well considering the time Red-XIII put in making this thread and the fact that most things he has been pointing out are good strong common sense that i share, i find it not very welcoming and quite harsh to say "things have already been suggested. Probably Not going to happen. Thanks.bye". Is it games2gether or not ? Because if things had been already suggested but because it had just been suggested once, devs think it is not really needed while they are many people who would like that feature, consciouly or not, that would be quite bad.

jetkar wrote:
However what I have been told by Moderators and what I have experienced personally doing this, is that fair amount of the community dont read the summary list and or related posts that may have been buried and they just post blindly.

It's this way everywhere. Suggestions, discussions, even support forums are like this all over the net. At best you get people who take a quick look and are experienced enough to know what not to do.



Our society has developed a "deaf speaker" mentality, but that's a separate topic... What's important, is that this creates a flood which grows faster with it's own size.

You've been sorting through this, you know how much time it takes. And most people are unable/unwilling to spend this much time.



One way to filter it out is to make closed sub-forums that are only available to forum's old-timers. These are generally much "clearer" (and much "quieter" for better or worse).



Another thing you might want to try is instating clearer, more visible rules.



For example visible tags.

Let's say there's a sub-forum recommendation stating that threads should start with ["ideatypename"] like "[Interface] We need scalable fonts" or "[Balance][Combat] Kinetic weapons need an overhaul".

When the list of threads is partially filled with these, it can get a point across to at least a part of posters.



The point of this - if you can't make someone read the rule, you can try to make that someone see it.



Last but not least - you might want to separate suggestions that focus on changing the game from suggestions that focus on expanding it. To be honest, most of expansion focused suggestions aren't important at this stage, but that's not the point. The point is - it'll be significantly easier to study them if they are separated, and the easier they are to study the less people fall down to posting without reading. Deeper separation might also help, like separating "mechanical" ideas from "gameplay" ideas. Or maybe go even deeper than that...

jetkar wrote:


I must remind you the game is still in its infancy of development with alot of things outstanding to be done. TBH should not have been released at this stage, however they want your feedback throughout the development process of the game, thats why we bought the game.



Some of your suggestions to change the interfaces may not happen even after the game has been fully developed.

As long as interface allows me to quickly manage what it was meant to allow me to manage I don't care how exactly it does that.



Relatively often I come across opinion that a game is well polished for an alpha. Some even go as far as to say it's better done than many "releases" out there. Personally I think it's fine for an alpha, but a few large changes are needed. Specifically the ones I've mentioned - scaling needs an overhaul, and interface needs to become a lot more time-friendly.



The flooded state of this forum really drops my hopes for this though.



Funny thing - those two problems seem to take care of each other - the mess in the economy allows to skip a lot of management by sacrificing an acceptably small part of efficiency. That's not an acceptable solution for a final product though, 4x games need enjoyable management routines, and that requires comfortable tools and challenging tasks.

davea wrote:
Well, let's figure out a good way to do this, so that jetkar does not get overwhelmed and new posters do not get offended. The idea is to spread out the work. Suppose a poster has 40 suggestions in one post, and out of these 10 are duplicates, 20 are near duplicates (similar ideas have been suggested) and 10 are new. Suppose there are 20 such posts. If jetkar is the only one who reads the post, investigates about the near duplicates, and writes a detailed reply on every point, then he will get far, far behind. The idea is that other people, perhaps the original poster, should take on some of this work.



Can we agree on a phrasing which jetkar can put into these 40-idea posts, which encourages the poster, but still does not wind up with jetkar doing all the work?

Firstly I am angered by individuals who make statments without thinking whats involved in doing what i have volunteered to do. Knowing them they cant do it! Please think before making statements!!



Davea has nailed it on the head I go through around 40 to 60 posts a day. 70% suggestions are repeated 20% dont make sense and need clarification and remaining 10% are actually added to summary list. I am sorry if I have to sound harsh to new posters I have no time as davea says to make a detailed report and explain. Where possible I will. I repeat I do this voluntrly by keeping everyones view. Otheriwse it will be buried like so many posts in past. I have only been able to do this as I was out of work and wanted to keep myself busy which the Dev Team know and appreciate. This will now change and I will have less time as before. You will all be surprised to learn which alot of my gaming friends know is so far I have only played 10hrs of ES and telling me to play not do this.



