I actually thought it was 'first was your flagship', but you're right I guess. At the start the first one is highest, and if it dies it transfers to the next-highest.
Longer names are a doubleplusgood idea.

I'm playin a long ass game with 10 players (9 comps, and me), and I've noticed a few things that I think need to be adressed.

First and foremost is the AI. I love the AI, and your ability to choose how they act in the game, but we have some issues to work out...

And yes, before you say anything, I KNOW the AI is supposed to be hard, but these can be fixed without changing that.

1, How they attack. A few games ago, I decided to see how long I could last on one planet, with a maxed fleet/defences for kicks and giggles. It seemed that the AI had teamed up with one another, because I have 4 giant fleets (combonation of the AI) surrounding me.

1a. Why do the AI team up so easily and often? It's amazing to me that I'd have an AI ally, I'd ask him to attack a unit or something, and I'll ALWAYS get a "sorry, we're not into backstabbing". Kinda useless, and it's a pain when you're on your own. The AI need to act a bit more like humans in that they don't need to ally every single being (save the human player) they meet.

1b. Attacking. In the scenario I described above, I've been sitting at this world for about an hour, with no action from the computer at all. I've seen ships move to the 4 planets, and never leave, and scans show they're just waiting for me. Not to mention all the computers are on aggressive. Explination?

1c. AI running. I hate this, mostly. I actually agree with the action, a lot, and I think it's a great idea on paper. But when I have one big fleet running around causing death to all who stand in my way, I don't want to chase an enemy fleet to Mount Doom and back because I have 1 or 2 more ships than him. The fleet running needs to be done better. Suggestions are open for this one, since I have none

2. Missions. Missions are a cool idea, and an interesting way to gain respect and trust to form an allience, which are very useful. But....

2a. The missions themselves. At the start, it's simple things like "gimme 1000 credits", which I'm okay with. But later in the game is where they become problematic. IE I've got an allience/peace treaty with AI1. He asks me to attack AI2, who is in the next system, but I can't due to AI3 and AI4 kicking my sorry butt on 4 different planets, and I can't be asked to spare ships to do something like attack a planet with defences and a defenive fleet roaming near it. I propose that the missions be toned down a bit from that, and made a bit easier, depending on where you as a player are stationed, and what else is going on in the game.

2b. User given missions. I have a fleet the size of Narnia, and my poor little victim has just had his home planet bashed in by 50 seige vessels, and the rest of it is on the run. I think I should have the option of making him pay me to stay in the game, and decide if I should make him my ally or a trade agreement, ETC. A list of different options (tactical stuctures, give whatever, you all get the point) could be in the Diplomacy box and you could fill in the info as needed. I don't see any harm in it.

3. Ship handling. I think this needs some work as well, but it's not uber important.

3a. The thing I think is needed most in this area is the fact that if you tell your ships to jump, and give no other orders, they should jump. I don't know how many times I've nearly lost a planet due to my orders apperently not being followed. Maybe it's me though, so.


Anyway, suggestions/criticizem is appriciated.

I think I should reiterate the problem with only being able to jump at the line, and not outside it: yesterday I played a game where the fight spilled out into the outer areas of the tactical grid, and nobody could leave when another fleet appeared, even though they were outside the jump-limit in the arc of a phase corridor. Both fleets scrambled back to the line, but the third fleet had moved into position and it was pretty messy.

You should be able to jump anywhere outside the jump-limit line, not just right on it. The pathfinding to jumps also needs improving - I have seen a cap drive straight to the line, encounter an obstacle, then drive AROUND it, then drive BACK ALONG THE LINE to it's original destination, THEN jumping. Seriously, jumping in combat should be a very high priority for the unit behaviours, and this kind of milling about costs lives and increases micro. The ships even get snagged on immobile objects in their mindless quest to drive straight to the jump line, and each obstacle often involves a giant sweeping turn through the entire enemy fleet.

Fix the lobby so that it doesn't jump back to the top of the name list every time someone leaves or enters, while I'm scrolling through the names.

Add a Defensive, neutral, Aggressive setting for capital ships that determines the behavior the AI uses, i.e. defensive makes it take less damage but deal less damage, while aggressive means deal more/take more.

Games Speed Adjustment for Multiplayer games, like major scale speed increase, base on highest ping rate to allow for lag, but the current fastest speed is too slow for 10 player lan games.

When I select a ship, planet, or structure from 3D map space - not from the icon list on the left and not hovering over the picture in the lower center - I should be able to get a pop-up in the lower right corner detailing the item. For some reason I only get that on the central picture or on the icon list to the left.

I don't know if it's possible in the game's engine, but it'd be great to have a 'cockpit view'; an option to watch a battle from the cockpit of a fighter or the bridge of a larger ship.

First post here.

First of all, let me say thank you for making such a great game. Probably the best overall rts/4x game I've ever played.

