Hello Vic, long time lurker who finally made an account. First off I wanted to say thank you for the amazing game and I really do appreciate all the effort you must have put in to make it. The following is just a wish-list of features I'd personally like to see and is likely some combination of unbalanced/impractical/poorly thought out as fair warning. Some of them have been posted elsewhere as well but are included here if I really liked the idea. One or two might already be in the game but I've somehow missed.
-Quality of Life features
1. Savable Starting Empire choices. Please let us save the starting empire information as a profile so we can simply load it in instead of having to manually set everything again for those of us who like playing the same empire (for various reasons) in different reasons. I could also see this being potentially useful for Streamers as well.
2. Bookmark planet generation rolls. Being able to save a single roll during planet generation and compare it to subsequent rolls of a given phase with the choice of either rolling again, using the bookmarked one, or replacing it with a new bookmark would be quite handy for those who spent a lot of time hunting for the perfect planet for a given game. People can already do something similar by simply rerolling until they get what they want, this would simply make the process less painful.
3. Additional History Class options. Having the flexibility to bias the generation results towards additional things could be pretty useful for those hunting for a specific planet they have in mind. Such options could be for example:
----Radiation: Weighs Dissolution War rolls towards radiation hazards being more likely.
----Mutants: Weighs Dissolution War rolls towards mutants being more likely.
----Metropolis: Weighs colonization rolls towards having higher population counts, the opposite of Outpost basically.
----Metal Rich: Increases the the percentage of Metal in the crust.
----Metal Poor: Decreases the percentage of metal in the crust.
----Rare Rich: Increases the percentage of Rare Metals in the crust.
----Rare poor: Decreases the percentage of Rare Metals in the crust.
----Fuel Rich: Increases the percentage of Fuel deposits in the crust.
----Fuel Poor: Decreases the percentage of Fuel Deposits in the crust.
4: Changing Auto-saves to automatically add your factions name to it could be handy for those who have parallel active campaigns. An alternative could be simply having a sub-folder created with the factions name for the current auto-save system.
5. Aux Info screen during geology phase of planetary generation. Basically right now if you want to see the heavy metal percentage of your planets crust you can only do it once actually in a campaign via your empires dashboard. Assuming that is decided during the geology phase and not when a campaign starts it'd be nice to see something akin to the Aux info tab we have for the biosphere generation phase showing a breakdown of various resource percentages in the crust. Once again aimed at those who have a specific planet in mind be it to make the game easier (to learn it or have a relaxing playthrough) or for those who deliberately want the challenge of one or more resources being very scarce.
6. Empire wide governor settings. Basically the ability to edit most of the things we can on the current governor screen (wages, bonuses, allow or disallow emergency food/buying freefolk, et) globally instead of having to only do so for each individual city one at a time. It'd be extra useful if we could also save a setting profile that would automatically applied to any new/captured cities during a campaign as the default.
7. Privatize Asset. Just what it says on the tin; please Vic let us be able to sell off public assets to the private economy if they can afford it as a way to undo nationalized assets. I'd be perfectly fine if it had a PP cost or required a stratagem to do so.
8. Water assets. This might already be planned for the navel updates but as of the moment coastal cities are disadvantaged by having less workable tiles then a landlocked city which can still get the same amount of water by simply having a zone border touching the coast. It'd make coastal cities much more interesting (and more competitive) if there were potential bonuses you could get from water assets. On a side note it'd also be nice if rivers (and maybe other water bodies as well?) could make use of a (researchable?) hydroelectric power-plant. Functionally a location locked solar power-plant balanced to be cheaper and/or have more output?
9. Remind me option. Having the game automatically remind you (maybe as something you can also flag certain things with?) about units that have yet to move/mothballed assets or other such things when you hit the end turn button then asking for a confirmation on if you /really/ want to end the turn anyway would be pretty nice. Especially for later in a game when you already are going to have a lot of stuff to keep track of so things will slip through the cracks.
10. Admin Strain overlay. Pretty short and sweet, this would be a map overlay option that shows you where admin strain starts to kick in. Potentially useful if in the future admin strain can be altered in-game somehow from the default over six tile range.
-Change in Mechanics
1. Interior Council Leader influencing Recruit rolls. As of the moment the only way to influence the cap level of a recruit is via meritocracy, which is both frustrating from a player standpoint and I'd argue unrealistic since the person doing the headhunting should be able to sort the obvious chaff from the wheat. Perhaps reuse existing mechanics for the roll where success gives a small bonus (an example could be 15%) to a recruits cap with a critical success being double the bonus? By the same token a failed roll could instead give a penalty with a critical failure doubling the penalty. Essentially this would represent your Interior Council leader using the Admin (or other relevant skills) to actively headhunt useful talent and on occasion mistaking a poor candidate for a real hotshot. This would also give the player the feeling of agency when it comes to recruiting short outside of taking Meritocracy, either at its first level or maxed out for the leader cap bonus.
2. Land Hex Perks need logistics. This is more to make them act consistent with how land assets work by requiring them to have a logistics link back to the city whose zone they reside in plus it would require a player to put more thought into harnessing them than "plop city down within six tiles of a perk and your set". It could also represent building up local infrastructure in an area and give more tactical options since having them be linked via logistics also means they can be cut off easier potentially opening up more tactical opportunities.
Once again I want to thank you for this excellent game Vic and I hope you might find something of use in the above word salad.
, so thanks for the great game. <3
