Feedback/suggestions for game

Gratuitous Forum Suggestions
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Hi Cliff,

Thanks for developing this game :slight_smile: I’m really enjoying it! Keep up the good work!

I just wanted to relay my thoughts and suggestions in the hopes that you may consider implementing some of them in a future patch.

I remove all my suggestions that I found already discussed in the forums, but I apologize ahead of time if there are any already existing threads that I missed.

Some of these are pretty minor, and don’t impact gameplay at all. I just wrote down things as I came across them.

ONLINE AND CHALLENGE SECTIONS

  1. In the Online section of the menu, after putting in your username, it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that I needed to go to the Challenges section. I was expecting another window to open or something after it accepted my username. It might work better to combine the Online and Challenges sections into one menu button. When you click Challenges the first time it would confirm CD-Key and Username, then show the challenges list. Any subsequent clicks on Challenges would show the challenges, but there could be an button in this window to get back to the CD-Key and Username dialog if someone wanted to change it again for some reason.

SHIP DESIGN SUGGESTION

  1. A way to select text within text fields. I often use “Shift-Home”, “Shift-End”, and “Shift-” to select text, then “delete” to quickly remove sections. This isn’t really major, but I did notice it’s absence when creating ships and also in the Challenges window.

  2. I can cause a crash by doing the following:
    a) Choose a battle and go to the Deployment screen.
    b) Click on “Design a New Ship” button.
    c) Click the “Load” button, then click the X to delete a design
    e) Return to the deployment screen. The design is still listed as an available ship even though it was deleted.
    f) Click on “Design a New ship” again (or right click on the deleted ship and choose “Edit”)
    g) The game closes and I receive this error: “Ship Hull not found ->:…\src\SIM_ShipHull.cpp 491”

  3. The “Load” and “Save” dialogs do not seem to retain the Uppercase/Lowercase letters of the ship design name.

  4. A “New” dialog option, that would basically clear the Ship design name text field, and launch the choose hull dialog box.

  5. When choosing a hull, an option at the top to show only a particular race’s hulls. It could default to the current race you are using.

FLEET HQ SUGGESTION

  1. It would be nice if there was an option to allow sorting by module type (cruiser, frigate, fighter)

DURING BATTLE:

  1. Allow for further zoom out in bigger battles
  2. Press Escape, battle pauses and leave game dialog pops up. Press escape again, battle resumes, but leave game dialog remains.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION:

  1. “Simulator” button, where you could build both fleets. This can be done currently through the challenge interface, but this would be a lot easier if there was a button for it. In addition to being a simulator for testing various ships/modules vs others, this could work as a “Hotseat” multiplayer mode.
  2. In the missions screen, an option for a “Random scenario” where you create your fleet, but fight a random enemy race/fleet + random spatial effects. This would require you to build diversity into your fleet because you would never know exactly what you would be fighting.
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I’ve noticed #2 and #3 as well, and the “Random Scenarios” is exactly what I was first thinking when I came into this forum.

I think we’re on the same page (well, literally right now, but figuratively as well.) All these suggestions are seconded!

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As much as I find reading some of these “I’ll respond to your post point-by point” comments tricky to read, I am going to do one anyway. I won’t be including every point from the OP, just the ones I have comments on. The ones on which I have comments. (Grammar police ahoy!)

Seconded.

I could see these functions combined in a single button, though I would keep the Online window as is and add the Challenges button to it at the bottom, next to the Messages button. You could leave a Challenges button on the main menu too.

As a mild obsessive-compulsive, I have to admit this annoys the hell out of me. Though when I save a ship with a capitalized name, it does seem to remember that if I load the ship and then click Save again.

A lot of folks have mentioned this in other threads, and I have to agree that it would make things a bit simpler. It’s also been suggested that this sort of filtering could be applied to the Load screen so you can look at all your Empire designs, for example, without having to page through a few hundred Alliance ships.

Amen. Having unlocked about half the modules at this point, I have to dig through the whole list of what remains to see if there is anything useful left for, say, frigate armor modules. Looks like a lot until I realize that most of them are for fighters or cruisers.

Heck, I could stand for wider zoom on the smaller battles too, but I agree that it becomes much more marked on the Large maps when the ships on the Deployment screen are smaller than my littlest fingernail. It’s very easy to lose track of what’s going on in one sector of the battle because it’s on the other edge of the map from what you’re watching. And I know it shouldn’t make any difference since I can’t change things mid-combat, but I like watching enemy ships explode and I feel sad when I miss one. :wink:

Ye gods, a suggestion that addresses not one, but two player requests (simulation and hotseat modes). And a good one, too. Though I’ll leave it up to Cliffski to tell us whether tracking race for both sides becomes a complicated programming issue.

Speaking as someone who cringes whenever I read a thread response that says “Just spam [ship type]”, I have to say this would be a lot of fun. Though certain effects that block the deployment of specific ships might have to be excluded (the “no fighters” and “must have engines” effects come to mind). But I think it would be cool if you laid out your fleet, clicked “Fight”, and got a brief dialog that says, “By the way, your shield generators are going to be paperweights here. Good luck!”

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I think it’d be funny to leave those effects in, and just receive a message like: “Sorry, a passing gravitational flux has crumpled your tiny fighters like tinfoil. Best of luck!”

In addition to screenshots, how about a feature that lets you record your battles? Basically turning them into movies where every function but the deployment screen remains. It would make reading the feedback communications from you ships post-battle a lot of fun.

When you’re viewing someone’s high score, you might even be able to see how they did it. Huzzah!