As for suggestions about future patches I submit the following:

1. Each race could have access to an Anti-Aircraft based defensive platform to help protect structures from massed bomber formations. I would also like to see defensive platforms SLIGHTLY upgraded too (decreased cost and/or increased effectiveness).

2. More maps is always good, not saying there are too few now though either.

3. Different game-winning scenarios besides just wiping out everyone else. (Capture the flag, Occupy X number of Y type planets, relic hunt, Diplomatic victories, etc) This could go hand-in-hand with #2

4. Upgraded AI, especially ship selection (although overall I think the AI is better than most rts games I have played)

5. More races! (but I understand if you want to wait for an expansion  )

6. Mobile Superweapons (cough...Death Star-ish ... cough)

7. Random Encounters with different phenomena/aliens which if handled appropriately may lead to you gaining some sort of reward




And thanks again for the great game!

Few things I can think of off the top of my head after playing for roughly a week...

Camera
- Camera tweaks on extreme Z limits (perhaps lower min and max z to avoid)

Gameplay
- Option to disable Superweapons
- Ability to build structures on the Z axis
- Add enhanced Frogboy AI  :)(Do not make the AI surrender as easy as it retreats)

Graphics
* - More skyboxes from those great artists at Ironclad and Stardock!
* - Different UI style for each Race

ICO
- .galaxy file sharing between clients in a multiplayer game (they are tiny)
- More picture packs and logos for player themes usable online
- Ability to change between channels ie: Lobby 1 2 3 without having to relog
- remove channel onjoin messages

* - Unique FFA mode that automatically groups people up and finds them a server. (Works better when more games are up and running)

Interface
- Focus Fire toggle for advanced fleet tactics
- Option to disable auto fleet join on build by default

Misc
- NoIntro on load (Not just the intro but the logos)

Performance
- Ingame benchmark sequence for performance tuning and or problems

Galaxy Forge
- Fix bug that makes objects hard to click on and requires a restart of the application

* Denotes a want not a need   

Awsome game can't wait to see what Stardock and Ironclad do with it. PS new GalCiv2 Expansion better have orbital bombardment   

Top on my list is to improve location assignment, at least in fixed team games. Several times I've been with friends doing 5v5 comp stomping, only to have one of us end up starting smack in the middle of the AI homeworlds, while everyone else spawns together.

Oops forgot a few things...

Performance
- Remove individual ship destination lines when using fleet selection (In larger fleets this cripples performance just by selecting units and or telling them where to move or what to attack) Especially when using qued movement points and or with allies. Reduce this to one line for each fleet. Fleet formation and position circles should still be fine but reducing the lines in a fleet can certainly speed things up on the performance side of things.

- Remove allies ship destination lines altogeather.

The biggest area that I've seen that needs room for improvement is ICO.

I see two major problems that fixes for would make my experience *so* much better.

1. ICO matchmaking is where battle.net was in 1998 with starcraft. Ranked anonymous matchmaking like warcraft III, and Halo 2, have is the way to go, as it makes it *much* faster to find a game. People like me who play strategy games play warcraft III, and so that sets the bar for our expectations of online service.

Also, a ladder is critical, as it lets us gauge our skill and gives us a reason to keep playing. Anonymous matchmaking, where people don't get to choose their opponents, but the system chooses them for us is the only way to keep people from gaming the ladder and also has the advantage of making matches start faster, and lets us not have to worry about who is host and who is client.

2. The port forwarding test is done wrong and reliably says that port forwarding is broken when it is set up right and everyone has no trouble hosting.

People on the forum mentioned that ICO is doing a wan ping, and also using ident. Both ping and ident are unrelated to ICO and are often blocked independently. This is the wrong way to do a port forwarding test.

Here is what I believe is the correct way to implement such a test.

1. (client) bind to socket 6112.
2. (client) notify ICO that you want to perform a connection test.
2. (ICO server) open a tcp stream to the client on 6112 and send some magic byte.
3. (client) confirm that the connection is received and that magic byte was sent.
4. (client) shut down the connection so that you can rebind 6112 when actually playing the game.

If the port forwarding isn't set up right, the client will never get the connection, otherwise you are golden. The magic byte is sent just in case some other kind of application tries to connect to you on that port. Note that battle.net uses the same port (6112) by default.

Internally you might be using some kind of RPC library for all client server communication, but you will probably be better off writing the above in berkeley sockets, or some basic OO sockets wrapper for low level control. It isn't that much code just using sockets.

You shouldn't be using other ports like ident (113) or a protocol like ICMP, which are totally unrelated and almost guaranteed to not be handled correctly.

Again, decisive battles!

...ship design? *wink*

1. Stronger Defensive Structures all around....the hull of these structures are alright but I would like to see turrets with more of a punch. The fighter hangars should house at least 8-10 squadrons, even if the cost of constructing it is raised. A defensive structure capable of effectively taking out fighters would also be appreciated.

2. More fighters carried by ships. 2 to 3 times the fighters and a slight increase of the damage inflicted by the fighters/bombers.

