Arioch wrote:...Marauders, before they inexplicably stopped raiding

In my experience they do raid. At least they are getting new slaves from somewhere (not from me, but I always keep them friendly).

Arioch wrote:We are adding more specialty ground units as niches present themselves: Human Assault Marines (who have bonuses in ship to ship combat), and Pirate Raiders (who raid like Marauders but steal cash instead of slaves). I'd like to add more faction-specific options, like aquatic versions of tanks, and Phidi sales commandos (to give the Phidi an "active" trading option), but those will probably have to wait until post-release. There isn't really a current niche for a regular Infantry unit (Militia are strength 1, Tanks are strength 2, and not very expensive).

Pirates will have a more active raiding role on the map (like Marauders, before they inexplicably stopped raiding). The idea of having a commerce raiding mechanic involving the Trade Pool has been brought up several times (one could allocate both raiders to attack the enemy's pool and escorts to protect one's own pool), but I'm not that keen on it. I think a pool is a useful abstraction for boring commercial activity, but I don't think it's a good abstraction for potentially interesting action like commerce raiding; action that happens off-map doesn't make for very compelling gameplay. Case in point: almost every bad espionage system that has each side filling pools with generic spies which do battle off-screen, and all the player gets is a summary of the bad things that are happening to him despite his investment in spies. Yahoo.

Special ground units, pirate raiders and faction-specific options all sound brilliant.
Marauders (slavers) is already an innovative idea (or at least I neve say such a concept in 4X games before), hope to see them in action soon
Also agree on spying, I would just scip it at least for the release for such a game. Keeping focus on the tactical combat and things that relate to it directly seems like the appropriate way to go for this game

What I am suggesting is more interaction between existing elements and no introduction of new elements such as raider stance of fleet, escorts and the likes meaning:
1. Prirate fleet moves into undefended empire territory (either AI or Player depending on trade pool size and proximity)
2. When pirate fleet starts the round on empire territory, that pirate faction gains assets (Money, ships, tech) and randomly destroyes a couple of Transport ships of the empire who owns the territory. All planets that are located in that System, also receive a blockaded Status and cannot draw Food from the trade lanes anymore + receive approval Penalty due to rading
3. Player gets a Status notification: "Pirate Raiding" with Detailed text in the bottom: System XY is being raided by pirates: Lost: 2 Transports from trade pool; System XZ is being raided by pirates: Lost: 1 Transport from Trade Pool
4. Player or AI orders fleet to get rid of pirates or risk loosing more income, and the directly affected colonies as they are rebelling and/or starving
5. Pirates engage the player or AI force and try to board as many ships as possible, pulling out when they do not have a chance to win anymore, or have captured enough vessels
6. The only way to get rid of them would be to eventually assault their base of operation, which is not a planet, but an actual starbase protected by stolen ships

This would lead to a very natural bahaviour of the pirate factions: They could start with low tech, but boarding capabale vessels, build up their assets by raiding others (the fatter the empire, the better as they have more trade routes and less local ships to defend), and they would try to occupy vessels sent after them to even furhter pump up their fleet.
Imagine if they occupy your largest capital ship of the player as it foolishly did not receive enough corvett support and they just bail out of combat after that, with their new ship (thinking at I-War here ...)

The above might be acomplished with existing assets and mechanics and would result in authentica pirate behaviour and more battles. Everything would happen on the map and would be transparent for the Player

It would also make for a Logical diversification of threats:
1. Raiders attack planets and take Pop
2. Pirates attack trading ships and mostly use Boarding tactics when engaged
3. Space mosters, eat, pray, love and defend high value planets as space mosters usually do...

Small icons underneath each Climate Zone value, representing which of the main races can colonize that Zone

This would enable quick assessment of which planets can be colonized, as other values such as atmosphere, population or the zones themselves do not tell the whole story.

