My wishlist

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DarthVicious
Posts: 98
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2022 7:38 pm

My wishlist

Post by DarthVicious »

EDIT: Updating this post instead of creating new ones. Thanks to all the responses to my original post, and the follow ups.

I love this game!!!! What a massive breath of fresh air. A game that does not assume its audience is dumb. I love the complexity of the mechanics and the real/hard sci fi approach. This is what PC strategy gaming should be about.

I am tryign to keep my suggestions small, restricted to QoL stuff, rather than game mechanics. Ofc, totally up to the devs what they take from it, how they implement it, or whether they post it on a wall to have a laugh at. :)

GENERAL
  • A faction summary page or home page (for your own faction) would be nice. Maybe with leader portrait, current objectives, and most especially global and faction wide bonuses that you have unlocked, with expiry date if it applies. Whether these be from techs, orgs, events. Things like solar flares, economic boosts, mining bonuses, etc. While the tooltips are fantastic, they only provide totals, and not a breakdown of how it was derived, and some modifiers like solar flares, +5 mining from base visits ec, are never shown explicitly anywhere.
  • Zooming everywhere when you click something gets to be tedious, in most cases, you just want to select something and assign an order. Its not always necessary to zoom to the location. Perhaps clicking the nation flag or object icon would zoom there, but just selecting an item in a list should not zoom there.

MISSIONS
  • Checkbox "Assign Permanently" when *initiating* a mission (like public campaign, or increase unrest, or advise). Waiting for the first mission report then clicking assign permanently is unnecessary, and is usually forgotten by the time it comes around.
  • The two week mission cycle is a bit jarring. I can be browsing techs, or designing a ship, and suddenly everything closes and i get zoomed to a councillor. Can we just pause the game and flash the game speed indicator? This way i' will know its the end of the turn, without having to stop what I am doing.
  • Sometimes one of my councillors is on a ship traveling somewhere (MakeMake for e.g.) but the game insists on zooming to them despite me not able to assign them a mission. Can they be automatically skipped or ignored if they have no valid missions available?

SOLAR SYSTEM
  • Search button for navigating the solar system. So many asteroids, centaurs, trojans. I'm lost.
  • Planet Navigator/Browser window which pops up on the left when you click a planet is awesome, but would be nice if it allowed to switch between major bodies. (A planet row at the top?). So you can quickly swap from one major body to another without having to scan the solar system looking for it.
  • More popup forms to have a CONTINUE button, and not just a CLOSE button (ref war declaration, base decommisioned, etc).
  • Can we have a slider which hides objects based on size? So as i shift it to the right, only the major planets remain. Just to remove clutter. A 3 or 4 step setting would be perfect. Similarly for distance. If i am browsing jupiters moons, dont show asteroids or trojans in the background. Maybe a button or keybind to show local system only?
  • A 'tactical' view of the solar system showing enemy fleets, and their transit vectors, so you know which ones to watch out for.

INTEL - ENEMY COUNCILLORS
  • Councillor navigator/browser window which also pops up on the left to have a row of faces to allow switching to alternate councillors (rather than going to Intel screen to select alternate councillor).

FLEET MANAGEMENT
  • Split fleets should have the same home base as their 'parent fleet. It would save re assigning home base every time you split a ship or two off.
  • When setting a home base, filter the picklist to only orbital bases,, or bases with a shipyard.
  • Fleet upkeep? Is it shown anywhere?
  • The fleet navigator, is pretty nice, but is there a way to auto-filter it to 'Friendly Ports', or 'Enemy Targets', or 'Nearby Ports' without clicking or browsing through half a dozen other windows, or memorising names of asteroids that you need to send you fleets to, then trying to find those asteroids by wading through the navigator?
  • By 'Nearby Ports' i mean maybe listing 5 to 10 friendly bases sorted by travel time or dV expenditure. Browsing the Solar System and doing mental orbital mechanics calculations to try and determine whether Mars, Ceres or Jupiter is a better destination from the asteroid I am currently orbiting is painful. Surely there must be a way to optimise this?

