Bugs, Annoyances, and Suggestions
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Update
- Accurate as of post #6903.07.2006 - Added up to post #69. Checked off items fixed in 1.01X.110.
03.02.2006 - Updated based on comments, fixed a few formatting errors.
03.01.2006 - Updated the list based on new comments, reorganized and cleaned it up a bit.
02.24.2006 - List updated based on 1.01D patch notes. Items that are fixed will now be crossed out.
02.24.2006 - I have compiled all of the bugs, annoyances, and suggestions listed on this thread into a single post. I tried to categorize things to make it easier to read. Since most of the 'bugs' are minor and do not affect gameplay seriously, I've merged them in with the growing list of annoyances and suggestions. List your bugs, annoyances, and suggestions here!
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- (curttasker) Entering text into text entry boxes in the game is just plain awkward. Sometimes when you open a 'rename xxx' box, there is no cursor. So you have to click on the text to make one appear. At this point any key will clear the line. What if you just want to make a small spelling change? You cannot click exactly in the text where you want the cursor, you have to use the mouse to move it. However, typing anything (backspace, space, anykey) clears the entire entry! Consider making it into a more standard windows text box (allow text highlighting via holding down shift, etc.) Just start with the entire line highlighted so that typing anything clears the line to preserve the current system and allow power users to edit the text normally. Also, when you're done typing the text, hitting enter should confirm and close the box. It does not. Instead, the cursor simply disappears, and you are forced to click Done with the mouse. On a side note, ESC should trigger the Cancel button.
- (Nathan E) All the text entry boxes are awful. Follow standard UI design please. - (Voqar) I happen to be a big fan of standard windows controls and how they operate, and standard windows text editing conventions (as a programmer I seriously can't live without them). It's brutal when an app (like galciv2) deviates so much from the norm. I can deal, but life in the game would be 100% better if standard control behavior and text editing were implimented. - (Peter Huebner) I have remarked on these otherwhere. Was that code written by a programming intern? This kind of stuff happens when you are using the wrong functions to fetch keyboard events or keypress codes - (curttasker) After just finishing a seven hour game, I just have to re-interate how BAD the text entry boxes are. I ended up creating dozens of ship designs, and had to deal with the awful text entry boxes each time. Make them work like they do in windows, please. Waypoint naming is just as bad. I had to give up on naming fleets, it was just too annoying to deal with any more text boxes than absolutely necessary. - (curttasker) Ship save dialogs have text boxes that require you to click to create a cursor. Then you have to hold down the delete key until it is empty. Only then can you name the ship. |
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(fixed in 1.01X)
- (Nathan E) The tool tips are awful looking and the font is just plain bad. (fixed in 1.01X) (fixed in 1.01X) - (curttasker)The Options screen needs tooltips for every option. Some options are a tad confusing (especially to a new player), and some are downright cryptic. - (curttasker) Civilization Manager / Stats and Graphs tab: The abilities window needs tooltips for every item showing where that bonus is coming from. |
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- (curttasker) Influence for races should not be displayed in the minimap upon game start. In fact, you should not be able to see influences period unless the actual influence is close enough to your planets/ships to be detected. It is blatantly overpowered to be able to see everybody's starting positions at game start, to be able to monitor the status of intergalactic war safely from your planet just by watching colors change on the minimap, etc.
- (jklgon) Regenerated anomalies show up on the map even if it is located somewhere covered by the fog of war. - (curttasker) There is no button on the minimap to show/hide mining resources. You can, however, get the minimap to show them by turning off planets, stars, and ships |
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- (curttasker) The lower left hand of the main interface. Clicking on the 'now researching' area opens up the Research window, as it should. However, clicking on the 'approval' part of this screen opens up Research, when it should instead open up Domestic window, Economy Tab. Or perhaps Civilization Manager, Colonies Tab.
- (dctrjons) Along this line....more hotspots. More more. Minimize the paths to specific screens to the point of sillyness. Possibly more summary tooltips. One click for tooltip summary, double click for opening specifc menu. Not very keen on the hovering tooltips. |
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(fixed in 1.01X)
(fixed in 1.01X) - (curttasker) The scrollbox in colony management for build queue isn't displaying properly. Queue up a bunch of items, scroll down to the bottom of the list. The scrollbar will only scroll a little under halfway down. |
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- (gustaf00) When minor races appear later in the game, it might make sense to give them more starting defensive ships / infrastructure. Otherwise I show up two turns after they've been founded and take their small population out with a single transport ship, and get a free 15 qual world. This may just be because I was playing on normal, I'll play on a harder difficulty next time.
