Interface and Gameplay Suggestions

I would like to add my thoughts.

We need some kinda of 'fleet' manouvre thingie, as ships enter the system in a messy way, and bigger ships get just left behind.

Also as I mentioned earlier, I don't like the current way weapons are done.

Guns should shoot more rarly but do way more damage, it makes it look way more powerful and cool, instead of having machine guns weapons that somehow just bite away at the enemy.

Also, low calibre weapons should really do nothing against heavy armour, this is the folly of hitpoints anyway....

It's 'unrealistic' in ways, as I don't see a MG gun doing -anything- do an M1 tank today, even if you fire at it for a few days.

Janster

I am very impressed with the tone and thoroughness of your comments. Well done!



As I understand it, Shield Mitigation is the efficiency concerning the amount of damage that the shields block. Think of it like armor, but instead of an armor number, it's a percentage. If the shield mitigation were 100%, then the ship would be invincible. If the shield mitigation were 0%, the shields would do absolutely nothing - weapon fire would go straight to armor.



Good question. I'm not sure whether this is possible, but since no controls of this nature have stuck out at me, I don't think so.

Thanks for sharing your ideas about these issues. Looks like you're the pseudo-moderator for the time being



I've had cap ships against a bunch of smaller ships reach 50%+ on this, but it was too fast to see what was really happening. The base value seems to be 20%. I would be interested to see techs that boost the base value or the rate of increase from damage taken. Perhaps also some weapon types should be shield-piercing?



I didn't get a chance to test it because I had won the game already. I built each ship type to see what its abilities are; I think you are refering to its targeting ability, and I don't know exactly what it does (multiple bonuses when using multiple Kodiaks?).



I noticed the autoplacement feature puts them at the right angle (facing the phase line) but too far back (I think). They really need to be right at the entry point for maximum effect. I know bombers are a pain; I started adding Kols into my fleets just for their flak ability (don't know how good the flak frigate is yet). I lost several cap ships once to a massive cluster of frigates with bombers and I don't know which weapons on cap ships can even touch them (autocannon?). The phase inhibitor makes sense if you have a heavily defended node which is a major chokepoint, or as a delay mechanism in weaker nodes for you defensive fleets. I usually add 1-2 repair stations to assist in keeping the defense automated (mainly anti-pirate). The planetary shield, to my surprise, blocks damage with a 50-70% chance. I think it should just be an added shield to the planet, so you have to destroy it first or spend twice as long taking down the shield (preventing immediate damage to the planet). I think people want to see it working more directly in that way (base shield, 3000 pts. upgraded, 5000 pts).



It's very hard to tell why constructors are being stalled sometimes (given some of their bugs). I think it's easy to forget what's "waiting" on something else too, so maybe the planet has 25/15 because I queued 25 tac points after queuing planet upgrades. I also thought I was recieving instant tech upgrades, but I think the devs already thought it all out. I think I was just confused because it's an unusual setup.



I guess I like the idea that a node can only have one player's buildings in it. If taking a planet would also take all defenses/buildings, reset cultural lines, and restore planet infrastructure, then a surgical strike at the planet becomes a tactic, and planetary shields are more important also. However, the static defenses need to be more capable of protecting the planet (you shouldn't be able to "run past" them and take out the planet). The planet should have its own short-range defenses as a backup to take out frigates or maybe one cap ship before falling, that fire only when being bombarded.



I think it spends too much on bounties that it could use for other purposes. I don't know if pirate strength is related to the amount of the bounty, but they seem to spawn at a star and find their way to targets. It's sort of like buying 3rd party attack ships for that target.



I think I was looking at that when I upgraded, and the recharge time was the same.



I see enemy planets where my culture line has hit, but nothing ever happens; sometimes, my own planets stop projecting new lines. I would like to see it in the infopanel for both (even if my intel on the enemy planet isn't current, I should still know if it's about to flip).



Weapons range should be the same for all basic weapons for a particular ship; that would eliminate any problems. I remember seeing beams and lazers on the same ship, thinking it was rather redundant. Weapon types need more differentiation. Is the autocannon a flak gun? There needs to be a specific siege weapon on the appropriate ships for clarity, not just "does 65 damage to planets" on the construction infocard.



