Suggestions

[eRe4s3r]

I would not ask if it were possible with Sorting based blend modes

Alpha blending has a lot of problems but the grave problem of them all is that you can not blend 3  transparent effects because you are sorting them (so its 3 effects -stacked- not blended together in the frame buffer (and you will always have more than 1 effect when 2 ships explode, for example)

What i mocked up is 3 separate explosions from 3 frames of explosion sequences (which i made myself) , so if 3 separate ships where to explode right there each 300ms apart), the first 1 demonstrates how it would look with a sorting based blend mode (where sprites "stack" and are sorted based on when they are created and blended based on their alpha map and "blend-over" color (a sadly common problem with alpha maps in general) and the 2nd where sprites are added together (blended) additive without caring when they are created or what their creation order.

[x4000]

I hear ya. You're basically talking dynamic explosions, which is of course ideal, I was just speaking more of fixed ones.  Apples and oranges, anyway -- yours would definitely look way better.

[Fiskbit]

Is there a way to use the sidebar to locate enemy ships if you have that ship type in the same system? If there's not, I suggest adding such a feature. I was trying to find enemy snipers so I could aim my snipers at them, but had to do it manually, which was a bit of a pain.

[x4000]

Is there a way to use the sidebar to locate enemy ships if you have that ship type in the same system? If there's not, I suggest adding such a feature. I was trying to find enemy snipers so I could aim my snipers at them, but had to do it manually, which was a bit of a pain.

There presently is not.  I can't think of a good shorthand way to do this, off the top of my head.  Ideas on what you are looking for here?

[eRe4s3r]

Right clicking on a class could always focus on enemy ships if they are present, that way you can click left (to select a class) and right click to focus on enemy ships of that class, but i do not know how you would handle knowing which of the 70 ships of a class the player might want to focus on...

And it might making focusing on your own stuff tricky too...

Well just a idea

[Fiskbit]

I'd probably just make it so that if you're holding a key while right clicking, it'll focus on the enemy ships instead of your ships. Of course, this requires that there be unused keys... I guess middle-click could work, too, if you want to go that route, but I figure you might be able to find better uses for that down the road.

[x4000]

Actually, I think it might work well to use X+right-clicking.  X is quickly becoming somewhat shorthand for different context-sensitive ways of interacting with AI ships, or selecting them, or whatever.

[eRe4s3r]

I have a batch of very systemic suggestions this time, please note that this text is long and that both features belong together, this is a complex suggestion "branch")

Suggestion - category GUI / Display

1) Consumption and production rates of resources should be displayed
2) And averaged to 1 minute thus displaying an realistic display of the resources and income and expenditure one has when producing ships
3) What sounds odd at the start, is important for end-game scenarios where its really hard to predict how many resources a mixed construction queue will cost in relation to income one has

Reason: To fine tune economy especially once 20+ shipyards and 30+ converters are in play, it gets really hard to KNOW what your current consumption is, or even guess

Suggestion - category , they way resources are assigned to production - Highly Complex
The current system is impossible to predict. Shipyards should have a *fixed* consumption rate of resources at all times which they put "into" construction of a ship , even if big ships are built (and thus the build time is actually a limit of how many resources per second a shipyard can use to build)

Would fix many issues
-build time counting up even though resource to finish the construction doesn't exist (especially starship constructors..)
-shipyards constructing (but not releasing) ships even though resource price has not been paid yet
-all shipyards would have the same consumption rate (engineers change it in a predictable fashion)
-thus a consumption display would actually show the *real* economic consumption and give players an indication what they need in terms of expansion and conversion

Side effects - Would give a reason to have MK2 and MK3 Shipyards (higher resource flow into a construction to decrease build times)

Would make engineers MUCH more important in that you could boost a shipyard in situations of resource excess

- Price for completion of ships would thus not be paid on "spawn" but during the entirety of construction, meaning that if you don't have resources, NOTHING is going to get build



What would such a change cause ...
- Production time is 100% dependent on resource cost
- Resource costs would have to be carefully fine tuned
- Resource costs would be paid over the entirety of a construction
- If you abort a building thats 90% completed, you loose 90% of the resources invested in it.
- If buildings are destroyed before they are build, you only loose a small % of the required resources for construction (you simply haven't put that much in yet)
- Build costs could be additional flagged with a "RPM (resources needed per minute)" in the tooltips
- Would make MASS spam of constructions very costly and potentially grind your economy to a halt
- Would mean that economy is much more important now, and that you can no longer mass produce in 32 shipyards just because you have "more" resources

