Wish List

That would be great.

I agree that 20 + races with the current map sizes would be too much. But larger map sizes is number 1 on my wish list. But wouldn't matter as much, without an increase in the number of rivals.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to eat some lunch, while watching Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. Nothing gets me in the mood for a space opera like playing a good 4x space game, and vice-a-versa. A vicious cycle

 

1) Two words: Stellar Converter


-Morloc

 

That was removed @PlotinusRedux from what I understand, and I'm not talking about your run of the mill monsters.
It would be a late event, and the Monster specifically an Ancient Dragon, let's say at twice the power of a mature adult in game (I can customize stats if you wish)

The event would be something like this (sorry this is a rough version)

"Greetings small one, I am Ysevon the mighty!
For eons I danced upon the waves of my homeworld, where scattered islands adorned the sea like precious jewels. Then they came, self proclaimed magicians and honorable warriors that knew not the meaning of the word honor... I incinerated them all. To tell the truth, they were more a nuisance than a threat. Then one day, as all things end, so did the star that shone down upon my world, and all life there ceased to exist.
I alone survived...
I took to the stars and rode the cosmic winds, visiting worlds you have not yet dreamed of... but the "heroes" came hunting again, this time clad in powerful metal ships instead of armor.
Again I incinerated them. But now they are far more than a nuisance, now they are a threat to my very being.
I grow weary of this nomad existence, weary of being hunted simply for what I am, and seek a home among your kind. Offer me sanctuary, and I will protect you and yours as if you were hatchlings of my own".

The choice to accept would gain you an ancient dragon, that also had some attributes of a ship leader (flat bonus to attack, possibly defense as well, cannot level up)

Refusal would fire a variable outcome, anything from Ysevon attacking your outposts, to some credits as a bribe (to let her go un-molested), to nothing.

So, the dragon would be far more powerful than your normal variety and act as a hybrid ship/leader. Her value would not diminish anywhere near as much if she had these attributes. This in turn could open up other ways to build some events around Monsters.

 

I also think the game could use some active pirates, it seems like a staple of the genre and could spice up the early game. I would imagine them cropping up on planets out of empire border range, with a low tech starbase, and a base which can get raided or razed like when you conquer an outpost. They might get lead by one of the pirate leaders that skims your trade. And they send ships out to raid your colonies.

The other thing I'd love to see is some game options around tech scaling. I like a lot of things about the tech system in this game: techs a few tiers in are beelineable, it feels a bit like you can use tech 'build orders' at the start of a game, you can specialise your planets' infrastructure to be good at certain tech fields and so on. But the scale of technology costs seem a bit off, especially in a large game. It's quite easy to get near the end of a tech tree before you've even met all of the players. I'd appreciate some game options for base tech cost, parallel tech cost multiplier, and next tier cost multiplier so I could tinker with a balance that takes longer to get to the high tier techs. (I would perhaps also change that low tech fields sometimes have 5 techs in them, and high tier techs ofter have 1-2 techs inside, but that's a different kind of change.)

 

While not exactly what you want, and certainly not a perfect solution, you can manually set research rates for all factions, regardless of the difficulty selected. Like you, on normal settings I can breeze through the tech tree... so I set my rate at a brutal 25%. This basically increases standard research times by a factor of four. I do give a bonus to the AI factions, just enough so they can keep their technological lead throughout the game. It makes for some very interesting sessions...

 

That is a really good tip! It didn't occur to me that the empire tech rate settings could work as a global rate setting. I'm definitely using that next time.

 

I second the notion there are some excellent suggestions in this thread and would like to add some of my own.

In the first group, we'll address my desire for larger games:
1) larger maps
2) more leaders (hard to cover needed tasks without distracting busy leaders with spying or influencing)
3) "minor" races. Think rogue planet, but with an "event" where they can join you, or fight you, dependent on various factors like government type, race match or intolerance, or something they want.

Additional desires are generally in modding ability. I love the variable settings for starting the game, but for instance, I want to be able to adjust the strength of space monsters.

I want MORE monsters (highest setting) but also MORE progressive strength on them. They start out too strong and if you survive, they quickly get outclassed and are a mere nuisance.

I want a ship special/ leader skill that allows for boarding monsters.

I want to set the game to have NO monsters for early game and MORE monsters later in the game.

I want to be able adjust level and function of ship experience. I'd like higher levels of experience to give a damage bonus as well.

I'd like the ability to set an "oppositional" race when creating a custom race. A Klingon vs Romulan hatred... I've used some base races to mod and they have "secret" hated enemies that I cannot tell who they are.

