1.04 Wishlist

What would you like to see in the 1.04 (or later) patch

from Sins Forums

Alright, so the title describes what this thread is for.

Here is my list:

  1. Fix the "out of memory fatal error crash" after playing several hours on a huge map, the autosave stops working and comes up with this issue that is only seen by manually alt-tabbing. I have 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD, so I'm not hurting for memory space. I havent a clue why the game just suddenly, after a few hours, causes the autosave to lock up and game to crash.
  2. I do like the new "random fluxuations" in the black market, but it doesnt seem to be affected when a player purchases resources from it, which I think it still should be. I've bought alot of resources when the price was low and my purchases didnt seem to affect the price at all. Only the "fluxuation" system.
  3. More diplomacy options. The ability to demand from them sometimes, or give them incentives to do work for us, like harrass enemies and pay them for it. The ability to "call for help" when your main planet is being bombarded and their fleet is 2 systems away sitting around doing nothing. A little more interaction in general with the AI players (havent played MP much yet so not sure how the diplomacy works in post 1.03).
  4. Adding espionage and be able to "spy" on a friend or foes economy, military, etc at a cost and a chance to fail the mission (similar to civ). If you could smuggle a spy on a capital ship and do some serious damage at a critical time, that would be awesome. Also adding a research arch for espionage. On larger maps I find research goes a little quickly (granted I usually put it on fast speed) but I love to research in these kinds of games (Earth2150 anyone?!)
  5. Further AI improvements. Thats just a given. I dont have any specific ideas for this, but I'm confident that you guys know what you're doing :)
  6. Fighter and Bomber asthetic motion improvements. Make them bank when turning and fly up and over a ship rather then veering around them or through them. Also adding frigate motion so they arent just sitting there. I suppose all of the ships could use a little motion while in combat. Even barrel rolls and loops would add to this and make battles seem less static. (the ability to turn these on and off would be prudent because sometimes you just want them to move and not worry about if they are facing the wrong way due to dynamic movements, but I'm sure you guys know what you're doing).
  7. This one is a much later implementation. Customizeable unit graphics (similar to GalCiv2). The ability to make ships personal to the players style.
  8. Similarly make explosions a little more realistic in that currently when something explodes, there is a delay between when the ship disappears and when the explosion activates so it looks disconnected. It would be nice to see large pieces of hull separating and floating away with secondary explosions of those and make them a little more fluid in their execution. Further, when ships are being built, it is kind of awkward to see the ship being built and suddenly it disappears and is next to the shipyard. I would like to see the ship fly out of the ship yard. I know these all add to system resources and requirements and such, but again, a toggle option to turn this on or off would be most beneficial.
  9. This may already exist, but I havent seen it yet: A quick jump key. When you hear "something is under attack" I usually hit space and jump to the action immediately in most RTS's. A similar feature would be nice. (Again, if it does exist, please let me know cause I havent found it yet).
  10. Finally, just general balance of the overall game. I dont have any real gripes about the balance of this game because there is so much real strategy to use. The fact that it takes a fair amount of time to kill anything allows for things to happen in order to counter the enemy onslaught. The superweapons could use some adjustment as well as better controls like being able to click on the planet and select the superweapon rather then zooming all the way in and selecting the weapon itself.

So I will stop there for now. Please feel free to comment on my suggestions and add ones of your own.

Thanks

52,813 views 35 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
This may already exist, but I havent seen it yet: A quick jump key. When you hear "something is under attack" I usually hit space and jump to the action immediately in most RTS's. A similar feature would be nice. (Again, if it does exist, please let me know cause I havent found it yet).
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Since there are so many different events in Sins, notifications are split into 4 categories of event cards that you notice on the bottom left. You can actually click on them and then hit spacebar to go to the point of origin of the event card. You can scroll through the list by left clicking, and go backwards by right clicking to select other events.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I think this is for much later personally, but much more customeizable ships, both Capital and subcapital. Sure have default ships for people that don't want to mess with them, but other ships could be altered either in game, or have a system like the map editor where you could make custom ships outside the game, with costs (metal/crystal/credit/crew) building up as you made ships more powerful.

I've been a long time player/modder of the Mechwarrior games (I'm an admin/artist for MekTek.net). You can edit a mech outside of the regular gameplay, and this is an extremely popular feature of that series of games. This should diminish concerns about ship editing during games making the game to frantic. It doesn't have to be DURING a game, and it doesn't have to be required, just optional. This feature will make the game even more fun than it is now, and would be a much loved option, believe me.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
If I build super weapons, I just assign them to a group number. Usually zero or nine. That way I can just hit the number and have it selected without having to find the thing.

I do wish the diplomacy screen listed who was allies or had other agreements. Kinda like the screen in Total War.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
better ai is badly needed im sick of being killed by 3 ai because i spawn so far away from my alies
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I'd rather just have it balanced and play right and save that other stuff for 1.1
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
It'd be nice if siege frigates were actually useful. 750 credits, takes up 15 cap space, and being made of tissue paper is a bit ridiculous.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
better ai is badly needed im sick of being killed by 3 ai because i spawn so far away from my alies
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Hmm, seems to be a good AI if it knows enough to keep you separated and kill you off first. Are you saying you want it dumbed down so it attacks the harder target and lets you flank it? I would think the logical move for the AI would be to divide and conquer, I would assume you would use the same strategy against the AI opponent stuck between you and your allies.

