zolobolo wrote:Would it make sense/be feasible to display contested systems in a way so that they are clearly visible from the highest zoom level?

It is probably not feasible to display this with all the colors of other contestants (as it would involve up to 3 additional colors), but utilizing only the main owner color to visualize the contested nature of the system should suffice anyhow

Arioch has also pushed me to implement some version of this feature. But I remain unsure how to best make it happen, at a technical level. It's certainly an idea that's 'on our radar'; but it's unlikely to be implemented unless I can think of some simple / clever way of making it happen.

How to make even small AI empires competitive:
1. Equipment for Planetary Defense installations should prioritize: Bomber, Rocket or Heavy Weapons. Medium Weapons should not be allowed to make sure the AI does not use this ineffective load out (currently used almost exclusively and ineffective against crafts, missiles and heavy)
2. Do not build more then one Starbase/Fortress per planet (takes time and Metal)
3. Do not Build the largest available ship. In a situation where the empire is clearly outmatched, it should settle for PD and heavy weapon base medium vessels with a couple of PD escorts
4. Spread out the ships to all systems (there aren't many so they can afford to)
5. Strike peace wherever possible. They have a chance at colonizing new worlds or taking away rebelled worlds during peace + makes sense to sue for peace if there is no chance of winning
6. Spend money on Mercs instead of rushed building as the later looses priority during a loosing war (though this would be a new behaviour altogether so the most difficult to do)
7. Reserve fighter wings for taking out torpedoes, missiles and bombers and only engage ships if they can hit them within a single turn - this would increase defense potential of carriers considerably as they would decimate player bombers when sent out as first wave and even take out rockets/torpedoes launched too early, leaving PD capacity of AI fleet reserved against EMP, Leech, torpedoes and reserved bombers. Imagine a planetary defense with: Level one Defense: 2 Torpedo mounts + Carrier: 2 Fighter and 1 Bomber wing + 3 Light Cruisers with PD and Medium Coilgun. If the fleet holds position, and reserves fighters that is an effective (and cheep) defense force right there that needs to be attacked with at least twice the resources

There are a couple of things I find strange:

1) Alliances
In a alliance I would expect military intervention in case of war, not just kind words and free passage through the ally systems, and shared victory conditions.
If not direct military help, at least indirect, like resources.
Alliances feels a little empty to me as they are.

2) Other races can pestering me with requests for help, but I can't do the same, or I haven't found a way.
I can propose exchanges, but they always expect something from me in return, even if I helped them 376 times before.

Thanks

Diplomacy in general is still in the TO-DO list. We can demand an entire planet but not ships or technology?

Agreed that diplomacy is in need of some love and there are numerous cool thing that can be done within the existing system (alliance members voting for the member with the highest pop, defense money of Marauders, mercs, food transport deals, and generally usage of influence as a diplomacy resource)

I am very much on the opinion though that trading any other resource then food should not be possible:
1. AI does not play to win and as such will never use a trading system logically
2. Exploits are everywhere: from tricking an AI to selling resource/tech that is not valuable to it but is valuable to the player to resource "brokering" your way to victory. In galciv you could still win the game on hardest difficulty against dozens of AI empires by trade brokering and they purposely TRIED to prevent this)
3. The mechanic does not add to the core gameplay. In my opinion, the game is about fleet MGMT on strategy level and tactical combat. Diplomacy should reflect the simplistic but practical approach that planetary development has embraced: less but meaningful options.

The trading feature could of course also be deactivateable (like in galciv) but why invest the DEV resource in the feature in the first place if it only serves the purpose of the player going around the games base mechanics?

Why allow trading of food then? Because that is the one resource that truly ties into all the other mechanics of the game: "You helped us" relationship bonus should be replaced with "you are supplying food to us" enabling some empires to function as a sort of grain storage of the galaxy.

Now that there is a cool border system and logo smacked into the middle of it, would it make sense to have the number of the empire on the logo?
In the below example I a using Georgia font style as it seems to fit the overall style nicely - the second example is with smaller numbers and positioned on the top left corner...looks also nice in my opinion

I guess this would only require editing of the image and if the diplomacy references would be changes from arabic to roman numbers as well it would be consequent.

