The patch thread: what to patch? - Page 4

vmxa1 · March 17, 2003, 14:37

I saw that as well. I finally got all the tech research and ended the game around 510. The game would take 60-90 seconds after going to Ground Combat screen for the computer players. This is strange as they only had one system. I guess it was evaluating all of my planets.

Harry Seldon · March 17, 2003, 16:01

I just came by to post on tech; I see you beat me to the punch. I think I read that the beta testers didn't get anywhere near the end of the tech tree but I'm sitting at five hundred turns and I've got two techs left to research. Why don't we have the generic Economics I, etc., like we used to? Also, I understand the random tech philosophy but I'm missing stretches of ten levels of tech. Would it kill ya to let us magically discover some of this old tech?

vmxa1 · March 17, 2003, 18:28

I am guessing that they figured no could stand to play much longer on one game. I was doing I-kools so no tech trades and had to learn it on my own. You could never steal all the missing stuff either.
Long gaps in most lines of research and I have no way of finding out what I am missing and if I wanted it.
At least we should have a full tech tree some place with a discription.

Flinx · March 18, 2003, 00:17

Just how many upgraded and retrofitted WWII fighter-bombers, navy ships and battle tanks are being used against Iraq this week? Personally I don't have a problem with not being able to use them in my battles against the Darlok Guardian either. Yes I can build ships that go twice as fast and do oh so much more damage, and I am, but in the mean time I send the old stuff up against an easy target. If I still have them around when they are completely useless I just send them off to the junkyard where the obnoxious Humans from Hollywood use them to make horrible so-called entertainment.

On the subject of what needs to be fixed in the game:

1) What am I doing to get the Eoladi so pissed off at me? We were the best of friends, had a non-aggression pact, open trade, had exchanged some tech, and then suddenly one turn “Stop that or else” and the next “War!” I have not been near one of their stars for over 150 turns, and they have not been near mine either, so why is a cease-fire out of the question. And what did I do in the first place?

2) The Trilarian’s apparently sent a colony ship to the same planet as I did. I obviously got there first because the planet is mine, but the Trilarian colony task force has been hanging around trying to colonize Asellus V for 20 turns. Now I have an alliance with the Trilarians so I don’t care much, but I think the flip of this situation nearly cost me the alliance. Out of the blue the Trilarians tell me “stop that or else” and just happen to notice that one of my colony ships is trying to colonize a world they got a full colony on first. So I give my colony orders to get out of there fast, and the Trilarians and I are back to trading tech every 3 turns or so and otherwise blissfully ignoring each other.

3) The send colony option is clearly implemented as a ‘stack’ rather that a ‘queue’ i.e. the planet most recently issued a “send colony” order gets the next colony ship rather than the planet waiting the longest for a colony. Actually that can’t be true, because some planets get sent more than one colony ship over several turns and I get messages in the SitRep the Evon (me) have already colonized that world. So why didn’t I get a message that the Trilarians had colonized the planet in the situation above or they get the message that I had?

4) If you have 5 colony ships and only one planet flagged with a “send colony” order, all 5 ships get sent there even if it is a “sweet spot” planet.

5) The save game problem.

6) The troop ship problem

7) The no reason given for unrest problem. How am I supposed to fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong?

8) I’ve never played MoO or MoO2, and given the learning cliff (there is no curve its straight up! but I like using my brain so that’s ok) I don’t have a problem with the AI not attacking me on “easy”, but I would have a problem if that were the case on the more difficult levels.

Elron · March 18, 2003, 05:51

The watch mode in spacecombat needs an escape button. For example if you acedently atack a colony ship with a scout. And also when like they atack your planet with missilbase with only transports.

Shnozwangler · March 18, 2003, 12:18

In addition to the well stated patch recomendations, I would like to restate an important one and pose one or two.

But before I get into the nity-gritty, I would like to say that despite the short-commings of the game, it does have some great qualities and with a well executed patch could easily rise to the glorry of the MoO franchies!!

1.. Ship refit/upgrade... ok I know that one can "get by without it", but the need for this is just too obvious. This feature was in the original spec for the game but was dropped at the last minute cuz the hurdle was too large for the time available. Now that the devos have a bit more time this MUST be addressed.

QS went out of their way to develop a system that does not require micro management if the player desires it - but the need to CONSTANTLY spend much time in the fleet screens, building and scrapping ships as they go through their life cycle is a huge pain in the a**!!! Especially as the game gets on and there are tens to hundreds of ships in circulation.