I think it's best to limit the viewed range to one ship first of all (or it gets messy in a hurry). Basic weapons range is the main thing for tactics, and is shown when the ship is selected (if the option is on, better make it optional, a button, or toggled by a hotkey). Special ability ranges should be shown when hovering over the ability icon, making it context-sensitive in a way (because you want to know particularly at that time).



I would like to actually see it happening on the planet infocard. One potential problem is the fact that an asteroid can never broadcast as much as a planet (due to logistics limits). If they faceoff, the asteroid would lose unless it gets backup culture from planets behind it. I am curious how much culture is lost for each jump. The tug-of-war concept is intuitive, but it needs some work on the actual mechanic of it.

I think this is important: People want the option to use war or diplomacy. Here is one way: when planets are taken, all culture on its connected phase lines is lost. You can't change your capital planet (sorry, it didn't make sense to me anyway). The sum of all of your cultural sources is projected from your capital, losing a small value with each jump. This creates a "zone of control" around the capital, rather than local broadcasting spamming to take border worlds. Each planet produces a small amount of culture based on population, but the broadcasting center just provides a bonus "+xx%" for this. The effect of this new system is to make controlling the immediate area around the capital easy, while actually flipping enemies planets is hard unless your culture is much stronger or they are closer to your capital. For each jump closer to the enemy capital than yours, you would need for example 25% more culture than the last jump (it all depends on each player's culture though, and the rate of loss with each jump). If both have equal culture levels, then they would naturally control the same distance over time. If someone has 50% higher culture, they can perhaps flip one layer of planets closer to my capital, but not all of them. You get diminishing returns for higher culture because of the drop in effectiveness with distance. I hope that all makes sense, otherwise I will have to do it graphically.



I am zoomed out most of the time, so having the icons show construction will remind me that the planet I took a few minutes ago is NOT finished building defenses yet when there are pirates en route, for example.



As explained above, I think the cultural implications of distance from the capital are a more compelling game mechanic. The other penalties seem a bit harsh currently.



I still end up building them randomly with extra slots "just in case" I can get more out of it. I have no idea what the limitation is, but I think the trade center can be used more often (I can also buy the others with cash).

This is what I'm suggesting for culture mechanics. Red has 16 culture points. Blue also has 16 (planet's base cultures from population and bonuses from any broadcast centers). The spread rate from the home planet is (100%). The loss ratio per jump is 80% in this example, so from the next nodes the spread rate is (16)(0.8) = (12.8). The third layer is (16)(0.8)(0.8) = (10.24).

The middle planet is 2 jumps from both capitals, and since the influence of both empires is the same, it is secure from red's influence. The bottom middle planet, although connected to 2 blue planets and only 1 red, is 3 jumps from both capitals, making the influence the same from both sides (it's not additive per connection, but the distance from the capital determines the strength once it touches the planet). The planet south-east from the middle planet is 2 jumps from blue and 3 from red; red would need 80/64 or 5/4 the culture points of blue to do anything to it.

If the spread rate of one empire is greater than another at a planet (which could be equal distance, but one side with more culture) and the culture lines have both hit the planet of course, then the "revolt process" begins at a rate proportional to the difference in culture spread rates. When spread lines meet, the effective spread rate is the difference between them, moving in the direction of the stronger side. I think this is a reasonable and balanced use of the culture mechanic; you can always take a planet by force and reset its culture lines, but after a certain period of time it will revolt unless you improve your own culture or take other surrounding planets.

Culture is capped at 10% effect on worlds belonging to the same culture. You can get higher percentages on enemy worlds though, and in such a case you also steal an equivalent percentage of those planets' taxes.

@Kryo Ok, but why do my planets never say that they are producing more than 0 culture a second?

Culture: Actually I was able to pull 0.2/0.3 culture (being produced, still capped at 10% in terms of effect) in my home system with 5-6 broadcast stations, and also in a foreign system. I am now playing the 100+ planet map with 10 stars. I discovered that culture only bounces off a location if you have a majority of the phaselines covered (so to bounce to other stars you need to cover the current star). Still have no idea how much I am affecting enemies until they actually flip, then I see it has bounced halfway to the next world.

