I'm going to be listing off a few of the things I think would be splendid additions or fixes to current problems.



Movement



there at the right time, but catching your enemies, whether in your territory or not turns out to be a major hassle. I think one way to solve this without having to completely rewrite the movement system is adding the ability to set up blockades, on planets or star paths in your areas of influence, these blockades would allow you to stop fleets from any faction you decide, or if you haven't met any, stop all factions. It would help you to keep your enemies from going straight through your fleets on the edge of your systems and heading to your larger worlds to blockade them. If a fleet was trying to go down a star-path that is blockaded, they would simply turn around and return to the last system. If somehow a fleet is caught between two blockades they might have to fight their way out, or there might be the option to bribe your way through, or maybe even open a diplomacy screen to try to improve relations with the faction via trading.



Heroes



hire more of them, and they would appear more often and there would also be a larger pool from the start to choose from. Maybe have it so each race has a few different specific types of Officer that appear more often. For instance Sophon's would be interested in science mostly, so they would have one pure wit build that shows up, then maybe a splice of wit and combat and wit and growth. Horatio would focus on growth and have one that goes full growth. I think this would cause each faction to have a bit more of a personality, even if you can still hire officers from different factions you'd be able to tell what they might have just from seeing what they are. Maybe allow research to increase how many Officers you can hold at your academy. Each player would get a completely custom hero. They can choose between a few pictures for the hero at the start of the game, they get to choose starting stats according to the appropriate pool. (Maybe since these will be true heroes to the empire they would be a bit stronger than the current ones.) And each level they would distribute not only a skill point but also any stat points a normal hero would have gained. You get complete control over your hero. You get to name them, pick their picture, choose their stats and skills, and if you really wanted to maybe write a biography for them.



Saving



only build them one way. Let's have there be a way to save stuff that usually takes time so we can minimize the downtime. Make it so you can save a hero's build, name, picture chosen, and when you load it the game automatically levels the hero for you and everything. You can turn this off of course and change the settings so you're customizing it normally. This would also be especially useful for building ships. Some people really really really like to customize their things, and with ships there is a lot of choice there. Make it so people can save ship builds, and are able to load them at various stages of the game, or even have it so any saved ship build you have is shown in the builds window as long as you are the appropriate faction. It would then be able to tell you what you're missing for certain builds if you had for instance just started a new game and forgotten what you had to research and obtain to make your favorite ship.



Hopefully you folks will take the time to check these suggestions out, let me know what you think, or even criticize me. (As long as there's something constructive there.) Thank you for your time.



-Sofiel

For movement, there will be a action named guard for your fleets in alpha 2.



For heroes, a totally custom hero would be quite cool, but might break the balance somewhat.



For saving, that would really lower the micromanagement time across many many matches, so it would be cool.

Thank you for your response, I'm glad that I wasn't the only one to think of my "movement suggestion". I do sort of understand that a custom hero might be a bit balance breaking, but they could always set limits to them if they seem to be too overpowered. I just think it would be nice to add a little bit of customization and have a true hero that you're happy with. And of course for saving, I'm glad you agree with me. I just think it'd help out a lot to be able to load up previous builds in a new game, especially if you were playing multiplayer where there will likely be a lot more pressure to be fairly speedy.