RE: Master Wishlist Thread

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Astax -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (5/30/2010 9:17:56 PM)
Add Recruit Troopx5 to the menu. Also a way to Build Destroyer x5 and such would be nice :)

Locarnus -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (5/30/2010 9:28:40 PM)
Ave, I like the "living galaxy" feeling of this game and imho it has great potential. But it looks like one of the most common roots of inconvinience is not adressed well enough. That is the emphasis on features itself rather then their interdependencies. Therefore I will address two of the most game-breaking problems here, because I have a feeling that this game has the support from customers and devs to make it worthwhile (although the modding restrictions are surprisingly self-injurious from the dev side [8\|]). 1. Colonization a: Race specific planet colonization b: Colonization specific system-ownership a+b: Race specific system-ownership => I cant claim my directly neighboring system with 10 planets while some species from the other end of the galaxy can, just because the system has no continental planet. There goes the Korabbian spice which is just in front of me... Solution: Races have pop limit of 30mio for "non-colonizable" solid planets (non gas giant). Result: System claim by sort of a mining biosphere. ie Still a colony ship needed (which should be 10 times more expansive, as was recommended), still "upkeep" for the mini colony required (as was also asked for, so this would be ruinous to do for every solid planet, but is worthwhile to claim a system). 30 mio means that a later colony by another race is still smaller and may be purchased per diplomacy. transformation from limited to unlimited status when researching appropriate colonization tech (eg marsh, desert for humans) Additional possibility: increase pop limits per already existing habitation tech-tree, eg to 50, 75 aso. 2. Player Challenge (I think I already read something in this direction within this forum) a: Aggressiveness slider should increase player challenge by decreasing AI diplomatic cooperation b: # of AI empires should increase challenge by increased competition for resources c: Pirate activity should increase challenge by increasing threat of hostile ships a+b: more AIs, each less likely to engage in diplomacy ie because player can "buy" treaties (trade, alliances) nearly like before, but ai does not -> 2a+2b has an ambigous effect on player (less resources, but more trade partners, more enemies, but more allies and smaller enemies), but a strictly negative effect on AIs (less rescources, and less trade partners, more enemies, and less allies, smaller enemies cancels out here, because both AI empires are smaller) solution: additional setting for aggressiveness only towards player a+b+c: Player kills pirates -> higher reputation, because of fixed pirate number and less AI emphasis to kill pirate bases (especially for the now weaker AI empires, see above) -> persistent bases in AI territory -> pirates will harass mainly AI empires later on -> game much easier for player small solution: pirates concentrate more on richer empires/colonies (most likely the player) and are willing to travel some distance for it, eg korabbian spice mining stations need more permanent protection. 3. Map generation a: Random ai placement b: 3 categories to set distance from player a+b: no control over ai placement in relation to other ai players => tendency for clustering of ai starting locations (simple statistics - see "birthday paradox") ie kind of a multiplication factor for the problems discussed in 2. solution: settings for minimum distances between empires Aside from the military incapabilities of the ai these three factors are just game breaking for me. I can not establish some kind of territory because of 1 and because of 2&3 I can not make the game more of a challenge. I like the game and would recommend it to others, if only those 3 were fixed. edit: since no one posted after me I just edit in here 2 minors from other threads 4. split tutorials according to automatisation possibilities so that after a basic tutorial one can just watch a specific one right before turning off this particular field of automatisation and take over 5. Request refuelling rightclick so that deep space installations/the resupply ship can request private fuel supply manually and it is afterwards automatically (thus earlier than normally) recognized by private sector

SeattleKCD -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/1/2010 10:57:03 PM)
The ship list screen has button for commanding selected ships to refuel or refit, how about adding option to retire/scrap?

Rugby9 -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/2/2010 3:40:22 PM)
Several small things I would like to see. 1. Exploration ships continue to explore areas for anomalies when you get a map of an area. They consistently miss planets with ruins and I have to manually assign a ship to go there and find out what it is. 2. Have the lists, like the potential colony list, not reset to the top when you assign a ship to a planet. Also have the ships list rmember where you were so when you open it up you are at the last place you left it. 3. Ships in manual control will stay on patrol. They currently stop after a short period and have to be re-assigned. Patrolling a gas giant (pirate spawn point) while waiting for a contstructor to arrive causes problems. Thanks -J

WoodMan -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/2/2010 4:33:15 PM)
Hey guys! New to the game, playing my first Empire at the moment. Most thingsa are already covered in this thread, but I have one suggestion and I'm not sure if it's already mentioned, sorry if it is. It would be good to get a notification when an AI Empire declares war on another AI Empire and also a notification when peace is declared between two AI Empires. In my first game I was fighting an enemy Empire and I asked an Ally to declare war on them too. They agreed and went to war, but then ended the war without me being notified, so I thought my ally was still helping me and then I notice in the diplomacy screen that they are no longer at war!! [:-] Something else similar happened aswell, I was fighting a war against a neighbour and all of a sudden another Empire suffered a civil war and broke in half, the new faction then immediately declared war on me saying they had been persuaded by another Empire. All this was really cool, so much going on in this lively galaxy, then they send a massive fleet to one of my planets and attempt an invasion, I decided I couldn't fight two factions and once and so I negotiated an end to the war with my neighbour so I could concentrate on this new faction that was attacking me, but when I did this my war with the new faction was also ended without any annoucement telling me so, I didn't realise the war was over and was still preparing to attack them! So my suggestion is a notification of all wars between AI races you have discovered and also of course a notification of when an enemy stops a war with YOU. I guess the reason the war with them ended is because they had been bribed to fight me by the other empire I was at war with, but some kind of notification that both Empires were no longer at war with me would have been helpful. Good game guys! and great to see a developer who is actually interested in supporting their product and communicating with the players, that's exceptionally rare these days!