AI Weakness: I am playing with the AI on medium now that I have an idea of the game. It is slow to expand into unowned stars, even when it is in the perfect position to do so. It scouts them, but never builds. In contrast, I did 2 star jumps and claimed all system resources within about 30 min using 1 Akkan (colonized and built another one in that system to speed it up).

Another random thing: I have pirates turned off, and they don't randomly attack me. However, I saw a squad of pirates phase jump from outside the map to attack someone's last world (they also had a high bounty). Since I have insurgency, is that what it does (random pirate attacks from nowhere)?

Game Balance: Even with a superior military, it's hard to take star systems that are culturally owned. Since you have to own a majority of the phase lines to a star to "get inside", it's difficult to "prepare" the planets for takeover (therefore, I have to destroy them all and not recolonize until the culture lines are gone, which is rather irritating, given that they can just recolonize them).

Ship Preference: I was using the Kol for a long time, thinking that its flak cannon ability would help protect me from the AI small carrier fleets (to which I lost the flagship). It turns out that it just costs too much antimatter to be effective against that many bombers. However, I have switched to the Dunov, whose superior magnetic ability can kill multiple fighters at once; when there are no fighters, the shield regen helps a lot. The Akkan of course allows me to colonize empty worlds quickly, and dominates pirates in unowned sectors; I always bring 1-2 with me.

Good Design: I like how sending 2 dozen scouts to "explore" sends them all to different places. They also give me "eyes" on enemy planets via probes. Someone has coded it very well.

Logistical: Typically, the map layout makes this effective; I build 1 capital ship factory and 5 broadcast stations on a planet. I build 1 refinery, 1 trade port, and 1 broadcast station or misc. building on an asteroid. That seems to even the distribution of resource gathering (I still have to see if traders crossing star systems get a large bonus for their time, but it works for me). My home world will normally be a research planet until I finish out the tech tree (and up to 3 other planets, if I have the cash to buy all techs, then I can replace them with broadcast stations).

Tactical: I have been prefering to use 1 phase jump inhibitor (on choke points and where it makes sense), 1 repair platform, the rest hangers, guass cannon for leftover points. I have not found the planetary shield to be of any value, but in multiplayer I think it will be more important. This setup works against most AI attacks, but if they bring in a cap ship and I know they're serious I will build or send in my own fleet.

Strategic: I tend to leave a fleet of 6-8 cap ships at each star after conquering a system (only scouts have come through so far). All systems are reasonable defended, so I don't worry about it. The other half of my fleet points are out pillaging nearby stars, and Akkans are sent solo to take empty star systems. My culture has projected to nearby stars, so at least I am even with my enemies culturally. We will see what happens.

Lots of good stuff here. Monster posts - yeah!! Skimmers need not bother this thread. Need more time to digest it all...

I have to disagree with everyone else about static defense placement. When I place my structures, I keep them in a tight ring around the planet. This way I can easily cover everything with multiple gauss cannons. There isn't a point to building them really far out, they still can't hit ships that just enter the system. If all your defenses are too far out, then they aren't even protecting your planet from a siege frigate that manages to run past them all. The dead space around the planet isn't worth defending, the planet, with all the structures close to it, is.

As far as UI suggestions go, I have two...

Allow me to use the attack command on vessels that are in phase-jump to reach my system. I *can* just tell my ships to move to the point of its arrival and get the jump on it that way, but I'm *MUCH* rather be able to tell them to attack it, have them move automatically, and then once the vessel (lets say a small scout ship?) is dead move back to the defensive formation I assigned them (to deal with the enemies regular, ongoing attacks against the system... that come in on the other lane).

Also, alt-F4 needs to let me quit the game fast fast fast... I don't have time to go through window after window when I go "OH ****!" and realize I need to leave for work in about 30 seconds because the "Just one more [command]" syndrome hit me so hard.

Let me add another suggestion: When short both resources and tactical / logistics slots for a structure, make the "slots" alert a higher priority than the resource limit... as things stand, you have to have the resources needed in order to realize that the slots are all filled.

