The patch thread: what to patch?

[tjno2]

Armadas in the late game just don't cut it, since you have a lot of ships being produced each turn and in the reserves. Then, when you want to amass your forces, you have to build a lot of TFs, and there's a limit to the number of TFs in each fight.
Giving the possibility to build fleets with 128 or 256+ ships would be very nice!

One other important feature would be the possibility to target incoming missile and fighter packs.

[Raeth]

I think the AI should be made considerably more aggressive. In the current version, the AI never attacks you with more than 2-3 ships at a time, and never launches ground invasions at all. It seems hard to believe that none of the beta testers noticed that the computer never attacked them.

[Jamski]

That should be simple to "tweak", I hope. There's probably some kind of variables for AI agression than can be doubled or something. Or maybe the AI has nothing to attack with - it uses same P-Viceroys as the player.

-Jam

[Arnelos]

Another "bug" to report.

Orion Senate weirdness... races voting to Condemn themselves! and voting against praise for themselves!

Now, voting against praise I can understand on some level because it raises your relations with all senate members by 10 points each and perhaps you're just in a foul mood and you don't feel like making up with those Cynoids that stole your favorite toy at recess yesterday...

But voting to condemn yourself?

[zxanth]

How is it that Species that I have "lost contact with" can continue to insert spys into my territory but I cannot spy back on them? I have no way at all to do anything in return to those Species.

The research sliders will not stay in the "locked" position.

When voting fo Senate President there is no "commit" button, the only way to get it to accept my vote is to leave the screen then come back to it to verify that I actually voted.

If I minimize the game when it comes back up I get "Direct X surface Unavalable" error, I have to kill the game in task manager then re-load. (Windows XP Home)

There needs to be a way to locate where my ground troops are without looking individually at all og my planets.

Something needs to be done about the diplomacy of war decarations. Many species will decare a war on me, then undeclare war on me in a couple of turns. The fact that they have no common borders with me and the fact that their Species apparently Loves me seems to have no bearing on this declareation at all.

General Bugetary policy seems to be, if not broken then misunderstood. I put the policy on "Spend" and the reserves continued to grow. I expected to burn through my excess in a small number of turns.

In the diplomacy screens I have had Species Declare war on me while at the same time accepting various treaties with me. Its like Sure we want to exchange research and by the way we declare war on you.

It would be nice to find out why I am being threatened. These Species come up and threaten me to cease my actions, I am not doing anything to them and have to assume someone else is. But it would be nice to at least know what they think I am doing to them.

[BottleOfPills]

Well, I'm now at about turn 170, and my big grip I've seen has only been touched upon here is the AI strength. As this oversight just makes me think that the beta testers where idiots and didn't catch that the Enemy AI will never invade my planets thus making it difficult to lose.

My wish list and I'm a MOO newbie, and only 170turns into my first game. But it goes as follows...

1. AI - let my enemy attack via ground forces. I've read several message boards that the AI will not invade my planets. I admit, I've never seen it attack mine. I've only read about two post that say they've seen it happen to them. But this seems to be a major bug and really needs looked at. If it's not it tends to support the people who say "You Can't Lose" at this game.

2a. Ship Design - here this may be because I'm so new but this is the most complicated thing I've ever seen. The ship names are too short, not very descriptive, in addition I can't seem to change the name and get it to stay that way it always reverts back. I hope I'm doing something wrong, but it still could be so much more easier.

2b. Refit / upgrade - this should have been obvious, and leads more creedance to my views that beta testers are idiots as they couldn't have possibly played the game and not have this issue. Someway I should be able to upgrade existing ships with new technology. This could be done in a realistic fashion. Maybe some technology will not fit on previos versions, ships have to dock at systems with the apropriat facilities to upgrade. Changing units already in production may take a few extra turns. But something needs to be done.

3. The whole issue of some windows have a "Close" button some don't. This is just inconsistant and should be either or.

4. The AI of the Viceroys - Why do I need so many troop ships? I should be able to control this in someway. The same goes for the creation of ground forces, obsolete ships, colony ships, and a great deal more. Not to mention the creation of DEA's. I would like more control over it, and I've noticed what someone else mentioned earlier that it seems sometimes the planet never developes a "Planned" DEA.

5. The Diplomacy AI - On the surface this appears great, but I can't seem to get over that it's nothing but a war - peace - war - peace cycle. I second what other people say that if you attack a planet a lot of times they will still want to initiate some sort of trade with you. This isn't right. There should also be some way of finding out why this civ is pissed at me. I've also noticed that if there is an election vote for the senate, you can not vote on other pending legislation.