Locarnus -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/2/2010 5:05:04 PM)
@Woodman This may be asked for already, but some diplomacy addition springs to mind here: I want to be able to ask an empire to end a war with another empire. Kind of british strategy to balance the rest. So to stop the attacks on a neighbor, who is a really good buyer of my z-fluids, whereas the attacker is a really bad trade partner.

Yarasala -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/2/2010 10:38:25 PM)
Since Erik stated that wishes are only save to be remebembered when in this thread I copied together all my suggestions from all my posts other than this one. I apologize for the resulting long and difficult to read post [;)] - Ability to set a maximum and minimum number of troops per planet. Troops are automatically recruited until the maximum is reached. When a troop transport fetches troops the minimum number is left at the planet so as to not strip it of all ground defenses. Of course the AI should be able to uses that system also. - Troop transports keep the "load troops" order until they are full. For that they stay at the planet where they began loading troops although that may last longer than going somewhere else but prevents them from scattering and moving far away in search of troops. Or even better, make it two separate commands so that the player (and the AI) can decide according to the situation at hand. - Ideally there should be an option whether the most or the least experienced troops should go on board of troop carriers. - Show the destination of a selected ship or fleet in the main view as an arrow that connects the current location and the destination. - Slow down hyperspace travel or increase fuel consumption (or provide a slider for those two). In my eyes the galaxy feels too small from mid game on despite having 1000 systems, because it's no real problem to fly to the other side of the galaxy in a comparatively time. - Let the AI not choose targets half a galaxy away. In my last game it happened quite often that the AI proposed such targets although there were enough other targets in much shorter distance. - More special objects (in the sense of variation, not number; but I admit that I may not have seen everything since I played only two games so far). Decrease number of derelict ship fields and let explorers stumble about things like abandoned research stations, hostile robot space stations, alien fleets of another galaxy with varying intentions, secret spy stations of a long gone empire, a planet without sun in deep space, a damaged freight ship without crew, but valuable goods, etc. I would like the possibility to discover a lot of different things, some with very small probabilities so that they are not in every game. I like the idea that not only the highest tech can be traded but all lower techs as well. Would it be so difficult to just list them together with all current techs the empires trading which each other don't have yet? I have another idea which I fear is much harder to implement but which models "real life" behaviour much better in my opinion: make it possible to trade components instead of the tech itself! How would it be to approach another empire and ask them: "Please give me 10 death ray cannons in exchange for x"? Those cannons would then have to be produced by the giving empire and actually shipped to the receiver's next starbase (and are prone to pirate attacks and whatever on the way ...). The receiver could then use those components to build ships or bases, or he/she could decide to disassemble one or more of them to boost his/her own knowledge of that tech a bit (but not too much; I think, the more advanced the tech is the smaller the gain should be. Imagine you give a tank to a tribe of barbarians running around with bow and arrows, what could they do with it?). And one suggestion as well: if we have an agent in deep cover within an empire, give us information about the number of enemy counterintelligence agents. About colony spamming: I suggested in the wishlist thread to increase the distances between the systems or at least the fuel consumption. Right now the galaxy feels really small because you can travel from one end to the other pretty soon in a relatively short time. Apart from making the game feel bigger, more epic, greater distances (or strongly increased fuel consumption) could also help avoiding colony spamming, because when there are only a handful of colonies in range as opposed to now, when there are dozens and dozens, there would be nothing to spam to ... Edit: even better: make fuel consumption an option so that every player can adjust that to his/her liking. That would be a very minor change in my opinion with the potential to vary the game tremendously. It would be a very big difference if distances take ten times as much time to cover than now, the game would develop much slower and in another way, also resupply ships would gain a lot of strategic importance. And again, make it an option with a slider where you can adjust fuel consumption for travel (not for weapon usage!) between 1 (the current consumption) and, say, 20 (use 20 times as much fuel). Edit #2: Or make fuel consumption at least moddable! I just managed for the first time to destroy an enemy empire. But: is it normal that there is no message whatsoever about that fact? I just received all their remaining ships and the empire disappeared silently from the diplomacy screen, but nothing else happened ... feels a bit disappointing I don't know the solution, but have the problem myself: how can I retrofit (privately owned) mining stations at all? I mean, I don't want them to have the ability to self-retrofit like Astax, but do it with a constructor, but I seem not to be able to find a possibility to do so ... There should be a better way to do it: - Provide constructors with a respective command * and / or * - Make the private sector update their assets regularly (and provide the player with some feedback about that, because I don't like when I don't know what's going on in my empire; it's ok when I elect to not micromanage, but there should be the possiblilty to find out what happens when I choose to do so) About the tech tree: I'm definitely for expanding it a lot! Perhaps this would then also solve two current issues? They are: - Messages appearing very shortly after one another so that the first message gets auto-replied with the default answer - Game not really pausing when the AI "does" diplomacy. It happens very often to me that I pause the game and 30 seconds after that the AI begins nagging me with several diplomatic messages with on top of that un-pause the game on answering ... If there is a scrolling list as suggested then I suppose it should function in the way that as long as a message is in the list the offer is valid, and it clicked on, the normal diplomatic screen appears and the game is paused until the screen is closed. But then the game is only un-paused when it was running before the message was opened, otherwise it stays in pause mode. I'm against detailling more and more specific resources, that wouldn't bring any new strategic elements into the game imo (perhaps apart from food, but to simulate that adequately a lot of work would be needed). But I'm all for making more of the resources already in the game. I too experienced no special difficulties from lack of certain resources. A game concept you never need to care about is unnecessary, so change the resource handling to make it important again. First step could be to increase resource costs for certain components or reduce the abundance of certain resources. I would prefer the latter, then I would again enjoy finding planets with those resources. As it is now, one planets looks like every other and the resources on it don't really matter. I miss the sense of wonder I had when finding a Gaia planet in MoO2 or a quality 20 planet or one with a 7 x research tile in GalCiv2. I want something similar in DW, either by making some resources scarce and / or decreasing ruin abundance and make their bonuses more varied and / or ... Second step could be to introduce new resources that are not raw