a map editor

Things I'd like to see:

1. Range as a significant factor. Very limited free range from techs, life-support modules that take up significant space.

2. Engines more as a space penalty than a cost penalty, because a cost penalty falls more heavily on smaller ships.

3. Starbase defences updated to reflect the new combat system.

4. Remove the 1-hitpoint rule. There is no need to force a survivor.

5. AI that is aggressive about taking planets. One that stockpiles excess population in unarmed transports, and sends full fleets of transports in one stack with full fleets of combat ships to take your planets.

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.

Like many others, I would like a more passive option to exist for spies, where they would just gather intelligence, and as a result be harder to detect.... maybe making starports or planet capitals open tiles for spy placing, without any sabotage effects. As mentioned, counter-intelligence against non-sabotaging agents would be accomplished by designating spies or money to that endeavor.

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 love the game, but I'll add a couple of suggestions:

1.The feature that allows you to define where launched ships exit from a planet is not working in my 1.5X game. I think I've seen posts where other people have seen this problem.
2. A way to gather intel without exposing your spy to removal. Perhaps there could be a low change of dicovery at first, but as the intel with the race increases, the spy has to take more risks and the chance for discovery increases. This could be implemented by allowing spys to take over the Colony Center, but does not shut down the Colony Centers production.

Galen

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.

I would like the ability to see improvements by category in the build list on the planet screen. So I click on "Production" and it only shows improvements that effect production. Click on "Research" and it only shows labs. etc.

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!

Oh yeah - absent the whole epic generator, I'd also like some sort of logging of in-game events.

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?

My wish is that DA will have better performance than DL. My computer ain't the best(yet),but DL runs perfectly on it, while DA...well reeks in performance.

I lied, thats not my only wish. Other things that would make DA cool:

-orbital defence platforms, ie macguns from halo.

-When a spore ship attacks a planet, the planet should toxify insstead of having the same picture when it wasn't toxic.

-Enviroment worlds should have advantages/disadvantages

-AI backstabbing/schemes

-More ways of collecting money. Like turning asteroids into money by beaming the asteroids another race for money.

-Balancing super abilities. Superadapter doesn't do much when there aren't special worlds around

-Starbases should be managed easier. You could have a waypoint go there, have a list of the upgrades you want on it instead of it constantly pestering you on what you want built on it

-Better espionage interface. EX: Techs are color coded to whether you have them or not.

-More espionage options, have 007 spies and tuff. They wuld be super spies that are pains to remove and have powerful abilities like making a planet revolt to you. On a sie note, you should be able to see where enemy ships are in the fog if you have "Advanced" intel on an enemy.

-Better minors(?)

-Have a second in command who manages all the minor stuff when you are playing a gigantic galaxy. Micromanagement can really bite.

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.

Fix the save game influence bug. Yesterday I had a planet flip because influence didn't update for more than 10 turns. I loaded an auto-save and it wasn't even in rebellion.

An option to choose balanced starting positions would be nice. As it is now, at least one player gets a terrible start unless I ctrl+n a hundred times.

Streamlined starbase upgrading. There are too many weapon/defense upgrades and they are far too costly.

The ability to make anomalies truly rare or turn them off. Randomly appearing anomalies as the game progresses.

The ability to eliminate the blue/red/yellow/green mining resources as a setup option.

The ability to turn off the governor on all planets.

The ability to move all auto-piloted ships before the turn ends.

Automatic fleeting of ships in orbit as discussed in a recent thread. Give the OFM other (hopefully balanced) abilities or simply retire it.

Rescue the good alignment from being an increase in difficulty level.

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.

One possibility that just occured to me is adding an evasion factor to ship hulls. Smaller hulls can move faster, therefor they get an evasion bonus against large hulls. This would factor into each ships ability to hit their target. Say a small hull has an evasion factor of 4 against a huge with only 1. So the huge ship would get -3 penalty to actually hit the small ship, whereas the small ship suffers none.

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.

Allow for changing of political parties. Make planetary elections actually MEAN something. There may be a point when you are making lots of cash and want to change from the Federalist party to the War party when facing alot of enemy civs. You have to pay a possible price in failing to win future elections by changing over, however.

I still think it wouldn't be too hard to allow for heroes on ships or planets--a great manager to boost prodcutivity on a certain planet, or a ship captain to increase battle effectiveness on a ship or in a fleet. Such heroes could even be the targets of espionage. Just like spies, you could spend money on developing "heroes" but the more you have, the more expensive they cost, to a point of diminishing return.

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.

Thanks to all who supported my ideas!

Reading through this, there are at least two other ideas I hadn't thought of that would be great. I support the continual spawning of anamolies (at a rate proportionate to their basic rarity) - go go Galactic Guide Book.

Also, improved warning options as part of diplomacy. So many times I decide to just kill someone because I don't like them flying through my space. Would be so great if I could just tell them/warn them. And if the AI could tell YOU the same thing, we might not even need the "Neutral Ground" UP event. Depending on implementation of this option.
EDIT: For instance, you could set up so someone couldn't fly through your influence, but pick up a diplomacy negative from that race for closing your "airspace". Violations of space by someone who is not authorized IS a war declaration. This way, you could close your borders to most civs, but doing so will not make you very popular.

A slight easing up on the new tech trading balance wouldn't necessarily hurt either.

I also saw somewhere someone suggest that the planetary defense module change from the 25% boost it currently offers to instead blocking attack techniques except for traditional invasion. That seems like a much more effective use for that building.

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.

You like having constructors pester you every time they arrive at the starbase, at the end of their waypoint? It can be a very annoying.

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.

I also like the idea of anomalies randomly spawning throughout the game instead of being spread over the map at the beginning. They could also give bigger bonuses in that case. This would make scouting, sensors and the surveying wonder so much more useful and entertaining.

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