A Couple of Ideas, Mainly Diplomacy and Combat Related

Hi,

My last game of DA a couple of things came up that seemed like they needed expansion or improvement. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great game, but it seems to me like there are some simple ways to improve it, probably in a future expansion pack, but who knows.

Anyhow ...



Diplomacy Related



1.) I've said this before, but I really really really want the option to threaten the AI. If they decide to stick an influence starbase in my territory, I'd really like the option to tell them to get it out without declaring war, same as they pop up and do to me. In the past I've always felt that this would be best based on a combination of military strength and your diplomacy ability as to whether or not they comply with your demand. Not necessarily just about starbases, but things about fleets of warships that they tend to park inside my territory, or troop transports.



2.) A more diplomatic AI when it comes to colonizing planets. I understand that the point of the colony rush is to grab as many planets as you can, but the way some of the AIs on the other side of the map go out of their way to head across weeks worth of space to start snatching up planets in my territory is a little odd. If there are available planets outside of anyone's elses sphere of influence, then I think it's a little more realistic to go for them first.

It wouldn't make much sense for France or Spain to have plopped down a colony in the middle of unpopulated SC or GA during the Revolutionary War era, when it had already been colonized by England. I understand this is a little different in space, but it seems more logical that they place a higher priority on planets closer to them first. If it's a class 20 jewel or something they really want, I could see an exception to this, but the way they snatch up 4s and 5s in my territory, and then I immediately take a diplomacy hit of (- Our Close Borders) and when they inevitably influence flip, I take an even bigger diplomacy hit, is a little off.

I know there's a United Planets Issue that taxes planets outside the owner's sphere of influence, but there's only an 8bc tax, which is nothing, and all the civilizations that have planets outside their sphere of influence, which is usually all except me, end up voting it down. Perhaps another solution would be giving this issue more teeth.



3.) Implementation of some sort of concrete borders. I know the whole tagline is that there are no borders in space, etc. etc., but there is such a concept as Airspace. Nothing is more annoying than the AI declaring war on somebody on the opposite side of your territory, or a minor race deep in the heart of your territory, and then sending fleet after fleet of warships streaming across your territory, only to have them just stop and camp there when the war ends. (Which creates an issue addressed in idea 1.) If Russia declared war on Mexico, let's say, and then started flying warplanes full of ordinance across American airspace, or landed tanks in Canada and sent them South through the US without permission, we would definitely have something to say about it. I'd imagine we'd have even more to say if they left their tanks and troops in Kansas after the war ended.

I get that there needs to be freedom of movement, so perhaps a tech in the mid tech tree would create these borders, and they could be 75%, or even 50% of normal influence boundaries. No ship equipped with weapons could cross these borders without taking a severe diplomatic hit. So, if you wanted to send warships into Drath space, you would get a popup when you hit the border,

"You will take a heavy diplomatic penalty if you go through with this action, are you SURE you want to violate Drath Airspace?"

That sort of thing. This seems like the sort of thing that should bring civilizations to the brink of war. You'd certainly have to plan a lot more carefully, as you'd be risking war with another opponent if you violated their sovereignty to attack someone else. Inversely, if you have a weak military or diplomacy, the AI could have no problem violating your political borders. This brings up another option for added diplomacy, you could form treaties allowing an AI to freely fly ships across your borders without a diplomatic penalty. This would help allies defend each other during wars. Obviously, Freighters, Constructors, Scouts, any ship not equipped with weapons or troop modules could ignore these borders as they don't pose a threat to your civ, and some are needed for trade.



4.) I'd like to see the AI approach you with alliances more often. Pretty simple. I see them forming between each other, yet for some reason I never get approached with an alliance offer.



5.) The ability to set relations with the AI. Let's say that early in the game, the Terrans try to extort some money from me. I refuse, and then make a comeback, and lo and behold, as soon as I get a decent military, their relations with me go to Close. This ticks me off, because I would never allow anyone who threatened me with extortion to develop close relations with me.

I think that you should be able to set a maximum, beyond which, relations with the AI cannot improve. For instance, as soon as the Terran relations start to improve, I think, "No sir, not after what you pulled," and I set relations to "Cool." Meaning, no matter how much the Terrans want it, relations with me cannot progress past Cool. Now, they're free to go lower than Cool, but never any higher.

I hate getting to the endgame, and every Civ on the board has Close relations with me. I'd love to be able to pick and choose whom I allow to get close with my Civ, and whom I want to keep out in the Cold, so to speak. No lower limit, so if the Terrans make a turnaround, relations are free to deteriorate all the way to war, just never any higher than Cool.