materials but semi-finished products that have to be generated in specialized factories (which need new components and a new branch in the tech tree) out of raw materials (e. g. 10 steel + 3 gold + 1 nekros stone = <insert fancy name here> alloy). Would be more work than step one but still less than introducing a food system i think. quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir the safest method would be to make the chances of each resource to appear on a plaent 1/A what it is now, but increase the production by a factor of A, with A being probably 5 to 10 (except for the three 3 super resources, korbebian spice, loros fruit, and zentabia fluid which remain the same)? overall the same amount produced AND consumed in the entire galaxy, but they are concentrated to individual planets, making said planets valuable and most planets are consumers only. Thus there are actual "strategic planets" instead of "how many ocean planets I own" its "do I own one of the few ocean planets that exports dilithium crystals?) This would be interesting... it would be a drastic change though... not sure how well it would work. Not sure if I am for it or against (I have mixed feelings about the idea).. this would certainly make mining bases less useless. (in fact, they would become very useful!) That's quite good an idea and along the lines of my first step. And to mitigate any unpredictable game changes coming from that: make your "A" a moddable variable quote: ORIGINAL: Astax quote: ORIGINAL: Yarasala - Make colony spamming impossible I wouldn't go that far. There are some races/governments that should still have the option. It makes the game more diverse. That's why I wish they make the mechanism moddable Edit: better still, make it moddable on a per race base quote: ORIGINAL: Barleyman quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir 10x the cost for a colony ship with 10x the pop when you require that it REMOVE said pop from the planet that built it makes NO SENSE! If colony ships stop producing colonists out of thin air, then there is no reason to EVER pay more for a colony ship... because passenger ships could and would easily make up any deficit by moving people around. It also makes the loss of a colony ship devastating, its very expensive AND carries many precious citizens... You're talking like colonizing another planet shouldn't be expensive undertaking with failure being devastating? That's how it is in most 4X games and it seems to work pretty good too. Let's say the aim is to slow down colony spam - Making the ships expensive and fresh colonies resource/money sinks would force you to consider your options instead of spreading through the map like a proverbial locusts. Cf sword of the stars how this can work. Agreed, like stated in another thread. Obviously that is an important point that a lot of players (at least of those who write in this forum ) want to see changed. And again I vote for a (moddable / optional) possibilty to reduce the range of ships drastically. But I also like the possibility to (optionally) increase the price of colony ships. To make them take their pop from the planet instead of from thin air would be preferable, but surely harder to implement. Btw, independent colonies do benefit you because the pop is higher and the colony gives you more profit faster. I would also like an option to increase unrest the more different species are at the same planet (what may be further influenced by a tolerance setting per race and / or government type), but along with a possibility to somehow control which species goes where. This control doesn't need to be absolute, just a setting like "prefer colonists of race X" per planet would do if then passenger ships try to gradually ship race X to the planet and ship all other races away. And, about the problem that you need certain races to colonize certain planet types: introduce terraforming tech like in so many other 4x space games (whatever terraforming is for a specific race ). Point defence! IMO the best solution to that would be if the AI just maintained a common list of explorable locations and every explorer would just pick the next unassigned location from there and mark it as assigned. Of course then the AI must keep track of explorers not fulfilling their assignment because of pirates / space monsters / enemy ships etc. quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir quote: ORIGINAL: Yarasala quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir quote: ORIGINAL: Locarnus dont like the extra window idea. right now i must click often enough to design/redesign/update a ship, with windows the opening and closing ro each component would be tiresome I agree, I don't like it either... but it the only passable way of having a system where "newer" components are not better/the same in all metrics, instead having a "next gen" tech sacrifice one area of performance for another. Either you go with the multiple windows and very complex but robust system... or just drop that nod towards "realism" and just have it where every component is in every way shape or form superior to the previous generation component (which is how I prefer GAMES to play) If newer componenets are better in every respect than older ones, you take away a decision from the players what would not be a good thing. I prefer the current system but the handling of components of different tech levels in a design needs to be much better, to that I agree fully. It IS a good thing to take away that decision... Too much "decisions" means cumbersome micromanagement... There are lots of design decisions you can and should be making, using obsolete tech because its in some way better means having to deeply analyze and understand every single tech component, and then calculate which one to use... it is a PITA and it is VERY frustrating when you try to implement an "upgrading" system (click a button to upgrade all components on the ship), a working AI (normally the AI would just use the latest gen tech), or just play the game without having to understand it to that level. Tech X > Tech X-1 is one of the most fundamental things for a game. We don't need this kind of "choice" where tech X might or might not be better than tech X-1 (because it might be a trap) thank you very much. By "we" you mean "you" ... Obviously we have a different opinion about that matter, we'll see what route the game will take. Anyway, I would like those decisions that are in no way cumbersome to me. And about the AI and upgrading, yes, it would be more difficult for it to find the best solution, but I don't find it too hard to implement. Just give the AI some "focus" attributes per component area, e. g. "speed" for hyperdrives so it will always upgrade to the fastest drive. I described elsewhere how the upgrade button could work: if pressed, check the design(s) and upgrade only those components that are most advanced and leave all others alone. But if the player could also specify "focus" like the AI, then the upgrade button could follow the same logic. quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir Now, if you want to implement different "types" of components, thats where differentiation comes into play... you could have it as different types of weapons (aka, lasers, mass drivers, missiles)... or you could have some other sort of categorization... such as "long range lasers" vs "short range lasers"... but its better to have those as "modifiers" like in MOO2 (maybe somewhat improved)... ideally you would want them both to work off of the same tech and be a design choice the player applies; such as bigger mount or small mount. And each weapon tech should be better then the previous one (something that sadly was not the case with moo2... i just finished a game of it this very second...) I could live with those modifications but I think that would need to much alteration of the current system to be viable (but of course I may be wrong). Furthermore I do not see the difference in AI decision finding and upgrading per button with those modifications compared to the system with components that are not better everywhere than their predecessors, it seems even more complicated to me ...

