Suggest - Features and Improvements

[zolobolo]

Add some more spray red color to Heavy Carriers of Phidi when cpatured by Gremak to make them more wild/Marauder like - Carriers is sort of ok having enough of the additional color to clearly stand apart but could also stand some more spray and/or agressive lines

On the subject of capturing ships: The self-destruction option seems to be deactived for the AI for some time now (might be a bug) but generally would suggest following formula to use it if working so that larger ships are harder to capture and turn against the AI:
If offensive power less then 60%, remaining crew is below 15% of ships capacity and enemy has ships capable of boarding then self-destruct during own turn

This would not effect capture of small to medium ships considerably but would make capturing of large enemy ships much more difficult and use of distruptors highly reccomended which is appropriate consideraing the mayor effect on balance once such a single event happens

[Arioch]

well, in the diplomacy screen the ship counter for factions differs from the fleet ship counter on the interface. it seems to detect only ships that have weapons. so there's some logic there separating ships by combat ability

Separating ships according to whether or not they have weapons is straightforward. Separating them by class is straightforward. Separating them according to capability is not as straightforward, since both civilian and combat ships can carry troops, and the ability to carry troops does not mean that you're currently carrying troops. Do you want to select all ships currently carrying troops, or all ships that can carry troops (which will include carriers)? Do you want to select only civilian vessels that can carry troops? Do you want to select only named Troop Transports? There are dozens of different criteria that a user might want to select by. We could add a new new selection buttons to the fleet pane, but adding dozens would just clutter and confuse the interface.

Perhaps in the future we may be able to add persistent groupings that will allow the player to create sub-groups once and then have these groupings persist through reassignments to different fleets.

[nathanebht]

- Provide more fine control of difficulty levels in the setup options.
- Add a custom race option.
- Even out the race advantages/disadvantages so that are more similar in difficulty.
- New map type of clustered groups of stars. Close clusters and farther apart clusters would be great. Had have fun with this map type in other 4x games.

[Arioch]

- Even out the race advantages/disadvantages so that are more similar in difficulty.

Why?

In a single-player game, why do you feel the different playable factions need to be equally balanced?

[zolobolo]

Give the top 3 winners of Galctic Council votes some reward e.g.: +60 Influence for 1st, 40 for 2nd and 20 for 3rd
Could be done with other resources as well (even with trade pool capacity increase) but influence seems to e the logical gain at first

Reasons to do this:
1. Give some in-game-sense (impact) to the vote even if no winner is elected
2. Make the player care abouth the outcome of the vote even if there is no chance a winner is elected
3. Empover top empires to engage more frequently or heavily in diplomatic actions - though if this is benefitial might be questionable

[nweismuller]

It'd be nice if minor races (other than the Viscid), splinter colonies, and those major faction home systems that don't have unique names set (i.e., Ashdar Colonials and the Orthin- I could understand why the Humans haven't even bothered with Fargone) could get their planets named. I've been pretty consistently using 'Tattak' for the Scavenger homeworld and 'Ssuuruush' as the Thresher home world when I get them, for what my ideas are worth.

[nathanebht]

- Even out the race advantages/disadvantages so that are more similar in difficulty.

Why?

In a single-player game, why do you feel the different playable factions need to be equally balanced?

Not suggesting to make them equal. Think that there should not be as much spread between the races. The current jumps in difficulty are fairly harsh. Its fun to play as each of the races. However, if its almost impossible to win as some of them then its not so fun.

The above change would work together with more fine control of the game difficulty. Believe both together would
be beneficial for new players.

[nathanebht]

Give the top 3 winners of Galctic Council votes some reward e.g.: +60 Influence for 1st, 40 for 2nd and 20 for 3rd
Could be done with other resources as well (even with trade pool capacity increase) but influence seems to e the logical gain at first

Reasons to do this:
1. Give some in-game-sense (impact) to the vote even if no winner is elected
2. Make the player care abouth the outcome of the vote even if there is no chance a winner is elected
3. Empover top empires to engage more frequently or heavily in diplomatic actions - though if this is benefitial might be questionable

GalCiv III has various interesting votes for a Galactic Council. Peace declared for a certain number of turns. Wealth distributed from the richest race. Kinda neat but it didn't add that much to the game.

