1. For the color coded waves, if you're going that way, I think they should be colored by whoever is doing the attacking. So if the player is gold, make the icon gold. If the AI is blue, make the icon blue. Etc. That way one can glance at it and know if its a defense or attack. I was thinking that it should be colored by the planet owner, but then if a friendly minor faction such as the Dyson sphere or hacked Nanocaust attacks the AI, it doesn't really show who's doing the attacking. Honestly, I'm torn between the two ideas because the tool-tip goes more in depth with the info.
I like that, but if two different forces are attacking the same planet, how should it be colored? Maybe instead color it by whoever owns the planetary controller to keep it simple?
2. Maybe have it only show for events that that the enemy has a considerable amount of strength compared to your forces? I don't want this showing up every time a lone Dyson Guardian or random enemy ship travels to one of my planets every 30 seconds that has a billion strength (the planet has the strength) but might take a little while to kill it because it sprinted to a resource node in the middle of nowhere. On the flip side, if you bring a group of ships to deepstrike the AI say, 4 planets deep, and some ships get caught on the planets along the way, that's 4 boxes that will take up the top of the screen.
Oh, I like this idea, except what if I do want to know about the little stuff because... I dunno I want to know where some of my deep striking forces went, or I want to know why one of my planets goes crazy every few minutes. Maybe have a tag for all the "minor" conflicts show up that you have to mouse over to see all of them? But then you still have the one ship attacking intermittently problem where that tag shows up and goes away repeatedly. Hrm....
3. For the dismiss pop-up, I would have to gather my thoughts on this. I say no dismiss, but I have to figure out what I'm trying to say and put it into words.
Please do. I'm figuring when the event is over, the tag goes away automatically (or after a few seconds), but there may be times in a multiplayer game where there's just too much noise and I need to dismiss an ally's attack/defense? Hrm, or maybe a better solution would be to put a setting in the player menu that lets you mute/show battle/wave tags for allies on a per-ally basis? Then right-click can be used to quickly move ships to a planet's defense?
4. I notice turret strength is not in the tool-tip. That would certainly help. Going by the information in the tool-tip picture, you are definitely going to lose that planet. But you could have 5k strength of turrets (I'm pulling numbers out of a hat here), meaning the attack isn't the curbstomp it says it is. Maybe have "Turrets 5k (str icon)" as a separate line so you can tell what strength is where.
I think I originally intended it to include all strength, including turrets, but when I was building my mockup, my imagined scenario didn't have any turrets (they were global cap then) defending the planet, but it would have confused Chris like that, so good point and I need to change the mockup.
I don't know how I feel about having turrets on a separate line with separate strength. I don't want people to have to do addition to figure out if it is enough... but you're right that 1k strength of turrets isn't quite the same thing as 1k strength of mobile military.
5. I know bugs will be inevitably be present, but you (or whoever) should make sure that the event goes away if enemy ships are converted
to your side (Dyson freed while its guardians are on your planet).
Have to keep an eye out for that kind of condition.
6. Other events that should be a pop up like the Resistance and Marauders: AI has recaptured (planet name). Dyson sphere is now Friendly, hostile to all, or has been provoked (hostile to you). Nanocaust Hive is now friendly or has been hacked. Golem/Flagship repaired on (planet name).
Good idea to have minor-faction related tags show up. This means this needs to have some way for modders to easily add event calls when they make their own factions. I don't want players to be overwhelmed with too many tags, but I think they'll be useful.
1. What if the planetary controller is or becomes neutral during a event? How would that affect the info displayed? Who's attacking and who's defending?
Good point, especially if we are coloring the icon based on planetary controller owner. Maybe the tag should "remember" the event it was until it is cleared, or would it be more useful if it turned into a "destroyed planetary controller" or "battle over neutral territory" event?
2. What is an AI Governor?
Not sure how this is changing with the pivot, but in AIWC you had two AIs, each with their own king unit, planets, and strategies, resources for the AIs were created independently based on AIP and divided up between them. And there was this "threatfleet" kind of entity and special forces entity.
In AIW2 we were dividing those up so players had more control, and possibly more (or less) of each category. At the top of the good chain was the "AI Overlord" which produced the resources, owned the king unit(s) and divided the resources up to its governors. We were starting off with the idea that there was only one overlord, and there was just a setting that decided how many king units it had. Theoretically we could add multiple overlords later and even have AI factions fighting against eachother (much later on). Under the overlord were the governors, which were like the two AIs for AIWC, only there could be 1... or there could be as many as 1 per AI planet or anything in between. You could have diversity as you moved through the galaxy and fought against the various governors with their different strategies and build preferences. Then the special forces became the warden fleet(s) (which you could have 0 through many of) and the threatfleet became the hunter fleet(s) (which you could also have 0 through many of).
It was a cool idea, but hadn't been implemented yet (or maybe just the interface hadn't been implemented yet). With the pivot back to AIWC I am not sure where that is headed. Conceptually it's the same as AIWC, just changing who owns the king units and allowing you to have various numbers of each class of entity.
