Patch 2.1 wishlist

[EricLarsen]

I've discovered that Andrew is busy working on a patch for SUDG. After helping him track down an old bug he intimated I should start a patch wishlist and see who piles on with what wishes. So I'm taking my opportunity to see some things made better. Please feel free to pile on or forever hold your tongue if Andrew doesn't incorporate some new feature or correction you'd like to see because there wasn't enough popular demand.

1) Random events need to be made more random. Right now it's just a balancing tool that rewards poor play and punishes good play. I would like to see it become a truly random event system where good things or bad things can happen to any player, human and AI alike, at any time.

2) More realistic research/production modeling by allowing worlds to do both at the same time. I also want to see the people populating a world working on their specialty exclusively. No more everyone does only one simple task at a time but true multitasking. Scientists only research, engineers only produce, security only secures, and navy only fights. The right person for the right job, just the way it's done here on good old spaceship earth (well theoretically at least).

3) Battlecruisers and Battleships! Where's our Dreadnaught's? Let's have some singularity age ships like battlecruisers and battleships with an additional slot each. I don't know about you but cruisers just don't have enough slots for all the cool goodies to stuff on ships.

4) Increase the number of researches needed to leave the atomic and fusion ages. I'd say we should need 25 techs to leave the atomic age and 20 to leave the fusion age. There are just too many atomic and fusion age research projects that should be studied before leaving the atomic and fusion ages so that when a race leaves that age it's pertty well grounded in that age's technology. In these two early ages there are just so many more techs to research that increasing the number of research projects will help ensure that each race gets more of each age's important researches in before going to the next age poorly prepared or having to go back and do old tech research just to bring something up to tech snuff. I also think it would help the AI to be more well rounded in their research as I've seen that they do a poor job of researching some very important techs.

5) Make the AI better by making it research and produce world enhancing techs like labs, research centers, nano factories and replicator facilities. I've had numerous visits to alien worlds to destroy them and I've never seen these tech items in the world slots. I use them extensively and they sure do help increase a world's research and production capabilities and I consistently outresearch and outproduce alien races mainly because I have those world enhancements and they don't. I see that the aliens build lots of weapons on their worlds but they are more a waste of production and money than if they invested in good world infrastructure. I've seen that they all research and produce surface mining tech exclusively and that is the end of their world enhancement.

6) Some kind of automatic riddance of some unneccessary artifacts. While the ram shield, storm and lighting dissapators and other artifact sentinel destroyers are useful in the very early stages of the game, they are absolutely worthless after all the artifact sentinels are gone and they just clutter up stuff. It would be nice if they disappeared after the last artifact sentinel has been eliminated. It would also be nice if there are fewer of these artifacts in the first place. I'd rather see some more useful artifacts like instant ships, colonies, researches and populations and 25% production increases, upsize starships, and those really useful artifacts.

7) In the advanced game I'd rather start with a huge type-1 world rather than a large world. That is the one thing that has led me to go back to the intermediate level with challenging pirates. The advanced level with challenging pirates is a bit too challenging as the pirates tend to get better stuff way faster than I do because I have this wimpy world to start from and can't research and produce fast enough to keep up with the alien Jonses. I actually enjoy playing against the better aliens at the advanced level but just don't like being hampered by the smaller homeworld.

8) Improve the interstellar standoff routine so that it is easier to see the shot striking the target. I've tried many times to get this right and haven't yet figured out how to accomplish it and the manual is rather short of how it is done correctly. When the targeting screen comes up and you select a target then that target should automatically become the focus unit and when we click on the fire button that target world should stay in focus rather than jumping back immediately to the world that shot the shot where there's nothing to see in the first place. I can see the city that I target have a small white spot on it desginating it as the target but I've never, ever seen the interstellar standoff come in and strike the city because the program jerks me back to the shooting world as soon as I shoot. Going back is always too late even at 1 speed and paused.

I guess that's it for now. Hope some of these are popular enough to get included in the next patch.