- (Nathan E) I had this happen in my tough difficulty game. In other words, the AI was all set to intelligent. Nice, easy freebie when that minor race popped up in my backyard. The AI should probably be given some infrastructure on the planet too. |
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(havn't noticed in 1.01X yet) - (curttasker) When I reach a new level of espionage with a race, I will get two notifications. First one, then the next week, another. (havn't noticed in 1.01X yet) - (Kavok) Occasionally I will get a intelligence notification twice it seems, I guess they -really- want me to know we've reached "low" in the drengin empire? |
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- (JPowell) Defeated AI players (major, not minor) still have "influence" scores.
- (curttasker) I've noticed this as well. If you view the UP screen, it shows all the races with their influence scores, even races that are no longer in the game. - (jklgon) When a race is defeated, there's a "speak to" button. - (curttasker) I've had one completed game where the game summary listed a player that was defeated in the early stages as having its most powerful ship be a ship I had designed and built literally 5 turns before the game ended. - (Weyrleader) Message shows up that says the Drengin are changing alighment - but are long gone from the Galaxy. |
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(Havn't noticed in 1.01X yet) - (curttasker) sometimes the game will CTD during gameplay (so far, only during campaign). When you attempt to reload the AutoSave, it will CTD. The Autosave is a zero byte file, so I'm guessing it experienced the initial crash while performing an autosave, and thus left the file empty. (Havn't noticed in 1.01X yet) - (Voqar) I just had another CTD and I think it was during an autosave. |
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- (curttasker) During a campaign mission, the AI offered to trade me 'Total Majesty', which is blocked from the player's tech tree during that mission. If you reject the offer, the tech does not appear under the AI's list of techs for trade. if you accept the trade, the tech does not show up under your tech tree.
- (Dellaster) free techs in trade if you build the Temple of Righteousness. Apparently the AI thinks the improvement is a valuable trade item. Sometimes a Neutral race will attempt to trade the Neutral improvement for it, more often they'll trade something else. In the first case, the alien conversation mentions trading the Neutral improvement for the Temple of Righteousness but neither show up in the trading windows. I can accept, it says "Thanks", but nothing transfers. In the more common second case the alien will offer something tradeable for the Temple of Rigtheousness, like ECM III, and it'll show up in the trade window and transfer upon acceptance (but of course the Temple will not). One alien has already traded good techs four or five times, getting nothing in return. (I've been accepting because I'm not sure if refusal pisses them off a little -- it should.) [editor's note: I think this issue is related to one race having access to a tech through their tree, and another not. It still allows you to trade the a tech in this situation, but the race without access to the tech tree will not gain the tech, while the other side will recieve the other side of the trade no problem] - (curttasker) This one happened twice, both games with me playing the Yor. The Terrans out of the blue offered me a peace treaty, even though we were not at war. The odd thing was, the peace treaty only appeared on my side of the screen, not on both sides. In both instances, the Terrans declared war on me within a few weeks. |
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- (curttasker) If you have more than one ship/fleet/starbase on the same tile, you cannot access the menus per ship (upgrade, construct, sentry, guard, destroy) or the fleet information window. This gets super awkward when you want to upgrade every ship in your fleet from 'Defender Mark 1' to 'Defender Mark 2'. You have to disband the fleet, then move each ship in the fleet into an empty tile. Only then can you access each ship's upgrade button.
- (TFXRaven) Probably the biggest quirk I have with the interface is naming fleets. If they're stacked, you have to move each fleet out individually to rename them. Also, moving a fleet to a planet (to act as defense) disbands the fleet. - (curttasker)Selecting a single ship from a stack of ships is awkward. I do not expect that if i have one ship selected, and i click on another, it will select BOTH ships. I expect it to do what a standard OS does, it selects the second ship i click on, and deselects the first. If i want to select both, i have to hold down the SHIFT or CTRL key as per standard UI design. - (Nathan E) Upgrading a ship in a fleet or re-organizing ships in multiple fleets is such a pain currently. I'd suggest looking at how some other games do this kind of thing. - (Voqar) I would also be in favor of typical windows selection/multi-selection when it comes to ships - like click, shift/ctrl click. I have sent ships all over the map that I didn't even know I had selected because of bizarre quirks in how multiselecting currently works. Sometimes I'll left click on a ship and still somehow have ship(s) from another stack selected and I get multiple ships converging from all over - it's a nifty effect - but it sure as hell wasn't what I intended. - (sam0t) Please stardock do something about this, super akward is a kind word for this one 