In my first few games, I had the concept that a ships life was finite, but got caught sending poorly out of date ships into battle as the number of fleets multiplies. I had ended up with old ships guarding a strategic system in all the shuffle of fleets. Ok... my bone head for nto micro managing my fleets. Now I spend too much time reviewing ships and fleets, sometimes to the point of loosing the focus of the strategic game flow.

It would be sooooo much easire if I could send a fleet into port to refit and upgrade - this way I could have a handfull of main fleets that I could come to know and love instead of a constant revolution of fleets who's name is just another number... In fact, the game story line continually refs to the Antarian fleets going in for repair and upgrades... why can I do this?! Where is my White Fleet.

And dont even get me started on system ships.. out of sight out of mind, once build they sit and fester.

So, not to be that guy that only criticizes and offers no solution... A possible simple way to accomodate upgrades is to have the player define the upgrade stream from one ship to the next as a ship class is commisioned and/or as one is marked obsolete. This cold naturally be restricted to things like hull size, classification. In this senario, one could sent a fleet to port and chooes Upgrade Ships from the Military Queue (which woud always be there) - this would lead to a simple table screen that shows the ships in-system and once clicked would state the user defined upgrade available and the cost/time required to do so - you would not even need to decommision the fleet, just address the individual ships.
I would even be happy paying almost full ship manufacturing cost just to be able to do this - as I hate the revolving door of ships and fleets so much.

2.. System combat enhanced info... When going into the combat resolution screens, it wold be nice to have more info that just the number of ships each side has... When you have numerous systems and fleets it is difficult to keep in mind exaclty what fleets are where. So, perhaps 1. a button that allows one to pop out and see what system is being referenced (what fleets are near by, both yours and theirs), this both tactical and strategic info would be usefull in knowing what avenue of combat to take. 2. a button or enhanced screen that allows one to see the nature of the ships that are facing each other... a Carrier fleet, or a troop ship fleet?... Very important info nes-pas?!

Well, lest hope these request and the others are not too much to ask for..

Harry Seldon · March 18, 2003, 13:04

Shoot, I'd settle for them getting the numbers of ships right. There's nothing more exciting than entering a combat sequence against what appeared to be Zero ships only to find out it's actually twenty-five.

And yes, I'm using scouts.

Flinx · March 18, 2003, 14:20

Quote:

Originally posted by far too many people to mention!!!
Ship refit/upgrade... ok I know that one can "get by without it", but ....

.....

... I would even be happy paying almost full ship manufacturing cost just to be able to do this - as I hate the revolving door of ships and fleets so much.

I just do not get this!

I name my ships 'BattleshipL5' or 'TitanM9' or something similar: Ship size, mission type, and warp speed. The weaponry is the best that was available when I first got that warp speed.

So now I want to upgrade my 'BattleshipL5' to a 'BattleshipL6' and I am willing to pay the full price of a new 'BattleshipL6' and wait the length of time it would take to build a new 'BattleshipL6' but there is no 'Upgrade' button in the military queue, oh no the world is going to end. Get a life!

Add 'BattleshipL6 x5' to the queue and when they pop out the other end all shiny and new, create your 'White Fleet' and trash the old one. Better yet send the old one along with the new so it can get trashed by the enemy for you and you don't have to open the fleet screen which you hate doing so much.

Some of you talk about how much you hate micromanaging your ships, but clearly that is a result of your own choice! This is a strategy game. If you redesign your ships every time you get a weapon upgrade, that's all you would ever be doing. Stick with what you've got for a while, and use a few more ships when the effectiveness is starting to drop off. But this is not a problem because you knew this was going to happen and you planned for it. You have new ships which are 10 or 20 microsteps better (i.e. state of the art) rolling out of your shipyards and ready to go into action. Some of the people posting here seem to just want to smash things up with the best that is available, but don’t want to actually think about how to achieve that goal.

habadacus · March 18, 2003, 21:53

Quote:

Originally posted by Flinx
Just how many upgraded and retrofitted WWII fighter-bombers, navy ships and battle tanks are being used against Iraq this week? Personally I don't have a problem with not being able to use them in my battles against the Darlok Guardian either. Yes I can build ships that go twice as fast and do oh so much more damage, and I am, but in the mean time I send the old stuff up against an easy target. If I still have them around when they are completely useless I just send them off to the junkyard where the obnoxious Humans from Hollywood use them to make horrible so-called entertainment.

LOL, and how many F/A18 Hornets, Aegis Cruisers, and Abrahms Tanks are going to bombard a planet in another solar system, Flinx? What a silly argument.