- Would allow for the inclusion of Resource Storage Buildings MK1/MK2/MK3
- Would allow for purposeful upgrades to mines to boost their rate
- When there is no longer a "300k" limit, Players who invest in lots of storage can maintain lots of construction for a time
- Destruction of those Storage buildings would DESTROY the resources stored in it.
- Would give much more importance to economic build up and storage management / Protection
- Starting Station should have low storage levels to give a reason for research into that area and construction of storage)

[x4000]

I really like it.  Discussion to continue here:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,613.0.html

[eRe4s3r]

Yet even more Suggestions, this time all relate to the ending of the game (the winning!, not the nuking yourself accidentally out of the galaxy kind of ending)

1) Once player has destroyed both core command stations the AI should no longer receive ship reinforcements or initiate waves/raids/cross planet attacks

2) The AI should be considered rogue (new, same color for the 2 ais maybe grey)

3) The player should still be allowed (if he so chooses) to annihilate the AI completely (destroy or capture all planets)

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4) The Winning should be a more grander act - first of all with a closing statistic and some nice words, and an epilogue (text)

5) I know Achievements to be unlocked is a big trend nowadays, and i am nearly ashamed to admit that they would.. be kinda cool to have to make the ending actually matter (they could be locally stored just like saves)

---

6) Player profiles should have stats
- detailed WIN/LOSS statistics
- Amount of games played
- Which AI types beaten
- What kind of ship produced the most
- What kind of ship produced the least
- Playtime
- How many Planets nuked
- How many (million) civilians saved
- And killed
- and nuked (hehe)
- How many ships stolen (Via parasite)
- How many ships tugged (via ether plane etc.)

And generally everything and a bit more, mainly though the players should be able to

7) Gain Experience points for each win (depending on Mapsize and Difficulty)
- Which grants them new ranks
- Might later be used to unlock "special" ships (like giving players who reach rank 5 the chance to unlock a core ship type?)

- Extra XP for completely killing off any non-cloaked unit in the galaxy
- Extra XP for capping ALL planets
- Extra XP for winning without ever using nukes or missiles ,p

Much later, eventually allow statistics to be uploaded to server

All of these would make winning much more fun imo

Comments?

[dumpsterKEEPER]

There's actually a couple of those suggestions that already have discussion threads:

Achievements: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,259.0.html

Player Scoreboard: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,278.0.html

Personally, I think the player scoreboard would be quite interesting and useful. I'd enjoy being able to look back over previous games, as well as having an overview of my performance in general. Achievements might be interesting as well, particularly if some of them highlighted parts of the game or suggested strategies to you through the completion requirements.

[eRe4s3r]

darn it, i have searched for Achievements and only found 2 posts in the pre-release patch category.. well my suggestions cover a bit more than that but thanks for the info

The player scoreboard is not what i mean, i don't suggest highscores but statistics which are bound to the profile - of course including the score and a highscore, but not only that

Actually i'd rather take an actual point in winning (EG, Rank to be gained and unlocks) than ego stroking (achievements) which don't help against DIF 10 AI

This is to make the SP games (and i'd assume thats the VAST majority of gamers) more fun. And COOP games of course too (if there are achievements etc for that too, even better ,p)

These suggestions are there to improve SP Campaigning and most importantly, the WINNING of SP games , sort of like an RPG (gaining Statistics, Experience and military ranks and maybe even abilities which we could extend (5% more missile damage etc) and the higher the rank, the more powerful the abilities one could gain (and which might make it possible to win 120 planet DIF 10/10 games in SP ;p)

[x4000]

1) Once player has destroyed both core command stations the AI should no longer receive ship reinforcements or initiate waves/raids/cross planet attacks

2) The AI should be considered rogue (new, same color for the 2 ais maybe grey)

It used to stop letting you play at all, but players specifically requested the ability to keep going, so I changed that.  I'm inclined to leave it as it is -- some of them wanted to be able to keep playing against the heavily fortified planets, now that they had gotten their huge fleets all ready.

3) The player should still be allowed (if he so chooses) to annihilate the AI completely (destroy or capture all planets)

See above, this is already the case.  Not sure what you mean beyond this -- you can definitely go and squelch them the rest of the way out of the galaxy, but the rules don't change from when you are actually in the game.  The main thing is that score stops counting upwards.  Or maybe you have a slightly different meaning that I am not understanding?

