Next Upgrade/patch

[couslee]

why not add an auto save at the end of the PBW turn?

I have no idea what I am talking about. I only have the demo and my CD has been shipped but not recieved yet. But, if in PBW when a player hits/clicks/whatever the "I am done, send my turn to the host" message/box/link/whatever, at that point save the game. that way if a reload is necessary, you don't have to do everything all over again. (IE "PBW/MP-autosave" file name).

Since we are on the topic though, I have seen a lot of things present in the demo I would like to see fixed. If they have been fixed in the most recently released patch for the full Version, then goodie. If not, their persual for consideration would be appreciated. Some I consider bugs, others are just wants. My list so far is:

1. Enemy units warp past SAT defended wormholes. I had a wormhole defended of the enemy side with some SATs. When the enemy entered the sector, I got the combat screen, but the enemy ship used a "don't get hurt" type of movement. When the combat was over, the enemy ship appeared on my side of the wormhole. It made it through the wormhole after combat was finished and I think that was fubar.
2. I wouyld like to see the option to force a ship in combat to break formation and not auto move around when the lead ship is moved. As it is now, I am begining to hate the fleet combat system and I have not even recieved the cd yet. an option under "orders" to force remove it from formation would be nice. Also, if i select a ship other than the lead ship and move it one space (IE 3 available) then DON'T automaticly change the ship selected to another one. i had a reason for putting it there, and the continous bouncing around in the combat screen is a headache. I have pretty much quit using fleets for this reason.
3. Have hot keys in combat for "next unit with movement points remaining" and "center window on currently selected unit" (if these are in the game already, I have not found them). I tried the "c" key for center and found the capture ship option (nice) though.
4. you get ripped off if you mix engine types. Say I can put 6 engines on a design. The first engine added is a photon type (+2 movement). All the rest of the photon engines added do not give additional movement. That is fine, but if for the 2nd through 6th engine I place Ion3 engines, I lose the extra movement points. I was trying to limit the mineral cost of the ship considering the photons are lots more expensive than the ion ones.
5. On the designs screen, there is a button to upgrade a paticular unit. it would be nice if when there is no upgradeable parts, you got an edit stating that. IE "there is currently nothing to upgrade on this design".
6. Allow editing of prototype designs even if some are already in the queues. Not necessarily referring to ones partially built, but ones that are a new design, and after looking at the "turns to build" (or whatever) you decide to edit the new design. having to go back and remove all the ones you just placed in the queue, just so you can change one component is a pain. Also I would like to be able to delete a prototype design (provided none are in the queue) instead of having to obsolete it and waiting for turn x.9 to get rid of it.
7. On the ship "design detail", show the total maintenance cost. It might be a factor in the design (duh, guys).
8. the ability to move the boxes around (click and drag). I don't care if I can resize them or not, but would like to be able to scoot them over a bit at times. IE, when making player notes regarding a system, I might want to note something like "3 stars, 1 asteroid 232/312/375" referring to the minerals in the asteroid belt. But the notes box covers this information on the main game screen. so it write it down, then open the notes box, then type the info info... that is a hassle imo.
9. When you click "end turn" you can get a message of confirmation. it would be nice if there were also a message that could be recieved when "you do not have enough minerals to complete the queue orders".
10. When your using the empire queue list(f7), have the main screen re-center on the planet that you selected. Similar to the way it works when you click on a planet from the "colonies" screen (f5).
11. WP stats/strategy incomplete. In the design window, with a current WP design selected, and the button for "stats/strategy" selected, the screen shows zero for enemy tonnage destroyed. this is not accurate. It works fine for SATs, but not WPs.
12. I would like to see the negative happiness factors on the planet detail. My planets have gone from "happy" to "indifferent" and I would like to know why.
13. What is the reason for an AI counter proposal of an "unavailable technology" and an "unavailable planet" in return for the organics I previously offered? This should not even happen in the game imo.
14. Limit the technology list to offer the AI to items they don't have. IE, if they HAVE rock colonization, then don't list that when making your offer. Also, on the want tech list, don't show tech I already have.
