The patch thread: what to patch?

Trifna · February 28, 2003, 10:37

This is simply an initiative to centralize all posts about what should be patched, what should be arranged, instead of spreading all over the forum. Hopefully, it will help MOO3 developers.

Personally, I already have one proposition: fixing what GameSpy's review proposes.

PS: Mark, could you put it sticky or post a sticky version of this?

krait23 · February 28, 2003, 11:23

1. Allow choice of color on starting a new game.

2. Allow for saving custom races

3. Move empire grants to the planetary pages so you can assign individual grants to planets (like if I want to grant 50 AU and have 3 planets, one is a splinter colony I found, one is my home planet, and one is the nice ultra rich size 12 sweet spot I found, I want all 50 AU to go to that great planet, not to the already working home planet or the crappy splinter).

4. Give us a 'resource breakdown popup' a'la MoO2 when rightclicking on a number in the production window so we can actually see what affects which item how much.

5. Use MoO2s ship construction... What we got in MoO3 is... inconvenient... to say it politely. Modifying weapons requiring you to remove and add again is a major annoyance, so is having to click on the damn tabs to the left to get to an item to modify it instead of just doubleclicking it in the item list.

6. Improve Diplomacy. I haven't gotten too deep into that yet, but my first encouter with it scared me off again. Someone wanted something from me, but I had no idea what. He said something about exchanging tech, but nowhere was a statement which tech for what...

7. Apropos Tech... A ingame tech tree would be invaluable...

8. Add planetary specials to the encyclopedia. Actually, add all encyclopedic stuff to it (like weapon stats, planetary improvement stats, actually, all stats we don't see anywhere!). The current encyclopedia doesnt nearly earn its name. Just seems to contain info on the various game screens and other stuff thats already mentioned in the manual anyway.

Thats it.. for now... I am sure I will think of more but not now. Others will though

Lata
Krait

H Tower · February 28, 2003, 12:04

did you have to start a second thread with the same topic? You already posted the same thread topic here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=78580

krait23 · February 28, 2003, 12:25

The other thread went somewhat off topic though...

And its not really asking for patch suggestions...

Lata
Krait

Trifna · February 28, 2003, 15:22

Quote:

Originally posted by H Tower
did you have to start a second thread with the same topic? You already posted the same thread topic here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=78580

If I could erase the other thread it would already be done. This one is to propose stuff for patch, so I wasn't gonna not put my own suggestion

Trifna · February 28, 2003, 15:28

cndblank also posted this in my other thread....

Quote:

One of most annoying things I noticed that would be very easy to fix is in the Shipyards. Most of the ships I do designs on are starships so why isn't starship the default setting.
The same thing goes for the ship size. Most ships get built using the largest design available (unless a scout or escort ship). So why does it alway revert to the lancer size?
Instead it reverts back to lancer size and orbital every time.
Please fix this in the patch!!!!!

H Tower · February 28, 2003, 15:31

Quote:

Originally posted by Trifna

If I could erase the other thread it would already be done. This one is to propose stuff for patch, so I wasn't gonna not put my own suggestion

so send markG or ming a pm asking them to close the other thread so we don't have two patch threads

habadacus · February 28, 2003, 17:40

OK here I go. First I want to say I'm a little bitter about looking for a patch the same day I started playing, especially after the excruciating waiting waiting waiting, so the game could go out the door bug-free. That clearly hasn't happened. That being said, I know we as gamers will get more out of QS/IG supportwise if we're not all agro about it, so that's all the venting I'm gonna do. Other that these things which I would love to see fixed soon, this is a very cool and groundbreaking game in a genre populated with clones. Kudos to IG/QS!!! Here's my biggest niggles:

1) Fix Build queue UI / AI

On the UI side,you can sort of see a planet's build queue from the system screen by clicking on the planet in the system view screen. But, what you get are generic icons for ships/troops which don't tell you WHAT is being built (although it's usually a troopship). If I want to check/change the queue, I've got to double click the planet, open the economy tab, and then click on military, and then I can adjust the queue. What a waste of clicks. The system screen should tell me what an item is exactly, and ideally just let me tweak it from there, without losing the system view. I could MM if I want from there easily, and for the whole system. Or at least let me jump right to the economy screen for that world with one click in/one click back out to system view to tweak the next world.

