Time to ressurect my old UI thread. Basicly it sums up almost all the annoyances I have with current DA UI.

UI improvement ideas

The most critical UI improvement I would like to see is the following:

- Same class buildings should always be at the same spot in planetary building list. Current system with changing building names create confusion since the building list changes all the time.

Each class building should be color coded, example. Factories could always be surrounded with blue color and so on?

Terror Stars - How do you build them? The tech tree line for them is long research but no where is there an indication of how you build them once the research is complete. I've looked everywhere, still havent worked it out, a couple of words indicating how in the Tech tree explanations would save much frustration.

Regards
Zy

I'd wish there was a way to set up patrol routes via waypoints, i really want recon vessel looking at my borders to see if a enemy is mounting up for a war. Micromanaging 3 or 5 different patrol vessels just to keep my military in proper readiness is quite annoying..

when the drengin leave the up they should get a major increase in inteligence for understanding that is where they get their ass kicked for using slave pits   

more seriously the ai should consider leaving the up as an option, especially the drengin that get near to no voting power

Terror stars aren't enabled in TA yet.

I'm hoping (and suggesting ) more modules with unique effects get added. In particular some like these:

- A module to increase the range of ships in a fleet.
- A module that increases the repair rate of ships in a fleet.
- Modules that decrease the enemy's fleet's attack/defense.
- A module that increases the ship's speed when in your sphere of influence.
- Modules that affect planetary invasions in someway if the ship it is installed on is in a fleet with the transport(s) (say, something like acting as extra "troops" in the invasion or increasing your soldiering bonus for that invasion)
- A cloaking module

I highly agree with both of these.

Also, how about an "Automate" button for survey ships on the main UI like Miners get? And maybe an "Auto-Explore" button for other ships that aren't constructors, miners, or survey ships?

I was going to make a long post, but then I realized I’d be going over what the community and the devs probably already know, so I’ll keep it short...er.

- Rebalance Ethical Alignments

Evil is too powerful, good is too weak, here's a few ideas how to balance it.

- Change good's loyalty bonus into an influence bonus. (by a value deemed appropriate)

- Add 1 or 2 defense points to Good's defensive techs to bring them more inline with Evil's weapon techs.

- Alter how the Hall of Empathy works, and perhaps surrendering mechanics in general. I really don't have any clue how the game decides when to surrender and to which race, but the Hall of Empathy really doesn't seem to "double" (whatever that really means) the chances of surrendering to you. This wonder is potentially Good's greatest perk, but I never notice it working, while in comparison, I certainly notice Evil's Mind Control Center working.

- Allow planet flipping to occur after a Mind Control Center has been built, arguable this could be considered a good thing, but with the penalty to drengin influence, I think it should be done.

- Change the economic bonus on the Mind Control Center to 75%, or even 50%.

You already receive multiple colonization/event penalties for choosing Good, so I see no reason why Good should be so inferior to Evil and Neutral. Sure perfect balance isn't required without multiplayer, but I would say making the choice between Good, Neutral, and Evil a difficult one, would be a major improvement to the game.

Also the above changes are just ideas, the general idea is buff good, nerf evil, but one could always give good a major buff, and neutral a slight buff.

Well, why do the Drengin have access to Market Centers and Black Markets, Entertainment Networks and Arenas?

Actually, just making the mind control center work like it SHOULD be would be a good step in that direction. Currently, it gives an absurd boost to your economy and disallows you from making influence flips, which isn't what it was meant to do.

I noticed there are a lot of light colored areas on the new surface maps. This makes it hard to see which tile is selected at times with the kind of transparent white glow depicting the selected tile. Maybe change the indicator to a solid white or more middle ground color would help.

I am colorblind so this may be a bigger issue for me than others.

I've been enjoying the expansion TA but think it could be improved. On a first pass, I felt like I was playing DA. This might just be superficial though.

More specific suggestions:

- On diplomacy screen, there should be some method to mouse over or right click a technology to see what its affects are. This is somewhat crucial with unique tech trees for each race being traded.