6. From the Sitrep window if you click on the planets name you go to the planet screen. From that window, you should be able to enter the "System" window. You can't. You have to back out to the map, and then to the system.

7. The save game should be able to save during a turn, and the Sitrep should be allowed to be able to be displayed. For the turn in question.

8. Choosing colors would be nice, naming your star systems would be nice and planets also. But I could see where this would become a nightmare keeping track of things and where they are.

9. The Encyclopedia is a joke - totally worthless. End of story.

10. The Manual - it's a joke but just a little less so than the previos statement. I'm glad I bought the stratagy guide. Least there I can find out what all the techs actually do, the specials do, etc. I haven't found it in the game yet.

I'm out like my last leader.

[Yodasplat]

Originally posted by Arnelos
WHAT TO ADD IN A PATCH
....

3. An Imperial Military Planning screen that works somewhat like the Planetary Development one.

I'll just copy what I posted in another thread regarding this one. I think this would REALLY help:

The planetary AI has an insane fetish for building zillions ground support units like hackers, command centers, commandos, and especially magazines but never building enough actual TROOPS to use them all! I have to CONSTANTLY micromanage the military build queues to cancel yet another 20 magazines and 20 hackers on several different planets and replace a large number of them with infantry or marines. It would be nice if the various planetary AI's looked at the fact that I have over 30 ground support units in reserve and less than 10 marines and responded appropriately by building marines rather than yet more hackers and magazines

That's my one MAJOR gripe with the planetary AI. I have other gripes with its sense of building miltiary equipment as well, but they're not as problematic as its fetish for ground support units. In general (and this goes with fleet build-up as well), it would be IDEAL to do the following:

You have planetary development plans you can name from the empire tab that give directives for the planetary build queues and DEA assignment.

Why not do the same with the military queues? (or is there something I'm missing...). Name, at the empire level, the #'s of point defense craft, carriers, recon/scout ships, marines, troop ships, ground support units, missile ships, beam ships, etc, etc, etc..... that you want as your force composition. Then let the AI figure out which planet will build what and/or have each planetary AI look at the list of what you want, what's already being built elsewhere, and select something from the list that it seems is still needed.

That would save me A LOT of trouble from having to micromanage the military build queues.

At this point, that's a big-ticket item on my wishlist, if it's possible...
.....

I wholeheartedly second this. This is one of my biggest gripes. If we can get a Planner for building queues (even a vague one as long as it stops the freaking AI from flooding my reserves with useless troopships) this would improve matters considerably.

How about a "spy" planner too while we are at it? Something to set how many spies, how often and what types to build.

[Harry Seldon]

I can't vote in the Senate, my troop ships won't invade consistently, the Galactic Encyclopedia stinks and needs more information (like how to obsolete a freakin ship), and the SitRep has problems like double reporting and conflicting information.

[GodKing]

Some features I would like to see added:

A symbol added to the main map that lets me know where I have ship deployment facilities. It would be easier to just see it instead of having to click on each planet to see if the Governor built one here or not…

Planet names on the main map. OK, when you are scrolled in the names appear, but when you scroll out to a certain point the name just disappear. I prefer to play a little further out than the text allows, but then I have no idea of who owns what system. Can you change font size, make it an option, or something.

I don’t like the way it shows systems owned by multiple civs. I preferred the MoO2 system of having the text name for the system on the main map in different colours based off of percentage of planets owned. I do like the little pop up that shows for example Me: 2.2, Them 1.0, and I think that even more info can be added here to make this more of a tool for those who went through the learning curve.

In the system screen, the two various windows or peals / one is military and the other is exploration, they can easily be combined. Neither screen has a lot of information on it but it is kinda a pain to go, explore each planet, then try and remember which ones were good for colonizing and thus click over to the military side, and click on send colony ship / outpost ship.

In ship design, it would be nice if we can click on an item (particularly weapons) and change them instead of erasing the whole category and starting over. Also, when designing ships, they way the menus appear you do not see the net effect of the changes (whatever they may be) until you add the system and close the particular screen. I would like to see something where you can see the ship as it is being designed (ie, hit points, fire power, COST, etc), and perhaps compare it to an older design as well (this could be a separate pop up window).

