Hey. I'm a new player to the game and still learning what there is to know about the game (just got my copy a few days ago) and still on the lowest AI level. I got myself stabbed in the back by those double-crossers and my so-called friend the Altarians. I attacked the Torians, who apparently the Altarians were allied with as well (me and the Altarians were also allies at the current time). I was informed that they regretably had to break our alliance and declare war on me, and after all I have done for them too. I helped them a lot more then the Torians ever did, that's for sure, what with all the research and technology I traded to them, and all the military help I gave them. The Torians had a weak military and economy at the time. They ended up totally destroying my economy and taking several of my worlds and destroying several of my starbases. Even after I managed to sign peace treaties with both races and get the Altarians to friendly and the Torians to cool, I decided the game was over for me, so I ceded (or tributed, whatever you wish to call it) all my remaining money, technology, influence, ships, and planets to the Altarians. Needless to say, that triggered my defeat and the end of the game.

But that's not the point of my suggestion. :notsure:

My defeat was categorized as a military defeat, when that's not really what happened. It was more of a surrender, bankruptcy or ceding/cessation defeat.

My suggestion is this: There should be a victory/defeat condition/category for surrending, bankruptcy, and/or ceding.

A little something I'd like to see: Make the sector influence colours for the Drengin, Terran and Yor a little bit more distinct. When zoomed out on a large map it is very hard to tell which of these races has dominant control in which sectors.

There is one small thing which bugs me :The elections, at the moment you know perfectly when the next elections will happen. To win them you have to lower your taxes simply one month before the elections and congratulations you won.....

Suggestion: Take the average value of the tax rate of the last 24 months to calculate the morale of your people during elections.

IMHO it will be good to set a cap to a population that counts to the Score (maybe depending on the galaxy size). For me, it was ~1000-1100 (Gigantic, Abudant) then i started culture conqest of enemy planets.
IMHO from that time game is already won or lost, or at least population isn't that essential. So, any excess population should not be counted in the score too. Also, any other things that depend on current population (say, taxes) may be scaled too *Min(PopulationCap/PopulationInGame,1).

~SDC~

In diplomacy, a feature to offer tech/money or whatever to the opponent. i.e. "What will you give me for.."

~SDC~

1: Have the "UP Announcement" include the voting topic.

2: Have the UP screen allow trading for votes on a topic.

3: Allow construction of a governor which has ALL possible projects available, so you can set it up once for the whole game. Allow this governor to be saved.

4: Second on "Obsolete Ships" options.

5: Have ship info show maintinince costs.

I would like to see more color surrounding the events that occur to you during gameplay, especially the colonization events.

I'm expanding on a suggestion I made earlier, but if I subjugate a primitive culture as slaves on planet Bilbo, it should trigger other possible events... such as an uprising on planet Bilbo, or Bilbo turning into a new Minor race (the Bilboians?). Or an event where the natives of Bilbo demand equal rights... something to make the universe 'fit together' and 'make sense'. Currently the events feel like temporary hurdles I need to surpass, whos only reprecusions are alignment and a +/- to some stat or %.

Another thought... many people have brought up the idea of mines. This could work, but a minor suggestion is that the 'icon' be a mine 'field' instead of a 'mine'. Mines should be small (like the size of the small trade ships that fly around). Speaking graphically, a minor nitpick would be to change the starfighter to a squad of small fighters. These are just asthetic changes, the mines/fighters should act as a single entity.

---

Another idea, which I haven't fully thought out... Since the stars we see on the map are in fact suns.. I find multi earth-like planets in a single star system to feel strange [concerning orbits, planetary defense, invasion, etc]. What if when you land on a star system, you get moved to a 'zoomed in' map of the system, and you could then fly to a specific planet in a system, attack it, etc. without effecting the other planets in the system. Kinda like the 'Star Control' game that was out years and years ago. This may overcomplicate things... but just a thought/suggestion.

How about tweaking the scoring formula, so that difficulty matters more than map size?

I have a minor suggestion: when you are playing a game and you want to load another, you don't see the loading progress bar. When loading a gigantic map in a late stage of the game I find this a bit annoying. Any chance of putting it in? Thx

I made this suggestion in another post but I'm putting it here in the hopes it gets more attention. I'm also putting in a couple other suggestions.
I would like to see starbases upgrade themselves. It would be cool if when you build a starbase a little menu pops up with all the modules available to you (regardless of necessary build order), that you could check which ones you want built and then have constructors automatically move to them once they become available. It would work similarly with upgrades. A little checkbox would appear when a new module has been researched, like say for instance "extraction center zeta is now available, would you like all resource gathering bases to upgrade?" or "interstellar distributor is now available, would you like to upgrade all your starbases or just starbases with inhabited systems in the same sector?" Is this possible? I just think it would be a cool option and it would make things easier since its kind of hard to keep track of how many starbases I have, what modules they have installed and what function I eventually want them to have. It would be cool if when you click on a freighter (one of the little ones that pop up once the route is established) a dotted line pops up showing you its path to its destination, so that I know where to put my trade enhancing starbases. (its kind of hard now to know, mostly when they are going diagonally). I would like a way to shut off minor races from the start, (this wouldn't include minor races from forming later in the game however). I would like it if you could choose your starting position and the starting positions of the AI races, to balance this maybe you could require that the races be a certain distance away from and near each other. It would be cool if you could use regular starbases like resource starbases to give your systems a minor 1-5% bonus in morale,economy and so forth. One last suggestion, could scout ships (or any ship for that matter, though scout ships seem more apropriate) be set to "auto explore" the way survey ships can be sent to "auto survey"? If there is something like this already in the game could someone tell me where?