I do need help!! and rely on people like Davea, KNC and few others to assist me.



However what I have been told by Moderators and what I have experienced personally doing this, is that fair amount of the community dont read the summary list and or related posts that may have been buried and they just post blindly. Now the Mods & Devs appreciate that people like me keep some sort of order in the forums however its not perfect by any means.



I willing to try anything to help everyone so if you got suggestion in helping then pm me.

What is the worst that can happen? I created an ideaspace forum as suggested by this thread:

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11079-g2g-suggestion-ideas-implementation-and-voting

Here is the forum:

http://endless-space.ideascale.com/

There doesn't seem to be any way to bulk-import ideas, which is unfortunate.

When the volume of the forum was slightly less, I tried to do a detailed reply to each point a poster made, with multiple quote sections, each containing the links. I could easily have spent 30 minutes doing that for the OP in this thread. But to be honest, it gets less interesting after doing about 50 of them. I don't know the right answer either. As a development manager (not on this game) what I want to get is a prioritized list of suggestions, each one marked with an indication of how much work it is. Then I can do a bunch of high priority, small work items. The high priority, huge work items get scheduled for later, maybe much later.



How do we get there? I don't know. Here is a post by a moderator which got promptly buried:

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/7318-a-wishlist-poll-like-gog-or-similar

Here is a website which appears to allow creating a big poll:

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11079-g2g-suggestion-ideas-implementation-and-voting

daveybaby wrote:
It's difficult. I think that Red-XIII's post is great, and i agree with most of his suggestions. But there is a lot of ground that has already been gone over.



Suggestion: Split the design discussion forum in two. One for design suggestions, and one for design discussions.

Moderators (i.e. jetkar and/or others) can promote suggestion threads by moving them into the discussion forum (only mods can create threads in the discussion forum). Threads should be specific to a certain topic, and should be merged and split as required in order to keep the discussions focussed.



I know that the suggestion list already encapsulates most of this behaviour by providing a list of topics, but IMO splitting the forums will give the members a better idea of whats already been discussed and hopefully focus things a little better.



I hope that made some kind of sense, it does to me but i have a crippling hangover at the moment.

While I see some problems with this, if it would work it would save everyone a lot of time, and that'd be quite valuable. The initial construction of that structure would take a while but the longer we'd wait the more work it would be. Just making a phrase to be copy pasted into threads with too much focus kind of works but it doesn't fix the problem. I'll have a think about this, maybe we could bring the idea to a forum administrator when the idea has a clear and definitely useful shape.

fixou wrote:
So it comes back to that : what people like me or Red-XIII who are newcomers to the forum should do ? What do the devs want us to do at the stage of the devlopment ?

The system still needs improvement, that's what we all should know, so improvements are to be made, improving the Games2Gether system is an important point as well.

Most valuable to the devs are suggestions or issues that haven't been brought up yet, which requires everyone who's new to take some time and look what is being discussed already. That's the problem, especially since it is often hard to see whihc suggestion has been made or not.

i understand that they are enough suggestions and ideas on all of the threads of the design discussion section to keep the devs busy until release and even after. So now, what de we do ? I played alpha 50+ hours, i have been thinking about giving my feedback but i gave up because the thread will sink into oblivion in less than one day and will probably don't matter at all.



That's why i came to support Red-XIII, because he made the effort of giving his feedback and it didn't seem fair to me that his work was overlooked.



But it doesn't matter because you are right about everything : if we continue talking and talking, it will not probably improve the feedback to the devs and may even worsen it. And i am far less concerned about who suggest what than about the final quality of the game i payed for



So it comes back to that : what people like me or Red-XIII who are newcomers to the forum should do ? What do the devs want us to do at the stage of the devlopment ?

It's difficult. I think that Red-XIII's post is great, and i agree with most of his suggestions. But there is a lot of ground that has already been gone over.



Suggestion: Split the design discussion forum in two. One for design suggestions, and one for design discussions.

Moderators (i.e. jetkar and/or others) can promote suggestion threads by moving them into the discussion forum (only mods can create threads in the discussion forum). Threads should be specific to a certain topic, and should be merged and split as required in order to keep the discussions focussed.



I know that the suggestion list already encapsulates most of this behaviour by providing a list of topics, but IMO splitting the forums will give the members a better idea of whats already been discussed and hopefully focus things a little better.



I hope that made some kind of sense, it does to me but i have a crippling hangover at the moment.

fixou wrote:
well considering the time Red-XIII put in making this thread and the fact that most things he has been pointing out are good strong common sense that i share, i find it not very welcoming and quite harsh to say "things have already been suggested. Probably Not going to happen. Thanks.bye". Is it games2gether or not ?.

Well, let's figure out a good way to do this, so that jetkar does not get overwhelmed and new posters do not get offended. The idea is to spread out the work. Suppose a poster has 40 suggestions in one post, and out of these 10 are duplicates, 20 are near duplicates (similar ideas have been suggested) and 10 are new. Suppose there are 20 such posts. If jetkar is the only one who reads the post, investigates about the near duplicates, and writes a detailed reply on every point, then he will get far, far behind. The idea is that other people, perhaps the original poster, should take on some of this work.



Can we agree on a phrasing which jetkar can put into these 40-idea posts, which encourages the poster, but still does not wind up with jetkar doing all the work?

It's definitely a nice game, yet a few things have been bothering me. Primarily there are 3 directions I want to talk about.

1 Interface.

1+ Automatic handling of some mundane tasks.

2 Numbers.



1 Interface.

The game itself is rather fast-paced for a 4x strategy, (on normal at least) but a lot of time sinks into "pseudo management routines". Let me elaborate.



1.1 Excessive screens.

The game tools often force the player to go into an extra screen to perform a single simple operation several times per turn. Often enough to make a significant time sink-hole.



-There's no option to retrofit a ship/fleet without entering the fleet management screen.



-The planet screen is largely useless - it contains sufficiently small amount of information and options to be handled by system screen and maybe even empire screen.

--There's no indication which moons have been explored an which haven't outside of the planet screen. This forces the player to check them all separately.

--There's no option to start a planetary exploration, colonization, terraforming, or anomaly "trimming" from outside of the planet screen.

A simple check-box on system screen (and maybe even planet view sub-menu on empire management screen), which makes the game show 6 buttons on top of a planets graphics could solve this.

Terraforming is a bit more complicated though, but it's used less often so it's fine to keep it inside the planet screen.



-Auto-resolve fails. Miserably.

Combat is a simple matter of choosing 3 cards and watching a couple of indicators.

An option to simply choose (or even predefine on a temporary basis) 3 cards and click "fast resolve" would serve us better than auto-resolve does.



-Screen space is not being used enough on the system management screen.

We have enough space to show both the hangar and improvement menus simultaneously, yet we don't have this option.



1.2 Other concerns.

While the bigger problem is the time sinking, there are a few other direction to improve in.

In particular the interface doesn't seem to be well adapted to larger screens.



-There's no option to scale interface.

At the very least, fonts should be scalable. The game is long, the text is abundant and the fonts are small enough to significantly strain the eyes.



-Often enough the functions are all over the screen.

--Ship design screen wasn't designed well enough ;P.

On big screens it's somewhat of a focal strain as it is now. Move the chassis panel and the strength indicators towards the bottom of the screen, closer to "where the magic happens".

While, we're at it, there's enough space to show all 3 tabs simultaneously and without scrolling, so an option to do it would be welcome.

Although personally I'd leave that as it is - this screen is used rarely enough, and a little eye candy on this screen helps to keep the player from sinking entirely into the "numbers game".



--Similar problem happens on the battle screen. Panels are too far from each other.

I'd say move them to be at the bottom of the screen, in the middle, next to each-other.



-System management screen and planet view sub-menu in empire management screen don't show the total FIDS per population on planet.

There's no point in showing us the total FIDS per planet (or is there something I've missed?). Replace it with the total FIDS per population on planet.

There's a point in showing the total FIDS of a system before various multiplicative FIDS enhancements kick in (aka base FIDS). Might be nice to show that somewhere too.



"Eye candy" gets old quickly, and then it's functionality over everything else. Especially if we consider multi-player.

Current auto-resolve is the worst solution for a quick battle of all I've seen. And turns are very long on the human side. Most of this length is occupied by primitive mundane tasks that can be quickened.



1+ Automatic handling of some mundane tasks.

1.3 Taking out the trash

The kind of trash your AI was building before the recent update.

-"FIDS per population on planet type" kind of improvements are rarely built while none of those types of planet have been colonised. (I can see one reason, but that's rare.)

Same goes for (un)explored moons. And, unless I'm mistaken, there are "population cap per planet type" kinds of improvements as well.

Hide these by default, and give us an option "show more" for those rare cases when we need it. Duplicate it with a check-box that gets reset on leaving the improvement building menu.



-"FIDS per population on planet type" kind of improvements are virtually useless while there are no planets of those types in system. (still can be utilized with terraforming though.)

And, unless I'm mistaken, there are "population cap per planet type" kinds of improvements as well.

Hide these by default, and give us an option "show even more" for those rare cases when we need it. Duplicate it with a check-box that gets reset on leaving the improvement building menu.



-"FIDS per explored moon" and "population per planet size" improvements are useless if the system has no moons and/or no planets of relevant sizes.

Hide these. Maybe add an option to show these for "complete manual control" maniacs. (*ahem* give us an option to filter these maniacs out of MP games *ahem* <_< )



Filtering these out manually during management is an obvious decision, and an easy (yet very repetitive and time consuming) task. Let the machine handle it.



1.4 Dynamic tooltips.

By automatically filtering out some information form tooltips we can rid ourselves from even more mundane obvious tasks.

-Give us "Current efficiency" and "maximum potential efficiency" information in improvement tooltip.

There are 2 values we often calculate:

How much will the improvement give us now - to compare it's immediate efficiency with that of other improvements.

How much will it give us at maximum - for those (currently) rare cases where the improvement is not worth building.

There's a number of additional factors here, but a simple calculation based on current population and current "maximum potential" should significantly cut down the time we waste.

"Maximum potential" should include uncolonised planets and unexplored moons, but not the terraforming results or potential population cap increases (except when calculating them, obviously).



-Remove the information about planet types that are not present in the system from tooltips.

Our mind does it anyway, over and over and over and over and... is it over yet? ... and over again when we sort through countless systems. Another obvious task suited for the machine.

Of cause there are exceptions, but we will get to these in a moment.



-Remove the information about every planet type from planetary explorations.

We're building it at a specific planet, it is enough to indicate that this particular planet gets a bonus due to type.



-Add the changes in FIDS per population (ones that happen from changing how the planet corresponds to type-based FIDS improvements) to terraforming tooltips.

Terraforming is an advanced decision though, and not exactly a common enough practice, so this isn't exactly a big and important change.



This doesn't cover all the cases though, obviously (or this game would have been as boring as sudoku). For more complex decisions we'll need that excessive information.

As in 1.3 give us an option and a check-box to go from "simple" tooltips to "advanced" tooltips. (Isn't it funny how "simple" tooltips take more effort to code then "advanced"?)



1.5 Rally points.

A well developed system can produce a ship every other turn (and that's on normal). A well developed empire will be producing several ships per turn in various systems.

For obvious reasons just having them sit there and wait while there's an ongoing conflict is generally a bad idea.

That means that every turn a player has to check all hangars, create several fleets and send them all to a few "distribution points" from which he will later send them to the parts where they are needed.

An option to automatically send all new ships from one system to another can save a lot of time.



1.6 Retrofitting

Ship redesigns come at different intervals, and for different reasons. There are cases where an old design is not efficient enough to be used at all any more.

In these cases a player will have to retrofit his entire navy. An option to automatically retrofit every ship of an old design as soon as possible would be nice.

This is more of a convenience option than needed tool though.



1.7 AI.

The ultimate tool in ridding human from mundane tasks and saving time is a program. (well, unless you've got a magic wand or something similar, but jokes aside, it's a program)

And you've even implemented that. (didn't test it though)

However, what I'm talking about is a customizable script.

