Suggestion: I love your trader pool system, how it generates money in an abstract way. So how about a way to damage this money flow of enemy empires? I mean a privateer/escort/trader subsystem

What I mean is that the player can send warships to the trader pool in the same way he can send tradeships (as it is now). He can assign them as "privateers" which hunt down and destroy/plunder enemy traders. This should not be a declaration of war to this empire, because they are privateers like Sir Edward Drake. Additionally for protection of its own traders an empire can also send warships to its own trader pool and designate them as "escort". The more escorts you have the better your traders are protected. I dont know the exact formula how to calculate this all. Maybe the main focus for success of privateer/escorts should be not only weapons but more speed of a ship. Maybe you get every turn or every few turns a message which tells you what happened with your traders/escorts/privateers. (eg. damage and loss of privateers/escorts/tradeships, loss of money or whatever) Important is that this should not add to the "micromanage" level of the game, so for this the fights in the trade pool should have an automatic mechanic and not be fought out on the tactical map.

Why?
-Fun: Because it could be a fun subgame to damage the enemy without going necessarily going to war with him. (of course you should be able to do this when you are at war with the enemy too)
-Multi-role for Warships: it makes more use of idle warships in peacetime.
-Rebuild Tradeships: you have to construct lost tradeships from time to time which is not the case now.
-Technology: you could introduce special modules which helps tradeships to escape their privateers and vice versa.
-U boat: if you make it clever you could create a "uboat feel" which could give a player the impression of beeing a beleaguered England in WW2.
-Monsters & Pirates: the game could additionally autogenerate from time to time pirates and space monsters which populate the trade pools and plunder/eat your ships there Attacking tradeships in the pool is probably a more intutive solution of how pirate behave than just guarding planets as it is now.

The reason I haven't posted a tech tree map on the website is because the techs and their positions are still changing frequently. I think technologies are a case in which the content is more important than the presentation. Once the techs are more settled, I'll experiment with ways to present the map visually and post the map as a reference, and that's the point at which it may become a possibility to put some form of that presentation in-game.

The problem with a straightforward commerce-raiding pool is that, given the system-to-system nature of travel in SiS, unless you have the science fiction equivalent of space submarines, there's no way for these raiders to get access to their targets in enemy territory without being detected and potentially intercepted by conventional fleets. Also, I have found the "competing pools" type of gameplay (which is how espionage is typically implemented in other games) to be not very much fun. We have plans to expand the trading system (which is currently an internal-only route system) into an international trading system, and along with this we will try to figure out ways in which commerce raiding might make sense. We would especially like the Phidi's armed traders to be a significant advantage.

Arioch wrote:We would especially like the Phidi's armed traders to be a significant advantage.

I need to try playing Phidi again, but I'd think having an armed trader with Planetary Assault modules instead of trade modules would give them a pretty significant advantage in the early game.

Being able to shift-click to select multiple ships is nice. I'd suggest two improvements:

- Band-box to allow the selection of a large group with one click instead of having to click on each individual ship.

- Keep the ships selected for the next round of combat or, even, allow the assignment of attack groups.

You can bandbox. Hold shift and drag.

not sure if been suggested before, but I've been thinking having a sensor range layer or some sort of visual cue to how far you can see/can go would be invaluable.
As it stands it is difficult to differentiate from a system you can see, to one you have been already

We do plan to add range circles to the Move UI so that it's more obvious which destinations are in range.

In the combat screen: When the user clicks "End Turn" please do not de-select the ships they have selected. If there is a shortcut key to end the turn then that could save some effort as well, but make it obvious what that key is in the UI, perhaps putting that key on the "End Turn" button itself, like "End Turn (Ctrl-E)".

- When plotting a course, after pressing the right mouse button and before releasing it, when you get the nice looking range circle, it would be nice if mousing over a target system would tell us how many turns it would take to get there.

- I'd also be happy to see the range circle without having to press the right mouse button, as soon as I click on a fleet to move.

- On status reports of the type "colony X finished construction", it's sometimes hard to remember where that colony is. When clicking on the status report, I'd be glad if the map scrolled such that the colony was at the center, and if something helped me see where that colony was.

projekcja wrote:- When plotting a course, after pressing the right mouse button and before releasing it, when you get the nice looking range circle, it would be nice if mousing over a target system would tell us how many turns it would take to get there.

- I'd also be happy to see the range circle without having to press the right mouse button, as soon as I click on a fleet to move.

If you explicitly click on the Move Fleet (ship icon) button at the bottom of the screen, it will show the range circles and also the ETA to the target system. I agree that it should use this same behavior when right-clicking, which it currently doesn't. We are considering more options as to when the range circles are displayed.

projekcja wrote:- On status reports of the type "colony X finished construction", it's sometimes hard to remember where that colony is. When clicking on the status report, I'd be glad if the map scrolled such that the colony was at the center, and if something helped me see where that colony was.

I agree that the map should center on the target system when a notification is clicked on. We are also adding some selection reticles to make selected systems and fleets easier to identify on the map.

I would like to suggest you add in a tech tree, that shows all the techs, cause i have to currently hope i can find the tech i want by randomly clicking on techs.

I would also like the capability of editing races and so on....or atleast customizing my race ingame....or create a custom race all together....where i can give bonuses, negatives and so on, it would be pretty cool.

It could be really nice and useful to have range circles for enemy empires, so as to give an indication as to which colonies are within their range, though I can see that there's a problem here regarding knowledge about enemy tech level.

I also think it's a good idea to have "blockaded" systems not supply fuel.

A passing thought re the name for "Adamantium" armor. (at one time you seemed to be looking for an alternate name)
If you still are looking, consider "Scrith". It was the structural material used in Ringworld series. Very dense...tensile strength on the order of the force that holds the nucleus together.

bevo wrote:A passing thought re the name for "Adamantium" armor. (at one time you seemed to be looking for an alternate name)
If you still are looking, consider "Scrith". It was the structural material used in Ringworld series. Very dense...tensile strength on the order of the force that holds the nucleus together.

I think 'Scrith' might get us in copyright trouble. ('Hellbore' is the kind of invented term I'm more comfortable borrowing -- as it's one that's already been appropriated by a number of other games. And whoever owns the rights to Keith Laumer's estate appears to be fine with that sort of use.)

"Hellbore" is an English compound word (which I don't think Laumer invented -- it's also a horticultural term), whereas "scrith" is a unique made-up word that's specifically tied to Larry Niven's universe.

It's not hard to come up with a unique replacement word, if folks don't like "adamantium."