On the AI side, this would be less of a problem if the viceroys weren't OBSESSED with building troopships and support personnel, as opposed to fighting ships and men (or lizards or bugs or crystals, etc.). Fleet control is the meat of the fun of a macro approach, but my colonies rarely build anything bigger than a frigate that has guns on it, leaving me with an skeletal navy unless I intervene. This needs to be fixed, or at least let me mark in the design queue whether or not I want the viceroys to have access to this model, besides marking it obsolete, and then having to wade through the list of old ships to reactivated it when needed. Which brings me to:

2) Ship design interface

This is really really horrible. Made even worse by the bloated tech tree, and inability to refit existing ship types with the hundreds of techs. I don't understand how this feature, so central to the fun of this kind of game (I designed a Battle Cruiser! Yay!) could be so poorly implemented. we NEED an easier way to compare , upgrade and create different designs! From everything resetting to the last thing you'd ever build (A Lancer Orbital station anyone?), to the name field bieng too short and not clearing in windows standard fashion, theres ALOT of wasted clicks here. I can't believe this game made it out the door like this. It's enough of a slap in the face that the ship images are so generic and boring. I found that whenever I build a larger ship type, some tech would roll around, or get stolen by my spies, and my design would become obsolete before it ever hit the starlanes. So back to the horrible design screen to make a completely new ship from the ground up, just to incorporate one of the hundreds of design advances. Discovered a new drive? You have to redesign every single ship in your fleet to use it from colony ships up. Figured out a weapon mod/minuturization? back to the drawing board with you, for every warship you have. Then a short while after plodding through the arduos process of bringing ALL your ships back up to speed, you discover a new warp drive/system drive/weapon/special/armor/younameit. Guess what you have to do to use them? Needless to say by mid-game your obsolete list is a mile long, with no way to delete the really old designs to clear the clutter which you must face to put the kibosh on troopship construction. I was willing to try to part with refits, but this alternative is abysmal. PLEASE FIX THIS. The game would rock if ship design were as fun and intregal as it should be in a space war game! And please let me refit my old ships so I don't have to spend the whole game redesigning every ship every 12 or so turns when a better tech is discovered, and then plodding through build queues to see that they get built instead of the old junkers.

3) Diplomacy

Really not sure what the heck happened here. My first game, a puny empire of silicoids went from a trade/research pact to war for no apparent reason. This war ended on it's own and was redeclared like every other turn, until I finally wiped them out. Even at the last , when they were down to one planet that wasn't even colony size, they refused to do anything but declare war. This and the counter-offer thing have been discussed elsewhere, so that's all I'll say here, but this desperately needs to be fixed, and shouldn't require any new code, just a tweak to the existing stuff.

4) Tech Tree Descriptions

The tech tree is so bloated it's absurd. Do we really need a seperate tech advance for every thickness of armor, every possible weapon mount, and all the different mods for the who knows how many weapons? I suppose it's too late for anyone to do anything about it now, but it would have been nice if the tech tree followed the same KISS doctrine (keep it simple, stupid) as the rest of the game did so well. As it is now I get a new tech advance and I'm usually like "whatever", but discovering an new advance should be a big deal to me as a player and to my empire as a whole. What CAN be changed easily is the dumbed down tech descriptions that don't tell you squat. This is a science fiction game. I bought it presumably because on some level I dig science fiction. So don't be afraid you'll hurt me if you tell me what a tech DOES. I'm sure my empire has made a huge leap towards contolling the Orion sector when it discovers Advanced Automated Robotic Armor-Piercing Quantum Anti-Grav Butt-Wipers Mk.III, but could the description at least tell me, IN GAME TERMS, wtf they DO? Some of the descriptions are so vague and meaningless it just compounds the "whatever" feeling.

Well, damn, I feel like I have more to suggest, (the lousy rehash-of-the-manual encyclopedia with no planet specials in it, way more statistics for taxes than for ship combat results, and did I mention the AI builds alot of troopships?) but there goes my lunch hour, so that'll have to do for now. I get the feeling after the huge release delays that I'll have PLENTY of time to post suggestions before any patch comes out, but I sincerely hope I'm wrong. And for anyone who is thinking of buying the game who is reading this thread, remember I'm talking here about what I want to see improved, but overall I'm pretty thrilled with the game and think it's one of the coolest designs conceptually I've ever played with, and I've been gaming since the commodore 64 days!. I'm not going to detail what I like about it here, but it outweighs the rough spots by far. So go buy it!!!

vmxa1 · February 28, 2003, 18:25

I am in whole hearted agreement with the Tech bit and have no real disagreement with the rest of your points.

Inverse Icarus · February 28, 2003, 19:00

i turned off tech notices in the SitRep, and i usually find out i have new sh!t to build when i hit the planetary queues

habadacus · February 28, 2003, 19:55

OK real quick here's a few more I want in the patch:

1) Ability to rename systems. Sure the names are all cool as they are, but after my empire grows I can't really tell a Metallah from an Alkurhah when I'm in the build queue. especially for important frontier/junction systems, I should be able to rename them to something a little easier for my brain to derive meaning from.

