Matrix Games Forums

I had a bunch of small suggestions and it's probably easier to put them in one thread:


1. It would help to have equipment quality level between current obsolete and low, in which the equipment would not be sent back immediately, but would be effectively treated as a lower tier of losses - i.e., replace with acceptable quality equipment if logistics capacity is present and no lost subunits need outright replacement.

2. At the moment the logistics handling of missing troops replacement on one hand and upgrade/replace on the other is different - replace/upgrade will use any hex with sufficient points within operational logistics range, while replacing missing troops apparently needs points on unit's hex. This can be confusing and is somewhat counter-intuitive (sending a replacement unit is actually simpler than shipping stuff there and back). It would help if both used operational logistics consistently.

3. It would help to be able to designate public assets as having priority access to the workers. For example, if on a given turn a town experiences labor shortage, the workers will be first pulled from something that is not a truck station. Yes, you can resolve it for future turns by playing with asset percentages, but when losing productivity in a certain structure even for a turn causes further problems, and total worker requirements fluctuate when construction is involved, it would help to have a way to handle it preemptively.

4. I think the game could use a land recon OOB consisting of several units of buggies or motorbikes - i.e. a group that is generally sent out to chart and claim wild territories or raid vulnerable enemy targets. (In theory these would probably not be under command as rigid as frontline OOBs, but there's still enough examples in history of such groups acting under unified command (although given Earth's history, its exploration groups existed before vehicles appeared)

5. On the other hand just about every other OOB is obvious enough that I'm not sure it makes sense for "Discover OOB" to be a thing. Discovery is used by other councils for original ideas that are not immediately obvious. On the other hand, once you develop RPG soldiers the idea that it would help to have some of them sprinkled in with your troops to give them anti-tank punch should be obvious (even if actual operationalization would still take time). Even more so would be the idea to have motorized and mechanized version (after you operationalized a moto/mecha version or two you can bet that the very first formal meeting discussing the new formation proposal will already touch on the possibility of having its moto/mecha versions). At the very least perhaps moto/mecha versions should just be discovered once and unlock these versions for everything, and similarly e.g. there should be no need to discover heavy armor storm formation if you already have an idea of light armor storm one.

6. It's a bit strange that you can have laser rifles, but aircraft are stuck with machine guns for direct fire weapons - it seems that aircraft-mounted energy weapons should be a thing, as currently aircraft weaponry is limited to 20th century while everything else marches on to Warhammer.

7. It seems that once your empire has orbital flight, at the very least any dark spots on the map should be removed - some of Civ games already do that. It could be after researching any tech in the early orbital group, or perhaps satellites would be a separate tech in that group. Or perhaps basic map would be filled on getting any orbital tech, and a proper satellites tech would provide a low amount of recon on all hexes - enough to know the map and keep track of cities, roads and assets.

8. Logically, since at the start of the game your regime has been around for some time, it should be largely self-sufficient at least at the initial levels of consumption. So it can be strange that if planet conditions mean that you start with a domed farm, you don't actually have water income for it. Maybe there needs to be an alternative version of the starting degraded LE mini-reactor for such planets that would also provide 200 water (but named differently of course).

9. Given that surplus army equipment is traditionally a big source for various militias, it seems that there should be an option to hand over obsolete models that you just replaced to militia, rather than scrapping them. I can understand that it may be exploitable if you design a new model and then immediately hand it over to militia who would field it without fuel requirements, so maybe such equipment would go into a hidden pool and would only get assigned to units once the model's age makes it eligible for militia (who may not have trained personnel to properly operate state-of-the-art vehicles immediately)

10. In many matches most or all of the opposing regimes are similar or even the same colors. E.g. in one of my games all except one of major regimes were different shades of green, in another all except one were shades of yellow. It would help for the game to try assign more differing colors.

11. The small white number in the upper-right corner of a unit's icon signifying its number can be lost on bright backgrounds. It would help if it was black instead if the background color is light enough (this number helps e.g. if you have 6 brigades of the same type and you want to make sure their units don't get separated all over the place)

12. It would help if when in road construction mode the hexes were marked according to the extra cost of the road - either by color (the redder, the pricier) or by outright displaying the cost modifier on each hex.