- (curttasker) After just finishing a seven hour game, I just have to re-interate how BAD the ship selection is. The ship selection silliness caused me to leave my starbases undefended and lose a few billion assault troops, among other silly things that would never have happened if the ship selection worked in an intuitive manner. Often I would select a tile (starbase, troop transport, 1 fleet on it) and select the fleet to move a couple of spaces, attack a dreadlord fleet, then move the fleet back to the starbase. However, if i had been looking at another ship/fleet just before this, it would remember that i had the previous ship/fleet selected. When I select the starbase fleet and give it a waypoint, suddenly *both* fleets would start moving, the fleet I wanted to move, and the fleet i just happened to be looking at right before. I can't stress how highly annoying this is when you're struggling to keep the dreadlords from sneaking past you to blow up your squishy ships and assault your planets. By the end of the game I was forcing myself to click on a planet before trying to move *any* of my ships, to ensure that it deselected any ships I was looking at. Just make ship selection not 'sticky'. If the player wants to select multiple ships, make them hold down CTRL. For a bonus, allow them to select a range of ships using SHIFT. - (Agent X20) Mostly since the patch, I've been having some repeated selection issues. I've seen instances where with fleet A selected, I then select fleet B (different spot on the map so it's not multi selection at work) and move B, and then B and A both move to the destination. I've also seen many instances where the display is not accuratly tracking the selected item e.g. I have ships A, B and C on a single spot on the map. I move A to new spot and the display says I'm looking at A, but there's a "stacked" ships display with B and C shown. I have to manually re-select A to get it to show the right information. As I mentioned I've seen quite a bit of this lately. - (JPowell) Several times, I have invaded a planet that had been defended by a small fleet. I killed off the fleet, and conquered the planet. But the "fleet" still remains on the screen when I select the planet, preventing me from seeing the planet unless I go from another one of my planets (Next button). - (dortmunder) I've noticed that sometimes ordering a ship to move to a certain location actually gives this order to the ship (fleet actually..in most cases) that you had selected BEFORE the ship you are trying to command. - (curttasker) When using the F1 key to manage all of your ships, it lists Freighters as the same type of ship, no matter if its part of an ongoing trade route, or if it has not yet set up a trade route. This makes it very difficult to quickly find out how many frighters you have en route to make a new trade route. This is important, as you have to time the completion of trade techs to coincide with ships arriving at planets, so that you properly fill all of your open trade slots. |
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(fixed in 1.01X)
- (curttasker) There is really no need for the little blue notification for ship complete when you have it set up so that the ship is autolaunched and sent to a rally point. Once you get several planets producing ships to send to a waypoint, you end up having so many little notification boxes that you just start ignoring them. This is problematic if you have one planet building a special ship and you actually want to be notified when its done. - (curttasker) When you move the mouse over the notification boxes to click/right-click them, you invariably end up mashing the cursor against the side of the screen. This triggers the edge scrolling, which ends up defeating the purpose of clicking on the notification in the first place (jumping to the planet), as edge scroll will send the map view a distance to the right of the planet. - (curttasker) Consider popup notifications on the right for when the game first starts and your military/social queues are empty. One per queue per planet. This is problematic in campaigns where you start with more than one planet. - (curttasker) When a starport is constructed, there is no helpful notification allowing you to know its finished and ask you to pick a ship to start building. Add one! (fixed in 1.01X) |
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(possibly fixed in 1.01X, confirm) - (curttasker) On the tiny ship body, humans, second type - the front left hardpoint is backwards. - (dctrjons) Truth be told more than one and most often the tiny ships. Noticed one on the back of a cargo...ALT race I think. Fairly easy to check up on in Battle of the Gods gametype. |
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- (curttasker) When trading the AI money for their techs, you have to drag the slider back and forth until you find a spot near the number they like. Then you have to click the left/right buttons a few dozen times to find the exact price they want. There should be a button somewhere to ask the AI "how much money do you want to make this a fair trade"
- (Nathan E) I think I have a better suggestion. The diplomacy window should calculate and show the money difference for a trade. There are two trade buttons. A "even trade" and a "trade". When you click the "even trade", you automatically have the calculated money difference added into the trade. If you don't want the extra money or are giving a gift, then you use the "trade" button instead. - (gustaf00) With respect to making fair trades easier to figure out, another method to suggest would be that used in that "other" Civ game, dialog options for 'what do you want for XXX?' and 'what would you give me for YYY?'. The color feedback makes it easy right now if you're just trading for money, but often I have to sit and permute a whole lot of technology combinations to find a tech trade that works. - (Nathan E) Very good point, I think more information about the value of techs planets and ships should be visible on the trade menu. I used to think it shouldn't be obvious what the values are but the fact is that you can figure it out pretty easy by putting up a tech or ship then ask for cash and see how much is too much. Just a long way of finding out information. In truth the trade between two races would not be so initially empty. I think a generic value system would be good to put with all availible trade items. Maybe a color coding system or 1-10 scale [eg Earth (3) ]. This would make trades go smoother and it would be more like a trade talk seeing what the race values highly of its stock and what the race desires. This would make trade more 'interesting'. Higher espionage would possibly lead to more information. - (curttasker) The Tech info window you get when right-clicking on a tech in the trade window is inadequate. Make it taller, wider. Don't force the user to scroll just because you wanted to make a tiny window. If there are no new abilities gained, don't say "NEW ABILITIES/nNone", instead just don't show that category. Allow the user to delve into the items. See above. |
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- (gustaf00) When spying with a high infiltration level, is there a way to look at another race's tech tree? Or see a rundown of their colonies? Basically, it would be great if many of the tabs/charts/graphs I use to understand my own empire could also cycle to display stats on my rivals. Maybe this is already the case, I'll look next time.