I want the ability to adjust the rate of finding things in ruins. More things to find in ruins, and limitations on when powerful discoveries are available. A recent game gave hyperdrive to my nascent race and for the rest of the game all advances in tech related to drive type were immediately obsolete. A way to approach that might be to allow discovery of an existing tech from a level you have already researched.

Lots of little things I see in game I'd like to adjust, but I have to say, most of them are indeed LITTLE things, not serious or preventing the game from being outstanding among it's peers.

 

For me it would be the same as every other 4X/grand stretegy game: better AI opponents.
And I don't mean give the AI bonuses, I mean AI players playing the same game as I do, and still being just as good if not better.

Too bad that never seems feasable, and it's always just a dumb AI that just gets more and more bonuses the higher you set the difficulty.

 

I understand you, and a lot has been written about this topic already, I'll summarize briefly as this is not so straightforward.

We cannot think of the AI as all encompassing, it can be generalized as having three parts, Strategic, Operational, and Tactical.

The Strategic AI, (how well the AI factions develop and expand, what strategic decisions they make), is actually very good. Even without bonuses, on the higher levels the AIs will expand and develop themselves quickly while making solid research decisions. There is little more that can be done here save perhaps teaching the factions to expand in a less reckless manner. A minor point.

The operational AI is seen mostly during war time, what does the AI attack, what does it defend, and how does it do it. Again on the harder levels, (even if you remove the production and research bonuses), it will do well, though I do notice that without heavy production bonuses, it won't field enough ships to really excel here.

The tactical AI... can always be beat by a player, regardless how well the AI is coded. This is not because the devs lack talent, it's just that a player can adapt and come up with new tactics far easier than the AI. The player can even influence the AI into making poor decisions through deception, subterfuge etc.

So how does this get improved? By addressing the problem not as an AI solution. What I mean here is that we need better performance from the tactics already employed. Right now, regardless of the release or what the AI does, I get some very lopsided kill ratios in manual combat, even if I have inferior technology. This could be addressed in a number of ways that would not require the AI to be tinkered with.
Better use of ship leaders in combat by the AI is the easiest solution and promises quick returns
Less overall survivability by ships would also help as attrition can hurt the player more on harder levels.

Anyway, if anything is done here, the devs may want to try an outside the box solution, and attack the issue from a different angle in order to get improved results. Like many players, I hate having to rely on giving the AI boosts in production and tech rates for a challenge, it has too many drawbacks for my tastes and play-style.

In closing, I will remind you that this game is very complex. Even a game like Chess has a finite number of moves and decisions, and a set number of pieces with strengths and attributes, ISG does not. You can customize races and give yourself a Strategic advantage from the start. You can focus on speed and range early and get an Operational edge. Finally, if you wish, you can employ ships for custom tactics in a way the AI cannot quickly react to. In other words, all the abilities that allow you to customize a session, (and there are many), also allow you to unbalance the game.

It's a great game, one of the best in the genre, and the work that has been done on the AI thus far is commendable... though I'm certain Adam still has some surprises in store here.

 

To compare myself against the AI, I of course disabled all standard races, and chose only from the custom races with all identical properties: Medium-G Terran, No unique abilities, no bonuses or maluses, Kaek affinity (to make CE category completion possible). Only differences remaining are Titan abilities and visuals/names.
Viceroy/Average, very high aggro, 8 players on huge, all map settings average.

I know the AI is sliced up into parts that act pretty much independently. I just always found it unfortunate that it is like that, I would like it to be more integrated.
Except for the tactical AI, that you mention. I never thought it did badly against me, and this part of the AI is of course seperate from the other parts, since there are no overlaps in decision making. That said, I always armed my superior fleet with long-rage beam weapons and killed AI fleets all before they were in range for their weapons, so I can't really comment on how competent of not it really is.

My observation was, that the AI is too slow in its planetary development, leaders are probably a big issue too but I can't really see that. (At least I don't engage in making AI leaders defect to me, that seems exploitive since the AI doesn't (can't?) do the same to me, so the issue can't stem from me taking away their leaders.)
Where I try to get the 3 infras that get me to zero upkeep on my buildings and +3 building slots, and then branch off to complete at least one category, the AI just mixes a lot and never gets the good bonuses. PE is too weak to get anywhere except for tiny planets not fit for any real use, but a completly CE cat or ship cat with its empire-wide production bonuses can be a good thing that should at least be considered.
Asteroid mining with mining leaders plus support ships can turn a hostile planet type to the ideal biome really quickly, and with the resources it's almost too cheap to also change the gravity - since you could change gravity on 100s of planets with just one resource - or whatever the minimum number was, point is that it doesn't get consumed. That way, a lot of planet can become really useful, if you can plan a terraforming run for a planet. Does the AI even terraform at all?

