Yeah, I tend to get cruisers late, so I work with what I have before that. Plus, using transports gives me a bit of help recognizing what the fleet's purpose is while just spot-checking.



As for composition....

Max S2G, adding in Extreme Artillery and the Tonfa thing later. Nothing else. Armor won't help them survive, not really, so why bother?

I highy support idea #1 of davea.

Diplomacy! We really need better/more Diplomacy!

76 hours on Steam. I'd like Genius-level AI. I played on hard difficulty yesterday and I rolled over races like I was a train. The AI is dumb.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-DpRcxK_N8





Played Moo2 on Impossible a couple of days ago:



http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/master_of_orion_1_2



I had a hard start with just a lowly initial planet, gambled with scout exploration and lost both scouts to space beasts. My lone Ninja spy completely ransacked the Sakkra but I failed to capitalize on the window of opportunity for ground invasion because I was doing it "Endless Space-style" and forgot to built troop transports ( oops ). Met some nice alien friends, tried to build outposts and colonies near them and the Sakkra followed me. * sniffles *



IE PC game designer Interview: Steve Barcia (Simtex, Circa 1994):



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5DD0zPOB-A

On Trade. Yes did alot of experimenting to work out trade. Basically if you have discovered 5 systems of a rival and you are at peace with them you can have 5 trade routes. This is not affected by buildings adding more trade routes (you can still only have 5). So if my capital can have 3 trade routes because of buildings you can only have another two in other systems. So building trade route buidings in other sytems (other than the 2 you have left) is pointless until you discover more rival systems. Plus if you build trade buildings in a system that would be more luctrative (ie further away) you cant redirect an existing trade route. Basically buildings affect how many trade routes you can potentially have, while the number of discovered rival systems you are at peace with is the number of trade routes you actually have.



On Food. I do the same but I dont believe this a good game system. Most mid tech food buildings are not worth building. The game needs serious balancing in regards to food. In fact the sooner you fill your system the sooner you incur happiness penalities for over population. The game punishes you for producing lots of food and population growth is far to rapid in my opinion. By mid game I am destroying food buildings rather than thinking about building new ones. In the real world food would be exported and sold for cash or shipped to areas of need. There needs to be options for what happens to surplus food once pop cap has been reached.

FangFur wrote:
1. Trade. Ability to set own trade routes and more of them per system as you can only have one trade route per system you are at peace with. Maybe increase this to two.

Do you find that the techs in the left hand tree do not help? I have not done detailed experiments, maybe you have. Is there a limit, or a bug when using these techs?

2. Food. Complete rebalance (needs to be slowed down) as I find most food production buildings useless once you reach mid game. Some options for surplus food once pop at maximum rather than just being penalised.

I tear down food buildings after reaching the pop cap. I can exploit something else, and I don't want the dust cost for buildings I don't need. This is what happens in real world cities, after all.

1. Trade. Ability to set own trade routes and more of them per system as you can only have one trade route per system you are at peace with. Maybe increase this to two.



2. Food. Complete rebalance (needs to be slowed down) as I find most food production buildings useless once you reach mid game. Some options for surplus food once pop at maximum rather than just being penalised.



3. Option to slow the tech research.



4. Resouces become highlighted above system once researched. Number of resources you have displayed in diplomacy panel.



5. A few more build options. Building panel colour coded as to there purpose i.e tech buiding blue / trade buildings red / dust buildings yellow. Basically a way to sort the buildings.

1. Combat expansion. My Ideas are explained in my thread here: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11640-5th-tech-tree-military-doctrine

2. Fix movement/blockade running

3. Allow more control of production queue.

4. Multiplayer today.

5. A fresh batch of cookies.

PyroVortex wrote:
Be very careful with Horatio, then?

I haven't played as the Horatio so I didn't take into account their cloning ability or how it works. Obviously, there would need to be a check/balance in place there. Thanks for pointing that out...I completely forgot.

There are many threads of first-time users posting their impressions. This is great, although it has a lot of duplication. For those players with more than 50 hours logged, please think a little and pick your top *five* suggestions. It will be interesting to see how much these line up.



1. Avoid ind->dust and ind->science queue management by having one global slider to allocate all overflow or production in systems without queues. Saves me hours of tedious button-pushing.



2. Fix bug with AI moving during player turn. If you want multiplayer, that is fine, but it is impossible to plan anything in my *single player* *turn based game* when the AI moves opportunistically during my turn.



3. Increase size of select box for ships and planets. Too many times the game has missed registering a click. Fleet A was selected. I click to select fleet B and the game misses it; I click on the planet, and fleet A moves instead of B. This has cost me systems, when fleet A was a border defense fleet.



4. Ground combat is too long, and too boring. At a minimum I need more feedback, like a hover help, to help me find out what to improve. I don't request fancy cinematics; but something more interesting than a slider bar that takes 10 *years* to fill up.



5. Fix known exploits: fleet hero teleportation, population duplication with transports, no effect from negative dust (OK, that is three)



Not on my list: ships exploding after combat apparently completes. I am pretty sure this is a graphics-only bug due to invisible/slow missiles.

Tavar wrote:
Generally I go with using a Fleet of transports with an engine upgrade+ as much ground attack boosting upgrades as I can.

Thanks for the info. Why transports, because you don't want to wait for cruisers? How much armor vs S2G?