- (curttasker) When playing a game with a lot of opponents, it becomes cumbersome to initiate a conversaion with each one to see what techs they have to offer. You obviously want to check back with each and every friendly (and nonfriendly) race from time to time to see what new techs they have for trade. Since this information is avaliable through the trade interface, why not make it avaliable through a tab in the foreign stats window as well? Something where you could instantly see a list of techs for all opponents all on one screen. |
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- (curttasker) Currently upon completion of a research tech, it selects the next tech in that tree. In practice, I rarely (at least in early game) keep pumping along a tree. The amount of research production you have early on is low. The further down a tree, the higher the costs get. So researching Xeno Research may take 3 weeks, but it'll take 10 for the next, 26 for the next, etc, etc. Early in the game, I find myself always scrolling up to the top of the list (sorted by cost or time completion) and trying to find a shorter one. I rarely if ever follow a tree. So basically have the game auto scroll to the top of the list upon completion, to allow you to more easily select your next tech.
- (dctrjons) Have to dissagree there. I personally prefer it as is. I focus most of the time. HOWEVER. I do have some trouble with the organization when I want to leave a branch and say work on diplomacy...I believe there is a sort option missing....even though there are like 10 Needs looking at more in a less stressful game. Just FEELS like there is an easier way. Possibly even a zoom on the full view of the tree to get a mental picture where you're at. - (jklgon) Instead of showing the next technology when the previous research is completed, show the technology on the top of the list depending on the classification. |
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- (curttasker) The Find and Turn buttons below the minimap should not be touching the minimap. They need at the very least a minimal border. What happens is you end up having a planet/resource/whatever at the very edge of the map near one of these buttons. you have to send a ship there. so you go to click on the minimap to center the map in that area and whoops! you clicked to close to the edge and ended your turn.
- (dctrjons) Load Save menus and buttons scary. Too close together and double click funtion would be nice. Too often almost overwrote my quicksave even with the warning. Or maybe worse since there is no warning....accidentally loading when I wanted to save. Separate menus for loading and saving would be nice and I think safer and would allow double clicking for saving / loading depending on the menu. If nothing else put some space between save and load. |
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- (curttasker) The number Eight (8) specifically when used as a planet quality in the little window in the bottom of the main interface when a planet is highlighted. It looks scrunched. In fact, I swore (and still swear) its a 2 unless i lean in close to the monitor. Put another few pixels of breathing room inside the bottom loop of the eight.
- (Nathan E) No the Three (3) looks like a Two (2)! There are a few places where this small font is used to show numbers and it is awful. I'm running at 1600x1200 and this font is using one pixel width lines! - (curttasker) The Planet title appears on top of the Shield (Planet is defended) icon, but appears behind the race ownership icon. Consistency! |
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- (curttasker) Consider showing ship autopilot routes on the main map, something similar to trade routes, but perhaps thinner and dotted (dashed). If you want bonus points, make the number of dashes on the line equal to the number of turns it will take to finish that route. So setting a waypoint for something 16 tiles away, on a 4 movement per turn ship would be a dotted line with 3 breaks (producing 4 lines).
- (Nathan E) Very good suggestion here. Also on the main map. the grid and border showing how far a ship can travel are sometimes hard to see. - (sam0t) Very welcome idea as a option as well. - (Sirvanzeek) Another addition should be (ive seen this mentioned before as well) showing ship route lines ON the play screen - even if not a bold line - just something to show us where all of our stuff is going. This also helps the above problem as we could see if there is a ship with no route. - (dortmunder) If there is one option I would like it is for ship's "autopilot" path to appear on the main screen (make it an option if necessary). |
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- (curttasker) The game does not Edge Scroll diagonally. It only does it veritically and horizontally.
- (dctrjons, sam0t) Arrow keys for map scroll, does anyone use them for moving ships? |
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- (curttasker) The tech tree needs to allow you to delve deeper. When I select 'Harpoon III', It lists a new ship component. Clicking on this should pop up a little info view of the item and what it has to offer.
