A Gamers Wish List

I like many of the things that the Modders are asking for. But I am not a modder, what does a gamer want before GSB development dies?

• New game modes
  [list]
  [*]Campaign (of course that is comming)
• Missions?
• Duel Downs (see upcoming post for details on how the game could automate the manual parts)
  [/:m]
  []New orders? (like “Kill Stragglers”, focus on ships who have “strayed” from the pack)[/:m]
  []Pilot/Gunner AI changes (same as the modders want)[/:m]
  []Gratuitous Stability[/:m]
  []Reworked some of the screen flow/interaction (I can provide a list)[/:m]
  []Non-modded scoring boards[/:m]
  []In game Mod switch - allows mod directories, to turn on and off mods by directories. So the game directories stay intact and “shadow” directories are accessed when running that mod. File structure like this: GSB\mod[mod name]\data[modded content][/:m]
  []Highlight the selected ship in the “Deploy” screen (the new text underneath them is great)[/:m]
  []Fix the hull disparity (19 frigates fireing 4 beam lasers a piece into a single cruiser should KILL it)[/:m]
  []Challenge sorting[/:m]
  []“I have beat this challange” indicator[/:m]
  []Duplicate challenge submit filter[/*:m][/list:u]

Anything else?

And what do you want most (pick three?)?

I could put up a wishlist of massive and terrifying scope. I don’t think it would serve much purpose other than getting ignored, though.

A shorter, balance oriented list:

1. A minimum range order. (AKA avoidance AI)
2. Revamp of the armor mechanics.
3. Some reason to take the large or alternate hulls (hull stat re-balancing)
4. Reexamination of fighter roles and abilities. We’re using antifighter lasers for bomber roles and rockets for defensive purposes, with torpedoes nowhere to be found.
5. Assuming 2-4 hasn’t done enough, a gratuitous nerfbat beating of Tribe hitpoints.

Just as in the Modders’ Wish List thread, accurate and non-stupid A.I. is my #1 desire. Impaired A.I. has a negative effect upon non-modded as well as modded GSB gaming. It doesn’t have to be brilliant. It just has to be non-stupid. I know that Jellicoe and Nelson aren’t going to be gracing my ships’ flag bridges anytime soon, but I want to grab the Benny Hill who’s presently intercepting my combat orders now and shove him right out the @#$%a airlock. Obedience to orders would also put the Fighter Torpedo back in the game as a viable choice instead of a laughable waste of time.

Randomized Battles
Nothing adds to a game’s replay value more than randomized missions. Sometimes I just want to hit “Instant Actions” and jump in with a random map, random opponent with a randomized deployment. (Or at least pseodo-random, with some known effective strategies being given additional weight when placing small groups of random ships.)

Color Switcher
I’d like to be able to just pick two or three colors and have the hues on my ships changed in a pattern that looks cool. No opening up a graphics editor. No playing with text files. And I’d like to have those colors uploaded with my challenges.

Better Challenge interface
It seems like there’s been a lot of talk about this lately, so I’m just repeating that here. It would be nice to be able to search through challenges, filter and sort challenges, and otherwise group (or subscribe to?) challenges in a way that helps us organize our events, tournaments, and groups of players.

Indefinite Honor
Honor is too definitive. You have X honor. That’s it. I think we should have a lot more honor controls and reports. We should know how much honor we got for each challenge, using which races, and even using which deployments, or which individual ships. We should be able to track ship honor, fleet honor, map honor, challenge honor, race honor, and total honor, and perhaps any combination thereof with a series of toggles.

Challenge Testing
Before I submit a challenge, I would like to test it in actual battle. I would like this testing screen to have a button (“Admit Defeat”?) that would take me back to the challenge editor to make changes to the challenge and test again. I would like to be able to test and tweak the challenge in this way before uploading it. And Ramcat’s right about the ship editor screen. The ship editor from the challenge deployment area should return to the challenge deployment area, not to the mission screen.

Total Statistics
The statistics show data to me only as percentages, which really doesn’t help me compare weapons of different types. If one weapon hits 20% of the time and another hits 50% of the time, which was more effective? To know this, I must know how many times each weapon was allowed to fire during the battle. If the one that hit 50% of the time only shot twice, obviously that’s not a useful comparison to a rapid firing weapon that hit 50% of the time. Percentages are nice, but I need some hard data to work with.

New game modes (updated)

See (for reference): http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5352

• Campaign (comming)
• Missions?
• Collection challenges (maybe a limit of 10?)
  [list][*]Fight each
• Fight all
  [/:m]
  []Automated SAC[/:m]
  []Automated DuelDown[/*:m][/list:u]

To keep things organised, and to make it easy for me to prioritise stuff, it would be a good idea to start a thread specifically about changes that are suggested to the existing ai orders. Such changes can cause gameplay and code nightmares so they need to be seriously analysed before I make changes

Brilliant:

One mission for each race. Everytime you load it, it generates a random fleet. You are asked pilot and credits limits (other constraints?). And you can save the enemy fleet to play it again (or later if you can’t beat it).

