presumably resides in the personnel themselves, who are unlikely to fight loyally for those who captured them). I suggest that captured ground military units are automatically decommissioned, so that we no longer have the strange spectacle of captured Marauders fighting in the invasion of their own world.

[victor_D85]

I finished a game yesterday, and would suggest a few things that I noticed:

(1) An animation of planet destruction would be nice. The current implementation leaves everything to imagination, which is not satisfying enough (in my opinion as a long-time MOO2 player and stellar converter user).
(2) Asteroid belts should be implemented (taking a planet's slot); they'd be either natural or result from planetary destruction (currently the planet just disappears). Asteroid belts could have other uses is the game, e.g. they could be mined for metals or credits, or be a necessary prerequisite for terraforming, because...
(3) ... terraforming seems to be rather easy and soon a player will have dozens of terraformed worlds, removing any necessity to specialise planets (for instance, I very early on relied on a single fertile farming world. If it was taken out, my mining/industrial worlds would suffer terrible starvation.) I'd suggest to make terraforming of certain worlds (a) more expensive, and (b) conditional on 'extraplanetary' resources (asteroid belts, gas giants). The rationale/in-universe explanation is rather straightforward: a barren world will need volatiles incl. water, which can be obtained from (cold) asteroids, icy bodies, or gas giants.
(4) I am not sure I like the lack of slower-than-light engine technologies. This means your ships' speed in the tactical mode is determined solely by their size. You can increase your "hyperspace" speed, but not the "sublight" speed. That's a missed opportunity in my opinion; researching higher tech-level drives to make your battleship faster/more manoeuvrable at the expense of higher energy requirements would present the player with interesting possibilities.

[bjg]

I am not sure I like the lack of slower-than-light engine technologies. This means your ships' speed in the tactical mode is determined solely by their size. You can increase your "hyperspace" speed, but not the "sublight" speed. That's a missed opportunity in my opinion; researching higher tech-level drives to make your battleship faster/more manoeuvrable at the expense of higher energy requirements would present the player with interesting possibilities.

You can "sacrifice" a System slot and add an additional maneuvering engine. For me proved to be useful on Dread Stars only.
Anyway, the tactical combat is quite rudimentary, just expanding engine speeds wont save it (probably will make it worse).

[Arioch]

(1) An animation of planet destruction would be nice. The current implementation leaves everything to imagination, which is not satisfying enough (in my opinion as a long-time MOO2 player and stellar converter user).
(2) Asteroid belts should be implemented (taking a planet's slot); they'd be either natural or result from planetary destruction (currently the planet just disappears). Asteroid belts could have other uses is the game, e.g. they could be mined for metals or credits, or be a necessary prerequisite for terraforming, because...

There are a couple of issues with asteroid belts, the first being how they would fit in terms of the existing functionality of planets. We could treat them simply as another planet type, essentially as a smaller Barren world, but small Barrens already get down to 2-3 population which is already minimally useful even as a mining colony. Our plan instead was to have specialized Outposts that could be built at asteroid belts (or gas giants) that wouldn't create full-blown colony but could make resources and perhaps other bonuses available to other colonies in the system. This sort of thing is still on our list as a possibility in the future.

The second problem is how to display asteroids within our game engine. Our planetary display engine can only display spheres and planes (for rings); it can't display irregular objects such as asteroids. We could display them as 2D sprites, but this would look somewhat lame compared to the 3D-looking planets. We could create some kind of particle system, but this would be a significant amount of work for what is not (in my opinion) a very compelling feature.

I agree that it would also be nice to have asteroid belts associated with planet destruction and creation, but they would be too big a feature to add simply for that alone.

(3) ... terraforming seems to be rather easy and soon a player will have dozens of terraformed worlds, removing any necessity to specialise planets (for instance, I very early on relied on a single fertile farming world. If it was taken out, my mining/industrial worlds would suffer terrible starvation.) I'd suggest to make terraforming of certain worlds (a) more expensive, and (b) conditional on 'extraplanetary' resources (asteroid belts, gas giants). The rationale/in-universe explanation is rather straightforward: a barren world will need volatiles incl. water, which can be obtained from (cold) asteroids, icy bodies, or gas giants.

I'm personally not at all satisfied with the terraforming system, and so I agree that it should be overhauled. I never use it, since I find most games can be won or lost before it becomes available, so it's not one of my higher priorities.

(4) I am not sure I like the lack of slower-than-light engine technologies. This means your ships' speed in the tactical mode is determined solely by their size. You can increase your "hyperspace" speed, but not the "sublight" speed. That's a missed opportunity in my opinion; researching higher tech-level drives to make your battleship faster/more manoeuvrable at the expense of higher energy requirements would present the player with interesting possibilities.

We did have some techs that increased tactical speed, but for some reason they were never implemented. I agree that this is an omission that needs to be addressed.