CaptainPsilon wrote:


Plutoman even developers agree that the game is unfinished, what are talking about? Check the suggestion threads. The game is just stable. That what you mean. Yes it is stable but not in MP i have to say.

The game was considered finished enough to release. Thus, it is 'finished' in the literal sense of the term. Is more planned, was more wanted? Of course! The developers want to continue supporting it, designing content for it, and want to add more into the game to truly make it more than an indie game. Does that mean the game is unfinished? No, it just means we have more to look forward too. If you are unhappy with the game now, chances are you will still be unhappy with it for a long time to come.



From reading most of your posts, I gather that is the case. So far you've leveraged criticism after criticism - has the thought occurred to you that maybe this game just isn't for you? Criticism is fine if it is constructive. This is not constructive criticism you have offered.

Unfinished? Please don't compare the size of this game to the size of a triple-A title with a few hundred developers. It's pretty finished as-is, but yet, since the devs are awesome, they are supporting us, the users, and doing more with the game.



Modding will be supported in future patches, they've said that before. See what comes out with it before tossing it aside. Not to mention, unless you've done programming, you likely have no idea how difficult it is to make and balance an AI that works with multitudes of variables. It's pretty difficult to make it all tie together. It's not just a simple if this, do that... because then you might want to consider how many 'if's' would exist, how long-term memory works for the AI, and all kinds of other details.

i already wrote about pointless defending. The game is unfinished period. If developers want make it complete they should work on it. But instead "wow we got money, Seychelles here i come".



It is not AAA title with vacations and full job packet. Indie developers don't have vacations until game is finished.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
i already wrote about pointless defending. The game is unfinished period. If developers want make it complete they should work on it. But instead "wow we got money, Seychelles here i come".



It is not AAA title with vacations and full job packet. Indie developers don't have vacations until game is finished.

It is unfinished in your opinion. Because you think more should be done. Keyword: 'you'.



The developers were content to call it finished - thus, it is finished. It is certainly playable, and it is certainly more finished than 90% of the games I've played. Do not mistake an opinion as fact.



The second line... it merits no reply, but I can't help but give one anyways. They deserve a vacation just as much as anyone else. As I say above, the game is finished - just because you want more, does not mean the game is not finished. If you want all those changes, you should start making the game yourself. Not to mention, just because they are indie does not mean they deserve less respect. What you said is basically like saying a plumber should never have a vacation, in case a customer might need a pipe repaired - just because he's a plumber and not a CEO of a plumbing company.



You sound like you have a few too many complaints to want to play this game again. Just because you need all these things done to keep playing, doesn't mean they'll all happen or even should happen. Very entitled.



You wrote about defending - there's a difference between constructive criticism and complaining with little purpose. You are doing the latter. Give constructive feedback that the dev team will want to listen too - then you'll see stuff done. After they enjoy a vacation, of course, that is entirely merited. If you want all this content done (as you put it), go do it yourself.

First I apologize before posting anything, I am not nicest person in this world and I tend to annoy people by saying what I think. But think positively, it's because of MY mental healthiness and not because you would be idiot.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
Unless modding could introduce new gameplay mechanic or remove some tedious aspects.



So far nothing can be done with ES cause all this staff is hardcoded.

New gameplay mechanics? Partially possible, depends what you want to do. I suggest to see my custom race mod and compare say Swarmers to original version Crawers. I'm fairly sure that you will be shocked.

Remove some tedious aspects? Well... it's possible to make more costly and better ships, it's possible to remove buildings, it's atleast in some standards possible to make AI builder more intelligent. Since you didn't say it better than this got nooo ideas what you mean though.

Currently mods work only in single player. I dont care much about balance in single player. Someone changed some numbers. Ok.

It's possible to do way more than change numbers, it just takes more time and way more patience. I'm sorry if you can't do that.

1) Should play with Brainless AI which i don't enjoy

You can atleast partially tune AI better, sadly you can't make it learn from it's mistakes.

2) Spend huge amount of time waiting while manual combat resolves. I dont pay attention to the cinematic anymore but i like play efficiently.

No, and if you have looked to assets files you know this too.

3) Click million times every turn just to move my fleets from production systems to war borders

Make more expensive ships with more expensive components and this is handled. Way lesser scale combats with about same force.

4) ... the list goes on

... and my wonder whether you have looked to that file goes on.

If some mods would work in MP i would use them.

Already said atleast in 3-4 posts how to get those works. If you can't get those to work, shame on you.

For now there is no mod anyone can provide at the current stage which would take me back to the single player game unless basis problems are solved.

If AI is what is annoying you why not make own mod? My problems with this game lies elsewhere.