13. Given that mascots are a career path for popular soldiers, maybe their icon should be a human rather than a dog (unless old GR genetic tech is involved).

14. The current name of the hitpoints can be confusing for starting players since SE's hitpoints behave nothing like traditional hitpoints (which is a health counter reduced by successful attacks). SE's hitpoints on the other hand are what is traditionally called defense - i.e. they reduce a chance to take damage from an attack. It may be simpler for new players if "hitpoints" were renamed to "defense" and current "defense" was renamed to counterattack" or "return fire".

15. The game treats turbojets as an upgraded version of jet. IRL while turboprop is indeed an upgraded traditional propeller engine (driven by turbine rather than piston engine), a turbojet is actually the first jet engine type developed and the most basic one. The "turbo-" just means that it's powered by turbine, like all jet engines are, not that it's more powerful - so there is no separate "jet" before turbojet. The more advanced jet engines are actually turbofan (more efficient) or ramjet (more powerful).

1. It would help to have equipment quality level between current obsolete and low, in which the equipment would not be sent back immediately, but would be effectively treated as a lower tier of losses - i.e., replace with acceptable quality equipment if logistics capacity is present and no lost subunits need outright replacement.

You're approaching the situation from the wrong angle, technically speaking. I think what you're really asking for here is a step between Disallowed and Tolerated? Obsolete/Low/etc. and how they're handled are entirely player-determined.

Essentially you've got a grid of Disallowed / Tolerated / Allowed, and Obsolete / Low / Regular / High / Elite. Obsolete is always Disallowed (units are retired to SHQ depots), but the others can be set per-unit either at formation or afterwards in Unit Admin at player discretion. Tolerated units are phased out and replaced with Allowed units if any such units are present at SHQ, but otherwise left in place if no replacement units exist.

Alternately what you're asking for already exists - I'm not quite sure.

4. I think the game could use a land recon OOB consisting of several units of buggies or motorbikes - i.e. a group that is generally sent out to chart and claim wild territories or raid vulnerable enemy targets. (In theory these would probably not be under command as rigid as frontline OOBs, but there's still enough examples in history of such groups acting under unified command (although given Earth's history, its exploration groups existed before vehicles appeared)

Given the nature/purpose of recon units the better solution is just 'raise independent formations and attach them to a larger unit, or leave them independent', really. Your recon units won't benefit from commander skill bonuses if they're roaming far and wide anyway, and as long as you're not using them to fight tanks then reasonably well-designed buggies are more than a match for roaming critters even without stance bonuses. Beta version is also adding the ability to customize OOBs somewhat.

The whole OOB system is kinda shonky and needs some extensive work really.

9. Given that surplus army equipment is traditionally a big source for various militias, it seems that there should be an option to hand over obsolete models that you just replaced to militia, rather than scrapping them. I can understand that it may be exploitable if you design a new model and then immediately hand it over to militia who would field it without fuel requirements, so maybe such equipment would go into a hidden pool and would only get assigned to units once the model's age makes it eligible for militia (who may not have trained personnel to properly operate state-of-the-art vehicles immediately)

Happens automatically already after a set number of years, kind of. It does take a long time (5-10 years or an equivalent number of turns/seasons, I think), but you better believe I was a little shocked when I saw my early model medium and heavy tanks, and power-armoured infantry, showing up in some freshly-raised militia groups! It might only happen with units explicitly marked as Obsolete but I'm not sure.

If you want to justify that to yourself, just 'pretend' that some of the units you scrapped were sold off, and the proceeds used to buy the resources.

11. The small white number in the upper-right corner of a unit's icon signifying its number can be lost on bright backgrounds. It would help if it was black instead if the background color is light enough (this number helps e.g. if you have 6 brigades of the same type and you want to make sure their units don't get separated all over the place)

For now, you can customize the unit group colours in the unit admin panel. Not ideal if you're working with a huge army made of lots of smaller formations, but it's an option.

1. It would help to have equipment quality level between current obsolete and low, in which the equipment would not be sent back immediately, but would be effectively treated as a lower tier of losses - i.e., replace with acceptable quality equipment if logistics capacity is present and no lost subunits need outright replacement.

You can do that by:
1. Setting the old gear to low quality. New gear to normal
2. Telling the formation to only tollerate Low gear, but fully use Normal

Now the Resupply pass will phase out tollerated low quality for Normal Quality replacements if there are any.