Also, when you highlight the logistics / tactical tab, it shows the slots total, and what is using how many slots, but it doesn't say how many slots are used / available, you need to do the math yourself, by hand. That could use a look at.

I've nearly completed a ~100 planet, 10 star system game (is my second game now). The AI is set on medium (10 players in the map, independent, no teams, locked). No roaming pirates, was distracting me last game and not doing any real damage.

I now have a greater perspective on this game; the report says 13 hours so far put into this map. Why is it taking so long? I got one word: Culture. But first, let me add some misc. stuff:

* Too many colonies = display problems when hovering over the resource list. I think the text reaches a limit or something.

* Fighters got stuck in the sun, or flew through it. A jump fixed it though.

* With 3 AIs left and my owning a majority of the planets, I sent in 20 cap ships and 10 more on the way. The game started to lag a fraction of a second, but only every second (a periodic freeze). This is not graphical, but some kind of processing problem (I've got the system resources, but after this 7-hour chunk who knows what's happening). When I restart the game maybe it will get rid of it.

* AI doesn't expand effectively into free solar systems even when it has cornered its original system. I can bring in an Akkan or two mid to late game, clear the pirates, and colonize the whole system in about 30 minutes (more if we're at the insurgency phase or if I had pirate attacks on, since new colonies can be randomly attacked and I must wait for tactical construction).

* One of my Desert planets got up to producing 0.4 culture. Cool. Population seems to be a minor factor, but otherwise it's a bit random.

* Periodic ship actions, whether it's move, attack, or even stop, cause more damage to nearby enemies than leaving it on attack mode. It's like the cap ships forget to use all their weapons, or don't understand their range. I never attack anymore; instead, I move the ships "through" the target, and start attacking when my fleet is on top of it. That seems to provide the correct full use of weapons, as I am point-blank with the target.

* Fighters and bombers prioritize targets quite well and appropriately.

* I am finding the Dunov cap ship to be useful in packs. I was having problems with enemy fighters, but the magnetic field can destroy multiple fighters (or all of them!). It also has the shield regen, and it seems to use all abilities intelligently; it will use the higher level skill that reduces anti-matter usage to 25% at the beginning, then the other skills are cheap. I also take the Akkan when I expect to colonize (and for its targeting computers).

* When you destroy a player, you should get all the remaining bounty.

* The bombing sound when attacking a planet is so low frequency that it sounds crackly. I've got decent speakers too. It could be clipping because I am using ~10 cap ships to attack normally.

* For multiplayer to work at a decent pace, things are going to have to be sped up. I would recommend a speed setting for the game host so everyone agrees on how "epic" they want it (13+ hours is just too much though).



Now, my frustration with the culture model:

* I can't see culture extending from enemy planets, but I know its there (particularly if it flips).

* It seems you can't culturally invade a star system. I had at least 30% of the stars using 75% of their logistics on broadcast centers, and the AI's single planet next to his star was keeping my line from coming to his star (he basically had no assets at that point). Is distance that critical? It seemed that only broadcast centers I built one jump from the star were doing any good. I had maximum techs. Projection out of a star also follows strange rules.

* When you wipe out a player, you also destroy his culture lines, but he only needs one planet to retain his entire network (that will take a good hour to push back). This was my greatest frustration: it takes less time to destroy all of a player's colonies than to wait to grab one in his previous culture zone. It took half the game to realize that I didn't have to wait if I destroyed him utterly, but of course he kept trying to retake colonies, so I had to systematically patrol each planet. It was an absolute nightmare, and it will be what kills multiplayer unless it's fixed (did that sound urgent enough lol?). There's no point in destroying his colonies unless I can "liberate" his planets in a reasonable period of time. At least make that planet's cultural lines reset soon after being destroyed so I can take it myself (I can then take planets in his system, but I need to follow up if I want to keep them from flipping).

I think many other people have also expressed concern over this problem, but I didn't realize how much it ruined the fun of conquest until I played a larger map. I still love the game though; I'm sure this is just part of the testing phase.

I reloaded the save game and there was considerable lag (15-20s) after the loading screen before the 3D items were loaded. I think that's because of the inefficient nature of the save files currently, but it probably won't be a major problem. It's a large map (because I like to push things to the limit hehe).