And to the people who like to defend anyone with anything. If you want something to be done you have to complain about that or you can done that by yourself which is not the case

You chose completly wrong place to defend what you want to do. You know you would have preached to more openminded and bigger audience if you would have said this on general or suggestion.

Instead you come to modding parts and start to tell to us how everything we do is pointless because you are lazy.



You know, what you are doing is same than in civfanatics someone would go to say NiGHTs partition and tell to Markus Beutel that he should stop modding because CiV is bad game. It's both rude and crude and offensive.







tl;dr:

If you don't like modding stay away of modding parts. These are for people who likes modding. (hard to understand?)

davea wrote:
This is good feedback. I am not sure it is related to modding.



For (1), the AI currently fails to retrofit, leading to huge numbers of low-tech fleets which we call "fleet spam". Besides this, are there specific things you feel could be improved about the AI? The dev team is very responsive, given specific suggestions. "The AI sucks" does not really help.



For (2), many users have requested to select the three battle cards and then auto-resolve; would this address your issue? For (3), many users have requested rally points; would this resolve your issue? For (4), are there other items you feel strongly about, which are not already requested multiple times in the suggestion forum?





Mods work correctly in MP assuming all players have the same mod installed. The game does not confirm this (bug), and it does not auto-distribute a mod present on the host computer (excellent suggestion, although I am not aware of any other game that works this way).

Addressing your last statement, WC3 and SC1+2 allow users to "leech" the data from the host if there is a mod/map installed, giving the user that mod in the process, should they want to use it... but it is more or less a custom map, and probably doesn't work the same way.



However, as far as I can remember, Supreme Commander 2 allowed users to download mods if they were present in the game, which they needed to, or they could not play. However this is another obstacle, in which I imagine that you would have to have sufficient servers in order to facilitate such a system in the game.

Hupailija, i'm sorry are you that indian guy Rajesh from Big Bang Story? Your post has the same amount of sense as his speeches.

If AI is what is annoying you why not make own mod?

Why don't i just make my own game?



Plutoman even developers agree that the game is unfinished, what are talking about? Check the suggestion threads. The game is just stable. That what you mean. Yes it is stable but not in MP i have to say.

Thats a pretty general statement and a bit off base in my estimation.

We mod because we like to mod who cares if the next patch blows it away. I"ll just commit to my changes and do it again. And for the point of it being an unfinished game. That is a crock my friend as this game is far more complete than anything i've seen from an indie developer in a while. If you compare it to Mass Effect sure but the staff from Bioware/Atari won't touch a niche market like this anyway because they aren't selling 2,000,000 copies. These guys (and galls) have done a helluva job at putting a complete and stable game together. Sure there are issues I would change to better enable modding and AI decision I would change. But "out of the box" this game is a helluva lot more stable than most.

Check out my thread, can those be implemented into a mod?

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9297-a-few-suggestion-from-a-long-time-4x-player

CaptainPsilon wrote:
Well if my fleets have no rockets and ai chooses -damage to rockets card (happens alot) then there are might be 2 reasons:

I do not believe this is true. I do not have the game in front of me. But as you know, each card belongs to one family such as "sabotage", and each card blocks one family. So the -damage to rockets card is still useful, because it will block one family of card you might play.



We can think of three methods for choosing cards: (a) random, (b) strategic based on attacker and defender installed modules, (c) historical to counter the human player's previous choices. It is possible that it is completely random, but it is hard to rule out the possibility that the game also uses (b,c).



I hope that the dev team will add a feature which allows the user to choose default cards to be used in auto-resolve. If they do that, I hope they also add a capability to mod the logic that chooses the cards. If they expose this logic, then we can know for sure which ones of (a,b,c) are in use.

It is finished in your opinion. Because you don't think more should be done. Keyword: 'you'.



I don't care indie game or not but anyway It is not free. The price is above average indie game by 3 times ($30 vs 9.99). So may i expect 3 times more than from average indie developer?



I feel like i'm playing in beta, very stable beta. It has like bare minimum to be playable and after couple of parties become boring boring due to the lack of diversity.



I feel game has potential so far i'm here. I stopped playing like 2 weeks ago. The game is so predictable i can play it in my mind.



1. Send scout there, send colony ship there. Put tax slider to get +5 dust for a hero on 3rd turn. Build food explo. Research n-fusion.

2. Nothing.

3. Hire hero. Give him +25 prod. Assign to home system. Q colony ship. Scout arrived. Send further.

4. Colony ship arrived. Colonize or send further.

5. N-fusion finish. Research food tech. Send scout further.

...

8. Research rocket tech.

...

9. Building rocket corvettes.

..

18. Got wormhole tech. 2 1500 fleets. Go.

..

27. Building +40 Science building everywhere. Invading AI colony.

..