We're not talking about fighters or tanks or even navy ships, which are covered extensively in other games. Were talking about battle-ready starships here. A tank weighs what?, 40 tons? No big deal to scrap it and start over. How much do you suppose a Battle Cruiser in MOO3 would weigh in earth gravity? Do you suppose that a ship of that scale would be designed to be sent to die because it couldn't ever be improved? Designed with no consideration of "The Future". Designed to never be able to use any of the 18 million techs in the game, except the ones they left stardock with? Do you suppose this empire-wide doctrine of retirement by explosive decompression might discourage enlistment in your galactic navy a little bit?

Using your (MOO3's) concept of Fleet Management, the United States would have used the atomic bomb on Japan a full year after they discovered it, because they would have had to build a whole new plane from the ground up just to drop it! Silly. Silly, and worst of all when talking about a game, NOT FUN. Stuff like Star Trek could have never happened, because Captain Kirk would have been sent to be a meat shield against the Klingons as soon as his ship got old. But as I recall the Ol' Enterprise has been around the galactic block a few times and can still throw down with the best of them. Why? BECAUSE ITS COOLER THAT WAY. Who gives a ratzass if it's realistic? Sending waves of faceless ships to die needlessly because they're too much trouble to scrap illustrates a game world that's about as much fun as a fart in a spacesuit. How I am supposed to be immersed in such a dry and emotionless game, if my ships, the very instruments of my galactic will and might, lack all personality and are just pawns on a very cluttered chess board? Ugh. Out of the box, this game won't even let me name them right.

I'm very proud of those who figured out a system they like for ship nomenclature. But I still feel that any TBS game design that railroads you into feeling like your veteran fleets are worth more to you dead, is not quite grasping what makes a 4X space game , and in fact the entire Science Fiction genre so captivating and immersive. And on that note, back to Freelancer, which occupies the space on my harddrive formerly occupied by MOO3, and which is (perish the thought) FUN!

Aqa · March 19, 2003, 10:42

I read the thread trough, but I'm not sure, if this is already said.

I think I found out why the AI doesn't invade with ground troops if there's troops on the planet besides militia.

In bombardment phase in the combat scheduler, the amount of troops in friendly fleet seems to be 1, even if there's an army aboard the transport. But the amount of troops on the planet is acually the power (or whatever the number is in the ground combat where you have for example marine 3/45) of the army, not the number of units. But when there is no ground force present(only militia), the amount of troops is zero. So if the AI gets the same numbers, no wonder it doesn't commit a invasion, if the odds are 1 to 350 or something like that...

gunnerstahl · March 23, 2003, 02:38

I hope QSI makes the research alot slower than it is now, as part of the patch, almost as slow as how Colin the Grey's is but not quite that slow......

gunnerstahl · March 23, 2003, 02:42

Choice to not blockade or assault, just to sit there...

vmxa1 · March 23, 2003, 14:29

I guess I do not understand the cry about the speed of the research. It slows down quite a bit later in the game, why is it a problem?

Brazuca · March 30, 2003, 11:04

1-) Tactical ground combat with more unit options, i wanna to directly command my troops on the ground, nothing to great a map with all regions 10 minutes and every unit single represented.
2-) Real pirates to my systens ships fight
3-) More realistic missile combat, a IF armada hardly will be defeated by any other armada, lower the missile power could resolve this
4-) More realistic diplomacy, more options, ask votes at the senate, or war declaration more openly
5-) More spy options like mission choose
6-) More easy fleet and ground groups creation, put one by one is lot of tedious, i wanna to choose nunbers and groups, and put all at the same time, i dont wanna to change my mouse every two weeks
7-)Macromanegement options like Ctp2 i choose the planets and order the Mil ou Plan Quee and the same time.
8-) More agressive, conqueror AI, i wannt to fight every system hold they at my capitol and trow the back to the wormhole from were the came from.
9-)More resisetnce to Orbital Bases, single missiles or fighter waves kill they easily, they must be a fortress
10-) Directly AU give to the planets
11-) More resistence to ships and planets, the battle could take longer time
12-)Coordenate allied war efforts ask atacks or defenses ant tell the nunbers of turns that they stay or arrive at the target
13-) Possibility fo training leaders and they could level up, choose the specialized area
14-) If i can get a tactical ground combat i can choose the weapons, a primary and a secondary

For now this is the things that i want changed, some can changed at the patch, other wanna graphical changes, but the game will get lot of better.