2) Changing colors, obviously

3) When I'm in the build queue I have my whole screen occupied with stuff. Nowhere does any of this stuff tell me WHAT build queue I'm in. I know I should know, but it's easy to get lost looking at all the options and stuff to build and forget what world I'm looking at. Tell me this has never happened to you. Where it says build queue at the top, it should say Build queue: Planet X or at least mention the planet the queue belongs to SOMEWHERE on the screen. Also, theres a part of the build queue screen that says Selected Item Details, but you click on a ship and it appears in there, um, but, like, where are the Selected Item Details? For Size it only tells you whether a ship is system or starship. Helpful, but not accurate. What about SIZE? With the useless generic icon (waste of space and butt-ugly too if you ask me) I can't tell if I'm looking at a frigate or a dreadnaught. Then it goes on to list the mission type. That's it. The bulk of this screen goes on to tell you what the mission type does. OK I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I don't need an item details window that tells me a long-range ship attacks from long range. How about telling me what warp drive this ship has? Armor points, weapon loadout, any PD weapons installed? etc. This looks like they meant to use this space for that, but never got around to it. It would be enormously helpful to see info about a ship there to help you decide which to build, especially as the name field is too short to properly identify each and every design at a glance just from those few characters.(IMHO)

4) There needs to be a way to organize TFs into fleets so they travel at the same speed. Seeing as I can't upgrade old ships to use new drives, and I discover a new drive every 15 minutes, this needs to be fixed so I don't have to manually time my fleet departures so everyone attack at the same time. Works well within the TF, but not across multiple TFs.

5) There's really alot of stuff that needs to be cleaned up in the ship design screen, which is my absolute least favorite part of this game, (and that was my most favorite part of MOO2) but one for now is: armor does not default to the heaviest available. I don't see any decrease in speed from heavier armors, and only a modest increase in price, so don't make me have to bump it up every time I build a warship. Of course I want the heaviest armor I have available, its a WARSHIP. It will happen less often that I want lighter armor for whatever reason, than wanting the best possible, so reflect this in the design screen. Maybe someone needs to start a thread so we can write all of our niggles with the ship design portion seperately, there's an awful lot of work that needs to be done with this stinker.

6) When assembling a task force I see a speed rating, but that seems to represent local (system) speed. Where's the warp speed info? If I stick one older ship in my armada, all the other ships are gonna go slower, so it's important to be able to tell how fast a ship can warp when building the TF to avoid this. Again the short ship name field hinders me doing this manually, and the spamy tech tree ensures I'll have lots of intermediate ship designs so...

AH OK, that's it for round 2 back to MOO for a few more turns, but I'm keeping my eyes open. I want to love this game so much that I'm willing to do for free the job QS's QA got paid for. If there are ways around any of the stuff I'm whining about , please let us know! I'm not too proud to say I'm may be missing something here, and would love to find out how to better enjoy this almost- but-not-quite-there-yet-shouldn't-have-been-released-but-I-was-tired-of-waiting-for-it game.

Inverse Icarus · February 28, 2003, 20:34

things i want in moo3:
SitRep
Checkbox to hide things after i'm done with them.
Planets View
Checkbox for when a ship is on the way to a colony, so multiple ships dont go there.

just a start.

Inverse Icarus · March 1, 2003, 13:43

Trifina: we should get this topped, and the first poster should maintain an organized list so QS can see it readily.

Zanac · March 1, 2003, 14:29

Allow the player to build anything on any planet that the AI (alone) can build. This would decrease the absolute dependence on the AI (in the early, more manageable part of the game) and let the player "play" the game more.

-D

Arnelos · March 1, 2003, 15:23

WHAT TO ADD IN A PATCH

1. A Tutorial

Let's face it, the game's learning curve is enormous... it has been accurately described as a "learning cliff". Most games that even a fraction of this complex have tutorials to help out new players. Why does MoO3, which is many times more complex, NOT have such a tutorial? This seems a rather obvious problem and a main reason why many people have stated that they don't like the game without "giving it a chance". What they need is a tutorial. Guide them through a beginning scenario game where they only have one easy opponent and let them figure out HOW TO PLAY before dumping them into the larger ocean and leave them to sink or swim.

2. Documentation.

A number of things I've seen other people complain or ask about are found in the readme file. I don' t have a problem with those items (such as planet specials, though it would have been nice if they'd made the manual). My problem is with the things that are not adequately documented ANYWHERE, such as what many of the trade agreements actually DO and how they work. The encyclopedia helps a lot, but it's severely lacking.