Yarasala -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/2/2010 10:44:26 PM)
And another very small but very helpful wish: - Make drop down lists of comboboxes long enough so that you don't have to scroll to access the items at the bottom of the list (examples: type selection in "Ships & Bases" screen; view selection in galaxy map).

DarthPrincey -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/2/2010 11:01:23 PM)
(Re-posting this in Wish List as requested by Erik) Hi, One improvement I has hoping for was increased control for the Popup message filters, specifically the "Under Attack" checkbox. Let me explain my reasons, once my empire gets to a certain size I start getting spammed with these messages. 95% of them are a waste of time as it is a freighter under attack from a pirate escort or one of my exploration ships under attack from an enemy frigate. This effectively makes this feature useless as I find I ignore all messages or when it gets really bad I have to uncheck the checkbox and not get any. And I'm sure that is what many people will do and forget it. But I really do want to know if a pirate of destroyer or above is wiping out my freight lines or an enemy capital ship is attacking something as this could be much more serious. There are many ways I can see this being fixed. A fairly simple one would be to include a sub menu with ship class checkboxes that you want to receive "Under Attack" messages about. So for example I could check Escorts, Frigates, Exploration ships, Small, Medium and Large Freighters. The attack messages are in two parts, the first being the ship that is under attack and the second being the ship that is performing the attack. I would see this working as, if both ships in the "Under Attack" popup message are checked then the message would be filtered out and not displayed. some examples... - Escort or Frigate attacks your Freighter - message is filtered out - Escort or Frigate attacks your Exploration ship - message is filtered out - Capital Ship attacks your Escort or Frigate - you get message - Escort or Frigate attacks your Escort or Frigate - message is filtered out - Escort or Frigate (or any ship) attacks you Colony Ship - you get message This is not perfect and I can think of other ways such as create rules but I expect this would take much more work to put in and require more user knowledge to use. The above would provide a basic way to filter out many of the unwanted attack messages. The game encourages you to build and automate your small Escort and Frigate class ships to patrol and defend against other small threats yet I cannot filter out this activity from the popups so I can focus on the important issues such as a Pirate Destroyer/Cruiser wiping out my freight lines and mining bases. Also one final note on "Under Attack" popups, it would be really helpful if you put the class in the working as well, e.g. "Exploration ship �Evil Eye� is under attack from Destroyer �Enemy of the State�. As at the moment i have to go through all my ships and add tags to them so I know what is under attack, for example EXP - Exploration ship, CST - Construction ship, COL - Colony Ship, etc. and yes it does get very time consuming as my empire grows!! Apologies for the large post, I read all these forums but never get round to posting as I seem to be unable to make small posts, once I start they just snowball into essays.

Shark7 -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/3/2010 12:35:09 AM)
Wouldn't mind having a few more filters for the ships list, or even a way to pull up a specific type of ships list without having to open the entire list first (it eventually gets to be a very long, very slow loading list) List Filters: -Escorts -Frigates -Destroyers -Cruisers -Capital Ships -Troop ships -Expoleration Ships -Construction Ships -Colony Ships -Starports Why this? It would make it much easier to retrofit when you make new designs if I could simply pull up 'escorts only' and then a nice 'retrofit all' button would be useful here as well. Another useful item, automatic retrofitting when designs are upgraded. That is the AI will carry out the upgrades as money and needs permit once I update a design. A way for this to work would be: -A check box to 'Automatically Upgrade Ships to new designs' -A slider that sets a percentage of yearly income that the AI can spend on upgrading ships. IE I can set it so it never spends more than 20% of my tax income on automatically upgrading ships. -As with all things, can be over-ridden by direct player input. This would take a measure of micro-management out of the game that revolves around constant updates to ships. After all, if most players are like me after 2-3 new componants are available, I'll upgrade my designs making my entire fleet obsolete and forcing me to go into the shiplist to retrofit since using the fleet screen to control it turns off the automation of my patrol ships.

