What about implementing a race change option like what Paradox put in Europa Universalis? Basically you play the game and save it. When you reload the game, the game offers you the chance to play any of the races. Enables you to build up an empire, and then see if you can defeat it with a different race. Its also extremely helpful in better understanding the AI options for development since at any time you can reload and see what the AI has done (ships, techs, and improvements). Scoring would be tricky for the cheat concept, but as someone who doesn't do the metaverse, it would be nice to have.

Dec. 12,

I`d like to be able to buy / sell Constructors.

Thabkx,

Prof.

  

Here's just a small suggestion. I was playing as the Krynn yesterday and had just researched large hulls. I spent about half my treasury building a nice new fleet on the next turn, and lo and behold, the Jagged Knife showed up and took all the planets where I was constructing my new ships.

Now, I think the Jagged Knife is a nice wake-up call during a game, but it would be nice if when they showed up I didn't end up spending half my money for naught, except to supply my enemy with a state-of-the-art fleet.

Maybe when Jagged Knife shows up at least some of your ships could be booted out of orbit instead of being given away. Losing a third of your planets is sometimes enough of a shock.

Another option would be to make each major event individually optional. Instead of asking on the game setup screen whether or not to have major events at all, you could access a checklist of possible events.

I would like a menu option ability to turn off galactic events a la carte. I like the events in general, but there are just a couple I can't stand. One of those is the unlimited range event, but there are one or two others.

I agree that the AI needs to do a better job of defending its own starbases by taking advantage of the defense modules.

Right now, the Arceans seem a bit underpowered and//or the AI is not utilizing their assets well. I've yet to see them perform well in any TA game I've played.

personally i think that the ethics are ok, good is weak evil is strong.. fine, but i also think the relations modifier should be so that good civilzations get ++ relations modifiers with good and netural while evil civilziations are -- with EVERYNONE, even each other... your evil! you dont need friends! and neutral civs get + relations with good and other netural civs and - with evil.

That would mean as evil you have enemies everywhere, sure you CAN make friends but its going to take alot of bribes, neutral civs get along ok with others and good civilizations band together easily to take on others, at the moment the bonus for being good is you have more friends, but then evil civs have a + relation modifier too and evil civs are generally stronger.

I also see the Arceans struggling more than the other races. It seems that they are slow to get weather control tech (and built) which I consider to be a crucial ability for their sucess. That might mean they need AI tweeking rather than actual balancing.

It seems that most people agree on two general ethics issues: (1) Choices that determine ethics favors evil and (2) Benefits linked to your ethics favors evil. Of course there are a wide range of thoughts on how to resolve these issues. But just to elaborate on a previous post, I think there needs to be a third aspect to ethics... (3) the effects of ethics changes should be linked to the races. There should be backlash for changing a good race evil or vice-versa.

There really isn't a good reason for not doing this even in DA, so I second this little suggestion.

I'd like to see a "capture ship" ship module.

Hopefully, this wouldn't be a big programming job.

Somewhere down the tech tree, a module would become available that allows a ship to capture an enemy ship instead of destroying it.

For game balance, the module should be large and expensive. Also, the captured ship would be reduce to 1 hit point and would have to be repaired at its normal rate.

As a counter to this module, a "self destruct" module could be available that would destroy the "victim" ship before it was captured. Again big and expensive (but not as much as the "capture ship" module)

Instead of a capture ship smodule, I would rather see a very small chance of stealing a weapon or defense tech after combat. Maube make the chance really small and rare, and force it to steal the lowest tech possible (ie give you laser before giving you disruptors).

Not sure if this already exists (since I don't pay attention to exploration)... does a survey unit set to explore (W) go and automatically search out anomolies (A) if any are available? Not needed in DA, but TA has anomolies reappearing.

Why don't other civ's react to a Terror Star? In Civilization and SMAC others declare war to you if you use a nuke/planet buster or are afraid of you or so.
I think AI should be mistrustful if the player or an other AI BEGINS to build a Terror Star and make demands to stop that or so.
And what about the UP banning the TS's? Or increasing the build limit?

I didn't take the time to read every reply on this thread or get enough money together to pre-order TA so it may have already been suggested/implemented: How about an option to give all races and equal tech tree? For instance, I play Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds still and it is really a lot more strategic when you and the computer have equivilent acesse to technology.

I also think that more major races should be added ... so that there are more AI options to face.

Fist I agree to his post. With the Gigantic Maps add another race or two, Have one of the races incorporate all the techs from all the races in the game but be handicaped somehow, maybe by a low reproduction rate or low moral or something.