Eric Larsen

[gren99]

a while back, i posted a wishlist of things that the game could incorporate over time. it can be found here:

showthread.php?s=&threadid=30311

i still think my thoughts on how to 'beef up' ships are sound and obviously i'd like to see some expansion in that regard as wel. much of it could be done within the existing framework of the game right now (f.e the 'arsenal ship' i ooutline -- a ship with the 2 slot weapons palette taking up 1 slot is pretty mucht he same as a ship getting the 'double weapon shots' artifact) -- but why not incorporate this into the tech tree?

i also echo the more realistic R&D by the AI request. the AI seems too preoccupied by creating defenses for its worlds -- and not pushing forward into the new ages. inevitably, when the player hits the anti-matter age, the gulf gets to be pretty wide and the player can start hammering the AI into submission pretty easily.

as for unwanted artifacts -- perhaps create something along the lines of a 'traveling merchant' -- who 'visits' the planets once every 2-3 years and allows a player to sell off artifcats or trade them for ones he's gotten elsewhere. f.e. if one race sells it's 3 beam ace artifacts and wants to get 2 bolt ace ones and you happen to have 4 bolt ace ones, a trade can be worked out.

i suspect that's a bit of a complex endeavor within the gamee's structure, but just a thought, anyway.

'multi-threading' the ability to research and produce at the same time would be very cool, but to be honest, i think that has the trappings of a very cool and very rare artifact rather than a default ability.

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by gren99
[Bi still think my thoughts on how to 'beef up' ships are sound and obviously i'd like to see some expansion in that regard as wel.

as for unwanted artifacts -- perhaps create something along the lines of a 'traveling merchant' -- who 'visits' the planets once every 2-3 years and allows a player to sell off artifcats or trade them for ones he's gotten elsewhere. f.e. if one race sells it's 3 beam ace artifacts and wants to get 2 bolt ace ones and you happen to have 4 bolt ace ones, a trade can be worked out. [/B]

gren99,
I read your post and I really think your ship ideas are more splitting hairs on the wrong classes. We can configure our smaller ships differently, and I sometimes do, to do different types of missions. I still think that adding two more ship classes in the singularity age, battlecruisers and battleships with one and two additional slots over a cruiser, would give us better bang for Andrew's buck.

As for a drop ship, some kind of dedicated transport for us to use, I agree we should have something like that rather than having to mess around reconfiguring our warships. Rather than create a new ship maybe Andrew could allow us to build our own freighters that we can use for this purpose. We would only be able to build a frieghter of the kind currently available for resource routes and a small freighter could carry one colony pod while a medium could carry two colony pods. I'd like to see a large freighter designation for the class 9 and 10 freighters that could carry 3 colony pods. It would be a stock, pre-configured ship that we can't reconfigure just the way the freighters are now. Now that would give us extra incentive to improve freighters over mere dollar wastage on freighter routes.

I like the concept of your "traveling merchant", but rather than have Andrew create a whole new character I think pirates would be great for this. It would be nice to be able to trade artifacts with pirates or even other alien races the way we do techs. It just would be nice to find a way to get rid of those many unwanted and unnecessary artifacts we collect that clutter up our world artifact bank. Instead of finding a bolt specialist and then immediately using him on my world, even though I have no intention of ever researching bolts, just to deny his use to the enemy I'd rather be able to hold him and then see if I can't possibly trade him to some alien race that likes bolts and may have a spare beam specialist hanging around that I could trade for. It just would be nice to trade artifacts.