70. WIN

CaptainPsilon wrote:
It is finished in your opinion. Because you don't think more should be done. Keyword: 'you'.



I don't care indie game or not but anyway It is not free. The price is above average indie game by 3 times ($30 vs 9.99). So may i expect 3 times more than from average indie developer?



I feel like i'm playing in beta, very stable beta. It has like bare minimum to be playable and after couple of parties become boring boring due to the lack of diversity.



I feel game has potential so far i'm here. I stopped playing like 2 weeks ago. The game is so predictable i can play it in my mind.



1. Send scout there, send colony ship there. Put tax slider to get +5 dust for a hero on 3rd turn. Build food explo. Research n-fusion.

2. Nothing.

3. Hire hero. Give him +25 prod. Assign to home system. Q colony ship. Scout arrived. Send further.

4. Colony ship arrived. Colonize or send further.

5. N-fusion finish. Research food tech. Send scout further.

...

8. Research rocket tech.

...

9. Building rocket corvettes.

..

18. Got wormhole tech. 2 1500 fleets. Go.

..

27. Building +40 Science building everywhere. Invading AI colony.

..

70. WIN

I totally agree with what u said and i stopped playing too. Diversity, decent fleet system and good diplomacy options are needed for a 4x.

Neither of you has explored the game very much. There are other victory types besides military. Try an amoeba/pilgrim trade game for diplomatic victory. Try a sophon game for science or wonder victory. I agree that more racial diversity is needed so that it is interesting to win as each different race; but saying there is only one way to win the game seems unfair to me.

[quite]

Neither of you has explored the game very much. There are other victory types besides military. Try an amoeba/pilgrim trade game for diplomatic victory. Try a sophon game for science or wonder victory. I agree that more racial diversity is needed so that it is interesting to win as each different race; but saying there is only one way to win the game seems unfair to me.

[/quite]



Tried. Doesnt work or has really low efficiency in mp. Takes to long to start.

Ah! A challenge for you!

CaptainPsilon wrote:
Hupailija, i'm sorry are you that indian guy Rajesh from Big Bang Story? Your post has the same amount of sense as his speeches.

No sorry, I don't work as a astrophysicist in university... thank you for beliving though that I would be in such a important work. (well ok, making games isn't shobby either but I'm fairly sure that if Rajesh would be real he would have way higher graduation than I have)

Why don't i just make my own game?

Wonderful question. I have been wondering why those persons who keeps complaining about problems in various games don't make own games.

It's really not that hard and even better you can actually earn from it if you make good enough.

And even better you have completly free hands with that game.



Then again it must be something to do with time and patience I quess.





Why I replied like I did was because you did come to modding section and started to bark to everyone here. You know, it's not that nice

These people here (including me) do belive that we can do a lot by modding. It's not really fair to come to tell to everyone here that they are wrong... even less if you really can't back it up.





Then again what we are having here is failure to understand each other:

Your opinion is that creating mods to game you don't like is waste of time. (and I'm sure that you are not alone)

Some peoples opinion is that game is fine already and need just minor fixes. (there are lots of these)

My opinion is that this game has wonderful base for modding and quite many things can be changed if one decides to do that.





It's not fair for me to start to yell to first or second group, nor it's fair for first or second group to yell to others.

at lest there not selling parts of this game to us as DLC....

Well that's the original meaning of the word in the IT sense

You can change many values in the game currently, like the power of technology's or mods.



So simple under the hood changes are easily possible, and some more braver people may even be able to figure out how to ad entire new things if they are smart with the current set up.



Its good practice for when more options are available, helping modders to find what they need to change for their mods.

Currently mods work only in single player. I dont care much about balance in single player. Someone changed some numbers. Ok.



To try this i again

1) Should play with Brainless AI which i don't enjoy

2) Spend huge amount of time waiting while manual combat resolves. I dont pay attention to the cinematic anymore but i like play efficiently.

3) Click million times every turn just to move my fleets from production systems to war borders

4) ... the list goes on



If some mods would work in MP i would use them.



For now there is no mod anyone can provide at the current stage which would take me back to the single player game unless basis problems are solved.



I occasionally play single but only to test some potential multiplayer strategy by turn 60 i finish session. It is enough to understand if the strategy viable.



My biggest complain is AI. I find it disgustingly stupid. The amount of laziness that was put in AI is astonishing. The most important aspect of strategy game. AI developer i give you F. You did a very lazy job.

And to the people who like to defend anyone with anything. If you want something to be done you have to complain about that or you can done that by yourself which is not the case

I agree with your points, as i am not sure they can be edited.



However we can modify how the AI builds its ships, preferring more weapons or defenses (Before it brakes down and builds glass cannons).