Generates random fleet on entry to “Delpoy” screen, after constraint dialog. You can fight and redeploy against the same fleet forever until you go back through the entry process.

You’ve Got Mail
The notifications and feedback through the internal message system is very uninformative. “XXX beat your challenge on Lucifer’s Nebula.” Great! Which challenge was that again? Do you have any idea how many challenges I have on Lucifer’s Nebula? Was it a public challenge or a retaliation challenge?

Rather than have three separate messages, “XXX attempted your challenge on Lucifer’s Nebula”, “XXX annihilated your forces on Lucifer’s Nebula”, “XXX has posted a retaliation challenge on Lucifer’s Nebula”… it would be much more informative and visually appealing to combine all this information in one message. “After 3 attempts, XXX has defeated your forces on Lucifer’s Nebula and posted a new retaliation challenge.”

Better yet, if we can have challenge names in the message: “After 3 attempts, XXX has defeated your forces on the ‘Federation Frigate Madness!!!’ challenge and posted a new retaliation challenge ‘Alliance Frigate Cleanup’.” When applicable, comments and ratings should be included in that same feedback message.

Does the “attempt” count for every time you go to the Deploy screen for a challenge, or every time you click the Fight button? Because sometimes I seem to have more victories than attempts, and I don’t understand that. I would rather show Victories and Defeats rather than Victories and Attempts.

Also, my old messages are still not getting deleted when I hit the delete button. I don’t think its just me.

How about a sort of tent, in wich you could invite other fellow players,
use god points to create your section of the map, then throw em together with others,
make alliances possible, filling the maps with challenges (in thes shape of planets to conquer)

I would think, that it’d be good to have a planet post, put a challenge option for it, and randomize
a selection of one players strategies to be put forward by that player.

Oke about the existing orders: if fighters are selected to do escort orders or say, protect orders,
it’s perhaps a nice idea to just be able to select multiple targets at once, right now,
the difference between a reallife pilot and a positech one, is that a real pilot understands the order: guard this group.
Now, we players have to use a trick, wich says, guard the ship behind that thip that caches damage, but the thing is,
we don’t allways use ship setups that use this stuff.

Another strategy setup nice thing, would be that players would want to do it as a football coach
you’d just put numbers / blocks on the field and tell the computer to allways make them full with remaining ships.
So you’d put up a center with blocknumbers 1,2, 3 and 4 for instance, and then you’d suround those with say:
5,6,7, etc. this way, your setup becomes more of a football or rugby strategy! you’d just put arrows next to the blocks
to other arrows and ad orders to em.
I don’t know if it is easy to work out and implement Clifsky, but I guess what I’m trying to deal with, is the
occasional ship that just runs away because it’s engines are to fast of it to stay in formation.
This way, you allso might combine the 'keep moving order, witht the formation order, I guess that would be perfect.
To perfect perhaps, I’ll leave this one up to you Cliffsky.

Ketejan Out-

Oke oke, so another idea would be: 3D!!!
Yes I lov homeworld 2 too,
yes I know some of my fellow players do too,
so…hell, why not have the next GSB (GSB-II) be in 3D?
With nice 3D ship deployments and 3D strategies?
And how about 3D maps?

Allso apliccable on gsb 1, draw places with say, yellow and green and stuff, make lines in wich to shoot
for different types of orders?

Another idea, a good one this time: if a fighter is set to guard duties, and it’s guarded ships blows up,
coun’t it go to the next ship that was allso set up with a guard duty?

And secondairy orders would do great too in this case, order one could be: guard ship A and order 2 could be, order ship B
or, go full kamikaze this time! order 3 eh there’s no order after the kamikaze option.

But the really great thing about the order turns, is that it’s combinable with certain predeterminable events such as ‘when this ship’s blown up’
and, ‘when this ship gets to that point of the map’
Perhaps the sheer amound of sophistication could express a new ranking.

Hey here’s a new idea: pitting players directly against one another, allowing them to build a fleet for 5 minutes (with an exit button for when both sides are finished early ofcource) and then allow them to set fight!
It’s a great way to allow for more contests!
Both sides could talk inside a chatbox to eachother while waching that battle, hell they could even have bets!
Interesting!
(it would maginify the playability for a lot of people) (I bet I win, I bet that guy wins etc…, it’s a boxing mach thing I think)

I want separate high scores for each of the campaign maps with each race.

My wish list is for an – Area of Effect Module – something that is effective for when every single opponent you face is using a brick formation. something low damage but wide area. ex – if it could do say 10 or 15 damage (low enough to not really be effective against single targets) but could hit up to 4 cruisers if they were close enough together would be cool. A similar effect to when a cruiser explodes.

Other wish is for more buffing the stats of cruisers that have only 5 or 6 weapons modules to off set their disadvantage as a limited support cruiser.

More race specific weapons please