Suggest - Features and Improvements

[zolobolo]

Under coin menu show how many trade routes are generated from Markets and how many are Foreign trade routes generated by diplomatic treaties
I suspect something might be wrong in the calculation but cannot see for sure.

In current game we have 48 Trade Routes in total
37 should be generated by trade treaties
5 markets have been built
We have started from 0 trade routes in the beginning and I do not see tech that should increase the amount created by a market (should only affect income from trade)

Thus 5 markets should generate 11 trade routes which seems unlikely: 2.2/Market, not 1 or 2?
When building a new market the pool increases by 3

There is also a text which might be outdated in the trade menu: "Access to foreign markets increases trade income by 16" - but our current income is higher: 64 coins

Also notices that a faction has asked me to break trade with my ally and I agreed to do so: though the diplomacy menu does not show the trade agreement anymore (alliance has remained), the amount of trade routes remained 48 after termination

Maybe foreign trade routes are not generated at all? Just closed a deal which should provide 9 routes but the available routes are still 48

[zolobolo]

Auto-resolving a battle where player and ally faces off the enemy, I have ended up with a captured vessel from my ally
This is since the enemy has captured the allies vessel during combat and my own military transport has captured it "back"

This is technically all in order but is a strange end-result altogether if you look at it high-level especially since it was a very valuable Yoral torp destroyer and Yoral had a large fleet in system
Especially since I cannot integrate captured ships yet so the ship needed to be disassembled

Also note: when replaying the battle to leave my ally to recapture its ship, it has destroyed it. Usually they do recapture ships but there were only two transports left and the captured vessel seems to have been prioritized as target for the weapons...

[zolobolo]

Propose to reduce the amount of Raiders on marauder planets from 30 to 15 or max 20
This is since these units now have 1.5 strength instead of 1 and even before the change the number of defenders made it nearly impossible to take the planet intact (without bombing away all the raiders and only leaving 2-3 pops left without improvements)

If bombing will reduce habitability of the planet that would tip the balance somewhat to invasion, but currently, bombing is the only way to go due to the sheer number of raider militia

[zolobolo]

Display fleet repair icon as a single notification listing all systems via hyperlink - this is to cut down on number of notifications from mid-game on
List all system and their hyperlink in Food shortage report - this is to allow navigation to effected systems directly

[zolobolo]

Propose to take away star base and fortress from Phidi altogether

Reason: They are an economy focused fish-people hiring mercs to do their dirty work.
Turtling, building military stations, and on top of that the same design as that of other races is the most out of place for them. I know why the same design is used, but in their case it might be best to take it away completely

This way the player (and AI) is forced to focus their metal and production elsewhere

Should the Phidi receive a star base, it should not be military focused in my opinion, but have only minimal amount of defensive turrets and trade-hub sort of modules instead of shields increasing trade routes and/or influence and boost the iconic blue habitat bubbles of the fish people

[PrivateHudson]

Display fleet repair icon as a single notification listing all systems via hyperlink - this is to cut down on number of notifications from mid-game on
List all system and their hyperlink in Food shortage report - this is to allow navigation to effected systems directly

If you really want to cut down on number of notifications, the most effect will be achieved by replacement of separate finished production notifications (which constitute the bulk of them) with Endless Space-like Finished Constructions dialog.

[PrivateHudson]

Under coin menu show how many trade routes are generated from Markets and how many are Foreign trade routes generated by diplomatic treaties

+1. I'm to this day not sure if science outposts add up to trade routes. In case they do, propose to strip them of this advantage. Let only outposts with fuel depot contribute to trade. Science outposts are insanely useful even without this: for their meager price you claim planets, get sight range and, well, science. By the way, it would be not bad to teach AI to use them and science bases. I routinely generate third to half my research from science stations.
Tight finance management, introduced in recent patches, brings welcomed new challenge to the game. Markets and trading colonies suddenly became a thing. And I discovered you can get a decent credits from your allies for occasional batch of surplus metal!

[PrivateHudson]

Tight finance management, introduced in recent patches, brings welcomed new challenge to the game.

The only drawback I see so far is mercenaries are now completely out of reach, at least within my playstyle.

[orvarth]

remove empty star system , AI often stuck on medium maps .

the early growing population mechanic is good , but techs cloning and longevity are too strong and remove any need of strategy for pop and troops ;

perhaps tune down them a little and add some special tech like breeding slave for the gremak (warrior slave) .