6.) More UP Issues. I seem to get the same few over and over, even to the point of getting the same two back to back. I'd also like to see them have more of an impact on the game.



7.) I'd like to see coalition forming and large scale alliances. Ie, like ethical alliances should be more likely to team up by the end game. I once saw that everyone except me was allied late in the game, my only option was a diplomatic victory as there was no way to take down all five civs. This would make for much more epic wars in my opinion, a massive endgame Evil vs. Neutral vs. Good war, or if Evil was really dominant, then a Neutral and Good Coaltion vs. Evil, or Neutral vs. Evil and Good, type of thing. Underdogs teaming up to take on the big guy, which I guess is sort of what happened to me. (Although I suspect this was coincidental, as they all had close relations with me.) As it stands it seems to me that alliances are too random, with little to no purpose behind them.



8.) Protectorates. Let's say I box a major race in early in the game, and by the mid game, they are completely within my sphere of Influence. (Same for minor races.) Now, because of issues I've already mentioned, I don't want the AI declaring war on them, because this would allow them to develop within my influence. So, I dial them up, and make them an offer to become a protectorate.

Attacking them is the same as attacking me so we're basically allies, but in return, 25% of their economy and research values are diverted to my economy/research. If the race is small enough and weak enough to fit in my sphere of influence, this isn't going to make a game breaking difference to me, but it would help keep that race in the game. Obviously, this would not be a very easy treaty to obtain, perhaps requiring Close relations for a certain number of turns, and a pretty tempting offer to the AI when you propose the treaty.

Another version of this could be a tribute treaty, if a Race falls behind militarily, you call up and demand a tribute treaty, and set a certain amount they're required to pay you each week to keep you from going to war. If the race becomes powerful, then they can break the treaty with you and risk war. Same thing with the Protectorate treaty, if the smaller race makes a comeback, they can break the treaty with you for a price.



Non diplomacy ideas



1.) Ship naming. I'd like to see a txt document somewhere that the game can read lists of ship names from, and automatically assign to your ships as they are built. You could have seperate name lists for freighters, medium, large, huge, etc. This doesn't seem like it would be all the difficult to implement, as it stands I don't bother renaming anything because it's such a bother.



2.) I'd like to see some different building styles. As it stands, a Factory built by the Thalans looks exactly the same as a Factory built by the Terrans. At the very least, how about the ability to pick the colors of your buildings by type (research, factory, etc.) the same way you can for your ship colors?



3.) I'd love to see some expansion of the combat system in future expansions. It's good the way it is, but paper-rock-scissors gets kind of old after a while. There are some factors that could be implemented without making it a fullscale tactical system.

Carriers. (This is really an opinion issue I suppose, but I know me and a lot of other people would love to see them in some form. That's all I'll say on this matter.)

Range
Factor range into battles. This alone would do tons towards making the battle system a lot more dynamic. For instance, just draw a straight line distance between two ships and have the range calculated from that. Different weapons systems could have different ranges, seems to me the most logical is beam/short, railgun/medium, missile/long, but perhaps different variants of each weapon could exist, ie "Heavy Laser V", which has increased damage over "Extended Range Laser V", which has a longer range.

Speed factor in battles
As it stands, Huge hulls are essentially just enormous small hulls. There's no real difference other than HP and Space. Maybe have small ships have a bonus over huge and large hulls, and larger types take an accuracy or damage penalty against small and tiny hulls. I smell an entire new branch of the tech tree here, sublight engines. A ship could have two separate speed ratings, a superluminal speed rating, what you get by researching the engine techs as they are now, and a subluminal speed rating that is a factor in combat. Smaller hulls would have higher default subluminal speeds vs. larger hulls.

Accuracy in Battle
This could be a function of ship exp, as exp increases not only does HP go up, but Accuracy also increases. Perhaps an evasion/piloting function could also be incorporated under similar terms here, but seems a bit superfluous. Simply, the higher level the ship is, the higher its accuracy. Accuracy could simply be a base of say 65%-70%, and have that percentage applied to the normal weapons roll. Smaller hulls would get increasing larger bonuses versus increasingly larger hulls, and vice versa.

Electronics Warfare.
I'd love to the importance of sensors and other modules increased. As it stands, I don't bother putting sensors on any of my ships, as by the time you've researched all 4, there's no real point in it.

