Poll: Big Items For 8.0

[Qatu]

So we arrive at my conclusion of hey, maybe the game needs to give you more to do while you're waiting for stuff to build.

I question that conclusion on the grounds that champions were designed for that specific purpose, and the general feedback in recent champion threads is that said purpose should be discarded

 I'm not sure I speak for everyone else but my specific complaints about champs is how incredible the rewards for so little cost, and the nebulaes were fun the first few times but are identical guaranteed victories every time now except if i get the devourer with a small hull without polarizers.

[TechSY730]

Well, how can the "pace" be sped up (reflecting costs reduced, etc) without making the game too punishing for players who like the AI and the game overall to be slower and are willing to accept a slow-ish reflect time in return?

Maybe the relation of build-time and resource cost could be tweaked, with changes to AI wave sizes and rates in proportion?

Maybe a "economy/production" scale that shifts build times and income rates (again, with AI scaled too)?

Maybe rescale the formulas such that the current +50% handicap becomes the new 0%, generally "speeding up" both the AI and the humans with no real extra mechanics or major balance effort needed?

[chemical_art]

Well, how can the "pace" be sped up (reflecting costs reduced, etc) without making the game too punishing for players who like the AI slower and are willing to accept a slow-ish reflect time in return?

Mmm, that is true. I forgot about the handicaps. I don't use them for I feel they "break" balance somehow, but I have no rational basis as to why that happens. Probably because I have never dug "deep" to examine what exactly gets changed. Sec.

[TechSY730]

Well, how can the "pace" be sped up (reflecting costs reduced, etc) without making the game too punishing for players who like the AI slower and are willing to accept a slow-ish reflect time in return?

Mmm, that is true. I forgot about the handicaps. I don't use them for I feel they "break" balance somehow, but I have no rational basis as to why that happens. Probably because I have never dug "deep" to examine what exactly gets changed. Sec.

IIRC, human handicaps scale resource production and knowledge collection rates.
AI handicaps scale sizes of waves, "points" for defensive reinforcements, and I think exo "points"
IDK if it scales special forces reinforcement "points" or stragic reserve "points".
I'm pretty sure it does not scale zenith trade buying probabilities, wave or defensive reinforcement timings, build times, assist rates, strategic reserve recharge rates, exo charge rates, or initial game seed.

[LaughingThesaurus]

What if there was some kind of just game-wide resource pacing scale? Meaning, it's like a global handicap that affects every player. Increasing it to 300% would reduce unit cost and build time to 1/4th, and it would have a similar effect on the AI, where its attacks are roughly that much bigger or more frequent. Basically, it would just be a handicap function, but it would evenly affect everybody and speed up the game flow for people who are so inclined.

[TechSY730]

What if there was some kind of just game-wide resource pacing scale? Meaning, it's like a global handicap that affects every player. Increasing it to 300% would reduce unit cost and build time to 1/4th, and it would have a similar effect on the AI, where its attacks are roughly that much bigger or more frequent. Basically, it would just be a handicap function, but it would evenly affect everybody and speed up the game flow for people who are so inclined.

You can sort of simulate this by increasing handicaps (thus income rates) and upping the game speed. The problem is that currently changing the game speed also slows down or speeds up the UI. Thus, at +10, the UI is so "twitchy" it is near uncontrollable, and -10 the UI becomes so unresponsive that even going to the galaxy map screen gets an annoyingly long delay.

This has been reported on mantis several times, but IIRC the dec feedback, this would require some serious "guts ripping" of the engine to fix.

However, IMO, this is a big enough deal that it seems like it should be done for 9.0, even if it would be extremely "painful". (Does not need to be an 8.0 goal though, there are enough other things that have been voted higher in this poll that should be done first)

[chemical_art]

increasing game time is just a bandaid. And for those with rust buckets like me, after about +4 or so, the CPU simply cannot keep up so increasing the speed further doesn't do anything really.

[Eternaly_Lost]

So we arrive at my conclusion of hey, maybe the game needs to give you more to do while you're waiting for stuff to build.

I question that conclusion on the grounds that champions were designed for that specific purpose, and the general feedback in recent champion threads is that said purpose should be discarded

Champion take too long for it to fill in, it is very much once you start a mission, you need to work on it until you win or lose. A good filler for time should be able to stop at any instant, because the rebuild is done and you are ready to go to the main game.

A target time of what, 20 minutes for champion missions means that if you expect it to take less then say 15 minutes to refleet, you want to just wait rather then start a champion mission. If you had say a lite champion mission you could trigger whenever, and had a set timer of say 5 minutes maybe.

Say, you warp out of the galaxy where you are. You lose if you die or the time goes over 5 minutes. (Say a big AI force shows up at 4 minutes that will kill you in a minutes). You win, you get a small boost of some sort. Maybe disable a warp gate for a few minutes or cause a guardpost on a planet to explode.

Then you can fill in refleet with this, a downside that is equally as low level, say the AI send a champion after your own if you lose, means that you don't have to worry that much if you need to return to normal.

Give this 'Warp out of the Galaxy for Micromission' a cool down timer of say 10 minutes, and people will have Micromission when they need them. Reward for each is not that good, but at the same time the lost of each is not that big either. Don't bother capping them and give them random objectives.

Say, defend a unit for a few minutes(3-4). Or destroy a unit, or things like that.

[Histidine]

For me (as KDR_11k said in another thread) the problem with the champion is you don't use it as a fleet replacement while waiting to refleet, you use it as a fleet replacement so you never need to refleet*.

*nebula ships do need refleeting, but you only need to use them when you really need some extra punch, like on core worlds/homeworlds

[lovekawakawaii]

There should be an option to turn off AI Eyes in the lobby. I like blobs.

[Coppermantis]

There should be an option to turn off AI Eyes in the lobby. I like blobs.

There's a cheat code for this: Running With Scissors (Remove all AI Eyes from the game - added in 6.003)

[Bognor]

There should be an option to turn off AI Eyes in the lobby. I like blobs.

There's a cheat code for this: Running With Scissors (Remove all AI Eyes from the game - added in 6.003)

Also see here for a list of AI types that spawn fewer eyes.

[lovekawakawaii]

There should be an option to turn off AI Eyes in the lobby. I like blobs.

There's a cheat code for this: Running With Scissors (Remove all AI Eyes from the game - added in 6.003)

Thanks

[Zeyi]

So we arrive at my conclusion of hey, maybe the game needs to give you more to do while you're waiting for stuff to build.

I question that conclusion on the grounds that champions were designed for that specific purpose, and the general feedback in recent champion threads is that said purpose should be discarded

Champion take too long for it to fill in, it is very much once you start a mission, you need to work on it until you win or lose. A good filler for time should be able to stop at any instant, because the rebuild is done and you are ready to go to the main game.

This is a very good point, if the distractions the champions provided weren't so definitively in need of being finished upon entry I might enjoy it more as I'd be able to come back to it during refleeting.

[zleorg]

If by chance we get an in game IRC like thing I would like it if the AI would randomly send me messages. Something like there's no escape or to look behind me.  Or if I team up with someone for a game then send me a message saying to rethink my decision.