Master Wishlist Thread

[Data]

I like all of it, especially the fact that is should be optional - that is a must for me as I'm 50-50 on this idea and I'd like to go either way.

[J HG T]

Nicely thought Igard! Population seems like the most logical meter for influence. Maybe some (rare) resources could add bonuses to influence as well.

[Bingeling]

When you conquer a colony, have its tax rate set to 0 rather than whatever the old empire had. It is annoying to have colonies instantly rebel without any chance to reduce taxes.

[EaglePryde]

to put it short:

1.) Multiplayer

[Torgrim]

I would like to see an option where you and your empire starts only in your home system with few ships if any and no warpdrive.

What you basicly do at first is to explore your own solar system to see where to set up your first mining ops and work from there and finally when warpdrive is researched you can venture out and explore nearby star systems.

[Data]

Great idea, I second that
Welcome to the forum Torgrim

[J HG T]

Something similar to MoOs (AGAIN?!) pre-warp start? I think it would work.

[Data]

I tried to abstain to rant yet again on this but you had to bring it up....yes, just like MOO pre-warp. [:)]
I've also requested it a while back.

[Igard]

Pre-Warp would be great. I'd love to also have pre-warp civilizations that we can use for research/slaves/subjection. Some options for RPing different races.

[bertipa]

Warning - Sakaturi spoiler!


It all started with this question, posted in the War room:

>
This is more an Ethical than a Technical Question:

Now that we know who the SAKATURI are what is the 'correct' way to deal with them?

1 - Kill at first sight
2 - Trade embargo them hoping that they will declere war earlier
3 - Wait their move and pretend to know nothing

The first choice is a little simplicistic, unethical and brings the match to a quick end
The second choice is still not correct but the war usually start in a balanced situation
In the third choice I feel a little stupid and, when all the chips are down, they are not nice neighborhoods.
>

And it generated a game change wish:

>
I have the feeling that it is a design fault.

Tha Sakaturi should be any new empire who pops out via 'Minor race upgrading' or 'Waked up after eons of sleep'.

The 'Immigrant from another galaxy' could be them, good guys or neutrals.

The AI players shold be able to mask in the diplomacy screen the technologies who they don't want to share or make you know that they have it.

The Shakaturi should have a tech that let them disguise really well... that would explain how they were able to infiltrate so well your advisors.

... or they can be the Ancient Guardians waiting for reinforcement/recontact from the intergalactic homeworld to start the shooting.

That will solve the ethical problem and will add a good dose of paranoia.
>

As I really like the late game Great War this is my wish to keep it fresh every time.

[J HG T]

Good point there bertipa. Making the Shakturis arrival/revelation more random would keep players on their toes, as even their most trusted ally could be the Shakturis in disguise, gathering strength with players assistance.
Supporting this idea.

[Data]

+1

[bertipa]

Was looking at the thread and this are my ideas, unfortunately the thread is too long so I'm really not sure about how many duplications I'm putting here:

Singularity:

The AI are coming, nothing can stop that.
How they will integrate in your (and in the others) empire?

Slaves,
Friends,
Allies,
Benign overlords,
Powermonger dictators,
Genocidal psychos?

Space battles:

I understand that WWII fighter battles are the simplest to visualize (from StarWars on) but Capital ship should really not do that.

Space battles will be quick, dirty, and from really long distances.
A little less glamour but more 'realistic' look, Newtonian Laws would be a big plus (like slingshot around gas giants to accellerate).

Relativistic kill vehicle (RKV) - Say goodbye to any military space base and to any planet installation.
Not to include them is troubling.

Mining:

Your choice of government should decide if mining is government or private sector or mixed.

Colonization:

Multiselection in the colonization panel, by hand or by filter (eg. all more than 49% Quality Desert targets).

Multicolonization: Expecially in a continental planet more than one colony can be extablished by more than one empire.
This will cause strife or, if the empire become frinds reason of good relations.

Buildings and other planet improvements.

Bonus-yelding galaxy unique or empire unique buildings (ok this is not my more original request).

Resources:

With all the message spamming we got I would really like also warning about resource sarcity or glout.