- (TheFriar2k2) This is the most annoying of all for me. - (MxM111) This one MUST be implemented. - (Muzakman) Ease of understanding for the tech tree is *crucial* I think. It's extremely difficult to browse around the tech tree as it is, and impossible to see what a particular tech does if it is not on your "can research" list. I sometimes want to browse through the tree and see the descriptions for each tech, so I can choose what to beeline, for instance. - (gustaf00) - When in the large research screen ('>>more'), it would be nice if there is any information about the technologies. Right-clicking doesn't tell me about a technology, and selecting one that's next on the tree will tell me how long, but not what it does. When in the reduced mode, all that information is there, but it would be nice if I could learn what, say, a disruptor's stats were before I researched it. Further, there's no way to learn what a technology does until it's available for research. After I've played long enough it won't matter, but in the meanwhile a richer research interface would have helped me learn the ropes. - (jklgon) Be able to mark certain technology as 'obsolete' or hidden so that you won't have to deal with it. (Stellar cartography on tiny maps *cough*) [editor's note: stellar cartography is a prereq for scanners, which even on a tiny map can serve a purpose. However, beefing up the filtering engine for the tech tree isn't a bad idea.] - (Lord KiRon) On "Research Tree" thing I think it's would be better to have "advisor" like in many such games (Civ4 , etc) that if enabled selects by default next "needed" tech as he thinks of it. You should be ablle to "tell" him to concentrate more on "military" or "industrial" or "trade" or "diplomatic" reserch or go even. |
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- (curttasker) Survey ships should have a combined 'Auto Explore and Survey' Option. Currently you have to set Auto Explore until you have a chunk of the map revealed, then hit Auto Survey to survey the anomalies, then repeat. At the very least, allow ships to stay in autosurvey/autoexplore so that as you gain additional explored territory/life support, the ships can continue their jobs
- (jklgon) allow the survey ship to stay in search for anomaly mode (so it can grab new anomalies) - (curttasker)If you have multiple scouts/survey ships and set them all to Auto Explore / Auto Survey, they do not take into account each other. Assuming they all start from the same locatoin, they will all follow the same autopilot path to explore/survey things. |
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- (curttasker) Sometimes there are just so many hardpoints it becomes hard to see what the actual ship looks like. It isn't exactly fun to add an item, click the toggle hardpoints display off button, then rotate a bit to look at it, then place another item, re-toggle it off, etc. What the game needs is a button you can hold down that will enable/disable the hardpoint view while the key is pressed. So you could hold down CTRL and it would display the hardpoints, letting go of CTRL would have the ship look normal again. Or hold to hide hardpoints, let go to display. Just *something* to make the process easier.
- (curttasker)Attaching some items (troop transports), does not allow you to attach additional items of that type without first reselecting the item from the list. This is problematic if you're tring to build a transport with 5 modules, as you have to reselect the module from the list each time. - (curttasker) Double clicking on any module to place it causes you to be unable to manually place the item. You must first select another module, then reselect the original and then it will allow you to place it. - (curttasker) When selecting items to place, the weapons are sorted in order of damage, defenses in order of defense, etc. If you select a filter for a specific type (Missile, Point Defense), the list reverts to an unsorted form. - (curttasker) There really needs to be an option for the ship design window to only show designs created this session. Currently I'm showing 60 or so custom designed ships, of which only 3 are being used in my game. I don't want to have to select the other 57 and obsolete them for every single game. Just don't show them! Instead of auto loading all custom designs, consider having a 'load' button to load custom designs from file. - (curttasker) The component selection interface is very hard to use as you gain access to more components. Specifically, the icons for items are so small that you cannot see what they look like. This is a huge problem for the Extras, as there are so many of them and they have a drastic effect on ship look. The interface needs to be changed from a list type to an icon type (think vertical rectangles, with large square icon two to three times as large as the current icon, with descriptive text below). In order to preserve real estate for the actual ship design view, consider having the left hand pane simply be buttons (engine, weapon, defense, modules), and clicking on those buttons can open up a full screen chooser. Clicking on an item will close the chooser and allow you to place it. You can show the large icon view+stats of the currently selected item in a little window on the left pane. - (curttasker) Make the hardpoint rotation Extras visible from the main menu. If you're getting heavily into ship design, you do not want to have to search for these Extras every time you place a new item. Also, consider allowing hardpoint rotation on the fly. For instance, when you have an Extra selected, and have the cursor over a hardpoint (thus previewing how it would look before you click to place), holding down or pressing a key or mousebutton (tap mouse4 for change hardpoint orientation, mouse5 to back up