What I want changed.

[BlueDEvil]

Diplomacy AI need a fix. How about trading my light armor and phaser for your very light armor? No reason for wanting very light armor when you already have light armor and throw in phaser as well. Ok, I'm on good terms with AI player, but this shouldn't be happening.

Tech trading sucks because:-
1) You have to check what the AI have. Then....
2) You have to check whether you are researching it or not. Then....
3) You have to check what you can offer. Then....
4) You found out you have a better one.
Need to have more info especially on the tech itself. Diplomacy is boring. Where is the check box for Diplomacy AI? There isn't any. At least the AI should handle the trade agreements.

Friendly ships blockade is a damn nuisance. I have already colonize the system, why do I have to wait until all other friendly colony ships leave the system before I can continue to colonize.

Looks like it is better off to terrorise the whole galaxy instead. No more boring diplomacy. Much more fun this way.

[vmxa1]

Don't know why it took me so long to mention this, but we need more filters in the Sitrep. We need more colors for events. DEA events one color so I can filter them out, but not all construction events.
Ships another unique color. Do I need a filter for task forces? Do I make that many? Is that a real problem?

[WarriorPoet]

How come no one mentioned being able to save your development plans???

This is THE MOST ANNOYING PART OF THE GAME!!! Well that, and the random technology thing. But seriously, I spend the first 10-15 minutes of every game setting up the priorities for my viceroys. I want to save the development plans under an empire name, etc...

Do that for me and I can live with the rest.

[vmxa1]

Saving Dev plans has been mentioned, but it won't hurt to do it again.

[Harry Seldon]

I want to capture tech when I take a planet. Trading is nice, so is spying, but I want my armies pulling lasers and robots out of the rubble of my latest conquest and passing it to my scientists for reverse engineering. This is vital to gameplay, especially when we have the random tech tree.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I want a slider on the start game screen for spy effectivness.

Have it start at the midpoint (100%) and have the same effect as it does now. I ought to be able to crank it from 0% (spies not effective at all aka no spying) to 200% (spies are twice as nasty as they are now).

I really want to have the option to have a nasty AI, even if it has to cheat a bit. I'm sure that I'll eventually have no trouble blowing it away on the lower levels and really want to be scared at the upper levels. Hey, look up the word impossible. that means that it is not possible [to beat it].

R:PM

[Hydro]

Tying In the Ithkul

I want the Ithkul to be more meaningful in the flavor and operation of the game. They are a terrific plot device – Evil Incarnate (like the Alien movies, only these nasties have even more attitude). With a little tweaking these could add more flavor to the game, and pick up where their significant back story leaves off.

Specifically I’d like to see:

1) Diplomacy - Specialized messages to and from the Ithkul in the diplomacy dialogs (minor item – may be more trouble than it’s worth). The Ithkul could say thing like “We have considered your proposal and reject it, drooling in anticipation” or “We propose that you serve as hour hosts. Since you do not see the wisdom in this, we declare war on your pathetic species”. A response might be “You are vermin. We will not treat with parasites”

2) Ithkul and Unrest – I think having the Unrest factor on any planet with Ithkul should spike sharply (say by 50 to 100). This would be the natives being very unhappy at being EATEN and used as hosts by a bloody parasite. And, when these blights migrate to other planets (as the races and magnates do) then these planets should have unrest. So, if an Emperor wants Ithkul subjects, be prepared for the consequences.

3) Genocide - As Emperor I should be able to decree that certain folks are to be exterminated. I might receive a morale/unrest bonus if this race is hated (like the Ithkul) or negative if they are neutral or friendly. This would be a nice tie-in for the natural disposition between races, and make it more meaningful. It would also be a nice way of making sure no nasty Ithkul are in my empire.

Right now the only way to prevent Ithkul infestation is to obliterate any worlds they are on. This seems rather severe since there may be non-Ithkul there. There was one instance where I took over a world that had a small Ithkul population that I didn't know about (it was not owned by the Ithkul) – I had to starve them to death and HOPE they didn’t spread before the entire population died.

[Hydro]

There isn’t much new here, just some thing’s I’ve experienced and that vex me:

15) Planet starvation and blockades – It is my experience that another race’s fleet will blockade your world unless they have a non-aggression or better treaty with you. This is ridiculous. A planet should only blockade races they are at war with since, in my opinion, it is an act of war to starve/blockade another race’s planet. At LEAST don’t have a race that I have a economic/research treaty with starve my worlds to death! Make diplomacy count for something!

