a map editor

So you're not sure, is that what you're saying?
Actually, I do like Wyndstar's ideas as well.
But can we please for the love of God have some sort of more dynamic UP?
Or how about allowing the Espionage to affect how trades are made. You know, like having to have a certain level of espionage on a civ before being allowed to trade techs... you really shouldn't know what the other guy has unless he's built something using the tech or you've spied on him, correct? I thought that this was going to be a feature since espionage was added, but it appears that I'm wrong.

i've got through about half the suggestions so far. here are my modest ones that i think would be relatively doable. i know some of them have been stated, so i'll avoid beating a dead seastar; but i want to bring them up anyway so that you get a sense of how important some of them are to how many players.

1) fix the (possible) bug with off-type defenses. some suggestions i've heard have included: remove ALL the calculation about how effective off-defneses work against improper weapons, and just give every defense a static value for which it'll work against improper weapons (so change zero-point armor to 4-10-4 in the defenses and remove all the square root business), or have the defense degredation work against the sqroot value rather than the max value - there are others i imagine you've read.

2) make good a viable choice for ethical alignments. make the defense and HP bonuses they get with defense techs higher - or maybe even add new defense techs that are better than the best current ones. i like this idea. some would say 'but evil doesn't get better-than-best weapons.' however weapons are a lot costlier to research, and getting powerful ones earlier is a major advantage. i'd also consider adding other benefits to good, perhaps themed around their attraction of psychics. how about: telepathic sensors (+3 sensor module); psychokinetic warp field (either an overall engine boost, or a new engine type after hyperwarp 3). some of these ideas might begin to offset how much good sucks.

3) revitalize starbases. i do thing military SBs should affect ships in orbit around a planet. i do like the idea of adding in the repair modules. i think the first two levels of SB defenses should be collapsed (and the first two SB attack/defense modules should be merged). SBs' base hull size should be huge (more HP). and if you could implement ship docking around SBs, i'd totally love them.

4) fix tech trading. i like the idea suggested above of using a slider. or just tweak it again, somewhere between where you were before and where you moved to now. i don't even have TT enabled most games, but i sympathize with those who had relied on it.

5) engine graphics have always been odd to me. now, it seems that engine trails are dependant on a hard point, which is fine except that very few engines (functional, those on hulls, and jewelry) have these hardpoints. it doesn't seem like it'd be all that hard to go through these pieces and add hardpoints (or do whatever) to make their engine trails look better in the combat viewer - maybe even implement a way to scale the engine trail so that larger engine pieces can have appropriate graphical effects.

6) improve the weak AIs as much as you can - the korx, yor and iconians come to mind first.

well... that seems to be all i got. you guys are awesome, and i'm sure everyone really appriciates all your hard work. i know i do.
nik

I would really, really like the game to be paused when I'm in a Starport selecting a ship build. Especially in the case where I have just established a new planet and gone into it's Starport to have it build something. It is so, so annoying getting in there just to have some event come up that kicks me out. Then I have to try and track that planet down and go through the process all over again.

This is a great game and I love it that there you guys have a huge support community. Other games don't do this. Anyway, down to business:

1. Improved Diplomacy: I'd like to see more treaties like "Do this or this means war," instead of empty demands. Also I'd like to see in the diplomacy an option to demand a ship or station removed in or close to your border. This makes things much easier instead of attacking it, thus causing war and trying to get out of it.

2. Weapons: I'd love to see cooler, newer weapons of "Mass Destruction". Such as nukes perhaps? Like you would have to build a silo on a planet to be able to unlock one and then use it to totally destroy a planet or ballistick missiles that could destroy an improvement on one tile. If you use nukes you need a radioactive tech to be able to live there. Also a cooler weapon on the huge ships. Something that screams death but soo good that only one could be fitted.

3. Starbases: Allow the military starbases to attack incoming ships. This would be nice because all they do is sit around really. Also allowing them to move would be great because you soon forget about them and they eat up your economy.

4. Story Mode: I know this is asking allot. But I really loved the idea that your adventures in Sand Box mode could be turned into a story. That was the coolest bit for me.

5. Stargates: I like the idea that you could build a stargate, making travelling between any of them easier. But only build them in the local area of the sun because it can power it? This would make military stretagy interesting because ships would defend a ship that could build such a thing next to a sun that has an enemy planet close by. Thus sending in military ships would be faster and easier, but could be used by anyone so having ships orbit it would be good. Also it could be used for trade.

Anyway, these are just ideas and I hope you at least read them over and give you a little bit of an idea. Thanks for putting this post on the site!

1. An in-game Post-It pad. Remind yourself what the heck you're doing at this or that planet, or with your empire as a whole. Useful when loading up a saved game you haven't played in a while. Example: 'Remember to research Logistics again' or 'Tuesday: Invade Earth'

2. Give an up-to-date situation report when loading a new game, especially if there's a war going on.

3. Make special weapons (e.g. the Nano Ripper, or the Psionic Shredder) special - at the moment they're rather expensive despite making for excellent space-effective weapons early on the tech tree. Could their effectiveness be perhaps linked to the military resources you've managed to acquire for your empire?

