Biggest Wishlist Ever |
OK, I know this is my first time on the forums but ive played this game for a while and its great. So, with that here it is!
List of improvements to Se5 patch 1.44:
(I hope this is read before the next patch!)
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GUI & management:
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General Improvements:
1. For smaller popup windows like;
Report Windows (componet, empire, star, planet, etc.)
Filter Windows
Portrait Windows
Create column Layout Windows
intelligence / select focus area window
Etc...
instead of having to click the cancel/close button to exit, simply right clicking in an emprty area or outside the window would be easier and faster.
2. Can we please save and load custom layouts to a file so we don't have to recreate them every game. Also having the game detect any exsisting custom layout files and adding them to the right click droplist would be useful!
3. Please add the "create custom layout" option to the layout droplists located in:
planets List
Colonies List
Ships List
Construction Queues
4. Help text popups in;
Systems List
planets List
Construction Queues
cover the map when moving / holding the mouse over the information area makes it hard to determine the location of the object you are trying to locate! Please fix this!
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A. Designs Menu
1. A delete design button please.
2. Please add right click functionality when right clicking on ship deisgns. Things like;
Create new
Edit
Copy
Upgrade
Make Obsolete
Set Stragety
3. Button name change;
Create -> Create New Design
because it can be confusing sometimes.
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B. Create Design Menu
1. PLEASE make it so were able to switch the deck level although there is a componet selected and ready to be placed.
2. The task buttons on the right hand of the menu need better wording. You're already in the "Create Design" menu, so there is no need to repeat that information on the buttons. It's redundant and sometimes confusing.
Filter Comps -> Componet Filters
Select Ship Size -> Set Ship Size
Select Design Type -> Set Type
Set Design Name -> Set Name
3. There is no Armor points report of the current design you are working on. You may only find out how much armor the ship has after you make it. It would be nice to know while you are making the ship!
4. Maintinence costs on componet reports would be very useful. If not, then at least report it while the ship is being created.
5. Ability to create custom design types.
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C. Space Simulator menu
Once you get further into the game you will notice that this menu becomes packed with so many different designs it drives me mad trying to create a simulation with the proper pieces.
1. A list of all the empires instead of the empires and their ships would be better. Clicking on the empire names would droplist all the ship designs for that empire. Some additional filters for ships would be nice. Things like; by last appearance, number encountered, types visible (ships that you can see on the map).
2. Saving and loading combat simulations would be very useful. Whenever I am creating a ship for combat I constantly test it to see its combat effectiveness. Doing this and having to recreate a scenario with the combat simulator starts to become a pain because I have to keep picking the pieces I want over and over... This could also be the perfect place to replay / edit previous saved battles.
*see "Log / News window" for more*
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D. Ground Simulator menu
Same thing with the saving and loading scenarios, this would be useful here too.
1. Button renaming would be nice here. This is what I think would be less confusing and easier to understand.
Set Owner Cargo -> Set Defending Units
Set Enemy Units -> Set Attacking Units
Place Ground Items -> Arrange Ground Items
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E. Log / News window
1. Later on when I have tons of research points and then pour all my points into a single research area I will get a ton of technology reports the next round which makes it hard and bulky to navigate... If it is possible to condense this into a single "technology advancement" report. That would be nice. Also you can right click this report for details on exactly what and how much it has advanced.
2. Same thing with the technology report but for componet reports
3. Ability to save combat reports to files which can then later be loaded and or modified into the Space Simulator. I would love to be able to see battles that other people on the forums have had.
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F. Communication Window
1. Please add some sort of ceasefire / make peace option you can use with empires you are at war with. I
have not found a way to stop a war with another empire other than; extermination, demanding surrender
(which never works), or infact surrendering to them...
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Gameplay
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Ok, other than all the other GUI problems I have this is where the game actually REALLY needs improvements, so everything here should be held in high regard above everything else.
A. If you have a treaty with an empire, then ships that pass by eachother and friendly planets should NOT engage in combat. Why does this happen!? I hate loosing ships and sometimes planets to an ally. Also moving ships over friendly planets should at least create a confirmation dialogue to attack or not.
