some suggestions

[phoenix]

Hi, while playing I came up with the following ideas:

Rally Points:

• I would wellcome if one could use Drag and Drop for setting rally points also (as one can do to send ships). My idea is that dragging while pressing Ctrl (or some other key) sets the rally point, while dragging without pressing any key sends ships.
• One could even use several different keys so that by pressing a certain key a preconfigured amount of ships is left behind (and thus avoid the dialog)
• The already suggested notion of setting a percentage of the total fleet size to be left behind sounds interessting too. A combination of both relativ and absolute values will probably be best (something like leave behind 10 promille (of total fleet) but at least 50 ships)
• Most annoying i found the fact that if one loses a planet all relly routes from and to it are also lost. While that makes sense it is still annoying to reset all routes once the planet is recaptured. Im not sure if one can or should do anything about that, but I had the idea that instead of deleting the routes one could suspend them if a planet ist lost and then resume them once the planet is recaptured.

Factory Upgrades:

• At the moment production is increased by a fixed number per level. Thus it is indifferent if one upgrades a level 1 platent to level 2 or a level 10 to level 11. I would find it more interessting if the increment were percental. So that if you upgrade a planet its production is increased, lets say by 20%. Thus a planet with a baseproduction of 5 would produce 5*1.2^1=6 on level one but 5*1.2^10=30.91=31. (to avoid non integer production values you could truncate or round or whatever)

Some other small suggestions (some already mentioned by others):

• Using ENTER to end turn.
• Some hotkey to quick-finish all battles of a turn (like spacebar, only for all battles at once)
• An option to NOT shift the focus to every battle

Well ... I guess that's quite a lot. I hope you can realize some of them ... preferably the Ctrl-Drag first 

[RubenKraken]

• The already suggested notion of setting a percentage of the total fleet size to be left behind sounds interessting too. A combination of both relativ and absolute values will probably be best (something like leave behind 10 promille (of total fleet) but at least 50 ships)

This is an excellent improvement to my suggestion, thanks for pointing it out. To explain a little bit further of why I really want this feature is once you get more than say a dozen planets on a good sized map I find myself micromanaging all my rally points to control my network effectively and not get swells or dry areas. The percentage based rally points would make the mid to later section of the game (the sections most 4x games struggle with) easier to manage.

The percentage based factory production is quite interesting too.

[Chris]

Lots of good suggestions here. Thanks for posting!

[[WACKY]Walter]

Hi, while playing I came up with the following ideas:

Rally Points:

• Most annoying i found the fact that if one loses a planet all relly routes from and to it are also lost. While that makes sense it is still annoying to reset all routes once the planet is recaptured. Im not sure if one can or should do anything about that, but I had the idea that instead of deleting the routes one could suspend them if a planet ist lost and then resume them once the planet is recaptured.

I actually understand the logic behind the way it is in-game. If you lose a planet, the rally point is cut off. If you resecure that planet, the dynamic of battle has changed, since the enemy was clearly close enough to your front lines to invade it. It's possible (though every game is different) that that planet is no longer the best rallying point.

Some other small suggestions (some already mentioned by others):

• Using ENTER to end turn.

Enter currently opens the chat window, which I use a lot with my friends. Please don't change this  Shift or Control+Enter though...

[Stixsmaster]

I think a cool feature would be...well this would only work with steam users...but to have chat only be via steam chat...not ingame...so when you hit enter you start a chatroom just for that server and everyone joins and you talk that way...

This would prevent people talking so much that the text scrolls up over all the gameplay in the middle of the screen...which I find very annoying...

---Stixsmaster

P.S. the chat going up over gameplay in the middle of the screen happens a lot...and trust me I easily run the game highest quality in the highest rez I can...

[[WACKY]Walter]

I think a cool feature would be...well this would only work with steam users...but to have chat only be via steam chat...not ingame...so when you hit enter you start a chatroom just for that server and everyone joins and you talk that way...

This would prevent people talking so much that the text scrolls up over all the gameplay in the middle of the screen...which I find very annoying...

The problem there is that not everyone plays this via Steam (myself included). And I think hitting Enter to open a chatroom via steam (which would have to be accessed via Ctrl+enter to see the Steam overlay) could be problematic.

Another possible solution to the chat window thing could be in the way WoW handles it. A small, but wide window in the corner of the screen, with three tabs: 1 for chat and game info, 1 for just chat, and one for just game info. (example of how WoW does it). Clearly it doesn't have to be this elaborate, but I think there should be some way to customize the kind of information that's being spat out of the game -- a way to distinguish between chat and game info.

This is by no means an endorsement of WoW, which I happen to think is a pretty soulless game. But that's beside the point.

[Chris]

A small, but wide window in the corner of the screen, with three tabs: 1 for chat and game info, 1 for just chat, and one for just game info.

That's a pretty good solution.

[phoenix]

wouldn't it be easier to make the key bindings configurable, so that everyone can use whatever key he likes best?

[Chris]

It would certainly be better, and I definitely suspect that's what I'd end up doing.