15. I would like the ability to transfer supplies from one ship to another. Say I have a colony ship comming from one direction and a light crusier comming from the other direction. they meet at the planet I am going to colonize. I would like to be able to transfer the remaining supplies from the colony ship to the other one before giving the coloniz order. One may be mostly full, the other may be nearly empty. Likewise, that would make supply ship designs work as well. (an escort with only engines and supply storage could transfer surplus supplies to the ships in the fleet). Those who have played STARS! know what I am talking about. Alternately, if I add the supply ship to a fleet, the supplies go into the supply pool. But if I then remove the ship from the fleet, the supplies "delivered" stay on the ship removed. It would be acceptable if the supplies from the pool were evenly divided between the ships being removed from the fleet and the number of ships remaining in the fleet. (IE 5 ships in the fleet, 100k supplies in the pool. remove 2 ships. 60k supplies remain in the pool and each ship removed gets 20k supplies each.
16. The 3 next/previous buttons could be lit when there are next selections to consider. for example, the ship icon could be green when there are ships remaining with movement points, same for the fleets icon. Since the next button skips ships/fleets with no movement remaining, a lite would make it easy to tell at a glance. The colony icon could be lit when there are empty queues.
17. When using the "next colony" button, what part of next colony didn't the game get? it does select the next system with a colony in it, but if there are SATs, ships or moons present, you have to select the colony again. This is an extra, tedious step. ALSO, when selecting the next colony, the detail/facility/cargo tabs reset to the detail selection. I would like to see it remain on the previously selected choice. meaning, if I am looking at a facilities list for one colony, when I select the next planet arrow I still want the facility tab to be selected.
18. it would be nice if the system had the Last visited info displayed. IE, I visit a system but decide to not leave a unit there to monitor traffic. It now will show as explored when selected in the galaxy window. I would like something along the lines of "this information is 15 turns old" or "system Last visited on stardate 2404.9". this could be displayed underneath the system name in the upper left corner. It could also show red if it has been more than ten turns since Last visited, but color coding is not necessary, just a nice addition.
19. Allow one engine on space stations. Since it is listed as a ship, why not? Being able to move it one square per turn makes more sence than having to build a construction ship and move that to where you want to build one and then building it there. Like some little ship could carry enough material to completly build a space station without having to make multiple trips. yeah, right.
20. Nix the confirmation edit when you selected the attack order. I can understand it if you choose the "move to" button and the path puts you in a battle situation. But if i select the "attack" order, why does it ask me again if I want to enter that sector with enemy ships. Hello, was it not listening the first time? What part of "attack" didn't it understand. Also, turning this warning off is not listed in the empire options like most of the other warning the game can give. at least let me turn it off.
21. Why do you lose construction accumulated when re-ordering the build queue? this is dumb. sorry, you have to destroy that partially built mine before you can build a ship on the other side of town. absurd. ESP since you retain research points accumulated when re-ordering the tech choices. It's bad enough that excess construction don't roll over to the next project in line. But having both is too much construction penalty IMNSHO.
22. No construction surplus rollover? It does for reasearch, why not construction.
23. have some picture options for your designs. say a choice of 3 or 4 pictures for each ship size. Again, those that have played STARS! know what i am talking about. it can't be that hard to program in. (IE escort1.gif,escort2.gif. .gif meaning whatever file type they used in the game. don't get picky)
24. Some sort of mineral alchemy would be nice. even if it is a small amount. just something to put in the queues of those planets that you can't build anything else with. like 10 to 100 of each mineral/organics/radioactives per turn. the amount could be a racial trait, or just limit it to 50 or 100. call it alchemy, or a recycling program, whatever. most cities have some sort of program like this so it is not out of the realm of reality. Recycle prgrams, comunity compost heaps, and old car batteries and used oil reclamation about cover the 3 resources in the game. lol

OK, thats it for my list. I know this is a long post and my appreciations to those patient enough to have read throught it. And many thanks in advance to those who reply to any of them.

