Thank you for this game, it's refreshingly different, and oozes potential for some serious fun. For full disclosure: I haven't bought it yet, kinda tied up with other co-op gaming stuff right now and don't want to annoy my wife and friends by moving onto a new game so quickly (plus I'm still enjoying the other). And then the Elemental beta is coming up soon. But it's very likely I'll buy it at some point in the future because I want to support efforts like yours. For now just going on knowledge from the trial and what you've written.
Sure thing, no worries, I can understand that. Thanks for taking so much time to engage with a game that you only have the trial of!
Anyway, you seem keen on suggestions, and probably won't mind if some/most are misguided based on my incomplete information, so here goes. Consider all prefaced with "if you don't already have this".
Nope, that's fine -- fire away. I certainly don't expect people to have a full working knowledge of every feature in the game before they make a suggestion!
- Force Field ships. Essentially a mobile force field generator. Cool because of being able to have very defensively weak ships (guns with engines) last longer in concert. Would require significant thought to properly balance without crippling, possible balances:
-- only starship class
-- only with (significant?) knowledge investment
-- very low ship cap
-- HIGH energy costs
-- really slow
Yep, this is in there -- the Mark III force field generator is mobile, but as you note, really slow. And yes, it also costs a lot of knowledge to unlock, and you get very few of them. We;re clearly on the same wavelength there.
- Ship-cap-expanders. Someone else suggested a mobile command ship that increases the ship cap by 5 for each command ship or something like that. Another approach would be a stationary command center which does something similar but is more vulnerable to AI attack since it doesn't move. Could apply to all caps, specific ship type caps, specific tech level caps, one for "ships" one for "starships" one for "econ" and one for "turrets"; whatever.
With this, what I think I've decided to do is to create a stationary ship that you can build, but it's really expensive (maybe 50k metal and crystal). It would do something like increase the caps for all space-dock ship types by 12 at Mark I, 8 at Mark II, 4 at Mark III, and 2 at Mark IV. It wouldn't increase stuff that you build directly, such as turrets, mines, etc. I think I'd actually allow the player to build unlimited of these, since if they have the money then why not -- gives them something to do with all that wealth. And I think I would limit these to only allowing one per planet, and then perhaps also make the AI get double-strength waves against any planet you build this at. So that gives you a lot of benefit, especially if you build these at interior planets that are well protected, but it also causes some ongoing trouble for you. Oh, and I think I'd make it so that AI Progress goes up by 1 if these are destroyed -- this is kind of like a Captive Human Settlement that you can build, and which has different bonuses.
- In general, more powerful/cool structures could be limited on a max-X-per-system basis instead of (or in addition to) a global cap, and/or increase AI progress
With this sort of thing, the really powerful and/or cool structures, I usually make them something that you have to capture from the AI. That way a) it might not be in an ideal defensive position, which can be interesting b) there is a very fixed number of them that you can have, period, since if you lose them they are just gone, and c) it provides more variety between different campaigns, since not all structures show up in every game. For most of the really powerful stuff this is how I prefer to handle it, but for a few things like the Logistics enhancer thing, I think that is something players should be able to build directly, and thus your suggestions on how to handle balancing those are duly noted and great ideas.
- Another take on the mobile command ship and/or carrier ship idea is to have a sort of symbiotic pair system where one ship type (starship class) isn't so impressive by itself but has the ability to "control" a certain number of a "drone" ship type. This "drone" ship type could have a really, really high ship cap, but if a drone is not inside a control ship's control radius it shuts down entirely. You'd have to add a whole new concept of "control range" and the resulting "don't go faster than your control ship" and "don't get too far from your control ship" and "AI should target control ships" etc logic that would be non-trivial, but the idea may be worth consideration.
I love this idea! I'm going to have to think about the specifics for a bit more, but the general idea of having drones with a control range like you describe is super cool and really different.
- Shared ship caps: tie two or more really useful ship types together under a single cap, offering (or perhaps requiring) a certain degree of specialization particularly in co-op games.
Could be, but it's a bit counter to the way I have the internal logic for this set up already. Specialization in co-op games is already hugely emphasized because there is too much stuff for everyone to unlock everything. And also each player starts with a unique ship type that none of the other players on the team will have. I'm all for encouraging specialization, but I'm not sure about this specific way of doing it.
- really knowledge-expensive tech(s) that increase the knowledge-per-planet cap to 2500 or 3000 or whatever. Basically it wouldn't pay off unless you have (cost)/500 or more planets and it would take time to pay off.