Reloading didn't fix the periodic lag, but I figured something out. The lag occurs when the game is updating my resource numbers, so whatever calculation is done there is becoming noticably long as the game progresses (more planets are owned now because the AI ignored systems that I colonized, at least 3 full systems).

Since I am playing as the Cylons, I suspect they have infiltrated my planetary defense system, and that may be the reason for the lag

I uploaded the save file (zipped) to my website: Save Game File.

Random: For people that were wondering, I discovered that shift-clicking allows multiple waypoints or targets.

Since this thread is more busy I'm gonna copy my other thread into here.

Having played beta 2 for a few days, here are some of my thoughts. Apologies if these are duplicates of things already suggested.

Selected ships
A (optional, perhaps) box that shows what you have selected. Much as I like the idea of the empire bar, it has some limitations. Firstly, you are unable to see how many ships you have selected. Secondly, if you a lot of ships in a planet, there is a point beyond which the planet ships bar will not display any more. Secondly if you have item stack selected it's quite possible to select three different ships from three different stacks of 10, and have all the stacks highlighted making it appear you have 30 ships selected as opposed to 3. My proposal is an optional bar at the bottom of the empire window that will say what you have selected, for example:

Cobalt x 30
Sova Carrier x 2

This way you can easily see exactly what you have selected, without any guesswork.

Message options
At the moment the player gets flooded by irrelevant messages. Scout ships getting attacked? Yes, that's the whole idea. Scout ships incoming to your system? Who cares, they're not about to do damage. Ally under attack on a different side of the galaxy? You're not about to swoop in to his rescue.

There should be an options screen for messages, where you could select what feedback you receive. Options could include:

-disabling attack messages for specific ship classes, eg scout ships or noncombat ships
-disabling incoming ships messages for:
--specific classes
--combat ships below a certain total supply
--or if the system defences supply total are a certain % larger than the incoming fleet's supply total (eg, 30 supply of cobalts jumping into a heavily defended system aren't a problem and the user doesn't need to know. an entire enemy fleet jumping into your back yard are)
-disabling "ally under attack messages"
--except perhaps those that you actually have some hope of responding to, eg two jumps away from your planets or some such.

Hostile systems
Much as I love the refinery/trade ships, they're pretty stupid when it comes to choosing what way to go. They will always choose the shortest route, regardless of enemy presence. Their pathfinding should either be reworked to take enemies into account, or there should be an option when you select any planet to designate it as hostile, which would make civilian ships avoid using it to travel.

Diplomacy
I realise that the dimplomacy is probably still being worked on, but I would love a lot more diplomatic options, conditional treaties with break penalties, etc

Purchase options
The player should have the option of spending resources they do not have. The production would not start until the player has actually got the required amount, with the resource bar displaying red negative to indicate the game is waiting for resources to start a production. This way at least the player doesn't have to keep looking at the resources and hope to remember. Perhaps this could also be queued, so the player could run a several item queue to put their resources far into the red, then not have to worry about spending their resources as they come for a few minutes.

Subsequent to this, there should also be a production screen where all queued productions can be viewed, and dragged around to reorder/etc. Example, if the player has a few research projects queued and realises that he needs the ships queued after those first, he could hit the productions screen button, and drag the ships to the top.


Galaxy generator
There should be more options for the galaxy generator
- Different layouts. As it is, the planet layout is always the same. Allow things like clusters, etc.
- Wormholes (or whatever they're called)
-- They're confusing when they cross or when two run in close parralel and then cross.
-- Should not really be running through other planets or stars grav wells, seeing as if ships aren't allowed to jump out from a grav well, then they shouldn't really be travelling through one while they jump

Research stations
Could decrease research time for projects. Instead of a flat % increase they could run on a process of diminishing returns.

For example, if each station gave a 2% decrease of the previous total, the calculation would be (.98 ^ Number of stations)

So, having 10 research stations with a 2% reduction each would mean research times are 82% of normal. Having 50 would make it 36%

This, if combined with a similar reduction in price of research would keep research stations useful even after the player has collected the requisite 15.


