Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: HectorOfTroy

ORIGINAL: MasterChief



I second this. For example, from the end of WWII until well after the cold war the US Navy's paradigm was stuck on open ocean conflict centered around the carrier battle group. Like all paradigms it took a lot to shift focus.

So each race could have their own military paradigm, which can be shifted, but only at significant cost.

This feature would add a lot of immersion to the game.

But then if you know what their military paradigm is you could easily counter it. Eg. Dhayut prefer carriers as they are an insect race. So you build your own carriers with fighters and ships with point-defence, strong shields, fast, that can chase down carriers and destroy them.

The AI will still be AI, just a better AI...

I fought the Dhayut yesterday, and I knew exactly how their fleets looked after a while. It would not matter what kind of fleets they were, they were predictable. Just like they could predict my fleets, but my fleets were not so easy to beat. It was a clash of titan blasters...

The main difference between myself and the AI was that after the war I bought 15 extra cruisers for each of my 3 main battle fleets. As far as I know, the AI did not strengthen its fleets... My fleets was not strong enough to take down a spaceport and 3-4 defensive bases quickly (so I used two), but neither where those of the enemy when the colony also had a 20 ship fleet helping in defense...

And credit to the AI. I jumped a large empire which was at peace. I knew of course that this was not the best idea in the world, but I wanted the fight. And they would have taken good colonies if I did not have rather excellent defense at the likely objectives (2000 strength fleet, 4 defensive bases at least medium space port, 20-ish troops on ground). They did indeed manage to land the odd group of 4-6 troops and kill a defensive base and get through the zenox shields of a medium space port. On the second of three incoming fleets, or whatever [:D]

I am taking a wild guess that the enemy ship names are either an adjective/noun random pick are a random name pick.
If we could modify those flat files, that would be cool...

ORIGINAL: HectorOfTroy

ORIGINAL: MasterChief



I second this. For example, from the end of WWII until well after the cold war the US Navy's paradigm was stuck on open ocean conflict centered around the carrier battle group. Like all paradigms it took a lot to shift focus.

So each race could have their own military paradigm, which can be shifted, but only at significant cost.

This feature would add a lot of immersion to the game.

But then if you know what their military paradigm is you could easily counter it. Eg. Dhayut prefer carriers as they are an insect race. So you build your own carriers with fighters and ships with point-defence, strong shields, fast, that can chase down carriers and destroy them.

I agree. However, if the AI paradigm was randomly generated at start up you would have to determine your enemy's paradigm through espionage or direct combat.
Of course the down side to this would probably be building an AI that could first detemine it needed to shift it's paradigm and then determine how to to deal with encountered threats.

ORIGINAL: MasterChief

ORIGINAL: HectorOfTroy

ORIGINAL: MasterChief



I second this. For example, from the end of WWII until well after the cold war the US Navy's paradigm was stuck on open ocean conflict centered around the carrier battle group. Like all paradigms it took a lot to shift focus.

So each race could have their own military paradigm, which can be shifted, but only at significant cost.

This feature would add a lot of immersion to the game.

But then if you know what their military paradigm is you could easily counter it. Eg. Dhayut prefer carriers as they are an insect race. So you build your own carriers with fighters and ships with point-defence, strong shields, fast, that can chase down carriers and destroy them.

I agree. However, if the AI paradigm was randomly generated at start up you would have to determine your enemy's paradigm through espionage or direct combat.
Of course the down side to this would probably be building an AI that could first detemine it needed to shift it's paradigm and then determine how to to deal with encountered threats.

Does the AI currently adapt to the player? If no, how would making it research and design more efficiently hurt? I noticed my zenox switching, though. They started with rail guns, and went to the impact blasters. Both worked just fine. I even saw some phasers for a brief moment.

Right-align numbers.

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

ORIGINAL: MasterChief

ORIGINAL: HectorOfTroy




But then if you know what their military paradigm is you could easily counter it. Eg. Dhayut prefer carriers as they are an insect race. So you build your own carriers with fighters and ships with point-defence, strong shields, fast, that can chase down carriers and destroy them.

I agree. However, if the AI paradigm was randomly generated at start up you would have to determine your enemy's paradigm through espionage or direct combat.
Of course the down side to this would probably be building an AI that could first detemine it needed to shift it's paradigm and then determine how to to deal with encountered threats.