So, my little suggestions for the AI:
1) better infra selection: (almost) always Civil Engineering to max - always required unless you have too much money (I never did, at least not in the beginning). -100% upkeep and +3 buildings slots defeats all other options by a mile. And whatever comes next, that one needs to be maxed too before moving the a third one.
1b) higher priority for infra might work well too, its bonuses (+100% base prod/level) are just too good - I'd even call it imbalanced.
2) All asteroid belts must do mining. All. of. them. Production is king, as always. Nothing to build? -> More infra/pop
3) Leaders! To maximise ship combat power, and probably even more importantly, to maximise asteroid mining yields. If not enough money: See #1
4) Make the AI capable of planned quick terraforming+gravity altering with focused support ships and asteroid mining + mining leader, or remove that entire feature from the game to make it fair again.
4b) focusing all production on one planet can also be really useful for: getting a new colony started (after terraform/grav control); last few infra levels on big planets; wonders; colony ships; big military ships. Redirecting mining output from asteroids, and moving a leader to different planet might cause a few turns of lost income but is widely beneficial when you put the production where it is needed most: to young colonies with their low initial production output.
5) No space elevators. Seriously the AI builds so much of it, you'd think it would be good building at least. It's not.

Not directly AI-related
6) The ability to turn asteroid fields into ideal planets feels very much overpowered. Even more so than terraforming and gravity manipulation, it's too cheap with too much benfits. Remove or make it vastly more expensive, and only give a barren planet on completion.
7) I was always wondering how I'm supposed to scan the whole galaxy with the remote scanning feature. Even with 2 parallel scans I can hardly scan 1/3 of my huge galaxy that has 16x11 scan tiles. Or maybe I'm not supposed to see all the special/hidden stars?

 

Outstanding, we agree on many things

I tend to use different settings, harsher in most areas... but I have too much experience with this to do otherwise.

Yes, the Ai ships can't fight well for many reasons. I too use stand off tactics a lot as they are susceptible to them, Part of the problem is the way the AI designs ships, they are individually good at times, but not mutually supporting. This is an area that just doesn't seem to be understood as I've brought it up numerous times. Again, there are work-arounds to this that would not require re-coding the AI.

Slow and erratic with too much of an emphasis on PE and not enough where it counts, it doesn't specialize worlds well. I've invaded enemy worlds that were just established, the biome ideal for the enemy, yet the infrastructure pick by the AI was spent on PE.

The remainder of your suggestions have merit, and in some cases have been suggested, It's a great game, but can easily become one of the best ever... the thing is, there are right ways to correct some issues, and misguided ways, sometimes it isn't clear at first what the correct path is.

Edit
Almost forgot, your last question about scanning. If you play on normal settings, the game will be long decided before you can even come close to scanning the whole board. Taking two scans at the same time helps, as well as the perk that reduces the length of time required for the scan. That said, the math doesn't add up. On the largest map possible it would take about 5k turns to scan everything under normal circumstances. So if you double the scan rate, and reduce the time needed... you only need a little over a thousand turns
Somethings were meant to be a mystery I suppose.

 

On the "scanning" issue that I, also have lamented over, perhaps an ability to steal/ capture other races scanned sites to add to our map?

I see them discovering black holes and rogue planets, so we know they are scanning. A damn shame every time I eliminate a race and that knowledge is not considered important by my spies or invading scientists.

Also, I'll second that this game can certainly be set up to be challenging, even overwhelming. The AI is as good as I have seen in any game that just used code and settings. The only complaint I would have hasn't been mentioned, and it's diplomacy. I can't get a reliable feel for diplomacy in this game for anything.
Friendly races I am trading with declaring war with no prompt or cause.
Races that can barely reach me declaring war.
Random events angering my nearest neighbors just for added chaos.
Small cash gifts are "too small and an insult" while the bigger cash gift "has too many strings attached"?
Sometimes I am rewarded with a +3 bonus for a garbage outpost on a planet, next similar offer is insultingly refused.

So if I am missing something, I'd be grateful to be corrected.

As for "better" AI, I have met some that were programmed to behave, not just respond.

But even then a player could "learn" their behavior and adapt, they could not.