Master Wishlist Thread

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: lancer



Resource Slider

It appears that this hasn't made the cut for the Expansion. During the Live Chat Elliot didn't appear to express much enthusiasm for the concept. I can see why. Implementing a resource slider would be a sizeable job. You would need to adjust the AI and the games underlying balance. Not easy.

The reason I - and by the sound of it, others - would like a slider is to enable resources - particularly strategic resources - to have some meaning. At present - once your empire reaches a certain size - you have so many resources that they effectively become meaningless background fluff. The exception, of course, are the key luxury resources.

It would be nice if you actually had to worry about sourcing enough carbon fibre or lead to keep your empire running. Wars might be fought over certain strategic resources. They aren't called 'strategic' for nothing.

The trick is to come up with a way of doing this without having to redo the economic model, the AI and the game balance.


Here's a suggestion ----------------------------------------------------------------


Keep everything as is. Generate the maps with the same number of resource locations. No different.

Implement a slider. Call it a 'resource multiplier'. Magically find some space for it on the start-up options screen along with all the other sliders. (Not complaining, these are one of the games stronger points).

Game proceeds as normal. AI empires do their thing. Difference only applies to the Players empire.

Everytime you build something each component costs 'x' amount of certain resources. What the slider does is change this. If set to 'normal', obviously no difference. If set to 'scarce', for example, then all resource requirements are doubled. So a component needs 10 Lead and 1 Carbon Fibre to build. Now it needs 20 Lead and 2 Carbon Fibre.

All of a sudden your empires resource requirements have doubled. Hey, I need a new lead mine, pronto.

Fine tuning the idea would involve applying the 'resource multiplier' slider to strategic resources only. Luxury resources appear to work well as they are.

Further tuning would be to put a limit to the extraction possible from a single resource source. Eg. So you couldn't put a mega-mining base on a single Lead source and supply all your empires needs from this one location.

This is an exploit currently in the game but one that would be easy (I think) to fix.

In summary you would be able - if you wanted to - make strategic resources mean something and have an impact on your play. The private sector becomes even more important as does the search for new resource locations. Do all this with minimal impact on the existing game design.

Sounds good to me but then most of my own ideas do.

Cheers,
Lancer

I support this 100%.

I'd also like to see the ability to modify a planet's resources with the in game editor...allowing us to boost or weaken them at will...not just the amount, ability to say...hmm, I want to add some steel here, and add it to that planet/moon.

[flap]

I might be a pervert, but what attracted me to distant worlds was the possibility to automatize everything, take a ship or a fleet and play as a captain in that complex world.
Maybe that idea could be pushed further in a future expansion :
- The player only has control over a ship, but has access to all data in its empire. He earns money, or any type of credit, fame whatever... depending on what he does (explore valuable worlds, maybe buy a colony ship to colonise them, kill pirates,...).
- The AI of the empire could give it orders in the same way as it does to automated ships. Except that the player can decline. If he performs it well, he gets some of these credits.
- There might the possibility to trade in the same way as a civilian trader, or mine, or whatever.

I suppose that this concept would still have to refined a lot, but switching from world leader to captain might be fun.

I will try to see to which point it is posible to play in that direction with a little bit of roleplay... (counting myslef money earned and ship prices)

[Pipewrench]

give certain resources a finite inventory that can be increased with technology. This will force expansion and abandonment of old bases.

give some techs a requirement that manufacturing, mining and science must be at a certain level to make the new tech operational.

it would be nice if spying became set to a budget with an unknown factor for the player to gauge. Information collected could be false due to other empires counter. Lets try and make the player paranoid as to the credibility of what he or she collects, hears or sees.