There is a detailed breakdown of max population ranking of the species, once a specific zone has been selected, but it is unclear what each of the 3 numbers exactly mean and this is a sub-menu which is not practical for a quick overview

Examples:
Planet 1
Type: Steppes
Fertility: Low
Temperature: Cold
POP Cap: 2 M
Climate Zones: Ice, Arid
Can Gramik Colonize?: YES

Planet 2
Type: Arid
Fertility: High
Temperature: Warm
POP Cap: 5 M
Climate Zones: Arid, Ice
Can Gramik Colonize?: NO

The later is more hospitable in every way, and has the same Climate Zones but due to unsure way to determine if a planet is colonisabe for the specific pop, I am unsure if this is a bug, or if I am missing some description somewhere (the race description says they find Arid worlds relatively inhospitable but this specification seems to relate more on max pop then on outright incompatibility with the Climate Zone)

You can tell by a glance at the solar system display which planets are colonizable by your race. Colonizable planets with have a white max-pop numeral; the max-pop number for uninhabitable planets will be grayed out and presented in the form " --3-- ".
Additional tooltips would probably help.

Ok, but how is that value decided? How do I know if the above example is a bug or not?

It seems like one, but since I do not know how that value is calculated I cannot be sure

Also: Shouldn't it be possible to create a colony ship for another race other than my starting pop?
It seemed logical (though I tested now and a mixed pop planet does in fact not offer me a choice of which pop to use for the ship).

Stellaris made the mistake of classifying the planets according to overall habitability, but as soon as they enabled the above feature it caused inconsistencies in the UIs as a specific colony ship could include any of the races.

Art assets for the various Climate Zones: Hives and Vents specifically seem cool concepts that would look really cool with the existing art style if these were more then just parameters on the planet tab. The art could be displayed under one another instead of listed in a line and next to them the pop type that it can host

Admittedly not a big added value game play wise, but would give more character to the planets

As far as I'm aware, whether a planet qualifies as "hostile environment" for given faction is strictly based on planet type, regardless of the biome characteristics. I agree that a Steppes is essentially a cold Arid and should be as inhospitable to the Gremak as a warmer Arid world, it's probably not accidental. I'll mention it to Sven.

I'd like to spruce up the biomes display with nice icons, and it's on my list of things to do (I already took one whack at it that was not successful), but not very high up that list.

Arioch wrote:Steppes is essentially a cold Arid and should be as inhospitable to the Gremak as a warmer Arid world, it's probably not accidental.

Steppes unlike Arid are colonizable by Orthin (probably because of Ice).

I discussed it with Sven and we agreed that Gremak should be able to colonize all arid world types (including Desert and Steppes). Their habitability will be minimal, because they don't like dry conditions, but it's not like they can't breathe. Whereas for a true aquatic race like Phidi or Orthin, trying to colonize a world without water is like us trying to colonize a world without an atmosphere.

Gremak uber alles!

bjg wrote:

Arioch wrote:Steppes is essentially a cold Arid and should be as inhospitable to the Gremak as a warmer Arid world, it's probably not accidental.

Steppes unlike Arid are colonizable by Orthin (probably because of Ice).

The aquatic races shouldn't be able to colonize arid worlds without habitat domes. This and the above change are on dev now.

I understand that this is a big change, but eventually it would be nice if habitability and fertility (for race itself and food) depend directly on biomes (exactly like population caps).

Suggest updating the sequence of various colonist types displayed in the planet overview window only after the screen has been re-opened

Reason: When conducting invasions, a lot of shuffling is going on with tank (and Marauder) units up and down from and to transports. As the list is updated in real-time, the position of the unit type is changed when its relative amount changes. This even happens several times if the planet has more then one colonist type making the uploading/downloading of tank units unwieldy.

I could understand this mechanic if there is a considerable benefit for seeing if the amount of tank units overweight that of the colonists in real-time, but due to the way revolts are calculated this is not necessary as a tank unit can overpower several units of colonists
+ slave mechanic + slave master trait

zolobolo wrote:Suggest updating the sequence of various colonist types displayed in the planet overview window only after the screen has been re-opened

Reason: When conducting invasions, a lot of shuffling is going on with tank (and Marauder) units up and down from and to transports. As the list is updated in real-time, the position of the unit type is changed when its relative amount changes. This even happens several times if the planet has more then one colonist type making the uploading/downloading of tank units unwieldy.

I could understand this mechanic if there is a considerable benefit for seeing if the amount of tank units overweight that of the colonists in real-time, but due to the way revolts are calculated this is not necessary as a tank unit can overpower several units of colonists
+ slave mechanic + slave master trait

I believe we had a fix for this behavior at one point, but it may have become un-fixed.

Arioch wrote: I believe we had a fix for this behavior at one point, but it may have become un-fixed.