- The ability to select multiple spies at once to be removed from a planet. It is somewhat painful to take out one by one when there are 12+ occupying one planet.

- More anomaly types (there is plenty of space phenomena to choose from) and more interesting results from anomalies which could include choices having an impact on ones ethical alignment.

Please change the spy system!
The current system is garbage, the old way was a great deal better. Change it to how it was and add a counter esp system to keep people from constantly keeping those spy networks on you.
Randomly stealing your enemies ships, collecting data, troop movements, inciting rebellions, stealing funds are all things your spending should do and more.
countering these effects from outside influences should be what the counter espionage slider do. as well as give you a heads up on who did what, how accurate that information is and what you can do about.
Update: Race A has been caught spying on us however we arn't sure if its really them. we have leads that it may be X or Y behind this and framing them because they are our Allies. no indications on if B C or D had anything to do with this.
keep the spy system simple.

There is actually. Try right clicking on a tech name.



Completely disagree. DA and DL's espionage systems are both excellent systems for what they do best. DA's Agents are great for sabotage, while DL's Sliders were better for information gathering. I always believed that the DA Agents should have been added on top of the DL Sliders and they are somewhat doing just that.

The 2.0 Patch is planned to have a change where you can assign Agents to a Civilization rather than a planetary improvement, where they can't be nullified but only gather information. As for counter-espionage? Well, if you can't create agents fast enough to nullify agents, build counter-espionage centers. That's what they are there for and they are half-decent morale buildings to boot.

I wish that espionage were useful against minors. Some of the "minors" due to mega-events end up being more powerful than most "major" civs. Using agents against a minor civ with three times the player's population and production isn't "wasting" them.

I agree, I think Minors can be just as powerful as the Majors if given the chance. I also reckon that after a certain point they should also try to make a break for the stars themselves rather than just sitting there waiting to be destroyed by everyone.

I also agree with thehandofzarquon and how to fix the espionage system. That would work immensely well and would allow for both information and sabotage (information comes thorugh too slow at the moment)

I don't knwo if this has been mentioned already, but the trim in the diplomacy screen needs changing. At the moment it stays at the light bluey-white that dominates the main interface, and should be changed to the other races colour like in DL and DA.

With Tech trading I think The different races should not want to give up their unique technologies without a price. For instance I had no problem trading for slave pits or navigation centers. The only reason I would give them up is for a hefty price or your unique techs and at an advantage to me. Another reason I could see trading away my unique techs is I'm at war and need ships. I would like to see computer players not willing to give away thier unique techs so easily.

It's always baffled me as to how you can't spy on minors. Being able to see their planetary improvements is important, and it's an arbitrary distinction that does nothing but take away the player's freedom.

My few cents:
Don't rearrange tech tree on trading/stealing
For starbase construction, automatically jump the focus to the last module type you built on the starbase - Making an Economy starbase with factories on it easier and faster to build.
Make more balanced super abilities - Abilities like Super Annihilator (Spore ships = <3), Super Warrior (If you can destroy enemy ships in one turn, you don't need armor, and if you don't need armor you have more available firepower), so on, are incredibly good. Others aren't quite so good.
Add something, maybe in the scenario options, for turning on/off events. I personally would turn off stuff like the Jagged Knife event, but leave stuff like the Pirates.
More fleet bonus modules.
Auto-Repair modules for battleships, so that you can build a self-sufficient fleet of battleships.
Perhaps a 'Starbase Navigation' tech tree with long research times which increase the 4 starbase per sector limit.

thoughts on race specific tech tree:

drengin has some 24 racial techs, arcaean 12, terran 10 - so as you'd expect the drengin feel more different (and feel a little over-powered? tech victory comes to easy for them?). the arcaean lack of engine tech is interesting, and other races should have this kind of impediment/racial characteristic (eg drengin could ignore all forms of government outside of imperial - who wants democracy in a slave economy?). as mentioned by others, don't think races should have access to more than one building for the same job eg drengin should not have black market and advanced market and should replace advanced market if conquered. cultural imperialism at its best.

feel that the generic descriptions are counterproductive to the racial diffentiation, so suggestion is: toggle in new/existing racial descriptions for tech eg Stinger III (terran) = Kiklat-Ti Missile (drengin) or Impulse Drive Mark III = It'In Fusion (Impulse) Core Level 30 (drengin) etc

hope this makes sense

evil

About Minor Races:

All other things aside, I was thinking that there should be a way (either by an event or by them making some achievement) for a Minor Race to be promoted to a Major Race, assuming there are <10 major races currently (counting player).

