Two proposals to improve the game (modernization of ships + building of spies)

[Starlord]

I like the game. It is too early to know if it will make it to the top of my 'favourite games of all times' list, because till now I don´t understand every detail in the game. But it is a already a lot of fun and I think I will really enjoy it for a long time.

But there are two things I find annoying:
Modernizing ships:
The current way of modernizing shipa contradicts the spirit of the game in my opinion. Because micromanagement gets rewarded (at least in SP). The more often you redesign your ships the more powerful is your fleet.
Besides that it seems to me the AI often tends to build only one or two types of the larger ships. So you often have to force it to build the ships you want by making other designs obsolete.

Creating Spys:
I try to produce spies non-stop. But during wars I often forget to check the spy-building queue from time to time.
And since spies are such an important thing in the game I am always frustrated when I have to notice that I wasted a turn or more without having a spy in my spy creation' queue.

So I would like to see two improvements:
Ship templates: You only create ship templates and the AI keeps your fleet up to date.
For example: You create for the following type of ship a template.
Carrier - Batleship - Starship
Each time such a new carrier gets finished it will be automatically equipped with your latest stuff and the number at the end of the ship name is set to the number of the current turn. (Maybe this mechanism needs some tweaking. Otherwise you might get more designs than the game can handle internally.)
Besides this it should be possible for the player to adjust the ratio between ship types built to his needs.
For example: If you set the ratio value for our carrier from above to "2" and the value for troop ship to "3". Then this would mean that no new troop ship would get built before there are not at least two carriers for each three existing troop ships. (2:3, 4:6, 6:9 ....)

Automatic building of spies:
All the spies should should be built automatically. The player adjusts only the percentages of all spies not inserted (perhaps with sliders like with research) and sets a maximum amount of spies allowed in the reserve. When a spie gets inserted aginst an enemy or dies or retires the AI builds a new one of the same type.


I think this is the best way to deal with this minor but annoying (at least for me) flaws.


Starlord

PS: (added because my original posting was not clear enough) I was not speaking about refitting ships. I was tallking about keeping ship designs up to date.

[Crostoneman]

Sorry. refitting ship is out, they fought for it but lost in the end. Some of us are changing research values to spread out the research tree a bit so we don't have to create top of the line ships every 5 turns.

[ZargonX]

I think it would be nice if you could create a task force template for your viceroys to use. You would specify the size (flotilla, etc...) and the number and type of each kind of ship to put in it (ex. 3 core carriers, 4 PD picket, etc...) and then just assign that to a planet's build queue. The viceroy would build the necessary ships to fufill the request, then deploy the task force when it was ready. This would make make it possible to manage the TFs and production on an Empire-wide scale, which fits in nicely with the main concept of the game...

[asleepathewheel]

I agree witht the spies.

I think they should just overhaul the entire spying system, too unbalanced.

And re: ships: I agree

[Starlord]

Originally posted by Crostoneman
Sorry. refitting ship is out, they fought for it but lost in the end. Some of us are changing research values to spread out the research tree a bit so we don't have to create top of the line ships every 5 turns.

Obviously you misunderstood me. It´s only about new ships. Existing ships should stay the same. But it seems I should clarify this issue in my original post.

Thanks

Starlord

[Starlord]

Originally posted by ZargonX
I think it would be nice if you could create a task force template for your viceroys to use. You would specify the size (flotilla, etc...) and the number and type of each kind of ship to put in it (ex. 3 core carriers, 4 PD picket, etc...) and then just assign that to a planet's build queue. The viceroy would build the necessary ships to fufill the request, then deploy the task force when it was ready. This would make make it possible to manage the TFs and production on an Empire-wide scale, which fits in nicely with the main concept of the game...

I fully agree with you. A task force template would be cool. But at the moment I would be content If I had not to do update all the ship designs by myself.

Starlord

[MarkG]

it's a shame the automization in ship design didnt go all the way. there is the autobuild button. i'd like an autoupgrade button that do the following

- take main characteristics of a ship(size, mission, type)
- autobuild a new design using the same characteristics
- name the new design with an increasing number(outpost2, outpost3, etc)
- obsolete older version

can i dream?

[vmxa1]

You can dream, but sleep with your umbrellla as water is about to be thrown on your dream.

[crush_99]

You can change the amount of spys that can be placed in the Spy queue -- Thanks to an easy MOD

Check out this link on how to do it:
http://www.ina-community.com/forums/...hreadid=272114

[vmxa1]

I am not sure why I need to put more spies in the queue. Ships yes, but spies are build rather slowly and since you have a bunch made, you never really know which type will need to be replaced.