Does the AI currently adapt to the player? If no, how would making it research and design more efficiently hurt? I noticed my zenox switching, though. They started with rail guns, and went to the impact blasters. Both worked just fine. I even saw some phasers for a brief moment.

Yep, I'm in agreement here if it can be done. Anything that gives the AI races more uniqueness is a plus! Love this game!

Please add a column on the Colonies screen that tells whether or not the colony has a spaceport.

Research that improves your fleets ability to jump more precisely to target and in better grouping and togetherness.

New gadgets to take over the colonies. Especially the currently heavily troop guarded ones.

New space ship weapon type.
[Surface Troop Support Component]
They work to increase the strength of currently invading surface ally troop.
Ship with the component must be present on the battle occurring colony to take the effect.
Each component gives X effect on Y troops given that there is limit in maximum positive effect on troop effectiveness.
 
---

Colony list shows the number of available troops on each colonies.

Sorry, double post.

Two more diplomacy options.

1. Ability to trade millitary ships.
2. Ability to ask(buy) ally to declare war on a 3rd party.

I think these features adds more strategic elements of the game.

OK, how about an optional "beer&pretzels" mode?

Let us assume that our empires have some intelligent and proactive logistics managers that work well with the private merchant fleet.

Then every time a ship/fleet came to dock it would be instantly loaded with troops and fuel.

Because in a 1000 years from now we will have learned not to bother the Emperor with these details.

Be able to reserve space within a immobile structure to be able to add additional component later.

When sensor/hyper jump deny/fighter bay/counter measure/better component version/etc becomes available,
I would like to be able to add those component without having to have to rebuild/retrofit/build separate to use those.

Rebuild/Retrofit involves extra design management.
Build separate involves requirement for extra defense component construction cost and more extra design management.

Bulk Messaging.

I got a modest little 28 colony empire of some riches. I got 533 Military ships, 24 other state ships, 28 space ports and 102 defensive bases. The ultimate terror is to retrofit all.

I like having retrofit messages in the scrolling log, because often I may wait for them to complete. I am not fond of 100 slowly scrolling retrofit messages in the log.

So how about some log routine that detects multiple identical messages and groups them? Maybe as a special log item or a popup? "Retrofits complete" - and click to view the whole list.

The limit for grouping could be at 10 or so, and it could possibly delay a day or two to group even more messages.

The ability to limit your automatic military ships to only operate in your territory. So they don't spend all day hanging out in someone else systems patrolling or flying off to fight pirates that aren't your problem. Don't too mention causing wars to break out.

The only exception to this, should be fleets you have enabled automation on and have on attack, targeting enemies. So they will still do so, if war breaks out.

Or perhaps the setting could set the automated ships to only function in your territory, systems you have bases in, or in territory of empires you are at war with.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, 44 pages of ideas is rather impressive !

Could we have a different icon on the lock view button when the view is locked or unlocked - I keep forgetting and trying to scroll the view when locked.

Reputation bonus for destroying Silvermist swarms (simlar to rep. bonus for clearing out Pirate bases)

The ability to sort and filter the ships list on the main navigation screen.

As it is now the ships list just presents a huge, unmanageble list of every state-owned ship, that you can't do much with.

At the least, the ships list should not include all the ships in fleets since fleets have their own list.

If they were grouped according to types it would also make finding a specific type of ship (ie: Resupply Ship) much easier. Resupply ships, like explorers, colonizers and constructors, aren't usually part of a fleet but, unlike those, there is no specific button to bring up a list of them.

The really nice thing about these lists is that you can just run your mouse cursor down the entries and each one gets highlighted on the main map with a strobing circle. Very easy to track your fleets and important, non-fleet ships....except Resuppliers. [&:]

For ship sorting, use the ship list.

To track my resupply ships, I add them to fleets all by themselves. 1 ship fleets. If I have some in storage outside fleets, I can find them on the ship list easily enough.

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

For ship sorting, use the ship list.

[font="Arial"][/font]Yes, I know but the lists available from the Empire Navogation Tool (as the buttons on the left of the main screen are called) is much faster and the strobing location circles are so handy.

To track my resupply ships, I add them to fleets all by themselves. 1 ship fleets. If I have some in storage outside fleets, I can find them on the ship list easily enough.

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that. I set my fleets to full AI automation so hopefully it does not add a bunch of ships to my Resupply fleets.

I use custom ship sets so I swap out the Resupply image with a different one (big & bright) so that it jumps out at me on the ships list.