Here are a few more suggestions from me.

-Like JesanFafon said, allow you to roll back the tech trees to the origional, but play with the new TA features.

-Add a few more minor races to game, with the immense galaxy size I would like to see an option for more minor races.

-Get a score boost or decline depending on Tech rate, very slow tech rate for instance will make for a slower game or faster tech rate normally makes for a faster game. Same thing with more or less habitable planets can change the normal length of the game. I think you already have score somewhat based on size of galaxy.

-I'm sorry if I had this in from before, but I'm in a hurry now, Add an option to increase or decrease the number of specialty planets.

-fix memory issue (just had to throw that in leading to next request)

-increase number of star for immense galaxy (right now it seems about the same as gigantic just more spread out)

Thank you.

Dread Lords are still pathetic. I crushed them like a little bug with one transport (they sat around for 10 turns or so). Also, they need the extreme-environment techs; Amalda was radioactive and they had built absolutely nothing when I got there. They hadn't even started their Habitat Improvement at all.

1. Arcean should have recruiting station like everyone else.
2. Korx should have custom economic buildings. The standard list of banking stuff just doesn't seem to do them justice.
3. Minor race steal techs can lead to tech jumping (hyperwarp, etc.)
4. I like creativity (thanks!). But it is now too powerful for a single point.
5. I don't understand the war profiting: is this described somewhere
6. When starting a new game, the initial message covers a portion of the mini-map. Sometimes makes it difficult to decide whether to CTL-N or not.
7. This has been talked to death, but Krynn super spy ability is worth even less with the powerful Krynn morale/influence buildings.
8. Added information in tech screen is great. But the super projects aren't all described and some can be confusing determining if it is a planet bonus or race bonus.

Each Race has its own technology tree.

I suggest changing the goverment techs around a little. Are the Korath really going to have a star democracy like everyone else? Why can't it be Star Dictator? Star Feudal. Evil Democracy. I.E. Your minions now have more power through goverment channels.

Also maybe a battle fleet scene added if a starbase has 5+ modules like a bunch of x wings trying to destroy the death star hehehe. x wing deathstar was just a joke but hopefully you know what I mean.

Ya, a Scrap feature would be nice for ships.

I would like an easy way to launch empty transports. Sometimes I want to ferry people around, but I have to drag the slider all the way down to 0 then manually add 1 person. Its kind of a pain when you have 5 or 6 transports to do multiple times. Why can't I launch with zero people?


Oh, and bibpopa8, if you mean recycle/scuttle a ship you can click the destroy button when you select a ship and it will destroy it and give you a little BC back.

Get rid of the tie breaker for ship battles. If all the ships are destroyed in a fight, so be it.

i am beginning to have some difficulties with the slave pits providing morale boosts. yes the non-slaves would get a boost.


but if your society is made up mostly slaves. the slaves are not going to get a morale boost from the slave pits.


if fact slave pits may cause a revolt. remember the roman gladiator revolt.


so i am thinking let it provide morale. but on planets that have more than one pit. there is a chance when the empire is at war there will be a revolt. since the best time to revolt is when the empires attention is pointed someplace else.

I'm not sure if this was mentioned before or not, but I think that there should be an option for people who do *not* want to steal/trade or have any foreign technologies (specific to any race). Or perhaps in the buildings section have it so the foreign buildings has a tab of it's own so when we wish to build buildings quickly we don't have to scroll down all the alien buildings as a result of their techs.

I think there should be drop-down boxes for technology trading and technology theft, so you can set them to fully active, active only for techs you can research, and fully inactive (each separately).

Much of this is from Kevin's list, but I agree 100% with some of his points, the rest is mine.

1. Arcean should have recruiting station like everyone else.
2. Korx should have custom economic buildings. The standard list of banking stuff just doesn't seem to do them justice.
3. Minor race steal techs can lead to tech jumping (hyperwarp, etc.)
4. I like creativity (thanks!). But it is now too powerful for a single point.
5. This has been talked to death, but Krynn super spy ability is worth even less with the powerful Krynn morale/influence buildings.
6. The Iconians are still underpowered in the special abilities category as well.
7. Some government techs are ridiculous for certain races- democratic Korath for example. Tie the government techs to ethics or at least make them unique for each race.

I'd like to see an option added that would let you buy a ship from another race, decommission it, and have a % chance to obtain some of the techs used in it's contruction

I'm not so interested in being able to "steal" other ships, but I'd like to be able to "disable" a space station and be able to send a troop ship in to attempt to capture it.