(whew)

[Graeme Dice]

For starters, the current released Version is 1.78, which is a large number of patches away from the demo.

Originally posted by couslee:
1. Enemy units warp past SAT defended wormholes. I had a wormhole defended of the enemy side with some SATs.

The ships would have appeared right on top of the warppoint, and right next to your satellittes. If they couldn't destroy it before they ran away, then yes, they would be able to get into your system, because those satellittes aren't going to chase them around.

2. I wouyld like to see the option to force a ship in combat to break formation and not auto move around when the lead ship is moved.

Go into your strategies menu under empire options. Select the strategy that you want your fleet to use. Select launching, and pick ships to break formation. They will then follow their individual design type strategies instead of the fleet strategy.

4. you get ripped off if you mix engine types. Say I can put 6 engines on a design. The first engine added is a photon type (+2 movement).

That's +2 bonus movement, not +2 movement. Otherwise ships with 6 quantum engines would be running around at speeds of 20+ which is game-breakingly fast.

All the rest of the photon engines added do not give additional movement. That is fine, but if for the 2nd through 6th engine I place Ion3 engines, I lose the extra movement points.

Part of the movement rules is that all engines must be the same type for engine bonus movement to be applied.

6. Allow editing of prototype designs even if some are already in the queues.

This would probably break simultaneous movement games.

7. On the ship "design detail", show the total maintenance cost. It might be a factor in the design (duh, guys).

The maintenance cost can be seen after you click create design, but it would be nice to see it before hand.

10. When your using the empire queue list(f7), have the main screen re-center on the planet that you selected. Similar to the way it works when you click on a planet from the "colonies" screen (f5).

I would definetly not want this. I want my currently selected ship to stay selected through almost anything.

14. Limit the technology list to offer the AI to items they don't have. IE, if they HAVE rock colonization, then don't list that when making your offer. Also, on the want tech list, don't show tech I already have.

For offers, that's far too much intelligence information to give someone for no effort.

It would be acceptable if the supplies from the pool were evenly divided between the ships being removed from the fleet and the number of ships remaining in the fleet.

They are.

19. Allow one engine on space stations. Since it is listed as a ship, why not? Being able to move it one square per turn makes more sence than having to build a construction ship and move that to where you want to build one and then building it there.

Why exactly? There's no reason for a construction yard to require an immobile station, which is what bases are treated as in the game. You could always just add a vehicle with the same stats as a base and the ability to add engines.

Like some little ship could carry enough material to completly build a space station without having to make multiple trips. yeah, right.

Civilian transport is completely automated in this game. A ship does not need to carry resources because they are delivered to it.

22. No construction surplus rollover? It does for reasearch, why not construction.

I'd like an option for this in the settings.txt file. I want to be able to set ships to be built more than one per yard in my mod.

23. have some picture options for your designs. say a choice of 3 or 4 pictures for each ship size.

\races\pictures has every picture available to be changed if you want to.

[Fyron]

3. Have hot keys in combat for "next unit with movement points remaining" and "center window on currently selected unit" (if these are in the game already, I have not found them). I tried the "c" key for center and found the capture ship option (nice) though.

Hit the Spacebar. It works in combat and out of combat too. Hit the Help button (F1) and then look in the Hotkeys tab.

18. it would be nice if the system had the Last visited info displayed. IE, I visit a system but decide to not leave a unit there to monitor traffic. It now will show as explored when selected in the galaxy window. I would like something along the lines of "this information is 15 turns old" or "system Last visited on stardate 2404.9". this could be displayed underneath the system name in the upper left corner. It could also show red if it has been more than ten turns since Last visited, but color coding is not necessary, just a nice addition.

That would be a great feature, but it would require the savegame files to be a lot larger. And I mean a lot. This is bad for MP games for Users on dial-up modems.

21. Why do you lose construction accumulated when re-ordering the build queue? this is dumb. sorry, you have to destroy that partially built mine before you can build a ship on the other side of town. absurd. ESP since you retain research points accumulated when re-ordering the tech choices. It's bad enough that excess construction don't roll over to the next project in line. But having both is too much construction penalty IMNSHO.

