Next Patch wishes....

[Sinapus]

Ah, forgot to add another:

The design minister should assign armor by amount of protection per 10kt, not per components. So they stop using Scattering armor and use my armor IV, V and VI components.

[Mad_Lear]

quote:

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Originally posted by Sinapus:
The AI should periodically jettison/scrap weapon platforms and satellites and replace them with updated Versions.

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Yeah, thats always been an annoying AI limitation for me. Especially when in comes to storming the AI homeworld- homeworld battles should be memorable and bloody affairs, full of high drama and tactical finess, as the best, most elite ships and units with the latest technology duke it out in an absolute battle royal. A homeworld full of platforms with DUC-1's and a batch of 20 year old satelites fall way short of this.
Of course, if the AI did periodically scrap/jettison old units and build new ones, chances are that it would choose the worst times to do so, such as when a huge fleet is bearing down on the world in question. Still, the DUC-1 thing is annoying.
Love most of the suggestions in this post, and really hope to see some of them in the next patch!


[This message has been edited by Mad_Lear (edited 14 August 2001).]

[AJC]

1. Revamp Intelligence- It needs an overhaul. Eliminate the research type window.

2. Get the AI to use troops

3. Allow for ship(s) to be assigned as wingman to another ship inside a fleet.

4. Ability to Assign fighters as defensive and Attack. So that some fighters can be reserved to provide cover for the fleet.

5. Ability to multiselect several build queues to build a common item. Having to select one planet at a time is tedious.

6. Ability to designate what and how many units are launched in a simultaneous game.

7. Ability to switch into Strategic combat mode from Tactical combat.

8. Increase missile speeds again (perhaps double them?).

9. Add range bonus to weapon mounts for weapon platforms

10. Revamp AI races that exclusively use seeker weapons. Add direct fire weapons to ship designs.

11. When switching off intelligence in a game - deactivate cunning in the characteristics window.

12. show crew experience on ship Schematic during tactical combat.

13. Move the Minister option : Ai should not make changes to empire during simultaneous game: into the empire set up window.

14. During repair indicate which ship is being repaired first.

15. Allow player to designate what ships are repaired first - A repair queue.

16. The ability to show all system wide facilities on the sytem map and in the build queue window.

17. Ability to select and deselect weapon types in Groups in tactical combat on the ships weapons listing. I.e. select All seekers, deselect all seekers.

18. A blockade strategy - so that ships wont go within range of the planetary defenses but will stay together and defend themselves.

[This message has been edited by AJC (edited 14 August 2001).]

[Baron Munchausen]

There are a bunch of small interface fixes that would make the game so much easier to play and be far less work in programming terms than all the new abilities that we all want so badly.

- Keep the 'place' you are at in a scroll box, like the planets or colonies lists.

- Make [Enter] and [Escape] operate like the [OK] and [Cancel] buttons. This is Windows standard behavior but MM had to write all custom interface for the game for some unguessable reason.

- Make it possible to jettison a SELECTED amount of a given cargo type, rather than all or none of each type.

Oh, and let's add the ability to SCRAP stuff in a planet's cargo area so we can recover something from our obsolete WPs and troops.

- Add a "global weapons toggle" to the combat interface so you can turn ALL of the usable weapons of a ship/base/satgroup/ftrgroup on or off at once instead of having to scroll through them and click each one. This is a HUGE pain with large sat and ftr Groups!

- Seperate options for automatic movement and automatic targetting in combat so you can have one when you don't need both under manual control. This would save some work in combat, too.

- Allow formations to be turned ON or OFF without losing the settings. So, you could de-activate formations and fight a melee with a group of ships without getting your maneuvers screwed by automatic movement, then reactivate and move your ships to engage another group of ships or bases or a planet or whatever.

- Increased range for all weapons would be cool since mounts can make large base/WP weapons nearly as long ranged as missiles. Could a second row of 'boxes" be added and max range for seekers extended to 40? This might require major changes to combat code. But seekers are much less valuable now with direct-fire weapons able to approach their range.

Oh, at present there's a bug with the 20 range anyway. If you fill a weapon's reange out to 20 the Last box will be blank. I'm not able to figure out if this is a damage bug (the range 20 damage doesn't occur) or just a display bug. I only use the full range 20 with Plasma Missiles. There's a general problem with seekers at max range, too, and this confuses the issue. Guess I'll have to make a range 20 direct-fire weapon and test it.

Anyway, I'd expand the size of the combat box again if possible. Probably double the width/height (4 times the area) and then double weapon ranges as well. Then it would be much harder for "hit and run" tactics to be used with the proportion of ship speed to weapon range changed. You'd have to play in a much more 'naval' fashion, really committing your ships to take fire if you want to get into a fight.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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- Allow formations to be turned ON or OFF without losing the settings. So, you could de-activate formations and fight a melee with a group of ships without getting your maneuvers screwed by automatic movement, then reactivate and move your ships to engage another group of ships or bases or a planet or whatever.

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This can be simulated by removing the fleet leader from the fleet, then giving it back the title.

Stage 1) Fleet is normal, and follows the leader.
Stage 2) Select the leader and hit CTRL-0 (zero), or use Orders->Clear group assignment.
The fleet leader is now a nobody, and everybody will do their own thing as if there was never a fleet.
Stage 3) Select the Ex-Leader, and choose Orders->Set Group Leader-> etc.
Now, when the leader moves, all his minions will fall into line. You may need to move slowly for a turn or two in order to allow individual members to find their position in the formation again.

I often use a quick Version of this to fix my fleet formation whenever I forget to change it from the default before going into battle.

[Sinapus]

Have the AI go over the facilities built on a planet and if something new (like a robotoid factory, etc.) becomes available that is listed higher on the priority list then scrap a facility that is on the end of the list for that planet type and build that new facility. When it has filled out everything on the priority list to the maximum level, *then* the AI can ignore the list for that particular planet.

Especially domed colonies, so they can build the atmosphere converter and have the planet become something useable when the atmosphere converts. Actually, domed colonies should build a research center or intelligence center first, then follow the script. So tiny domed colonies won't build the space port and cripple a system if the AI did scrap something on that colony to make room for the converter.

(I tend to build extra research centers on worlds in anticipation of future expansion when I get the right tech level. Amount is dependent on the size of the planet.)

Hm. If the AI can be made to do this correctly, then it might be able to juggle things easier than a human can. I tend to build research centers on intelligence compounds until I get applied intelligence and make contact with a spacefaring race. Then I scrap all the research centers on those planets and start building intelligence centers. Manually going to each planet, scrapping 1 facility and building another one would be difficult for me, but the AI might be able to do that.

I'm also hoping this might help the AI with homeworlds somewhat. Or at least have it rebuild the spaceyard facility on the homeworld if it ever gets destroyed.

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 15 August 2001).]

[CW]

Launching units - current there is no way to to launch or recover a portion of the satellites/fighters/mines carried by a ship, it is either all or nothing. This is really anonying not to mention it doesn't make any sense. Same thing goes for transfering cargo, we can't queue up an order like "transfer 5 out of the 10 troops on board to the destination planet".