Turk Man · April 2, 2003, 20:47

yes

beandip242 · April 12, 2003, 03:27

Amen, to all the above.
I ahve to sat that being able to upgrade ships is a HUGE fix that needs to be dealt with! Spy are fine, as they are even if they are kind of annoying. I like the size of the tech tree as it is, but some real descriptions NEED to be added big time!
And PLEASE fix the vicroys from Building troopships and support units all the damn time. That is a really big pain in my A**!!!!!!!!!
And here is a request I ahve not seen here. In MOO2 I could choose to invade, bombard, etc a planet. I find the lack of this control to be a downgrade, not an upgrade in this game. I only get to do orbital bombardments if the AI decides to grant me the permission to do so. Granted maybe if I controled comabt it would allow me to have this ability. But I find the fleet comabt cotrol to be just about useless to control. It is clunky as hell. And besides in MOO2 I could let the AI handle the comabt and still choose what do to the planet I'm attacking. This would be a huge plus for me.
And one other while I am at it. Being able to actually choose the make up of the Antaran Expedition would be a nice bonus. and also expand the info you get from the expeditions. Telling me it is outbound, inbound, at destination, etc. Is the bare minimuim of info. I would think this could be expanded to give it a fuller, richer effect. After all this supposed to be a civ changing process. i would think I could get more info after sending out dozens of ships. If I spent that much time and money
outfitting a research mission like this and all I herard back from the mission commander was "outbound" I would fire him at the least!
Being able to save custom races should have been in the factory release as far as I am concerned. Please put in a patch!!! I am tired of remaking the same race over and over!!!
Ok that is my wish list.............For now.

Beandip242

Sir Alkis · April 19, 2003, 09:08

I will focus only on the diplomatic AI here. As it is now the D AI understands only one thing. HATE

If they hate you they will be at war no matter what. If they don't hate you they let you take all their planets and keep offering deals. Just play a game with expert diplomacy and you will see what I mean.

To QS: Teach the D AI some other things. Like FEAR for instance. Or SURVIVAL. Or COMMON SENSE.

In demand box add demand "Stop spying" I had trade agreements and non agression pacts with some race with a funny name and they kept harassing me with their spies all the game.

Also, social spies are .... well what can I say, but just think a single spy bringing an Empire-wide unrest?? Not only it's annoying but it's also childish and rediculous.

Make defensive spies to actually work. As it is now it's unclear to say the least. I didn't notice an improvement using defensive spies. It seems that only the oppressometer does something (which you almost can't use if the enemy uses social spies).

etc
-

Kahn · May 15, 2003, 01:23

Just cure the DX error and I'll be happy!

BobD · May 16, 2003, 02:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Roney on the official Atari forum (patch info thread)

Because you just can't wait another day....

This was put as the header to the latest patch update. I believe we have all waited long enough.

chuckbert · November 1, 2003, 12:30

There are lots of problems in this game, but much has been said about fleets, guardians, ship design, horrible viceroys that only build troop ships, etc.

But I'm having some SERIOUS problems with diplomacy.

1) Allies ask you to declare war on someone, but they don't tell you who you're supposed to declare war to. Can we say what the ****? The only reasonable option is to say no. Ah, but if you say no, you get a penalty. So the only option? Make a BS counteroffer (it doesn't matter if it's good or bad). This leads me to my next complaint.
2)Counteroffers are NEVER accepted (which makes it easy to get out of any alliance obligations without penalty).
3)Most "exchange" or even demands you propose are NEVER accepted, even if they are VERY favorable. I'll exchange super-duper-mega-hyperdrive for pd lasers and they'll turn in down.
4)Yet it will be very easy to propose some kind of trade/science pact and get accepted, and it is quite easy to get an alliance out of somebody.
5)Voting in the orion senate is weird... If you vote you cannot change your mind, or there isn't a "are you sure?" message dialog. Granted, in real life you cannot retract a vote, but since this is a TURN BASED GAME, your vote theoretically hasn't been sent by diplomats yet. So shouldn't you be able to pull your senate diplomat to the side and say "I change my mind about condemning the klackons"?

While number five is a trivial complaint, the other four make the game almost unplayable and make me want to turn diplomacy OFF for ALL RACES.

Note: When I type in caps, it isn't because I'm yelling, it's because I don't know how to do italics in this forum

PS: I loved MOO2 to death... why couldn't they just have left parts of the game that WORKED (ie, ship design)?

Flinx · November 9, 2003, 23:53

1) Have you installed the 1.25 patch?
2) I have had counteroffers accepted. Also, or rather more importantly, a counteroffer is not "give me this instead of what you offered", but "give me this in addition to what you offered"
3)They have to like you a lot before you can exchange technology and at first it will need to be 3 of yours for 1 of theirs, but over time you can get that to switch around.
4) So?
5) --

PS: The only similarity between this game and MOO2 is the name.

