Hello,



I'm a recent player and this is my first suggestion post, so feel free to point out what I've missed



After playing several games and battles I've come to a realisation that basically you do not know what fleet composition you attack before the engagement window appears.



You can somewhat predict, judging by your own military tech, that they all begin with Kinetic, then some primitive rockets and beams appear, then it's really all about rockets since even the auto-upgrade feature seems to think that this is "the way to go".



As of now it really feels as lack of information on engagement and a certain limit to designing various ship patterns because you either 1) design overall-defended ships with lower firepower output or 2) put it all in rockets as auto-upgrade suggest and hope to steamroll everything in Phase 1.



Don't know if it's only my thing, but I've come with a suggestion nevertheless:



1) You should be able to see the tech composition of the orbiting fleet BEFORE the engagement.

"Scientific" explanation: star system-wide scanners should be able to identify the ship's electronics and give at least an overall idea of what weapons does it use, or you could basically SEE the plating / shield plates / flak turrets on the ship visually.

Game Mechanics: depending on star system improvements which give +scan you could see the detailed info on the attacking fleet. Also, Heroes have this +scan ability too. Modules and Abilities should be able to counter it, hiding at least parts of the info.

Consequences: more strategy - you can redesign your nearest fleet to counter more specifically the fleet attacking your system or build a new fleet to counter the threat. And all the reconnaissance / first attack fleets should be balanced, without giving way to one single tech-tree.



2) In the Arrival phase you should be able to issue individual targets to your ships for EACH phase.

"Scientific" explanation: pretty self-explanatory, because it opens the possibilities to use specialised ship-killers and also is closer to what we all see in space operas.

Game Mechanics: should the Arrival phase be longer, the player can assign each of his ships to attack the opposition. It can be presented as a simple 2-column window with fleet lists for each phase. If the player fails to meet the time, "default" mode kicks in (as in-game at the moment).

Consequences: the player can design specific "glass-cannons" to destroy certain enemy ships, also it will add strategy and will grant the ability to focus-fire enemy ships (the enemy will do the same ) Combats will become just a little bit longer, but will have more strategic depth and involve more thining ahead.



So these are my 2 cents for the time.



Feel free to discuss!



Thanks,

Phil

Some or all your suggestion have been suggested please ready the summary suggstion thread /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13003-summary-of-suggestions-so-far-discussion



If you dont see any particular suggestion please add it so that I can add it to the summary.