B. Stellar maniuplation research area takes way too long to get to the point of creating artifical planets, etc. Researching it is useless, by the time you get access to artifical planets and star
manipulation the game is probably already over. Well, at least for you for wasting all your time researching stellar manipulation. 
Unless you research this without being interrupted for about 500 turns.
C. Attacking planets with normal weapons should not even be possible. The only weapons that should damage planets are the ones designed to damage them. I Have never used planet bombarding weapons. If I wanted a planet destroyed I would simply move in a few ships and shoot it until its dead. No effort involved with extra technology. Also, I would rather see AI note this as an option to use on a planet. Rather than later on moving a highly equipped ship destroy everything on it with a few shots.
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AI (yeah... i know)
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A. AI always seems to be basic and with only 1 goal in mind if they ever attack a planet... Shoot it till its dead... -_- I have never once seen AI try to land troops to take over a planet. It would be nice to challenge AI over posession of a planet rather than having them just wipe everything out and move on.
B. Ok, this is a big one. Yes I know programming isn't easy let alone programming AI. But at least see this through. There is alot of technology options in this game, and alot of races to compete with. Although every AI player plays very simmilar it feels so bland. One big thing that should be done with AI is give them personality attributes, things that control what they do and how they play in the end.
Things that could immideatley modify their game style ingame:
1. Agression
A factor that controls how frequently they will attack. As opposed to how much they will be defensive.
2. Variation
A factor that controls the variation of the units they use in their forces. This should be kept in ascoiation with attack style. Unless of coruse you want to experiment.
3. Brutality
A factor that controls if they would rather capture, disable, or destroy your ships.
4. Mercy
A factor in how much they will want to destroy your planets as opposed to capturing them.
5. Technology
This would control what their favorite technology areas would be, they would focus more in these areas than anything else. This section should always include a list of weapons, armor types, and other misc technology they will excel in.
6. Attack Style
A setting that will determine their fleet and ground forces numbers and strengths.
-Swarm-
This empire will send large fleets of weaker units.
-Swarm2-
This empire will send small fleets of carriers loaded to the top with fighter units, sometimes accompanied by a few other ships.
-Suicidal-
This empire will send large fleets mostly composed of suicidal rammers and drones, accompanied by a few other normal ships to get things done.
-Tactical-
This empire will send small fleets that contains various units that have equipment to compliment eachothers weakness and well prepared for a number of situiations.
-Brutal-
This empire will send medium sized fleets of hard hitting ships which usually have more guns than armor.
-Defensive-
This empire will send medium sized fleets of defensive ships which usually have more armor and few guns.
-trutle-
This empire will send small fleets of simmilar well equipped all around ships that can deal alot of damage and take alot of abuse.
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Further suggestions:
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A. I think an entire section devoted to combat should be added. Seeing as politics has its own section I believe combat/war should have its own section as well.
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Things to include in combat/war section:
1. Saving and loading of combat scenarios just like the Space Simulator and Ground Simulator.
2. Option to create and save post combat reports after a simulation. Just like the ones you see in the Log / News window.
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End
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Whew, other than all that stuff, this still is a great game. love to play it. I hope someday that all these things can at least be noted and fixed. I will add a bug report to the bottom of this post later on, because there is a few I have found. I just gotta make sure on how to recreate them before i post them. 
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
Hi there, I agree to some of your points?
But in responce to :3. There is no Armor points report of the current design you are working on. You may only find out how much armor the ship has after you make it. It would be nice to know while you are making the ship!
Look in the design satistics window upper left corner?
You will se a white clip bord with green arrow on it, click it and you will see more satistics. Look at hull structure points
then add some armour and the value increases so you can keep a track of points well making?
I must admit though its easly missed?
Hope this helps Spuda
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
This is a very well thought-out list, and I'm in agreement with every point but one: under "Gameplay", point A, is it possible that your treaty specifically allows combat in certain areas? For instance, if you have a treaty with the Non-Aggression set to "In neutral space (non colony systems)", then any ships which pass over the other empire's ships/planets in a system which is colonized will engage, since your Non-Aggression treaty only covers systems which are not colonized. Perhaps you meant something else entirely though, in which case, disregard the above.