thru the orientation list) could temporarily rotate the hardpoint so that you can see on the fly how an item will look with a 90deg rotated hardpoint. (fixed in 1.01X) (fixed in 1.01X) (fixed in 1.01X) - (curttasker) When an item is selected on a ship, you should be able to use a keyboard shortcut (delete key) to delete it. - (curttasker) consider making small tweaks to the component selection to make it easier on the eyes to find key values (size, cost, other). Make it bold like "Size: 12 Cost: 123 Damage: 1 ". Consider font size tweaks to make them stand out as well. - (Dzhel) When designing a ship, I think it would be alot easier if it didn't keep track of changing hardpoint directions. That list could get really long. Once an item is placed on a ship, you should be able to resize & rotate it, would make things way easier I'd say. (confirm, needs an update) - (JPowell)Sometimes, if you add a module or item in the design screen, then delete it, it will remain in the list of components although it won't be on the ship (fixed in 1.01X) |
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(fixed in 1.01X)
(fixed in 1.01X) (partially fixed in 1.01X) - (curttasker) The game should have an option to remember your stardock - (curttasker) When you create a metaverse character, it should automatically set that character as the 'Default' without having to click on the Default button. Setting it as default lets the forum use your badges when you post, perhaps other things. Forcing people to figure out that they have to click that button on their own is a bit much. Also, the button looked greyed out when I first saw it, leading me to believe it could not be pressed. After I selected it, it lit up. |
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- (Voqar) When I upgrade a ship I would like the name to change too. Or make it an option. I'm sure some people give their ships individual names but so far I'm cranking out a lot of ships and I usually name them "Cruiser III" and "Cruiser IV" or whatever as the build progresses...and if I'm upgrading 20 cruisers I don't want to manually rename them all so that I know which version they are.
- (sam0t) This is a must option too. At the moment if you upgrade a ship and and save it with the same name (overwrite excisting desig) is bugged somehow. After this when you go to ship building and select "user designs" there are two designt with the same name old on the new which was supposed to overwrite it. - (Agent X20) Upgraded ships don't take on the new classname. Glad to see others (above) find this as annoying as I do. |
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- (dctrjons) Sleep mode for ships. I'm not sure but I think Guard was waking up when the Yor who I was fighting but then had a peace treaty with. Had a scout out in their territory and cursor focus would go back every turn. Be nice to have an option for a sleeping sensor....much like Homeworld probes.
- (sam0t) I got all excited that there is a TRUE sleep mode in the game according to manual, but it looks like they changed this to Sentry. In my mind Sentry should be true SLEEP mode, aka wake up when cliked. Guard is enought for the other stuff in my mind. - (JPowell) Ships set to 'Guard' or 'Sentry' don't do anything when an enemy shows up. They just sit there as the enemy ships pass through their spot. - (JPowell) The first two GalCivs had a "Patrol" option for ships. Maybe I was the only one to use that feature, but I miss it. |
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- (curttasker) Racial customization is not reset between games. If you choose a new color scheme, party, and abilities for the terrans, it will save those options every time you try to use the terrans. The Clear button for this screen only resets changes you have made this session. It does not reset changes to factory defaults. Either do not save these values between games, or add a 'Reset' button to clear them to default values.
- (curttasker) When customizing the appearance for a race, the color pickers should preview the color you have selected on the ship in real time. Having to select a new color, then Accept, then see how it looks, then selecting a different color, etc.. is just painful. - (curttasker) The game creation screen should have a tooltip for the AI difficulty, or a window with the same information. The information displayed should break down for the player exactly what 'Cakewalk' , 'Normal', etc mean. You should be able to see what economic penalties/bonuses for the AI this difficulty has, as well as what AI algorithms are turned on/off. On a side note, on the forums there was a lot of talk about 'Intelligent' being the AI with all algorithms enabled, no economic penalty. However, there is no such setting in the game! Consistency! - (jklgon) If not replace, at least add the option of drop down box for habitable planets, number of planets, and other settings. It makes it easier to see at a glance what choices the player have and make a choice. - (jklgon) Add the option of how often random events occur, build rate. - (jklgon) Besides the current set up of game difficulty and AI intelligence, you might break it down into categories like: AI starting fund, Player starting fund, AI penalty (economic), AI intelligence (algorithm enabled) - (sam0t) Since the whole tech trading is very hard to balance out, I would like to see No Tech Trading option ala Civ4. |
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- (curttasker) Its painful to use this screen, simply because you have to scan the list of possible improvements to find the one you want. You can't guarantee that Factory is always number 1, Research is always number 2, etc. As you gain more and more options, the ordering of improvements constantly changes. Change is bad, consistency is good.
