Nominations for Most Important Pre-8.0 Polish

[Draco18s]

Now if the Zenith trader will just show up so I can start building a ZPG prior to capturing one... you can have two as long as you capture the second one, right?

Yes.

[tadrinth]

Awesome.  I got tired of waiting for the zenith trader to come to my homeworld, so I capped the planet right before the center of the X (it had a cursed golem on it), then when the Trader passed through the middle, I had supply and could toss down a second ZPG next to the AI-controlled one.  Had to frantically rush a fleet over to protect my shiny new purchase, but it worked! 

However, the existing ZPG was next to a wormhole while the Core Needler Turret Controller in the same system was way out at the edge of the gravity well.  So now I have two different locations on my primary choke to defend, which is super annoying.  I had totally forgotten about that controller when I capped the system; I feel like I should have hacked it and blown it up before capping the planet, just so that the waves and CPAs coming to that choke are guaranteed to fly through the minefields.  I wish we could move irreplaceables around within systems, or cloak them, or something.  Or that capturable ZPGs would be placed with the irreplaceables if there are any.  I'd still prefer to be able to build my defenses on top of a wormhole I want protected (though with Black Hole Machines this isn't necessary). 

The ravenous shadow is still ridiculous, especially when there are four of the things.  I think *one* neinzul enclave made it out alive. By the time my champs got over to the shadows, they'd munched half the enclaves already.  Maybe if the shadows spawned way out at the edge of the gravity well, behind the enclaves, that would at least give my champs time to get to the fight before it's mostly over.

[DrFranknfurter]

I'd like for mines to be less visible. Set them to never obscure a ship, turret or anything actually since you never have a reason to select or target them once built. Faint or transparent would be nice, otherwise as close to background as possible.

[Winge]

Alerts need to last longer, play a more distinct and noticeable sound, and log to some viewable record.  If needed, make the Alert window scrolling.  Or, log them to messages, or make a new area.  Right now, if you aren't watching, you can easily miss things like Exo firepower, enemy spawns or other critical information.

The Golem and Spirecraft Exos should not be separate.  Instead, each additional exo source should increase the potency of the overall Exo wave.  This is for two reasons:
1.  Dual exo waves right at the beginning are a bit too strong for what you get (not even going to go into triple).
2.  Later on, the exo waves can split up, which, between Exos and CPAs, could mean that the player is on the defensive more often than necessary.  This can be worked around if the player can 'coerce' the exo to come from the same direction, and build a really strong whipping boy.

Note that I consider Fallen Spire separate from this, as the mechanics for those exos work differently (city progress instead of AIP).

[ZaneWolfe]

The Golem and Spirecraft Exos should not be separate.  Instead, each additional exo source should increase the potency of the overall Exo wave.  This is for two reasons:
1.  Dual exo waves right at the beginning are a bit too strong for what you get (not even going to go into triple).
2.  Later on, the exo waves can split up, which, between Exos and CPAs, could mean that the player is on the defensive more often than necessary.  This can be worked around if the player can 'coerce' the exo to come from the same direction, and build a really strong whipping boy.

Interesting. I play with Golem Hard, Botnet Hard, and Spirecraft Hard on all the time. I am facing 3 exos, that may or may not come all at the same time. With your idea, I would be facing a single exo, but one that is now 3x the power, all at once. I am not sure which is better honestly. The former is more split up, but I build a single hard chokepoint, so it all goes to the same place. Rather, as they are not spawned exactly the same time, the full power of it doesn't hit all at once usually. This allows for some rebuild time. With the other way, it would all pretty much it at once. While this does give me more overall time between exos, it means that much more enemy firepower is hitting me at once.

While concentrating the 3 exos into a single source does tend to favor the single chokepoint route rather the spread out defenses, it also means that the AI firepower that is hitting that single location is going to be vastly more powerful, especially if you have all 3 options on. This gives the AI a much larger chance of breaching your single superchoke, and thus more likely to cause serious harm. Especially as, as I understand it, the number of individual captains in the exo, and thus the number of squads in said exo, do not grow larger. Rather, it is the power of the captains themselves, and the units they lead, that grow. Using my own case as an example, while I would be facing only a 3rd of the number of squads, each squad would have 3 times the number of points to use. Suddenly everything in those squads gets bumped up a teir, and the squads get much larger too.

