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Comments from new comer - 10/3/2010 6:25:11 PM

vanfanel

Posts: 3
Joined: 10/3/2010
Status: offline

Hi everybody, I'm new here and have some comments about DW. First of all I have to say DW is really a great game which also have potential to move forwards. Anyway, I have some comments and recommendations on this game as follows.

1) Colonization
- The automatic colonization is very convenient and I would like to have more functions:
a) Opinions to choose target; for example, I would like to colonize any planets with quality only over "50%" to avoid extra burden from poor planets.
b) Second action after colonization. I like to build a small star station in every planet. It's exhausting when I have to build them manually. It's better to have an opinion to set a targeted facility to build(not only star station).
c) If "b" is not adoptable, please add a "latest colonized planets list" on the screen(eg. like the treaty notification at the left side). So I don't need to check the fast rolling information and get to the planets directly without clicking too much buttons.

2) Fleet
- Please correct me if I'm wrong. When the leader ship of a fleet is destroyed, the whole fleet will be judged to "defected". All the remind ships will turn to enemy side but not shift the leader to another ship and continue to fight in the battle. If it's true, please check the possibility of shifting leader, or let the reminds escape from battle, rather than the current "defected" situation.
- When a fleet is organized, all the ships will stop and wait for orders. Can we have better opinions, for example, let then patrol or attack certain area/races automatically like an individual ship? I know there is a similar function to suggest our ships and fleets to attack, but they are in different approaches.

3) Weapons
- DW have 4 kind of weapons: short and long range, area, and bombing weapons. As some players have suggested before, it's strongly advice to add more weapons in different types and usages. I have tried "Gratuitous Space Battles2" recently and their weapon system is really great. Complexity allows more strategic design on ships and any military facilities. For example, a long range nuclear missile can be launched from outer ring of a system to a target planet. We need to build a monitor station or intercept system in strategic area to prevent such kind of attack.

4) Experience System
- Maybe it's not a very good idea and will generate too much data, but is it possible to let the ships gain experience from battles like "Starcraft 2"? For example, an elite destoryer could be benefited from extra targeting accuracy, firing damage, or damage control ability...etc.
- Only elite ships achieved enough experience could develop into powerful ships which could not be build. They will be lethal killing machines with limits in number... but increase the voice of peacenik and lower the loyalty...something like that.

5) Special Facilites
- Like the "World XXXXXX" series capital ships, we have to find mysterious facilites in the universe and repair/rebuild them back to functional status.
a) For example, a special star station which can build special battle ships. We have to decide to ignore it so to prevent wars with other races, or try our very best to keep it in our pocket.
b) A special planet with rich and unique material (only one in the whole universe). Any race can be benefited from income (trade) or technology development from it.
c) A heroic commander with his/her mysterious fleet in the universe somewhere. We have to try our very best to defect him and invite him to our country. Special battleship could be built, some military benefit or employ him as our alliance rather than controllable army (something like the pirates).

6) User Interface improvement
- Some minor but better improvement are welcomed as follows.
a) Independent construction yard window - fast and convenient to access every yards and stations.
b) Add "retire immediately" in the ship list window. The current version only allow "retire" and it's impossible to terminate the heavily damaged ships which cannot move anymore.
c) Add "go to capital planet" in the planet map. In my every first strike to my enemy, their capital always be the prior and best target. But it's quite difficult to find the capital when there are too much colonies.
d) Add "capacity limit" in the ship building window, like xxx/230 rather then only current capacity so we don't need to return to previous window to check.
e) Add a category of "Custom design" in the ship design check list window. When we click on "custom" opinion of the blueprint, only those custom ship design will be listed when we choose "custom design" (like the "latest design").
f) Add "Macro Retrofit" to simply the retrofit process of the whole series as an opinion. For example, I have 100 destoryers of "A design" and 20 Capital Ships in "B design", I just need to click 2 buttons and finish the work.
g) Player cannot set construction ships to fleets in the ship list window. Sometimes I would like to create a construction fleet to repair the big alien capital ships together, but the fleet system seems not allow such kind of action(?).

Finally please forgive my poor english. I enjoy DW very much and expecting another hugh
and great patch in the coming future. Of course, also thanks to all the kind player whom
provided fantastic mods. Cheers.

Van

P.S. I'm a Macross and Cowboy Bebop fans and 3 fighters are added in my every game.

Post #: 1

RE: Comments from new comer - 10/3/2010 9:31:59 PM

fabio80mi

Posts: 57
Joined: 3/26/2010
Status: offline

Welcome to the forums and to the game!
This will be a very fast reply ( quite busy with other things) but since you like Macross i already like you :)
Some of the suggestions you made have already been made in the previous months and many of them have strong merits.
Vanilla game is on "hold" since a couple of months because an expansion is on the works and it will likely be ready to release in a few months.
I'm sure some of the suggestions you made are already designed for this expansions and if they're not i hope the future betatester will consider them to be included in the final release.
I completely agree for the weapon and user interface improvements, i'd like to see more options avaiable to direct the AI governors (like you suggest for colonization) and indeed more variety with special events (or special threats like in SOTS) are always welcome! :D

(in reply to vanfanel)

Post #: 2

RE: Comments from new comer - 10/4/2010 1:24:22 PM

Aures

Posts: 343
Joined: 9/13/2010
Status: offline

Hi vanfanel, go bebop.