I'll have to think about this more, this could seriously complicate the balancing of the knowledge costs of ships. I'm not super inclined to provide a way to get more knowledge than what is already there, just because I don't want players to be able to get everything in a given single game -- if they can eventually just get everything, then the individual choices that they make don't really matter and are kind of boring. Unlike other RTS games there is not a "civ" that you choose at the start, so that means that you are kind of building your civ as you go. If I made it so that people could get everything, or nearly everything, then that would mean that it's just one big generic civ in practice.
- this would be pretty involved, but it might be more interesting to break out the AI's resources into more ablative chunks. Have military production (reinforcement points), tech production, and aggressiveness all as separate numbers. Add "normal" AI factories or lesser warp nodes that contribute to reinforcement points, and "normal" labs that contribute to tech points, and have data centers or whatnot apply to aggressiveness. Maybe it would be tough to balance so it wouldn't be too easy to cripple the AI's supply chain or research, but if nearly every AI world had *something* interesting worth taking out (even if the planet isn't worth taking), each node on the galaxy map might feel more meaningful and unique. Maybe even break the factories down into ship-type specific stuff so if you really wanted to reduce the number of cloaked ships coming in... but that's potentially a lot of coding.
Could be something to do... I like the fact that it has a lot of potential for interesting choices for the players. But as you say, it would probably be a lot of coding, and the other worry is that this adds a serious amount of surface complexity to a game that is already complex. I'm more interested in ideas that increase complexity/variety in terms of what you find out in the galaxy, instead of what you see in the interface (e.g., so I doubt I'd ever split the AI Progress like that). But I do like the idea of potentially adding some more AI targets like you describe that would let players affect gameplay more. I'm almost positive I will build out some new AI ship types in coming releases with stuff along those likes -- great idea on that front!
- planet-specific bonuses, again to make each node feel more unique. Honestly not sure what to give bonuses on, but perhaps stuff like:
-- builds bombers 20% faster (potentially give motivation to risk putting up production plants on the front lines if you just captured this)
-- reduces/increases effect of shields by X%
-- reduces/increases speed/damage/range/etc by X% (could be asymmetric, some planets favoring the humans, some planets favoring the AI, not sure how to put it story wise but there's always enough selective forms of radiation to cover a sci-fi writer's needs)
-- permanent scouting of adjacent planets
-- free tech on first capture
-- when a ship wormholes in, applies a flag that prevents wormholing out again for X minutes
-- cannot be AI-warped to, has to be wormholed to
Usually what makes the planets feel unique is the capturables, and those are really only on 30% of the planets at a time. I will be growing the list of capturables as we go (because I do think that's really important), but I'm not sure that I would make inherent changes to the planets beyond that. There are already half a dozen or so capturables, but I want to add a lot more. I also like that some planets are generic except for their "terrain" of resources and wormholes, because on those it comes down more to player judgement as to what to best defend, where to get resources, etc. But then those other 30% of planets with specialized capturable ships stand out more.
Of course, that 30% number is rarely hit except in a 40 planet game at the moment, I need more capturable ships before that will be the case in the larger games. But I like a number of the ideas here, I'm sure you'll see at least some of them showing up in future releases.
- accessible progress bar on starship construction (I can't seem to find any indication other than how faded in it is)
When you click on any constructor, it has a progress bar above the thing it is currently building. It's on my list from someone else to also have a countdown timer over that bar.
- in general, I would like to be able to manage/play more from the galaxy map (the Turn-Based gamer in me again, I think), specifically:
I'm not super keen on this, just because it's a real departure from most of the game. I could basically be building about half of the controls in the game a second time for this, and I don't really think that the galaxy map is ever going to be large enough and expressive enough to really be a replacement for the main view. But, I'll respond to each of these individually.
-- select a system I own, and press a button or "M" to build a metal producer on an empty metal spot (if available), or "C" for the same on Crystal
With the new one-click metal/crystal production, I think this is less needed. But an important thing is that you cannot "select" planets on the galaxy map, when you click a planet it just takes you there and puts you on the planetary view. I figure that anyone who is rebuilding metal/crystal spots is also probably going to want/need to check out the planet and see if their defenses need shoring up, anyway, since clearly something got through.
-- it would be nice to be able to order construction of other stuff from the galaxy map without having to select a specific constructor or building location, but that would be tricky because the questions "what constructor does the player want me to use?" and "where does the player want this structure" are non-trivial. Could just have a default behavior of building in an expanding spiral from the command center, and either have to place turrets manually or put them at some radius out from the command center. I could go nuts with shortcut commands like "put a tractor turret next to the hostile wormhole in this system with the fewest tractor turrets currently in range", but then you'd probably hurt me and tell me there's more to the game than the galaxy map for a reason 
This sounds a lot like Star Wars: Empire at War. Are you a fan of that game?