I've never been separated from my allies when I make sure we're on the same team at game start, but perhaps it's just been random chance so far.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I'm thinking that 1.04 will be small changes, balances, and 1.1 will be the big overhaul, so that leaves out sweeping diplomacy / black market changes. I'd like:

Ability to shift-click a research item to start it researching immediately (any item currently being researched on that sheet pauses, then resumes after).

In another thread someone was asking about Homeworld style ctrl-drag selecting targets to be attacked, where your ships would try and kill those targets before targetting anything else (i.e. focus-fire on a group of ships rather than an individual). This would be good, but I think it'd work easier without the clunky drag mechanic; It'd be nice if you could switch to the stacked view in the empire tree and right click an enemy stack (currently this makes your units just attack one ship from that stack and then go back to auto-targetting).

Another button in the search panel for normal ships (or 2; Frigates and Cruisers), which would expand to allow you to select individual ship types. It'd also be nice to have a text box you could type into to search for named objects like planets (yeah, my allies don't know how the ping function works).

Returning Armada obeying the rally point which has been set for the planet the phase gates orbit.

Ships auto-targetting; higher priority should be given to ships in front of the ships guns / inside weapon range. If the ship has been told to hold position or is in fact incapable of movement then it should always target ships inside it's range over ships outwith.

Ability to toggle the flip/flop abilities per group rather than having to tab though each ship (assailant ability being a prime example). Assailant ability (and others like it) need better autocasting; if I tell my ships to move when they are in siege mode and the ability autocast is on then it should bloody well instantly cast.

Should be allowed to fire my kostura cannons at planets where my allies have fleets. If I can accidentally nuke myself then I should be able to "accidentally" nuke them too :) More importantly, I can't even fire it when they have a small scouting force there (which would let us see the pretty explosion).
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Another suggestion would be a way to freeze the empire tree scroll. Early in combat when ships are jumping in, the scroll moves around and its hard to select and target appropriately. When I pause, the empire tree kinda stops refreshing.

I like the shift-click in research. The AI is probably ok for now. more info about other alliances/deals in the galaxy would be better.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Better AI.

I noticed today playing a small random (asteroid heavy) map vs Random Unfair TEC...

I found the opponent home, they had also colonized a desert and the nearby asteroid. NONE of the metal or crystal nodes had Extractors, but there were FIVE Military Labs built. Looks like they ran out of money when they got 1 Colony, 6 Cobalts and 1 LRM built, and did not have a dime to spend on getting more metal or crystal.

Bad priorities, wish I knew exactly which build it was.

I also noticed a "dead" opponent last night vs 4 Unfair - for whatever reason they simply did not colonize beyond the 2 adjacent planets & were doing basically nothing that I could tell except research. They had extractors though, so I assumed their efforts were in another star system and went on...
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Oh, oh! sorry to skip people but...

I think this is for much later personally, but much more customeizable ships, both Capital and subcapital. Sure have default ships for people that don't want to mess with them, but other ships could be altered either in game, or have a system like the map editor where you could make custom ships outside the game, with costs (metal/crystal/credit/crew) building up as you made ships more powerful.I've been a long time player/modder of the Mechwarrior games (I'm an admin/artist for MekTek.net). You can edit a mech outside of the regular gameplay, and this is an extremely popular feature of that series of games. This should diminish concerns about ship editing during games making the game to frantic. It doesn't have to be DURING a game, and it doesn't have to be required, just optional. This feature will make the game even more fun than it is now, and would be a much loved option, believe me.
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this would be really cool. i've tried to raise this idea in other posts, but it tends to get ignored and (skimming) it's happend again.

verybad: do you think this would be possible with mods and seperate tools or would it need to be implemented by IronClad?

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
1. Improved AI fleet composition/retreat tactics.

2. Antimatter toggle low/medium/high for ships, so autocast will not use more than 33/66/100% of total antimatter.

3. Pirates attack random planets.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I like the option # 4 , I really could use some more animate action on these ships, moving gun turrets, opening/closing hangers and etc.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Here's my two cents....

I agree with sideshow if RA followed the planets rally point that would be great.

Also if you could set your fighter/bomber mix like 50/50 and have all of your carriers try to match that allotment for planetary bases and groups (and whe carriers join groups) Its a pain to try to find all of your unallocated assets and have them sitting empty. Or maybe choose autofill to fighters or bombers and tweak later.