[flap]

Here are some more thought on my proposal to posts earlier to beef up gameplay as a captin only :

- The player would be given the possibility to play as a captain. When playing as captain, he is still part of its original empire, but as his own budget (money).
- The captain has to buy his ships, pay maintenance for them ans purchase the fuel.
- His income could either be a proportion of total empires income, or be some money payed when performing some actions :
-- Exploring valuable world
-- Colonizing valuable world. Then the captain would receive during 3 years a proportion of the income made from that planet (but it belongs to the empire)
-- Destroying ennemy ships
-- Performing missions given by the AI of the empire (blockade, that is destroying all commercial ships going to a planet; protecting a ship; invading ennemy planet...)

- When the player is fed up with playing that captain, he can "erase" it : everyship which used to be controlled by the captain (the player) go back to normal control from the empire. All money of the captain is returned to the empire.

[martok]

ORIGINAL: pipewrench

give certain resources a finite inventory that can be increased with technology. This will force expansion and abandonment of old bases.

Oh hell, no.

I hate -- with the fire of a thousand suns -- strategy games with finite resources. While I concede that those who feel resources in Distant Worlds are a bit too abundant may have a point, I would still vastly prefer they be overly plentiful than having it so that you can run out.

ORIGINAL: pipewrench

give some techs a requirement that manufacturing, mining and science must be at a certain level to make the new tech operational.

This would be interesting. I'd worry about how well the AI could handle it -- I could see computer-controlled empires researching technologies that they can't use because they're unaware that their industrial base (mining/manufacturing) was insufficient -- but with that caveat, I like the idea in principle.

ORIGINAL: pipewrench

it would be nice if spying became set to a budget with an unknown factor for the player to gauge. Information collected could be false due to other empires counter. Lets try and make the player paranoid as to the credibility of what he or she collects, hears or sees.

Now that could be a lot of fun. The possibility to feed disinformation to your enemies is one that I, quite frankly, find delicious. [8D]

[lancer]

Resource Strip Mining

As mentioned above there is nothing to stop you building a medium starbase over a particular resource location with multiple resource extractors, lots of cargo and docking bays and effectively generating massive amounts of that resource (luxury or strategic) from the one location.

All you need to do is find a single source of Nekros Stones, for example, and by strip mining it you can supply your entire empires need and additionally flood the market with your abundant supplies. You can do this because there is no restriction on over-exploiting a resource location and the resources themselves are assumed to be infinite.

In a previous suggestion some posts above on this page I mentioned that this is an exploit that should be gotten rid of.

Which would work.

If the game was tweaked somehow to make resources have greater impact and meaning (eg. so you don't end up knee deep in every strategic resource once your empire achieves critical mass) then the mining of resources takes on greater importance.

So I've had a few thoughts on how to deal with the exploit beyond just unilaterally enforcing a rule that any miner can only have a single resource extractor of any particular type.

If, instead, you (eg. CodeForce) continue to allow the player to put as many resource extractor modules on top of a location as he wants. Go crazy and strip mine Lead till the lights go out.

A couple of ideas how to turn this into a positive instead of an exploit.

Making resources finite would work. The games already has the data inbuilt for this. Didn't come to pass because, as I understand it, the AI had difficulties. Make it for players only. Make it an option so those that dislike this kind of thing don't have to deal with it.

A second approach would be to have resources that never run out but that degrade in quality. For example a resource of Caslon is rated at 92%, excellent fuel source here. If you put multiple extractors over it to suck up as much as you could as fast as you could then you run the risk that the quality of the Caslon source could degrade below the 92% level to represent the fact that it is depleting.

Rough thoughts would be that once a month, for example, the game checks every mining station and if any have multiple extractors then there is a die roll that may result in random% drop in the resource quality. The more extractors you have sucking it dry the greater the odds it will drop.

Trick is that it will keep dropping until it gets to 1%. After that no more drops. Your mining station is still eking out dribs and drabs but that's about it. You have - like a greedy oil baron - taken out too much too soon and suffered the inevitable consequence.