taltamir -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/3/2010 3:28:05 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yarasala quote: ORIGINAL: Barleyman quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir 10x the cost for a colony ship with 10x the pop when you require that it REMOVE said pop from the planet that built it makes NO SENSE! If colony ships stop producing colonists out of thin air, then there is no reason to EVER pay more for a colony ship... because passenger ships could and would easily make up any deficit by moving people around. It also makes the loss of a colony ship devastating, its very expensive AND carries many precious citizens... You're talking like colonizing another planet shouldn't be expensive undertaking with failure being devastating? That's how it is in most 4X games and it seems to work pretty good too. Let's say the aim is to slow down colony spam - Making the ships expensive and fresh colonies resource/money sinks would force you to consider your options instead of spreading through the map like a proverbial locusts. Cf sword of the stars how this can work. Agreed, like stated in another thread. Obviously that is an important point that a lot of players (at least of those who write in this forum ) want to see changed. And again I vote for a (moddable / optional) possibilty to reduce the range of ships drastically. Please don't misquote things without context... the full quote clarified that I was saying 10x for a colony ship TECH UPGRADE makes no sense. It is plausible to force all colony ships to cost 10x as much, but the suggestion was that tech level 1 colony module cost 5000 credit and transport 1 million people, and that a higher tech level "upgrade" would then cost 50,000 credits and transport 10 million people. therefore it is TECH 2 colony module that would cost 10x as much and transport 10 million colonists in that suggestion... THAT I said makes no sense because it is a huge DOWNGRADE for the colony tech... And I then explained that the various game mechanics that make it so. If you want to increase costs of colony ships it is doable, but: 1. It should not have ANYTHING to do with amount of colonists... there is no need or benefit to forcing it to move 10x more people... if anything, I suggest that colony ships should cost the same but move 1/10 the amount of people the currently move... but that is for ALL colony ships, not for a supposedly "higher tech" colony which is actually a huge freaking downgrade. Why cost the same? because if you make it too expensive it becomes crippling to small empires and to the AI. There are better solutions to the whole issue. Specifically, require that colonists be picked up from a planet instead of manufactured with the ship and then tweak the reproduction rates to suit... thus the limiting factor is not your wealth but your colonists (also makes it attractive to conquer a high population enemy planet.

Yarasala -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/3/2010 8:58:20 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir quote: ORIGINAL: Yarasala quote: ORIGINAL: Barleyman quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir 10x the cost for a colony ship with 10x the pop when you require that it REMOVE said pop from the planet that built it makes NO SENSE! If colony ships stop producing colonists out of thin air, then there is no reason to EVER pay more for a colony ship... because passenger ships could and would easily make up any deficit by moving people around. It also makes the loss of a colony ship devastating, its very expensive AND carries many precious citizens... You're talking like colonizing another planet shouldn't be expensive undertaking with failure being devastating? That's how it is in most 4X games and it seems to work pretty good too. Let's say the aim is to slow down colony spam - Making the ships expensive and fresh colonies resource/money sinks would force you to consider your options instead of spreading through the map like a proverbial locusts. Cf sword of the stars how this can work. Agreed, like stated in another thread. Obviously that is an important point that a lot of players (at least of those who write in this forum ) want to see changed. And again I vote for a (moddable / optional) possibilty to reduce the range of ships drastically. Please don't misquote things without context... the full quote clarified that I was saying 10x for a colony ship TECH UPGRADE makes no sense. It is plausible to force all colony ships to cost 10x as much, but the suggestion was that tech level 1 colony module cost 5000 credit and transport 1 million people, and that a higher tech level "upgrade" would then cost 50,000 credits and transport 10 million people. therefore it is TECH 2 colony module that would cost 10x as much and transport 10 million colonists in that suggestion... THAT I said makes no sense because it is a huge DOWNGRADE for the colony tech... And I then explained that the various game mechanics that make it so. If you want to increase costs of colony ships it is doable, but: 1. It should not have ANYTHING to do with amount of colonists... there is no need or benefit to forcing it to move 10x more people... if anything, I suggest that colony ships should cost the same but move 1/10 the amount of people the currently move... but that is for ALL colony ships, not for a supposedly "higher tech" colony which is actually a huge freaking downgrade. Why cost the same? because if you make it too expensive it becomes crippling to small empires and to the AI. There are better solutions to the whole issue. Specifically, require that colonists be picked up from a planet instead of manufactured with the ship and then tweak the reproduction rates to suit... thus the limiting factor is not your wealth but your colonists (also makes it attractive to conquer a high population enemy planet. I just copied everything together from all my posts in other threads but tried to keep it as short as possible when longer posts were involved. I apologize if I missed something as it seems to be the case. About the issue mentioned: for me only the colony spam reduction is important, and I prefer the way to solve it using reduced ship range, but I could live with another mechanic as well, so I took this point above in my list. Thanks for clarifying what the real issue was.