But I agree this should be a dediceted setting on the Model level. Actually had a few more ideas for those settings:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4839424

2. At the moment the logistics handling of missing troops replacement on one hand and upgrade/replace on the other is different - replace/upgrade will use any hex with sufficient points within operational logistics range, while replacing missing troops apparently needs points on unit's hex. This can be confusing and is somewhat counter-intuitive (sending a replacement unit is actually simpler than shipping stuff there and back). It would help if both used operational logistics consistently.

To my knowledge Replace/Upgrade/Raise Formation uses the Logistics points of every hex along the way. If it does not, that sounds like a bug. And should be verified like one.

3. It would help to be able to designate public assets as having priority access to the workers. For example, if on a given turn a town experiences labor shortage, the workers will be first pulled from something that is not a truck station. Yes, you can resolve it for future turns by playing with asset percentages, but when losing productivity in a certain structure even for a turn causes further problems, and total worker requirements fluctuate when construction is involved, it would help to have a way to handle it preemptively.

Agreed, but would propably need to be a Empire setting. Maybe start with ordering the rough Categories as you got them in the build menu?

4. I think the game could use a land recon OOB consisting of several units of buggies or motorbikes - i.e. a group that is generally sent out to chart and claim wild territories or raid vulnerable enemy targets. (In theory these would probably not be under command as rigid as frontline OOBs, but there's still enough examples in history of such groups acting under unified command (although given Earth's history, its exploration groups existed before vehicles appeared)

5. On the other hand just about every other OOB is obvious enough that I'm not sure it makes sense for "Discover OOB" to be a thing. Discovery is used by other councils for original ideas that are not immediately obvious. On the other hand, once you develop RPG soldiers the idea that it would help to have some of them sprinkled in with your troops to give them anti-tank punch should be obvious (even if actual operationalization would still take time). Even more so would be the idea to have motorized and mechanized version (after you operationalized a moto/mecha version or two you can bet that the very first formal meeting discussing the new formation proposal will already touch on the possibility of having its moto/mecha versions). At the very least perhaps moto/mecha versions should just be discovered once and unlock these versions for everything, and similarly e.g. there should be no need to discover heavy armor storm formation if you already have an idea of light armor storm one.

The whole OOB System needs a rework, something that is less static.
The Betas ability to modify OOB's goes into the right direciton here, but it needs to become the default mode.

Vic is working on a scenario editor and I think OOB's are part of the Scenario/Savegame file.

6. It's a bit strange that you can have laser rifles, but aircraft are stuck with machine guns for direct fire weapons - it seems that aircraft-mounted energy weapons should be a thing, as currently aircraft weaponry is limited to 20th century while everything else marches on to Warhammer.

What is currently preventing the use of Laser weapons and Electrical Engines in airplanes in the real world is the energy density. Airplanes are much more vulnerable to weight then ground vehicles.
You can always stop a tank halfway for a refill - hard to do that with a plane.

7. It seems that once your empire has orbital flight, at the very least any dark spots on the map should be removed - some of Civ games already do that. It could be after researching any tech in the early orbital group, or perhaps satellites would be a separate tech in that group. Or perhaps basic map would be filled on getting any orbital tech, and a proper satellites tech would provide a low amount of recon on all hexes - enough to know the map and keep track of cities, roads and assets.

Agreed

8. Logically, since at the start of the game your regime has been around for some time, it should be largely self-sufficient at least at the initial levels of consumption. So it can be strange that if planet conditions mean that you start with a domed farm, you don't actually have water income for it. Maybe there needs to be an alternative version of the starting degraded LE mini-reactor for such planets that would also provide 200 water (but named differently of course).

Actually is should be self sufficient. Consider every case where it is not a bug worth reporting.

But a bit of issues can come from Minors stealing access to a river or Waterbody. As well as Rainfall varrying across the year.

9. Given that surplus army equipment is traditionally a big source for various militias, it seems that there should be an option to hand over obsolete models that you just replaced to militia, rather than scrapping them. I can understand that it may be exploitable if you design a new model and then immediately hand it over to militia who would field it without fuel requirements, so maybe such equipment would go into a hidden pool and would only get assigned to units once the model's age makes it eligible for militia (who may not have trained personnel to properly operate state-of-the-art vehicles immediately)

The Militia has access to any design that is older then 30 turns (~5 earth years) to be used for new units. It will not upgrade however. And more often then not, the militia stops building units at all by the time this would mater.

