- Non-tile planetary improvements
Not every building should take up an entire tile to operate. There should be incremental improvements in planets infrastructure that shouldn't require 1/16th of the planet's surface to build.
- Organic looking synthetics / Replicants
When you get up to making synthetic people, they should look like sythetic people, ala Alien or Blade Runner. Alternatively, make an alternative for replicants that are bioengineered machines that absolutely look like people.
- Species group field (all species with the same field are seen as the same species)
Come on, you knew that people were going to want to play as humans. You guys said that pretty regularly. So, put a special field in character creation that allows all species that have the same text that field to recognise each other as subspecies of the same origins. This would give a bonus to relations (more likely to cooperate with the same species) and lessen xenophobia between empires (xenophobes might be a little wary, but not comparable to their malus against ACTUAL aliens)
- Create new supspecies
I should be able to, once I'm genetically savvy enough, just create a new subspecies, even if my main traits species traits are all expended. If I want to say "Hey, I need a species to live on desert planets, but I also want to make them breed really quickly. Or maybe I want to engineer some people into supersoldiers who are dumb at the sciences. By the end of the game, I should have huge freedom to engineer biology based solutions to my problems. If I focused on biology, I should be able to outcompete synthetics in my chosen areas.
- Lower hability on home worlds.
Here's an idea: the homeworlds are WORSE than normal planets of their type. Yes, people evolved on their home planets, but they also ecologically ravaged them. I want to see home worlds as ruined worlds with failing ecosystems that are being fled. That why people are going to space to begin with, because there is little left on the homeworld. Have a mid-game tech to repair the ecosystem using the knowledge of xenobiology acquired from living on other worlds.
- Ability to limit species to certain phenotypes
Add the functionality to make a subspecies have just one or two phenotypes. This would allow for species of humans like the Fremen, or maybe genetically engineered people who look different (eg. pale skin and golden, red and violet eyes)
- Extra techs in genetics and psi for wider sociological impact.
Right now the treatment of psi and genetic techs are very unimaginative. Psionics are ground troops, jump drives and precog computers. Genetics are a bit more diverse, but we don't really get to see the effects of these on a wider-sociological level. Both of these technologies should revolutionise society. They're both somewhat black swan events.
- Bioweapons
Retrovirus bombs that allow you to depopulate a planet without damaging the infrastructure. It should grant the diplomatic genocide malus.
- Weight special resources to players who have the material on their planets already.
I think this might partially be in the game already, but if I have zro dust or whatever on my planets, that should bring that tech up. I'm tired of having all these special resources come up to research, only to invest all that time just to discover that my scientists had no access to this resource to begin with. If I research a resource, I should have access to it.
- Larger despots of resources
Resources should be less rare. If only a few planets in the galaxy have Pithrim or Zro dust, they shouldn't only have 1 or 2 . They should have closer to 15 or 20. Otherwise, it's not worth wasting time on, because it's too rare to be useful.
- Colony ships should be able to land on any planet
- Per biome hab techs
So, colony ships should be able, from the start, land on any habitable planet. Then the "colonise desert planet" tech, should then be +20% hab to desert planets (ala the invention of stillsuits or whatever). Make people miserable to live on the wrong planets and make hability as a modifier to how quickly they reproduce or how much food they can generate.
- Hab modified armies
Armies should be worse at invading planets they can't live on. Army effectiveness should be multiplied by hability rating for the species.
- Armies acquire tech on conquest
Why do you only get science from blowing up space based objects? There must be treasure troves of technology to be found in alien cities. Beyond that, there needs to be a better reason to invade worlds. Right now, it's a chore, especially with the baffling choice to not allow transports to be upgraded. As it stands, invading planets is something you want to avoid if you can, because the logistics of it suck. Give some reasons for risking your ground troops.
- Military Science ships
Give us the option to build science ships that can fight back. In the mid-game, I don't want to concern myself with crystal entities and mining drones. Space monsters, in general, suck. Dealing with them is a chore. That some of them move from system to system and cause all your non-combat ships to flee (disrupting their queues) is just work and shouldn't be in the game. Give us some ability to have our civilian ships deal with early game threats instead of having to micromanage them. A solution might be to get rid of science ships and just make the science lab an expensive component that you can put on a "war ship". Fleets could then be assigned scientists, which would turn them into science fleets, which make them operate like science ships, but with enough teeth to defend themselves
- Science auto-explore
That said, allow us to just give our scientists an order to explore in a certain direction. If you used this to tell a scientist to continue exploring after it saw something which may be scary.