A big update for the encyclopedia and a greatly updated readme file to boot would be a HUGE improvement.

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...

4. Player-selected map color

I was gripping about this before the game even came out. It really would be nice. I would also think that it wouldn't be hard to implement, but I'm willing to admit that I'm not knowledgable on the subject.

5. Help for those poor Humans.... please?

Let's face it. From all appearance, the Humans are rather badly handicaped. Just do a quick comparison of the Humans to the Evon and you'll see what I mean. You can customize the Evon to create a Homo Superior that has all of the good and superior traits of the Humans AND BETTER TRAITS including the absense of those painful poor traits. Given that the readme states (if accurate) that the Evon and Humans are IDENTICAL in terms of other hardwiring, this means that anyone who intends to play the Humans might as well just play a customized Evon

The Humans need some help... very badly. Currently, the only reason to play them is sentimental value, which doesn't count for much at the moment. I'd hate to see the poor guy who decides to play the Humans in multiplayer...

As for beefing the Humans up, my personal suggestion would be to increase their trade trait first and their diplomacy trait (which is already at half-price for picks) if you have generosity left over. That would bring the Humans more into line with their historical MoO role and it would balance them some. Their poor traits should be kept... if they actually have some more decent traits to detract from, that is.

---------

For now, that's all I have in terms of patch suggestions. I'll post more if I think of them.

Trifna · March 1, 2003, 15:59

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX
Trifina: we should get this topped, and the first poster should maintain an organized list so QS can see it readily.

I already asked this to Ming. He didn't answered or put it top yet. And for organization, I don't know if I'm really willing to do it... Have some stuff/projects already. But anyway, if someone is willing to do it, it wouldn't be very hard for me to copy/paste and edit.

wyldrose · March 1, 2003, 18:20

Add map notation for systems with Guardians. Having to memorize which systems are deathtraps is ridiculous.

Display the names of shared systems in multiple colors.

vmxa1 · March 1, 2003, 18:33

Now there is one I really do not understand. I run into a guardian and look around trying to figure out which planet that scout was at? Why am I not able to even see the planets name? I mean I can discern a reason, but there is not need for it. In Moo2 when I found it I new where it was weither or not I survived the encounter.
Arnelos I second that opinion. I was just thinking that a scenario with a turtorial that included combat and all from one of the devs would go a long way to making the game enjoyable to more players.
Why make them struggle? Remember most will not be coming to the web for help.

yoda · March 1, 2003, 21:52

Now that I have come down from the dream world of a game that was delayed to make it as bug free as possible...

1) Map symbol for guardian locations
2) sound bugs in diplomatic screen
3) (could just be my computer) for some reason the game tries to access both my speakers and the computer internal speaker causing an annoying high pitched whin (not consistently though). I especially noticed this in SP, but not in MP
4) make a simple path to production queues
5) Use a colony summary screen so that you can "mass edit" production
6) find some way to have a "fast map move". With wormholes, you can end up having systems all over the place and no easy way to find them unless you are zoomed in.
7) make the encyclopedia actually useful by putting more than just the general information into it. OR, make pop up messages when the mouse rests on an item of interest (perhaps a right click?).
8) some sort of tech chart would be nice so that you can at least see where you are.
9) have some way of SHOWING who has already ended turn (MP)
10) make the chat window (MP) work after you have ended turn
11) tone down spys... they can be a bit silly blowing up everything in sight until you get counter spys in place
12) 2 out of 3 times I have been disconnected in a large MP game. It didn't seem to be a problem in smaller games. Have some way to "rejoin" the game.
13) freighters? are resources naturally sent from one colony to the next if needed or are there no provisions for supply?
14) supply lines for ships. Scouts can go on for ever without any restrictions for resupplying.
15) some advanced notice about the length of time a spy will live so that you can make sure replacements are in the queue.
16) Have some way to remove some of the luck factor from the game so that MP can have balanced starts and gameplay.

That's it for now. Overall, I think the game has lots of potential. It just needs a bit more work to polish it and some very patient players to learn how to play.

Yoda

Arnelos · March 1, 2003, 23:21

I know a lot of people are complaining about spies, but let them

I personally think the current strength of spies is just about right. People who are complaining about the spies being too powerful are mostly the same people that always picked -10 spies and Democracy in MoO2, didn't build spies in the early game, and then wondered why they were being robbed blind.

Spies should be important.