- (jklgon) Instead of ordering improvements alphabetically. List the crucial and basic improvements on the top in the same order. For example, if basic factory is the first item on the list, it will still be the first item on the list after Xeno Factory Construction is discovered. This way, we wouldn't have to go up and down the list to hunt for the improvement we want to build or have to know all the improvement names by heart. - (gustaf00) When creating colonies later in the game, it would be nice if I could use "obsolete" technologies, such as basic factories. I might want to give a new colony a production boost to build its infrastructure, but the advanced ones may be outside of my budget/concern for that particular planet. Another option would be building improvement modules on rich colonies and exporting them via ships to poor colonies, but that's a bit far-fetched. - (jklgon) A even better (but more lengthy way) would be to allow the player to have the option of building the basic improvement even when the new version is available. The player would still have the option to purchase the new version if he/she so desires. Building a basic factory first and then upgrading to a xeno factory will be faster then buliding xenofactory by itself. Furthermore, the player can plan out what the planet would have and let governor take care of the rest. (see post 45 for more info) - (curttasker) The ability to create obsolete tech is a valid point. Try taking over a PQ4 planet midgame. It can take dozens of weeks to build the first SuperUltraMegaFactory even at max population. Allowing access to a standard Factory could take only 13 weeks, which would in turn boost your social production, which would make building an upgraded factory (or another base factory) that much faster. Automating the whole process would be tasty. Have the governor handle building basic structures, followed by upgrades. If the basic structure can be completed in a rediculously low timeframe (1 week) due to an endgame planet suddenly using a soil improvement tech, then have the governor check the next highest structure type. If that is 1 week, then the next, etc. Once it finds one that has a nontrivial build time, build it. - (jklgon) Have an option that will sort the queue based on what will build in the shortest amount of time. - (jklgon) Build soil enhacement only if no other upgrades are available. Immediately bumped off the list when new upgades are made available. - (curttasker) Taking over a planet does not queue up terraforming projects immediately. It may queue up after a turn has progressed, unsure. |
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- (curttasker) After loading a savegame, the first time you hit the Turn button, the game does not progress through a turn. The current date does not change, and the social/military/research completion times do not update. Hitting the Turn button a second time ends the turn as normal. This behavior is easily replicated, and I have consistently reproduced it on several savegames from various games.
- (curttasker) Scanner Modules in starbases: Do they work? I constructed a military starbase a parsec away from a dreadlord homeworld. The fog of war was so bad that the dreadlord ships would be almost past the starbase before I saw them. To counter this, i researched and built several scanner modules (Up to Sector Surveillance Scanner). I think for the first turn after building each new scanner, it worked. However, the very next turn the fog of war came right back in. I ended up building a small ship loaded up with scanners and parked it on the starbase. That seems to defeat the purpose. [note that in 1.01D scanner modules are allowed on all starbase types, check further to see if this issue still exists] (fixed in 1.01X) (fixed in 1.01X) (fixed in 1.01D) (partially fixed in 1.01X) - (curttasker) Sliders are very hard to use. (confirmed as part of the game design) (confirm this, needs an update) - (TheFriar2k2) Bink movies freak out if your window loses focus. - (curttasker) Middle mouse drag is inconsistent. When dragging left on the main map, the map rotates clockwise. When dragging left on the shipbuilder, the ship rotates counterclockwise. Both should be clockwise. (fixed in 1.01X) - (curttasker) Economy screen needs a 'reset' button to bring the spending sliders back to default. - (curttasker) When playing in windowed mode at the same resolution as your desktop, there is no easy minimize the application. I love the way it works now, but there still needs to be a hotkey to shrink the app. Currently you have to bring up task manager and right-click > minimize. Add a boss mode hotkey that will minimize the window and change the taskbar title to something innocent (Internet Explorer). - (curttasker) Building a starbase in the tile just to the southeast of a planet makes it impossible to launch (either by rally point or manual launch) a constructor from that planet and have it go to that point and auto upgrade the starbase. You have to send the ship into another tile first, then send it back. (confirm this, needs an update) - (Peter Huebner) I have used (one each) rally points in two campaign games. Upon reloading, very strange things happen. Ships get reloaded with [new] destinations - I had fleets besieging a Drengin planet leave their post and race off in strange directions. I have also had a rally point suddenly reload on top of a Drengin planet when it was 3 squares away in the original game. Seems to me that coordinates get saved wrong once there is a rally point around, I must test this further. - (jklgon) Star-base can be set to auto-retreat. - (jklgon) Display the population growth right after the population (You can tell whether you need extra farms at a glance) - (jklgon) hit point bonus from xinathium hull plating only show up on the planet that it is built (this is probably due to the fact that global bonous don't show up.) - (jklgon) Starbases aren't supposed to be built 3 parasec within each other. Yet in different sector you can build it side by side, shown below. A|B --- C|D Perhaps this is how the designers