- Tiles you can build on, tiles you can't
Make it so every tile in the game isn't suitable to build structures on. "Oceans", if you will. Now on a desert planet, the "ocean" could be sand, on Ocean planets, they could be storm zones. It's places on the planet that have resources to harvest, but aren't suitable to actually build structures on. This would probably require larger planets in general. Maybe limit the pops to the number of buildable tiles and have archology techs to increase the supportable pops per buildable tiles (or have arcologies to be buildings that are built per tile, but doesn't take up the tile like a farm or whatever)
- The Scourge, empire colour selection, mod support, multiplayer server lists
FFS, fix them. How did those bugs ever get by?
Spy and Society expansion ideas:
I've grouped these together, because I think they support each other well and represent potential areas for expansion.
- Non separatist factions
There should be factions that just represent powerful forces within societies, ala estates in EU4. Right now, empires feel really non-dynamic. The loyalist faction should be done away with and replaced with a number of powerful institutions that you get bonuses for favouring. To draw examples, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood or the spacing guild of dune, or the the guild in empire of the fading suns (that might declare the 3rd Terran Republic if they get too powerful.) Have different ethos gravitate to different sorts of factions. Individualists might gravitate to a liberal party, spiritual might gravitate to a church, etc. Have these movements try to seize power if they get too powerful and disloyal
- Subcharacter retinues
Each main tier character should have the ability to recruit lieutentants (up to three?), who augment their skills and loyalties. An emperor with a bene gesserit advisor would increase the "influence" of the bene gesserit faction, for example. However, an admiral with loyalties to a faction might defect in a war.
- Character ethics, hidden and real
With a wider range of personalities per empire, each character should have their own personal ethics. There should be two per character : declared ethics and actual ethics. The more liberal the regime the more likely a character will own up to having ethics that are not inline with the regime (especially if their personal ethics aren't opposed to the regime). These ethics would determine their sympathies and loyalties
- Spy System
I know a bad spy system is bad, however, I think with more characters, you can make an interesting one. With a deeper character system the spy system can be character based. Use your secret police to investigate loyalties and ethics of your powerful members. Use it to sniff out sympathetic officers in the enemy ranks and black mail characters into treason against their people. Defecting Admirals might lose a battle that was sure to win, while defecting scientists would bring with them technology. A model for this could be the spy system from KOEI's games, where instead of being empire based, you send characters to deal with other characters.
Not every building should take up an entire tile to operate. There should be incremental improvements in planets infrastructure that shouldn't require 1/16th of the planet's surface to build.
- Organic looking synthetics / Replicants
When you get up to making synthetic people, they should look like sythetic people, ala Alien or Blade Runner. Alternatively, make an alternative for replicants that are bioengineered machines that absolutely look like people.
- Species group field (all species with the same field are seen as the same species)
Come on, you knew that people were going to want to play as humans. You guys said that pretty regularly. So, put a special field in character creation that allows all species that have the same text that field to recognise each other as subspecies of the same origins. This would give a bonus to relations (more likely to cooperate with the same species) and lessen xenophobia between empires (xenophobes might be a little wary, but not comparable to their malus against ACTUAL aliens)
- Create new supspecies
I should be able to, once I'm genetically savvy enough, just create a new subspecies, even if my main traits species traits are all expended. If I want to say "Hey, I need a species to live on desert planets, but I also want to make them breed really quickly. Or maybe I want to engineer some people into supersoldiers who are dumb at the sciences. By the end of the game, I should have huge freedom to engineer biology based solutions to my problems. If I focused on biology, I should be able to outcompete synthetics in my chosen areas.
- Lower hability on home worlds.
Here's an idea: the homeworlds are WORSE than normal planets of their type. Yes, people evolved on their home planets, but they also ecologically ravaged them. I want to see home worlds as ruined worlds with failing ecosystems that are being fled. That why people are going to space to begin with, because there is little left on the homeworld. Have a mid-game tech to repair the ecosystem using the knowledge of xenobiology acquired from living on other worlds.
- Ability to limit species to certain phenotypes
Add the functionality to make a subspecies have just one or two phenotypes. This would allow for species of humans like the Fremen, or maybe genetically engineered people who look different (eg. pale skin and golden, red and violet eyes)
- Extra techs in genetics and psi for wider sociological impact.
Right now the treatment of psi and genetic techs are very unimaginative. Psionics are ground troops, jump drives and precog computers. Genetics are a bit more diverse, but we don't really get to see the effects of these on a wider-sociological level. Both of these technologies should revolutionise society. They're both somewhat black swan events.
- Bioweapons
Retrovirus bombs that allow you to depopulate a planet without damaging the infrastructure. It should grant the diplomatic genocide malus.