Well, currently code hacking is discouraged by the Devs, and even discussing it is a bit of an iffy issue. I can and did hack the code, but currently there's no permission from the dev team for that so I'm keeping it to myself.

Code hacking?

Modifying the C# code of the game

Ahh, I found it amusing that you called it hacking!

Unless modding could introduce new gameplay mechanic or remove some tedious aspects.



So far nothing can be done with ES cause all this staff is hardcoded.

Ciehoo what you are suggesting is actually illegal so there is no point to go there.



I will try to explain why any kind of balance mod is useless at the moment.



With current mod system it is not practically possible to use mods in MP with random players. When or if new system will be introduced like if host has mod applied all other players automatically download it then mods become viable in MP but it is a very long shot. Now it is only SP.



So why balance mods are useless in SP.



Because on higher difficulty settings bonuses provided to an AI are so ridiculously huge that it doesn't matter if building gives you +20 Science or +40 Science, +10% Industry or +20% Industry. This difference has no matter for an AI.



So effectively it affects only human player. It can make harder or easier to archive victory for him. Well there is no point to make it easier it is easy enough. And there is no point to make it harder i can just make it impossibly hard by taking all negative traits and no positive for my custom race.



So why do i need mod then?

You don't need mods, we only do them for fun.



And with even a harder AI things that effect Modules and improvements still effect them.

This question is rhetorical and addressed to the actual developers. Since they are supporting modding so much. At least that what they say.



The message to the actual modders you are doing a great job. The Community very appreciate that.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
To try this i again

1) Should play with Brainless AI which i don't enjoy

2) Spend huge amount of time waiting while manual combat resolves. I dont pay attention to the cinematic anymore but i like play efficiently.

3) Click million times every turn just to move my fleets from production systems to war borders

4) ... the list goes on

This is good feedback. I am not sure it is related to modding.



For (1), the AI currently fails to retrofit, leading to huge numbers of low-tech fleets which we call "fleet spam". Besides this, are there specific things you feel could be improved about the AI? The dev team is very responsive, given specific suggestions. "The AI sucks" does not really help.



For (2), many users have requested to select the three battle cards and then auto-resolve; would this address your issue? For (3), many users have requested rally points; would this resolve your issue? For (4), are there other items you feel strongly about, which are not already requested multiple times in the suggestion forum?

If some mods would work in MP i would use them.

Mods work correctly in MP assuming all players have the same mod installed. The game does not confirm this (bug), and it does not auto-distribute a mod present on the host computer (excellent suggestion, although I am not aware of any other game that works this way).

Mods work correctly in MP assuming all players have the same mod installed

Realistically not possible with random players.

Besides this, are there specific things you feel could be improved about the AI? The dev team is very responsive, given specific suggestions. "The AI sucks" does not really help.

The ai do many things random. Developers know that. They were lazy enough to implement that. Some examples:

- Battle cards. AI chooses pure random.

- System improvements. Build everything it can.

- Send attack ships one by one even if it can organize a full fleet

- Planet colonization. Colonize everything it can.

For (2), many users have requested to select the three battle cards and then auto-resolve; would this address your issue? For (3), many users have requested rally points; would this resolve your issue? For (4), are there other items you feel strongly about, which are not already requested multiple times in the suggestion forum?

That will greatly improve MP experience. Single player not so much but good to have.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
1. Battle cards. AI chooses pure random.

2. System improvements. Build everything it can.

3. Send attack ships one by one even if it can organize a full fleet

4. Planet colonization. Colonize everything it can.

1. Are you sure that battle cards are chosen randomly? I am not sure how to prove that.



2. For system improvements, there used to be cases where a building which made absolutely no difference was built, such as careful sweeping in a system with no moons. All of these are fixed, it never happens anymore. There are cases where it is "debateable" whether a building should be built, such as cis-oort satellites (increase influence radius). If you have specific feedback, please look into this thread:



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9289-suggestions-requested-rules-for-ai-to-not-build-something



This is something that modders can improve by changing the xml.



3. I agree that the current AI creates small fleets when it should merge them. I know that the next upcoming version will have an improvement for this.



4. Different players have different opinions for which planets should be colonized. Since the AI gets approval bonuses, its decision about whether to colonize a planet may be correct for its own situation. It is true that when a human player conquers these systems and does not get the same bonuses, the human player may disagree with the decision. Currently there is no way to raze these painful colonies. But I am not sure you can call this "brainless". Do you have specific examples where a completely useless planet is colonized by the AI?

Well if my fleets have no rockets and ai chooses -damage to rockets card (happens alot) then there are might be 2 reasons:

1. Bug

2. Random



AI colonizes everything because of huge bonuses. Same with buildings. AI builds everything it currently can just in different order.