Eric Larsen

[gren99]

Originally posted by EricLarsen
I read your post and I really think your ship ideas are more splitting hairs on the wrong classes. We can configure our smaller ships differently, and I sometimes do, to do different types of missions. I still think that adding two more ship classes in the singularity age, battlecruisers and battleships with one and two additional slots over a cruiser, would give us better bang for Andrew's buck.

the whole point is to give people more options to with as they please -- so in that regard, splitting hairs is exactly what i was outlining. as i noted previously, some of this could be accomplished by simply letting you add a feature that a an artifact can bestow now to a ship via a research effort. that's not too terribly hard, now is it?

i never said 'use all the ideas as i outlined' - i think some of these speciality ships are perhaps not as viable as others in retorspect (though i still think the arsenal ship and the space control ship would be keen), but there aree ways around this -- the game could be set up f.e. to have specialty ships with a 'tagged' technology -- i.e. the tagged technology (computer, generators, missiles, beam/wave/etc, stealth) is either doubled, built in or works at 2x the efficency or some such.

no extra specialty classes needed and maximum freedom for people to tweak stuff as they see fit -- you just research an 'advanced frigate' or an 'advanced cruiser'.

adding a couple of singularity age ships is also something i would support (and i do think i mention that).

on the flipside -- making freighters into dropships -- now that sounds like an overly complex concept. i currently use a fleet of 3-4 cruisers in my games to capture worlds and that works fairly well. if you start using a freighter derivative, it stands to reason that their defenses will be about as pitiful as current freighters and likely won't take too many hits in such operations. on the level, i'd rather stick with my teleporting assault pod cruisers in such situations.

though admitedly, it would be kinda cool to create freighter based 'colony ships', i suppose, that can be stuffed with items corresponding to their size (a type 6 has 6 slots) -- great for rapidly building up population on colony (or newly captured)worlds. you could perhaps also use them to build stuff (replicator facilities, deep minining plants, etc) on one world and ship them to your new planet, thus speeding things up a bit.

i just wouldn't want to take them into combat.

and yeah, letting the pirates act as merchants would work for me.

[genehaynes]

I would like a screen that lists ALL your artifacts and where they are located ( i.e. What ship / world ).

[SideshowBob]

OK, as I am about to move on to Uncommon Valor as soon as it arrives, I'll post some small practical improvements I'd like to see when I return to this game:

Get rid of the very light tan color - can't distinguish "out of turmoil" systems or pirates from it! Or at least make it possible to choose the color of your opponents! Maybe come up with a dark blue instead. I've actually quit good games when my chief adversary ends up this color - way too frustrating to watch for out of turmoil systems.

When ships signal they are ready for an assignment, have it default to whatever planet they are at now, not some ridiculous assignment I'd never want them to do (like attack a pirate in a $2/year system, or raid a neutral alien's $4/year system) like they always do. 75% of the time I want a ship to patrol the planet it is at, as it has just been refitted, and is waiting for its fleet-mates to refit. Once the whole fleet has re-fit, I seldom send them off immediately somewhere, as I may be doing other stuff (with other fleets) at the time.

Oh, and when a ship is newly built, have it always and automatically go to the planet it is built at! In my experience, the new ship, without any request for an assignment, always goes to the planet I last ordered a ship to go to. Often this is a new colony, as I just ordered a ship to patrol it. Then I have a brand-new cruiser just jump-gate across the galaxy, and on the way back, it uses a wormhole with an end in a system with a pirate, who promptly blows away my brand-new unarmed cruiser! What's up with that?

Don't activate "Invincible Shields" on a planet automatically if war is declared! Cheez, this is pandering - I want to decide if and where and when I use it! I may want to save it for the end of an attack or for a future new distant colony. I usually buy my way out of early wars, and the shields won't save me if I can't anyway. Well, maybe restrict this to the "Beginner" level!

I'd love a way to acquire some of the specialty artifacts later in the game, or better yet, instead be able to de-activate them and move them to another ship. I absolutely love to use "overload weapons w/o damage" or "2 shots per turn" or "xxxx weapons ace" on a singularity-age cruiser. Inevitably it seems that the ships I load with these artifacts are the first one destroyed, and foolishly (see below)! Arrgh!

Jumping - Why does my best ship (with the artifact of course) always get jumped right into the arms of the enemy cruiser, who blows it away before it has a chance to power up? I guess this is part of the game - The jump technology is offset by the need to be vulnerable for a short time. It sure happens against me way more often than it happens to the AI. This is kind of like random special events just punishing good play/ ship design strategy. I often jump to an adjacent system (if one is available) and trans-warp to the attacked system, risking loss of the system but not my best ships.