Some oddities
- When you cancel an unstarted construction, it explodes and still leaves debris. Even if a fraction of a second passed between clicking the button and unclicking it.
- When you mouseover a structure button at the bottom it says to "press (key) to autoplace module) even when you don't have autoplace enabled

Ah ha! My old post on having tabs in the empire window would work here
Not many were too fond of the idea though

You currently do have an alternative for this: selection based empire window (enable in options). Only problem with this is it shows ONLY what you have selected, nothing more


I like this idea
I also liked the beta 1 chat messages for cap ships leveling up - right now I often do not notice that they have leveled up until I actually look at their icon in the empire window

I find that the absolute best combination of capships is a "balanced" one - including at least one of each capship. If I were given ten slots for capships (400 fleet supply), I'd distribute them as follows:
Kol - 5 of them. (including the flagship you start the game with, hopefully, since it's stronger) - once they're level 4, all fighter/bomber slots go to Bombers because Kols can directly defend themselves against fighters with Flak Burst

Dunov - 2 of them. Disable all their abilities except Shield Restore and Flux Field; all slots as Fighters.

Akkan - 1 of them. Get Colonize at level 1, of course, and don't enable auto-use of Armistice, as this usually buys the enemy more time and thereby it isn't available when you need it, e.g. to retreat safely. I only use Armistice manually, if ever. Max out Targeting ASAP. Fighter/bomber slots evenly distributed between fighters and bombers.

Sova - 1 of them. 100% of its fighter slots go to Fighters, not bombers.

Marza - 1 of them. It only gets 1 fighter slot pretty late in the game, and I don't think it matters where I allocate it - I kind of choose randomly.

BTW, if I had to scale this back and had less fleet capacity, I'd just get rid of some of the Kols, and if I really had to cut, I'd get rid of a Dunov - but I think you can't really have a complete fleet of capships without at least one of each type. And if you've only got one Kol, you better bring some more ship-to-ship firepower, either Kodiaks or at least Cobalts; use up the rest of your fleet capacity with heavy-hitters...

The reason I assign so many fighters is because my Kols are the ones doing ship to ship combat, not my bombers. I've run into many cases where the AI loves to swarm bombers, with Perchiriens and Hangar Defense and Sova Carriers - this may be because of my map settings or the Hard difficulty of all the AIs in my games. Rather than build 20 Garda Flak Frigates, I choose to engage their bombers with fighters. Also, I tend to use spare slots for Kodiak Heavy Cruisers, so really the only anti-fighter potential I have is with my own fighters, since the rest of my fleet is for ship-to-ship and/or siege (obviously a capship without Flak Burst cannot directly "swat" fighters or bombers, unfortunately... ugh, they're like bees! )


Reading this made me laugh out loud. I do the exact same thing! It almost feels like a manual fire mechanism, except that while ships move they seem to fire their weapons perfectly. It's also cool to see ships' autocannons and lasers blazing while they're bombing a planet at the same time - who needs Krosovs when your battleships can fight off enemy ships while they bomb?



This Beta 2 is the first time they've actually made culture *do* something major (in Beta 1 it just kind of sat there and gave you some money). Frankly, they screwed up. There's gotta be a better way of doing it - many people have given them alternatives; they'll either pick one offered by the community, or come up with the own way around it - but for the love of God I hope they don't ship with the current culture rules.

Then again, I think I remember reading Blair saying that the culture is "working as intended". That's scary.

A bit of an oddity with the menus. If you select load game from the main menu, then you get an option of a saved game, offline (whatever that is) or recording. If you select load game from within the actual game it just gives you a list of save games, even if you were watching a recording at the time. At the least give a list of recordings when you're watching one and select "load".

He also said that it needed tweaking... I think its more along the lines of "we have the right general idea, just need to get it perfected".

I admit that the Kol is a superior battleship. In a cap ship battle a level 3 adaptive shield would help immensely. However, my preference is based on speed. Cap ships always stumble around planets (especially keeping large fleets together), and dealing with buildings and cleanup takes a long time. I was disappointed to observe that the Kol's flak gun doesn't seem to kill fighters, but simply injures them. In any case, it almost certainly doesn't kill more than one at a time, and at high antimatter cost.