16) Manual fleet combat – I’ve tried to manage fleet combat and it is not a happy experience. One particularly irritating problem is that my fleets will make no effort to protect themselves unless I tell them to do so. There should be a Defense tab to allow them to fire at missiles, fighters, or whatever. Or, let me select Target of Opportunity, which would essentially let the AI take over part of the combat while I concentrate on something else.

17) Tactical combat inset screen - again, mentioned by others, but have a small (2”x2”) screen showing where forces are. I’ve ‘lost’ parts of my fleets and only find they’re in trouble when I hear shooting. By the time I find them it is too late – give me this zoon-in feature to make human-controlled combat easier.

18) Retreat in AI controlled combat – others have mentioned this, but let me tell everyone to bug out when I’m in over my head. Right now the AI fights to the death, which is stupid.

19) “Finish combat” – I’ve had to wait for 7.5 of 10 minutes for combat to be resolved when nothing is happening. Let me Auto Resolve so I don’t have to waste my time watching a scout and a transport NOT fight each other.

20) Modify selection screen – let me see what my forces are (at least # ships and fleet type/size). Then I can decide what to do.

21) Planetary Bombardment – This seems to only come up if I resolve tactical combat. Give me the option of what I want to do in this phase – the AI never seems to do anything. Another note – let ground troops die, too. Otherwise all bombarding does is destroy pop and structures, making it effectively useless except for extermination

22) Making troops ‘obsolete’ – let me make magazines, marines, or other non-useful military items unavailable to the stupid AI. There is a point where these are obsolete (who needs marines when you have armor?) or redundant (when I have 200+ of each).

23) Max build setting – let me say “No more than 75 transports” or something similar. Right now I have to set items to be obsolete to prevent the AI from building them (cumbersome).

24) Autoexplore – let my scouts or task force be set to autoexplore. This is a minor item, but after a while I don’t want to mess with pushing my scouts all over the place, and I’ve found they’ve been sitting at Planet Booblebleck for 10 turns. This would also be a good thing for the tons of scouts the AI builds – I’ll just send them on their way and forget them. I see this as being like AutoColonize by the AI. Sure some die, but if I cared I’d do this myself…

25) Race and empire names – as mentioned by others, put the race name (Ithkul) by the empire name (Zk’aack’re).

26) Spying – let me determine the ‘intensity’ of spying (high, medium, low, none).

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
I want to capture tech when I take a planet. Trading is nice, so is spying, but I want my armies pulling lasers and robots out of the rubble of my latest conquest and passing it to my scientists for reverse engineering. This is vital to gameplay, especially when we have the random tech tree.

Yes at least some chance to get a tech from time to time.
Something like 1 in thre or four. You could go even 1 in 2 in this gme as there are so many techs.

[vmxa1]

Looking at my keyboard foldout I do not see anything that lets me tag the galaxy map.
I would like to have say Ctrl-number to set a marker on the map and use the associated number to scroll the map to that marker. It is a real pain to alway be scrolling around to see what is at the differnet systems.

[BobD]

Besides everything already mentioned, I would like the game to remember my preference settings so that I don't have to turn off the "Master's Notes" when I start/load a game!

[vmxa1]

When the Sitrep has construction events and you select them, it goes to PLANETARY IFRASTRUCTURE instead of ECON.
This cause me more clicks to get out and over to the Military build queue. This would make a better default IMO. I rarely want to look at the infrastructure.
Saving a few clicks on a function that is used so many times is a big deal.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Originally posted by BobD
Besides everything already mentioned, I would like the game to remember my preference settings so that I don't have to turn off the "Master's Notes" when I start/load a game!

Bob,

I hear you, but there is a little check box on the options screen to turn that off.

[Spaced Cowboy]

One more:

When I want to change a DEA, I do not want to have to wait a turn...or more for multiples, to tell it what I want to replace it with. This is a real pain when you have a lot of planets that you want to change things on like your initial mines on average and poor planets (the first ones you found) that you later want to change to research and industry (after you get the rich+ planets going). Also if you decide that you need a rec or gov DEA later on to keep the peps happy.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Oh yeah,

And it would be nice if the planets screen had more info about the planet on it. That red/yellow green bar is real useful....NOT!...as opposed to having the mineral, grav, habitability parameters noted.