AKicebear's wishlist

[AKicebear]

I've had a lot of fun with this game, but am putting it down for awhile for spring weather, other games, and to wait for some of the numerous small pain points (especially for a nearly full manual player) to be resolved. Here is my wishlist for what will improve by the time I return.

• Ship design, retrofitting, and fleet management by design name or hull type (not role) - this feels very broken at the moment. There are multiple hulls available within a given role (like Escort), but only one is conveniently usable at a time - with incredible tedium to try to use more than one simultaneously.
  
  I would prefer for the game to differentiate designs by design name, allowing ultimate flexibility (e.g. dozens of special purpose escorts, explorers, using a single hull type etc). But I can also recognize that this may be hard to implement within the UI (especially fleets), unbalanced, and encourage a whole different tedious and exploity play.
  
  I would wholly understand if developers pursue merely differentiating by hull type (e.g. escort, patrol escort, heavy escort, etc.), allowing only one active design per hull type at a time - which would itself further incentivize those research paths. Hopefully this latter option is quite easy, given spaceports already follow this convention across their three main variants!
• Ensure that component types are properly mapped/differentiated in upgrading - currently some components incorrectly upgrade to different ones - e.g. from kinetic to energy weapons - even when using the manual upgrade button. I think this is because of their similar component name by fire type (direct), but it should impose the that they are also the same weapon type (e.g. only replace kinetic with kinetic of a higher tier).
• Toggle to disable galaxy map backdrop - add a button in the bottom right to remove the milky-way swirl and all other extraneous graphics from the galaxy map, leaving only the map elements that convey information via their various toggles.
• Toggle to disable empire territory fill - and, improve differentiation (e.g. bordering) of empires that are neighbors with similar colors.
• New design setting of "upgrade" (in addition to manual and automatic) - only automatically directly upgrade a given component in an old design to a higher tier component of the same type. If that simple 1:1 approach results in an unbuildable design due to insufficient power, crew, size, etc, save the design as unbuildable and give a warning for the fully manual player to inspect it themselves.
• Improved ship design suggestions, and autocomplete - make the Ship Design suggestions button, in the top right of the design screen, clickable to attempt to autocomplete by satisfying the given warnings. Imagine starting with a blank design and adding one weapon, then clicking autocomplete and the designer uses the highest tier components to satisfy the various suggestions (e.g. for crew, hyperdrive, power, etc). Then I could add another weapon and repeat. Etc etc etc. Ideally this would also know when to remove excess components - e.g. if crew modules or reactors improve enough that one can be taken off. Fill remaining space with fuel cells at the end. Use this as the algorithm for "upgrade" as the design setting in the bullet above. If all suggestions cannot be fulfilled, or result in an unbuildable design, give a warning for the player to manually remove one of the discretionary components (weapons, sensors, docks, optional general components above the minimum).
• Add a Next Idle button that visually indicates when actions are available (esp for players on full manual) - part of the main UI, e.g. along the bottom left or left side of the screen, which indicates (e.g. via color or highlight) if a manually controlled object is idle and ready for orders. Assign a hotkey to cycle through idle objects. Allow toggling what objects are included in this - fleets, military and non-military state ships not in a fleet, ambassadors, spies, etc. This would save me from manually scrolling through the multiple tables over and over looking for various idling items.
• Count of items to review in top left UI buttons - which would clear show the number of idle characters, explorers, constructors, active designs using old components or unbuildable, etc. Example for just ships here.
• Planetary build menu by facility type - similar to the menu of where spaceports can be built, create/merge a new list of all locations where any facility (and/or spaceport) can be constructed - with a drop down menu to select what type of object you aim to construct and then show options both in the menu and on map.
• Assign spy to steal specific research, then show list of empires available with probabilities - in addition the the current system that works in reverse
• Timer for when to review indefinite character actions - e.g. for a admiral with a fleet, scientist on a station, ambassador at another empire, spy on counter-espionage. E.g. after 1-3-5-10 years a message will state "Ambassador X has been at post Y for Z years" (total, not just the most recently timer). Reminds me to review my characters locations occasionally instead of "set and forget" for the whole game.
• Improve civilian shipping - there are many comments on this elsewhere, it would be nice if this made more sense with a hub-and-spoke system. Each mine has a specific smaller freighter that hauls to the nearest hub, each hub has larger freighters that haul hub to hub, etc. Dynamically build or upgrade civilian ships based on estimated demand for freight shipping per hub/mine, retire excess smaller freighters as new larger designs are available.
• Improve fleet cohesion when rallying from disperse starting points - have a fleet set a few waypoints: a) if preparing/refueling, do so closest to each individual ship, b) if at home, warp at full speed to closest (to destination) owned system and wait there for rest of fleet, c) if necessary, warp to closest neutral system outside sensor range, d) warp as a fleet at same speed to final destination.

[dostillevi]

Great list!