The reason I use the Dunovs is because if there are a few bombers, my shield regen basically negates it. If there are many, then I rush toward buildings and cast magnetic field on them (usually killing several at a time, but more if they are clustered). This frees me up to build all bombers, which I target to hangers and other targets of my choosing. By the time I've bombed the planet (which of course I can't colonize normally You know why) and crossed the gravity well, they have cleaned up the area. Sadly, the bombers are much more efficient at dealing damage at specific targets than the fleet (at least for the time and effort spent).


Interface Issues:

* When I am zoomed out to planet mode, I would like to be able to easily select a subset of a planet's ships by clicking on the bar next to the planet, and choosing from a menu (like the one that pops up anyway with my ships, but that disappears as it's only for information). I almost never want to select all ships in the planet unless it's my main attack fleet (and even then, leaving a ship behind sometimes). I wouldn't need to group as much if I could easily select the ships I need in the proper context (that is, without searching the whole empire list for it). The game needs more context-sensitive lists like that, especially for combat (show me what's going on in the gravity well/planet I'm currently looking at automatically!).

* I start ignoring "you're under attack" messages because I get tired of moving all over when I'm doing something else. If the information was displayed at the top of the empire bar, or in some other convenient location, then I could quickly see "oh, it's just a few pirates or a scout". How about "a capital ship is attacking Planet X" or "enemies have arrived: 12 frigates and 2 capital ships" and flash a quicklink to that location near the top of the screen; that would get my attention. This is completely necessary for large multiplayer games; we can't be messing around with things that the static defenses can handle all the time.

* My only fast option for grouping cap ships is to select all from the planet bar, because their fighters are on top of them (I view straight down usually) and it's hard to single them out. Unfortunately, this always selects all the bombers (and other random ships) too; most people want those as a separate group, if grouped at all. Of course, the manual type selection above should resolve this problem.

* There are some general gameplay issues here; information, navigation, and unit control:

+ I physically have to zoom out and move over, then zoom back in to get from one star to another. It's slow, but it's faster than finding the star in the empire list. The quickest way is to have groups set in each star, so I can go there directly. It just doesn't feel right that the main interface is not very helpful for this purpose. I'd like a zoom key for "all the way out" as well, as I am using the solarsystem and planet zoom keys often, but moving across stars is harder.

+ I'm not getting empire-wide tactical information in a useful way. I need to know what's attacking me, where, and have an easy way to see the status of multiple battles without having to go to all those places (for instance, icons at the top of the screen representing battles; hover over them to see the unit health as you would when hovering over a planet's unit panels. I can use this to tell what's going on).

+ I need to select units or unit types at certain locations without finding them in the empire window or searching the gravity well. Suggest also a hotkey (if not already) to "select all of this type" then click on a unit.

the select all of type is alt+click

Agreed, I've found cannons to be too weak to do any good. Perhaps there should be a long range missle launcher upgrade for the cannons? Or a anti-fighter flak upgrade?

The cannons need a bit more punch.



I think I noticed this too



Good idea - would be nice to see Gauss Cannon range too.



I thought the penalty was extreme as well.



Yes, these buildings need to show their quantifable gain. I build Trade Posts + Refineries only because I *think* they're doing something. Would be nice to see what the benefits are.

Could other things for me:

*Icons/ships are too small, hard to click
*Ship selection needs some work? I find the side bar impossible to understand/read.
*Certain themes are had to see against certain background (i.e. blue against black Orange against orange neubla... etc.)
*Ships seem to randomly target enemies during an attack. It would be nice to be able to set "focused" attack as one of the attack options
*Ships need more descriptions - especially Cruisers + Capital ships. The infocard should display the skills of each type of ship. This is useful for novice players - I'm a bit reluctant to spend 3K credits to find out the features of each ship Of course as one gets more experienced this is less of an issue...


How about a "reinforce" group option? If I have a group selected, perhaps the build menu will pop up? A ship will get queued for the group at the closest and least busy ship yard? This would allow someone to reinforce large attack groups without needed to set rally points etc. etc.

>>> Agreed, I've found cannons to be too weak to do any good. Perhaps there should be a long range missle launcher upgrade for the cannons? Or a anti-fighter flak upgrade?

