Hello everyone,



Here is a tread which goal is to gather most of the suggestions made by the players of the alpha, including myself.



I'll try to edit this post as often as possible, do not hesitate to post any suggestion about the game - especially on features and contents, and then on balance.



There will be 10 (this is not a fix number) categories : FIDS, Improvements/Technologies, Galaxy/Systems/Planets' caracteristics, Diplomacy, Ship design, Fights, Hero, General views, Interface and Coming playable Factions.



Here are my suggestions, I will complete them with yours.



FIDS :



- The extra food issue (when population slots are full in a sytem) ,

It is too bad that before having the "Dust Virtualization" technology" (Extra Food into Industry) technology, the surplus is totally wasted... Then I'd suggest :

1. The surplus can be transported (another use of the transporter, see Ship design section) to newly colonized system, maybe by the way of an automated travel.

Or 2. Food become like science : a generic ressource for the entire empire, not only by system, this way (also possible with 1.) we can assign planets to food production (thus, the food planetary

exploitation is no longer useless in population-filled systems), with percentages per systems, calculated with distance, approval, etc...

It would make more sense, because, unlike Industry (the result of local factories, mines, etc...), Food can be "moved" between star systems. (I personnaly prefer 1.)



- Approval :

It is possible, with the correct technologies, to increase approval by 175 on a single star system... Assuming you have terraformed every planets into "good" planets (i.e Terran, Jungle or Ocean) and got rid of bad anomalies, the system approval will be "Ecstatic" even if there is a 100 % tax rate... Well, why not, but I think this is kinda weird. Maybe lower the approval bonus could be a good idea.

And/Or it would be very very nice that one could set a tax rate PER system, I mean, there would be low taxes on newly colonized system in which there is no "Infinite supermarket" or other "Colonial rights", and high taxes on older systems, in which there are "Permanent vacation"... Thus, there wouldn't be this (virtual) frustrating (for the player of course...) 150% or more approval on a system.



Improvements/Technologies



- The extra food problem unsolved, I find the improvement "Permanent perennials" (+100 % food surplus) useless, because the time a syteme can build it, this one is generally full (population-talking), excepted if one want to "buy" it with dust, but it's quite expensive... And as I've seen in my games, this improvement doesn't work with the one which convert food surplus into industry (or maybe I'm wrong, and it's a just a bug or it depends on which one is built first).



- "Planetary institute" (+6 FIDS) seems a little weak, it is either too far in the research tree or doesn't give enough bonuses (6 FIDS is approximately 2 people in a single planet).



- It would be better I think that the "useless" improvements in a star system (i.e that will NEVER give a bonus to a star system like +3food/moon, or +pop on small/tiny for example) are not shown. It would ease the micro-management (and will also "help" the AI which build them when not needed).



- What do you think about a "stand-by" mode for the system improvements ? Like for example, if you're near bankruptcy, you should turn off - instead of scrapping - some improvements, or, if you build the "Extra Food -> Industry" improvement before having researched the +2 pop improvement, you could build this second one, turn off the first one and turn on back the second one when the system is full. This is still realistic, if you don't want a factory to work, you just turn it off, you don't need to scrap it. Maybe a fee would be needed to turn it back again (based on the industry cost needed to build it for example).



Galaxy/Systems/Planets' caracteristics



- When I was having fun terraforming all my planets, I noticed something, there is no medium or high industry level 2 planets (If level 1 = Terran, Jungle and Ocean then level 2 = Arid and Tundra ; level 3 = Artic and Desert ; level 4 = Barren and Lava ; Level 5 = Gas giants and Asteroïds), indeed, Arid and Tundra give respectively +2 and +1 Industry per Population Unit. It is not very important though, but still sounds strange to me. Maybe a last type of level 2 planet ? A mountainous planet or something like that, providing +2 Food, +3/4 Industry, +1 Dust, +2 Science per Pop Unit, with a -10/-15 approval because of random landslides...



- It has been said many times in the forum, but I still write it : What are the caracteristic of the differents stars ? Do they have more chances to provides specific planets ? Or anomalies ? If the type of the star doesn't change anything (which, in my opinion, is not the case), then I think it would be good that the type of a star has a physically reallistic influence on planets around it, and maybe on ships travelling across it, or the battles, etc...



Diplomacy



- I think some basic diplomatic options are a little bit too far away in the research tree.



- An other thing : Maybe I'm bad at diplomacy but the times I tried (I confess, I didn't try a lot) to make deals, even to buy a ressource 4/5 times the cost writen when I chose it (the "balanced" cost), the AI refused it... I haven't seen this problem in the forum, so I might just be anti-social .



Ship design



- When all the systems are colonized (which happen quickly in tiny/small galaxies) the transporter class is absolutely useless, so, as said above, maybe they could transport food or even people from old systems to newly colonized ones.



- Some suggestions about retrofitting : Why not simply allow the player to retrofit a ship without necessarily upgrade it from its base design ? Because if you want to make two different ships design from one old design, you have to modify the first, retrofit the ships you want to, modify the second, retrofit the ships, you turn when you see you've forgotten one ship... And why only with dust ? I can propose a formula (simplified) for an Industry cost : Sum(for all modules) of abs(Old Industry cost - New Industry cost). I give an example : You got a Destroyer class ship with : 10*Ion torpedoes (cost : 6 each), 4*Reflective isotopes (cost : 10 each) and you want to fit it with 12*Unstable torpedoes (cost : 10 each), 2*Reflective isotopes and High energy couplings (A You-Die-With-Me nasty Destroyer). Then the cost would be 10*|10-6| (you replace the torpedoes) + 2*10 (you add two of them) + 12 = 72, you lose the cost of the two last "Reflective isotopes". 72 seems good, the cost of a totally new one being 152.



