Master Wishlist Thread

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Yarasala

ORIGINAL: Barleyman

ORIGINAL: taltamir
10x the cost for a colony ship with 10x the pop when you require that it REMOVE said pop from the planet that built it makes NO SENSE!
If colony ships stop producing colonists out of thin air, then there is no reason to EVER pay more for a colony ship... because passenger ships could and would easily make up any deficit by moving people around.
It also makes the loss of a colony ship devastating, its very expensive AND carries many precious citizens...

You're talking like colonizing another planet shouldn't be expensive undertaking with failure being devastating? That's how it is in most 4X games and it seems to work pretty good too.

Let's say the aim is to slow down colony spam - Making the ships expensive and fresh colonies resource/money sinks would force you to consider your options instead of spreading through the map like a proverbial locusts. Cf sword of the stars how this can work.

Agreed, like stated in another thread. Obviously that is an important point that a lot of players (at least of those who write in this forum ) want to see changed. And again I vote for a (moddable / optional) possibilty to reduce the range of ships drastically.

Please don't misquote things without context... the full quote clarified that I was saying 10x for a colony ship TECH UPGRADE makes no sense.
It is plausible to force all colony ships to cost 10x as much, but the suggestion was that tech level 1 colony module cost 5000 credit and transport 1 million people, and that a higher tech level "upgrade" would then cost 50,000 credits and transport 10 million people. therefore it is TECH 2 colony module that would cost 10x as much and transport 10 million colonists in that suggestion...

THAT I said makes no sense because it is a huge DOWNGRADE for the colony tech... And I then explained that the various game mechanics that make it so.

If you want to increase costs of colony ships it is doable, but:
1. It should not have ANYTHING to do with amount of colonists... there is no need or benefit to forcing it to move 10x more people... if anything, I suggest that colony ships should cost the same but move 1/10 the amount of people the currently move... but that is for ALL colony ships, not for a supposedly "higher tech" colony which is actually a huge freaking downgrade.
Why cost the same? because if you make it too expensive it becomes crippling to small empires and to the AI. There are better solutions to the whole issue. Specifically, require that colonists be picked up from a planet instead of manufactured with the ship and then tweak the reproduction rates to suit... thus the limiting factor is not your wealth but your colonists (also makes it attractive to conquer a high population enemy planet.

[Yarasala]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

ORIGINAL: Yarasala

ORIGINAL: Barleyman




You're talking like colonizing another planet shouldn't be expensive undertaking with failure being devastating? That's how it is in most 4X games and it seems to work pretty good too.

Let's say the aim is to slow down colony spam - Making the ships expensive and fresh colonies resource/money sinks would force you to consider your options instead of spreading through the map like a proverbial locusts. Cf sword of the stars how this can work.

Agreed, like stated in another thread. Obviously that is an important point that a lot of players (at least of those who write in this forum ) want to see changed. And again I vote for a (moddable / optional) possibilty to reduce the range of ships drastically.

Please don't misquote things without context... the full quote clarified that I was saying 10x for a colony ship TECH UPGRADE makes no sense.
It is plausible to force all colony ships to cost 10x as much, but the suggestion was that tech level 1 colony module cost 5000 credit and transport 1 million people, and that a higher tech level "upgrade" would then cost 50,000 credits and transport 10 million people. therefore it is TECH 2 colony module that would cost 10x as much and transport 10 million colonists in that suggestion...

THAT I said makes no sense because it is a huge DOWNGRADE for the colony tech... And I then explained that the various game mechanics that make it so.

If you want to increase costs of colony ships it is doable, but:
1. It should not have ANYTHING to do with amount of colonists... there is no need or benefit to forcing it to move 10x more people... if anything, I suggest that colony ships should cost the same but move 1/10 the amount of people the currently move... but that is for ALL colony ships, not for a supposedly "higher tech" colony which is actually a huge freaking downgrade.
Why cost the same? because if you make it too expensive it becomes crippling to small empires and to the AI. There are better solutions to the whole issue. Specifically, require that colonists be picked up from a planet instead of manufactured with the ship and then tweak the reproduction rates to suit... thus the limiting factor is not your wealth but your colonists (also makes it attractive to conquer a high population enemy planet.

I just copied everything together from all my posts in other threads but tried to keep it as short as possible when longer posts were involved. I apologize if I missed something as it seems to be the case.

