Issues and Suggestions

[Void2258]

General:

• There isn't enough information about radii of effects. How much bigger does the outpost make my empire? How much of my system is covered by defense platforms? Where will my borders fall after I colonize this planet? Howe much does upgrading admin or getting border techs change my borders? There is no pre-build feedback, so you just have to guess. Also you cannot tell what will happen to borders if you lose a colony or outpost, after vassaling, etc.
  
• Fleet Management is awkward because if you want to move a specific ship or ships, you have to subdivide the fleet down to fleets of one and then recombine how you want. Need to be able to just move single vessels.
• The Leader UI, especially the Research UI, would be easier to manage if you could drag your scientists around instead of opening the leadership panel, which causes you to lose track of who is doing what.
• The construction ships need something to do while they are not building. Mine has spent more time sitting there than accomplishing things. How about you let them do poor quality mining or somesuch when not engaged?
• Need an automatic "explore" button for the science ships that has them nearest random walk from system to system automatically surveying, instead of stopping and waiting for you to tell them to go to the next one.
• Can we have the option to scroll up to the galaxy level with just the scroll wheel (ala supreme commander)? It adds a lot of clicking since there are so many things you can't do from the galaxy menu.
• It took me forever to get colonize because every time I ran into anything, my society researcher was the one who had to stop what they were doing to find out what was going on. There needs to be a mechanism to not stop your society research continually or there needs to be more variety in what research needs to stop.
  • There is a semi exploit where if you let these build up and then do multiples at once they all go simultaneously. That makes no sense.
• It is possible to get research missions you can't finish because some of the relevant planets are inside other empires' borders. There needs to be a mechanism for doing these other than having a random war over access. At least, move them out of the situation log when they cannot be done.
• When elections happen, tell us what the mandate is, instead of forcing us to manually go look in the situation log.
  
• Fallen Empires need to be more clear about what will set them off, and more reasonable about terms. You should not be accidentally triggering territorial violations because you can't tell where they draw the line and you should not be in a situation where the war terms are all 9 of your planets even though only one is near the FE.
• Cannot selectively remove queued movement, construction, surveying, etc. Have to cancel everything on the queue and start over.

Economy:

• Queue system
  • The most frustrating thing is having to sit there staring at the menus waiting for minerals to come in.
  • We need to be able to queue things up for when the resources come in (empire-wide queue would be handy), including blocker removal, planetary building, etc.
  • Why doesn't this game have streaming economy? A realtime game like this makes so much more sense with a streaming economy. Why am I staring at a clock waiting for numbers to slowly move up?

• Influence Issues
  • Not enough ways to get more
  • needed for too many things
    • Can barely do anything other than constantly hire leaders
    • Major source seems to be mandates, but since most are "build X in your empire" and you need huge influence to build outposts to expand your empire, you can almost never complete the mandates
    • No way to do mandates without expanding empire borders, which you can only do so much of.
      
    • you barely ever use edicts or interact with politics because you don't have the influence
• Energy Issues
  • There need to be more things to do with energy. I am almost always at my energy limit without anything I can do with it
  • Too much depends on minerals and not enough on energy, leaving you chronically flush with energy and short on minerals.
• Strategic resources
  • If I click on the icon in the mainbar for them it doesn't tell me where they are. I have to try to spot the resource on the galaxy map.
  • Unclear how much you have to work with (for power plants, etc.)
• Happiness
  • Very few things influence unhappiness, meaning that after conquering a world you often have to just spam Media suppression to keep separatists under control. You have no means to directly address the issues in any meaningful way.

Diplomacy:

• Trade Issues
  • The AI is very reluctant to trade resources and almost never lets you get anything else without obscene payments. There needs to be more flexibility and reasonableness in the AI in this area.
• Alliances
  • It is very very hard to get an alliance going. Often you can't tell what exactly the issue is.
  • Too much of a drain on Influence, which is in too short a supply.
• Embassies
  • Currently, in order to end an embassy, you have to go find it. The button to make a new one should bring up a list of where your current ones are so you can choose one to cancel.

UI:

• An option to put the stars "on plane" would be nice. The offset of the graphic of the star and the actual gameplay location can sometimes make it hard to tell who owns what, and leads to a lot of misclicks.
• Alternate map modes would be helpful
  • Empire strength, economy, hostility, FTL type, weapon tech, planet fortification...
    
  • Resource histogram
  • Habitability histogram
  • Defense radii
  • Jump range (in time units so you can tell how far you can move a fleet and still be able to get to X)

• We need a more general ability to control what is happening in the system from the galaxy maps.
  • Better galaxy-level control for the construction ships. When on the galaxy map, if you right-click a system, your options are build every possible structure of the type (ie all 3 mining stations) or do everything manually while zoomed in on the system. You cannot build just one without zooming in and scrolling around. How about "build on X" from the galaxy menu? Also, there is no quick control when zoomed in the system either; instead you have to scroll around.
  • A little automation for fleet dispatch would be nice. How about giving me the option to have it move to attack from the galaxy instead of my having to move it, then click into the system and manually tell it to attack because otherwise it sits at the point where it came in? It shouldn't be automatic obviously because you could be trying to rally, but some ability to avoid zooming in and out would be nice. Just have the option in the right click menu for "attack X" instead of just "move here".
  • Option to have fleets automatically go into orbit around colonized planets in you system when they arrive, instead of sitting at the edge of the system until you zoom in and tell them to go orbit. This should be the default behavior unless there are hostiles in system.
  • Designated defense area, where fleets automatically move to protect whenever an enemy jumps in (ie Fleet in Sol automatically goes and defends Alpha Centauri if it is in defense area).
    