1. Make custom races actually useful.

The built-in races have two powerful advantages: they have way more powers overall (huge built-in bonuses instead of a measly five extra points), and they can add bonus picks on *top* of their existing powers to stack up huge individual bonuses that are out of reach for custom races. For example the Altarians can get their research, morale, *and* economy about 20 points higher than any custom race could achieve.

First, give custom races a minimum of 25 points to spend instead of 10.

Second, provide some abilities that can *only* be picked by custom races, so that they can "stack" their bonuses to a level to match some of the default races. Or just give them an extra higher option on existing abilities, like an even higher and more expensive choice for research, economics, production, etc.


2. Change the "shipyard"/fleeting mechanism so that ships can be fleeted in planetary orbit *without* any special constructors. This would keep the AI from being bled dry so easily when its ships are picked off one by one in orbit. Either treat all planets as having the structure that automatically fleets ships in orbit (easy), or allow manually controlled fleeting in orbit just like in any other part of space.


3. Do something about the ridiculous advantage of huge ships over smaller hulls, especially given that the AI has an obvious preference for smaller hulls.

I suggest, quite simply, an innate speed advantage for smaller hulls which would take effect when higher levels of technology are introduced. Make a fleet with a dreadnaught in it be inherently slower than a group of small and medium ships. This would give human players who like large and huge based assault fleets a need to be more nimble when on the defensive against the AI. The key is to make the advantage something the AI will actually use - making late-game engines cheaper for small ships is another simple way, but then you get things like humans doubling them up all the time and having megaspeed fleets).

It could be as simple as giving large hulls a -1 to speed and huge hulls a -2 to speed (with 1 being the minimum speed).


4. The alignments are *really* unbalanced. As someone who doesn't like to be moustache-twiddling evil even when playing an "aggressive" game, this is really frustrating. Good just sucks - there should really be more bonuses to influence, your own population's approval, and such things. Evil is overpowered - when people cite one structure as critical to win at suicidal, you know something is wrong.

And the "moral decisions" are just *ridiculous*. Virtually all of them involve making a penalizing sacrifice as the good option, versus getting big bonuses for being an utter bastard. It's as if there is nothing but upside to being evil. Seldom is it a more realistic choice between different kinds of gain - peaceful growth versus military gain, for example.


5. Starbases could really use an overhaul. First, I would suggest a limit of one or at most two of a given *kind* of starbase per sector. Four econ starbases in a sector (or 16 in a corner where four sectors meet) is mind-blowing cheese.

Influence starbases are way too powerful in the late game... influence goes from being fairly weak, because it's centered on your planets and doesn't go very far, from being ultra-powerful because you can stack these super influence bases anywhere you want. In general I think influence starbases should be toned down or somehow restricted so that your influence doesn't extend *that* far from your planets.

Military starbases are also fairly useless in the late game. The late game military starbase techs could use an increase in their cost to research and their power.


6. More control over mega-events. I had them turned on *once*, then I had to turn them off because they kept coming up OVER AND OVER even when it was only on tough difficulty. Jagged Knife, then Dread Lords six or seven turns later! Most of the "mega-events" are the sort of thing I'd like to see once or twice per game... first Tough game I had them turned on, I saw more like four.


7. Rebalance the existing races a bit. Some of them are just horrible as opponents. When was the last time the Korx or Iconians did well in one of your games? You can even tell they're bad just looking at their picks. Then in contrast you have the Krynn who were just added in with huge bonuses left and right.


8. Any new update needs a major *documentation refresh*. Right now DA's in-game documentation is really bad at describing what many things actually do, whether structures apply to planets or to the empire, basic things like that. Even just a few days spent overhauling the documentation would go a long way to eliminate confusion.

Please make DA have better game performance for lower end systems... it's the only thing keeping me from fully enjoying the game. Frame rate drops considerably once ships FIRST start appearing on the map. And from then on I have to resort to the tactical view (which is still cool) to play the rest of the game. I miss seeing the planets in detail because the frame rate gets so bogged down. Anyways, more in-depth social options, improved trade/trading, and greater advantages for domestic style players would be appreciated.

Instead of just completely getting rid of the '1 HP rule', just modify it so that the ship that survives is the one which had the most HP at the start of the battle.

Better spacing would certainly be welcome as far as I'm concerned. I'm playing Gigantic maps with 9 civs, and I had one game where 6 of us started out in one corner of the map. There should be a minimum distance between races, large enough that each one can develop a respectful empire. I hate playing games where I start out just a couple of sectors away from another race. I usually just start again.



It would definitely be nice to see anomalies appear randomly throughout the game. There's always a point where there's none left and the only use I have for my survey ship is as a scout. And the survey modules are totally pointless as it is now. I never use them since my existing survey ship will become obsolete eventually anyway, and they're so bloody expensive to use just for recon.



That seems to be a big issue. It's pretty much pointless having ships in orbit since they're so vulnerable as is. It's better to have a fleet parked just outside in order to defend the planet.

