General Ideas Thread

[Chris]

You mean a screenshot of the entire map, I assume, rather than just what's currently in view?

[Minus]

Yeah, with ship numbers and stuff revealed. Maybe player names too. I'm not being terribly specific because whatever you do would be useful.

[Chris]

Okie dokie!

[Kumlekar]

hm, is there a way to save the game replay currently for multiplayer games? I fugre thats not exactly hard to add, but without current related functionality, it could be a pain.

[Chris]

There isn't, and it's probably slightly harder than you'd think to implement.   I can certainly see how to do it, but it's a reasonable-sized feature.

It is on the to-do list already.

[Minus]

I have another sound request. Sometimes people get surprised when the game ends - maybe some sort of warning blips that fire with a message in the chat box at five minutes remaining in the game, two minutes, one minute, and at thirty seconds, or when there are five turns remaining, 3 turns, and final turn. Like, "***Warning! Five minutes until end of game!" in reddish text.

[Chris]

Yeah, not a bad idea at all.

[Kumlekar]

I have another sound request. Sometimes people get surprised when the game ends - maybe some sort of warning blips that fire with a message in the chat box at five minutes remaining in the game, two minutes, one minute, and at thirty seconds, or when there are five turns remaining, 3 turns, and final turn. Like, "***Warning! Five minutes until end of game!" in reddish text.

This is strongly seconded by me.  Minus and I were playing on Milky way 6B against a sicilian player, and were completely blindsided when the game ended and he won.  We could have turned the game around within the next few turns too.  Minus had just taken his largest production factory, and I was one turn away from his second largest one. If I had realized the game was about to end, i would have attaked sooner rather than concentrating my forces for a few turns.

[Jeff]

I'm not sure whether this was an intentional design decision or not, but it seems strange to me that you can fly 'through' an occupied planet, skipping it and any defenses completely. Doesn't usually come up in random maps, but maps with rifts function unintuitively. Would it be possible to at least add an option to not allow that behavior?

[Kumlekar]

Interesting idea.  I think that being able to pass through planets better simulates a 3d space though.  From a technical standpoint, I'm not sure how hard that would be, but I guess a modification of the rift code, combined with a change in the origin and ending points for pathing between planets would allow for it.

[Chris]

It's intentional. Ships in transit are "moving through hyperspace" (which is also why they can't be redirected mid-flight). The location at which they're displayed is merely a way to visually represent their progress, not an actual plotting of their real-space position.

I realise it can look a bit odd to have ships moving through planets like that. At one point during development I experimented with moving ships to one side when they were intersecting planets, but I decided that actually looked worse.

[flap]

Hello.

I know, that's a bit of necro, but the thread was still on the main page. And what I'll do is exactly what is in the title : give some general ideas. Also, seing the age of the game and as chriss says, the stage it is in its life cycle, I doubt that so much work is likely to be added. But who knows, if Chris decides to give a last commercial strike to the game, some minor additions might be worth it...


So, I have a few suggestions :
- It has been proposed a long time ago, that when clicking on a line in the chat log, the given plant would be highlighted. I really second that. I actually, I would propose something else : when clicking a planet, the corresponding lines in the chat could be highlighted. So it would be easier to guess what might be waiting for us on an enemy planet. (Edit : or displaying somewhere on the planet panel the last event that occured there, with the turn number. It is probably much easier in terms of programming)
- Rally point are great for automation. However, I wonder if it would not be possible to add another type : repeating the last convoy (instead of sending ships above when there is more than a quantity, it would keep sending a fixed quantity). It would be usefull to keep scouting a few given planets. (but this would create some interface issues : how to select those repeating orders...)
(Edit : Maybe just a "scout" button, to automatically send 1 ship every turn to a planet might be enough...)

- Another one as been proposed already : a radar that could be built on planets. This would change the gameplay a lot and might require to change AI. So it would probably be out of scope. However, the idea is that a planet with a radar stops producing ships, but can see the fleets flying around it. The higher the ships production would normally be, the wider the range.

- Also, if planet swapping is a problem, maybe should a planet not produce the turn it has been taken. So keep moving forward whithout stopping would be more deadly...

Well, anyway, that's a good game. I feared that it would be too much like Pax Galaxia, but the fact the we can move anywhere we want adds a lot. Thanks !

[Chris]

Hi Flap, welcome to the forum! Thanks for your thoughts.

There are some good ideas in there, definitely. As you said, it's unlikely that many new things will make it into the game, but who knows. Maybe one day!

[flap]

Oh, yeah, I understand that.

Though, after more experience playing, the biggest improvement would be regarding AI... The fact that it very often fully leaves a planet, leaving 0 armies to guard behind makes it very easy to develop : just send 1 ship every turn to as many AI controlled planets as you can, and you would grow quick.

[Chris]

Yep. The AI could definitely do with some love.