IMO the fleet logistics calculations need adjustment. The fleet maintenance cost should consist of two components: a fixed cost and a cost per ship. The fixed cost would increase from level to level as new tech is researched. The cost per ship would be just that: a fixed $$$ per ship added to the fixed cost to determine the total maintenance cost. More ships = more cost added to the fixed cost. You may want to make these items user adjustable in the game set-up.

Ohhh. this is probably too late but i can still hope cant i?

The advents culture cannon is too weak. TEC can blast a completley upgraded planet away with 2 shots from their super cannon. While trying to destroy a planet using the culture cannon takes nearly 20 shots to keep up the pressure. You have to keep on additional pressure to prevent colonising or their broadcast centers will quickly undo your work. Also, you may have to aim at nearby planets because you cannot aim the cannon at planets that do not have an owner. or 0 population, like dead asteroids.

IMO the culture cannon should last like at least 5x longer and destroy/convert communication centers on the planet that has been hit. Spread rate should be increased as well. As it stands now the cannon is useless, unless you are defending impossible odds and need to shoot one of your own planets to give defenders the edge they need to win. I hope that targeting can be changed so you can aim at spaces that have no population like dead asteroids, nebulas, storms, and other places to get rid of culture influence left by long dead players.

Personally I would like to know if any of my ships/planet deffenses are lost/destroyed, not only for Cap Ships. I could recall C&C "unit lost" or Homeworld "frigate lost" audible sound. In the heat of battle, especially in large battles, this little feature could save you time and help you decide if an early retreat would be wise.

I would like there to be an option to set up your fleets to patrol the area of whatever palent they are around so whenever an enemy raider pops in you can have ships able to engage it before it leaves

This is a small thing, but still really important to me. When right-clicking to rotate the map, I want the mouse cursor to disappear and not change position.

You can see that it's difficult to rotate the map and subsequently target or select something, because the mouse drifts off as it is now.


There are two other easy-fix nuisances I'd like to mention. My girlfriend can't stand how chatty the game is--it really never stops talking and it gets very tiresome. You can turn it down, but some of the messages are essential to hear (bounty on you is now the highest, incoming hostile forces). There's no option but volume for all of these messages as one. I'd like an option to turn off different types of acknowledgement, and only hear the important ones.

Finally, I would like to not have a single skirmisher running for its life set off "hostile fleet approaching" and "kiss your planet goodbye" messages. I'm not sure what the solution is--maybe the planets that have incoming threats should glow a certain color or have some other visual indication to let you know what size the incoming threat is, at a glance (this could also help eliminate the tedium of losing your place in finding out where and what the threat is on large maps). Or maybe there should be a threshold before a warning is launched, like 5 ships or so.

Skirmish mode and dual monitor support!

For single player, it would nice to have a glorious ending when you win - especially after 5+ hours playing, and numerous and possibly just-completed glorious space battles of epic scale.

How about adding three (instrumental) anthems - one for each side. When you win, you get to hear your race's anthem, possibly with a bit of a slideshow portraying the greatness of the home planet.

You can skip the anthem with ESC, of course. But after a long hard match, it sure would be nicer than a dull statistical screen

Land (Planet) to Space defense weapon will be nice

Like the Ion cannon on Hoth from Star Wars: Empire Strikes back.

It's not useless, it just is differently used than the Novalith. It's not a fire and forget, it's pretty much just for reducing tax income and adding bonuses to invasion fleets. The Advent get a lot of bonuses for invading a gravity well that the culture cannon's been used against.

First off, great game.

Secondly, I didnt read every post, after page 19 I skipped ahead, so if its been said before...

An Idea for Phase Jump Inhibitors, of course like so many before, they should probably cover the whole gravwell, even with placement anywhere in the planetary system.

If they could make getting a lock into or out of a system much longer that would be great, with a warning when you were trying to go into a system that had a phase jump inhibitor placed. Something to the effect of "you are phase jumping into a system with a phase jump inhibitor, entering or leaving the system will take significantly longer" Or just "Phase Jump Inhibitor Detected"

that way a person could cancel the phase jump and not enter that system, or if they think they can beat the opposition and destroy the inhibitor they can let the coundtown continue.

phase jumping into or out of such a system armed with the inhibitor should be something you have to think twice about, and it should take more than a full minute or two to get a successful lock to phase jump.

There should be a skill to train that would cut this percentage down, but not eliminate it. Maybe to cut it down by 40-50 percent so that the inhibitors dont become as useless as they are now.

this would also add to some strategy because by you getting that warning you could in effect pretend you have a large fleet there, and scare off some people.

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Planetary defenses should also be beefed up considerably, scouts and small fleets of frigates shouldnt be able to outrun and outlast everything you throw at it. In all other games ive played scouts are fast, but they do get destroyed by base defenses before they can escape, thats what they are there for, they are expendable.

Those gauss guns are freaking huge, they should make even a cap ship spin on its axis when they are hit by one. They should also cover most of the gravwell, scouts shouldnt be able to sneak in and see your whole layout without paying the price for spying.

I can't tell now for sure, but fighters and bombers seem to go the same speed, maybe make the fighters faster, and leave the bombers the same speed they are now.

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Lastly its been said before, Unit caps and taxation rate

The actual size of your fleet should be part of the equation for taxation, if your getting beaten you shouldnt have to pay the same rate as somone else with the same amount of fleet capacity but less ships. Since your focus would be on spending your money to replace those destroyed ships.

But with much larger limits instead of the 2000 you have now.