Crew Experience, not Ship Experience - Of course this makes more sense, but seems difficult to model in the game, so I realize why it is the way it is. Totally Medieval has a system wherein an experienced unit, decimated by battle, is reinforced with fresh recruits, it's experience drops as well, proportionately. Not sure how you'd deal with moving crews around.

Ship Captain tactics - Do I have the most bone-headed captains in the galaxy or what? I'd like to be able to manually control just the ram, but not other weapons. I get into a lot of fleet battles in which I'm outnumbered but technologically superior (isn't this the theme of every sci-fi galactic adventure?) - I don't want my cruiser ramming a scout, only to be taken out by the next Adv Nuclear Standoff as it drifts along dead after the ram. Yeah, I know, if you use Armor, it is active even when the ship is dead. But armor sucks for other reasons - Guess that's part of the game. A request nonetheless. Being able to activate the cloak separately is great for these reasons - my captains will sit there getting repeatedly hammered while remaining uncloaked - what are they, Cardassians?

Have the fleet number of the ship show up everywhere the name of the ship does (especially on the star map). Then I don't have to open a window or leave the star-map to see which ship is which. Sometimes I re-name all the ships with the fleet number in the name, but this is too tedious. Maybe right after the name, in parentheses, ie: Bismarck (3).

Make "Protected/Domed/Underground" cities not take up a slot on a world. There already is dis-incentive to build them due to the cost. Also since I always know my most recent world will be attacked, there's no reason to build anything beyond Protected on my 1st 3 or 4 worlds (see next subject) If you insist on them taking up a slot, then have the slot taken in the build queue like anything else. Once I have 2 cities and 2 Rep Facilities on a colony, I am often loading lots of stuff to build with Protected Cities, so I have to manually count and leave 1 open slot. I've overcounted, and invariably it knocks out a Replicator Facility, then it takes forever to restore it and complete the world build.

Make the Alien AI's more unpredictable. As I noted above, I always know that my most recent world/colony will be attacked, so I anticipate by keeping defenses high there, and as each new world comes online, I can de-activate defenses and replace with Deep Mining/Research facilities. Maybe have crazy, Saddam/Kim-type civ's who will attack anywhere.

Keep the ability to move Wisdoms around! I agree the cheat method of stashing them on ships should be eliminated, but I still want to move them around as a strategy to fool enemy spies. Otherwise I seem to be robbed blind, even with 30-33% security on a world. And it seems AI worlds I "visit" (ha!) or federate with have far fewer security %'s, yet the chance of failure is still 12-15%, and I lose stuff easier than it is for me to rob stuff.

Well, these are the PRACTICAL suggestions.

I agree that larger ships would be nice, but then you'd have to design and create a new class or 2 of ships for each body type - maybe have a design contest!?!?!?

I also earlier floated the idea of a "death star", which would be a very small (or smaller) planet that can only jump to attack other worlds, and would be able to create "killer beams" and "invincible shields". Wouldn't it be cool to load one of these with Fighters or Standoffs for an attack on a world? Or defend against one with lots of scouts? Am I insinuating I've seen a very basic galactic space adventure movie?

OK, that's my $55-worth. As I noted in another post, this is by and large my favorite game!

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by SideshowBob
When ships signal they are ready for an assignment, have it default to whatever planet they are at now, not some ridiculous assignment I'd never want them to do

Oh, and when a ship is newly built, have it always and automatically go to the planet it is built at!

Don't activate "Invincible Shields" on a planet automatically if war is declared! Cheez, this is pandering - I want to decide if and where and when I use it!

I'd love a way to acquire some of the specialty artifacts later in the game, or better yet, instead be able to de-activate them and move them to another ship.