BASE MANAGEMENT
  • Hab lists which clearly show net output (or cost) in columns, and is sortable. This way I can find that base that is draining all my nobles, or wasting water.
  • Flag a base as a 'template', so when you build a second base in the same environment you can assign the template. Let this work for modifications and base upgrades too. E.g. I can flag Mars base 1 as a template. When I plant base 2, I can just say copy 'Mars base 1'.
  • A rebuild button, for when a base is damaged in a bombardment. Rebuilds damaged/destroyed modules without me having to do each one manually.

NOTIFICATIONS - UNDER ATTACK
  • I have no idea that a region in one of my nations is being attacked by a megafauna, or an enemy army is invading it, unless I happen to see it on the globe. These notifications (if they exist) get lost in the message spam. There should be a permanent indicator for such things, that I can click on to go there.
  • Incoming enemy fleets, especially those that are only arriving in several months, are very difficult to keep track of, and remember. It would be nice to get a reminder from time to time, or just 7 days before arrival, that the aliens are about to arrive at your research ring.
Last edited by DarthVicious on Wed Dec 07, 2022 7:26 am, edited 7 times in total.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
neilwilkes
Posts: 184
Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2022 10:44 am

Re: My wishlist

Post by neilwilkes »

DarthVicious wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 5:47 am I love this game!!!!

What a massive breath of fresh air. A game that does not assume its audience is dumb. I love the complexity of the mechanics and the real/hard sci fi approach. This is what PC strategy gaming should be about.
I hear you loud & clearly, and am 100% in agreement.
DarthVicious wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 5:47 amEARLY ACCESS
I do have some concerns about tech tree bloat, fluff, and balancing, as there are lots of dead ends and unnecessary duplication, but hopefully that will be trimmed or will be less impactful once I get more familiar with the techs. So given this is early access, not going to stress too much about it. Hopefully it will get better over time.
I think the latter is the way - there are a lot of 'duplicated' techs - specifically Engines, Drives, Weaponry etc - but you just pick your direction & go there. For detailed descriptions & tutorial playthroughs, can I recommend this YouTuber's tutorial playlist?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlTK8qP ... QGSPqxHDN1
You should also follow the incredibly detailed playthrough as 'Humanity First' at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1moqo_ ... AdKgizYiv9
He explains how to navigate the tech tree (basically find your tech, right click it and see all the preliminary techs you need to go for) and also that there is indeed a lot of duplication (hence the addition of the 'obsolete tech' marker in the recent patch) and as an example look at Missile techs - you don't need them all, so just pick one & ignore the rest. It's a similar thing with reactor types for Fusion, drives - you may need 2 (an Ion drive, which is slow but gets you anywhere) plus a more 'military' drive, which will need a lot of work. I think you will find that after the first few attempts have gone horrendously wrong - at least they did for me - you'll have a far better idea of what to go for and perhaps more importantly what to ignore (and a LOT of this is exrtremely faction dependent too).
It will get easier, but there are no easy wins
DarthVicious wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 5:47 amQUICK FIXES - UI
  • Checkbox "Assign Permanently" when assigning a mission (like public campaign, or increase unrest).
  • Search button for navigating the solar system.
  • Planet Navigator popup to have a list of alternate planets (planet row at the top?).
  • Councillor navigator popup to have row of faces to allow switching to alternate councillors (rather than going to Intel screen to select alternate councillor).
  • More popup forms to have a CONTINUE button, and not just a CLOSE button (ref war declaration, base decommisioned, etc).
To go through your 'request list' and to add some of my own:
a - this already exists - permanent assignment is already an option, or am I missing something?
b - Oh, YES PLEASE!!
c - I am not sure I really understand this. Would you please elaborate?
d - Agreed.
e - Absolutely agreed, although I think I understand why it is how it is (in order to allow a timely response) there should be the option to just 'continue'

