PrivateHudson wrote:Why after the Eye of Dzibix' loss all tinkers aren't instantly disconnected? Instant deharmonization would probably be too much of a punishment, pushing their faction into complete chaos.

When the Tinkers say "Dzibix", what they really mean is "the collective." As long as Tinkers have access to the collective through a machine altar, they are still connected, even if the homeworld has been removed from the network.

But yes, being able to decapitate the Tinkers empire by taking out the homeworld would be somewhat cheesy.

It would be convenient if notification message about transports arrived to their destination listed what cargo was delivered, in a manner similar to messages about finished research/production. For example, 'Human slaves, Marauders, and Gremak colonists have arrived to Altair II. Transports returned to pool'.
+1 to zolobolo's proposition to add notification message when new building slot(s) appears in a colony. To generate message, the colony should not be automated (obviously), be fully built (or have buildings for all remaining slots queued) and have repeat build or activity as current/last queued production item.
Also, while maybe a minor problem, the issue of lost idle fleets waits for solution. Those are ships sent to shipyard colony (or simply to any colony nearest to contested outpost) for refit, or empty colony ship sent to embark specific race colonists, or transports recalled from pool to pick up no longer needed police troops, etc. They can easily become lost track of. Someone already proposed notification message about fleet arriving to its destination and not generating any other messages. It can be pushed one step further: message 'Fleet awaits orders' for any idle fleet not on hold, where hold command is slapped either to message or to fleet itself.

PrivateHudson wrote:Also, while maybe a minor problem, the issue of lost idle fleets waits for solution. Those are ships sent to shipyard colony (or simply to any colony nearest to contested outpost) for refit, or empty colony ship sent to embark specific race colonists, or transports recalled from pool to pick up no longer needed police troops, etc. They can easily become lost track of. Someone already proposed notification message about fleet arriving to its destination and not generating any other messages. It can be pushed one step further: message 'Fleet awaits orders' for any idle fleet not on hold, where hold command is slapped either to message or to fleet itself.

I think the proper fix for this is to implement a "next fleet" notification system, where you get a prompt for any idle fleet, and you need to put it to sleep or sentry or give it some other task to take it out of the notification queue. Unfortunately, to get this to work properly (and not be a notification spam nightmare) would require a significant amount of work and changes to the notification UI. I'd like to do this at some point, but I don't think the idle fleets issue is a major problem at present, and so this is pretty far down on the priority list.

Can you please include the icon for deharmonisation in the description of Cybernetic Organisms tech to spice it up and increase recognisability?

I think that all tech should include some visual treat for the player to make them more stimulating and interesting to look at and in this case, the art is already available for this.

The text information is needed and good to have but in and by itself is fucntions as an information dump and does not serve recognisability

Sorry if this question was already answered, but rationale behind current fractional pop transfer rules evades me. Why we aren't allowed to transfer < 1 pop unit in separate transport, but are allowed to transfer slightly > 1 unit in one transport, and withal losing those unfortunate enough to be in an overhead? It's quite inconvenient to constantly monitor pop growth to 1) remove undesired pop from colony when it finally reach 1 unit; 2) transfer pop desired in some other place while keeping some of it here when it finally reach 1.2 (or is it 1.3?) unit. Why not limit transport to 1 pop unit and allow fraction of a unit in separate transport?

PrivateHudson wrote:Why not limit transport to 1 pop unit and allow fraction of a unit in separate transport?

Suspect this was a conscious decision for the player having to live with suboptimal pops on the planet- which basically means Humans

It would be usefull to be able to remove them though agree (and maybe also send them to invade a well-defended enemy planet as militia

zolobolo wrote:

PrivateHudson wrote:Why not limit transport to 1 pop unit and allow fraction of a unit in separate transport?

Suspect this was a conscious decision for the player having to live with suboptimal pops on the planet- which basically means Humans

It would be usefull to be able to remove them though agree (and maybe also send them to invade a well-defended enemy planet as militia

Still can't see how this forces player to anything aside from annoying micro. As it is now the mechanic is rather counter-intuitive, I remember the chilling realization I just doomed ~200k colonists to 'disappearance'.

