The patch thread: what to patch?

[Cabbagemeister]

Why can't I tell my ships to target fighters/missiles? I don't see why I can't have a LR task force in point-defense duty when it is necessary in certain situations, such as when the enemy has lots of fighters.

Even better, when I have lots of fighters, I want to be able to tell the fighters what to do. Maybe I want the fighters to defend my SR task force. If I have enough fighters, this would actually make a SR task force useful. Or if I only have carriers, I'd love to tell the first wave of fighters I launch to attack the enemy, but the second task force to defend me from incoming enemy fighters.

I don't mind taking losses because of intellegent enemy tactics, superior enemy technology, or superior enemy numbers. However, it does frost my shorts when I lost ships because I can't perform the best tactics for the situation.

MOO2 let the player tell fighters to intercept missiles or other fighters. Why can't MOO3?

[wyldrose]

My sitrep says "Congrats, you've just reached level 3 in these tech fields", but when I look at the levels on the Technology->Matrix screen, it says Current Level = 4. And speaking of Tech Levels, it sure would be nice to have the levels listed next to the sliders on the Technology->Research screen instead of having to look them up one at a time.

[Trachmyr]

Most of what I would like as already been mentioned by others... but to recap:

1. Reduce the effect of spies (or frequency of their attacks)... Playing the Evon with a high O-meter, the higest tech & 12+ defending spies, I still get HAMMERED every turn. Defending spies should be a lot more effective.
Also, I think that the New Orions should not use spies unless you're at war.
If I don't have contact with a race, I shouldn't be able to spy on them or have their spies infiltrate my empire.
Assasinations of Leader should become a lot more difficult, and should make it very hard for that spy to escape. Leaders at the moment are practically useless as they rarely last more than 5 turns (if you're in the senate).

BTW, someone asked about info on how long a spy will last until they die/retire/etc.. Every spy looses 1 luck per turn (perhaps more if on a mission), when their luck runs out they are no longer available.

2. The ability to give direction to what military vessels to produce and in what percentages.

3. Selectable colors... I thought the reason we were not going to be able to do this was that colors were hardcoded to specific species (An Idea that I like), but instead they're totaly random.

4. Allow Task Force replacements (i.e., replace lost ships) and Ship upgrade.

5. Allow us to control all phases of combat even is you cede control to AI or choose to watch.

6. Better documentation, Encylopedia & Tool Tips.

7. In diplomacy, when a race threatens me (or has relations improved/reduced), I'd like to know why.

8. The ability to adjust the "Survey System View" to different race types. The ability to see what the planet's type is before you colonize. And in the planetary view & planetary list, the ability to not only select "View by" for the playable races, but also for magnates.

9. When a colony ship is created, there should be some sort of note to show what race of colonists are onboard.

10. When building a Ground Force, I would like to be able to sort by Type, Race & Experience, and the slider should allow you to go through your ENTIRE list (or atleast show 1 of each available Type/Race/Experience). I would also appreciate being able to create more than 1 Division/Corps/Army at a time before I load them on to a Transport (i.e., Load 3 Armies into a Transport Wave, etc.).

11. If I have more than 1 troop TF during an invasion, allow me to choose which ones/How many to use... On my first game I didn't relize it used ALL of your transports, and I attacked a small world with 12 28-unit armies. At least I won.

12. The "Hold Position" combat option should always be present if the "Defend Planet" option isn't legal.

[Bblue]

I want to be able to let the AI assault a planet but, still have the OPTION of gonig to the bombarbment screen so I don't have to waste time personally controlling a combat that's a forgone conclusion just so I can depopulate/ Stellar Convert a planet with a bombardmant. This option would also fix the requests/complaints of others wanting to control assaulting troops after an Ai controlled planetary assault, since that is also determined from the bombardment screen.

Biggest goof in the game IMO

[vmxa1]

A means of aquiring tech other than trade/steal. In Moo2 you could get a tech when you busted a planet. I could be either capture or kill off all pop or both, I don't care.
Also maybe a means to get the plans to learn a missing tech, so spending extra for it. It can be very painful to miss a bunch of tech that you would like to have.
If you are a non trading race, you have few options.

[jc9542]

I've seen a lot of people complain about spy activity and and I agree it needs to be toned down a bit or at least give you the ability to tweak it. Can you turn down the frequency of spy attacks with that moo3 editor? Open up the spread sheets mob and look for spymissions.txt the 2nd to last column is NumTurn or something like that. There's no comments so I can't quite figure out if that's how long an effect lasts or how long it takes to execute that mission. Anyhow I doubled everything so I'll see if that helps to reduce spy activity frequency.

[star mouse]

Duplicate system names

When generating the universe, make sure no two systems have the same name. In my current game, I have two systems with the same name, fairly close to each other.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Originally posted by 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.

I'm not sure what you are after here, but I always start from my current design (not from scratch) when designing. That wasy I always have my last cutter design.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Re: More features in need of a fix

Originally posted by matohl
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.

2. There are two sorts available. Maybe I'm stupid, but I thought that mineral richness was only mining related??

6. This one freaked me out. I set up all my planets military production queues initially then use the sitrep to make sure the ai is on track with what I want. If you click on the sitrep report that says you've built x, it takes you right to the build queue (one click my friend). The freaky part is that it quickly goes through all the screens.

[jc9542]

1 Ability to upgrade ground troop equipment for existing units.

2 Some level techs marked as always being visible for research ie things like space port.

[vmxa1]

RPMisCOOL you can go to the shipyard and to new design. It will have some layout, if you are at cutter and the layout is the one for a cutter, fine. Now if you decide you really want to do a cruiser, you have the layout that was there already and have to take it apart or do autobuild and work from that one. IOW if you select any hull in new design you will have the same components for all selections. Now you will need to recall what you had for that design.