Jumping - Why does my best ship (with the artifact of course) always get jumped right into the arms of the enemy cruiser, who blows it away before it has a chance to power up?

Crew Experience, not Ship Experience - Of course this makes more sense, but seems difficult to model in the game, so I realize why it is the way it is. Totally Medieval has a system wherein an experienced unit, decimated by battle, is reinforced with fresh recruits, it's experience drops as well, proportionately. Not sure how you'd deal with moving crews around.

Ship Captain tactics - Do I have the most bone-headed captains in the galaxy or what? I'd like to be able to manually control just the ram, but not other weapons.

Make "Protected/Domed/Underground" cities not take up a slot on a world. There already is dis-incentive to build them due to the cost.

Make the Alien AI's more unpredictable. As I noted above, I always know that my most recent world/colony will be attacked, so I anticipate by keeping defenses high there, and as each new world comes online, I can de-activate defenses and replace with Deep Mining/Research facilities.

SideshowBob,
Here's my take on some of your suggestions.

I agree that ships that just become ready, or are just built, should always default to patrolling the system they are in or built in. Then if you want something different you can do something different but I agree most of the time I want them patrolling where they are or refitting where they are.

If you don't like the way the program automatically handles artifacts then use manual control like I do. That way my artifacts don't get abused by the program when it thinks it's appropriate to use an artifact and I don't.

I sure wish we could deactivate artifacts and have them become available agai I also wish we could destroy them as well as there are times when I collect a slew of aces for weapons I'll never use and I just wish they'd be gone so they wouldn't clutter up the artifact screen on my homeworld. I do find good artifacts later in the game by going and destroying alien worlds, usually the wisdom and advanced research ones. But it sure would be nice to be able to trade them like techs.

I don't have the same problems jumping as you do. Either you're not going forth with enough power, ie not enough generators, or you have very inexperienced ships. Or if you have the ships' captain controlling combat maybe his style of play is too defensive. I find that having standoffs cures that problem real easy and I usually crank up all my ship captains to Berserk level for the move to an enemy world and then kick back to Balanced when they're all there. I've jumped into alien worlds with plenty of ships protecting it and have never had problems with the first ship getting blown away before the others arive.

I agree that crew experience should be modeled rather than ship experience. The crew experience should go down as new crew members are added to replace missing crew. I also think that world populations should have an experience level that gets better with time. I have noticed that no matter when I built a world the different classes of workers all have about the same percentage experience. I would expect that the older a world the better trained it's populace would be except for having to crew ships and then replace world workers with untrained ones.

Ship captains aren't necessarily the best but they do a credible job of controlling combat. One thing I've noticed is that a ship's captains style of play, from defensive to beserk, is rather crucial in determining how it does in combat. I usually use balanced especially when attacking a world. I usually go aggressive when I order a fleet to attack a world and then drop to balanced when they arrive. I forgot once and left the fleet on beserk the whole time and lost 5 ships, mostly small ones. Also make sure your crew compositions are good and not left to the captain's discretion.

I agree that underground cities should not take up a slot on the world. This is real critical for the advanced level when you start with a wimpy large world and probably another reason I don't like the advanced level with a wimpy large world.

I agree the AI needs to be more unpredictable. After playing many games now I can usually know what the aliens will do. I always know that my newest colony is the most likely to be attacked so I always send out one of my biggest and best ships to patrol that colony until it's finished construction. I also know that once I've got colonies my homeworld is pretty safe from attack and I don't bother to put up shields or weapons until about the antimatter age. Plus when aliens attack a world they should be getting about that business rather quickly. I've noticed that there is far too much of a time lag between the time the world shows it's being attacked and when the actual attack occurs and the time lag is not due to flying time. I've noticed that if I'm building techs that relate to being on my ship and some are finished but not incorporated in my ships then I have to switch to ignore the captain's upgrade requests for all the ships involved. I've had numerous occasions where I'd set some fleet to attack an enemy world and they'd head in the opposite direction to my homeworld to try and refit without really doing the refit.