I am waiting to see what is in the works for the expansion. But I do have some comments, mostly about how to deal with these issues as the game currently stands:

1a) Having more options for when the AI is set to fully automate or suggest would be nice. Currently you are probably better off using the expansion planner and setting colonization to "Suggest new colonies". The only difference between suggest and fully automate is that the AI asks you before going ahead. If you select "show me first" then you can check out the planet and deny any requests to colonise poor quality planets. Personally I use the expansion planner and manually assign them most of the time.

1b) Yeah this can be a pain, see my comment about 1c for how to make it a bit easier.

1c) If you open the colonies screen (F4) there is a column (Pop.) that displays the population of the colony. If you click on the column header it will sort your colonies by population. If you have the colonies with the lowest populations at the top, they will generally be the most recently colonised planets.

You can also access notifications of new colonies by opening the message history screen (H key or click on the top icon to the right of the scrolling message window) to see all of your messages. You do not need to notice/act on the new colony message while it is in the scrolling message window.

If you turn on popup messages for colony gain or loss in the options menu a notification will appear on the right hand side of your screen when you gain or lose a colony.

2) I have never had an issue with the lead ship in a fleet being destroyed. Another ship becomes the lead ship, I have never encountered a case where the rest of the fleet defects.

You can order a fleet to patrol etc but I agree with you, some equivalent of the auto option for fleets would be good.

4) An experience system could be pretty simple, most RTS games that use them have a single number that is gradually raised by certain actions. Agents in DW have that kind of system. I am not sure I agree with directly assigning experience to ships, something like the admiral system used in total war (in Medieval 2:Total war a fleet of ships had an admiral that gained experience but was not tied to any particular ship) would be more suitable. I do disagree with your idea that certain designs could only be built by upgrading elite ships.

5b) The 3 ultra rare luxury resources only appear on a very small number of planets (in my experience 2 worlds each on 1400 star maps), I'm not sure your suggestion is substantially different to what already exists.

6a) There is a Construction Yard screen you can access by pressing F6 or clicking on the bottom left icon in bank of icons that appear down the bottom of the screen (looks like a crane arm). Please forgive me if you were suggesting a change to how that functions, but it is not clear to me whether you are aware it exists.

6b) This is an annoying interface issue. From the ships and bases window you currently you have to select the ship, close the window and then use ctrl+right click to bring up the menu that will let you select the option "Retire>Scrap Ship immediately". It would be nice to be able to do this en masse from the ship list. Or just to be able to use ctrl+right click to bring up command options without closing the ships list. It is possible to immediately scrap multiple ships at once, but you have to multi-select them in the main screen.

6c) If you are in sector view mode (Insert key) or closer there will be a gold star before the name of any system that contains an Empire's capital. If you open the Diplomacy screen it will tell you the capital planet and system of any empire you have made contact with. Unfortunately I am not aware of a method for going directly to a system based on its name. If one doesn't exist it would be a really useful thing to add, as anyone who has a spent significant amount of time looking around for a particular system will know.

6d) I think I initially misread this comment. If you mean the design window should always tell you the max size you can currently build then this is not needed, as soon as you exceed that size a warning will appear saying you have done so and the current max size you can build. Initially I thought you meant the maximum size your design can support with its current life support/hab modules should be displayed next to the size. That I would like to see, it would be very handy and easy to do. At the moment the best you can do is be aware of the different support capacities and add/remove components to find the limit by trial and error.

6e) I don't think there is currently a distinction as far as the game is concerned between custom built ships and AI designed ones. It would not be straightforward to define what should count as a custom design and what as an AI design.

6f) If you open the ship list and select several ships you can press the retrofit button and issue retrofit orders to all of them at once to whatever design you want. They could add an option to the design screen to mass retrofit a particular design but I can think of many things I would rather have them spend time on before doing that.

6g) No you cannot add constructor ships, exploration ships etc into a fleet. If you want to there is nothing to stop you copying a constructor ship, changing the role to a military role (eg cap ship), sticking on a weapon and then building that design. The AI will not use it as a construction ship but if you select the ship you can order it to build, repair etc. Additionally it will have about a third the maintenance fee of a constructor ship with the same design, perfect for a fleet of ships dedicated to clearing out a debris field. You will not be able order them to repair etc when you have the fleet or multiple ships selected. The fact they are in a fleet will make keeping track of them, refueling them etc easier though.

PS: Do your designs that use the Sword Fish II graphic have a death ray on them? Seems fitting given the big main gun on the thing.

PPS: My wall of text addiction is obviously getting worse, apologies to all.

(in reply to vanfanel)

Post #: 3