Opens up some interesting decision points for the player. Yep, I have an urgent need for Helium. Running short of the stuff. Do I park a gas mining station on top with a standard single extractor and go for a long term reliable source while gambling that I can find more or do I go for broke and pull out as much as I can with multiple gas extraction modules installed in the miner while accepting that I might kill the golden goose?

It would also make resource quality have more impact. There isn't a lot of point in strip mining a 13% Lead deposit. You'd be hitting empty in no time. But a 90% Lead deposit might last long enough ('cause the chance of the deposit degrading is randomised) to make it worth your while.

Looking forward to the expansion.

Cheers,

Lancer

[martok]

ORIGINAL: lancer

A second approach would be to have resources that never run out but that degrade in quality. For example a resource of Caslon is rated at 92%, excellent fuel source here. If you put multiple extractors over it to suck up as much as you could as fast as you could then you run the risk that the quality of the Caslon source could degrade below the 92% level to represent the fact that it is depleting.

Rough thoughts would be that once a month, for example, the game checks every mining station and if any have multiple extractors then there is a die roll that may result in random% drop in the resource quality. The more extractors you have sucking it dry the greater the odds it will drop.

Trick is that it will keep dropping until it gets to 1%. After that no more drops. Your mining station is still eking out dribs and drabs but that's about it. You have - like a greedy oil baron - taken out too much too soon and suffered the inevitable consequence.

Opens up some interesting decision points for the player. Yep, I have an urgent need for Helium. Running short of the stuff. Do I park a gas mining station on top with a standard single extractor and go for a long term reliable source while gambling that I can find more or do I go for broke and pull out as much as I can with multiple gas extraction modules installed in the miner while accepting that I might kill the golden goose?

It would also make resource quality have more impact. There isn't a lot of point in strip mining a 13% Lead deposit. You'd be hitting empty in no time. But a 90% Lead deposit might last long enough ('cause the chance of the deposit degrading is randomised) to make it worth your while.

Looking forward to the expansion.

Cheers,

Lancer

I rather like this idea, and wouldn't at all mind seeing it in the game. Good post!

[kenata]

ORIGINAL: lancer

Resource Strip Mining

As mentioned above there is nothing to stop you building a medium starbase over a particular resource location with multiple resource extractors, lots of cargo and docking bays and effectively generating massive amounts of that resource (luxury or strategic) from the one location.

All you need to do is find a single source of Nekros Stones, for example, and by strip mining it you can supply your entire empires need and additionally flood the market with your abundant supplies. You can do this because there is no restriction on over-exploiting a resource location and the resources themselves are assumed to be infinite.

In a previous suggestion some posts above on this page I mentioned that this is an exploit that should be gotten rid of.

Which would work.

If the game was tweaked somehow to make resources have greater impact and meaning (eg. so you don't end up knee deep in every strategic resource once your empire achieves critical mass) then the mining of resources takes on greater importance.

So I've had a few thoughts on how to deal with the exploit beyond just unilaterally enforcing a rule that any miner can only have a single resource extractor of any particular type.

If, instead, you (eg. CodeForce) continue to allow the player to put as many resource extractor modules on top of a location as he wants. Go crazy and strip mine Lead till the lights go out.

A couple of ideas how to turn this into a positive instead of an exploit.

Making resources finite would work. The games already has the data inbuilt for this. Didn't come to pass because, as I understand it, the AI had difficulties. Make it for players only. Make it an option so those that dislike this kind of thing don't have to deal with it.

A second approach would be to have resources that never run out but that degrade in quality. For example a resource of Caslon is rated at 92%, excellent fuel source here. If you put multiple extractors over it to suck up as much as you could as fast as you could then you run the risk that the quality of the Caslon source could degrade below the 92% level to represent the fact that it is depleting.

Rough thoughts would be that once a month, for example, the game checks every mining station and if any have multiple extractors then there is a die roll that may result in random% drop in the resource quality. The more extractors you have sucking it dry the greater the odds it will drop.