Example (35 percent base tax rate) for the capacity to support your full fleet, then add a percentage of the actual capacity you have to that number. so if you have a full fleet, all your slots used up, your tax rate is 70 percent. if you have half of your slots used up your tax rate is 52.5 percent. (If anyone knows how tanking in eve works you'll understand what i mean in this example)

This would mean that if your entire fleet gets destroyed, you go back to a 35 percent tax rate, but you stay at that rate even if your down to one planet.

Binary star systems, the most common star system and none in SOASE. Also satellites (namely moons) would be awesome.

Player profile statistics need to be expanded. I believe it only shows total WINS currently.

We also need to be able to add a clan tag before our name. This would allow one to join and leave clans without hurting their win record.

It would also be nice if you could right click on a player's profile and invite them to join your clan. If they accept then the clan tag will automatically appear before their name.

The multiplayer chat lobby could also be improved some.

Enslave Option - in a large multiplayer game, the situation becomes hopeless for one of your unfortunate opponents as your massive fleet arrives at his homeworld. It's more fun for everyone involved to keep as many human players in the game as possible, but you've worked hard to conquer this player. How about an option that allows you to subjugate his empire? You offer the agreement and he has the option to accept. If he does, his units are still under his control but he is unable to attack your units or planets. If not, you will surely eliminate him. Maybe you can even force him to donate resources/credits to you. You have the ability to scuttle his units/worlds if he misbehaves.

This is actually a good idea. Kudos.

This is known as a Vassel State.. great idea with one caviat.. How can they get out of a vassel state?? What would be the point of it without a way to get out?

The mecanics behind it would allow for great team play as players could be military commanders while one player focuses on economy and development the others could focus on micro managing battles.. What a major boost to clan playing that would be..

I vote this be a top priority for version 1.05!!!!

Oh my suggestion for version1.05 as well is can we get an observer mode where guest can come and watch during a game? This would make the online tornaments more fun as people could watch as well as those who play..

ZathrosEnB: Don't know if you caught this but there is special victory pictures for each race (and special defeat pictures) they are pretty sweet.

Didn't take screenies of all of them but here's the victory ones and one defeat one:

Wooo Vasari havin a PARTAY!


Yay TEC save the day!


We won! Let's shoot purple stuff outta our hands!


Some not so happy Advent

I like the term 'vassal state', it sounds much better. I think whether or not a vassal state should have the ability to be freed is debatable - it would depend on game mechanics and the designers motivation for allowing vassal states. There needs to be incentive for the conquering empire to allow the vassal to exist and not absorb their remaining resources. Forcing them to do your bidding with the threat of scuttling the rest of their possessions is a nice incentive - and can open up a new kind of team play. But a strong danger of the vassal empire freeing themselves and then exacting their revenge might dissuade conquerers from using the agreement. But you are correct, there needs to be some incentive for the defeated to enter into the agreement as well. The chance to play the game to the end and be on the victorious side (though as a defeated vassal state) might be enough. If not, maybe the chance to regain your freedom if the homeworld of your masters is destroyed?

Free-for-all endgames could become really interesting with this mechanic, as the galaxy slowly groups itself into 2 or 3 victorious sides and their vassal states for a final showdown.

Historicly vassal states would pay tribute to the ruling empire.. a tx if you will, the ruling empire called all the shots in a vassal state without encurring any of the cost. It often left the valles poor, plus they were often required to produce a disproportionite % of their population for the army of the ruling empire.

As far as leaving, if a vassel state is allowed it can still expand itself, and build its own military (providing the ruling empire allows). Lets say, if the vassel state reaches a point where it's population out numbers the empire and it has more then 50% the number of planets and a culture value of 50% greater then the ruling empire it can choose to "revolt". some planets will join the revolt, others will not... and so the fight goes on!

-lowering the unit cap upkeep costs
-being able to bribe ships to join your force?
-fixing the resource income rate
(i always seem to be getting lots of crystal or metal)
- bombers able to attack planets (example: strafing runs on critical locations)
- ion fields and magnetic fields lower shields or abilities get disabled.
-AI dont run away as much from defending their planets
- AI replacing players in multiplayer after they quit
- deplomacy more fine tuned able to demand more things from other players.
- more avatar portraits available sort of limited at the momen.

in further patches as i know you are very busy to make a more stable engine as it can drop out sometimes or slow down.

and i would like to say that you have done a very good jobat this game and you should give yourselves a pat on the back great job guys!  

Planetary assault. I'm just reading Dune and i think it would be awesome to have transport ship that can drop soldiers on a planet. Then you would have a fight between planetary defenses and your soldiers. Sorry for my english.

I love the game so far, but the defensive platforms we need to be able to build more or they need to do some more damage. Also...what would be great is Automatic Custom Map downloads with out that. It can kill this game, because im getting tired of playing on the same maps.

A problem I run into commonly is a lack of crystal and metal resources. There have been instances where I get tipped that a huge attack fleet is on the way to one of my planets. I would like to start building a few more defenses while I am waiting, but I usually don't have the metal or crystal and buying it off the black market just dwindles my credits. If there were maybe a few more crystal and metal asteroids around, say, an asteroid planet, it would help relieve this problem. Also, when you think about it, shouldn't a huge asteroid have a lot of smaller asteroids around it? It would still keep a feel of reality in the game, but help make it easier. Plus, this idea could make things harder, because all of your opposing empires would also have access to this, allowing them to churn out defenses and ships faster. It would give a sense of urgency to build defenses and an offense force, instead of just worrying about how fast you can build a fleet to take over an enemy planet before they get a chance to attack. Whew! Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble.  

I agree with Designer. I think all players should begin as neutral. That way, players can have the choice to declare war, or make peace upon contact with each other.

ok..with all tings said..can we know the exact date of the patch release? please...

Wow, 1000 replies
Ironclad has a lot of work ahead of it..