- Weight special resources to players who have the material on their planets already.
I think this might partially be in the game already, but if I have zro dust or whatever on my planets, that should bring that tech up. I'm tired of having all these special resources come up to research, only to invest all that time just to discover that my scientists had no access to this resource to begin with. If I research a resource, I should have access to it.
- Larger despots of resources
Resources should be less rare. If only a few planets in the galaxy have Pithrim or Zro dust, they shouldn't only have 1 or 2 . They should have closer to 15 or 20. Otherwise, it's not worth wasting time on, because it's too rare to be useful.
- Colony ships should be able to land on any planet
- Per biome hab techs
So, colony ships should be able, from the start, land on any habitable planet. Then the "colonise desert planet" tech, should then be +20% hab to desert planets (ala the invention of stillsuits or whatever). Make people miserable to live on the wrong planets and make hability as a modifier to how quickly they reproduce or how much food they can generate.
- Hab modified armies
Armies should be worse at invading planets they can't live on. Army effectiveness should be multiplied by hability rating for the species.
- Armies acquire tech on conquest
Why do you only get science from blowing up space based objects? There must be treasure troves of technology to be found in alien cities. Beyond that, there needs to be a better reason to invade worlds. Right now, it's a chore, especially with the baffling choice to not allow transports to be upgraded. As it stands, invading planets is something you want to avoid if you can, because the logistics of it suck. Give some reasons for risking your ground troops.
- Military Science ships
Give us the option to build science ships that can fight back. In the mid-game, I don't want to concern myself with crystal entities and mining drones. Space monsters, in general, suck. Dealing with them is a chore. That some of them move from system to system and cause all your non-combat ships to flee (disrupting their queues) is just work and shouldn't be in the game. Give us some ability to have our civilian ships deal with early game threats instead of having to micromanage them. A solution might be to get rid of science ships and just make the science lab an expensive component that you can put on a "war ship". Fleets could then be assigned scientists, which would turn them into science fleets, which make them operate like science ships, but with enough teeth to defend themselves
- Science auto-explore
That said, allow us to just give our scientists an order to explore in a certain direction. If you used this to tell a scientist to continue exploring after it saw something which may be scary.
- Tiles you can build on, tiles you can't
Make it so every tile in the game isn't suitable to build structures on. "Oceans", if you will. Now on a desert planet, the "ocean" could be sand, on Ocean planets, they could be storm zones. It's places on the planet that have resources to harvest, but aren't suitable to actually build structures on. This would probably require larger planets in general. Maybe limit the pops to the number of buildable tiles and have archology techs to increase the supportable pops per buildable tiles (or have arcologies to be buildings that are built per tile, but doesn't take up the tile like a farm or whatever)
- The Scourge, empire colour selection, mod support, multiplayer server lists
FFS, fix them. How did those bugs ever get by?
Spy and Society expansion ideas:
I've grouped these together, because I think they support each other well and represent potential areas for expansion.
- Non separatist factions
There should be factions that just represent powerful forces within societies, ala estates in EU4. Right now, empires feel really non-dynamic. The loyalist faction should be done away with and replaced with a number of powerful institutions that you get bonuses for favouring. To draw examples, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood or the spacing guild of dune, or the the guild in empire of the fading suns (that might declare the 3rd Terran Republic if they get too powerful.) Have different ethos gravitate to different sorts of factions. Individualists might gravitate to a liberal party, spiritual might gravitate to a church, etc. Have these movements try to seize power if they get too powerful and disloyal
- Subcharacter retinues
Each main tier character should have the ability to recruit lieutentants (up to three?), who augment their skills and loyalties. An emperor with a bene gesserit advisor would increase the "influence" of the bene gesserit faction, for example. However, an admiral with loyalties to a faction might defect in a war.
- Character ethics, hidden and real
With a wider range of personalities per empire, each character should have their own personal ethics. There should be two per character : declared ethics and actual ethics. The more liberal the regime the more likely a character will own up to having ethics that are not inline with the regime (especially if their personal ethics aren't opposed to the regime). These ethics would determine their sympathies and loyalties
- Spy System
I know a bad spy system is bad, however, I think with more characters, you can make an interesting one. With a deeper character system the spy system can be character based. Use your secret police to investigate loyalties and ethics of your powerful members. Use it to sniff out sympathetic officers in the enemy ranks and black mail characters into treason against their people. Defecting Admirals might lose a battle that was sure to win, while defecting scientists would bring with them technology. A model for this could be the spy system from KOEI's games, where instead of being empire based, you send characters to deal with other characters.
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