taltamir -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/3/2010 11:31:44 AM)
no problems. I don't think that there was any ill intent, just glad its clarified. Anyways... So the suggestions are: 1. Require colony ships to pick up actual colonists, not create them Caveats people suggested to that: a. don't allow picking from colonies with less then a certain minimum amount of people. b. don't have the ships deduct colonists on purchase (too many issues with that)... instead, build the ships, then pickup colonists, then colonize a planet... can be done manually to control the species on the ship, or if simply ordered to colonize a planet they will travel to the nearest planet with compatible race. c. perhaps have the colony component simply be the infrastructure, with an actual passenger component (same as used in other designs) needed to transport the people. d. tweak down the reproduction rates to ensure even slower expansion. 2. increase cost of colony module a whole lot... perhaps 10x current value. 3. Limit range. My view on this is, first are we sure that the game would actually be made better (read: more fun) if colonization rushing are halted? I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game. Second, if the developers decide to implement that, use a non harmful method. Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess. Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people... Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game. method 1 seems the safest to me if you are going to implement that change. losing colony ships or colonies will be a severe blow to the population. early expansion is checked in that spreading the population around means moving them from profitable worlds (high culture) to unprofitable ones (0 culture)... and since the population amount accounts for half the culture, then the remaining pop on said planet will also be less profitable now... Conquering planets of other empires or indigenous colonies would become a higher value task as you acquire more people to move around... there will actually be a real cost upfront for building a new colony (of course, eventually it pays off... but in the short term...)

Yarasala -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/3/2010 1:42:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game. Weary or wary? [;)] quote: Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess. Agreed. quote: Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people... Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game. That's why I said to make fuel consumption adjustable by an option or at least moddable. Massive size is not what I would like, increased fuel consumption for colony ships only whould at least somehow be logical and I could live with that as minimal solution.

Locarnus -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/3/2010 2:10:14 PM)
what about reducing the hyperdrive speed, ceteris paribus? so the intra system speed/consumption stays the same the hyperengines speed will be halfed, fuel per second stays => I guess that it works (right now) like this with hyperdrive: max hyperspeed eg 20000 max energy cons eg 62 if you provide only 51 energy you only get 16500 hyperspeed (need to check this in game next time) so if max hyperspeed eg 10000 max energy cons eg 62 the game works all like before, but interstellar travel takes twice the time and is twice as fuel consuming with intrasystem travel unchanged the main benefit is, that it would be easy to try out, since only the max hyperspeed of the hyperdrives need to be changed (read: modded)

Shark7 -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/3/2010 4:07:26 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir no problems. I don't think that there was any ill intent, just glad its clarified. Anyways... So the suggestions are: 1. Require colony ships to pick up actual colonists, not create them Caveats people suggested to that: a. don't allow picking from colonies with less then a certain minimum amount of people. b. don't have the ships deduct colonists on purchase (too many issues with that)... instead, build the ships, then pickup colonists, then colonize a planet... can be done manually to control the species on the ship, or if simply ordered to colonize a planet they will travel to the nearest planet with compatible race. c. perhaps have the colony component simply be the infrastructure, with an actual passenger component (same as used in other designs) needed to transport the people. d. tweak down the reproduction rates to ensure even slower expansion. 2. increase cost of colony module a whole lot... perhaps 10x current value. 3. Limit range. My view on this is, first are we sure that the game would actually be made better (read: more fun) if colonization rushing are halted? I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game. Second, if the developers decide to implement that, use a non harmful method. Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess. Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people... Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game. method 1 seems the safest to me if you are going to implement that change. losing colony ships or colonies will be a severe blow to the population. early expansion is checked in that spreading the population around means moving them from profitable worlds (high culture) to unprofitable ones (0 culture)... and since the population amount accounts for half the culture, then the remaining pop on said planet will also be less profitable now... Conquering planets of other empires or indigenous colonies would become a higher value task as you acquire more people to move around... there will actually be a real cost upfront for building a new colony (of course, eventually it pays off... but in the short term...) Some combination of all 3 might be the right course. Though with a combo, you'd want to tone down part of them. 1. Colonists must be loaded. 2. Colony ships should have a colony core (this carriers the materials to found the first town) and passenger compartments to carry the colonists. -The colony core technologies increase the habitability zones -Passengers determine the founding size of the colony. If you want to build a ship expensive enough to haul around 100 million people, then you can build it (not advisable though). 3. Limit colony ships to 1 or 2 fuel cells total. If you are stuffing millions of people on them, then you aren't going to have a lot of room for much else. 4. Increase the cost moderately (3-5 times current). Though this may not be necessary if passenger components are required. Also, a 'Migrant Ship' should be player controllable so a player can manually move around population as he/she deems necessary. The migrant ship would be able to load up people from one colony and move them to another, allowing a player to quickly increase the population of a chosen colony. -Similar to colony ship, only without the colony module. -Passenger components allow players to load people from one place and drop them off at another.

VarekRaith -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/4/2010 8:53:42 AM)
Probably been suggested already; A "distribute AIs evenly throughout the galaxy" setting.