Personally, I think the scientific and military spies are probably the only ones that are too powerful. The other spy types are just about right. If I was to tweak any of the others, I'd make the political/social spies less likely to blow up system seats and imperial seats of government and make the social spies' ability to raise unrest levels a bit more powerful (and make it more concentrated and system specific as with the original MoO).

But those are just tweaks.

wyldrose · March 1, 2003, 23:45

Found a nice glitch in the ship path-finding function. While ships will go around Guardian systems when using starlanes, they will try to go through them when going to isolated stars.

yoda · March 2, 2003, 00:03

Myself, I find the political assasination WAY too easy. One spy can knock out 4 leads in 4 turns. Unless you have defense already in place, very difficult to stop. So tell me, in what time frame in all of earth's history have you seen leaders knocked off like flys by another power?

habadacus · March 2, 2003, 00:32

Quote:

Originally posted by yoda
Now that I have come down from the dream world of a game that was delayed to make it as bug free as possible...

LOL Yoda. Yeah, I was willing to put up with the delay based on this promise and am as dissappointed as you that it was so glaringly short of the mark. That stuff like the auto-colony ship and build queue choice AI was released in it's present state is really shocking to me, given the assurances of quality we all recieved in exchange for our patience for waiting and waiting and missing X-mas and waiting some more. I really feel burned. Hopefully QS or IG or whoever's hands this is in now will redeem themselves with quick, thorough and effective patches, so I can recommend this game to my gamer buddies who are more of the RTS type. I really want to love the game, and it's sad to see it dragged down by such poor implementation of a such a great design. Now back to the bughunt [/preaching to the choir]

cpinchak · March 2, 2003, 00:34

Errrr...

A patch that makes this MOO 2.5 would be nice.

habadacus · March 2, 2003, 00:45

Quote:

Originally posted by yoda
Myself, I find the political assasination WAY too easy. One spy can knock out 4 leads in 4 turns. Unless you have defense already in place, very difficult to stop. So tell me, in what time frame in all of earth's history have you seen leaders knocked off like flys by another power?

True here too. The way it's been for me so far is getting a leader is more like a special event that lasts a few turns than a valued addition to the empire, even with defensive spies in place. Maybe if spies killed sometimes, and sometimes just injured the leader so he was out of commision for a few turns? The chance of a spy returning unscathed from an assassination attempt should also be very low, and the killing should have more dire consequences between the races, including those not directly involved. Espionage is one thing, out and out murder is quite another to any sentient race. This would make killing leaders just for fun a less attractive proposition. Also is there any way to see what leaders are working for your enemies so you could tell if a poltical spy attack was a worthwhile endeavor? They seem to be famous figures in the galaxy, it should be common knowledge who's working for who shouldn't it?

Arnelos · March 2, 2003, 01:06

habadacus,

Both EXCELLENT suggestions concerning political espionage. Having political spies be vastly likely to die if they succeed at political assassination is a good suggestion. Having everyone KNOW which leaders are employed by which race would also be a very nice thing and it would indeed make sense.

sprucemoose3311 · March 2, 2003, 03:06

- A way into the senate
- a way to exit to the galaxy map from every tab
- fix directx bug and the occasional failure of short buttons (esc, g, etc...)

Finally: (its more a wish than anything)- fix multiplayer so larges games have a winner

lockstep · March 2, 2003, 06:07

Quote:

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

IMO, this would become impractical when three or more races share a system - something I've already seen. So, displaying the system name in grey isn't that bad.

Otherwise, great thread! This game may be free of crash-bugs, but it needs a lot of feature enhancements to be a major success, even if the core gameplay is solid.

yoda · March 2, 2003, 15:07

Quote:

Originally posted by lockstep

IMO, this would become impractical when three or more races share a system - something I've already seen. So, displaying the system name in grey isn't that bad.

Otherwise, great thread! This game may be free of crash-bugs, but it needs a lot of feature enhancements to be a major success, even if the core gameplay is solid.

Just to note, it is not free of crash bugs. Other than a 1 on 1, I have not been able to play more than an hour or two of MP without losing connection (crash)! And with no way of re-joining the game...

yoda

I have ADSL and a 1 gig computer so I doubt it is a hardware problem.

Epistax · March 2, 2003, 15:17

Not a bug, but I wish there was something that could be done about the under 1000 populated planets. I can't attack them, I can't land troops on them, I wont land a colony ship there (the planet is doomsday for my race usually). So what do I do? I wait there for X turns until it's big enough, then bomb it hoping to destroy every last person, if not, the cycle starts again. The result is I have a whole bunch of systems which are not called "name", but "(name)", and a very insecure feeling.