I think this would really mix things up, to have a race that has been minor so far suddenly become an actual power to be dealt with.

Also, I think the Dread Lords and Jagged Knife should be Major Races, not minor, and those events should only happen when there are <10 major races. Actually, to really mix things up, I would prefer it if those events didn't happen until at least one major race has been knocked out of the game (possibly do this for promoting minor races, too).

I think Minor race becomes major race would be a damn awesome twist, and some of those minor races are damn powerful. Perhaps a 'Pirate' race event, as well?
Edit: I mean, have a pirate homeworld where they can spawn ships and such.

I could have sworn that I had a couple things to tweak, but right now this is the only one I can think of:

- Make clicking in the text areas when saving a ship design work (pretty please?)

I end up designing and tweaking ships frequently enough that this is extremely annoying when you want to just add a version designator (e.g. My Ship, My Ship M2, etc.)

I'd like to see the race perk pick system be overhauled for internal consistency. There are things you can't pick with a custom race that some races have (miniaturization, more or fewer logistics points, the Torians [iirc] starting with one big world instead of a so-so world and a small world, etc.)

I should be able to arrive at the exact makeup of any preset race with a custom's race pick options, in my opinion. Also, no race should end up with more or fewer overall total pick points. It seems to me some races have much more going for them than others, such as the Yor compared to, say Torians, or the Krynn consulate compared to anyone.

Some of this may be doable by having a "reset" on a premade race also eliminate the benefits that hang on - like the Krynn's extra morale and defense.

Also, the ceiling for each benefit should be the same for any race - I shouldn't be able to get Krynn morale up to ungodly levels over any other race by resetting and adding the +morale benefit in the chart to the innate benefit that remains after a reset. All races should be able to achieve the same maximum advantage or disadvantage in any trait.

As it is now, custom races always will be underpowered. And I don't buy that a little extra flexibility makes up for far fewer overall pick points.

Also implement race penalties.

An expansion seems a good opportunity to do all this.

orriginally posted in game talk but eh.

After reading quite a few threads, and playing pretty much exclusively huge/gigantic galaxies, i would like to suggest that a look at how the ai desides what is a useful ratio of transport to regluar ships might be in order, as a way to increase difficulty, especially in regards to late-game (when most techs are researched by all civs that have survived the Mid-game wars)

As an example, in the current game im playing, the most powerful enemy (status with me, at war) currently has 100+ planets, 923 total ships.. but only 4 of these are transport vessels.(and if i counted right, only four or five planets acctually building transports) In a tiny/small/medium galaxy with a limeted supply of planets, this would be fine - 4ish transports should be able to take out a planet once defenders are gone, and obviously in those galaxies, one planet means ALOT more relitively speaking than in a gigantic galaxy.

This ratio is representative for just about every game ive gone through, the only exception being the Korath ai, who do to thier spore techs, seem to focus more on building invasion ships. Increasing the ratio of transport ships to normal attack ships would greatly increase the AI's ability to both increase its teritory and defend its teritory (by taking planets back) - meanwhile making the human player value the use of "defensive" fleets alot more.

Id also like to suggest that the dev's take a look at the way range mechanics work on the larger galaxies, restricting the "base" range. This would in essance force the AI to make better decisions simply by restricting thier over-all options.

Lastly, the AI itself is doing a great job of targeting mining starbases as high priorty targets, but contrawise does not defend it's own mining starbases at all, or rarely at best. given the huge overall benifit of some of the mining bases, this could use a tweak. (and please, consider allowing starbases to be parts of fleets - give the various types of starbases differant logistic points - or allow it as a modding option)

end 2bc,
thanks for the great game by the way.