I am uncertain how I feel about this idea. While it gives the AI a more effective weapon to try and end the game, which is a good thing, it doesn't have a lot of those honestly, it also makes that weapon so effective that it becomes overly powerful. Suddenly I go from "My chokepoint can handle these staggard, but rather heavy, strikes from the AI" to "Wlep, its Exo time. Either I break out warheads or I lose."

[tadrinth]

Human Resistance and the leftover ships from nebula are both still really dumb.  They'll happily charge into a 2300 ship CPA as soon as it hits the planet next to my choke, rather than waiting until the CPA arrives.  Seems like these could at least be as smart as Roaming Enclaves.

I'm going to let them die just so the CPA dies on my choke so I can get salvage. 

Also, carriers do not bother deploying any units when attacked by those minor faction units. 

EDIT: Nevermind.  They had the firepower to kill the CPA, so they did.  It'd still be nice if I could tell them to wait until the AI got to my choke.  I think I actually lost MORE of them when I sent my champions in to cover them with shields, because then the carriers deployed ships. 

Any chance Cleanup Drones could be modified to collect salvage from planets where you have supply?

[relmz32]

Human Resistance and the leftover ships from nebula are both still really dumb.  They'll happily charge into a 2300 ship CPA as soon as it hits the planet next to my choke, rather than waiting until the CPA arrives.  Seems like these could at least be as smart as Roaming Enclaves.

Most Uncontrollable Allies could look to be as smart as my beloved Roaming Enclaves. <3

[TechSY730]

As much as I would like smarter allied minor factions and "pseudo-controllable throuth vague prioritization commands" allied resistance fighters, they arent't the biggest issue in my mind, not even close.

+1 on better alerts. Right now, only command station under attack gives an audible alert, and alerts overall are too easy to get "burrowed".

Also, fixing UI "hacks" like the clunky entries in the alt+right click thing, fixing cases where selection filters don't perform like they should, the "chat commands" thing that allied enclaves have, etc.

[Draco18s]

+1 on better alerts. Right now, only command station under attack gives an audible alert, and alerts overall are too easy to get "burrowed".

Yes please.

I've actually had an instance where I was so involved in neutering a planet I lost, due to forces overrunning one command station and then heading to my homeworld.

Edit:
I would love "recenter and pause" level alerts, like Dwarf Fortress has.  Notably, DF pauses on some of the smallest events ("Urist McDwarf has given birth!" yeah, good for you), but "holy shit there's units on your homeworld" kind of qualifies for that level of interruption.

Along these lines, can we get some audio/visual differentiation between the various planet-wide explosions?  Every time an EMP guardian warps I go "holy shit, what just got nuked?"

[keith.lamothe]

As much as I would like smarter allied minor factions and "pseudo-controllable throuth vague prioritization commands" allied resistance fighters, they arent't the biggest issue in my mind, not even close.

+1 on better alerts. Right now, only command station under attack gives an audible alert, and alerts overall are too easy to get "burrowed".

Also, fixing UI "hacks" like the clunky entries in the alt+right click thing, fixing cases where selection filters don't perform like they should, the "chat commands" thing that allied enclaves have, etc.

You've mentioned the galaxy map filters several times and I do agree they're a major mess.  Are they the biggest item on your list at the moment?  If not, what is?

[Winge]

The Golem and Spirecraft Exos should not be separate.  Instead, each additional exo source should increase the potency of the overall Exo wave.  This is for two reasons:
1.  Dual exo waves right at the beginning are a bit too strong for what you get (not even going to go into triple).
2.  Later on, the exo waves can split up, which, between Exos and CPAs, could mean that the player is on the defensive more often than necessary.  This can be worked around if the player can 'coerce' the exo to come from the same direction, and build a really strong whipping boy.

Interesting. I play with Golem Hard, Botnet Hard, and Spirecraft Hard on all the time. I am facing 3 exos, that may or may not come all at the same time. With your idea, I would be facing a single exo, but one that is now 3x the power, all at once. I am not sure which is better honestly. The former is more split up, but I build a single hard chokepoint, so it all goes to the same place. Rather, as they are not spawned exactly the same time, the full power of it doesn't hit all at once usually. This allows for some rebuild time. With the other way, it would all pretty much it at once. While this does give me more overall time between exos, it means that much more enemy firepower is hitting me at once.

