The patch thread: what to patch?

[Craig P.]

Now, QS/IG probably should have done this themselves, but you can get improved encyclopedia and tech description mods at www.orionsector.com. The encyclopedia mod inserts planetary special info, race info, magnate info, and some info from Chaos Avatar and Lore Weaver. The tech description mod includes specific modifiers for vague techs. Some variants include approximate level information in the tech name (aids in trading), and one also does this for ground combat techs.

[Alexander D]

That are good news. The guys at Orionsector.com are fast. This is the closest thing for a patch we have now, just 6 days from the release day!

Gretz

Alex

[habadacus]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon my troop ships won't invade consistently.

Oooh, good one. I noticed this myself last night. It seemed to be working as per the manual in the early / mid game, but later when I went on the offensive against the trilarians, I noticed they had taken over most of the sakkra worlds. So I went in with a big fleet, 8 combat TFs and 2 maxed transport TFs (so I wouldn't exceed the 10 max) , but I never got a bombardment/ground combat phase during the combat turns. Instead, I had dispatched the defending fleet, and eliminated the planetary defences and with no bombardment/ground battle phase and hit end turn. Then, in the sitrep for the new turn, it said "our fleet has bombarded (planet X), and the planet was scrubbed clean. This happened about 8/10 times while advancing againts the trilarians. When I wanted this to happen I had to bomb a planet for like 20 turns to get the pop to zero. Now when I wanted to conquer a world with some buildings and pop to use as a forward base, I had to start the planets completely over from scratch. Who gave the order to bomb the freaking planet anyway? not me, that's for sure, but then I'm never really sure if I'm playing this game or it's playing me. Has anyone from QS been addressing or even acknowledging any of this BS? Starting to feel like the only reason I'm even bothering to play at all is to find new stuff to point out is broken.

[Craig P.]

The problem with bombardment seems to be that if you cede control to the AI for combat it will automatically cede control for bombardment as well. This does NOT extend to the invasion proper, as I've controlled every invasion despite turning most of the combats over to the AI.

[matohl]

Re: my two cents

Originally posted by matohl

1. Disapperaing ships
I had two light cruisers in my military production queues that was supposed to be ready with a few turns in between.
According to the sitrep they were completed, they were removed from the production queues but they never appeared in my
reserves!

Sorry, this was not a bug, I designed my light cruiser as a system ship by accident.

[Essex]

Constant Troop Ship Production

For all of you complaining about the AI constantly building troop ships and the like, this isn't the AI choosing to build them over your beautiful battleship designs at a whim. It's a consequence of the number of industry points and the funds available to a planet. Simply put until very late in the game, none of your planets can afford to build the largest ship designs available in a reasonable number of turns, at least as far as the AI is concerned. For a much better discussion of this check out the orion sector.

However, I don't think anyone has come up with a good reason for all of the useless excess support troops being built.

Finally, while there are a lot of little things that should be patched to make the game better, the one true game breaker for me is the fact that the enemy AI is absolutely pathetic. I know a lot of people who buy first person shooters love the god mode and wouldn't know how to play without it but this is a STRATEGY game. Right now there's no strategy. Other than Orion Senate victories by races you've never met, it's impossible to lose. That needs to be fixed PRONTO or there are going to be a lot of returns and very few new purchases of what could be a truly great game.

[Craig P.]

Rantz has noted the call for a more aggressive AI. Reportedly, they toned it down a bit because it seemed too aggressive in beta, so some kind of fix there should be in the first patch.

That and the PD fix are the most important issues right now, I think. It'd be nice if they could tweak the viceroy's military preferences, as well.

[Alexander D]

I noticed, as probably others, that many things of the game (troop ship and ground forces obsessions, AI aggresiveness, etc) are twekeable from the spreadsheets of the game.

Although I'm playing with the stock game values of the game, I downloaded some interface mods and so. Right now, I'm tweaking the filtering of stuff for the sitrep, to have in green the stuff i'm not interested (i.e. DEAs been built).

I hope somebody with lots of time (and I hope again from IG/QS) with some knowledge of the game parameters will tweak these factors to make the AI player less dumb. And I hope this will become an official patch.

Gretz.