10. In many matches most or all of the opposing regimes are similar or even the same colors. E.g. in one of my games all except one of major regimes were different shades of green, in another all except one were shades of yellow. It would help for the game to try assign more differing colors.

No chance for automatic assignment. The best would be allowing the player to change AI regime colors or select the ones to be used during game creation.
But then the whole start needs a minor rework.

11. The small white number in the upper-right corner of a unit's icon signifying its number can be lost on bright backgrounds. It would help if it was black instead if the background color is light enough (this number helps e.g. if you have 6 brigades of the same type and you want to make sure their units don't get separated all over the place)

Pretty sure there is a number of graphical mods that change the unit Icons for readability.
Graphics mods are possible, simply by overwriting the Art assets in the game directory.

12. It would help if when in road construction mode the hexes were marked according to the extra cost of the road - either by color (the redder, the pricier) or by outright displaying the cost modifier on each hex.

Üretty sure the pathfinding already tries to find hte cheapest path, but I could see it usefull if you want to partially go anothr direciton (meaning you have to go hex by hex).

13. Given that mascots are a career path for popular soldiers, maybe their icon should be a human rather than a dog (unless old GR genetic tech is involved).

Maybe there are some K-9 units among those 100 people?

14. The current name of the hitpoints can be confusing for starting players since SE's hitpoints behave nothing like traditional hitpoints (which is a health counter reduced by successful attacks). SE's hitpoints on the other hand are what is traditionally called defense - i.e. they reduce a chance to take damage from an attack. It may be simpler for new players if "hitpoints" were renamed to "defense" and current "defense" was renamed to counterattack" or "return fire".

Totally true, with the only exception being shields. The HP actually is a bar. That is reduced by attacks and restored every combat round.

15. The game treats turbojets as an upgraded version of jet. IRL while turboprop is indeed an upgraded traditional propeller engine (driven by turbine rather than piston engine), a turbojet is actually the first jet engine type developed and the most basic one. The "turbo-" just means that it's powered by turbine, like all jet engines are, not that it's more powerful - so there is no separate "jet" before turbojet. The more advanced jet engines are actually turbofan (more efficient) or ramjet (more powerful).

This might fall under a spelling mistake, wich which we have dedicated threads actually:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4930374

I'll try not to repeat what others have already said.

ORIGINAL: Zanotirn

I had a bunch of small suggestions and it's probably easier to put them in one thread:

3. It would help to be able to designate public assets as having priority access to the workers.

Public assets already have worker priority in the form of higher public wages. If people will get paid more working for the state than private entities they will more likely choose public jobs than stick with the private sector. It's not unusual to see public assets operating at full production while there are some private assets that have been completely mothballed in cities with population shortages.

4. I think the game could use a land recon OOB consisting of several units of buggies or motorbikes

Armoured transports share the same recon class as buggies so they are just as effective at recon as them. Once you deploy mechanized formations there is no need for sprinkling in recon battalions in your front lines.

6. It's a bit strange that you can have laser rifles, but aircraft are stuck with machine guns for direct fire weapons - it seems that aircraft-mounted energy weapons should be a thing

I agree. You can put laser and plasma machine guns on APC's and buggies so why not aircraft? I don't believe real life arguments around not having efficient enough batteries is a reasonable excuse in this setting. Too add to this idea I think there should be gauss/charged gauss equivalent of high velocity guns for tanks as well.

12. It would help if when in road construction mode the hexes were marked according to the extra cost of the road - either by color (the redder, the pricier) or by outright displaying the cost modifier on each hex.

There's already a running tally that shows you the total cost of road construction. Any large increase in that shouldn't be left unnoticed. Still, having hexes be colour coded along construction cost modifiers wouldn't be unwelcome.

14. The current name of the hitpoints can be confusing for starting players since SE's hitpoints behave nothing like traditional hitpoints (which is a health counter reduced by successful attacks). SE's hitpoints on the other hand are what is traditionally called defense - i.e. they reduce a chance to take damage from an attack. It may be simpler for new players if "hitpoints" were renamed to "defense" and current "defense" was renamed to counterattack" or "return fire".

