Priorities for 7.0/Vengeance official release

[Aklyon]

Railpods are also good at sniping anything, as long as you can keep them flowing.

[LaughingThesaurus]

My current game's before the introduction of the new toys, so I haven't really gotten to toy with them yet. I don't think an ARS will have a chance of giving them to me. If they will I'll grab the update right away. I didn't realize that later raids were immune to missile ammo.

[Wingflier]

Edit: Incidentally, I have encountered so many missile guard posts under force fields and that is seriously like the most powerful combo out of those very common things the AI could possibly have as defenses. Bombers can't get the force field else they instantly die to the guard post, and missile frigates and fighters don't really work all that well against the force field. Raid Starships will also die instantly pretty much as soon as they get into range. I've been defaulting to the slow approach, but lord help me if I encounter that combo also covered by a fortress that is in range of the missile guard post.

Ironically, the expansion has (thus far) provided two new ways to deal with this in the form of Lightning Torpedo Frigates (ignores FFs) and Zenith Devastators.

[Toranth]

Ironically, the expansion has (thus far) provided two new ways to deal with this in the form of Lightning Torpedo Frigates (ignores FFs) and Zenith Devastators.

Hmm, something seems not quite right about this statement... Let's run it through the AI War Translation Device, and see what it spits out!

Ironically, the expansion has (thus far) provided two new ways for the AI to deal with this your Home Command Station in the form of Lightning Torpedo Frigates (ignores FFs) and Zenith Devastators.

Ah, there we go.  That seems more in keeping the AI War traditions.  Please note what was probably one of our first Translation Assistants in his thread here.

[Cyborg]

The coolest thing you could do for the opening screen is to place a unit on the screen that comes from each expansion, with all of the expansions creating a fun battle scene.

[LaughingThesaurus]

The coolest thing you could do for the opening screen is to place a unit on the screen that comes from each expansion, with all of the expansions creating a fun battle scene.

Only one? I'd say place a full cap of each under 'very high' caps and each enemy to every other type of ship, and set them all on FRD and watch the carnage.

[keith.lamothe]

The coolest thing you could do for the opening screen is to place a unit on the screen that comes from each expansion, with all of the expansions creating a fun battle scene.

Hmm, if there were some way of getting the sim running during the menu, that would be very interesting.  My guess is that it would take me about a week to find and punch-through all the places where the game assumes there's no sim during RunStatus==GameStart, and another month or two of occasional work fixing all the resulting bugs

But yes, it would be cool.

[LordSloth]

I had one real issue last night, but forgot to write it down. In hopes of jogging my memory, I'll throw out everything I can remember thinking about at the time.

Okay, here we go... let's start out with some trivial things I'd like to see, and work my way to somewhat more important.

• Fleet scouts show up under the mobile military units in galaxy view. Scout starships do not, and we've already got a scout filter. It would be easier to track down some stragglers without the junk data thrown out by the presence of scouts.
• More prominently display remains on system summary screen. I don't like my economy to tank, so I try to avoid FRD'd engineers. Not really important, just something that came up while I was trying to gather my thoughts.
• Question more than suggestion: Should barracks continually unload like Carriers do, now?
• With starships and bonus starships, the planetary alert counters are less relevant than they were before. Would you consider adding a on-off toggle on planetary controls for "AI Strength here greater than player Strength here", or a simple numerical field for strength estimates? I'm thinking that if my forces are stronger than the AI's, then I'm more or less happy leaving things to my defenses and focusing on something more important .
• Champions in multiplayer games, champions needing engineers. I haven't played a co-op game for a while, so I don't know if this is still true, but it kind of matters for Champion-only players so I'm bringing it back up. Simply put, even with assistance to allies allowed, engineers will often ignore champions to work on an ongoing starship project. More frequently, Assist Allies is turned off (because of Science Lab spamming, power generators going up everywhere and soaking up engineer time, and Champion only players have to pester a human player to manual assist them in building their modules. Various thoughts I've had: a separate toggle for champions, a higher engineering priority for champions so engineers will automatically retarget any attempting to build a near instant, practically free module, each champion only player spawning with an unarmed immobile "Champion" starbase on a normal player's HW that has a repair/build beam so they don't rely on ally intervention just at the homeworld.
• And finally, the big one, the one I've been trying to remember all this time: Planetary view icon priorities, particularly at the furthest zoom. Now that guardians and command posts have both been buffed, the big view is showing me the wrong information to plan around. If you have a guard post covered by guardians covered by fleetships, the fleetships will show up first. At that level of zoom, I need to figure out first what guard posts are along my path and that may destroy my fleet ships (don't send the bombers past the Laser guards) or starships (keep the hell away from missile posts unless I'm planning to take them out), then analyze the guardians, and finally the fleetships. One final thing, I think CSGs should actually have a lower icon priority. They are unarmed and you cannot take any actions with regard to them until you finally take control. You need to know they are in-system, but their location is near totally irrelevant and the nearby guard post or fleetships would be more useful to know about.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=148804460

[Tridus]

Is there any chance of getting the objectives screen updated to reflect some of the newer things that aren't included? That's a hugely useful display.

[Bognor]

Is there any chance of getting the objectives screen updated to reflect some of the newer things that aren't included? That's a hugely useful display.

You're the third person after me in this thread to say that, but so far no-one's supported the Mantis issuse.

The Custom (Narrow) and Custom (Broad) galaxy display modes now count enemy ships that are immobile

Thanks Keith! 

[LaughingThesaurus]

Don't often browse Mantis.
I throw my strong support behind that idea.

[Tridus]

Don't often browse Mantis.
I throw my strong support behind that idea.

Ditto.

Also adding a note that SCLs should be included.

[Aquohn]

Don't know if I'm being really thick or what, but it seems sensible that something as critical as threat should be hotkeyed on the galaxy map. Last I checked, 'T' was unbound in that view.

[Toranth]

Don't know if I'm being really thick or what, but it seems sensible that something as critical as threat should be hotkeyed on the galaxy map. Last I checked, 'T' was unbound in that view.

Yeah, that was one of the first things I re-bound when I started playing.  By default, 'T' is the 'Show Minimap' key.  In Galaxy View, it'll show you the mini-map of any system you mouse-over while the T key is pressed.  Neat, but not nearly as important as threat.  So that got re-bound quickly.
Other changes I made were 'C' for displaying CSGs, 'A' for displaying AIP Reducers, and recently 'I' for Immobile Minor Factions (Dyson, Dark Spire, Showdown).


As for an actually 7.0 release item, I noticed Core Spider Turrets have a build time of 50 seconds rather than the 150 seconds of every other core turret.  This, combined with their higher cost, puts the m+c/sec rates really high, effectively preventing build assist or repair.

[Aquohn]

Oh, and one more nice-to-have that shouldn't take too long: even if you don't overhaul Champions, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix the UI. It really grates on me: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=10886