Alex

[vmxa1]

I would like to see something done to the wing tab for Military Queues. It is so easy to click on the Econ frame and get that one instead of the build queue. It is not as if I do not get enough clicks in, now I have to close this one and try again.
(Ok, my bad, you do not have to click on the far end, any place on the bar will open it.)

One more that I am sure has been mentioned before, but I would at least like to see the new design to load the current values for a given design. So if I swing to new and select say a cutter, pop up the layout form my last cutter design, not the last ship I edited, say Cruiser.
The problem is that forces me to remember what exactly is in each design or bounce back and forth or write it down. I hope that was clear.

[Cabbagemeister]

I can't stand the lack of any screen summarizing the planets I have (a la the old MOO2 "Colonies" screen). Why? Okay, I want to build a big ol' dreadnaught. I need to do this manually, of course, because my Viceroys are so infatuated with their troopships. Okay, I can deal with that. But where do I build it? My empire has swelled to like 50 planets. I know my homeworld has decent production, but I don't know what other worlds might build it in less than 200 turns. All I can do is manually hunt among every one of my planets (at like eight clicks per planet) to find the most productive planet. And suppose I want the five most productive? Quick, someone get me a pencil and some paper so I can write down the values for any planet with more than a thousand production points. Yeesh.

What else? Well, aside from the things already mentioned by other people, I'd like to have some way to choose which of my ships go into any space battle. It's very frustrating when my four armor corps transports get blown up by the stray missiles that miss my invincible armada, and then I can't invade. Or, I can tell my transports to retreat right off the bat, and then even if I win, they're on their way back to the closest planet, and I have to wait 8 turns until I can get them back. The best option is to time it so that the transports get there one turn after the armada, but it's absurd that I have to go through all of that.

In a similar vein, when I do invade, I want to see some numbers in the bombard planet screen telling me both my troop concentrations and theirs (INCLUDING militia), so that I know how many of my troops to land. There's nothing worse than forgetting how many troopships you brought with you, pressing the "Land all troops" button just top be safe, and finding that you've landed 2,000 batteloid troops to wrest the planet from thirty enemy mobile troops and fifty militia. D'oh!

[matohl]

Originally posted by Cabbagemeister
I can't stand the lack of any screen summarizing the planets I have (a la the old MOO2 "Colonies" screen).

Go to the Planets screen and check the "Owned planets" check box. Un-check all other checkboxes. Then you select to sort the list based on Industry.

It is almost as good as the colony screen in MOO2, however, it does not seem to take mineral richness and other modifiers in account; this needs to be fixed in the upcoming patch I think.

[matohl]

More features in need of a fix

1. Why cant I make the choice to NOT invade? If I have transports in the system, select assault planet with the fleet because I want to wipe out the fleet of the enemy, then my troops autmatically assaults the planet, I can only make the choice to control the battle or let the AI handle it. Perhaps I want the re-inforcements that will arrive the next turn with me in the assault.

2. Sorting on Industry in the Planets screen is not quite up to the task. It seems it does not take into account production modifiers, like mineral richness.

3. I want to access the production queues directly from the Planets screen, like I could in MOO2 from the Colonies screen.

4. In the sitrep, the checkbox for showing tech breakthroughs seems to be not working.

5. In the sitrep, I want to chose to see produced ships, ground troops, DEAs, planetary facilities, spy events.

6. In the sitrep, when it tells my XYZ has been produced I want to see what is next in the build queue and a shortcut to the production queue so I can change it froom Troop Transport or Magazine to something more useful like a Destroyer or a Marine.

[Zyrax]

It would be really nice to actually be able to see the mineral richness and such from the planets screen.

On another matter. Is it possible to somehow find out what kind of ships are involved in a fight before deciding if you want to attack/intercept the enemy or are you supposed to remember where every ship in the game is?
If this is not possible to find out, it should be fixed.

[Zyrax]

Just remembered another thing thats really needed. The scan feature from Moo2. I find it really annoying that I cant find out what enemy actually has on its ships.

[GodKing]

Scan - sure, but you have to take into account the technology. I wouldn't want to know automatically what each ship is, but a summery approximation would be nice, particularly if better sensors give better data....