4) The Winning should be a more grander act - first of all with a closing statistic and some nice words, and an epilogue (text)

You have closing statistics already (you can see them at any time, unlike other RTS games), including graphs.  Rather than pop the graphs up in your face though, it just flashes the button for them.  This is similar to SupCom and similar.  As far as an epilogue goes, I suppose I could do something along those lines, but I'm not sure exactly what mechanic I would use.  Perhaps the in-game text messages, so that players who want to keep playing can do so without being completely interrupted.  That's a cool idea, added to my list:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,627.0.html

I'm thinking perhaps of having more than one.

5) I know Achievements to be unlocked is a big trend nowadays, and i am nearly ashamed to admit that they would.. be kinda cool to have to make the ending actually matter (they could be locally stored just like saves)

I know, I'm with you.  Also, local high score boards.  Both are on the future DLC list, and I'm really excited about both, there's just so much else that takes precedence at the moment.  But I am 100% confident that both will be in the game before too many months pass.

6) Player profiles should have stats
- detailed WIN/LOSS statistics
- Amount of games played
- Which AI types beaten
- What kind of ship produced the most
- What kind of ship produced the least
- Playtime
- How many Planets nuked
- How many (million) civilians saved
- And killed
- and nuked (hehe)
- How many ships stolen (Via parasite)
- How many ships tugged (via ether plane etc.)

That's a cool idea I had not thought of.  That's just the sort of thing I like to do, though, so I don't know why I never thought to do it.  Fricking platformers that I've coded in the past have had this, but I didn't think to do this in an RTS!?  Added as future DLC:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,628.0.html

7) Gain Experience points for each win (depending on Mapsize and Difficulty)
- Which grants them new ranks
- Might later be used to unlock "special" ships (like giving players who reach rank 5 the chance to unlock a core ship type?)

- Extra XP for completely killing off any non-cloaked unit in the galaxy
- Extra XP for capping ALL planets
- Extra XP for winning without ever using nukes or missiles ,p

This is cool, but definitely something for an expansion.  I really loved how the home cities evolved in AoEIII, and given an opportunity I would definitely like to expand this game in that direction.  That will take a fair bit of resources, though, so this might be something for after the first expansion.  We shall see.   If there is player interest, I hope to put out around 1 per year for as long as there is interest.   Added to my expansions list:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,629.0.html

Much later, eventually allow statistics to be uploaded to server

#8 is something I would want to do if I later have the cash to build my own dedicated server cluster in a datacenter.  I've built such things in the past for my day job, but the up-front costs of something like that are approaching $20k, and then the ongoing monthly cost would be around $1.5k per month.  So that is something I want to do, but right now it is kind of a pipe dream just because of the money issue.  Potentially if we partner with someone else like Gamespy or something, they might be able to host that space for us, or perhaps even some sort of cloud-based service might work, but a lot of that is kind of nebulous at the moment.  So, while I would really like to see this happen (with stage 1 being a general high scoreboard -- well, with more calculations on it than simple score, obvious), it's something that is really out there for the moment for me.

[x4000]

Personally, I think the player scoreboard would be quite interesting and useful. I'd enjoy being able to look back over previous games, as well as having an overview of my performance in general. Achievements might be interesting as well, particularly if some of them highlighted parts of the game or suggested strategies to you through the completion requirements.

I am totally with you, I'm very excited about both.  They will be around before too long, I am certain!  And thanks for posting the links over to the existing other threads on them.

[x4000]

These suggestions are there to improve SP Campaigning and most importantly, the WINNING of SP games , sort of like an RPG (gaining Statistics, Experience and military ranks and maybe even abilities which we could extend (5% more missile damage etc) and the higher the rank, the more powerful the abilities one could gain (and which might make it possible to win 120 planet DIF 10/10 games in SP ;p)

Not to rain on your parade, but if I did add features like this, I would probably also add corresponding unlocks for the AI.  Sort of like how the home city levels were when playing against the AI in AoEIII.  I don't see ever changing the general difficulty balance so that players can beat a higher-level AI via anything but skill (and patience, since those are pretty long grinds), or flat-out cheating.  Unlockables might add new features to the game, but then that would also cause corresponding unlocks for the AIs.

Of course, one compelling argument against unlockables is that you have already paid for the content, and if you want it now why should you have to play through a lot of other content first in order to get it?  Tycho over at Penny Arcade made a great rant about that some while back, and I really connected with that.  Personally I like unlockables to some extent, but it has to be handled in just the right manner.  So that will be a difficult balancing act for me in the future, part of why that is expansion material (plus all the content that would actually have to be developed to support this).