General
- shift queuing attacks with strike craft should persist for all strike craft, even newly built replacement squads. Shift queuing targets in general hardly works as intended for strike craft, they seem to spread out targets or outright disobey and go for a target attacking main carrier
- auto grouping structures needs to follow the starbase, or other first placed defense and logistics structure. Manually placing structures is harder to do as a game goes on. Moving structures in orbit should not necessarily move all structures.
- saveable ship item loadout / starbase templates in capital ship management. Maybe even configurable before a game.
- remove exotics entirely, streamline the game. This is really forced, manufactured busywork. Introduce something else or a fourth commodity resource instead
If they must exist then some sort of configurable auto production when underutilized.. which can immediately pause if exotic requiring events occur. A better way to see exotics in queue for what purpose than mousing over each exotic in two lines
- starbase range, health, and mitigation needs a buff, and immunity to disable effects. They should all be mobile too tbh.
- logistics slots x / y needs to be visible in logistics tab of planets UI. Defense likewise.
- solution for the right display of own and other player ships in gravity well. If not, using it to target can be difficult as targets move around on the display
Advent:
- Deliverance engine auto: stop shooting empty enemy systems.
TEC
- bizarre warping behaviour, bumping into each other.
- auto group jump enclave garrison ships initially
Initially group jump*
exotics
Perhaps use it like Trade menu, you have export and import and you could shift between production of exotics exactly as is done with trade in TEC factions. Add, remove refineries from exotics instead of gold/iron/crystals. This makes it also possible to not produce any, when no refineries are set to work on any exotics. This way, you wouldnt pay upfront, but based on how fast they are made, you get that amount of upkeep. Queuing up you would pay nothing immediately.
base exotic is 400/125/125/120 seconds. 3,33 gold per second, 1,041 iron/crystal per second. You could also produce exo in multiple refineries, meaning, 5 refineries shouldnt have to produce 5 things, but make the exotic in 5 times the speed if you like.
I do not really know what was the aim of each producing separate 1 thing, possibly to prevent exotic snowball early ? Refinery takes 3 slots. For some reason as well. If it was 1/3 cheaper, took 2 slots, even worked slower, 3 mins instead of 2, but if they could stack like trade and they concentrate to produce 1 piece instead of separate, a bit of civ build space could have been saved.
There is an issue with fleet selection, it inconsistently shows fleet build menu other times it shows the selected capship and stuff. One left click usually removed one layer of the menus, but it is inconsistent. And it wants multiple clicks to remove.
I think I can be more coherent. It was late and I was on my mobile.- Strike craft don't move from target to target when commands are queued via shift- Auto-placing structures - there needs to be a way to choose where all structures will group- Saveable/Loadable Ship item and Starbase Item templates.- Exotics are not fun (actually make the game less fun), they feel like busywork. - If they must exist, there needs to be a system that auto manufactures exotics, and a better way to see the queued up manufacturing orders- Number of used logistic / defense slots and available slots needs to be visible in the Planet's UI- The Ships display on the right has a tendency to "bounce around" as ships get destroyed, making it difficult to select/target ships. This can be alleviated by separating it to display each factions' ships in separate visual "groups"- Starbases need more range, health, and mitigation at a minimum. Maybe some immunity to some disable effects, or reduced duration of such effects. Damage could use a buff too.- Deliverance and Novalith superweapons - auto function needs improvement. Deliverance engine auto attacks empty enemy systems. In addition, an easy way to access all available deliverance engines/novalith would be useful, where indicating the target planet would fire one / x superweapons, or ctrl click to fire all.- Ships bumping into each other when warping out of a system - This seems like a bit of an oversight, there should be better auto-coordination in fleets to allow ships to align and warp seamlessly.- TEC enclave garrison forces should behave smarter, they should group jump initially before streaming in to defend neighbouring systems. They should also group together whilst in their own system, near to starbase/structures.
Thank you for taking the time to compile this feedback, I'll read through and pass it along to the team. I was wondering if you had any particular systems you envisioned. As mentioned above there are ways to produce increase exotic production via refineries, and has proven valuable from testing. I do agree that there are areas that could be more consistent or better communicated down the line
I was thinking a bit about the exotic production.
If Trade-like system was introduced, you could also have both a queue of exotics to produce, with refineries each jumping around, all to produce the queued up ones, but also have that endless 8 on the side.
So, say you set 2 refineries to produce gray and red exos consistently, these you lock into constant production/upkeep, while,say you have 3 other refineries that produce what is the current queue. Meaning, you have both a queue that is serviced by 'free' refineries, as well as constant production that is outside the queue. If say red and gray are in the queue, the Free refineries to help the constant production until their queue is done.
Something that would produce consistently without having to queue manually would imo be preferable.
...
Upkeep this, upkeep that, sort of topic, perhaps a bit off-the topic.
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I wonder what kind of gameplay would it be with SupCom:FA style of managing of income vs production upkeep. A unit doesnt just cost 225, but say 10 seconds of 22,5 of resource XY. Faster production ? More expensive continuous production. What would the gameplay be like. Better/worse ?I wonder.
