Sins of a Solar Empire: beta-tester’s suggestion for additional features and improvements to the game in list form.

Preface: I’ve commented on some of these things on a post in response to another, and I realize others have probably said the same things, but with so many postings, it’s quicker for me to write these suggestions than to see if they are already posted, cause I've got 11 of them!

1) A Much More Epic Scale. The current maximum star-count for a game is set at 10; While that’s big enough for an enjoyable campaign especially with as many planetary objects that can be added to them; my suggestion is to expand this star count with features built-in that would allow the game to continue running as lightly as it does…. HOW? Design galaxies with "quadrants" or some other-division, each hosting a star-cluster of as many as 10 stars. Each of these quadrants could operate in a compressed automated sim-mode when not accessed by the player; and each of them could allow and demand a technology level higher than phased jumps to move between them. (ex: "star-gates" stellar-gates, stable warm-holes. etc.) Those division and technologies could allow for permissible load times, while entering/exiting star-clusters; and allow for PC’s that can handle 10-stars (doesn’t seem to be that heavy a strain on my system) to handle as many as 40 (using the quadrant idea) without much hassle (even more if something other than a quadrant is used as a unitary-division.) It would also allow wars between empires with mutually huge fleets. The division points could also be marked and made collapsible on the side-scrolling menu—which is really great feature to this game.

2) More Subversive Options: Right now, the most subversive strategies in the game are dominance by culture, or by destabilizing enemies with the insurgency technology. As it is right now, scout frigates loose their effectiveness early on in the game… you can use them later, but they are more or less kamikaze ships. Later in the tech-tree, more effective ship designs and/or technologies should become available. A spy-cruiser fitted with cloaking-devices, and sabotage capabilities would be nice. A frigate-spy/scout that could infiltrate, and leave behind an undetectable recon droids would also be nice, later down the tech-tree. Also, I think one of my favorites would be, selling ships to black-market types, which would repopulate systems with pirate-muaraders that would have a roque(undetectable)-allegiance to their military supplier and concentrate their disruptive tendancies on other factions. Giving milatary supply to two factions at war with each other would also be a thing I'd personally like to do, being the dominate power in my current campaign, but at the moment, the AI makes/breaks allegiances seemingly at random.

3) More Useful Stars: The orbital space around stars is prime-real-estate for a military outpost. (Not only is it a jump-point for an average of 3 planatary objects, it is also usally a connecter to another star-or-stars--making it the spot I wish to control most--even though there are no resources to collect from the position.) Right now, I make sure I keep control of them using a large-fleet. However, having a capital-ship that could unpack into a permanent star-base-outpost (freeing up command points) and with the tactical deployment capabilities of a controlled planet would be an amazing useful improvement to the game. This feature is even more appropriate if combined with my first suggestion, as the military outpost could build a star-gate to allow travel among multiple star-clusters.

4) Sell, Decommission, Scrap, plus Cancel Bounty: There’s currently no way (at least that I’ve figured out) to scrape/sell/decommission structures and/or ships. Once they are built, there’s no getting rid of them until the enemy has the opportunity to blow them up. Since this is a common ability in every strategy-game I’ve played so far, it would be nice to have it in this one! Also, I put a bounty on someone by accident once, and I kept upping it trying to cancel it! A plus and minus control to the bounty system (offer/retract) would be good.

5) Time control: like a pause or slow-time button would be good while dealing with certain points of the game if it becomes more complex allowing for customized ship-designs, etc. I wouldn’t want to be tinkering with something cool, or reading a report while my enemy has time to build up his forces for an attack.

6) Ship-tech, and visual customization options: This was one of the coolest parts of Dread-Lords, and I, like most, really would like a ship-editor to be made part of this game. A pause-game feature would definitely need to be a part of this mode, as I would, as I did with dread-lords, spend hours perfecting my ship designs.

7) More advanced diplomacy; while on par with other RTS games, this game is really missing the fun-diplomacy dynamics of turn-based games like Dread-Lords, and Civilization

4.) Other factions/races definitely need more personality and social logic than they have.

8) Blue-shade rotation on yellow-qued building icons should be there to help me see how complete they are, and how fast they are building, at a glance. This is a common feature of RTS games, and should be here.

9) The mouse-control to zoom in, zoom out, and pan. It would be nice if the selection button could also be mapped to allow for scrolling forwards without hindering it as a selector-button. Also, zooming in, and out goes a quick enough pace, and so does panning, but scrolling backwards and forwards is slow just in comparison to these other movements, and it would be cool if it wasn’t, especially when I’m trying to get the best viewpoint of a battle.

10) I also agree with the guy that said frigate spam is an issue right now. The tactical match to frigates is carriers-in-mass with fighter and bomber escorts. But planetary tactical options need to exceed the offensive capabilities currently there. (hanger bays and cannons, a rotating-beam/missile platform (allowing for almost continuous fire) that is equal to a capital-ship in power, but is not capable of moving out of the orbital-plane where it’s constructed (so it uses tactical-points instead of command-points) would be really good to have on my side, and fun to face in taking on my enemies!—all wars are eventually fought on the basis of attrition, but the fact that the attrition factor is effective at the frigate, and fighter/bomber levels, means they might be a little more powerful than they really should be at the moment.

Overall, this game is already really good. In Beta-2 format, I’m already happier with it than I am with a lot of other already released games. But, it’s not a 5-out-of-5 for me yet, and these suggestions might help it become exactly that.