Ability to upgrade ships. OK, OK, I understand you most likely had a reason for leaving this out. But if you do decide to add it back in, please look at something like ships in the reserve are taken out at random and upgraded to the current ships of its type (ie – a destroyer sized recon ship will only be upgraded to another destroyer sized recon ship). The old design needs to be obsolete. The ship gets taken out of reserves, sent to a planet and put into a build queue, and then sent back to reserves. The AI should do all of this, no human intervention, except a check box somewhere that says (Upgrade ships? Yes/No). If there are multiple ship designs it can be upgraded to the AI picks whichever one it likes best.

Ship Life spans. You have this for the spies and the leaders. Should be something like this for ships. Say 80 +/- 20 Galactic Cycles, with upgrades when complete is resetting the life of the ship. That way if you build a couple of orbital space stations then ignore them for a hundred turns or so they get placed back in reserves until you upgrade them. Ships that are not within their life span are placed into reserves and unable to be deployed. You can also just scrap the ships as the cost of upgrading might be more than the cost of buying new. If so it there should be some whey of letting players know this.

Ability to turn off construction of such things as transports without making them obsolete. This would also include such things as Marines and infantry.

Auto explore options for scouts. Just click on a button and these little ships just hit jump lane to jump lane until you know where they all are or until they get destroyed.

Colour picks. Also, picking the style of ships.

Show something with systems with guardians in them on the main map. The name of the system at least with a special colour until it is defeated and colonized.

An AI for spying. Just set the budget and let the AI recruit spies for defense and which civs to target. I am not too worried about how strong they are, it is just a facet of the game that I don’t like to deal with all that often.

Something so that two AI civs do not pick the same symbol, particularly when their colour is close to the same.

Better way to control ground forces. It is hard to know which planets have some and which planets do not. I lost a planet when I though I had 12 marines and it was actually another planet with a similar name. I would like some method of auto deployment to all of my systems.

Diplomacy – Things happen without knowing why. Also, I would like a button to tell me of past actions (particularly those outstanding events which are yet unresolved) with a species. Some sort of log. I have sent a request to trade for a tech, only to request it the second turn again and then get a response the third turn accepting the first offer. Also, if I offer to trade with one species for a tech, then with a second species for the same tech I should get a warning saying that (hey, you just asked BOB if you could buy that from him, so wait a turn until you ask JIM to find out what BOB says first).

That should do it for now.

[GodKing]

OK, one more - if a special is used up, can it no longer appear on the planet screen. The leader one is probably the most significant, but many items are limited and once gone, they should be gone and no longer showing, right?

[matohl]

I have compiled a list of bugs I noticed during my first 200 turns as HUMAN:

1. Disapperaing ships
I had two light cruisers in my military production queues that was supposed to be ready with a few turns in between.
According to the sitrep they were completed, they were removed from the production queues but they never appeared in my
reserves!

2. Invasion impossible
When there is an enemy planet that can produce one defensive system ship each turn it is not possible to invade the planet

3. Wrong message from allied player - the title said he asked for a TA: Intelligence, but in the message he wanted us
to declare war on each other. When I accepted it it turned out to be a TA: Intelligence.

4. Fix the save-bug!

5. Save the sitrep!

6. Map zoom does not work

7. Remove obsolete designs from production queues!

And then my list of NEEDED improvements:

1. Better sitrep filters - who cares about the DEA's being built on 30 planets every turn? Filtering out all the yellow ones are not a good solution, since you miss a lot of information. I want to see reseached tech , built ships and spy actions.

2. Easier access to the production queues - whoo, I don't need this click fest.

3. Improved ship-building AI - I already have 30 troop transports in the reserve, why does it continue building these? Why does it never build any battleships?

4. Improved galactic encyclopedia - add ALL items and make it possible to right click on items to get help for them,
just like in CIV3 and MOO2.

5. Improve the exchane function in the dilpomacy screen - there is no way to see what the technologies are, what level they
are on and so on, i.e. it is impossible to make a fair bid. Also, add more things to exchange - money, captured spies, ships and armies from the reserve

6. Refit ships!

7. Upgrade ship designs!

8. Imperial Military Planning! - I second that, great idea!

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by GodKing
Some features I would like to see added:

A symbol added to the main map that lets me know where I have ship deployment facilities. It would be easier to just see it instead of having to click on each planet to see if the Governor built one here or not…

Hit 'b' in the galaxy map. It will switch to border view, which will show where you (and your opponents) can deploy ships (they'll have a split blue-grey pentagon around the empire flag). It will also show your (and your opponents') imperial seat of government.

