Some thoughts from this little fox. For starters in the ship designer it would be really nice if adding a piece (whether jewelry or functional part) did not suddenly send me back to the beginning of the list. When making a ship with 100+ pieces of jewelry it gets really annoying to place a piece on your ship and then scroll through all the stuff you put on so that you can get to the piece you just added so you can tweak its alignment. I know you can technically just click on the piece, but in complicated designs this is still quite frustrating.
For spies I have been thinking and I believe the best approach would be to simply have it select the planet you want it to invade and a list of options would pop up for you to tell it what you want to do. Like you could have an option for it to destroy each type of building (research, morale, production, economy, production) but not be able to select specific buildings, reduce morale without dealing with buildings (IE reduce the morale of the populace on a planet without a morale building), just sit there and gain intel on that race, sabotage whatever ship they’re making, increase the chance of that planet flipping over (regardless of influence), etc. This way you don’t get the cheap tactic of seeing what buildings are on every planet in the galaxy just by making sure to have a single spy available. Also agree there should be the ability to research technologies for Espionage ability.
Give the option to completely remove all PQ 0 planets in a game, or change their frequency. It seems really pointless as it stands to be playing a game and find that half of the planets in the galaxy are all PQ 0. With the Extreme Colonization there should be significantly fewer PQ0 planets out there.
In regards to extreme colonization itself I have a few ideas. First to drastically decrease the colonization rush at the beginning of the game make most of the planets (like 90-95%) one of the types you need to research. Also drastically increase the amount of research needed to colonize these planets (maybe expand the tech trees to 4 pieces, 25%, 50%, 75% and then the 100%) as well as add the tech (more expensive than any of the other colonization techs) to give the Habitable class worlds a bonus (like a 125% and 150% bonus). This way in mid-late game there is still an advantage to having those Habitable Class planets over the Ocean class or whatever. Not sure how easily done it would be but it would be nice if the PQ could be tied in to how habitable you can live in that planet (like for a planet that would normally be PQ20 if you only had the first tech it’d be only a PQ5, if you had the third it’d be up to a PQ15). As for Super Adapters maybe instead of them starting with one or two of the starting techs for one of the habitats, maybe add instead like a 25% bonus to their ability to live in any habitat. With this they won’t get any over-powerings at the beginning of the game since they’d still need to research the technology to live on those planets but the bonus once they have that technology would be (31.25%, 62.5%, 93.75% and 125%).
I am of the mind that the anomalies should be something that should not be fully accessible at the beginning of the game (Survey module aside). Instead there should either be a branch in the tech tree dealing with being able to investigate certain types of anomalies (the higher tech required, the better average reward it gives) or anomalies should be something that comes gradually, like one showing up in each sector on average once every year. This way there’s still a point in still having those survey modules on your ships mid-late game. Now for specific anomaly suggestions: Wormholes should not vanish after the first person enters them. Instead they should be something that, though possibly only one way, is something that is static. It would add quite a bit of extra strategy if you not only have to guard your borders but also be aware that there might be a wormhole location or two that could land end right on your doorstep. The other is the research one. Instead of it simply removing 25% of the total time to research that technology, it should instead be a set bonus to your rp (or even make it branch dependent like giving 20rp to the first missile tech on your list). Though it can be useful when you’ve just finished researching if you’re like only 1-2 turns away from getting it anyways it’ll just save you one turn and then won’t give you anything extra afterwards.
Diplomacy should be given a boost as well, especially the treaties. The research and economic treaties should be mutual and the AI should be much more willing to share them (since they are getting a boost as well). What these two should be is more of a building block to getting them to like you more. Instead of having to get their opinion of you really high they should be willing to start sharing money and research points when at only a Warm rating when your diplomacy ratings are equal. This would also be nice if you could give/get one of these treaties from potentially every race. Also as for some things offered I agree that the enemy invading your territory unanswered should be fixed. I suggest either using the mentioned abilities of demanding ships in your territory be removed (if military (any non-cargo ship) ships then no dip relation cost)/ability to deny access to your territory. On top of this it should also not be considered an act of war (or a dip relation cost) to attack and destroy any military ship that is within your sphere of influence.
For the UP it should definitely be much more impactual (I know it’s not a word) to the game. For starters it should be much more often than once every year. For most games they only happen <10 times and often are turned down which makes them moot anyways. Instead what would be nice is the ability to dictate how often they occur (like 12/year) as well as the ability to bring up what’s going to be discussed. This could either be relegated to whoever everyone votes to be the leader of the UP or you can use up some of your IP to introduce a bill to the other races to have it voted on at the next meeting. Also it doesn’t really make much sense that only the races you’ve met participate in the council. I’ve played one game where I never met the Terrans the entire game (they eventually surrendered to the Yor) and because of which any influence they had would have been pointless since it never would have come up. I think what should happen is for the council meetings all major races should automatically be present, regardless if you’ve seen them yet or not.
Halve the effect of population size on morale and instead add an effect based on the ratio of pop:max pop. This way there are still costs to having large populations but not nearly as much and making the +300% Farm tiles not completely harmful. Or as an alternative make it primarily dependent on the pop vs planet quality. After all the planet quality more or less represents livable areas and 1 billion people would live happier in a place the size of China than they would the size of England. Perhaps use an equation like
Morale % Penalty= 50*(Pop/PQ)^X (X being some factor so it isn’t linear)
This way if you had 10 Billion on a PQ 10 planet you’d have a 50% decrease in morale due to the population. But if you stuck those same 10 Billion on a PQ 20 planet it’d only be a 25% decrease since there wouldn’t be as much overcrowding.
As a suggestion for the constructors and starbases, maybe make the constructors either work like the mining ships or the same ship. Instead of build a ship, send it out, upgrade the base in one turn then build a new ship, maybe have that constructor need to spend X weeks to fully upgrade and while upgrading its HP is drastically reduced. This frees up your planets so you can properly upgrade them or repair them (at a cost, of course, like 100BC/HP) without eating up a planet’s capabilities. As for the Starbases themselves they shouldn’t be able to stack abilities and instead just the best effect is used. Also for the Offense/Defense of the ships they should be based on your own military technology. Like instead of Starbase Attack 1 (normally a 1-1-1 bonus) it should instead simply place one of each of your best weapons of each type on the starbase and can be upgraded whenever you choose to using the Constructor. In the beginning of the game it wouldn’t really change much since the weapons would be doing 1 damage anyways. But in mid-late game where 1-1-1 is laughable if you had dmg 4 weapons then it would be instead a 4-4-4 (assuming you had a 4 in all three, else the other two would be whatever they would be). If you went to the third attack (normally like 10-3-3) you could instead have a starbase with an attack of 20-12-12, which is not laughable to any fleet at that point in the game. Course if you never researched the other two branches that starbase would only be a 20-1-1 or 20-0-0 if you never even researched the base tech. This also makes sense to me since why would a starbase be holding a missile or whatever if you’ve never researched anything from that branch.
I might think of more but this should be good for now. As for the one person’s statement about posting on the other threads instead of looking here I figure when trying to figure out what needs fixed and what does not which is the more efficient choice: to read dozens of different threads that each talk about a different topic that needs addressing and is probably a lot of agreement between people or to go to just one thread that has a general list of things needing fixed?