After my last game, I encountered an enemy fielding force lances for the first time.

Those weapons are maybe a bit much. They are probably better than every direct fire weapon up to and including plasma cannons, because they suffer from no range dissipation and have the 'extra range' modification to make them enjoy that feature. They don't even require heavy mounts (which lets them double as ghetto-PD).

30 damage per hit, stronger than primary beams at 18 (minus range dissipation and less range), and plasma (25-50 doesn't even get close to the 60 average of two force lances). The only stronger weapons are Hellbore and Stellar Surge beams, which have significantly higher research costs.

On top of that, the shield piercing destroys anyone not aggressively chasing the top tier shields.

The default behavior for retreats in systems where you have a colony can be degenerate. If you can't defend a planet and retreat, by default it puts you a turn away from the same system. In the case such as, for instance, a recent game of mine where it turns out Star Harpy reinforcements including a Mediator were a turn out from a system I just established a new colony on by clearing out the basic Star Harpies, your fleet can be stuck perpetually pinging back to the same system until destroyed. Either default behavior should be changed, or you should have some option to set a target system you control for retreats.

Why do Marauders want influence in exchange for cease-fire? If I understand correctly, influence is a measure of reputation. I believe, Marauders, being inreputable (is this a word?) by definition, would accept for peace exactly the fee they requested (and were denied) at first contact. At most correct the price tag for updated conditions. In other words, what good is your reputation for them? They only care about money. IMHO, this would help to further differentiate Marauders and normal factions, giving former a bit more flavour. One could come out with all sorts of cheesy dialog for this interaction (Well, did you finally come to proper assessment of out protection services at and around Xxx system? etc).

PrivateHudson wrote:Why do Marauders want influence in exchange for cease-fire?

Though I like the idea of differentiation, it does make sense in my opinion to use influence as the basis cost in all sorts of interaction with any other faction

Reason being: Unlike "normal" ressources, influence is not a thing the other party actually gets in return for the exchange. I always imagined it to be a measure of soft-diplomatic power and as such it gets expended withouth the other party gaining anything for it directly. It just represents a factions indirect (political) power.

As such, even a lowlife criminal organisation might pay more attention to the requests of an empire which can manipulate most other empires around it.

You might also imagine Marauder factions as stadalone principalities that do tend to keep some basic diplomatic conenctions for selling slaves - which they can only do during peace. Their business is raiding and selling and not war (except when they are hired as mercs but we shall not talk of this heressy here )

PrivateHudson wrote:Why do Marauders want influence in exchange for cease-fire? If I understand correctly, influence is a measure of reputation. I believe, Marauders, being inreputable (is this a word?) by definition, would accept for peace exactly the fee they requested (and were denied) at first contact. At most correct the price tag for updated conditions. In other words, what good is your reputation for them? They only care about money. IMHO, this would help to further differentiate Marauders and normal factions, giving former a bit more flavour. One could come out with all sorts of cheesy dialog for this interaction (Well, did you finally come to proper assessment of out protection services at and around Xxx system? etc).

Influence and Reputation are two different metrics. Reputation is the level of respect (or lack thereof) that the other faction has for you, which determines whether they are willing to deal with you; Influence is an abstract measure of international "credit" that you have earned which allows you to apply diplomatic pressure on other factions. Though Marauders are essentially pirates, they also do business in the international community, and so they are not immune to political pressure.

Having a Haduir governor image for Haduir splinter colonies would be nice. At the moment, all Ashdar splinter colonies use a Teros governor image, even if they're mono-Haduir in population.

nweismuller wrote:Having a Haduir governor image for Haduir splinter colonies would be nice. At the moment, all Ashdar splinter colonies use a Teros governor image, even if they're mono-Haduir in population.

Good point - Human colony leader also looks unique and especially pirate and merc leaders look innovative and interesting (besides being clearly different from the main Human faction characters portraits)

Slave Collar tech researchable when planet with slaves is conquered (just like when buying slaves from Marauders)