Hitpoints are typically a measure of how robust an entity is and, in other games and in Shadow Empire, is a stat that must be overcome for the entity being attacked to be defeated. In this regard it's perfectly acceptable. In some games defense reduces incoming damage by a flat amount, in others it reduces damage by a percentage, and in others still if defense is not overcome no damage at all is done (exactly how Shadow Empire operates). Which type of game should players be bringing in their preconceived notions from?

Besides, if you where to change the name to defense and soft/hard defense to "counter attack" or "return fire" then that would only lead to confusion when you look in the detailed combat reports and see that you units are conducting counter-attacks not with their "counter-attack" value but their attack value. Also, when any combat occurs sub-units on both sides launch attacks against the other side. It would mean your units, on the defense, would be using their "counter-attack" or "return fire" when they're the ones attacking. Now this also means that units on the defense are conducting attacks with their defense value, but the player never sees the combat reports in which this happens so it can never be a source of confusion.

ORIGINAL: Arcalane

1. It would help to have equipment quality level between current obsolete and low, in which the equipment would not be sent back immediately, but would be effectively treated as a lower tier of losses - i.e., replace with acceptable quality equipment if logistics capacity is present and no lost subunits need outright replacement.

You're approaching the situation from the wrong angle, technically speaking. I think what you're really asking for here is a step between Disallowed and Tolerated? Obsolete/Low/etc. and how they're handled are entirely player-determined.

Essentially you've got a grid of Disallowed / Tolerated / Allowed, and Obsolete / Low / Regular / High / Elite. Obsolete is always Disallowed (units are retired to SHQ depots), but the others can be set per-unit either at formation or afterwards in Unit Admin at player discretion. Tolerated units are phased out and replaced with Allowed units if any such units are present at SHQ, but otherwise left in place if no replacement units exist.

You are right, I meant a setting between disallowed and tolerated.

ORIGINAL: Arcalane
Given the nature/purpose of recon units the better solution is just 'raise independent formations and attach them to a larger unit, or leave them independent', really. Your recon units won't benefit from commander skill bonuses if they're roaming far and wide anyway, and as long as you're not using them to fight tanks then reasonably well-designed buggies are more than a match for roaming critters even without stance bonuses. Beta version is also adding the ability to customize OOBs somewhat.

ORIGINAL: GuardsmanGary
Armoured transports share the same recon class as buggies so they are just as effective at recon as them. Once you deploy mechanized formations there is no need for sprinkling in recon battalions in your front lines.

In this case the goal is to have not an individual recon unit, but an expeditionary force that can claim territory from marauders and wildlife. Recon units do very well in this role since they are fast and their combat abilities are adequate for the job, while heavier mechanized formations are usually overkill, and also are harder on the limited supply capacity that you often have in these situations.

Think of American forces sent into indian territory, large European expeditions into Africa or Russian forces claiming Siberia - on Earth this kind of activity was finished by the time vehicles arrived, but if we had to do it now, such kind of vehicles would probably be used. In game terms a group like that can spread out to quickly cover more territory and can converge to handle and potentially encircle enemy groups. Although it would work adequately in war by dealing with stray and weakened units while your heavier mechanized formations may end up needing to form the front.

While these groups would often operate more independently than regular troops, they may still end up converging, so a commander in charge of the whole group would provide benefit (as well as handle things like making sure lessons learned from some units are adequately integrated in others).

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

6. It's a bit strange that you can have laser rifles, but aircraft are stuck with machine guns for direct fire weapons - it seems that aircraft-mounted energy weapons should be a thing, as currently aircraft weaponry is limited to 20th century while everything else marches on to Warhammer.

What is currently preventing the use of Laser weapons and Electrical Engines in airplanes in the real world is the energy density. Airplanes are much more vulnerable to weight then ground vehicles.
You can always stop a tank halfway for a refill - hard to do that with a plane.

In modern world yes, but in SE once energy weapons are refined enough to replace infantry rifles and tripod machine guns, they should be miniaturized enough for their use in aircraft to be viable. Aircraft in SE remain very vulnerable like in real world, so a machine gun-sized energy weapon would still be adequate for the job.

