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Rustyallan -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (4/28/2010 3:37:04 PM)
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Long post warning!
Hello all. Let me just start by thanking the devs and Matrix for such an awesome game. It's definitely helping me out with my empire-building fix. :D
Moving on from that - since this is the wish list thread and I want to stay on topic ;) - here are some thoughts that I had while playing. I started 2 days ago with 1.03, killed myself with lag in mid-late game with all the ship-spam, found 1.04b2 and restarted a new game or two there. Here are some of the things that struck me while playing that. I have, unfortunately, not yet had time to read through this entire thread (too busy playing since I only heard of it 2 days ago and needed an empire-building fix). But I did review the consolidated list to see what was already being considered/worked on. Some of this is overlap with my take on it.
-Global queues.
Simply put (but not-so-simply implemented?), I really really really like this idea for colonization, ship construction, and base construction.
A colonization queue would have the player tagging planets to be colonized and allow you to change the order with move-up / move-down buttons. The nearest available colony ship would be routed to that planet. This should be on a counter (check end-of-day?) rather than as each ship is completed so that it reduces the chance of multiple ships crossing paths to colonize a planet on the other side. Ships near completion could be assigned a target as well.
A ship-build queue would allow the player to request X number of ship Y and have them built at your bases *in order of fastest build speed*. If I ask for 10 colony ships, I don't want them snapped up by my ten slowest planets first. Some consideration should be taken into account for planets that produce at 400 vs 50. If I have 5 planets producing at 400, 2 at 100, and 4 at 50, the 4 at 50 should not be assigned any of the 10 as the 5 at 400 would finish them all faster building 2 each. The same would apply to spaceport shipyards, but I think to a lesser degree.
A base-build queue would have the player tagging where to build a particular type of base. When a construction ship completes the current job, it then grabs the job from the queue which is closest to the current location. There could be a priority flag as well and construction ships would choose the closest of those jobs first.
When there is nothing in the base build queue, how do the construction ships prioritize? They should focus first on your inhabited systems, then slowly work out from those. Repairing damaged ships might have a slightly higher priority though.
Drag-and-drop for changing the order of queues would be ideal, but I don't see that implemented anywhere else and expect it would be even more of a major engineering change.
-Auto-design problems
I noticed this in the early game. I obtained a torpedo tech and suddenly couldn't select destroyers to be built by my bases. The reason was that the destroyer size was now at 205 and my max capacity was 200.
Auto-design formula should take into account the current shipyard tech. If I have SY-100, limit destroyers to a max size of 200. For SY-200, limit cruiser designs to 330. And for SY-300, limit capital ships to 500. At SY-100, should cruisers and capital ships even be designed?
Weapons/components that aren't used in an auto-design should be reevaluated, or the auto-design formula should be changed.
The example that caught my eye is the Shatterforce Laser which comes after the Impact Assault Blaster D5. The D5 is chosen instead because it does more damage at a slightly faster rate, but does so at half the range with damage loss to the point that it does just as much damage at all but stepping-on-toes-range. There are advantages to both weapons and ideally there would be a mix of them, but the shatterforce laser is completely left out of any auto-designed ships. A destroyer uses 4 beam weapons and a 50/50 split would be good, while larger ships should emphasize the higher-damage weapon more. A median damage rate-at-range calculation might make sense.
-Refits
Change the behavior of the refit button on the ships list so that it adds a refit order to the queue rather than forcing the current task to cancel. This would allow ships to complete their current escort/patrol/attack before seeking a base to refit at.
Add a button in the design screen to queue a refit for all ships of a design. I want to upgrade all my really old frigates to this awesome new design, but leave the last generation's frigates alone since there's really not much difference. (none sometimes)
I'll add my voice to wanting refit ships to be renamed to their new class name, but only when they're originally class names. It's nice seeing some of the bigger ships with unique names. And I'll admit it was cool to notice that my first destroyer is still in service and recently upgraded, unless that's just a new one that was randomly assigned the same name. /ponder
Auto-refit of really old ships/ports/bases.
At the end of the new auto-design task, evaluate previous auto-designs for queuing a refit.
A refit on all *automated* ships, bases, and ports of an old design should be queued when any of the following is true.
maintenance is at least x% lower.
firepower increases by at least x% (calculated by median damage@range?)
shield effectiveness increases by at least x%
engine/power plant efficiency increases by at least x%
new relevant mining tech is used
at least 50% of the lab or plant modules are upgraded.
Base auto-refits aren't workable without a global queue. If that is added, the refits should be flagged as priority in the queue.
There should be an option under advanced to toggle auto-refits on and off, perhaps with a percentage box as well.
-Randomness
More construction ships should be "suggested"
I find myself manually queuing colony ships to be built at the fastest planets, and usually build 1 construction for every 3-5 colony ships to keep my economy flowing and get damaged ships repaired. I only just started this, but it seems to be helping. I'll test the idea further when I start a new game.
Early game, it's very easy to go red just adding a couple of colonies, then takes years to be back in the black. This happened to me with a few colonies and pirates whittled away my fleet til I had 2 frigates and a destroyer left. After letting it run and stabilize (in a few game years), it's hard to make myself go red, but right at the start, it took no effort at all. After it stabilized, I started colonizing like crazy. I'm eagerly awaiting the economy changes in the new patches so we'll see on this. I'll also prioritize building some extra construction ships from the start.
Why are savegames stored in a normally hidden folder? (Application Data)
5-10min savegames are the pits, but it gives me time to check the forums or chat with my girlfriend. While troubleshooting to see if it was my anti-virus causing problems, I ran procmon and noticed that it was getting "FASTIO IS DISALLOWED" errors writing every chunk of the save file. At the end, I noted the writefile had "I/O Flags: Non-cached." After some quick checks on these, I came up with .NET has problems streaming a transaction file or database backup to disk. Is there a work-around that could speed up the saves? I auto-save in case the game crashes, but 5min+ is not fun. It's a nice break every 45-60min though. :D
The messages log needs more filter types. One for each message type? Checkboxes to filter out what you don't want to see would be very nice. All/non-battle/history just doesn't quite cut it when I want to find that planet I saw mentioned where I found some particular ruins.
An option in settings to disable or quiet the $%#& alert sound would be reallllllllllly nice. (I saw the mods and will be checking out the alternatives.)
Take care!
Rusty
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