Hey guys,



I've been playing ES since the second add on and seen quite a few patches and changes and finally decided to look through these forums. It's comforting to see such strong involvement between player and developer, especially on such an awesome strategy game. I made a few minor notes yesterday while playing and thought I would put them to anyone who's interested. I haven't lurked much around the forums so I apologise if any of this has been suggested/raised previously. Also, sorry for the wall of text.



Suggested improvements

1- The image that shows the hero tech-trees is very low res. I play on a pretty high res and everything looks great but this looks image looks really blurry.

2- The ability to move construction up and down the star-system ques is great, but why does it not extend to the research que?

3- I like to rename my fleets so I don't forget what their for (i.e. "colony", "north arm") but when I merge other fleets together, they sometimes default back to the auto generated names. Maybe if priority could be given to names of fleets that have been renamed, and if both have been renamed, an option box appears to pick which name you would like to conserve when merging.

4 - I found myself forgetting I had the resources to develop/restore endless wonders. Maybe a notification when there's an endless wonder able to be restored? They're pretty rare, and its disappointing when I've wasted 30 turns before I realising I've had the resources all along.

5- Infinite star-system improvements ("ind to dust" ect) should be auto-qued below any added construction. What I mean is if you have a system set to an "infinite build", and then decide to build an improvement on that system, it should automatically prioritise itself above that infinite build. The amount of times I had been waiting for constructions to finish and then realising I'de forgot to drag them above the "infinite build" was really annoying.

6 - On the completed game screen it gives you pie-graph type overview, but I don't find these useful because they only show the factors at the end-game. Maybe it's there already and I'm just missing it, but what is really needed is a graph of each factor relative to game-time, so people can adjust strategy by seeing "ahh, here between turn 60 and 70 my production fell way down, that's where I went wrong" or "I was beating everyone at science for all the way up until turn 80, what happened then?". Civ 5 has something similar and its really useful.



Other

7 - I think there may already be a mod for a "central fleet hub", but when is something like this going to be added to the main game? Having to go to each hangar and create a fleet and direct them to the one star system to be merged is very laborious (even using the shortcuts inside the empire screen). It would be nice to have a button where you could set a system as a "fleet hub" and auto-send all newly created ships there.

8 - While on the subject of fleets, how does the new weapons upgrading work on disharmony? If I research a weapon improvement, I cant work out whether the new version is applied to all current ships, only newly built ships, or I have to go in and modify the blueprints for the weapons to be added. The image for the module (the one that fills up white with each better version) is updated down in the module screen (when choosing modifications) but the top image with what the ship looks like just has plain blue pictures of the modules, and I'm unsure whether the updated versions are being added. I'm sure they are, but this may make it confusing for new players.

9 - I found no real use for choosing anything other than default formations. Not really a question, just a comment... no point choosing guillotine if the opponent changes his formation to weak ships first, you just waste firepower. Because of this, default for both is really the best option in all cases... sort of a psuedo-prisoner dilemma.

10 - Lastly, once one takes a commanding lead, there seems no incentive for other players to remain in the game. It becomes pretty obvious there's nothing you can do but watch your empire slowly fall. Really ruins multi-player when people just quit in the mid-game because they see the inevitability of loosing. Weak empires just end up hassling the dominant empire over small outer systems until the dominator finally co-ordinates his efforts. I'm guessing there's a system in development to balance this?



Again, sorry if any of these have already been raised or it's not clear what the hell I'm talking about. Just ask me to clarify :-)