Although it might require implementing a mechanic for upgrading (at least somewhat) aircraft armor with more advanced one - for land troops improvements in defense and offence offset each other, and if AA weapons get better with technology but aircraft defenses do not, aircraft will keep getting more vulnerable. I'm guessing this is the reason AA effectiveness of ground weapons like machine guns is currently tied only to their class, not their tech.

ORIGINAL: GuardsmanGary

3. It would help to be able to designate public assets as having priority access to the workers.

Public assets already have worker priority in the form of higher public wages. If people will get paid more working for the state than private entities they will more likely choose public jobs than stick with the private sector. It's not unusual to see public assets operating at full production while there are some private assets that have been completely mothballed in cities with population shortages.

The wages set the priority of public assets compared to private ones. However it would help to set the priority of some public assets compared to other public assets. E.g. if you start a construction of a couple mining assets and the worker recruiting cannot immediately compensate the additional demand, your truck station will continue operating at full capacity if possible and the workers will be pulled from existing mining assets instead.

ORIGINAL: Zanotirn
In this case the goal is to have not an individual recon unit, but an expeditionary force that can claim territory from marauders and wildlife. Recon units do very well in this role since they are fast and their combat abilities are adequate for the job, while heavier mechanized formations are usually overkill, and also are harder on the limited supply capacity that you often have in these situations.

Think of American forces sent into indian territory, large European expeditions into Africa or Russian forces claiming Siberia - on Earth this kind of activity was finished by the time vehicles arrived, but if we had to do it now, such kind of vehicles would probably be used. In game terms a group like that can spread out to quickly cover more territory and can converge to handle and potentially encircle enemy groups. Although it would work adequately in war by dealing with stray and weakened units while your heavier mechanized formations may end up needing to form the front.

While these groups would often operate more independently than regular troops, they may still end up converging, so a commander in charge of the whole group would provide benefit (as well as handle things like making sure lessons learned from some units are adequately integrated in others).

Oh, I'm aware, I've used them to much the same effect myself - hence my comment on their effectiveness as such.

Honestly I think the main benefit of a "rough riders"/"rapid recon" type OOB, if anything, would be not having to individually raise 6-7 independent formations one at a time. [:D]

A few more:

1. During planet generation if you click re-roll while re-roll is already in progress (e.g. by accidentally double clicking), the second reroll will be queued and will start once the first one is done. Since this happens before you can see the result of the first roll, there's never a case when you'd actually want it to happen, all it does is increase the time you wait for results of reroll. It would be better if the game just ignored clicks on reroll button while reroll is in progress.

2. It would help if you could call your secretary and ask to appoint advisor, if a slot is available. Most decisions that you can postpone (like upgrading a city) have a way to call someone and make it happen right now. For the advisors the secretary would be a logical choice.

3. It would help to have the numbers or some other identifier for the friendly sentinels in the unit list. Currently they are all called simply Sentinels and there's no way to know which is which if you e.g. want to play a card on one.

4. It could make sense if vehicles' soft hp penalty depended on the presence of friendly infantry - tanks are vulnerable to infantry on their own, but less so when supported by friendly infantry.

5. Edit: forget this one, the rule applies to ranged attacks, not howitzers.
[s]It could make sense if the howitzer performance against armor, mainly in caliber calculations, but perhaps in attack as well, worked differently for tanks/assault guns on one hand and artillery on another. While a howitzer-like gun will always be less accurate than a high velocity gun, when used by a tank, they still have a fair chance of scoring a direct hit, and given a large enough caliber, they do a decent job of knocking out an enemy tank. E.g. a HE shell from 122mm gun on IS-2 tank could knock out a Tiger II after hitting its ~150mm front armor even when it didn't penetrate it. Even more so for 152mm gun on ISU-152 assault gun which often knocked the turret off the enemy tank entirely. Basically "divide caliber by 3" penalty seems too harsh for direct-fire vehicles armed with howitzer-like guns, and too light for unguided artillery or rocket launchers. (missile launchers on the other hand may be guided - perhaps they may even get an upgrade tech increasing their performance vs armor to tank-like levels). On the other hand reducing armor vulnerability to howitzers and rocket/missile launchers could be a realistic linear tech, since WWII-era tanks were often very vulnerable to spalling and certain other effects of powerful non-penetrating explosions, but later vehicles incorporated measures reducing these, like more carefully chosen alloys and spall liners.[/s]

6. Buggies could perhaps have an option of mounting either RPGs or light HVGs, like technicals often do. On wheel-friendly planets later in the game you often end up with a bunch of independent buggy squadrons used for capturing territory, and having an option of converting a few of them for use against troublesome wildlife, enemy Sentinels and so on can be useful.