At this point I was going to add some of my own, but will instead think carefully and add later
DarthVicious
Posts: 98
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2022 7:38 pm

Re: My wishlist

Post by DarthVicious »

neilwilkes wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 1:20 pm To go through your 'request list' and to add some of my own:
a - [Permanent Assignment]this already exists - permanent assignment is already an option, or am I missing something?
You have to wait for the first mission result popup to assign permanent (if you still remember or didn't accidentally click continue). You can't assign it as 'permanent' from the outset, which would be nice. i.e. i want to assign this guy as permanent advisor.
neilwilkes wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 1:20 pm c - [Planet Navigator Popup] I am not sure I really understand this. Would you please elaborate?
The popup below. Has awesome info, and great for navigating through a planetary system. but there is no way to switch from Jupiter to Mercury or Ceres without scrolling through the entire solar system. My suggestion is to include a bar at the top to switch planets (like when launching a fleet).
TI - Planet Info Popup.png
TI - Planet Info Popup.png (207.33 KiB) Viewed 1843 times
EDIT: I took this screenshot from steam. its not one of my games.

Include a row of flags for nations where i have CP. So its easy to cycle nations rather than spinning the globe.
TI - Nation Info Popup.png
TI - Nation Info Popup.png (147.34 KiB) Viewed 1838 times
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
neilwilkes
Posts: 184
Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2022 10:44 am

Re: My wishlist

Post by neilwilkes »

Now I can see what you are referring to (much appreciated, BTW) I fully agree with each & every point above.
These would be great QoL additions, and this is the kind of category that I expect to see in Mods, as has happened before with other games.

EDIT.
Great example now - I had an Asteroid marker for a site, but cannot now find it even though I know it's name.
The Solar System Bodies should be indexed & searchable - especially those we have already surveyed.

Another one for me would be an easy way to see my controlled countries (including what and what is not CP defended) and Orbitals/Habs without having to select an orbital, go into 'Manage' and then see the list of space assets. It's a little bit click-click-click intensive when there really should be a much better integrated 'assets list' as it were, that is customizable so I can view all controlled nations, orbitals & habs (with filters for selection) so I can see quickly where I need to send a 'Defend' mission
Barleyman
Posts: 42
Joined: Sat Oct 08, 2022 6:38 pm

Re: My wishlist

Post by Barleyman »

Being able to see known enemy agent stats in one table would make it easy to target someone for "retirement" at a glance.

Having a table with sortable columns for bases would be a real boon to find your MVP bases or resource sinks.
neilwilkes
Posts: 184
Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2022 10:44 am

Re: My wishlist

Post by neilwilkes »

Barleyman wrote: Wed Nov 09, 2022 5:18 pm Being able to see known enemy agent stats in one table would make it easy to target someone for "retirement" at a glance.

Having a table with sortable columns for bases would be a real boon to find your MVP bases or resource sinks.
Agreed - very much so. On all counts
DarthVicious
Posts: 98
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2022 7:38 pm

Re: My wishlist

Post by DarthVicious »

Some game mechanics changes I would appreciate.

1. Being able to designate which region an army spawns in, or a councillor mission (policy) to change its home region. This way i wont have an army spawning on an island without a navy, or having a home base far from a vulnerable border.

2. A way to decide which army gets the navy, or re assigning the navy to a new army, possibly with a policy decision. So I can move the bloody Irish or Scottish army off the fracking island where its stuck without a navy.

3. A limit to alliances (cohesion cost for each alliance) so the AI doesnt ally every single little country in Africa.

4. Some battle info for ground battles, maybe a tooltip with relevant balance of power listing all modifiers that apply (milstrength, terrain, advisors, techs, regional and national buffs).

5. A summary screen for space battles, listing total damage inflicted or taken by each ship/weapon type. Possibly an experience points system for ships. Or a battle record.