I hope all the hero ability, invasion power and stuff like that would be available in the hover help for the invasion progress bar which I request.

davea wrote:


In the early or mid game, what is your invasion ship build? The best I can manage is a cruiser with 5x S2G kinetics plus some defenses. Are you suggesting something like a destroyer-only battle fleet, and then a cruiser fleet with only S2G? What if the enemy sneaks in a battle fleet -- it will pick the cruiser fleet to attack, and maul it.

Generally I go with using a Fleet of transports with an engine upgrade+ as much ground attack boosting upgrades as I can. Also tend to split them into two or 3 fleets. That way, even if an enemy fleet does get by me, they can't destroy all of them. Oh, and while I do keep a combat fleet with the invasion fleets, generally they're all one transit behind the front lines, as it were. The enemy focuses on the front lines, which are all combat ships, which cuts down on casualties.

davea wrote:
How much effect does a melee hero (hate the skill name) have on that? Any tips for not getting stalled/bored here?

In addition to wanting to know how much the hero's ability helps, getting a bit of basic info regarding how one's ground invasion power maps up to the enemies defenses would be nice.

Here's what I'd like to see for the next alpha builds -



Commonly reported bug fixes, balancing, performance optimizing e.g late game turn time.



Improving UI/empire management and all other ideas to eliminate tedious clicking, and anything that feels like work -

There needs to be a natural progression from managing 1-10 systems at the start (which the game does very well) to the large number of systems in the mid/late game.



Many of the ideas in jetkar's summary thread look worthwhile, especically the "Mods / Techs" suggestions - as the combat/military aspect lacks depth.

4x_Fan wrote:
The 100+ hour club thinks you're suggesting things already in the next patch.

If the other 50 hours give you detailed info on what will definitely be in the next patch, please share

#4 Ground combat ~ actually incredibly fast, if you don't build the correct defences. Top tip: have an invasion fleet who shadow your main attack force, and actually do the grunt work.

In the early or mid game, what is your invasion ship build? The best I can manage is a cruiser with 5x S2G kinetics plus some defenses. Are you suggesting something like a destroyer-only battle fleet, and then a cruiser fleet with only S2G? What if the enemy sneaks in a battle fleet -- it will pick the cruiser fleet to attack, and maul it. How much effect does a melee hero (hate the skill name) have on that? Any tips for not getting stalled/bored here?

AceXMachine wrote:


Would also like the final "Academy pop limit" research to give you the ability to hire alot more/infinite heroes. The time between each is limiting enough so for an extra long game it would be nice to continue to get a hero every 20 turns if you research that upgrade.

Be very careful with Horatio, then?

I'm currently at 132 hours of playing this game according to Steam (loving it).



+1 to losing a ship at the end (or even after the end) of a battle from no apparent reason...It is always against ships with missles so I believe it to be a missle bug as well



+2 to fixing AI movement during players turn



See my thread for all of my requests (most of them major/expansion type requests): Link Here...



Would also like the final "Academy pop limit" research to give you the ability to hire alot more/infinite heroes. The time between each is limiting enough so for an extra long game it would be nice to continue to get a hero every 20 turns if you research that upgrade.



Another thing I was thinking about for heroes is instead of getting 3 options at the beginning and 1 every x amount of turns, give the option for 3 heroes of which you can only choose 1 (assuming you have the available academy slot). This would lessen the "crap, I didn't get my fleet/pilot or industry/corporate etc hero this time".



Weight bonuses for different class of ships needed. For instance, the scout should get a significant/huge bonus for engines vs a battleship since the scout wouldn't need anywhere near as big an engine to get the same benefits. So the scout would get a huge bonus, destroyers/cruisers a moderate bonus and little to no bonus for the battleship (definately no bonus for the Dreadnought). Also, the "weight" of the scanner modules is way to high. 90 tons for the highest tech scanner when the highest tech engine is only 60? This may be less of a problem when the tonnage upgrades/research are fixed but still...



Would like to see a new type/upgrade of system status from outpost to colony to ?(suggestions?). So after 30 turns you have a colony, then another 30 turns it would be upgraded to a new status. Benefits would be an increase in your region of influence (colony influence would need to be reduced from what it is now to compensate).



More of a request than a suggestion, but I would like anomolies in outer space. There would wormholes/nebula/etc that are in open space that you can only get to after researching warp drives. Wormholes could lead to another factions open space or the middle of nowhere. Nebula could hide fleets, give increases to research etc. Some anomolies could be dangerous giving a negative impact to influence or ships within a certain radius?



These are in addition to the suggestions in the OP which I would also like to see.

The 100+ hour club thinks you're suggesting things already in the next patch.





Your point #3 has some weight though, esp. with multiple moving fleets.



#4 Ground combat ~ actually incredibly fast, if you don't build the correct defences. Top tip: have an invasion fleet who shadow your main attack force, and actually do the grunt work. Try playing on impossible, and bouncing multiple systems being invaded ~ 3-5 turns on a pop 20 system is not too long. Your suggestion should have been: "Make #pop of system influence invasion times". But, anyhow ~ you've a point: later on, with the +15/20 techs, systems can become invulnerable to invasion.





Not that I would create a system with max invasion defenses + regen... and just let it suck up AI fleets or anything. Done it once, too :cheesey: