Matrix Games Forums

Right Click menu for missions for characters.

For Example:
Enemy Empire base you want to destroy through an intelligence mission. Right click to open menu, select intelligence missions, destroy base, then which agent

2. Job for Explorations ships, after all systems are explored.

Search for Pirates: They visit systems/clouds again, put a timestamp on this visist, so they dont visist this system again in x month.

Explore Ruins: When you buy/find Maps the structures on these planets dont get investigated. Now its time to do it.

Think of how CLUTTERED the top info window gets constantly.. Most messages cant even be read "Due to blabla your Blabla scientist increased their energy research skill to.."

In the spirit of readability, i suggest ALL scrolling notifications in the top to be condensed to show quick and easy info.
They need to have a shorter version of the explanatory text you get when you open the actual event log. It makes no sense to clutter the top infowindow with walls of text.
Examples;

"Scientist Bob Kerbal improved Energy Research to +51%" <--- (the reason WHY, can be seen in the full event log, no reason to spam it here)
"Scientist Bob Kerbal initiated crash program for Improved Armor!"
"Ruins encountered, Kaltor swarm unleashed!" <--- (what the ruins were called, and the story, needs not be spammed here either)
"Colony ship failed to colonize, enemy territory."
"Human Dominion offers Trade Treaty"
"New Troop General has arrived!" <--- (beats the old wall-of-text "because of something you did in a battle with fleet fifteen, a new troop general has appeared at your world homeworld two")

Basically, any message that takes up TWO rows needs to be shortened, as do any message that does not leave at least 50-100 pixels free space at the sides.
Less clutter, more quick easy info, that's what the window is there for!

New thoughts...

1. Combat Crosshairs: Tp prevent undesired "incidents", they crosshair would turn yellow for empires you have no relation with and green for empires you have a pact with. This could also bea reminder that you have forgotten to declare war on your intended target.

2. Expansion Planner: Colony Ship picker for new colonies. It would be great if it could show some details of the ships that listed in the pop up. Such as - is it built yet, when will it be built, where, and what type of planet can it colonize. Right now I have 2 planets making colony ships, one is a desert planet and colony ships for desert planets are in great demand. As it stands now, I can't determine from the list whether it is a valuable desert colony ship that I am assigning to a continental world or not.

A way to click a toggle on any division of troops to have them serve as garrisons - i.e., they don't leave where they are, whether on a planet or in a transport hold. This, and a color cue that they are "locked" or assigned in this way would address the problems of loading troops that should really be kept where they are (especially for purposes of discouraging revolt) and also is usable to tailor offensive forces (such as forming crack armies, or ones of raw troops, or those of a race suitable to the target planet).

I'd also like the right click for loading troops to have nearest as an option but also other worlds in order of proximtiy where there are loose troops, and the number there at the moment. This would greatly help the often necessary micromanagement of invasion fleet formation.

Thanks for your attention, and those Daily Updates!

Diplomacy Mining rights:
An Empire allways should be able to build at other empire space.
When you build there without Mining rights your Reputation decrease with that empire. And the other empire can attack/destroy your Mining base/ship without consequence.
Player need an empire option to enable/disable to build at other empire space like it got at RotS and before.
AI build at other empire space depend on their characteristic.

If you dont allow that, an invasion without declare war shouldn't be possible too.

BTW. Invasion shouldn't be possible with an operative Spaceport around the planet.

New Pirates Behaviors/Mechanism
1. They will try snatch the resource out from the mining/gas mining station
instead of destroying it. If they succeed, they will grow in size faster.

2. They will try takeover the mining/gas mining/resort/research/defense base.
They target more remote installations.
If they succeed, they will grow in size.

3. Any pirates group's survival operates around the survival of pirate head character.
Pirates head character must be killed/captured to eliminate a pirate group.
Given those head pirate characters are boarding in a mobile space ships, destroying
all bases of a pirate group helps make the head character space ships strand. Finally make easier to locate and kill/capture. Pirates possess more than one base.

4. Bigger the unhappiness in colonies in galaxy, grows the pirates.

5. Pirates make coalition themselves. And they split in two groups.
Playing bad guys party. They harm empires. Other is Playing good guys party.
They pretend helping finding fight other pirates.

6. They deceives you in certain deals. Money you paid could be found if you
destroy the base.

7. Corrupted tax money partially feed pirates.

Defunct Mechanoids

They are old time wanna be Ancient Guardians. Or some sort of.
They have fundamental logic failure and acts like simple few cell animals.
They consume resource, multiplies and destroy every thing in their path.

If they reach critical size and infects Ancient Guardians, Ancient Guardians
turns against all other sentient life form empires. They attack all non mechanoids.

Interaction with pirates
Pirates does feeds Defunct Mechanoids. This can be serious threat to all empires.
(Or use as tool)

Colonies screen:

1. A new column showing what is being produced at the colony (so one can get a quick overview w/o having to step through each colony).

2. Broaden the existing Facilities column to allow all the icons to be seen for the different facilities AND structures (LSP, MSP, SSP, DB, etc.).

What Geosch said about a clearer view of planetary production plus

1) Move the check box to let the AI direct your character's locations to the policy screen from the options screen

2) Have map option for no planet less (empty) stars

3) More race families with greater variety

4) Full sized widow for picking out ship appearance rather than the column w/ more base options

5) Civilian/merchant interaction quests/requests.  

6) More maps!

7) Racial picture diversity amongst characters so not everyone looks like a clone

8) Suggestion subforum

On the Colonies screen where it has the tax rates and revenue, I would like to see or have the ability to add one more column that has Colony Happiness values under it. So I don't have to click on each colony to see what their happiness rating is. Would make it easier to pick an adjust taxes on colonies that have low Happiness ratings. When you get into the 100's of colonies this is a real time saver idea.

EDIT: I just noticed that if you hover the mouse pointer over the smileys in the colony window then the happiness rating appears. I'd just rather see the ratings outright instead of the smiley face as that smiley face doesn't show how close you are to moving to the next lower or higher value.

Minefields, Mine layers, etc.

The ability to setup what Pop-ups Pause the game. I miss so many research events because there's just too many popups coming at once and they get lost in the list.

I think there should be a separate "if" routine when a ship(s) in a fleet need to repair. The whole fleet shouldn't have to goto a repair facility a million miles away when the majority of it just needs refueling. What should happen is ships in a fleet that need repair should break off from the fleet and go repair and refuel and those remaining should goto the nearest refueling point. This is what I'm having to do manually and it's a pain in the patunia to do this everytime a few ships in the fleet need repairing.

In the Galactopedia under game concepts add a spot for disasters.

Each race starts out being able to colonize certain worlds. So basically say race a can colonize continental planets by default can have a slightly bigger population on those worlds.

When setting up the game only a few options have random in it. Let them all have a random option in all those sliders (even galaxy shape and the race customization sliders).

New Galaxy Shape Spiral Barred.

Debris field slider in game setup would be nice (so sometimes in games I don't rely heavily on them in games). Maybe a check box for respawn debris fields too.

Add a Corruption slider to game setup.

Keep adding in more disasters in game. Supernovas (hypernova affecting planet quality), black holes forming, planets getting hit by gamma ray burst, etc... A disaster slider in game setup would be very nice if you get the itch for the universe for absolutely hating you at every turn. [:D]

Now you guys already have some types of nebulas. You you get some more in.(Think of the Star Trek Armada games)
Ya more types of space terrain.

Wormholes with a slider option in game setup. Also some check boxes to go along with it such as if you want stable, unstable wormholes and or violent wormholes (unstable wormholes only certain amount of ships can go through it before it collapses, and with violent wormholes its possible that some ships will be destroyed as it collapses basically this could happen to a whole fleet too).

More colony options.
Later on in a game you can create small "cloud city" colonies on gas giants (maybe mining stations can upgrade to do that (construction size tech and also a higher tech level requirement as in general research completed) and these colonies can grow from there. The populations on these would be small though.
Asteroid fields in solar systems can be collected to create new worlds.
Barren rock planets later on can be slammed together to form new planets/moons.

In your empire and other empires tab when setting up a game you can create new races from scratch. You can also add them to minor races too. (think GalCiv2)

Random Empire name generator in "Your Empire" game setup.

Expand more on minor races.
When minors appear they can run the chance that they will die off from a disaster of some sort (hey free world for ya). Once you colonize the minor world into your empire though they can't die off from these disasters any more.
Minor races have minor unique tech (only 1 tech for each minor and make it random for each game). These techs are not amazing but they help out.
How about some minors that don't have FTL tech and or ships.
When minors become majors sometimes they only expand so much and while others will take as much as they can.

Moar victory conditions.
Have a options for killing enemy leader and take the homeworld to win (also maybe kill x amount of other characters too). Enemies empires have to kill your characters so if you get new leaders from retirement, death, fights with pirates, monsters etc... these don't count against you. Extra option you have x years to recapture your homeworld or you lose.
King of the hill hold relics that are randomly dumped on places across the galaxy and after x years you win (relics left from progenitors or something). Add extra option if you collect them all you win.

I will add more as I see them. Amazing work! Also sorry if am repeating other stated requests.

I'd like to be able to use out of game Pictures for race pictures instead of the cartoon ones. Like Shinobu's picture from Babylon 5.

A wider diversity in the size of planets. In my current game the range seems to be 16-32, with the habitable planets further constrained to 20-30. Not much. It would be intereesting to have a few HUGE planets around, and perhaps you could Terraform the smaller planets into something useful.

Hyperthreading!

I'd like to be able to quickly see what a colony or starbase is building instead of just the name of the item when I open the construction window. I get all these silly names of ships and a teenee tinee icon of what is being build. Why can't it just say Colony ship and then the name of it? Or Destroyer and then the name of it or always the <base name> and then the abstract name of it. I don't really care what the call name of the item/ship/thing I'm building is I just want to know the Basic name like Colony, Destroyer, Carrier, High Tech Research or even HT Research, etc. etc. is.

I was thinking of this earlier today and when i got to the forums I started reading others posts and (I think I have the beginnings of alzheimers) just completely forgot what I wanted to wish for. But, it came back to me in another thread I was posting in. So without futher adoo and getting called a Drama Queen...

One thing about these types of games is the Tech Tree is Always the Same. I sooooooooo wish for some type of randomized teching up sort of like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri whereby you pick a Catagory of Research instead of the Specific researched item. I know this game is too far gone probably in that respect of teching up, but, in another rendition like a II or III to have Research Catagory choices or an option for them would just be awesome. Alpha Centauri gave you the Option to go either route at the start of the game and that was great because sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don't. ;P

Something else to add in that line of thinking is like Civilization III & IV and probably V do it with Advanced Teching Breakthrus (I'd like to see this happen more often for the AI also just as an option or another advantage for it). Not something that happens real often in a long game but something that would be years in advance of normal research.

I guess I'm just bored with Linear teching up. You learn a path or method and it's hard to break without something in the game forcing you to change your strategy. This is what I want some form of random forced changes or unknown teching up like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.