[zolobolo]

GalCiv III has various interesting votes for a Galactic Council. Peace declared for a certain number of turns. Wealth distributed from the richest race. Kinda neat but it didn't add that much to the game.

Yes I also found them interesting though they did not account for much

In this case I wouldn't go nearly as far though as Galciv did (as there is no real benefits to gain from an extensive system): just give some minor purpose for the player to care about the outcome

[PrivateHudson]

Being a huge fan of MoO 2, I stumbled upon SiS recently and bought it instantly. Now, having played some hours, I dare to bring forward a few suggestions. Sorry if some already were proposed, as it's impossible to read all these threads.
- I miss "turns left" number on productions in colony list and, to a lesser degree, queued items. Graphic indicator is nice, but how far exactly is that "mostly done" factory or battlecruiser? It could be dozens of turns away. The number would help to determine what colony is in need of credit intervention, as well as better plan fleet operations. The feature is present in virtually any TBS.
- Speaking of credit interventions, it would be useful to have a visual clue on colony list which productions are within buyout reach of the current treasury. If I remember correctly, MoO 2 had this.
- Colony list could display not only current, but also max pop. Something like 10/12 instead of just 10, or proportionally filled planet disc. Might help with migration planning.
- An excellent shortcut from Endless Space: Alt+click adds production item to top of queue, shifting all other items further. By the way, it took me a while to understand how to queue and unqueue items, worth adding hint text like "Left-click an item to change current production to it, right-click to queue, Shift-click to design". Or at least write it in the manual.
- I've already seen suggestions to expand functions of the colony list. I understand it's against rule "Don't turn a game into spreadsheet", but additional, vastly expanded version of colony/planet list could be actually very convenient for experienced emperor. I discovered the power of such lists in Space Empires 5. Turned on by a hotkey (say, F2), color-coded, possessing customizable columns, filters, sorting, pop-ups for detailed info not fitting into a single line, even its own minimap, ability to go to system, planet, colony, or build queue, or to issue orders directly, such spreadsheet could become player's control center once colony count steps over what can fit in on-screen colony list.
- Speaking of hotkeys, I advocate the maximum possible doubling of UI functions with keyboard. Modern UIs mostly neglect it, but, I suppose, a large portion of SiS players are old-timers hardened by games like SMAC.

SiS is already a gem, and IMHO it has potential to become one of the best space 4X TBSes, a proper successor for giants of the past. Thank you, Ashdar Games!
P.S. Please, don't add multiplayer.

[evil713]

I am not sure turns left on a build is really a thing that can be done, as construction is not an upfront cost but cost over time, so you run into issues like metal shortage that can hamstring production.

[PrivateHudson]

I am not sure turns left on a build is really a thing that can be done, as construction is not an upfront cost but cost over time, so you run into issues like metal shortage that can hamstring production.

Of course I mean turns as calculated in current conditions - metal shortage/abundance as of this turn, not counting arriving colonists, at current morale, etc. In most cases such estimate suffices.

[Arioch]

The Planetary Report/Fleet Report is meant to be a quick reference list that's small enough to be kept open all the time while you play, which I find really useful, and is something that most games of this type don't have... in my experience at least. There is only so much information that can be crammed into these lists while still keeping them small and readable readable enough to fill that role. I would like at some point to add a full-screen spreadsheet style report that shows everything you would want to know about every planet, but that's a different animal.

We do show turns left on the current build in the planet info screen, which is just a single click away from the planet report.

I appreciate your taking the time to offer suggestions.

[Alimaeus]

oops

[Dragar]

I think the ship stuff is pretty deliberate.