Trick is that it will keep dropping until it gets to 1%. After that no more drops. Your mining station is still eking out dribs and drabs but that's about it. You have - like a greedy oil baron - taken out too much too soon and suffered the inevitable consequence.

Opens up some interesting decision points for the player. Yep, I have an urgent need for Helium. Running short of the stuff. Do I park a gas mining station on top with a standard single extractor and go for a long term reliable source while gambling that I can find more or do I go for broke and pull out as much as I can with multiple gas extraction modules installed in the miner while accepting that I might kill the golden goose?

It would also make resource quality have more impact. There isn't a lot of point in strip mining a 13% Lead deposit. You'd be hitting empty in no time. But a 90% Lead deposit might last long enough ('cause the chance of the deposit degrading is randomised) to make it worth your while.

Looking forward to the expansion.

Cheers,

Lancer

I think you are overlooking a fairly simple and effect solution to your issue. The problem here is not that resources are finite v. infinite, but simply how much can be refined by a given star base. From my point of view, the solution would be a simple as giving a mining star base a natural extraction limit based on the extractor type used. This is sort of what they did for the medical and recreation modules, so that you can't just put a bunch on one base and get a huge bonus. If they set the limit to something around the extraction capacity of 4 extractors, then you would not be able to "overload" your extraction capacity. Yet, maybe this kind of limitation does allow the player to have that strip mining feel that one would expect. Another simple solution would be to simply limit a players total resource extractors, based on total population. This way, an empire could strip mine a few planets for an abundance of resources at the cost of slow mining a lot of different planets.

[kenata]

Maybe this has been stated already, but its hard to tell with 32 pages of wish list. Right now I really just want a button on the expansion planner screen that says "send construction ship with smallest queue". I love the expansion planner screen, and think its awesome how it lets me see all the potential resource targets laided out by galactic and empire priority. However, right now, the only way to send constructor ships is via the "queue closest constructor" which more often than not queues the same ship to do like 8 mining stations, even if I have 5 constructors each doing only 1 job each. I just think it would be nice to have a button that helped even out the building distribution.

[TheLastRonin]

Just incase this doesn't get seen in the modding wishlist thread I will post it here (and only here) also:

If the modders could somehow have a way of INCREASING the number of planet textures instead of REPLACING the textures we could make much more varied galaxies! For example we have 28 textures for barren rocky planets now, if we could increase that through to 40 or even 50 through mods then it would really spruce up those large galaxies, you wouldn't stumble across 100 of the same looking planets.

[Krob]

I'm not sure if this wishlist is still valid or if you want to start a new thread, but I'd really, really like the Expansion planner to sort the planets/asteroids by the resource I'm filtering the list on. It's a pain to have to search through every item in the list to find decent percentages. :/ It seems to do this for singles, but anything with more than one resource is sorted arbitrarily (or so it seems).

It would also be nice to flag which items we would like to be used in upgrades. Case in point, I purchased Swift Robotic Repairs from the Ikkuro and can now build the S2F7, which even without it's upgrade is better than the top end S2F4, but the system still thinks the S2F4 is better so every time I upgrade my ships and bases, I have to go back into them and remove the S2F4 and hunt down the S2F7. Blergh!

And, um, make it so we can set my colonies to always use clone troops and make it so we can do a selection in the troop menu to disband our sissy peasants.

Also, the galaxy map seems to get pretty bogged down later in the game; it'd be nice to have options to turn things down a bit so that it doesn't take 2 minutes to scroll.

And I'd like a pony.

K

[Zakhal]

Just som UI design things.

Som lists have no order. Race diplomacy list is good example. You have 14 different races on a random list. It annoying hard to find them. If they were on som order like alphapetical one it would be easy to find the race and even memorize its place.

Also the component list in ship design should be  grouped. The list changes so often that even if you can keep it in alphabetical order its impossible to remember it. Each group (weapons, engine parts, etc) having little space/color/bolded line between them would be enough. Also when you move components to ship the list should never jump up or down.