Messages:

More control on which messages will get a banner which will be visible by default in the message list and which will be visible only if you really search for them.
In this scenario I would like to discriminate advisors suggestions against other empires from those against pirates.
Also between other empires at war with me/my trade sanction/their trade sanction/ the others.

In the 'not usually shown' messages shold go things like lost ships etc.


System (No FTL) Colony ship:

By default if there is a colonizable target in the builder system?


Diplomacy:

I see a lot of CIV4 or GALCIV2 references in the forum... I would point more to good old CIV3 for its fantastic freedom to echange anything with anything.
BTW if an AI don't want to exchange something should be able to not show it up on the diplomacy screen.
If the AI look at this kind of things also the player should be able to do that.

Multilateral
Some kind of Coalition common decision mechanism, maybe linked to a Diplomacy win condition (or maybe not).

Pause:

The pause behaviour shold be more user-controllable:

By myself - a Turn-Based player by heart - I wold like to have pauses at every screen and always resume from pause by myself.
Others in the forums (probably Real-Time players) would like the game going on even behind management screens.

Capital ships:

In late game-age Capital ships should rival planets for population and production.

Space creatures:

I concur that they are cheesy.
Could them be replaced with space hazards, Automated remain of the old Great War, Shadows of Sublimated post singularity races, alternated universes interaction due to weak space-time fabric etc. etc. ?

Fleets:

Individual fleet automations.
Maybe with different priority like 'Doesn't matter what is going on but Utopia has to be defended to the last ship' or 'If you are really nothing to do check out the nearby systems'

IF not Fleet formations some tech about tactical ability in space battle.

Empire provinces:

I would very like to define subareas of my empire (like Core, Frontier, Mining Area) and to assign different economic/military presence/etc. policies to them.
As we are limited with a 2D universe this could be a compensation.

Resarch:

The only tech that I look for (without stress, but I check them out sometimes) are the Colonize this or that. The rest are a blur.
I just make sure that I have more blur than all the others.

I think that this come from Heart of Iron (but never played it myself) divide the technology in:

1 - Theory - Takes long time to resarch and if bought medium time to be really understood.
2 - Application - You need the theory behind but for the rest is like it is now, you have to research it too.
3 - Item - You know how to mass produce something useful from an Application - this can safely become better with repeated research step.

The three level have different way to be researched, exchanged, used, budgeted.

Patience:

If you had the patience to read until now thanks a lot for the effort.

[bertipa]

I just want to tell that I am aware of the ridiculous level my wish are attaining... but here we go:

Mixing the research and the mining wish of the previous post:

Depending on your choice of government research also should be a mix of government and private effort.

The player will give directions to the government efforts but the private sector will go by himself.

Probably they will be slanted toward 'Items' research.

The money the private sector will invest in research should be deducted by their taxes also.

If the resulting techs will be used in bargain with other empires a percentage of the benefits should go back to the private sectors (if any, I alway exchange losing money!).


Now I will restart my mac in Windows 7 to load the new patch.

[Bingeling]

A big empire annoyance issue.

When you got many colonies, and retrofit space ports, or build the same stuff on 100 planets at once, the message log on build complete is quite noisy and annoying. But often this is useful info, as you for instance wait for a fleet to complete retrofit.

So if multiple similar messages are spawned at once, group them, and expand to individual when clicked.

20 destroyers completed
4 destroyers completed at Sitrus 4
120 fortified bunkers completed

In the perfect world, one can predict what will happen in a few seconds, so even if there is half a second between them they are grouped.

[Shark7]

While this is kinda a modding thing, it could also be easily used by all players to help improve the AI capabilities. And I think it is sorely needed. This is one of those things that could be added easily and the community could share (HINT HINT).

I think that one of the best ways to improve the AI would be to let players design the blueprints for the AI ships. Players make far more powerful ships than the standard AI fair. I know pirates 'copy' player designs, so the AI should either be able to do this, or at the very least place a stand alone editor and a readable file for the game so that players can design and save the blueprints with the AI modifying as needed.

