Posted by Belhoriann

"In the galaxy view and in general :



- Replace the known stars by a simple representation of the solar systems, with the planets orbiting the star. I think it could add to the sensation of discovery (instead of simple red and white dots) and scale of the galaxy. Also, I love to see orbiting rings, don't you ?



- Add some tiny ships traveling from the home system to the other colonies to represent the trade routes.



- Add some space anomalies, like black holes, supernovae... Random events and independante factions are needed too.



In the system view :



- Add more visual activities at the surface of very populated planets. Currently there are 2 or 3 ships and some lights, this is great, but not enough. Also it could be cool to have visual influence from the different improvements built on the planets.



- Add a solar system representation, with orbit rings (yes again). Or at least you could put the sun at the left of the planets representations to give a sense of scale."







I like that focus. Also you might add destroyable/capturable pirate bases (scalable)

Honestly? Most habitable planets are more likely going to be moons rotating around a gas giant. So why not have some solar systems show moons orbiting around gas giants. I think some scale would be cool.

Yes, I think there could (and should) be some more random "life" to the galaxy. Passing satellites, random asteroids, random super-novas, etc... but I do think that this is an alpha and those kinds of fine details will be worked out in the beta phase.

I like the idea of little representations of freighters .

Black holes, Nebulas.. but maybe also some space creatures .. maybe defending some systems.

I agree that there could be a bit more "going on" in the universe, but I think I remember seeing somewhere that the dev's were planning on adding things like this and expanding upon the history of the universe, etc.

I really don't care about planets orbiting suns.



What I want to see, is that when you zoom on a planet, you see settlements depending on the planet's population.

I totally agree with this. I love the minimalistic nature of the UI, but it would be so much cooler to see little ships moving along trade routes (and to see the broken trade route system fixed), as well as some independent (spacefaring) civilizations that aren't abstracted into anomalies.



I'd love to see more of the abstracted parts of the game become customizable, but I think that we should leave that for the modders. The core game can remain simple, and all the other bells and whistles should be optional.

Random encounters! Space Monsters! Left over automated weapons from wars long past..... Ancient ships left adrift... Stranded heroes to rescue... Cosmic storms... Abandoned minefields.... Nebula with effects on the game.... Plagues!!!! Unique, ancient techs.... One-way wormholes.... Rogue planetiods.... Relic stargates....

Wouldn't mind having to build trade fleets and the like. Troop ships for invasions.



Also, I jacked my resolution to max and noticed some "hulks" floating around systems when you are in battle. I'm wondering/thinking these are Endless race wrecks.... why can't we send out research teams to delve them for bonus techs, or science bonus? Even if they had no working technology to recover or intact enough to reverse engineer, the metal from the hulls would be a valuable resource to reuse or reverse engineer. Presuming they actually are supposed to be Endless hulks. Don't buy they are sposed to be asteroids, asteroids don't have long arms and things reaching out from the main body, like the front thingies on the human ships.



Just saying. If I was running an empire and found Endless wrecks floating all over my back yard, I'd send someone to look at them.

+1 for livening up the environment with animations, and events, tech advances etc. with cutscenes, or even small pictures.

Sleel wrote:
Wouldn't mind having to build trade fleets and the like. Troop ships for invasions.



Also, I jacked my resolution to max and noticed some "hulks" floating around systems when you are in battle. I'm wondering/thinking these are Endless race wrecks.... why can't we send out research teams to delve them for bonus techs, or science bonus? Even if they had no working technology to recover or intact enough to reverse engineer, the metal from the hulls would be a valuable resource to reuse or reverse engineer. Presuming they actually are supposed to be Endless hulks. Don't buy they are sposed to be asteroids, asteroids don't have long arms and things reaching out from the main body, like the front thingies on the human ships.



Just saying. If I was running an empire and found Endless wrecks floating all over my back yard, I'd send someone to look at them.

To me they looked like hunks of asteroids being mined in orbit or maybe ships under construction

Well I would welcome more random events. And some that not only give you a bonus/malus of x% in some area, but some like an overthrown pirate leader fleeing fron his/her clan seeking refuge in your territory and offering you his/her services. Then you can have a pirate fleet and build pirate ships. Or an enemy planet seeing your great empire and trying to switch sides. Or just simple ones as in Master of Orion 1/2 like hyperspace anomaly preventing all travel for x turns.

Regarding graphics, I would like to see more diversity in planets and systems. If there is a fleet in the system, I would like to see it orbiting my planet/s. And why can not we have starbases? Or at least ground based weapon batteries? Planetary shields? I know this is only alpha, but I would like to know if these features are being planned for the future.