6. For ship maneuvers in space, I would like to add the following special maneuvers. ...
- lateral thrust (left or right or up or down) that doesnt change ship orientation but gives you an easy tool to try and evade kinetics.
- accelerate or decelerate with maneuvering thrusters only. (Nonchange in orientation)
- Main engine throttle controls (increase decrease power). Emergency brake will flip the ship and apply max thrust.

7. The ability to set or adjust a reserve fuel amount so ships dont end battles out of fuel or unable to return to base.

8. Can you board/capture disabled enemy ships if you have assault marines in your fleet?

9. Ships with a repair or refuel module so you dont have to scuttle damaged ships.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
Chris D
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:24 pm

Re: My wishlist

Post by Chris D »

My first wishlist item would be an organized naming scheme for bases and stations.
At present it just assigns a name, and who knows where "Shakespeare Station" is. I take the time to change the name to start with a code telling me where the station is and what it does. The system could just ether adopt a scheme that everybody could use, or allow users to customize their station names (like they can customize "Romeo" for Resistance fleet names to something else). That screen might let them pick a naming scheme. Or like I said, just force an order upon the default.

Components that could go into the naming scheme include the fact that each planet in the system has a Unicode symbol.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/ ... m-symbols/
Pick some symbols for inner asteroids, outer asteroids, kepler belt, etc.
Add to that a moon name (if needed), an orbit, possibly a code for the size of the base (1,2,3) or station (A, B, C), an optional code (changeable by the user) so he can recognize what function class, and then finally, the random name.
♃Gan 2m RandomName. Jupiter System, Ganymede, tier two base, Mining, Name.
♃Gan LoCop RandomName. Jupiter System, Ganymede, Low Orbit, tier three, Operations center, Name.



My biggest wishlist item would be a major update of the tech tree such that you could mark items in a persistent way, and have the mark show up on the choose technology screen.
So lets say I "starred" some technologies. When I went to the pick technology screen. I could add or remove stars, but stars added on the tech tree would be there automatically. Furthermore, it would automatically add a star of a different color if I had not stared that technology but it was a prerequisite for something that I did star. If you select the tech to look at its details, it would also say something such as "XXX is 2 techs away for YYY and 4 techs from ZZZ", YYY and ZZZ being techs that I have starred.

To the two existing tech tree views (basic and full), add another view (Basic plus starred).

If we wanted to get even fancier, add an Ignore status, similar to Obsolete (Techs that have not been researched yet are not really obsolete, but they can be ignored). So we now add a 4th view, Full minus Ignored. Techs are ignored at a root tech, and all branches from that are also ignored, except for techs that might also be starred (in which case everything except the starred tech and its direct prerequisites are ignored.

If at all possible, I would love it if, from the tech tree, the user could not just mark a tech, but projects as well. When they are researched they alert as being a priority project, and start off marked in the project picker.

Further enhancements would be that instead of have a three status system (ignore, normal, starred), you have 4 or more status's, Ignore, normal, medium and high. It might use the 4 state button used so much in the game. The advantage to a 4 state system is greater flexibility and that some techs could start off preloaded to a medium priority. For example the projects that give the player their faction organization, and their winning conditions should probably start off marked. Furthermore, every project that the introductory guide tells you to do (recruit your councilors, build a station, build a dock, etc. might start off marked by default.

The reason this would be so great is that at the start you can just mark a dozen things, and know what you wish to rush, and which branches you can safely ignore without having to be constantly refering to the tech tree. Just do it right once. You could mark some ship components you want to use, and then ignore all ship components that are not on those paths. I would love this so much!