The above mentioned mundane tasks fill most of the "governing" anyway, most of what's left for the machine to decide can be defined by a relatively simple preference system.

For a number of good reasons, this isn't exactly a common feature though, so I'm not going to waste time going into details here. I'm just throwing it here,for a slight chance that you'll consider it.



I can't express this enough - you really need to cut down on the time we spend performing simple mundane tasks. This harms the experience as a whole, and will kill most of the fun from MP.



Part 2 moved to a different post due to size limit.

Red-XIII I have watched this thread and did not involve myself. I volunteered in assisting the Creative Director & Dev team creating a summary list of all the new ideas and improvements into game and discussing them with all in the community. Repeatedly their are number suggestions that KNC, Davea and I can see that have been said more than once and already raised with the Dev Team.



The Dev Team wants new inspired ideas for the game however depends what can and cannot be done.



I must remind you the game is still in its infancy of development with alot of things outstanding to be done. TBH should not have been released at this stage, however they want your feedback throughout the development process of the game, thats why we bought the game.



Some of your suggestions to change the interfaces may not happen even after the game has been fully developed.



This does not stop you in raising your concerns and suggestions and ideas as the Dev team will consider them.

Red-XIII wrote:
I think you're a little to quick to jab.



I checked that thread. I didn't read every suggestion there, but I did take a look at the list. Didn't notice anything regarding changes to interface that I'm talking about or scaling.

I'm posting my idea about hero changes along with scaling because they are meant to work in tandem.

Sorry if I'm too quick here but currently we're just dealing with too much reposts here. Also it usually helps a lot not to put too many suggestions into one thread, as not to generalize the thread name and in order to have a thread for discussion about a specific topic. That way the devs can see the summarized suggestion and can then directly take a look at the thread and the suggestions themself instead of having to dig a specific suggestion out of a big thread with many partially unrelated suggestions.

Red-XIII wrote:
I did notice that partially I'm repeating what others have said. But I didn't dig around long enough to see the same solutions as I'm suggesting, and the suggestion listing thread didn't direct me to these either.

I know that there are a few unlinked suggestions, and I know that problem, already had it myself. In that case I would recommend you to either ask jetkar if there is a thread and it's just unlinked, or create a thread to be linked in the first place.

KNC wrote:
I don't see if you have only reposts here but so far I don't see anything new. If you really want to help look in this thread if your suggestion has been made already: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13096-updated-summary-of-suggestions-ideas



If you have something new to suggest, make a specific thread and post it in the following thread. If it is something small post it directly in this thread: forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?1323-Summary-of-suggestions-so-far-Discussion

I think you're a little to quick to jab.



I checked that thread. I didn't read every suggestion there, but I did take a look at the list. Didn't notice anything regarding changes to interface that I'm talking about or scaling.

I'm posting my idea about hero changes along with scaling because they are meant to work in tandem.



I did notice that partially I'm repeating what others have said. But I didn't dig around long enough to see the same solutions as I'm suggesting, and the suggestion listing thread didn't direct me to these either.



I wasn't born yesterday, I don't expect to be the only person with suggestions, actually, I was shocked not to find anyone else concerned about all the time wasted due to unoptimized interface.



I also have a bunch of simpler, more obvious ideas, but I'm holding out on these exactly because I expect them to be mentioned by others. Either repeatedly or eventually - that depends on how common these are.

4x_Fan wrote:
From my experience, auto-resolve doesn't use cards, so you lose a significant amount of +damage or mitigation.

From my experience it's worse than that.



Example:

I have a fleet sitting in a system, intercepting enemy ships. Been at it for a long time, seen the same ships over and over being wasted. Even had my cards blocked several times, still won in 1st or 2nd phase without loosing anything EVERY single time. And STILL when I press auto-resolve I lose a ship.



Can't trust it to handle anything stronger than a scout. That's got to be more severe than simply not using cards.



Actually this kind of incompetence is surprising. It's almost like it isn't even trying to emulate an actual battle.

AI itself isn't doing much better either, looks like it never checks what is it fighting against.

Most of the time it seems that it is making random choices (like blocking my missiles when I don't have any) but it's still not failing as miserably as auto-battle does.