- A last class of ship ? A kind of capital ship, limited to 1 or 2 per empire ?



- -X% tonnage bonuses for specific modules on class ships is a good idea, why not some +X% tonnage malus for some ships ? (I said I wouldn't talk to much about balance, but I think Destroyers are a little bit to powerful since they can equip a lot of weapons with just what they need to defend themselves not to die too fast).



Fights



- It would be good to see which card the AI opponent is going to use (that's a joke :rolleyes: )



- I would love a second fight mode, I mean, we chose the battle action (the cards) and a sort of battle move in parallele (maybe other cards, which can be unlocked through research), like focus the weakest ship, accelerate to reach melee phase fast (which would reduce the amount of fire of the two first phases for example), keep long distance, or something like that.

Hero



- Another word about balance (the last one I promess) : I think hero are too powerful, when you have +25 Industry and + 20 Food (not %, the absolute value) on a Labor hero, which happen very fast, you assign him (instantly, I would suggest by the way at least some time for a hero to travel from a system to another one) to a system you've just colonized, in a few turns, it becomes more productive than the older system (at the beginning of the game), and at the end, a Labor/Wit hero can almost double the production of a star system, and a high level Amiral commanding a correct fleet is just an atomic bomb... So I would suggest :



- More heroes allowed before the +X academy cap researchs



- Less powerful hero



- 20 or 25 turns instead of 50 turns before a new hero is available (The researchs such as -5 turns before new hero arrival would be changed, of course)



Coming playable Factions



- I pray god every night for an Industry-based race (with a "Unwarlike" malus, +20%/30% cost of researchs on the Warfare Research tree for example, or a "Bad economist" malus : -10/20 % dust, I've also got so much idea for bonuses...)



- The possibility to customize a faction ?



(In fact, I don't really know how advanced you, the Dev Team, are on the designs of the 3 last factions, but I can suppose they're almost finished, so I don't think the suggestions on the next factions will have a great impact on them, but maybe I'm wrong, and I'll still post them here)



General views



- It would be nice to keep seeing our area of control (the colored rings/zones) while zooming out (in the options maybe ?). A proud emperor might want to see what he has accomplished (I think...).



- A double right click instead of a single right click to order a fleet to move would allow the player (after the first right click) to see how many turns it is needed for the fleet to reach its destination.



- The possibility to move heroes by dragging them while you are in the empire management window would also be a plus (instead of click him, unassign, right click, click the planet, click the hero again, assign), but it's not that important.



Interface



- I know this is not the most urgent thing, but the possibility to change the binds would be good (or maybe we already can and I didn't notice it...)



- A spot on a corner of each windows for a specific tutorial ? I mean, if you just need the tutorial for hero, you just have to click on this spot while you're on the Academy window.









I will continue to add suggestions, mines and yours (I hope mainly yours, my brain is melting...), and I hope this will improve the already very good game we all have the chance to play.



Again, these are suggestions, it doesn't mean everyone will agree them, critics (positive or negative) are of course welcomed, this is the purpose of this tread.



And a last word, I'd like to congratulate the Dev Team for the job they did so far, I've played 1.0 games that had 50 times more bugs I've encoutered on the Endless Space alpha at the moment :rolleyes:.





PS : You've probably noticed, I'm not English (French actually), so some mistakes might be wandering... (If you see a horrible one, tell me, I'll edit the post )

One issue i have found in the alpha, is that once you have a new ship type, you have no incentive for building the others. I believe that there should be a combat bonus for mixed fleets. That way, you have diversity in the fleets and the game will feel more realistic.



also a boarding option would be interesting....

I agree with the idea of having food being an empire resource. There's no reason a particular star system with many green planets can't grow a metric @$$ ton of food and export it to the rest of the empire. In Star Wars expanded universe there are farm planets that all they do is grow food and supply the rest of the galaxy. I'd also now would like to not have to micro all my systems and make sure they're not overproducing food. :/



On the ships, yeah a titan of some sort that you can only produce one of would be cool. I think it should take the combined efforts of the empire to construct it and a huge amount of tech. Maybe even restrictions on what kind of system you build it in. So you have to tailor make this 'shipyard system' to make this leviathan. Maybe a little overpowered, but I think it would be cool if this unique empire ship not only didn't take up command points, but even supplied some either to all the fleets or just the fleet it's in. Plus I'd like to see bigger fleets overall.



And as my own two cents on ships I would like scouts and maybe destroyers screening my bigger ships from missiles with flak launchers, and maybe a new frigate class that I can organize into little wolf packs to get in close with kinetics and start tearing it up.

A thread already exists that has compiled all the suggestions on the forums, You can find it here /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13003-summary-of-suggestions-so-far-discussion,



Most of the stuff you have said, has been mentioned before

Oh, yes indeed, well thank you then. I've linked this page in the thread you've mentioned.