I really don't intend for the galaxy map to be used to this degree like this, the entire structure of the code, etc, for working with it is all wrong for that sort of control. If there's a lot of demand for this I would consider it, but right now I'm not seeing that it really has many benefits beyond the more RTS-style (versus turn-based-style) controls that are already there.
-- overlays for displaying on each system "number of ship producers", "number of starship producers", "number of available metal spots", "number of available crystal spots", "amount of knowledge remaining", "number of hostile wormholes", "number of incoming AI waves", etc; it would also be interesting to have some sort of derived statistic for "total defensive strength" that would take some thought but a quick comparison of the "has hostile wormholes" and "total defensive strength" overlays could be quite informative.
These I love, but a lot of them are already there. One's already there (use the Disp button on the left bar):
1. Number of available resource spots vs those used (metal and crystal in one).
2. Knowledge gathered (always out of 2000, so the amount remaining is easy).
The ones that I'll definitely add are:
1. Number of constructors (includes space docks, advanced factories, and starships in one).
2. Number of starships.
3. Number of starship constructors.
4. Number of incoming enemy waves.
5. Number of hostile wormholes (GREAT idea -- will only count enemy planets with warp gates).
The total defensive strength would be tricky, as there are really a lot of variable in that. Plus I'm not sure I see the value, it's a bit hand-holdy. And even if you have a really well defended planet, the right mix of enemy units might be able to bring it down. So a number like that could be more misleading than anything else.
-- fleet sub-screen that displays all numbered groups (maybe allow fleet naming, just for fun?), which allows left click to select a fleet and has buttons and/or hotkeys for setting to lone/group movement, normal/attack-move stance, and that "patrol/go-after-any-hostiles-in-system" flag I think you mentioned; you already allow currently-selected-group move orders to other systems from the galaxy map so that's taken care of
Yeah, my dad wants to be able to see his numbered groups, too. That's on my list. Will probably do it as iconic or something, I try to avoid subscreens wherever possible just because it is, after all, a realtime game that doesn't pause while you're in a subscreen. I really don't see myself adding a lot of secondary menu-based controls as an overlay to the existing realtime controls. That's just not the sort of game this is, in general. Again, if there's a lot of interest in this I could do it, but right now I just don't see doing it.
-- "production chain" sub-screen that shows a summary of all scheduled ship production, would make it feel like more of a naval wargame to me, might be me being silly
This is a sizable one to code, but it might be interesting/useful -- I've added it to my maybe list.
- setting on a ship/starship constructor to automatically assign all produced ships to group/fleet X
Would this really be desirable? Having ships that are all part of the same control group, but which are on different planets, is non-ideal (though it does work). I'm not real sure about this one, I think it could be more problematic than helpful (and I can't think of a good way to easily add it into the interface -- again, I really don't want to have a proliferation of single-use buttons that only 1% of the players use, because I think that would damage clarity for the game for very little benefit).
- button/hotkey for "narrow selection to first idle ship in selection" so when I want to send 1 of each of my 3 scouts to a different system it's just "select scouts", "assign to group 1", "go to galaxy map", "select idle from selection", "right click target system 1", "select group 1", "select idle from selection", "right click target system 2", etc.
I love it, that seems really useful.
- interface option to automatically pause the game every X seconds, for those of us Turn-Based gamers who really want to like an RTS for a change.
Eh... would that really make you happy as a turn based player? It darkens the screen, etc, and seems like it would turn out to be kind of annoying. If you really think that would be a fun way for you to transition, though, then I could do something like this. I'm not going to turn this into a turn-based game, though.
- interface option for "music keeps playing while paused"
Ah, because of the above thing.
Well, I can understand this one at the least, I'll add that as a settings option whether I add the auto-pause or not.
- mostly for graphical "looks cool" purposes, but it would be nice to see ships with really long range spinal mount lasers of doom. Remember Freespace 2? And Homeworld's ion cannon frigates?
Gosh, I can't remember Freespace 2 very well, it's been so long (though I loved that game). And Homeworld is also a pretty distant memory. Main thing: right now we don't have an artist on staff, so I work with what I've got from free sources and what I can make myself.
A non-game suggestion: have you ever read the Lensman series by E.E. "Doc" Smith?
I have not -- will check that out.
(you know, I think I used "prolixity" in the wrong part of speech...)
You got me, that's a new word for me (and I consider myself to have a pretty good vocabulary). Good word, anyway.