About the issue mentioned: for me only the colony spam reduction is important, and I prefer the way to solve it using reduced ship range, but I could live with another mechanic as well, so I took this point above in my list. Thanks for clarifying what the real issue was.

[taltamir]

no problems. I don't think that there was any ill intent, just glad its clarified.
Anyways... So the suggestions are:

1. Require colony ships to pick up actual colonists, not create them
Caveats people suggested to that:
a. don't allow picking from colonies with less then a certain minimum amount of people.
b. don't have the ships deduct colonists on purchase (too many issues with that)... instead, build the ships, then pickup colonists, then colonize a planet... can be done manually to control the species on the ship, or if simply ordered to colonize a planet they will travel to the nearest planet with compatible race.
c. perhaps have the colony component simply be the infrastructure, with an actual passenger component (same as used in other designs) needed to transport the people.
d. tweak down the reproduction rates to ensure even slower expansion.

2. increase cost of colony module a whole lot... perhaps 10x current value.

3. Limit range.

My view on this is, first are we sure that the game would actually be made better (read: more fun) if colonization rushing are halted? I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game.

Second, if the developers decide to implement that, use a non harmful method.

Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess.

Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people...
Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game.

method 1 seems the safest to me if you are going to implement that change. losing colony ships or colonies will be a severe blow to the population. early expansion is checked in that spreading the population around means moving them from profitable worlds (high culture) to unprofitable ones (0 culture)... and since the population amount accounts for half the culture, then the remaining pop on said planet will also be less profitable now... Conquering planets of other empires or indigenous colonies would become a higher value task as you acquire more people to move around... there will actually be a real cost upfront for building a new colony (of course, eventually it pays off... but in the short term...)

[Yarasala]

ORIGINAL: taltamir
I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game.

Weary or wary? [;)]

Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess.

Agreed.

Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people...
Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game.

That's why I said to make fuel consumption adjustable by an option or at least moddable.

Massive size is not what I would like, increased fuel consumption for colony ships only whould at least somehow be logical and I could live with that as minimal solution.

[Locarnus]

what about reducing the hyperdrive speed, ceteris paribus?

so the intra system speed/consumption stays the same

the hyperengines speed will be halfed, fuel per second stays

=> I guess that it works (right now) like this with hyperdrive:
max hyperspeed eg 20000
max energy cons eg 62
if you provide only 51 energy you only get 16500 hyperspeed
(need to check this in game next time)

so if max hyperspeed eg 10000
max energy cons eg 62
the game works all like before,
but interstellar travel takes twice the time and is twice as fuel consuming
with intrasystem travel unchanged

the main benefit is, that it would be easy to try out, since only the max
hyperspeed of the hyperdrives need to be changed (read: modded)
[/align]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

no problems. I don't think that there was any ill intent, just glad its clarified.
Anyways... So the suggestions are:

1. Require colony ships to pick up actual colonists, not create them
Caveats people suggested to that:
a. don't allow picking from colonies with less then a certain minimum amount of people.
b. don't have the ships deduct colonists on purchase (too many issues with that)... instead, build the ships, then pickup colonists, then colonize a planet... can be done manually to control the species on the ship, or if simply ordered to colonize a planet they will travel to the nearest planet with compatible race.
c. perhaps have the colony component simply be the infrastructure, with an actual passenger component (same as used in other designs) needed to transport the people.
d. tweak down the reproduction rates to ensure even slower expansion.

2. increase cost of colony module a whole lot... perhaps 10x current value.

3. Limit range.

My view on this is, first are we sure that the game would actually be made better (read: more fun) if colonization rushing are halted? I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game.

Second, if the developers decide to implement that, use a non harmful method.

Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess.

Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people...
Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game.

method 1 seems the safest to me if you are going to implement that change. losing colony ships or colonies will be a severe blow to the population. early expansion is checked in that spreading the population around means moving them from profitable worlds (high culture) to unprofitable ones (0 culture)... and since the population amount accounts for half the culture, then the remaining pop on said planet will also be less profitable now... Conquering planets of other empires or indigenous colonies would become a higher value task as you acquire more people to move around... there will actually be a real cost upfront for building a new colony (of course, eventually it pays off... but in the short term...)

Some combination of all 3 might be the right course. Though with a combo, you'd want to tone down part of them.

1. Colonists must be loaded.
2. Colony ships should have a colony core (this carriers the materials to found the first town) and passenger compartments to carry the colonists.