7. The planet atmosphere density seems too closely tied to its gravity, never straying too far from the Earth's ratio. In practice the planet's atmosphere can be much more dense - e.g. Titan has 0.14g and 1.48 earth atmospheres for almost 10 times the Earth's ratio. Venus has 0.9g and 91 earth atmospheres for around 100 times the Earth's ratio. Conversely, planets can lose atmosphere that they would be able to have. Mars is a glaring example with 0.38g and ~0.02 earth atmospheres. Generally planets receiving more energy from their stars and those without magnetic field are more likely to lose (most of) atmosphere, while those which have a significant part of atmosphere consist of heavier gases less so.

2. No jobs are given by calling a leader, they all happen on the next round that a vacant position exists.
It would be nice if you could spend PPs to have the selection committee review the potential candidates *right now*.

4.

5.10.15.2. Combat stePs looP
[...]
Scroll through all Subunits
As already explained above, we cycle through all Subunits and then test for
each one whether it can attack. It can attack if it has made fewer attacks this
combat round then its statistics allow. Furthermore, the Subunit must not be
in the process of retreating.

Find a target
Then (semi)randomly an opponent of the enemy side is chosen. Semi
random because the randomness depends on the number of tries the
Subunits statistics allow. If it has only 1 try in finding its favourite target, it is
purely random. But if it has more tries it will pick the target it likes the most.
A Subunit can only attack an enemy backbench Subunit if the attacking
Subunit has either accomplished a breakthrough or if it has artillery range.
Furthermore, artillery capable Subunits cannot fire on enemy Subunits that
have broken through.

Find preventer
It is possible the target Subunit is of a type that another Subunit from that
same side wants to defend. This may lead to the “preventer” being attacked
instead of the original target.
[...]

I've never noticed this "favourite target" mechanic in the game.
It's also not clear to me whether the "tries to find favourite target" are different from "number of attacks per combat round" or not.

I know that the APCs use the preventer mechanic on at least the units that they are carrying, with what seems to be 50% chances.

You can probably already achieve the effect that you want by having a lot more infantry than tanks ?
(Which is usually easy, since infantry tends to be a lot cheaper than tanks.)

5. "divide caliber by 3" penalty already doesn't apply to tanks.
(Also, tanks and artillery get different modifiers to firepower to calculate the 4 attack values.)
Higher techs defenses like Liquid Armor and Shields already have reduced vulnerability against Hollow weapons.

6. Agreed, buggies seem to become obsolete very quickly.
(And IIRC they're strictly inferior to APCs, except for having a dedicated Independent formation ?)

7. Yes, more planet diversity please !

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

5. "divide caliber by 3" penalty already doesn't apply to tanks.
(Also, tanks and artillery get different modifiers to firepower to calculate the 4 attack values.)
Higher techs defenses like Liquid Armor and Shields already have reduced vulnerability against Hollow weapons.

Oh, true, just rechecked the manual, it applies to ranged attacks.

Actually, it also applies to normal artillery attacks, the manual is wrong on this one.

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

2. No jobs are given by calling a leader, they all happen on the next round that a vacant position exists.
It would be nice if you could spend PPs to have the selection committee review the potential candidates *right now*.

What I mean is that the game will offer you to fill an advisor position when you have both a free advisor slot and leaders in reserve pool. If leaders in reserve pool are capability I/IIs just waiting for a retirement card, I don't need to see the prompt for advisor every turn and will click "Postpone". However if I then get a leader who would be actually useful as advisor (e.g. good skills that governors tend to use in crises) and I don't need them for a more permanent position, I would like to trigger the appointment immediately (or perhaps next turn) for a minor cost of PPs comparable to other options of calling a leader. Essentially in this case the action is "un-postponing" the appointment.