[zolobolo]

If you really want to cut down on number of notifications, the most effect will be achieved by replacement of separate finished production notifications (which constitute the bulk of them) with Endless Space-like Finished Constructions dialog.

I can see that being helpful for some, but I always suppressed queued production notification and almost always set up the production queue in a way that there is no idle state so almost never get this notification

[PrivateHudson]

1. Minor UI convenience: fix position of notifications Close button. Currently it floats a bit according to notification caption's length, and so each click requires a little aiming.
2. Scale cooldown period after DoW when no peace offers can be made with stage of the game - the later the shorter. At mid-game, when fleets are faster and deadlier and ground invasion forces are much more capable, a medium-sized empire can be completely wiped out in 15 turns. And maybe abolish this waiting period for the attacked side at all.

[zolobolo]

Is there a chance for Tinker Destroyer to get a facelift?

For one its is very anti-aerodynamic - simply cutting off the collar around its front sphere would be nice
It is also a bit too big for its description and crew size when compared to other ships such as the Light Cruiser which has x2.5 crew but is around the same size

[zolobolo]

Can we please have a priority on non-combatant ships when disembarking pops/troops?
Already mentioned this for Military Transports, but this also goes for any ship that has attack strenght such as Gremak Command Cruiser, or Phidi ships that cna have both weapons and ground troops/pop embarked

Thus a priority on disemabarking units (combat or otherwsie) would be ideal to be set on ships that have no attack capability (normal transports or hulls that were not given weapons)

Now, there might be cases where a player configures specialised Assault Ships where all wepaon mounts contain something else like armor modules. To catch even these, the priority could account for the ships shield and armor value but these cases should be relatively rare

So altogehter something like this:
When disembarking:
1. Start with lowest attack value
2. If none have attack vlaue, start with lowest shield+armor value
3. The rest are assault ships that should loose their cargo last

[zolobolo]

If we get a summary of planets suffering from food shortage with shortcut link to the system, it might be cool to have two categories in the list: sohrtage due to insufficient food procuction (or transports) and due to blockade

[zolobolo]

Ground combat expansion might be achieved in a simple way withouth changing existing tank battalions and milita units: Detachments
This would be partially taking notes from Stellaris (where admittedly this concept has failed - so lets jsut compare this to HoO or Panzer Generals).

So each Detachment type could be researchable and some can even be faction specific:
1. Mobile Artillery (increase strength against milita divisions)
2. Heavy Weapons Teams (increae strength against tank battalions)
3. Commando Squads (Phidi Sales Commando has been mentioned a couple of times, could be integrated here)
4. Sabotage Divison (increases the chance of improvements being destroyed during invasion)
5. Engineering Corps (reduces chance of improvements being destroyed during the invasion)
6. Medical Corps (same affect as shield)
7. Reasearch Field Teams (Orthin specials: increase chance of capturing enemy tech)
8. Training Coprs (increase attack of militia)
9. Armored Personal Carriers (increase strength and mobilization of milita = more pops will fight when defending)
10. Percanary corps (increase strength value but also permanently increase upkeep of all units)
11. Propaganda corps (reduces amount of militia taking up arms on defender side and increase them when defending)
12. Titan squadron (super-heavy walkers increasing overall strenght of Tank Battalions - endgame tech)
Optionally: Human Power Armor units could be molded here as well negating the need for the AI having to "learn" how to use them and their affect being automatically applied to Human Assault Cruisers (currently the AI cannot produce these units and mount them on the ships but this way their bonus would automatically apply via the tank battalion of which they would be a detachment of)

Once a tech has been researched, the appropriate detachment type could be automatically attached to all existing and newly built battalions or militia so no micro MGMT would be added.

Visually the varios detachments could be placed on the lower right of the tank and miltia icons (this would be the biggest drawback as in some cases, they woudl not be visible e.g.: on ground invasion window they would need to be listed below the unit type to be visible

Benefits would include:
1. Player can decide on how to specialize ground troops via research (but withouth micro as mentioned above)
2. The additional research branch provides other viable targets when progressing through the tree (currently it is very much dominated by ship related tech + a few buiilding improvements
3. Existing tech increasing unit strenght and giving shield can be molded into the branch and make it more intuititve what effect ground combat. Both Tanks and milita would retain their base strenght and upgrades would be applied via the detachments themselfes (with the excpetion of tank battalion upgrade)
4. Ground combat is made more deep withouth taking away focus from other elements or change the current concept - if the player is interested they can plan their invasions more around the detachments available to them and to the enemy but can also ignore it completely and just play as now (risking inefficiency)