  • Leave last seen combat values, weapon types, etc. visible on the map, so you don't have to try to remember what it was when dispatching fleets. Doesn't mean you can't be surprised, especially by enemy empires, but you shouldn't have to play by memory.
    
  • Colonization is difficult because you get almost no information from the galaxy map. You need to be able to see colonizable planets without zooming in, and do the entire colonize action without leaving the galaxy screen.
    
  • Designate colonization targets so you don't find a good world, build a ship, then have to look all over trying to find it again. If set, the next colonization ship will go there on construction and get started (or at least, should popup and ask).
• Need to see primitives from the galaxy map so you don't forget where they are. Even better if they have a small icon for development stage, observation post, and post activity as well, but at least something to show them at all.
  
• Send science ships on special projects from the galaxy map.
• Spaceport access, other than for your home system, is awkward, particularly once sectors come in. Generally involves having to click into sectors with ports and select them manually, assuming you can remember where they are since there is no icon on the galaxy map.

Ship Builder:

• Desperately needs better organization.
  • Civilian and military should be separable.
  • There should be ways to sort (by class, etc.).
  • Ability to order the list how you wish
  • List order should not constantly shift around
    
  • Iconography so you can tell similar ships from each other without having to click back and forth.
  • Warnings about out of date tech
• Improvements for automation
  • Options to auto-generate with a focus, ie Laser focused, anit-laser focused
  • Auto generation should not reuse names of classes already in use
  • Options to retrofit so manual and auto-gen ships can be kept in service without having to worry about if you made a new design or edited an old one. I should never be forced to keep a weaker ship in my fleet because it is older and won't allow upgrades.
• Planetary assault ships
  • These need to be upgradable
  • Need to have assault modules that can be put in ships so you can get assault armies to planets in bulk and without them being vulnerable to instant kills.
• Intelligence
  • It is often hard to see what weapons enemies are using since you have to watch the fight and pick it out based on effects. There should be a listing to see who is using what, what kind of defenses they are building, etc. This way you can build intelligently instead of maxing and hoping you aren't countered.
  • Relative strength modelling (based on last seen ships) vs any empire
  • Better explanation of what weapons are for (ie make more clear that Disruptors are for killing shields).

Systems:

• Border system is too strict
  • Not enough ways to expand so you can gain resources
    • Need too much influence to build outposts often and can find yourself lacking useful habitable planets to colonize. Need more ways to expand.
    • Need way to build research, harvesting, observation, and possibly military (platforms) outside borders, or more precisely to claim without inhabiting. Perhaps "hard" and "soft" borders, where hard boarders are the current and soft borders can be overtaken if you aren't careful because it's just a few lightly defended structures.
  • Cannot build observation posts outside borders, even though doing so and then uplifting or annexing a race to join you would be a great way to expand logically.
• Sector control needs changes
  • If you need the sector to build something (expand administration to expand borders, build happiness structures, etc) you need to be able to dictate to them (perhaps with a cost). Right now all you can do is set focus and hope. Sectors should take the micromanagement out of your hands generally, but still let you do what needs to be done if needed.
    
  • Costs influence to add or remove worlds, which is in freakishly short supply.
    • Bug: Costs influence to remove even before you confirm sector composition. Should only cost on actual action,not hypothetical.
  • Need to be able to set a general policy for observation posts for your empire (so sectors don't start infiltrating when you wanted to passive), and override if you want to. Alternatively, observations posts should stay under player control even in sectors.
    
  • Sectors do not make use of robotic pops.
  • Sectors need to be able to build and upgrade defenses. Militia or "sector guard" troops, where you need to spend influence or edict to take them off guard duty and add them to your regular forces.

Flavor Improvements:

• Observation posts not dynamic enough.
  • Direct conquest (invade the planet and forcibly add it to the empire; right now you only have infiltration to do it subtly).
    • Of course, needs ability to do anything with primitives outside borders as previously mentioned.
  • Subtle and unsublte cultural influence options in addition to outright infiltration needed (ie Vorlons, Overlords, Uplift Patrons and Clients)
  • Options to enslave for resources (with breakdown for subtly ie "pretend to be gods" ala goauld, "hide from the masses" so only the leaders know (less efficient but doesn't leave a negative disposition toward you later)).
  • Sterilize and stripmine for really nasty races.
    
  • Berserkers (with associated risks).
  • Harvest slaves, with overt and covert options
  • Purposefully suppress advancement
    • I realize a lot of these are evil options but that's the point: you don't really have the ability to be an "evil empire" if you want to right now.