[Franky007]

Another UI improvement:
All scroll lists should remember the last item chosen.
So when you come back at the same screen, scroll list should have the same item already selected.

[Fideach]

"goodies" options! I would like when setting up a new game, to be able to adjust if any, and what type of "goodies" are found. Ruins don't bother me, as much as all those debris fields of ships and Planet Destroyers. So far it is better in the expansion then in vanilla DW. But I'd still like to be able to adjust it, or remove those completely.

 

[Zakhal]

"Only show latest components" checkbox in the ship designer actually hides the best components (like meridian shields) from me in som cases. Auto-update does the same.

This checkbox also doesnt save it setting and you cant change the default from anywhere so I have to tick it off everytime I use the designer. The setting to show all/latest should atleast be saved.

[adecoy95]

i just got the expansion yesterday, i was wondering if it was possible to get clusters with less systems between them, right now it dosent feel very clustery. more like, irregular irregular

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: martok

ORIGINAL: pipewrench

give certain resources a finite inventory that can be increased with technology. This will force expansion and abandonment of old bases.

Oh hell, no.

I hate -- with the fire of a thousand suns -- strategy games with finite resources. While I concede that those who feel resources in Distant Worlds are a bit too abundant may have a point, I would still vastly prefer they be overly plentiful than having it so that you can run out.

It's already been done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceward_Ho!

The "finite resources" idea CAN work, as they showed - but it belongs in a whole new game, not on the "wish list".

[adecoy95]

adding an add to/create new fleet button to the build order screen would be pretty sweet, causing all the ships you que up to be in the same fleet

[Nalim27]

Hello,
I suggest to improve upgrade ship design functionality for player that design ships manually. Manually update ship design is most annoying task now in DW:
1. Update design do not decrease amount of parts if the are not needed (because of new technology) for example life support and habitats or number of reactors. I spend big boring time with trying to decrease habitats then discover that it is still not possible, locate habitat in lest parts list and increase back to original amount.

2. In some cases update should increase number of new level of parts - it was happen for me one in reactor - new reactor technology have better attributes (size, fuel etc) except energy output - he produce less energy then old model. After upgrade button game design have total positive output but it have not fully powered hyperdrive - due this hyperdrive works on 50% capacity(speed) only in all upgraded ships. I realized this later and correct amount of reactors manually, but I did not expect it. Maybe this one is a bug.

3. Sometimes happens that when old design have maximum possible size then after update size is bigger (for example limit is 350 and upgraded ship have 353). And due this some ships can't be constructed. It is OK for me that upgrede algorithm crete too big desings sometimes, fix is easy (decrease amout of armors), but I suggest to higlight designs that can't be constructed (because of size, missing important part etc. generally designs with error) in the list of designs. For example use red bold font for those desings in the list or red line background.

So I summarize this logn post to some short version:
1. Upgrade shloud lower amounts of parts if this is possible
2. Upgrade should keep total energy output not greater than 0, but equal or greater than hyperdrive consumption.
Or another possibility: Upgrade should keep total energy output to the same amount as old design has.
3. Designs with errors (like too big size) should he highlighted in the list of designs.

[Bob123]

---Diplomatic option to buy/sell Ships depending on Relation/Reputation/building price/tech---

Costs could be calculated a similar way as Technologies(for AIs),and could be freely set (0 to infinite) by the player (with an default value say.... 100% percent building price)

After the Trade,the Ship has to reach a Colony of the new owner before it changes hands (one way to prevent "Instant conquests").


This would enable things like:
-Proxy Wars (Arms Sales to influence Conflicts)
-selling outdated Ships
-playing Trade Empires with little Weapons Research but good relations.
-selling found Atrifact Ships

Btw the basic idea is from Galciv,where it worked pretty good.

PS:
Hell, this could even be adapted to government styles,with mercantile guilds selling everything to everyone for the right price,and Democracies/Dictators not even offering the option to certain governments.