When it comes to designations, each race can be referenced in a lore-friendly way: Satrapy; Refugee Confederation; Trade Union; Commune I-IV;

The non-plus ultra solution could also be to have the empire logo function as a hyperlink to the corresponding diplomacy screen

Tie event: "Minerals found" to when an invading Harpy fleet is defeated

This way there is some difficulty for the "reward" and the player is happy to see invasions instead of handling them like some minor attempt to slow the advance as each time these fleets are destroyed there is a (minor like 10%) chance for the event to occur

Text could be: "Upon further investigation our scientists have identified the reason for the Harpy incursion. It appears to be a massive mineral rich deposit that has thus far eluded our mining teams. Science decision has deemed the site safe for extraction and operations can commence immediately"

Ground unit type: Infantry Battalion

Attributes:
1. 25% less combat strength then Tank Battalions
2. 50% cheaper and thus faster to produce then Tank Battalions
3. Requires both money AND food to maintain: thus amount of Infantry Battalions is directly limited by food surplus of empire = systems synergy
4. Faction specific Art: increase immersion with the faction played especially since Tank battalions are currency identical for all factions
5. Any additional racial trait that comes to mind/ race like we have for population. Example: Gremak unit would be the "Marauders" with slave master trait. Tinker troops could have the "population control" trait, very slowly killing off non major races on a planet

This type of ground unit is to spice up ground combat a bit, would require art for the representation but thus also increase immersion with the faction played

Another advantage is that it can be implemented to any number of races from a single one to all of them and tailor their attributes to serve various race specific roles such as the Marauder Battalion does for the Gremak

Relationship penalty between empires that have ships stationed at systems where the other has colony or outpost except when in alliance or open ports agreement

zolobolo wrote:Relationship between empires that have ships stationed at systems where the other has colony or outpost except when in alliance or open ports agreement

I'm not clear about what you mean. A relation should be required, or it should cause some kind of relationship?

Arioch wrote:

zolobolo wrote:Relationship between empires that have ships stationed at systems where the other has colony or outpost except when in alliance or open ports agreement

I'm not clear about what you mean. A relation should be required, or it should cause some kind of relationship?

My bad, I meant to write: Relationship penalty: "You are amassing ships in our zone of control"

Segregate AI scripts to: Defense and Offense

Currently, the AI seems to try and cover both functions with their ships, leading to a lot of reassignments such as pulling back invasion fleets to defend systems far behind the front-line

It would also ensure, that the AI always has some defense available to it as these ships would not be thrown away against monsters, powerful enemies, or simply sent into an everlasting limbo between systems. This would make war interesting against empires of all sizes and prevent them from being rolled over by other AIs easily.

It can also be used to prevent defensive star-base spamming if the two scripts get their own ratio of metal an money they are allowed to consume. Accordingly and logically, defense fleets should only contain small to medium sized vessels, as these are cheaper to produce and resources can thus be used more efficiently via covering large areas with them. Defensive force strength could be somewhat randomize between 0-Full (full being a calculation depending on system importance)

Please consider using the faction color scheme for merc ships

The reason being:
1. The faction color looks really awesome on ships of other factions too
2. There is already a clear distinguishing marker for mercs on the top right corner of the ship
3. Utilizing the same color scheme for purchased merc as used the Marauder factions, makes the overall color scheme more boring due to repetition of the red/yellow scheme independently of which faction the player is using
4. The scheme is already utilized on the galaxy map as seen below: utilizing the same in fleet manager and tactical combat should not be an issue and would be consequent over all 3 layers of the game

Have all Energy weapons have envelop effect: 25% of all damage effects all sides of the shield
Plasma Gun will still have a usage as being a weapon that can eliminate shields significantly faster and on all sides (100% of the damage applied to all sides)

But the change would:
1. Lessen the effectiveness of rotating ship exploit
2. Lessen the dominance of shields which are OP at this time considering weapon alternatives (they make numerous weapon configurations not viable as the recharge speed of the ships in late-early game outpace the weapons damage output + each side needs to be eliminated separately)

Kinetic guns do not need this as they can already go through shields to some extent

I haven't done a ton of testing but I agree it seems that energy weapon damage vs. shield regeneration seems off in the favor of shields in the more recent builds.

-Will