4x_Fan wrote:
From my experience, auto-resolve doesn't use cards, so you lose a significant amount of +damage or mitigation.

It doesn't use cards *at all*? That is unexpected. It really sucks, too, since there is no way to fast-forward. It seems that some kind of selection technique would not be very hard. If it were moddable, I bet we could whip up one in a couple of days.

davea wrote:
As other poster have pointed out, this feedback is very useful but very similar to feedback which other players have given. On the particular point I have quoted here, do you have any details? I have done one or two experiments but not enough to come to the conclusion you assert. Do you know that autoresolve is worse? Any details or experiments would be helpful. My personal preference is to rely on auto-resolve, but I want to know for sure whether I am making a mistake.

From my experience, auto-resolve doesn't use cards, so you lose a significant amount of +damage or mitigation.

Red-XIII wrote:
-Auto-resolve fails. Miserably.

Combat is a simple matter of choosing 3 cards and watching a couple of indicators.

An option to simply choose (or even predefine on a temporary basis) 3 cards and click "fast resolve" would serve us better than auto-resolve does.

As other poster have pointed out, this feedback is very useful but very similar to feedback which other players have given. On the particular point I have quoted here, do you have any details? I have done one or two experiments but not enough to come to the conclusion you assert. Do you know that autoresolve is worse? Any details or experiments would be helpful. My personal preference is to rely on auto-resolve, but I want to know for sure whether I am making a mistake.

I don't see if you have only reposts here but so far I don't see anything new. If you really want to help look in this thread if your suggestion has been made already: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13096-updated-summary-of-suggestions-ideas



If you have something new to suggest, make a specific thread and post it in the following thread. If it is something small post it directly in this thread: forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?1323-Summary-of-suggestions-so-far-Discussion

2. Numbers.



2.1 Scaling.

-FIDS don't scale well enough across the game.

Change the earlier improvements to give flat increases. This'll help counteract the disparity in starting conditions, and reduce the all-importance of administrators across the game.



--Leave most of the "per population" improvements for mid-game. Reduce the maximum FIDS per population "on any" (aka "on planet") from improvements.

Make no more than a total of 2 per FIDS type.

You've created a big diversity in systems.

Early on it's a balance disaster, and you let it be. Having an extra 3+ FIDS of every type on every planet kills that diversity mid-game when it would actually start doing some good.



--Change late-game improvements to be percentage based.

This keeps, the diversity intact, and still makes big developed systems much better than undeveloped or inhospitable ones.

Rework their building costs, maybe even make it scale somehow with system development. Investment return time on some of the late improvements reaches 70+ turns.



--Increase the cost on economic improvements, maybe even make them mirror the improvement type. (introducing per population costs and percentage based costs)

Currently only a few rare economic improvements are not worth building in some cases. (moon-based ones, and a few others)

Anything else pulls it's weight and brings more to the table over 95% of the time.

Ideally they should be half improvements half customizations.



2.2 Heroes.

My primary concern here is the flat bonuses.

Obviously flat bonuses are good on newly colonized systems, and currently administrator is the strongest tool available for quickly bringing a fledgeling system on par with oldest systems.

That's great, I like it, but there's a number of related problems.

-Administrators are best used when a colony is starting out. Once it's up and running at it's best (or close to it's best), it's much better to move the administrator to a new colony.

-Nobody beats administrator. Level 5 Administrator is more useful than a level 20 pilot/commander/adventurer, corporate isn't anywhere near either.

My solution? Rework the division between governors.

Give administrator the "flat increase" bonuses to all FIDS, tie these to labour. Give corporate the "percentage increase" bonuses to all FIDS, tie this to wits.

Don't give all those crazy +25 and +50 bonuses in one go. Make administrator gain them gradually over the course of the game with Labour and perks.

Rework the exp system, to let governors keep up with fighters in term of levels.

This'll still make administrator the most useful hero early on, but along with rescaling above this'll move him from outcome decider down to a powerful bonus.

And later on, corporate on a developed system can give a sizeable increase in empire's total outputs.

Make his bonuses multiply the system's totals to the point where mid-game on a big developed system he gives more FIDS than the administrator, and late-game on a big system in the middle of it's development course he gives about the same FIDS as administrator.