In an ancient Version of the game, you would maintain the construction points already accumulated towards building a project when changing to a new one. But, that was easily exploitable, and so was removed. A system similar to Research and Intel was in SE3 though. MM tried to do something different with SE4, but that part didn't work. I do agree that it would be good to keep the construction done on a project just like Research and Intel Projects, but it is too late to code that into SE4. It might make its way into SE5 though.

24. Some sort of mineral alchemy would be nice. even if it is a small amount. just something to put in the queues of those planets that you can't build anything else with. like 10 to 100 of each mineral/organics/radioactives per turn. the amount could be a racial trait, or just limit it to 50 or 100. call it alchemy, or a recycling program, whatever. most cities have some sort of program like this so it is not out of the realm of reality. Recycle prgrams, comunity compost heaps, and old car batteries and used oil reclamation about cover the 3 resources in the game. lol

When you get the full game, research Chemistry 2, then Resource Manipulation. You get a Resource Converter, which can convert resources from one type to another. It doesn't use up any build queues.

[ January 08, 2003, 00:48: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[geoschmo]

18. it would be nice if the system had the Last visited info displayed. IE, I visit a system but decide to not leave a unit there to monitor traffic. It now will show as explored when selected in the galaxy window. I would like something along the lines of "this information is 15 turns old" or "system Last visited on stardate 2404.9". this could be displayed underneath the system name in the upper left corner. It could also show red if it has been more than ten turns since Last visited, but color coding is not necessary, just a nice addition.

That would be a great feature, but it would require the savegame files to be a lot larger. And I mean a lot. This is bad for MP games for Users on dial-up modems.

Actually, I am not so sure it would make the savegame all that much bigger. All the information is there anyway. It has to be otherwise you couldn't have everybodies turn running off of the same .gam file. All that would be needed would be a couple of more bits for each system to say how old the view is for each system for each empire. The coding for the actual color coding or symbols or whatever would be in the game executable, not in the savegame.

Geoschmo

[Fyron]

Geo, it doesn't store the info of what is in the system on old turns in the savegame file. If it did, they would always get larger. But as players start to be eliminated, the savegame files get smaller.

[geoschmo]

Good point. I was thinking of real time info, but we can't exactly be giving that away now can we.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

---

18. it would be nice if the system had

*snip*

That would be a great feature, but it would require the savegame files to be a lot larger. And I mean a lot. This is bad for MP games for Users on dial-up modems.

Actually, I am not so sure it would make the savegame all that much bigger. All the information is there anyway. It has to be otherwise you couldn't have everybodies turn running off of the same .gam file. All that would be needed would be a couple of more bits for each system to say how old the view is for each system for each empire. The coding for the actual color coding or symbols or whatever would be in the game executable, not in the savegame.

Geoschmo

---

If you want to make it simpler, you don't have to keep track of every ship and sat. Just remember what planets an opponent had colonized. Sure maybe one was just glassed and now you have an opprotunity to colonize ... but really is it worth haveing the colonization minister trying repeatedly on the off chance that happens. Some systems you just don't care about.

[Gryphin]

couslee,
A lot of good ideas. I like quite a few of them. In particular having the maintance cost displayed during the design process.
Just an idea > Yes losing a partialy built ship because you have to build something else is regretable. There are many aspects this game, (and many others) that don't make, "rational sence". They "seem" dumb. There is almost always a reason weather it is play ballance or coding limitaton, or just plain practical.

[couslee]

thanks guys.

RE-18: I am not saying to save the details. I have no problem with the way that is now. You enter a system, you see all the current plkanet date, other ships present, ect.. When you leave the system, all that info disappears and it looks like an empty system, irregardless of planets already colonized, ect. No need to change that. All I was saying, was under the system name an indication of when I Last viewed it would be nice. The game already shows the system now as explored. Make it show explored on what date. that should not cause an big increase in save file size.