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by wyldrose
Display the names of shared systems in multiple colors.

Note that single-clicking in the galaxy map to select the planet will show who shares the system, both textually in the list of controlled planets and graphically in the ring surrounding the sun.

[GodKing]

Originally posted by Craig P.


Hit 'b' in the galaxy map. It will switch to border view, which will show where you (and your opponents) can deploy ships (they'll have a split blue-grey pentagon around the empire flag). It will also show your (and your opponents') imperial seat of government.

Thanks, I will try that.

[Alexander D]

For those who haven't done it, the README file that is in the main directory of the game (i.e. C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Master of Orion 3) contains very useful last minute info that may help to solve some of the problems posted here.

Greetings

Alex

[Craig P.]

Now, QS/IG probably should have done this themselves, but you can get improved encyclopedia and tech description mods at www.orionsector.com. The encyclopedia mod inserts planetary special info, race info, magnate info, and some info from Chaos Avatar and Lore Weaver. The tech description mod includes specific modifiers for vague techs. Some variants include approximate level information in the tech name (aids in trading), and one also does this for ground combat techs.

[Alexander D]

That are good news. The guys at Orionsector.com are fast. This is the closest thing for a patch we have now, just 6 days from the release day!

Gretz

Alex

[habadacus]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon my troop ships won't invade consistently.

Oooh, good one. I noticed this myself last night. It seemed to be working as per the manual in the early / mid game, but later when I went on the offensive against the trilarians, I noticed they had taken over most of the sakkra worlds. So I went in with a big fleet, 8 combat TFs and 2 maxed transport TFs (so I wouldn't exceed the 10 max) , but I never got a bombardment/ground combat phase during the combat turns. Instead, I had dispatched the defending fleet, and eliminated the planetary defences and with no bombardment/ground battle phase and hit end turn. Then, in the sitrep for the new turn, it said "our fleet has bombarded (planet X), and the planet was scrubbed clean. This happened about 8/10 times while advancing againts the trilarians. When I wanted this to happen I had to bomb a planet for like 20 turns to get the pop to zero. Now when I wanted to conquer a world with some buildings and pop to use as a forward base, I had to start the planets completely over from scratch. Who gave the order to bomb the freaking planet anyway? not me, that's for sure, but then I'm never really sure if I'm playing this game or it's playing me. Has anyone from QS been addressing or even acknowledging any of this BS? Starting to feel like the only reason I'm even bothering to play at all is to find new stuff to point out is broken.

[Craig P.]

The problem with bombardment seems to be that if you cede control to the AI for combat it will automatically cede control for bombardment as well. This does NOT extend to the invasion proper, as I've controlled every invasion despite turning most of the combats over to the AI.

[matohl]

Originally posted by matohl

1. Disapperaing ships
I had two light cruisers in my military production queues that was supposed to be ready with a few turns in between.
According to the sitrep they were completed, they were removed from the production queues but they never appeared in my
reserves!

Sorry, this was not a bug, I designed my light cruiser as a system ship by accident.

[Essex]

For all of you complaining about the AI constantly building troop ships and the like, this isn't the AI choosing to build them over your beautiful battleship designs at a whim. It's a consequence of the number of industry points and the funds available to a planet. Simply put until very late in the game, none of your planets can afford to build the largest ship designs available in a reasonable number of turns, at least as far as the AI is concerned. For a much better discussion of this check out the orion sector.

However, I don't think anyone has come up with a good reason for all of the useless excess support troops being built.

Finally, while there are a lot of little things that should be patched to make the game better, the one true game breaker for me is the fact that the enemy AI is absolutely pathetic. I know a lot of people who buy first person shooters love the god mode and wouldn't know how to play without it but this is a STRATEGY game. Right now there's no strategy. Other than Orion Senate victories by races you've never met, it's impossible to lose. That needs to be fixed PRONTO or there are going to be a lot of returns and very few new purchases of what could be a truly great game.

[Craig P.]

Rantz has noted the call for a more aggressive AI. Reportedly, they toned it down a bit because it seemed too aggressive in beta, so some kind of fix there should be in the first patch.

That and the PD fix are the most important issues right now, I think. It'd be nice if they could tweak the viceroy's military preferences, as well.

[Alexander D]

I noticed, as probably others, that many things of the game (troop ship and ground forces obsessions, AI aggresiveness, etc) are twekeable from the spreadsheets of the game.