Just a few notes from my first game in about 7 years. Sorry if this has been covered.

Not sure if this is a bug:
If you go to a planet's view screen (either from the end of turn display or by clicking on the status at the lower right) and click on "Details" you get a "Propoganda" Slider. Nowhere on the screen is displayed the morale which is needed to see if there's an effect. If you use the button at the bottom of the screen to get the planets, and select a planet, the morale is displayed in the upper right.

Would also like to see "stickiness" in the sorts (tech, planets, ships etc) from session to session. I like to have the tech's sorted by "time left" for example and when I load up it's always sorted by something else. Not that I shut the game down much

The ability to shut off some of the popups the end of turn one f'rinstance. The status at the lower right can do nicely.

Automatic upgrade of governors or a status saying something like "I'm finished with my orders sir should I turn things over to.." then a picklist or a trip to the Governors screen.

~SDC~

Maybe we should be able to pass over a freidly vessel, having the same tile. Some sort of concept of layer would do this perhaps... This stops wall of scouts or elsw.

One of the things I find most annoying is figuring out what races have something that I might actually want. I end up frequently clicking on each one to see if they have anything. I find it very annoying.

My suggestion is actually pretty simple, but it has a lot of time saving implications. When I get a new tech, I often want to do the following:
- trade it
- update my governors
- update my build orders
What I would like to see is instead of "You just finished researching a new tech" screen, is to add to it:
What do you want to do now? (Check all that apply)
- Flaunt it to other races
- with techs you don't have
- with trade goods you don't have
- that are willing to pay for it
- Update your governors
- Change build orders
- whatever...

That way after you hit OK you go directly to those screens. It would save a lot of time and wouldn't require much of a development investment.

Suggestion:

Starbase Governors: Just as the conventional governor represents a build queue, have a similar queue for starbase improvements. The "Build Starbase" menu selects the governor's first valid choice as the default item to be built.

Regarding the suggestion by RealSpices for a "what will you give me for ??...." on the diplomacy screen -- I second the motion!

I wonder what the chances are for getting some of these suggestions actaully implemented? Anybody out there know (actually know, not speculation)?

Am I just slow?(that was a rhetorical question)

I would like to see some sort of "teaching demo" since there doesn't seem to be any of that in the manual. FOr all of the hoop-la on this game - I can't figure out how to play on even the simplest elvels.
FYI - I did not play the BETA (if there was one) and would like any leads to an info page where I can learn how the game works.

More UP issues and more practical issues at certain times. I mean its stupid to ban terror starts when no one even is close to the tech. I think the UP should also come either every 2 or 3 years. Otherwise everything is good so far LOL

Great game!! LOL

I'd like to see a way to find a specific star. I was playing along and got a message that Gabriel had increased its planet quality. Where is Gabriel?

More Suggestions.

1) RANDOM ALIGNMENT. Right now, when I click the randomizer, the new alignment-corrected description immediately appears in the dialog box. Not very random, or very surprising, is it? Make alignment more mysterious! Actions, not words, should show us that the Drengin are good/evil/neutral.

2) Hyperlinks. The last post asked about finding a particular star...it would be nice, when something says 'so-and-so system increases by 7 points' you can just click the star name and it shows it to you on the map. Currently, you can do this with ships in the ship menu...make it ubiqitous. This is one thing MOO3 did very well with the sitrep.

3) MORE STORY. I said this before, and I'll keep saying it. Everything in the game can be made as complex as you want if there's some backstory to justify it. It's not essential by any means, but come on, it would be cool, and probably very easy to add.

4) Tech-tree. Yep.

5) United Planets stuff. Ability to propose resolutions, ability to buy/sell votes.



~SDC~

In one of the examples of play provided in the Galactic Encyclopedia Brad talks about the AI voting intelligently. However, the voting is only semi-intelligent, because there's never consensus on a particular option. Sure, they all want to limit evil races to a certain number of trade routes, but if they can't agree how many, even if they have a majority of good votes, they'll still lose.

Just wanted to use this as an opportunity to further my case for UP reform.

~SDC~

I would like to see some sort of tactics involved with ship to ship combat. Anything more than: bang, bang, bang, dead.

My suggestion is for a little confirmation screen for sending the metaverse score in. Just a little "Score Accepted" with ok to click underneath

In the city screen I would like to see a mini-map that show's the galaxy's location. I someitmes forget where the galaxy is, and when something's finished at the beginning of a turn, I have no idea where I'm zooming into.

Auto-explore setting for ALL units, not only scouts.

Maybe an "auto-protect" command for units. They would follow a freighter, for example, and auto-attack all enemy units en route.

~SDC~

I would like to see an option that will turn the fog of war on and off. So then when you start the game the entire galaxy is already explored, that would be really nice.

~SDC~

I've got a couple UI recommends which may have already mentioned. If so, than consider this a second, third or whatever ---

1) Clicking on message of event -- like constructor built at such and such star would center star in galaxy view versus opening build screen.

2) Clicking tab or find would not make you go thru each ship in a stack.

3) Allow filter of ships versus sort for ship list so it easier to find transports, constructors or whatever. It takes awhile to scroll thru several hundred ships to find the transport that is just sitting somewhere.

4) Set waypoints for ships set to autolaunch from a particular planet.

Just these four items would speed up my gameplay by a factor of 3 or 4. Especially during the later stages of the game when ships are popping out of planetary build queues at ever increasing rates.

~SDC~