[alinfitar]

I've managed to log about 10 hours of game play so far , and I'm still not sure If I'm impressed. I think this game could be a winner, but it is missing something. I've compiled a list of my must-see features for a patch... On the whole I concur with everything stated in this forum (beef up that AI!), but figured a few things should be repeated or added. There are some UI design issues, (okay - game design issues) that should be looked at before this thing is truly "gold".

General Game Functions
1. Context Menus - Right Click... There are whole buttons on my mouse going to waste here. The inclusion of a simple pop-up menu could allow a lot of navigation short-cuts and additional UI features. For example:

-Modify contents of production queues from system summary
-Modify contents of production queues from planet's screen
-Red-Flag in SetRep when complete
-Set WayPoints and Actions in ship combat and galaxy map

2. Remember my choices and settings. It would be nice if I didn't have to change the planets screen to "industry, shipyard capacity, owned" every time I restore a "saved" game. Same with turning off "Masters Notes"

3. Allow player control of sitrep priorities

4. I've seen a "Military Priorities" panel suggested on this forum... This is an absolute necessity - Marking transports obsolete is a work-around for a suboptimal AI.


Ship Design Screen
1. I'm going to agree to any requested improvements on this thread - just about any change could be made to make ship design better.
2. A minor point - Things such as the "X-Ray warhead" running out of the bounds of the weapon combo box. This may not be a crash bug, not even a show stopper, but this is the sort of bug developers should fix... Makes the whole product look like "amateur hour".

Ship Combat
1. Start combat at minimum zoom - I'm not interested in seeing my task forces, I'm interested in seeing their position relative to everything else on the map.

2. Would it be too much to have the whole map visible at on screen at minimum zoom? Rotating the map doesn't really help matters, although I can get a fairly good view of the whole situation.

3. What about pause?

4. Bring back scanning assuming one's empire has appropriate technology. So many space games/science fiction settings have some kind of detailed scan technology - let's have the same in this game. I would even be happy with Military spies stealing or reporting on enemy ship designs - where is the Naval Intelligence?

5. The "Task Force Orders and Information" panel is a complete waste of screen real-estate. Half of it contains giant icons for attack, move, etc. We've got hotkeys... Why not use the right-mouse/command-click for a context-menu for orders? The command button space on the panel could then be used for something useful, like scanning, or:

6. Combat event log. Combat events should be logged in a message window. That way I can find out what my task force is doing while I'm looking somewhere else... For example:

Task force 1 reports contact with enemy at (x,y)
Task force 1 reports contact lost/enemy destroyed, etc.
N Fighters approaching
Task force 1 fires on Enemy Task force 2 for N damage

7. A final futile complaint about that panel... Every other screen in this game seems to be filled with a flood of information - usually poorly organized... Why does this panel seem to convey no information at all? (oops... bitterness level rising)

8. Perhaps an optional starry background?

Combat Scheduler
1. Another interface nightmare. Even with the view system button, I'm never really sure what planet I'm attacking. I think something more than a picture and name of the star is in order. The dark blue selection highlight and general twitchiness means I'm never sure if I'll get a chance to bombard the world I want to...

2. Bombardment scheduler should allow me to specify the task forces and targets I want to bomb. I've wasted too many turns by not getting to bomb the worlds I want to bomb.

Research
1. Give us something to do here. Research is very much a set priorities and forget about it matter. In the other two games tech meant something, in this game it's just more clutter. The ability to rush a research project would go a long way to improving the strategic elements of research. It might be nice to allocate funds to rush a given project As a penalty for overuse, have some unscrupulous scientists take advantage of your generous donations, and not actually rush the project.

2. Increase the detail of descriptions - drop the out-of-place attempts at humour. "Penetrates armour faster than sound through space"... ROTFL - really... very droll...

Diplomacy
1. Sometimes the diplomacy messages are just too incoherent... While I'm willing to believe that aliens may have different untranslatable methods of communicating, the first "Angry/Demanding-Praise" message received is a confusing experience... Too hard to parse some of those diplomacy sentences

[Harry Seldon]

Not sure if it's been mentioned before so I'll either state or reiterate that planetary missle bases are too powerful. I just sent a fleet of LR superdreads with PD and recon and a second fleet of LR/IF with PD and recon up against a planet and I lasted less than two minutes. Two volleys to kill 24 level 27+ ships. I used the PD workaround and have the best beam and armor around.

Very, very frustrating.

[intrigue]

aside from bug fixes, this game is simply missing a few things:

1. Refitting of ships. Perhaps refitting an existing ship should be VERY expensive, but it should be there.
2. Choices for hull style of ships. A frigate is a frigate, and battleship is a battleship... how boring. In fact wouldn't it be cool to be able to load your own models? Those that love tweaking games (like me) would be delighted.
3. Mini-map in combat. Much needed, others have said it better.
4. Mini-map on galaxy view. I know I can zoom out, but what a pain.
5. Ability to take over control from the AI when you are watching.
6. Ability to have AI take over a battle you started.
7. Ability to Pause a battle
8. Ability to speed up a battle... (perhaps your watching, and your non-combat ships are all that is left, and are cowering in the corner).
9. The game needs to have a last-used custom race option. Or does 'Quick Game' actually do this? I am afraid that it just uses the default race for the race that is pictured.

thats all I can think of right now

[Harry Seldon]

And fix the planetary AI's military queue. I don't need two hundred system ships in a system, or one hundred magazines, or six hundred thousand troop ships. I'm having to drill down and MM every five turns or so to make sure this isn't happening.