One thing that i found extremely annoying my first few hours of play was that "Publicize Alien Threat" says it will 100% unlock as soon as all prerequisites are done, and it seems to clearly indicate that the only prerequisite is "We are not alone". However it will not unlock until "Alien Operations" is researched. However that particular prerequire never shows up until it itself is unlocked. There should be some sort of clear visual or textual clue that there are hidden prerequisites that have not been unlocked yet.
anonusername
Posts: 49
Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 11:10 pm

Re: My wishlist

Post by anonusername »

My biggest wishlist items would be
1. More intelligent aliens.
1a. The aliens do a poor job of scaling their number of hab sites. In my current game, they have maintained a single mine on Io for over a decade, even once I took the war hot and starting out producing them.
1b. The aliens don't scale ship production efficiently. The alien orbitals will only have a few T3 spaceworks at best, while I can fit 8 spaceworks in a single orbital. This, in concert with 1a, makes it excessively easy for me to catch up and surpass the alien shipbuilding program in the late game.
1c. The aliens don't make proper use of forward bases. Their trickle of dreadnoughts arrive at my outposts slowly and in piecemeal, allowing me to defeat them in detail with a fraction of the investment that a proper fleet would require. Rather than use a fuel efficient route to send individual ships from the Kuiper belt to Ceres or even Mercury, they should use the maximum DV to send them to a forward supply base for refueling and rendezvous with other ships.
1d. When defending a hab, ships should be deployed around and not in front of it. I am often able to defeat hab defenders, including deadnoughts and motherships, with coilguns because they are too far forward to share the hab's PD envelope. Effectively, I fight the hab and its defending fleet separately, giving me the opportunity to defeat the aliens in detail.
1e. The aliens should have some way of producing additional exotics in-system, even if the player cannot copy it. Currently, there is little reason for them to build anything but mines, spaceworks, and hab defense. Adding an exotics production building would allow them to produce more elite ships and give them a reason to build more orbital industry. This would provide an opportunity for the player to fight the aliens over their key industrial orbitals instead of just nuking their mines.
2. Better scaling of IP with GDP. Currently, large nations with substantial GDPs are very underwhelming. A nation with 10 or 20 times the GDP will only have 3 or 4 times the IP. I understand diminishing returns, but this is excessive and encouraging micro-intensive cheese like researching "End of Empires" and releasing/reabsorbing regions for more efficient MC production. (This makes a particularly big difference with the US or China.)
3. Better heavy fusion. Currently, researching terrawatt fusion is rather underwhelming. It unlocks some nice drive paths, but the orbital reactors themselves are ridiculously inefficient. This also contributes to the Mercury dyson swarm being so dominant.
DarthVicious
Posts: 98
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2022 7:38 pm

Re: My wishlist

Post by DarthVicious »

I made a point of restricting my wishlist items to minor UI and QoL stuff,and avoided game mechanics entirely.

The gane is early access, and I trust the devs to develop things like AI ,balance, campaign to suit what they've anticipated to achieve from the game as far as it is possible to do so.

To add to my personal wish list (since 0.3.42).
- Split fleets should have the same home base as their 'parent fleet. It would save re assigning home base every time you split a ship or two off.
- When setting a home base, filter the picklist to only orbital bases,, or bases with a shipyard.
- Summary of modifiers that apply. (Global, Faction). It would be nice to have a faction 'home page' or 'summary page'', which is a one stop shop to see a list of modifiers that apply to your faction. Be it the energy crisis, a solar flare, faction bonuses derived from techs, etc).
- Hab lists which clearly show net output (or cost) in columns, and is sortable.
- Flag a base as a 'template', so when you build a second base in the same environment you can assign thr template. Let this work for modifications and base upgrades too. E.g. I can flag Mars base 1 as a template. When I plant base 2, I can just say copy 'Mars base 1'.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
anonusername
Posts: 49
Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 11:10 pm

Re: My wishlist

Post by anonusername »

Base templates would be huge. I have finally gotten a save to late game this week, and managing hab construction is really starting to drag. I have begun to leave MC unused just because I am already winning and building additional habs is boring. (The Aliens keep sending all their dreadnoughts to Ceres 1 at a time, allowing me to kill them all with a few battleships while my main fleet tours their bases. Since you can assault habs by killing the docked fleet and ending the battle before fighting the defense modules, they have not met much difficulty.)
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