I can think of a few hypotheticalh fixes,
- For ships bumping into each other at warp, a predictive path for each shit could be assigned, so that friendly ship collisions reduce.
An easier alternative could be for friendly ships not to clip with each other, but this might be controversial.
- Deliverance engines in auto should: at a minimum, shoot at planets with enemies present, including it's own planet.
Novalith should auto onto planets without known planetary shields
- For deliverance engine manual control, life would be easier if you could select them from any level of zoom. Perhaps a "superweapon" icon appears with the number of deliverance engines/novalith under your control. When selected, it selects all existing superweapons. But the key here is that when a planet is targeted with a superweapon, the ones within range of the target will fire, once per click, eliminating the need to cycle through to find the superweapons within range.
- strike craft should follow existing queued orders, even if squad is wiped out and a new squad is spawned in. Other than forced aggro skills that strike craft may be vulnerable to, they should follow orders without wildly breaking into hitting multiple targets.
- "ships in system display" on the right: you could have a scrollable window that toggles to hide friendly ships, and another (scrollable) window below that lists enemy ships. These windows would be in fixed positions so no amount of reinforcement / exploding ships will juggle the positions around so much, all whilst providing clearer info in the chaos of a large battle.
- exotics have a whole interdependent system of research, structures, logistic slots balance, exotics types, racial advantages, quarnium associated with them. In order to build things/progress optimally during a game, player is required to micromanage exotics, sometimes to best prepare and save time before using them. This is a frustrating minigame inside of a great game. I actually find sins crazy addictive, and just started MP after clearing majority of your maps with full impossible AIs, but I imagine this mechanic alone could discourage the game from being more popular. But I don't know anything, just my opinion.
If you don't want to change it too much, you could make it so the refineries can be set to "autoproduce" up to certain levels of exotics. In addition, the UI displaying exotics in queue could probably benefit from being a "visual table" outright, where players can see the exotic and the reason it is being manufactured (if any) in the form of an icon as well as a progress bar. Shrink the 5 exotic icons while you're at it so we can see more of what is in queue
If you want to keep it but change it significantly exotic refineries could be set to toggle on/off the automatic production of a fourth resource. Existing mechanics with your current exotic system can be balanced around this.
A complete overhaul would be an entire discussion in itself..
- Auto-placement of structures could be a "point" you could set after picking a planet. Structures would group together there. In particular, healing defensive structures should be near starbases when auto-placed.
- As for the Planets UI, just display logistic slots x/y and defensive slots w/z. It eliminates the need to check each planet by going to the planet and selecting "build orbital"
Regarding unit balance, this stuff is far more subjective, but;
- Starbases could explore having more range, health, mobility like the orkulus (after all they are in space, and practically speaking probably do have a need for thrusters in orbit) immunity / resistance to disable effects (duration of debuff effect resist), and more damage / weapons. I'd probably suggest mobility, range, health, and maybe 1 additional set of weapons unique from existing ones. Maybe some PD ? (Can't recall of they had any).
- TEC enclave (I don't actually play this faction much) garrison ships should patrol their systems in groups, and jump to assist other systems in groups initially too. This is to increase their efficacy rather than trickling in to systems, and just feeding exp. There could also be another "superweapon" type icon like the one suggested above that shows up once you have garrisons, that let's you set their global settings from defensive roam / offensive roam / hold. Settings for individual systems is fine as it is.
- Advent are slow. Speed is pretty OP. Part of advent being slow causes them to almost be forced to go carriers. Kols are also heavily OP, and move fast with primacy's planetary item and culture (+ range aura) compared to radiance, at least in my experience.
- Advent culture effects could use minor buffs
- Advent resurrection and conversion mechanics are good, if not gimmicky unless against AI. Deliverance engines and resurrection do nothing for capital ships if i am not wrong. Perhaps add some minor effects on capitals, like minor regen healing friendly slightly (resurrection effect) or minor slowing of enemy attack speeds / speeds (deliverance engine effect on enemy capitals)
Excuse the typos, on mobile again.
Just want to add, deliverance engines probably shouldn't shoot at single ships on auto, and probably prioritize the largest groups of enemy ships in range.
Starbases getting turned off wasnt a thing in SoaSE:R Vasari had that Kostura thing that turned defenses off, but afaik Starbases were exempt from being turned off. I personally think that makes defenses useless to the extreme if they are present. Novalith turns all turrets, bases off for a minute. No repairs, nothing. I think this is a cheap planet sniping mechanic, quite exploitative. Advent superweapon on the other hand discourages non-capship use. Capship ability that turns starbases off too ? That is a bit much.
In old game it was useless once planet shields went up. As far as Im concerned, Sup Weapons provided nothing of value or fun and I turned them off, always. With current redesign, you simply cant throw them away, because not everybody gets them.
I dont really think unit balance is subjective at all, because if the maths are clear enough, you can calculate outcomes and cost-effectiveness, supply-effectiveness of each unit. Yes, there are level-ups, unit upgrades, items on capships, these are variables.
if one side is weaker, then it should be more able to replenish the losses, attrition war style.
You are right, subjective is the wrong word. More like complex.
I do think player feedback on balance solutions (although well intended or even well thought out) could be a little subjective though, although players are always good at identifying the problems.
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