Its still in the current version it seems

Difference in factions. As a general rule, it is great to have unique factions (since StarCraft at least ). The existing ones are quite nice already, but here are a few suggestions:

I think there is a lot that can be done with this system, as it is simple, but has many components that can interact with each other, these are: Colonists, Ships, Research, Buildings and Diplomacy. As the third one is not really implemented yet as far as I can tell, I will just leave that one out for now:

The goal is to have each faction play as unique as possible without forcing the user too much into a per-determined play-style:

1. Colonists: Each faction should have a unique combination of production values for the 4 resources. Optimally this should also be extended for all minor races in the game, so each of them have a unique purpose for which they are optimal. The amount of possible races accordingly is: 4 (assuming that production values are assigned from 0-4) on the power of 4 (amount of production types) = 256. This amount includes everything ranging from pests who produce 0,0,0,0 to super-productive machine slaves producing 4,4,4,4 - this can further be managed via differing fertility values to reduce effect of overly unproductive races as well as those who are overly productive

2. Ships: Unique ship types for each faction. This I have already seen in several occasions, like the Orthin siege unit. But since the roster is not finished yet, please try to keep some unique ship-types for each race if possible

3. Research: Unique techs for each faction. This is the most logical aspect that can be trimmed for each faction. It can contain specific research tech that changes the overall play style of each race such as:
Humans could research tech that enables further traveling or even traveling any distance. This would especially be useful in the beginning as they start as nomads. Giving them tech, that expands their range and ship survivability would truly make them the roaches of space, as they could pup up anywhere, colonize fertile worlds and swooping up other human refugees in the process

4. Buildings: Unique buildings for each faction. There is already limited space on each planet which is great, but a unique building type would spice up each colonization that more. e.g.:
Humans could start with a "Colony" building which produces both food and production at the same time but can only be built once. Or a Central habitat which gives bonus production to each farm that has been built on the planet (this would reward the Humans for specializing on food producing colonies). Same for Orthin with a Since Center providing bonus to each science building and for the Yoral when it comes to production

Additionally: Can we call buildings "District"? Seeing how few of them are around, it could be more beneficial to image them as large districts of specialized buildings built by the government instead of a single building. The slots are currently called improvements while the selectable options are referred as: building ... (not plural as it refers to the icon or rather of what it symbolizes), but once a building has been built, it is referred as buildings (plural)

There are also ways to diversify the factions by changing how each of the core systems operate, but above seem the most easy to implement as they rely on existing mechanisms
Making the Humans for example a star-faring faction which can only produce ships on their mother ships would be awesome, but would mess with the existing system, and would be a lot of work + prone for bugs

After some time off, I started a new game with the Phidi.
Here some things I noticed.

Alot of little things were added, like additional tasks (mining, synth. food, etc) and diplomatic quests, very nice!

- I encountered the Ashdars early and became friendly with them.
- They laughed at my torpedo destroyer squadron (-15 relation) but those got quite the punch against pirates, raiders and star harpies.
(But the destroyers sure got a glass jaw )
- The Ashdar unlocked the "War Wings" Mercenaries for me
(their black Ashdar ships are looking really cool )
- Is there a way to check the mercenary ship specs before buying them?
They were reasonable priced (400g for a heavy cruiser) but knowing what I purchase beforehand would be nice.
- Upkeep cost for the mercs are considerably higher. Good!
- Are the mercs humans, like their "ambassador" or Ashdars, like their ships?
- It is noted that they may desert if you order them to do stuff they don't like.
What would that be? I guess attacking their race (see question above)
- How are the merc ships calculated? Do they have the tech level of their host race? Do they upgrade over time their stock of ships?

- I was orbiting a raider colony, after blasting away their fleet (torpedo destroyers Ho!). Only leaving their asteroid station until i got more ships ready.
In the meantime, the Ashdars see their chance and send an invasion expedition. My advisor askes if I want to join the ensuing battle.
How would the AI see this? Would it take note which side I fire upon or would my meddling alone be seen as an act of aggression?
My standing at the time was quite friendly with the Ashdar (trade, science, open port treaty but no alliance) and at war with the raiders (of course, you don't demand tribute from a merchant prince without repercussions )

- enemy transport ships did not flee combat, even after their escorts (Human pirates, Gremak raiders) disintegrated.
Intentional to avoid a goose chase through the galaxy?