4 Requests

Please see the Kyrnn special ability. They get the Counter Espionage tech right off the bat, a spy at the start and get spies faster (aka spend more money).

I think the Korx get more money from trade routes by default too...

Well, before TA, the super abilities were the only thing that differentiated the races. In the TA expansion they're less important, since a lot of the individuality is now in the unique tech tress. The Korx super ability does tie into the emphasis on trade in their tech tree, and most of their trade strength is now in unique racial techs like Xeno Mercantalism (+20% to trade on top of starting bonuses), Cut Throat Competition, Fortified Freighters (persistent trade routes) and a unique trade boosting starbase module. Also, starting with all the stock trade techs means you can spend research in other areas, so that super ability is actually fairly powerful... assuming you're going all-out for trade anyway, and it wouldn't make sense to choose the Korx if that isn't the goal.



I agree the espionage bonus doesn't make much sense, but the Iconians don't have much trouble keeping up on research in my TA beta games. They start with multipurpose Precursor buildings that give plenty of research tp in the early game, and then you can research standard research buildings later on, for a further boost. Creativity wouldn't be a good bonus for them (IMO) since their back story is all about relying on ancient Precursor tech they don't understand, and they're not supposed to be especially good at researching their own Iconian tech. I think that's why traditional research comes further down the tech tree for them.

Dark Avatar is required to play this one isn't it? So how have you managed to play this one without having the last one?

He could have just not ever played DA. Played DL until just now and picked up the DA/TA pack.

I would like to second this part of the OP. This is an annoying bit of micro-management, and I'd love it if the expansion got rid of it.

Exactly. I actually played DA once a week ago and then tried the Beta and never went back.

And I agree that the Kyrnn's special ability is rather lame too (although I don't think that was loupdinour's angle).

On the movement issue, isn't there a option to recieve a prompt when ships have movements left at the end of a turn? Or not allowing you to end the turn if something has movement points left? I'm pretty sure there is.

If the Krynn got an extra spy every time they trained one, or their espionage ability boosted their ability to get information on other civs, or putting spies on enemy worlds actually meant something other than a defensive spy zerg from the enemy...urg, yeah. I like playing the Krynn, but their super ability sucks.

I knew there was one more request:

5. Make a few more default ships, in particular, for the early game. Once you have Ion technology, you should get double-Ion Colony ships and Ion Freighters (with Trade). With Survey, you should get an easy survey scout. Not only would this be handy, it would help make the AI better, since the AI would be more likely to use the tactics we use...

The ability to make custom ships is there for a reason. Use it frequently. If anything, there needs to be fewer default ships, not more. All of the armed ships could be deleted and very few people would notice, let alone care.

The AI makes its own custom ships to match what it thinks it needs, so if it percieved a need for such ships, it would make them whether they were default ships or not.

If you really want ships like this, and play the same race repeatedly, just make sure you check the option to save ships to hard drive. That way the ships you design this game will be available next game as soon as you get all the tech necessary.

This is already in the game. Hit esc and it's one of the check-boxes, marked something like "Go to ships on auto-move with moves left over at end of turn". With this checked, if you hit Turn and any ships auto-move but have moves left, it focuses on them and won't end the turn until you give them new orders or hit the Turn button again (which is now marked Skip).

I do use it frequently. I just find it irritating making the same ships every time I play a new race and having to come up with unique names for the same ships with different races. Later in the game, my mix of techs is always unique, so of course there designing my own ships makes more sense.



The AI almost always seems to use the default ships in the games I play. Are you sure that the AI is good enough to perceive every need that it has?

Anyway, I am just happy about the option that people pointed out to me to not end the turn with moves left. I can't believe that isn't the default!

In my experience, the AI fields its own designs rather than the core designs that everyone gets.

Indeed. I don't think I've ever seen an AI build a stock ship more than 20 turns into a game - every ship they build is a custom design of one sort or another. If anything, they design new ships and upgrade entirely too often. I occasionally blitz an AI when I find a good chunk of their fleet helplessly upgrading on my doorstep.

BTW hintikka, what difficulty do you play on? At lower levels, the AI is intentionally degraded, so maybe they aren't using custom ships.

I have been playing on painful. I assume the AI is at full level there.

Perhaps the difference is that I was thinking about non-combat ships, not combat ships. Survey ships, colony ships, freighters, etc. If the AI is upgrading these, it is giving them the same names as usual.

The AI upgrades freighters, colony ships, etc. I never check their survey ships because they totally neglect those, but the cargo-class ships do get upgraded. You can see this just by looking at them - they look ugly, because the AI sticks the transport/freight/constructor modules in stupid places.

Actually, what I'd really like is the option to auto-design a ship of a given hull-size with my current technological availability, per the current AI implementation. There are times when I'll want to custom build a ship to crush a particular enemy, or to squeeze out absolutely optimal performance-- but a lot of the time I just want a ship (or at least a big floating sign that says "Lord Kona Keep Off"), and I end up having to drag and place three engines (no, wait, two works better), four shields and six beam weapons over, only to find out that I have four spare slots and gosh I'd better fill those up with hull reinforcement modules....

Since the code to procedurally generate ship designs is already there, I would imagine that this would be a relatively trivial change, and it would be a nice quality-of-life issue. Then you might be able to scrap most of the default ships entirely.