I suggested long range launcher above, but perhaps make it an upgrade for the cannon that is researched (I am assuming the finished game will allow building upgrades?). Allows specialization in your defenses. Prevents some bombing of the helpless cannons.

>>> The cannons need a bit more punch.

Perhaps some upgrades to its actual damage and range (+10%, 3 times). The cooloff upgrade is not that useful. I would like it to have better range mostly (like 2x at least), but this can be reserved for a different cannon style/upgrade.

>>> Good idea - would be nice to see Gauss Cannon range too.

Then we would notice how small it is However, seeing cap ship ranges for all its weapons would help in testing its behavior.

>>> Yes, these buildings need to show their quantifable gain. I build Trade Posts + Refineries only because I *think* they're doing something. Would be nice to see what the benefits are.

Especially because it's easy for the game to calculate how much it made per period of time. It could tell me credits/metal/crystal per second/minute. This could also be reflected in the total income information. Due to the severe distance penalties, it's hard for depleted mines to give anything other than 0.0, so this becomes the primary source of resources (for faster multiplayer games, suggest reducing the penalty).

>>> Ship selection needs some work? I find the side bar impossible to understand/read.

I just find it cumbersome and slow, but I understand. I normally have my grouped ships displayed fully in order to do ability points or see if they're dying. Otherwise, I hardly use it at all, as clicking the planets is the best way to do business.

>>> Ships seem to randomly target enemies during an attack. It would be nice to be able to set "focused" attack as one of the attack options.

I normally shift click to queue an attack sequence for bombers, but the same can be done for other ships. However, they tend not to get close enough to use all weapons, and the autocannon I think is always shooting random targets regardless of your orders (that seems improper somehow unless it's shooting bombers; it should target your target).

>>> Ships need more descriptions - especially Cruisers + Capital ships. The infocard should display the skills of each type of ship. This is useful for novice players - I'm a bit reluctant to spend 3K credits to find out the features of each ship.

Yeah I had that phase too. "What does this one do?". Bought all 5 just to put them side by side and compare.

>>> How about a "reinforce" group option? If I have a group selected, perhaps the build menu will pop up? A ship will get queued for the group at the closest and least busy ship yard? This would allow someone to reinforce large attack groups without needed to set rally points etc. etc.

Perhaps you can set a factory to produce for a group number, then its ships automatically join/move to the group? It would be harder to do what you're saying, as you have to have a method to figure out who needs the ship. The current rally point system can get pretty close to sending them where you need them, but it's a manual device.

* I'd like a patrol feature so that a couple of cap ships can guard and respond to threats in a local star system. Either a list of waypoints, or just select the planets you want it to respond to.

* I have found mid to late game that I've maxed out my fleet and research, there's nothing to do with all those extra resources. I simply don't lose ships fast enough to need much production to cap out my fleet logistics. Need something else to dump money in besides bounty (perhaps planet/other developments that become exponentially more expensive with each upgrade, but provide linear increases in benefits).

Here's an example of culture deadlock between star systems. I am blue, and I have eliminated all colonies in this system. The problem is, the culture lines from green and pink will never go away until I destroy their empires. Both have only a few colonies in the next star system, but I am certain that both orange and myself have more culture coming in (in fact, I have 4 consecutive systems pushing in). For some reason broadcasting into a star system isn't possible if someone's culture lines are there. This simply isn't fair as green most likely has only a few stations left.

I don't think culture deadlock can occur within a solar system, even if there were 100 planets (I'm going to test this next game), because superior broadcasting will push back the culture lines, but between systems is a problem.

Couple of other suggestions:

1. Engine upgrades (speed, extra manuverabliity, etc)
2. Multi-level cannon upgrades (missile vs. flak)
3. Hanger upgrade? Increase # of fighters?
4. Make cap ships larger? More massive looking?

Personally i'm fine with the current size of the cap ships, what I would like to see is the strikecraft, I mean does anybody know what they actually look like. Even at maximum zoom following the fighters, all they look like is black oblongs with maybe a few stubby things (Wings? Engines? Weapons?). Anyways, I know that strikecraft are supposed to be small, but i'd at least like to be able see them in something other than icon view.