Belhoriann wrote:
Adding more random events and space anomalies full of dangers but also full of treasures could increase a lot the "explore" and "expand" sides of this 4X game

Also, the aestethics elements we propose are quite easy to add during an alpha play test because it doesn't require heavy gameplay changes.

All in all, I want more immersion because this is strongly related to the 4X experience.

I fully agree with this. The events and space anomalies are the part i miss.

The devs already made some changes to the galactic and system views, for the better IMO. Hopefully they will make more improvements in this direction. Keep posting your suggestions and impressions guys

While I find a lot of things good the way they are there is a lot of room for improvements, primarily stellar anomalies like black holes and stuff. But I'm very sure these or on their way and I made a suggestion thread for them as well so I don't think I need to go into detail here. Apart from that it indeed would be really could of you could see the planets orbiting the star if you zoom in far enough, especially because that might give you a rough idea of where to send your scouts, just like in realitiy where you can survey a system from a distance.

stevenmc409 wrote:
To me they looked like hunks of asteroids being mined in orbit or maybe ships under construction

Ships under construction don't have debris floating around them in a cloud. And you wouldn't build them in chunks at odd angles to each other, praying that they don't get bumped and ram into each other before being attached. Asteroids you would mine in place. No point paying the cost of pushing a rock of mostly slag to planetary orbit when all you want are the metals, never mind the chance of screwing up you trajectory, dropping it on the planet and starting an extinction cycle. I never noticed how busted ship like they looked till I maxed out my resolution.

stevenmc409 wrote:
I want events like in Gal Civ 2 where you are presented a problem and are given a list of possible actions with a list of benefits and downsides to each action, that and anomalies like black holes but have them offer some benefits or risks (fleets travling in a black hole system might be destroyed).

Might?? The gravity shear from one side of the ship to the other would rip a passing ship to shreds and add it to the accretion disc. Black holes toss around stars like frisbees and rip them apart like confetti. Your ship would be nothing to it. Sagitarius A*'s "system" (our galaxy's central black hole) includes several stars orbiting it in a death dance. The boffins recently recorded a flare up from it as it snacked on a star. So yeah, will, destroy you ship. Then there is the radiation.

SomeGuy wrote:
Concerning independent factions, in my other game, I started exploring an untouched section of the galaxy. The map was split in two with me and two other AIs on one side, and the other AI on the other all alone. He hadn't expanded to encompass the whole half of that galaxy, but when I went in to explore, I found some of the systems were already occupied by pirate factions. Fascinating.

Then he had expanded. And they captured his systems.

Sverr wrote:
I Voted no for one main reason, immersion. While I really like the game in its current state, I would love it if I felt like I was actually a part of a thriving galaxy. I believe more visual elements would have a huge impact in this regard. Visual elements changes that I believe could have a huge impact are:



- Less monochromatic galaxies: For the most part every star that isn't part of the game is one tint. I believe there could be slightly more variation in color without the risk of players confusing the background stars with those that they are able to visit.



- Twinkle: There is an abundance of gas and dust out there in space. Would love to see a few twinkling stars every now and then. As it is now, It is quite hard to tell if there is any brightness variation at all.



- The Background: From the few games I've played it is always the same.



- And every point addressed in the OP.

Stars don't twinkle. You only see them twinkle because of atmospheric distortion, same reason you see "ripples" over a road giving a mirage effect. No air, no twinkle.

Godeke wrote:
I'm going to vote a tentative "no". I really, really like the streamlined UI, so anything that clutters it up needs to be carefully weighed. Random events are fun, but they can also be unbalancing, so I prefer the kinds of things you found in MOO II (a lot of which was "flavor text news") over the empire crushing events that Sword of the Stars can throw at you.

We already have random events. Some that make absolutely no sense. Like a star going nova and it's shock wave somehow affecting the entire galaxy and messing up everything's sensors. Never mind a nova's shock wave doesn't move anywhere near light speed, much less fast enough to affect an entire galaxy instantaneously. Nor would the force of a nova reach across a galaxy, any more then the nuke dropped on Hiroshima rattled windows in Los Angeles.





Also, re: suggestion list. Quasars are distant galaxies with actively accreting central black holes. The "light" from them is the radiation shot out along their axes in a jet, if the jet is aimed right at us we see it like we would see a laser in the eye. Those are called blazars. They are just so far away they look like stars. Quasar = Quasi Stellar Obect