intended? [editor's note: where the corners of four sectors intersect, you can build a starbase in each corner and avoid the 3 parsec placement rule] - (uglycow) A problem i noticed is when I select the war party to get the increased hitpoints; during the game when I click a fleet I have made the hit points of the fleet that are shown on the left side are more than total actual hitpoints of the ships. When I go into battle i have the lower number of hitpoints, not what I should have - (curttasker) Military Starbases: There needs to be more information presented to the user as to how ship assist modules work. Curently, ships will gain assist attack bonuses to all 3 types of damage if they have at least 1 point of attack in any damage type. Ships will gain assist defense bonuses to all 3 types of defense if they have at least 1 point of defense in any defense type. Most users are assuming that they can build zero attack/defense ships and gain the bonuses. - (curttasker) The quick build list for a planet (accessed from the main menu) should show the number of troops a troop transport can hold. - (curttasker) Constructors should allow you to preview the radius of a starbase before you build it. There's nothing more annoying than building a starbase one square out of position, or having to find that magic spot by trial and error (or counting tiles on screen). (possibly fixed in 1.01X, confirm) - (jklgon) an auto-launch option and allow the ship to be launched through right click on GNN reports. - (jklgon) When launching a ship from orbit, allow the player to choose where the ship will appear (might be the difference between life and death in early games) - (curttasker) When starting a campaign mission when several civs are allready built up a bit, is it really necessary to spam the player on the first turn with multiple "XXX has built an economic capital" messages? (confirm, needs update) - (sam0t) After you load a saved game and you have constructor going to a star base on autopilot, it only gives you the very first basic modules choises, even if the bases have like 3 modules or so. I am not 100% sure but I swear I had only 3 star bases in the game all with 4 modules and the above keep happening. - (curttasker) When you click-drag the map, if you drag to the edge of a screen, then let go, you'll start edge scrolling. This is more apparent if you zoom in (thus you have to drag the screen to the edge every time to feel like you're getting somewhere by click-dragging. This can be confusing for the new player, they click-drag left, and then the edge scrolling kicks in, and it brings them to the right. They move their mouse during this process, and it cancels edge scrolling. Thus it seems like they click-dragged and got 'snapped back' to the original position. - (Ragor) Sometimes after loading a saved game Ship-Traveling-Distances were wrong. E.g. I could not move my Scout any further away because it would tell me something along the line, that my max. distance was reached and I needed to be closer to a planet/base. Next turn (and before loading) it would work properly. - (dctrjons) Clicking on a tile then double clicking on the building you want to change it too doesn't work very often...seems to faill the second change you make on the planet. - (dctrjons) In the planet tile screen, clicking build for ships - clicking the ship from the list you want to build - return to planet, does not que the ship like it would seem to. Return to planet seems like a cancel when it's not clear that it would be. Done should return you back where you were not to the main map. - (Agent X20) I still can't launch colony ships with 0 people. Is this by design? - (trancejeremy) One really annoying thing since the latest patch, is that when I run it, I get a pop up telling me that I am running a resoultion of 800x600. Well, yeah, that's what I like to run the desktop at. The game can (and does) change the ingame resolution itself to 1024x768, so why complain to me about it? (Editor's note: Dear god man, how can you live!) (fixed in 1.01D) - (curtasker) When loading a saved game, is it really necessary to force open the colony manager window for your home planet, and the tech tree right after? Enough allready, my game just crashed and I want to get back in! - (curttasker) ships that are autolaunched to a rally point using the colony rally point system appear as invisible the initial turn they are launched. If you click on the correct tile (southeast of the planet), suddenly they will appear and be selected. - (curttasker) after a ship is destroyed (confirmed with scout ships, unconfirmed with other types), you are able to see the area around the ship's last position as if the ship still existed. The fog of war is gone, and you can see all movement in this area (ability to see ship movement is unconfirmed). This may also be happening with planets that have been taken over, and with starbases, but is unconfirmed. - (Veranator) Any of the function keys should be able to close the notification/status window at the beginning of your turn not just the escape key. I use a 5 button mouse where I have 2 of the buttons programmed to F2 and F5 and would like to go to those screens right away after I read the turn briefing without having to close the brief and then hit a button (I do not want to program an extra button for ESC, thats a waste) - (Squash713) Here's a trade offer I received from the Drengin: The [TheirShortName] have always been better warriors than scientists, Savant Barril. Your kind seem to have researched a technology that we have failed to explore. What do you say... your 'Interstellar Governments' for our Laser? Looks like the [TheirShortName] got hard-coded in somehow... - (Nathan E) On the main map, the grid and border showing how far a ship can travel are sometimes hard to see. - (varatada) I played around with my super large ship. Got it to 28/103hp or so killing lots of enemies. Then I upgraded the design by adding new weapons and the ship became -27/1 or something like that.. Didn't try enter combat yet.. |
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