Enjoy Uncommon Valor but take my advice and don't bother trying to edit any scenarios as that game's editor is nothing but an excercise in frustration.
Eric Larsen

[EricLarsen]

I have noticed that even though I'm very anal about locking down each ship's or world's crews/populations as far as what I want them doing, that the moment I restore a game for the first time that day that all my locks are gone and the crews are now being determined by the captain's discretion. That is extremely annoying!:mad:

It would be great if the crew/population locks would stay when a game is saved and restored. It is a real pain in the butt to have to lock down every ship and world everytime I restore the game. Please make the locks a savable item in the saved game file so we don't have to always check that everytime we restore the game, especially for the first time of the day. It's now a chore I have to remember each time I start anew for the day. Otherwise as I've found out the captains start using really stupid crew compositions and I start losing ships a lot easier than when they use my settings.
Eric Larsen

[SideshowBob]

Eric - I KNOW WHY YOUR SHIP POPULATIONS DON'T LOCK! This was going to be a subject of my next post. Seems that whenever you CHANGE THE COMBAT STYLE OF YOUR SHIP it resets the crew to captain's choice! I finally figured this out after many games of annoyance, 'cause I too change the combat style often, depending on weapons types and mission. Each time, I have to reset the crew - a real pain!

Thanks for the Manual Artifacts setting advice - never thought to try that!

As for the problem I experience with ships getting zonked as soon as they jump onto an enemy ship, this usually happens when going into a freighter system, not to attack or defend a planet - then you usually get jumped to the star in the center and then go to the planet. Doesn't matter what weapons or combat style I have, or even if I have armor, even the armor is dead (and armor stays on even when ramming/rammed).

OK, on to other comments/suggestions:

I'd say that the IR Stealth/Radar Stealth tech's should disappear once EM Cloak is in hand (same goes for detectors). These are useless after that. After all, the 4 different screen types disappear once Single Phase Deflector is researched. This would shorten the menu of possible items to build. I always run up against singularity-age AI ships with these fusion-age devices installed, taking up 2 slots. I probably should be grateful!

More on Assult Pods: I started another game last night and got "Shield Ignoring Assult Pods, as well as an early lead due to 3 very early fortunate finds of 1 instant colony and 2 instant starships! I built up a comfortable lead and large fleet, with plenty of assult pods and security aboard the destroyers and cruisers, and they show 10 shots! I want to know or figure out what it takes to get 10 assult pod shots instead of 1.

I then launched several capture world missions. When I capture an enemy world, it starts over with the population of the assult pods used to capture it, as all the enemy population must be killed off first, so its only 10 people in 1 city. Sometimes other ships in my attacking fleet will scrap their assult pods over the new planet, adding to the population, but I can't actually make this happen, and would like to be able to. It doesn't happen all the time or with all the ships. It certainly helps to add population to a captured world. If the world has no remaining computer or generator, the population cannot grow, so you have to wait up to 200 months while the computer/generator is built before going beyond population 10. Meanwhile, a large network of freighter routes is attached to this world, rendering up to 1/4 of my systems vulnerable to loss from 1 shot from an enemy attack.

Auto-Build on Captured Worlds: With auto-build on, the captured planet trys to re-build what was on the planet before I attacked, invariably something like 9 adv proton shotguns and 6 nuclear generators, while I'm anti-matter age!. I have to then cycle through removing all old items as they show up in the queue before it stops doing this. If I keep the build queue loaded up from the moment of capture till I fully restore the world, once the queue is empty it will start systematically destroying what I built in favor of that old configuration (even tho I can't even choose those items off the current build menu!).

This also happens to any of my worlds after an attack has damaged any components - even if my engineers have restored it to 100%, the auto-build still has to replace it, eating up valuable research capability if my 2nd or 3rd world is attacked. This is usually why I sue for peace early instead of withstanding an attack on my 2nd or 3rd "research" worlds.