While concentrating the 3 exos into a single source does tend to favor the single chokepoint route rather the spread out defenses, it also means that the AI firepower that is hitting that single location is going to be vastly more powerful, especially if you have all 3 options on. This gives the AI a much larger chance of breaching your single superchoke, and thus more likely to cause serious harm. Especially as, as I understand it, the number of individual captains in the exo, and thus the number of squads in said exo, do not grow larger. Rather, it is the power of the captains themselves, and the units they lead, that grow. Using my own case as an example, while I would be facing only a 3rd of the number of squads, each squad would have 3 times the number of points to use. Suddenly everything in those squads gets bumped up a teir, and the squads get much larger too.

I am uncertain how I feel about this idea. While it gives the AI a more effective weapon to try and end the game, which is a good thing, it doesn't have a lot of those honestly, it also makes that weapon so effective that it becomes overly powerful. Suddenly I go from "My chokepoint can handle these staggard, but rather heavy, strikes from the AI" to "Wlep, its Exo time. Either I break out warheads or I lose."

Thank you for bringing that up.  I knew I forgot to mention something:  I don't know exactly what the bonus would be, but I am not thinking 100% per source.

I am not thinking of 3x exo strength (at least not on 7/7; I suppose it could scale up)--based on what others have said and my own experience, that is a bit too much cost for the reward you get (which is why so few players play with all 3, and some don't even play with 2).  It makes sense for an increase reaction, but that first double-exo is insane for the relative gain.  Especially since future exos will likely be split up.

The real reason for this suggestion is, between exos and CPAs, it feels like the player is forced on the defensive a bit too often.  That gets to be a drag, especially if Exos get large enough to threaten defenses (especially true if Z. Trader is not enabled).  This would allow the player more "attack time" rather than having a constant influx of large waves.

Given that you have actually played with 3 exo sources, I would be especially curious to hear your opinion of a reasonable bonus.

[keith.lamothe]

In general I would actually prefer that playing with multiple different superweapons all active be pretty painful in terms of response.  It's very, very hard to balance for

[Faulty Logic]

Human Resistance and the leftover ships from nebula are both still really dumb.  Seems like these could at least be as smart as Roaming Enclaves.

YES. Please. And Dyson gatlings shouldn't be allowed to try to hunt threat, because they inevitably die one by one. Enclave level control over the dysoncloud would likely be OP, though.
That's the top of my current list, given the early fixes on the core post exos and CA posts.

A close second is telling units to shoot at something by right-clicking the sidebar.

I would also appreciate an "all of them" button, like control is x5 and alt is x10, this button would place every one you have available.

I would love "recenter and pause" level alerts, like Dwarf Fortress has.  Notably, DF pauses on some of the smallest events ("Urist McDwarf has given birth!" yeah, good for you), but "holy shit there's units on your homeworld" kind of qualifies for that level of interruption.

I agree that the option for those would be nice, probably tied to the per-planet alert level. But if it was always on I'd get really annoyed really fast.

Suddenly I go from "My chokepoint can handle these staggard, but rather heavy, strikes from the AI" to "Wlep, its Exo time. Either I break out warheads or I lose."

You say that like it's a problem...

[ZaneWolfe]

Suddenly I go from "My chokepoint can handle these staggard, but rather heavy, strikes from the AI" to "Wlep, its Exo time. Either I break out warheads or I lose."

You say that like it's a problem...

Not all of us follow your signature Faulty. Though in my case its "If the FS Fleet can't solve it, send in the Golems. If those are still not enough, send in the Spirecraft too." Warheads are typically my very last option, usually because I'm out  of Martyrs.

In general I would actually prefer that playing with multiple different superweapons all active be pretty painful in terms of response.  It's very, very hard to balance for

I'm ok with this actually. But one of my Superweapons needs a tad bit more power. The Botnet Golem. Given that it, just by itself, is a Exo source, which is perfectly fine to me, it needs a to be more over the top. I think it should have forcefield immunity, so it can shoot at things under the rather large number of shields that are generated by the exos it causes. After all, it is a single, irreplaceable unit, that you first must recover, thus it costs 15-20 AIP minimum to get it as well.

As far as the merging of the exos, I am ok with doing it, even though it makes exos stronger when you have multiples. I just wanted to point out the drawback associated with it.

[bonesbro]

Any hope for improvements to the UI for multiple champions?  It frustrates me that I can't assign them to control groups, I guess because they're allied ships.  If I could do that it would fix it.  Or perhaps if I could just assign myself extra champions instead of having to add the "Extra Champion" player slots.

I was looking forward to trying a higher difficulty than normal with a few extra champs, and to see what nebula encounters are like with extra players.  (I like nebulas)