Adding sensor jamming, (decrease sensor range/accuracy in battles,) warp jamming, (decrease map speed of ships within a certain range of the EWAR vessel,), subluminal drive jamming, (decrease in battle speed,) etc. would be great, and people might actually start using some of the non-battle related modules.

Increased command options
If the above options are implemented, this allows for some expanded control over your fleets. You could, for instance, order your short range fighter fleet to "Close range at high speed." You could order your long-range capital fleet to "Use standoff tactics" or order your medium range frigates to "Engage closest target." Obviously there are many more potential options here, but you get the gist. This begs for a civilization wide governor, however, similar to setting up a rally point perhaps.


4.) Range
As it stands, it doesn't make much sense to me that my tiny one man fighter can fly 10 or 20 weeks away from home with out any support modules on it. I think that range should be far more limited to start with, and that the support techs shouldn't increase it nearly as much, perhaps providing a reason for people to finally start sticking support modules on their ships.



5.) The ability to auto upgrade an entire class of structure from the civilization manager. For instance, I currently have the tech right before neutrality learning centers researched, and then I steal the tech that is equivalent to nlcs in an invasion, and all of my research centers auto-upgrade, yet when I research NLCs, they don't autoupgrade again. Just a simple Convert all (Blanks) to (Blanks) option would be great.



6.) The ability to upgrade starbases without constructors. Maybe this could be balanced out by increasing module costs. Also, make starbases more effective. As it stands, I don't bother with military starbases on large maps, because they are just about useless by late game, both in terms of the bonuses they provide, and their range of effect.

Maybe rework the bonuses provided so they provide a percentage rather than a set number, ie "Fighter Drones: Provides +5% to beam attack for all ships within range." A new branch of the tech tree, "Starbase Range" seems like it might be prudent too, ie, "Starbase Range +10%, 20%, etc."

I'd love to see a "Repair Bay" module on starbases that you can dock a ship at, and that ship is provided with a repair bonus according to the level of Repair Bay Tech you've researched. (This could go under the standard Starbase Techs that already exist, or maybe a new branch for it.)



Pipe Dreams/Miscellaneous



1.) Stargates
I think that a stargate system would be another fun addition, if implemented properly.
You would only be able to build stargates within your influence/political boundaries, and they could be constructed the same as a starbase. Maybe each Stargate could be linked in with three other stargates, to prevent them from becoming overpowered.

There's an opportunity for another treaty here too, linking your Stargate system with that of an AI. The bonus could be an increase in Trade Revenue for any freighter that uses a stargate system because of time/fuel/consumables saved.

To work, all you'd have to do is order a ship to move onto a stargate, then select the stargate you want it to emerge from. Good for moving ships around quickly in a time of war, and no surprise invasions or cheese because you could only build them on your turf.

There's in-game lore to support these too ...



2.) Interstellar "Terrain" features
Maybe things like Nebulae, (decrease sensor range/increase jamming/decrease accuracy on all ships in battle and on map)
Dense asteroid fields, huge to the point where they become a real obstacle to navigate



3.) More colonization/mining techs
How about the ability to colonize gas giants ala sky cities?
Or, at the very least, mine them and other class O planets for resources similar to asteroid belts, but only with a larger bonus/longer construction time for bases?

Also, I don't know why they weren't implemented in the first place seeing as they were planned for originally, but the ability to mine Morale/Research/Economic material from Asteroid belts instead of just industrial.



4.) Rework Invasion System
It doesn't make much sense to me that you take every man woman and child into battle, and then slaughter the entire opposing planet's population. Maybe there could be a set percentage of a planet's population that you could take via a transport. Say, 20-30% that you can remove before you have to let that top 20-30% regenerate. This would help prevent wartime economic collapse in addition to being slightly more realistic. (Not to mention how enormous a transport would have to be to carry even 1 billion people.)

Since the defender has a numeric advantage, you could use a higher percentage of the planet's population as the defense force, say 50-65%.

These would be numbers that the game would calculate automatically to remove micromanagement from the equation here.

Maybe there's room for a structure here that when built increases the percentage of the planet's population that you can remove via transport, or increase the percentage used for defense.



5.)Orbital Fleet Managers as part of starting colony. Pretty self explanatory, this is more for the AI's benefit than the player's.



6.) Different appearances for weapons when fired. Perhaps just the ability to custom set the colors of your race's weapons by tech/type.



In retrospect, many of these seem like options for GalCiv III more than an expansion, but they've been floating around in my head for a while, and the other threads are so intimidatingly large that I felt that it would be best to start a new thread. Please let me know what you think, if you managed to read this far.