I can always turn auto-build off, that's fine, until I need it back on, to upgrade my worlds with the latest generators/ shields/ weapons/ etc. - By then I will have forgotten about my captured planet and by the time I realize it, its entire new infrastructure is destroyed! Arrgh!

Seems there's an easy way to fix this problem - have the auto-build recognize and leave alone a component at 100%, and disallow it from replacing built components with anything different.

Enemy Planet Info/Spies: In the advanced level (and maybe intermediate depending on how far ahead you are in tech's), you can't see what an opponent has on his planet, unless you are attacking with ultra cloak detector on board a ship. But you can always see the type of cities (domed/protected/etc) and the population distribution and numbers.

A suggestion is to not show any info. other than what distant observation technology could discern, namely the size and type of the planet, the fact that it is inhabited, and maybe the spacedock, city type, and whether a jumpgate is present. But certainly not the population or its distribution.

Then, create a new mission for spies: "Investigate City", with similar chances of success as stealing money, etc. If the mission is successful, you get to see everything there is to know, including weapons/improvements, population, and even if ships are on patrol there plus their config's. Of course this idea is from another game.

Oh, thanx for the advice on UV's scenario editor. Sometimes the scen editor is more fun than playing the game (Stronghold and Man of War II come to mind), but I'd rather have a fulfilling game!

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by SideshowBob
Eric - I KNOW WHY YOUR SHIP POPULATIONS DON'T LOCK! This was going to be a subject of my next post. Seems that whenever you CHANGE THE COMBAT STYLE OF YOUR SHIP it resets the crew to captain's choice! I finally figured this out after many games of annoyance, 'cause I too change the combat style often, depending on weapons types and mission. Each time, I have to reset the crew - a real pain!

As for the problem I experience with ships getting zonked as soon as they jump onto an enemy ship, this usually happens when going into a freighter system, not to attack or defend a planet - then you usually get jumped to the star in the center and then go to the planet. Doesn't matter what weapons or combat style I have, or even if I have armor, even the armor is dead (and armor stays on even when ramming/rammed).

SideshowBob,
Thanks for the tip on changing combat style changing crew composition to captain's choice. Andrew this has got to be fixed so that changing combat styles does not, I repeat, does not change the crew composition to captain's choice. That's really annoying and very user unfriendly!:mad:

I never have problems going into freighter systems, either against pirates or other alien races. The only time there's a problem is when I'm raiding and an alien comes in to patrol while I'm busy shooting up the transport the alien is busy shooting me up. Seems the ship captains aren't very smart about knowing which threat is the most dangerous and dealing with the most dangerous first before resuming the mission. But as far as going in while a pirate or enemy alien ship is there I never get jumped either at the intermediate or advanced levels when I first jump in. I guess it's a matter of timing of something. I still say standoffs are the way to go since they usually fire off before an enemy can get close enough to pose a problem.

I never use the world governor auto build feature as I've found it just doesn't satisfy me as far as doing a good job selecting freighter routes to build up and quickly and it does not do a good job of selecting items to build on a world. I go manual all the way. I want to control when I build a freighter route and which ones to build, not just have the auto routine building freighter routes to poor resource systems wily nily screwing up my research efforts. I also don't want it junking up my worlds with useless builds that I would want to cancel or remove. Nope manual control of building is the only way to fly!;)
Eric Larsen

[SideshowBob]

I indeed keep auto-build "off" until I get my 1st 3 planets up & humming (full population/improvement slots), I too want to decide when and what I build. At that point I am usually well into Fusion age. At that point, too, though, the entire galaxy is known and all star systems are owned by someone, so there's no freighters to build (unless a war makes a few available).

Once I research Anti-Matter Age tech's, I need to update my 1st 3 world's improvements (generators, computers, shields, weapons). Since my worlds are full, the only way to do this w/o a lot of tedium is to turn auto-build on, which lets the world automatically replace/ update each component, and basically leave it on for the game's duration.

Therein lies the problem with the way auto-build works.