-The colony core technologies increase the habitability zones
-Passengers determine the founding size of the colony. If you want to build a ship expensive enough to haul around 100 million people, then you can build it (not advisable though).

3. Limit colony ships to 1 or 2 fuel cells total. If you are stuffing millions of people on them, then you aren't going to have a lot of room for much else.

4. Increase the cost moderately (3-5 times current). Though this may not be necessary if passenger components are required.

Also, a 'Migrant Ship' should be player controllable so a player can manually move around population as he/she deems necessary. The migrant ship would be able to load up people from one colony and move them to another, allowing a player to quickly increase the population of a chosen colony.

-Similar to colony ship, only without the colony module.
-Passenger components allow players to load people from one place and drop them off at another.

[VarekRaith]

Probably been suggested already;

A "distribute AIs evenly throughout the galaxy" setting.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: taltamir

no problems. I don't think that there was any ill intent, just glad its clarified.
Anyways... So the suggestions are:

1. Require colony ships to pick up actual colonists, not create them
Caveats people suggested to that:
a. don't allow picking from colonies with less then a certain minimum amount of people.
b. don't have the ships deduct colonists on purchase (too many issues with that)... instead, build the ships, then pickup colonists, then colonize a planet... can be done manually to control the species on the ship, or if simply ordered to colonize a planet they will travel to the nearest planet with compatible race.
c. perhaps have the colony component simply be the infrastructure, with an actual passenger component (same as used in other designs) needed to transport the people.
d. tweak down the reproduction rates to ensure even slower expansion.

2. increase cost of colony module a whole lot... perhaps 10x current value.

3. Limit range.

My view on this is, first are we sure that the game would actually be made better (read: more fun) if colonization rushing are halted? I THINK it might be better if there were some checks in place, but I am weary of advocating major changes to the game.

Second, if the developers decide to implement that, use a non harmful method.

Method 2 seems to have the problem where it would be crippling to AI and smaller empires, and games will take a very very long time to start out... your one or two planets are not going to be able to afford 50,000 credit colony ships... the tiniest shortage of materials will send the price skyrocketing, and the whole thing would be a mess.

Method 3 seems to have the problem of how you implement it... massive size? well, you can't build colony ships then because of your starting construction tech... super slow drive? every other ship has the same speed, why an exception to colony ships? And would it really help (not terrible much I think)... extremely short fuel ranges? this means one heck of an increase in fuel consumption... which will severely and negatively affect every ship in the game... fuel issues are already pissing off a lot of people...
Perhaps it could be confined to colony ships only by making the colonization module consume a whole bunch of energy for static operation... say, 200 units... this would drain the fuel tanks of colony ships rapidly and not other ships... of course, that also would have issues... the difference between late game and early game fuel efficiency and storage is such that it would be meaningless in late game and utterly cripple in early game.

method 1 seems the safest to me if you are going to implement that change. losing colony ships or colonies will be a severe blow to the population. early expansion is checked in that spreading the population around means moving them from profitable worlds (high culture) to unprofitable ones (0 culture)... and since the population amount accounts for half the culture, then the remaining pop on said planet will also be less profitable now... Conquering planets of other empires or indigenous colonies would become a higher value task as you acquire more people to move around... there will actually be a real cost upfront for building a new colony (of course, eventually it pays off... but in the short term...)

Some combination of all 3 might be the right course. Though with a combo, you'd want to tone down part of them.

1. Colonists must be loaded.
2. Colony ships should have a colony core (this carriers the materials to found the first town) and passenger compartments to carry the colonists.

-The colony core technologies increase the habitability zones
-Passengers determine the founding size of the colony. If you want to build a ship expensive enough to haul around 100 million people, then you can build it (not advisable though).

3. Limit colony ships to 1 or 2 fuel cells total. If you are stuffing millions of people on them, then you aren't going to have a lot of room for much else.

4. Increase the cost moderately (3-5 times current). Though this may not be necessary if passenger components are required.

Also, a 'Migrant Ship' should be player controllable so a player can manually move around population as he/she deems necessary. The migrant ship would be able to load up people from one colony and move them to another, allowing a player to quickly increase the population of a chosen colony.

-Similar to colony ship, only without the colony module.
-Passenger components allow players to load people from one place and drop them off at another.

that sounds good overall, might not actually need every one of those things though to avoid overshooting the target and making colonization too difficult... maybe reduce the amount of passengers that fit in each passenger component, so you require significantly more of them per million colonists.