taltamir -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/4/2010 9:31:08 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Shark7 quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir no problems. I don't think that there was any ill intent, just glad its clarified. Anyways... So the suggestions are: 1. Require colony ships to pick up actual colonists, not create them Caveats people suggested to that: a. don't allow picking from colonies with less then a certain minimum amount of people. b. don't have the ships deduct colonists on purchase (too many issues with that)... instead, build the ships, then pickup colonists, then colonize a planet... can be done manually to control the species on the ship, or if simply ordered to colonize a planet they will travel to the nearest planet with compatible race. c. perhaps have the colony component simply be the infrastructure, with an actual passenger component (same as used in other designs) needed to transport the people. d. tweak down the reproduction rates to ensure even slower expansion. 2. increase cost of colony module a whole lot... perhaps 10x current value. 3. Limit range. My view on this is, first are we sure that the game would actually be made better (read: more fun) if colonization rushing are halted? I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game. Second, if the developers decide to implement that, use a non harmful method. Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess. Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people... Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game. method 1 seems the safest to me if you are going to implement that change. losing colony ships or colonies will be a severe blow to the population. early expansion is checked in that spreading the population around means moving them from profitable worlds (high culture) to unprofitable ones (0 culture)... and since the population amount accounts for half the culture, then the remaining pop on said planet will also be less profitable now... Conquering planets of other empires or indigenous colonies would become a higher value task as you acquire more people to move around... there will actually be a real cost upfront for building a new colony (of course, eventually it pays off... but in the short term...) Some combination of all 3 might be the right course. Though with a combo, you'd want to tone down part of them. 1. Colonists must be loaded. 2. Colony ships should have a colony core (this carriers the materials to found the first town) and passenger compartments to carry the colonists. -The colony core technologies increase the habitability zones -Passengers determine the founding size of the colony. If you want to build a ship expensive enough to haul around 100 million people, then you can build it (not advisable though). 3. Limit colony ships to 1 or 2 fuel cells total. If you are stuffing millions of people on them, then you aren't going to have a lot of room for much else. 4. Increase the cost moderately (3-5 times current). Though this may not be necessary if passenger components are required. Also, a 'Migrant Ship' should be player controllable so a player can manually move around population as he/she deems necessary. The migrant ship would be able to load up people from one colony and move them to another, allowing a player to quickly increase the population of a chosen colony. -Similar to colony ship, only without the colony module. -Passenger components allow players to load people from one place and drop them off at another. that sounds good overall, might not actually need every one of those things though to avoid overshooting the target and making colonization too difficult... maybe reduce the amount of passengers that fit in each passenger component, so you require significantly more of them per million colonists. As far as the migrant ship idea, good idea. how about just letting players manually build passenger ships under their control while still leaving them most in the private sector? that is, a passenger ship could be either AI controlled or player controlled, if the private sector built it, then it is privately owned and AI controlled, if the player built it then it is state owned and controlled by the player.

Yarasala -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/4/2010 10:33:27 PM)
On AI diplomacy: to prevent the AI from spamming the player with map exchange requests or similar things I have a simple suggestion: introduce a counter per request type that counts how often the player declined the request. Also estabish a "block time", say five minutes. Now for when the player declines a request set for that request type a time = now + (block time * number of consecutive player denials of said request type) until which the request won't be issued again from the AI. So when the AI requests a map exchange and the player declines for the first time the AI won't ask again before five minutes have passed. If the player declines again the AI won't ask until after 10 minutes and so on. If the player accepts a request the counter is reset to zero.

Florestan -> Windows discomforts (6/6/2010 7:23:15 PM)
I was advised to repost this here, so... But before, try to search "wishlist" from the forum interface, body or subject option on, in the "distant worlds" forum, and you don't even find this thread... There are some things that could be easily enhanced in the ways the game windows work. 1 It would be good that the windows contents would be updated according to the other opened windows given orders. For example, if I change a design while a shipyard is selected in another window, the build combo box should reflect the new designs or removals or price changes. 2 Why isn't it possible to move windows around ? it would be very convenient when using research to get components information, or in when building things to look at the designs and components... And so simple to implement ! And also, that when I click on a window, it is brought in the foreground. 3 Why is it not possible to use the main screen when a window is displayed ? 5 It seems illogical to me to have a "select ship" or "select planet" or so button in the windows interfaces : why isn't the object simply selected when selected in the windows' list ?.. A double click would be a nice shortcut to the "center" button, too. 4 Harder, it would be nice to be able to redimension the windows, and the lists and panels (in WPF way) in the windows, so we can see more of a list or another, and that the game remember size and position of the windows. And also, changing the size and position of the HUD components would be nice. 5 It would be nice to have a shortcut to the military ships list. I often find myself opening the ships and bases screen and then selecting the military ships in the combo box. I use this a lot more than the default display ! Or at least, perhaps memorise the last filter used, so I don't have to reselect it every time. 6 A whole game and a single measure unit : "K" !!! The game would be a lot more readable if the units where related to what they measure ! I don't know, you could use $ or credits for the money, people for the individuals in a colony or ship, HP for damage or shield strength, science point for research, and the like ! 7 There are a lot of inaccessible information in the game ! I would like to access them all ! First, the fixed one, like the formulas used in combat or the productivity of a mining device... Galactopedia is way too much incomplete in this regard. It would also be nice to have in game access to the full database of all the objects you own. Display a properties screen on double click on any selectable item would help a lot. In the beginning, I found myself searching for data on things a lot ! The windows in the bottom right corner is good, but not enough. 8 My eyes hurt ! I had to move my screen closer in order to be able to read the fonts on my 1920*1400 screen ! Why don't you adapt the font size to the screen resolution ? Or make us able to choose it ? You may say I could change my resolution, but this means change my desktop resolution, which is quite annoying by itself, but also support the blur LCD screens do when not set on the native resolution.

Florestan -> Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules (6/7/2010 12:26:20 AM)
Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules.

HsojVvad -> RE: Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules (6/7/2010 1:25:13 AM)
I tried changing my screen resolution, I don't see much of a difference to go through that hassel to play the game. Fonts need to be bigger. I played on 1080X760 and I still find it hard to read and then I don't have the whole big screen as I use to. Please please change the fonts.

taltamir -> RE: Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules (6/7/2010 3:34:32 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Florestan Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules. quote: ORIGINAL: Florestan Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules. Automatic upgrade does. I think you mean "manual" upgrade, when you select a ship and click the "upgrade" button (it replaces every component with latest model)... I agree, it should auto remove unneeded life-support and habitation.