[EricLarsen]

SideshowBob,
I keep my auto build off the whole game as I don't want the auto-build bulding weird stuff. I also keep updating my older worlds with newer tech regularly, though I don't redo shields every age. I kind of like playing the production game, more so than combat. When I get later into a game I don't even bother to watch the combat or see what my ships are attacking. Sometimes I miss being intercepted by the aliens and I miss seeing my great gunboat blow away some stinky alien cruiser. But I'm always keeping tabs on my builds, especially on new worlds where I tend to build, build, build before switching my population to other pursuits.

Have you noticed how the aliens build lots of ships early in the game and then seem to peter out about mid-game to end-game? I keep wondering where the aliens are wasting all their money during this timeframe and why they don't keep building warships. Makes the game rather boring after you've trashed the big alien fleets.
Eric Larsen

[SideshowBob]

Eric - But if Auto-Build DID work properly, you COULD be using it! I think its worthwhile to upgrade your planet technologies as soon as you get new tech's, especially computers, as they aid in research and sensor range.

Yes, once you eliminate the large early fleets, there's no punch left in any of the aliens - they are busy funding pirates in your systems instead of building more ships. This is why I don't play Intermediate level anymore - at the Advanced level, you get more aggressive, ship-building aliens later in the game - you just have to survive to that point!

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by SideshowBob
Eric - But if Auto-Build DID work properly, you COULD be using it! I think its worthwhile to upgrade your planet technologies as soon as you get new tech's, especially computers, as they aid in research and sensor range.

Yes, once you eliminate the large early fleets, there's no punch left in any of the aliens - they are busy funding pirates in your systems instead of building more ships. This is why I don't play Intermediate level anymore - at the Advanced level, you get more aggressive, ship-building aliens later in the game - you just have to survive to that point!

SideshowBob,
I played an advanced game this weekend with random civs (I like not knowing how many alien races there'll be as that adds some mystery to the easter egg hunt) and challenging pirates. I ended up searching through almost 2/3 of the galaxy while my 2 alien competitors searched only about 1/3. Needless to say I had lots of artifacts and 7 wisdom artifacts to the alien's one each. I got a good boost into the fushion and antimatter ages before the other aliens stole an artifact and got into the fushion age. One alien race built about 6 ships early on while I had over a dozen. This time it did not commit fleet suicide attacking any of my worlds but I managed to whittle his fleet down by attacking his resource systems and killing off his ships as they intercepted mine. But after those first 6 ships that was pretty much it. I was able to watch the two aliens federate, but by then it was too little too late. I really see no difference between the smarts of intermediate aliens and advanced aliens. They both play pretty much the same style of game with lots of money wasted on pirates and none of their own ships after the initial wave.

Hopefully Andrew's new fixes for patch 2.1 will improve the way the AI plays and will provide us with a much more challenging opponent.
Eric Larsen

[SideshowBob]

You need to start with more than 6 civ's (in the 150 star galaxy) to limit your own starting size to less than about 20 systems - then you are on par or behind at least 2 alien civ's until Anti-Matter Age - and if they ally and federate it puts you further in a hole - you have to play diplomat and persuade them to leave you alone and attack each other instead, to spare you while you research and colonize. Pick up a few more systems along the way as a result of their wars, too. Once you hit AM Age, have 4-5 mature worlds and a colony on the way, start building cruisers with EM cloaks, teleporting assult pods, THEN you can start challenging aliens, and by this time there are at least 2 good federations to deal with - usually 1 of the opposite philosophy and 1 of the same - both with 6-10 ships, 3-5 worlds, and in the AM age. The game gets really interesting from this point onward.

In addition to seeing the aliens research and produce better, I'd like to see them colonize a little more too - usually there's 1 or 2 civ's that go for 1 or 2 colonies early (presumably because they found Instant Colony or Instant Population artifacts), the others just sit with 1 world all the way through the game, and fall further behind as their research lags. Even the civ's that got colonies early pretty much stop colonizing later in the game - they grow by federating. Oh, well, maybe there'll be a 2.2 patch!