#19, Quote reply:
"Why exactly? There's no reason for a construction yard to require an immobile station, which is what bases are treated as in the game. You could always just add a vehicle with the same stats as a base and the ability to add engines."
I may not be putting a construction yard on one. I may want to design a remote mining platform and be able to send it to a nearby asteroid field. Even if it was prohibited from using warp points would be fine. Or I may want to design a station as a defensive or repair base. With one engine, i could build it at the planet and slowly move it to where I want it placed.. It just makes more sence than building a ship with ship yard abilities so i can go build a ship yard.....

#4 Quote reply:
"That's +2 bonus movement, not +2 movement. Otherwise ships with 6 quantum engines would be running around at speeds of 20+ which is game-breakingly fast."
I understand that, that is not what I am saying. I would not want ships with that many movement points. design a ship, put one bonus movement engine on it. You see it has 3 movement. Add one Ion engine and that drops to two movement. You lose the bonus movement when mixing engines. All I was saying, was allow the mixing of engines without being penalized.

#14 Quote reply:
"For offers, that's far too much intelligence information to give someone for no effort."
How so? if both of us have Rock colonization, there is no reason to have it show on the tech list when offering a trade. Likewise, if I have rock colonization, there is no need for it to be on the tech list for the "request" side. I can understand you point regarding the offer side, knowing what you have that they don't could be construed as undue intel. But there is NO reason to be able to request a tech I already have. all that does is clutter the list.

thrilled to know #15 is in the full Version. At least in part. That don't work in the demo.

back to my search for info. can't find what I need regarding captured ships. (I captured one, that has organic weaponry. Now what do I do with it? retrofit command only brings up a list of my designs. How do I change the cheap engines, and retain the weapons. AND/OR I would like to learn those organic component abilities, but that don't seem possible in the demo, or I am missing something)

[Phoenix-D]

"#19, Quote reply:
"Why exactly? There's no reason for a construction yard to require an immobile station, which is what bases are treated as in the game. You could always just add a vehicle with the same stats as a base and the ability to add engines."
I may not be putting a construction yard on one. I may want to design a remote mining platform and be able to send it to a nearby asteroid field. Even if it was prohibited from using warp points would be fine. Or I may want to design a station as a defensive or repair base. With one engine, i could build it at the planet and slowly move it to where I want it placed.. It just makes more sence than building a ship with ship yard abilities so i can go build a ship yard....."

Not really. If you need to build something, but don't have the tools, what do you do? Make the tools. It makes perfect sense to me.

"#4 Quote reply:
"That's +2 bonus movement, not +2 movement. Otherwise ships with 6 quantum engines would be running around at speeds of 20+ which is game-breakingly fast."
I understand that, that is not what I am saying. I would not want ships with that many movement points. design a ship, put one bonus movement engine on it. You see it has 3 movement. Add one Ion engine and that drops to two movement. You lose the bonus movement when mixing engines. All I was saying, was allow the mixing of engines without being penalized."

Balance issue. This can be modded, but it would allow you to get Quantum speed but only paying the Ion price.

#14 Quote reply:
"For offers, that's far too much intelligence information to give someone for no effort."
How so? if both of us have Rock colonization, there is no reason to have it show on the tech list when offering a trade. Likewise, if I have rock colonization, there is no need for it to be on the tech list for the "request" side. I can understand you point regarding the offer side, knowing what you have that they don't could be construed as undue intel. But there is NO reason to be able to request a tech I already have. all that does is clutter the list."

Actually there is a reason. Namely, multiple level techs, and bluffing. If you have ship construction 3, and your ally has 5, you certainly want it listed for a trade!

"back to my search for info. can't find what I need regarding captured ships. (I captured one, that has organic weaponry. Now what do I do with it? retrofit command only brings up a list of my designs. How do I change the cheap engines, and retain the weapons. AND/OR I would like to learn those organic component abilities, but that don't seem possible in the demo, or I am missing something)"

The answer here to all is "you can't". Racial tech- which is what Organic tech is- can't be captured.

Phoenix-D