3. Easier selection of individual ships from a further zoom. I would like to be able to select the ships by pressing on the "bubble" above the ships not just the ship's hull.

Thanks

The one thing I was really surprised about that I didn't see is Random placement in the universe with the map creator. It always takes the total planets and spreads out the players evenly. I don't like the fact I have to pick how many people are going to be in each star section.

I want to be able to say there are 8 total players. I want the minimum of 0 per star sector and maximum be whatever. Then it would randomize everything instead of balancing it all out. I don't like knowing that there are "enter number here" other people in my star area because I HAD to set it like that in the map editor.

I think it would add alot more mystery and fun if you ould set the minimum and max players per sector and the starting locations weren't always even. (Right now players are spread out evenly across the sector)

Think how nuts it'd be to fly over to the next planet and find another player! The defense war would start and you'd have to be on your guard!

I know not everyone would like this but I'd say at least make it an option. It'd also make exploring a bit more fun because you'd never know how many people were in your sector.

In my mind it'd be easy enough to add and if this isn't added ina patch I am trying to find a way to mod it in.

Great game! Look foward to all the future patches!
Rob

Couple of suggestions:
1) The AI needs to stay and fight. It seems that whenever I jump into a planet with reenforcement the enemy immediately jumps away regardless of of much they outnumber me by.
2) Some way to keep the enemy from jumping away on neutral planets, wormholes, gas giants or stars. I think maybe a ship that prevents the enemey from jumping away would be great here.
3) Some way to keep an enemy fleet (I don't mind scouts doing this, but not entire fleets) from jumping past my blocking fleet on a neutral planet, wormhole, gas giant or star. It seems that my fleet never gets there in time to engage the enemy. They are always reforming and never attacking.
4) Fleet movements and attacks need to be improved. They reform too frequently and never attack. In addition, ships (like carriers, support ships and LRMs) seem to somehow always get into the front line.
5) Finally, adjust the diplomacy to make it useful. Maybe everyone should start out with a rating of 100. As it is now I can never get anyone to agree to a ceasefire, trade agreement or anything else no matter how hard I try. Lastly, adjust the missions enemies give you, so as to reward you more and reduce the penalty for not successfully completing the mission.

Great game overall, however. Well done.

Scaleable user interface.
I have a 30" screen and using 2560x1600 as my resolution, text and everything is so small its very hard to see them. Please have a scalable user interface for menus and all...

Thanks for the great game

Computer AI Teams:
Not sure if this is a bug or not but have seen it twice


1) Player's and Ally colony ship shows up at the same time. I get the planet first and my ally spends the entire rest of the game saying 'You had better abandon X planet' as if they view it as hostile.

Replicated issue twice

not sure if it has been posted in here..but its alot to go through when im at work on a laptop battery about to die

if possible..for friendly ships to make use of a friendly vasari phasegate (or marauder)

sometimes i would be on the other side of the system and an ally needs help..my fleet takes forever to return to assist but he has phasegates all over and his fleet has just nearly been whiped..so he cant recover in time...so i would try to make it back to help defend his stuff but i get there too late to do any good because i had to travel the long way. i dont see it as being unrealistic...imagine you are the us military and are the only ones with equipment to make a bridge across a river.....you make it and go across...but now your allies the british are stuck on the other side..sure..they vehicles are more than capable of going across the same bridge and after all..they are your allies...so you should let them so they can assist you rather then having them go all the way downriver for miles trying to find another way across.

i think allies should be allowed to use friendly vasari gates if they are available..after all..they are only able to be used in vasari controlled space anyways

maybe even make it a researchable tech for the vasari to allow friendlies to use the gates that way it isnt just instant free passage (maybe make it allowable with the returning armada tech since in essence you are getting reinforcements from abroad)

I would like to see a culture gauge telling you how much of the galaxy your culture controls and how long it would take to win a culture victory.  

Being able to send messages while the game is paused or someone is lagging.

'R' hotkey for retreat actually working.

Nerf dark armada.

I'd like it if culture impacted phase jump speed. It would give the defenders a bit more of an advantage. That is, if you have a lot of culture between planets, you travel faster. It doesn't need to be an extreme here, but a little bonus would add a little bit of depth to culture

I'm going to make a nice easy suggestion that would help a lot.

In the options it would be nice to adjust the frequency of Autosaves. When I'm playing singleplayer, I don't need them to occur as often. I kind of want them to occur more often in multiplayer because people Disconnect.


I completely disagree with anyone here wanting stronger defenses. I think it would just make an already long game longer and boring. I think the balance between defense and offense is just perfect, the best defense as it stands right now is simply to build fleets to stay in your own territory. The higher fleet cap is already helping the defense issue on larger map, problem solved.





Yes, autosave frequency.

Also, I've noticed that the patches have reset my settings, including my name. A fix for that would be be nice. Doesn't really matter I suppose. But those are the kinds fo things patches should adress.

This may be silly but I would really like to name my fleets.