Florestan -> RE: Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules (6/7/2010 10:54:51 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir quote: ORIGINAL: Florestan Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules. Automatic upgrade does. I think you mean "manual" upgrade, when you select a ship and click the "upgrade" button (it replaces every component with latest model)... I agree, it should auto remove unneeded life-support and habitation. Yes, but it does not seem very manual to me... It would need to have a specific term to designate it !

taltamir -> RE: Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules (6/7/2010 11:16:54 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Florestan quote: ORIGINAL: taltamir quote: ORIGINAL: Florestan Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules. Automatic upgrade does. I think you mean "manual" upgrade, when you select a ship and click the "upgrade" button (it replaces every component with latest model)... I agree, it should auto remove unneeded life-support and habitation. Yes, but it does not seem very manual to me... It would need to have a specific term to designate it ! it is just called "upgrade"... the fully auto option is "automate ship design", which automatically obsoletes old designs and makes entirely new designs to replace them.

cmdrnarrain -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/7/2010 2:59:10 PM)
System Views I would really like to see the ability to click a system and have a screen pop up which showed me all of the planets, resources, resource %, facilities, colonies, monsters, ruins, etc of explorered systems. The screen would give the option to queue construction and colony ships just like the exploration screen. Maybe even the option to send fleets to patrol the system as well. Technology I would like to see the AI brain races be ahead of me in tech. and everyone else be right behind or even for a more competitive game. Currently, I'm always so far ahead in tech. that they really are not a challenge. I've tried giving them more tech at the start but it just means they trade if off to me eventually and once I'm ahead they never recover. Also, I would like to see more tech. and a consolidation of the some of the more common every ship needs one items. Do we really need 2 different life support modules or multiple types of building/resource gathering/cargo hold modules? Could ships just have something call infrastructure which is just all of that meaningless stuff on a ship which would scale based on size and tech level? AI Attacks You need to look at the deciding factors of when the AI attacks or not. I have almost no military, only 3-5 high tech. ships that I have found and only the starting troops on my home planet, but have yet to be attacked by the AI.. The most I have happen is that a bunch of the AI ships will orbit one of my planets, but they won't attack even when it isn't defended by ships or troops. Attack Icons I would really like to see great big icons on the strategy map showing me where I'm being attacked. The icons should be different for monsters, pirates, and AI opponents. Bigger Sensor Ranges The galaxy is a big place but my sensor range is tiny. Also warnings if the following were to occur, pirates, monsters, and ships of empires am at war with enter sensor range. Exploration Ships Exploration ships need to keep exploring, including all of the asteroids in a system. I really dislike it when I have to manually explore all of the asterroids in a system or when they only partially explore a system but consider it explored. Right now if you discover a star map you don't recieve a bonus/notification of what is in those system. Nor will you explorers go back and check them out if something changes.

cmdrnarrain -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/7/2010 3:00:31 PM)
AI Starting Location I would like to see the AI empire's start farther apart. It seems to me at least they start all bunched up and by the time I reach them, one or two of them have already been devastated by their neighbors. Swap Star Maps Is there a way to reduce the number of requests to exchange star maps. It seems like I can not go a full minute at 2x speed without some empire asking to exchange maps with me. The answer was no last time and it isn't going to change a minute from now. Shipyards The AI doesn't seem to build very big shipyards which limits its ability to produce big ships. Exploration Ships Is there a way to have exploration ships re-explore the galaxy once they have explored it once? I would really like them to update my star charts for all of the changes and the better sensors later in the game pick up more stuff that seems to have been missed the first time. Build on Planets Could you make it so you could click on a planet to send a construction ship to build a factory just like you can do with colonies?

NickWright -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/7/2010 7:04:04 PM)
I've got a fairly simple comment about the interface. I'm using two monitors on my PC, in what Windows refers to as an "extended desktop" configuration. So what happens is the game is displayed on the primary monitor, which is all well and good, however scrolling around the map with the mouse can be tricky. Moving the mouse over to one side the the screen, my pointer will head off onto my other monitor (where the game isn't displayed). The upshot of this is that I can only pan the map in 3 directions with the mouse, which is a pain. I'm wondering if there is a simple switch you (the devs) could set in your code that would lock the mouse pointer and prevent it from moving outside the game window/display? That would be utterly glorious =)

Falokis -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/8/2010 1:38:40 AM)
I would love to select a construction ship, zoom out to the galaxy map, and right click on a system, then --> "build at all available resources". That way, I don't have to queue up all the resources myself or shuffle through the expansion planner.

aprezto -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (6/8/2010 8:56:51 PM)
My apologies if this has been listed already, but I would like to be able to set rally points on the map that subsequently appear on ships or fleets when they are selected and viewable, either in the window in the bottom left (of screen) or on the main map, that are then accessable via right click on the object selected (fleet or ship). Use: I have 2 fleets, 10 new ships and 4 troop ships, spread around the galaxy that I want to coordinate into an attack/invasion force. I don't want to have to select them, zoom out and move across to the rally point, right click on my rally location and choose patrol, or 'move here'. Further to this order that the ships chosen via this 'goto rally point' option refuel once they get to the target if a refuel point is available in the system. Each rally point should be able to be labelled to make sense.

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