Sedmire · February 9, 2004, 16:14

What I'd like to see:

- New interface colours/skins, possibly different sound schemes (For different races, maybe?)
- Re-Implementation of the races that are not playable, but are in the game (Gnolam, Darlok, etc. - yeah, right...)
- More "Special" picks for custom races
- Ability to save custom races/empires and possibly the settings with them (Such as development plans and system classes)
- Implementation of custom empire flags (I know you can do it right now, but as an in-game feature, it'd be nice to have)
- Options to change resolutions
- Star Map Font and Font size options, in conjunction with the ability to show star system names when zoomed out further
- More information on leaders - age, for example (And information regarding the life expectancy of their race)
- Ability to select your opponents' races (Possibly only on low difficulty levels)
- Ability to select your race portrait from the custom creation screen, rather than having to select a race first.
- Ability to lock values such as taxes, terraforming, and so on.

...mostly little annoyances, I haven't been too deep into the game yet, and I suck at the game anyways, so I wouldn't be able to provide input on balance issues or anything.

Sedmire · February 10, 2004, 00:57

Uh
Well, I just patched the game, and I guess the "saving development plans" was in it.

Keeblerdawg89 · April 19, 2004, 22:45

I'm seeing lots of great ideas!! One I saw in a previous post I think should be a MUST... "make a simple path to production queues" or "Use a colony summary screen so that you can "mass edit" production" and make it so that you have more than just 3 que slots... That just doesn't last very long on a well developed planet.

Spies are (in my opinion) quite annoying more often than worth-while in the installed and updated to version 1.2.5, so I was VERY happy to find a mod which basically turns them off... So, doing something good to make them, say, last a lot longer and do more would be one great step to making them usefull enough to try them again... And, I agree with this statement also by the same guy: "tone down spys... they can be a bit silly blowing up everything in sight until you get counter spys in place"

Here's any idea, partly in tune with all the modding I'm trying to figure out how to do... Why not add an interface to edit such things as the tech tree of your chosen race (even if it can only be used at the start/creation of your game) so you can experiment? I would personally love to be able to see the effects of some of the techs out there, but might not be able to research it myself or trade for it for whatever reason. It might even be fun to see what any particular game would be like if I played a race destined to learn ALL the techs without getting any help from any other race if I wanted to try something hard (seeing that the number of techs you have slows down over-all tech levelling because you have to research all of those in each level before going on to the next)...

On a line of the tech token, how about it when you're in a game at turn 256 or whatever and you begin research something that you KNOW will be useless... Couldn't there be a way to make your civilization abandon it either temporarily or permanently?? To me, researching a useless tech can be a supreme waste of researching time and money...

Also, (I've seen this idea before, and REALLY like it) could a decent modding interface be created?? I'm not talking about editting just the text files or being able to locate certain files to be swapped out for something someone else created, but to have a tutorial along with it to help you along with practically doing whatever you want (except changing the very basics of stuff like the game engine and other major programming)? I don't know about the rest of you, but being able to go so far as to replace all the races with Star Trek universe stuff or Babylon 5, or whatever tickles your fancy can make the game's replayability go way up!! Anyone every hear of Space Empires 4?? You can do that with them as well as a whole lot more!!

Also... I noticed one thing missing in MOO3... There were many of them in MOO2, but now they're ALL gone....... The monsters!!! Where are the space hydras, dragons, and such?? Did they decide this universe isn't fun anymore?? I liked having the challenge of running up against those things once in a while... Can they come back, too??

One last thing... As far as races go, what about being able to create (or recreate) a new race easily and maybe stick it into one of the vacant slots for one of the "types" of races you can choose from?

Odin · July 10, 2004, 18:27

1. Has anyone else noticed that on the habitability zone chart that "martian" and "jovian" are flip-floped?

2. the stars with Guardians should be marked

3. TOO MANY WEAPON TECHS!

4. Make the solar systems more realistic

5. The Ichthytosians should like Terra Aproxima planets, not Neptune clones.

6. Obsolete ships shoup be able to be upgraded.

7. An option to exterminate races you don't want in your empire (like the harvesters).

8. When an opponent thretens you they should say why.

9. You shouldn't have to wait until your population on a world with a magnate race reaches 1000 until the planet is considered colonized.

Flinx · July 12, 2004, 03:14

Moo3 is dead.

deathgiver · October 19, 2004, 17:09

is soemone still monitoring this thread ive just got the game and my cdrom wont read the play disk verry frustrating and i cant find a nocd crack anyone have any ideas for a whereabouts of one??????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????

Flinx · October 19, 2004, 17:46

Quote:

Originally posted by deathgiver
is soemone still monitoring this thread ive just got the game and my cdrom wont read the play disk verry frustrating and i cant find a BLEEP! anyone have any ideas for a whereabouts of one??????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????

Try the Atari Forums people are still active over there.