As far as the migrant ship idea, good idea. how about just letting players manually build passenger ships under their control while still leaving them most in the private sector?
that is, a passenger ship could be either AI controlled or player controlled, if the private sector built it, then it is privately owned and AI controlled, if the player built it then it is state owned and controlled by the player.

[Yarasala]

On AI diplomacy: to prevent the AI from spamming the player with map exchange requests or similar things I have a simple suggestion: introduce a counter per request type that counts how often the player declined the request. Also estabish a "block time", say five minutes. Now for when the player declines a request set for that request type a time = now + (block time * number of consecutive player denials of said request type) until which the request won't be issued again from the AI.
So when the AI requests a map exchange and the player declines for the first time the AI won't ask again before five minutes have passed. If the player declines again the AI won't ask until after 10 minutes and so on.
If the player accepts a request the counter is reset to zero.

[Florestan]

I was advised to repost this here, so... But before, try to search "wishlist" from the forum interface, body or subject option on, in the "distant worlds" forum, and you don't even find this thread...
There are some things that could be easily enhanced in the ways the game windows work.
1 It would be good that the windows contents would be updated according to the other opened windows given orders. For example, if I change a design while a shipyard is selected in another window, the build combo box should reflect the new designs or removals or price changes.
2 Why isn't it possible to move windows around ? it would be very convenient when using research to get components information, or in when building things to look at the designs and components... And so simple to implement ! And also, that when I click on a window, it is brought in the foreground.
3 Why is it not possible to use the main screen when a window is displayed ?
5 It seems illogical to me to have a "select ship" or "select planet" or so button in the windows interfaces : why isn't the object simply selected when selected in the windows' list ?.. A double click would be a nice shortcut to the "center" button, too.
4 Harder, it would be nice to be able to redimension the windows, and the lists and panels (in WPF way) in the windows, so we can see more of a list or another, and that the game remember size and position of the windows. And also, changing the size and position of the HUD components would be nice.
5 It would be nice to have a shortcut to the military ships list. I often find myself opening the ships and bases screen and then selecting the military ships in the combo box. I use this a lot more than the default display ! Or at least, perhaps memorise the last filter used, so I don't have to reselect it every time.
6 A whole game and a single measure unit : "K" !!! The game would be a lot more readable if the units where related to what they measure ! I don't know, you could use $ or credits for the money, people for the individuals in a colony or ship, HP for damage or shield strength, science point for research, and the like !
7 There are a lot of inaccessible information in the game ! I would like to access them all ! First, the fixed one, like the formulas used in combat or the productivity of a mining device... Galactopedia is way too much incomplete in this regard. It would also be nice to have in game access to the full database of all the objects you own. Display a properties screen on double click on any selectable item would help a lot. In the beginning, I found myself searching for data on things a lot ! The windows in the bottom right corner is good, but not enough.
8 My eyes hurt ! I had to move my screen closer in order to be able to read the fonts on my 1920*1400 screen ! Why don't you adapt the font size to the screen resolution ? Or make us able to choose it ? You may say I could change my resolution, but this means change my desktop resolution, which is quite annoying by itself, but also support the blur LCD screens do when not set on the native resolution.

[Florestan]

Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules.

[HsojVvad]

I tried changing my screen resolution, I don't see much of a difference to go through that hassel to play the game. Fonts need to be bigger. I played on 1080X760 and I still find it hard to read and then I don't have the whole big screen as I use to.

Please please change the fonts.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Florestan

Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules.

ORIGINAL: Florestan

Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules.

Automatic upgrade does. I think you mean "manual" upgrade, when you select a ship and click the "upgrade" button (it replaces every component with latest model)...
I agree, it should auto remove unneeded life-support and habitation.

[Florestan]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

ORIGINAL: Florestan

Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules.

Automatic upgrade does. I think you mean "manual" upgrade, when you select a ship and click the "upgrade" button (it replaces every component with latest model)...
I agree, it should auto remove unneeded life-support and habitation.

Yes, but it does not seem very manual to me... It would need to have a specific term to designate it !

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Florestan

ORIGINAL: taltamir

ORIGINAL: Florestan

Ship design automatic upgrade should remove unnecessary life support and habitation modules.

Automatic upgrade does. I think you mean "manual" upgrade, when you select a ship and click the "upgrade" button (it replaces every component with latest model)...
I agree, it should auto remove unneeded life-support and habitation.