I love the above mentioned ideas of anomoly guardians for MAJOR anomolies, and the ability to set a planet to "production", "research", "military", "money", "universal", "Galactic Achievements", and have the planet produce the next improvement that would best achieve those goals. I'm more of a casual player, so these options would make things more interesting, though I understand that there are many more "hardcore" ideas that may make more people happy. I like to macro-manage.

Been away from the game for few months but got back to biz after DA came out.Generally I can join the "horde" that mostly agrees with Wyndstar so let's get started with the stuff I DISagree with him. Take all of these with a grain of salt as I've only played a handful of games in last 4 months or so.

Starbases: I don't see any reason to make them huge to start with. Instead I'd give them more HP with each added module (military modules might give more HP than others) so that they may end up as huge.

Anomalies: Considering what Anomalies are (mostly some old stuff that's been left there by someone - someone including The Big Bang) I see no reason for them to spawn during the game. In my opinion it would be more logical way to give surveying some value after the start of the game to have Anomalies that couldn't be harvested until later in the game (whether it's for the monster guarding it or a tech required to get the benefits).

Planetary Defense: While changing Planetary Defense to block all but Traditional Invasion would surely make the improvement better it wouldn't make a slightest sense to me. But I do think that there's something rotten in the invasive war at the moment. I'd much rather have AI's to invest more on Soldiering if its neighbours are starting to research invasion techs. Also I'd like to have some sort of costs to have billions of soldiers waiting in space between wars and even the cost of the invasion tactics could be related to the size of the invading army.

Then to the stuff not directly related to "agreeing with Wyndstar" notion.

Tech Trade & Diplomacy: While I consider the current Tech Trading implementation to be the best this far it still has some flaws.
1) AI overvalues techs it is unwilling to trade to the point where it's actually hurting itself. For example I'm allied with a race with a certain Extreme Colonization techs and I'm warring with another race that has a planet or two requiring that tech, and my ally is completely unwilling to trade me those techs no matter how sweet deals I'm offering.
2) I'd like that AI could actually give up a planet during the Peace Treaty. At times I've completely wrecked AI's military, his economy is in ruins but most of his planets are in awkward position for me except that one crappy ball of rock in the middle of my empire. But no, I've never had AI to give up a lonely planet in the middle of a hostile space to save its butt.
3) More of those diplomatic options are needed. Things that are already mentioned like "get your ships off my space" would be great. I might like to have a chance to cancel a treaty with a severe cost at relations. All in all, I'd like to be able to extort other races in more ways

Espionage: Spies are a nice thought but...
1) I should get basic information about the races through diplomatic channels (that is 1st and maybe 2nd level of intelligence). Trade routes should give some small amount of intel, neutral relations and better should also contribute as well as treaties. Low level of intel in the game is so low it just can't require a finesse espionage system to reach.
2) IMO Spies are quite poor because they represent the whole espionage now. They are multipurpose tools that do nothing in cost efficient way. I'd like to separate the spending on spies and generic espionage where the latter would give you more intel about the races while spies would be used in more direct ways like the current nullifying of improvements.

Big vs. Small Ships: I don't think there's any reason why small fighters should be equal to massive capital ships in actual space combat. But read on...

More About Invasions: One thing where smaller ships (tiny and maybe small) could excel is assisting the invasions. According to many sci-fi movies the small fighters are able to fly within the atmosphere so they could give air support to the ground troops. That might be a reason enough to keep some tiny fleets in your arsenal even during the late game. Related to the invasions, I'd also like to have a chance to bomb the planet from the orbit with large+ ships. There could be a "bombardment" module that requires Planetary Bombardment and allows the ship to attack a random improvent on the undefended planet.

Just read through all of it This stuff I'd like to see implemented has already been mentioned:
- some sort of repair module for military star bases;
- lesser impact on approval from big populations;
- higher profitability of trade routes;
- longer ship descriptions;
- tweak tech trading: although it works for me in general, I have had allies engaged in a death struggle with the Drengin refuse to trade their Phasors III for my Phasors IV...Beg your pardon?
- Spies only intel gathering.

The following things would also be great:
- some sort of "order of battle"-screen. I mostly play on gigantic maps, making for very long games with hundreds of ships. It would be great to have a tab showing you an easy overview of how many of what you have.
Even better off course if you could organise your fleet here but that's probably out of scope.
- a fourth governor: "Planets producing ship type X will send completed ships to location ..." Big empires with lots of different ship types and different "fronts" could really do with this feature.
It would be perfect if you could actually group planets and give orders for a certain group to produce ship type X and send their ships to a certain location with one (or two or three) clicks, but this is probably out of scope again.
- Shipyard: put the best/most powerful item at the top of the list.
- some easy way of seeing which starbases need upgrading short of actually opening the information screen for all of them.
- UI: tabbing through your ships, when you get to a ship/fleet on a location with lots of ships, moving that ship out of that location will cause the information screens at the bottom of the screen to show what is actually left in the starting location instead of the selected ship. This is an issue that existed in GC2 too.
- UI: When you manually make a ship move to a rally point by auto-pilot (ie right clicking on the rally point), the destination will often be attached to a ship already there. When you move that second ship away, the original ship will somehow lose its autopilot orders and stop.

I love the game as it is, but hey, you asked