Many thanks! Great work guys!
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Which reminds me: ships joining a fleet should pick up the engagement state from the fleet. It's annoying having to manually keep reseting to Hold Position every time a ship gets rallied in.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
1)
Improve preformance on medium sized fleets and bigger. (30ish ships)

2)
Add a option to go into slower then 1x gameplay. (would be extremely helpful in creating huge fights for movies without needing a super-computer) Also would be a tempariy fix for #1 (Was one of my favorite things about SupCom, you could make any sized fight but if it was too laggy you could slow it down to playable FPS)

3)
Related to #2
Make it so your computer doesn't have to be all powerful to run at higher than 2x speed.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Aside from what they already have planned, I want a map thumbnail that lets you set player starting position when setting up the game. Almost every other RTS I can think of has this. At very least, 'team-based' or 'Player-vs-AI' map settings, to arrange players as desired.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
1. Every planet has a pair or two of asteroids seems odd to me. They should put some moons for building moon bases around planets instead of just asteroids.

2. The ability to capture enemy ships.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
2. Antimatter toggle low/medium/high for ships, so autocast will not use more than 33/66/100% of total antimatter.
3. Pirates attack random planets.
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These are both great ideas..

But random attacking planets for pirates should be a "pirates hard" option, and also come with pirate raids being twice as strong. :)

Also make pirates not screw around with trade ships so much.

Right now pirates are so weak. 2-3 guns and 2 repairs stops even a 20k bounty pirate raid.


No Pirates, Easy Pirates(how it is now would be easy.), Hard Pirates, Very Hard Pirates would be nice.
Currently bounty is pretty worthless past the 1st and sometimes second attack, but some people like it how it is now and newbies sometimes can't handle harder.

But can wait till 1.1 for that stuff.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
I'd like to see pirates BEING PIRATES, ie killing tradeships and trade bases then MOVING ON, not just 'attack x planet of y player and stay there'. If they exhaust bounty, they should move away to the next most profitable target. They should never use seige frigates: there's no bloody money in it, is there?

The antimatter thing should just be a click on the antimatter bar: 'lock' a part of it so the autocast doesn't use it.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I think this was mentioned before just after 1.03 was released, but I would like planets to go back to random resource values when you start. It added a strategic level to a game. If I know every planet I take , aside from Volcanic and Ice, just has 2 asteroids then it really doesn't matter how I branch out, but before 1.03 if my scouts showed me a desert planet with 3 asteroids one way and another with just 1 or 2 well guess which way my fleets is going to lean. I kinda miss that "surprise" element when planet scouting.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
It'd be nice if siege frigates were actually useful. 750 credits, takes up 15 cap space, and being made of tissue paper is a bit ridiculous.
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Okay thar siege frigate spammer. Only a siege frigate spammer would complain about an intentional change made specifically to prevent siege frigate spam.


Just an odd little thing I've seen concerning pirates that perhaps should be changed/fixed: pirate raids seem to get very confused when entering a system containing hangar bays. They never seem to attack the planet or structures, they just hang out at the edge of the system being blasted to pieces by fighters.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
I am not sure if it has been suggested else where but their are a few improvements I would like to see not sure how feasible they are however. The first would be the ability to set a target and cast priority for abilities for instance Rapture battle cruiser I would like to prioritize it to auto cast vengeance on the Radiance Battleship or the Progenitor to always attempt to keep enough anti-matter in reserve to fire off a shield regen when needed kind of thing. The other would be the ability to set unit formations within the fleet like have LRM's travel in a line, cross, or U shaped formation and others different as well. I would also like to see the ability to place a special building in a usually non-colonizable system for instance a ship that deploys into a defensive outpost or something with a couple ships in hanger or something it just seems more realistic ( i know its a game and its fiction atm but still ) i just can't see someone leaving a valuable asset or interesting anomalies without something there to observe and defend it. The only other thing I can really think of that would be nice is the ability to build the frigate factory at the begining for free rather than having it auto-placed.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
A couple changes that would be nice:

1) How about a story mode. Like Homeworld or Galatic Civ. I mean there is such a back story to this game, why not create a story/campaign mode.

2) Also I think it would be cool if a new and final class of ship was added, the Dreadnaught class. I mean almost every space fleet themed game has a Dreadnaught class. These could be limited to maybe 1-2 for every race, or for every couple fleet point upgrade, and these do not effect fleet points. If they wouldn't effect fleet points then a true 1-2 only cap wold be great. A true flag ship for a fleet.

3) Customization of the ships would also be alot of fun.

That's all I can really think about.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
Quote: verybad
I've been a long time player/modder of the Mechwarrior games (I'm an admin/artist for MekTek.net). You can edit a mech outside of the regular gameplay, and this is an extremely popular feature of that series of games. This should diminish concerns about ship editing during games making the game to frantic. It doesn't have to be DURING a game, and it doesn't have to be required, just optional. This feature will make the game even more fun than it is now, and would be a much loved option, believe me.
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Damn, what a great site MekTek.net is. I'm a BIG fan of Mechwarrior series all the way back from the first game :) After MW4-Mercenaries I REALLY have missing an follower up (MW5) :SNIFF!: But I’m happy to see the MW community still hot and going strong :) I'm still playing MW4 series from time to time . . . GREAT game!

And to the OP - this looks good imo but some of it is for a future expansion-pack i think :)

Redion