Although I'm playing with the stock game values of the game, I downloaded some interface mods and so. Right now, I'm tweaking the filtering of stuff for the sitrep, to have in green the stuff i'm not interested (i.e. DEAs been built).

I hope somebody with lots of time (and I hope again from IG/QS) with some knowledge of the game parameters will tweak these factors to make the AI player less dumb. And I hope this will become an official patch.

Gretz.

Alex

[vmxa1]

I would like to see something done to the wing tab for Military Queues. It is so easy to click on the Econ frame and get that one instead of the build queue. It is not as if I do not get enough clicks in, now I have to close this one and try again.
(Ok, my bad, you do not have to click on the far end, any place on the bar will open it.)

One more that I am sure has been mentioned before, but I would at least like to see the new design to load the current values for a given design. So if I swing to new and select say a cutter, pop up the layout form my last cutter design, not the last ship I edited, say Cruiser.
The problem is that forces me to remember what exactly is in each design or bounce back and forth or write it down. I hope that was clear.

[Cabbagemeister]

I can't stand the lack of any screen summarizing the planets I have (a la the old MOO2 "Colonies" screen). Why? Okay, I want to build a big ol' dreadnaught. I need to do this manually, of course, because my Viceroys are so infatuated with their troopships. Okay, I can deal with that. But where do I build it? My empire has swelled to like 50 planets. I know my homeworld has decent production, but I don't know what other worlds might build it in less than 200 turns. All I can do is manually hunt among every one of my planets (at like eight clicks per planet) to find the most productive planet. And suppose I want the five most productive? Quick, someone get me a pencil and some paper so I can write down the values for any planet with more than a thousand production points. Yeesh.

What else? Well, aside from the things already mentioned by other people, I'd like to have some way to choose which of my ships go into any space battle. It's very frustrating when my four armor corps transports get blown up by the stray missiles that miss my invincible armada, and then I can't invade. Or, I can tell my transports to retreat right off the bat, and then even if I win, they're on their way back to the closest planet, and I have to wait 8 turns until I can get them back. The best option is to time it so that the transports get there one turn after the armada, but it's absurd that I have to go through all of that.

In a similar vein, when I do invade, I want to see some numbers in the bombard planet screen telling me both my troop concentrations and theirs (INCLUDING militia), so that I know how many of my troops to land. There's nothing worse than forgetting how many troopships you brought with you, pressing the "Land all troops" button just top be safe, and finding that you've landed 2,000 batteloid troops to wrest the planet from thirty enemy mobile troops and fifty militia. D'oh!

[matohl]

Originally posted by Cabbagemeister
I can't stand the lack of any screen summarizing the planets I have (a la the old MOO2 "Colonies" screen).

Go to the Planets screen and check the "Owned planets" check box. Un-check all other checkboxes. Then you select to sort the list based on Industry.

It is almost as good as the colony screen in MOO2, however, it does not seem to take mineral richness and other modifiers in account; this needs to be fixed in the upcoming patch I think.

[matohl]

1. Why cant I make the choice to NOT invade? If I have transports in the system, select assault planet with the fleet because I want to wipe out the fleet of the enemy, then my troops autmatically assaults the planet, I can only make the choice to control the battle or let the AI handle it. Perhaps I want the re-inforcements that will arrive the next turn with me in the assault.

2. Sorting on Industry in the Planets screen is not quite up to the task. It seems it does not take into account production modifiers, like mineral richness.

3. I want to access the production queues directly from the Planets screen, like I could in MOO2 from the Colonies screen.

4. In the sitrep, the checkbox for showing tech breakthroughs seems to be not working.

5. In the sitrep, I want to chose to see produced ships, ground troops, DEAs, planetary facilities, spy events.

6. In the sitrep, when it tells my XYZ has been produced I want to see what is next in the build queue and a shortcut to the production queue so I can change it froom Troop Transport or Magazine to something more useful like a Destroyer or a Marine.

[Zyrax]

It would be really nice to actually be able to see the mineral richness and such from the planets screen.

On another matter. Is it possible to somehow find out what kind of ships are involved in a fight before deciding if you want to attack/intercept the enemy or are you supposed to remember where every ship in the game is?
If this is not possible to find out, it should be fixed.

[Zyrax]

Just remembered another thing thats really needed. The scan feature from Moo2. I find it really annoying that I cant find out what enemy actually has on its ships.

[GodKing]

Scan - sure, but you have to take into account the technology. I wouldn't want to know automatically what each ship is, but a summery approximation would be nice, particularly if better sensors give better data....