Yes, but it does not seem very manual to me... It would need to have a specific term to designate it !

it is just called "upgrade"...
the fully auto option is "automate ship design", which automatically obsoletes old designs and makes entirely new designs to replace them.

[cmdrnarrain]

System Views

I would really like to see the ability to click a system and have a screen pop up which showed me all of the planets, resources, resource %, facilities, colonies, monsters, ruins, etc of explorered systems. The screen would give the option to queue construction and colony ships just like the exploration screen. Maybe even the option to send fleets to patrol the system as well.

Technology

I would like to see the AI brain races be ahead of me in tech. and everyone else be right behind or even for a more competitive game. Currently, I'm always so far ahead in tech. that they really are not a challenge. I've tried giving them more tech at the start but it just means they trade if off to me eventually and once I'm ahead they never recover.

Also, I would like to see more tech. and a consolidation of the some of the more common every ship needs one items. Do we really need 2 different life support modules or multiple types of building/resource gathering/cargo hold modules? Could ships just have something call infrastructure which is just all of that meaningless stuff on a ship which would scale based on size and tech level?

AI Attacks

You need to look at the deciding factors of when the AI attacks or not. I have almost no military, only 3-5 high tech. ships that I have found and only the starting troops on my home planet, but have yet to be attacked by the AI.. The most I have happen is that a bunch of the AI ships will orbit one of my planets, but they won't attack even when it isn't defended by ships or troops.

Attack Icons

I would really like to see great big icons on the strategy map showing me where I'm being attacked. The icons should be different for monsters, pirates, and AI opponents.

Bigger Sensor Ranges

The galaxy is a big place but my sensor range is tiny. Also warnings if the following were to occur, pirates, monsters, and ships of empires am at war with enter sensor range.

Exploration Ships

Exploration ships need to keep exploring, including all of the asteroids in a system. I really dislike it when I have to manually explore all of the asterroids in a system or when they only partially explore a system but consider it explored. Right now if you discover a star map you don't recieve a bonus/notification of what is in those system. Nor will you explorers go back and check them out if something changes.

[cmdrnarrain]

[font="times new roman"]AI Starting Location
 
I would like to see the AI empire's start farther apart.  It seems to me at least they start all bunched up and by the time I reach them, one or two of them have already been devastated by their neighbors.
[/font]
[font="times new roman"]Swap Star Maps
 
Is there a way to reduce the number of requests to exchange star maps.   It seems like I can not go a full minute at 2x speed without some empire asking to exchange maps with me.   The answer was no last time and it isn't going to change a minute from now.
 
Shipyards
 
The AI doesn't seem to build very big shipyards which limits its ability to produce big ships.    
 
Exploration Ships
 
Is there a way to have exploration ships re-explore the galaxy once they have explored it once?  I would really like them to update my star charts for all of the changes and the better sensors later in the game pick up more stuff that seems to have been missed the first time.
 
Build on Planets
 
Could you make it so you could click on a planet to send a construction ship to build a factory just like you can do with colonies?
[/font]

[NickWright]

I've got a fairly simple comment about the interface. I'm using two monitors on my PC, in what Windows refers to as an "extended desktop" configuration. So what happens is the game is displayed on the primary monitor, which is all well and good, however scrolling around the map with the mouse can be tricky. Moving the mouse over to one side the the screen, my pointer will head off onto my other monitor (where the game isn't displayed). The upshot of this is that I can only pan the map in 3 directions with the mouse, which is a pain.

I'm wondering if there is a simple switch you (the devs) could set in your code that would lock the mouse pointer and prevent it from moving outside the game window/display? That would be utterly glorious =)

[Falokis]

I would love to select a construction ship, zoom out to the galaxy map, and right click on a system, then --> "build at all available resources". That way, I don't have to queue up all the resources myself or shuffle through the expansion planner.

[aprezto]

My apologies if this has been listed already, but I would like to be able to set rally points on the map that subsequently appear on ships or fleets when they are selected and viewable, either in the window in the bottom left (of screen) or on the main map, that are then accessable via right click on the object selected (fleet or ship).
 
Use: I have 2 fleets, 10 new ships and 4 troop ships, spread around the galaxy that I want to coordinate into an attack/invasion force. I don't want to have to select them, zoom out and move across to the rally point, right click on my rally location and choose patrol, or 'move here'.
 
Further to this order that the ships chosen via this 'goto rally point' option refuel once they get to the target if a refuel point is available in the system.
 
Each rally point should be able to be labelled to make sense.