Example:

I design an escort base design with 4 laser, 2 shields, 8 engines, and electronics for the AI to use. The AI interprets this as

4 x (most current beam weapon)
2 x (most current shield)
8 x (most current engine)
1 x (ECM)
1 x (targeting)
1 x (damage control/repair)

so the AI gets a design similar to my own escorts, but uses its own best components.

The nice thing about designing the blueprints is that you could have a file to customize designs for each race and 'tonnage' level, giving a whole lot of diversity between the different races. Also simply making it a stand alone designer with a readable output file means that we could share design blueprints among the community, other than having to edit every single one ourselves.

For instance, I might design the Shakturi shipset while someone else designs a Human shipset and we trade files.

[bertipa]

I just finished a post-1.508 patch game and I have better defined my criticisms/wishes.

Here I speak about the map: I basically use the map to find out the two world destroyer and the three or four interesting debris fields. For the rest the map is inconsequential: I could play just with the colonization panel and even there I never look at the distance column.

I know that I should, that it will optimize my play but for what? To win even more?

In this weekend game I discovered, when I was already owning more than the 40% of the galaxy, how to build paceports. Before it never occourred to me to search for that and only reading this forums I found out that it should have been possible.

And again... for what? I was already owning the frigging 40% of the galaxy with just two spaceports (one came with a recovered startbase).

BTW I upped the galaxy owning level to win to 50% for to being able to fight with the Sakaturi. at the 33% level I was always winning before they committed to declare war.

But... back to the map. Why I don't look at it? Because it is not giving me any information useful for my strategy. I just have to colony-spam anything even marginally colonizable, doesn't matter where the planets were.

If my frendly neighborhoods ask for a base or a planet I often just gave it to them just to keep them happy... in the end more planet from them were defecting to me than the ones that I was giving them back.
And I never check where they are on the map: still no useful information, it does not change the fact that I'm augmenting my percentage of galaxy control costantly.

I could exchange the map with the percentage counter and it would not change a lot(from a strategy point of view, grafically could be a little boring).

So... to my wish:

- The voids between spiral arms should be almost impossible to traversate.
- Ditto for Clouds.
- Tempests should be just impossible, not even 'almost'.
- Clouds, tempests, voids, black holes, nova remains, other space hazards should be more influential on the galaxy navigation, create choke points, obliging difficoult choices in one's empire development.
- Clouds and tempests should mask the stars behind them creating a simil-fog of war at the least until an exploration ship does not manage to pass them.
- During a game there should be a significant probability to have one two novas with mayor impact on their region of space.

- As relativity has no presence in DW universe why not add a few (really a few) wormholes, to add spice to the strategic planning.

In the end DW has to choose between being a Strategic or an Arcade game. I always felt that RTS were more of the second kind but DW seems to have the capability to be more strategic than most... but more work is needed to achieve that.

[bertipa]

About the speed of light:

Even now we are getting a lot of information about nearby star systems: if the have planets and the atmosphere composition of that planets.

We should be able to do that and even better in DW. Even spot Civilization telltale signals.
Even before explore them with our ships.

But.. the info that we would get from our passive sensors should be adeguately aged: depending on the light-years of distance we should get equal years old informations.

BTW exploration should be much more expansive.

[Awaras]

I feel that the ships and bases are too large visually compared to the planets, but also compared to their speed and weapon ranges. What I would love to see would be an additional zoom level available greater than the max zoom that we have now. For example, I would like to be able to zoom in on a continental planet until it is as large on my screen as a gas giant is in the game now, filling most of the screen - and ships and bases made smaller so that they are their "normal" size at this zoom level. I would keep the speeds and weapon ranges of the ships the same as they are now, so this would be a cosmetic change only. It would make the ships seem a little faster when looking at them, since it always looked stupid to me when a ship is docking with a starbase and crawling one pixel at a time toward it at speed 3 while the base and the planet is moving away from the ship at speed 2, and battles would look less like WWI biplane dogfights. Also, you would not have starbases larger than their planets.

*moved from here: tm.asp?m=2779692

[J HG T]

Awaras, the scale-issue has been around since first space-strategy game, you just have to live with. It bothered me the most in the SR2, but finally I just accepted it.
But, I still agree with you. Little more zoom and slightly smaller ships and bases would look better and be easier to control.