While I do agree with everything else for the most part, under "GUI" points B1 and C2 are particularly poignant: these are the ability to switch decks when a component is already selected, and saving/loading combat simulation setups, respectively.
I've seen quite a few "wishlists" on this forum, and more often than not it seems that 90% of their contents are items that could (and should) be modded in, like bigger ship hulls, different racial techs, etc. This list stands out by going after what really needs work first, and that's the GUI and gameplay elements. These are the little things that over the long run, take the fun out of the game because you can't make it do what you want it to do. So again, kudos, and I hope your voice is heard!
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
Hey guys. Thanks alot for the replies. Now, as I said in the above post I have a bug report for malfador.
Bug Report of Se5v1.44:
1. Battle - Ship portait bug
to recreate this.
1. get some units to camp a warp point.
2. When a battle occurs, click an enemy unit.
3. Right click the information bar at the bottom to get a ship report.
4. Click its display picture on the top left of the unit report window.
5. Hit the esc key to exit.
Doing this will not only close the Ship report window behind the display picture, it will unpause the battle. If the battle ends while the dialogue is up it may crash the game depending if there is a ground battle at the end of that turn. I'm not entirely sure this is the case, but doing something simmilar did crash the game and I lost alot of progress. Otherwise the window will remain open as it finishes processing the turns and stay there until the next turn where you can close it.
I remember there being another bug but i cant even remember what it is now. Ill just have to experiment to find it again.
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
I'd like to see the following:
- Select multiple units/ships in the combat sector view (for aligning sats/ships etc.
- A button to assign a formation to the selected ships/units as per above.
- A circular formation specifically designed for satellites. As per above, above
Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
On further reflection, might I also add to this list under "GUI and Management":
The ability to use components other than the most recently researched version! Just because I have DUCs V researched doesn't mean I want those on all of my ships.
There are at least three viable scenarios I can think of in which it would be beneficial to have this ability.
1) You want to give a ship (or ships) as a gift to another empire, however you want to ensure your own ships will remain competitive. Designing and building a ship with slightly older technology would be ideal for such a gift.
2) Some (all?) components increase in cost as they increase in level. Their cost-to-effectiveness ratio also increases, but sometimes this is irrelevant. If level 5 DUCs will be more than adequate, why spring for level 15 DUCs, even if they are "better"?
3) You don't want the enemy to know your current technology level for the component in question. Sending ships to a non-critical combat area with level 5 DUCs might lull the enemy into a false sense of security, so that when they go to engage your main fleet they're taken completely by surprise when they encounter lots of level 15 DUCs.
I won a fairly drawn-out game in SE:IV due in large part to #2 and #3 (although #2 was more important in the older version). I can definitely see these coming in to play again in SE:V, but this time around the ability to have this level of control just doesn't exist.
This might have already been brought up before on another thread, so I apologize in advance if that's the case. If it has been brought up anywhere though, has there been any proposed resolution to this issue?
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
The problem with using obsolete versions of components (and facilities, and vehicle hulls) is that it would require some major reworking of the vehicle design engine (or the facility build queue), esp. to do it in a non-cluttery fashion. It is primarily a problem of programming time cost vs. net benefit.
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
I would suggest actually emailing this list to Malfador as I heard that he rarely checks the forums.
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
Another useful feature would be to show a trail for other empires ships when you click on them. At the start of a new turn, you may have various ships passing through your sensor range and not a clue where they came from. You'd obviously have to guess where they're going but it would be nice to know where they came from.
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
It could be something as simple as crtl-clicking or alt-clicking on a component and getting a pop-up box in which to enter the level you desire. Either up/down arrows or direct keyboard input.
Still might not be worth the effort at this point, but I've wished for this feature myself a time or two.
My workaround's to go back to old designs and "copy" them, then edit the copy. Of course if the desired new ship is a larger class than the old you'll be out of luck.
Re: Biggest Wishlist Ever
That's a very extensive list, I do like some of your ideas. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens in the future.