FreeOrion

So the plan for v.3.17 is mostly bugfixing?

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You mean after v0.3.17 / what is needed for v0.4 ?

There are a few features I want to have added, including:
* Ship repair at shipyards / in supply range
* GenerateSitRepMessage effect extension to control the message recipients (single empire, allies of empire, enemies of empire, all empires)
* Techs / other content for planet troops (presently natives have them, but player planets can't, I think...)
* Text files for starting buildings (currently hard-coded) and ship designs for empires (not all predefined ship designs should be given to players)
* Enabling conditions to control special generation during universe generation. This may involve reordering universe generation to add specials after natives / player empires so that special location conditions can check for distance to those.

Optimization of the WithinStarlaneJumps condition is already committed. Further similar changes may be forthcoming.

Drastic simplification of the tech tree would be nice.

Regarding the Tech tree we could maybe have some type of AI suggest what tech would be the most advisable based off certain conditions/decisions of gameplay? It would help for newer players and simplify some of the decisions maybe. Like the player selects a tactice at the beginning maybe on a slider or something and the tech adviser makes small adjustments.

I think the lack of sitrep reporting for starving planets is currently the most annoying imperfection.

This project is trying to avoid what MoO3 did a lot: Make parts of the game very complicated, and then let you turn it over to an AI to play for you. So i think it is more expedient to simplify and clarify the tree, rather than try to make an AI tech-helper.

If we had an AI that could choose techs wisely for the AI empires, that might be a good time to consider making some of that available to the players.

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Personally, I like the tree the way it is because you can queue up multiple techs to be done in succession, and with good colony management can mow through the tech tree pretty quickly.

my $.02

+1 for the starving colonies notification

Also, I don't know how resource-sharing is currently implemented (particularly food), but instead of or in addition to "available for export," an "exporting" figure would be nice, if its easily coded. Either that, or an "available for import/ importing" so that a player knows before switching focuses if the resources are available to, for example, stop food production on a given colony.

Seconded the above.

This value is not defined. For example, if there are two systems, each producing 10 extra food per turn, and one system connected to both that is importing 15 food per turn, how much are the two exporting systems actually exporting? 7.5 each? One 10 and the other 5?

One could say that the stockpile imports all available extra food, so any system that can will send all its surplus to the stockpile and thus be exporting whatever it doesn't use locally, but that doesn't help in systems not connected to the stockpile, and it doesn't make an exporting number useful to decide how much is "needed".

What could be done is have surplus or shortfall summaries for whole resource sharing groups, for each resource. The amount of PP (or minerals and industry) available / wasted in each resource sharing group of connected systems would also be useful to show on the production screen, for example.

As well as information about I food I would like to see information about construction.

If I have a colony that is not attached to my empire through supply routes I'm not sure if it supplies food, minerals, construction or reseach to the empire. If I hold my mouse over the icons at the top of the screen a list of planets supply construction to the stockpile would be nice.

The starvation seems to be instantaneous. You can loose a planet with 25 population in one turn. (Surely they could at least eat each other for one turn?)

it should supply research and trade when that's implemented, but nothing else.

Since your empire can be hundreds of planets that list could easily get pretty silly.

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I am starting to have trouble finding buildings and remembering what I have built. The galactic map shows shipyards, but not other types of building. One time I captured one of two AI planets in a system. The AI was left with a planet with a shipyard, my new planet didn't have one. On the galactic map the system was in my colour, underlined. The AI planet was off the bottom of the sidebar, it took me a while to work out why I couldn't build ships!

The same with fleets. I sometimes search quite a while to find a scout fleet - just to find that it has been destroyed. The sitrep tells you when ships are destroyed, but when fleets arrive at places. I rename my fleets, but not my ships. Could we have a list of fleets somewhere, with locations?

Buildings with a universal effect, such as Industrial Farms should not be built at a planet. They should be somewhere else, so I can easily see that I have them and so that they cannot be destroyed or captured.

Solar Orbital Generation seems to break the rule of not having build everywhere buildings. It is a building which affects just one star system, which I would like to build everywhere. It should probably be placed on the star icon, not a planet icon, since it also shouldn't be destroyed or captured by taking one planet in a system.

Finally - I cannot see the arms in a 3 or 4 arm spiral. I have tried galaxies with 100 or less stars - do I need more?

Otherwise, v.3.17 is a great improvement over v.3.16

Likely yes; with only 100 stars, there's not enough to have 4 well-separated arms.

We should probably list the location of buildings in the 'Pedia like most other things.


Already provided. Fleets are listed in the 'Pedia.

And what about your enemies buildings? You want them impregnably located in abstraction? Specific locations for special buildings give systems unique strategic value.

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I think it presently only shows your own empire's fleets... I'm not sure why that's the case, though.

Not all buildings. It just seems that something like Industrial Farms shouldn't be destroyed by taking a single planet, since it represents farms on all industrial worlds. Thinking about it more I think Industrial Farms shouldn't be a building at all - like Orbital Farms and Autofactories.

I built a new Imperial Palace today and kept my old one, so I now have two. When I look myself up on the Pedia my capital is listed as the original one. I carried on a few turns, but no change. My original capital has a supply of 3.00 from the Imperial Palace, my new Palace gives supply of 3.00, with a Space Elevator giving 0 at that location. The palace description claims a +1 bonus.

As far as I can tell the only ways to increase supply are Palace and Elevator. Places other than the Palace should provide supply. Maybe an upgrade for Ship Yard. Or a focus for an outpost or colony. I think building ships should be a focus, since they are a major part of the game and I would think that a single colony empire would need to make a huge effort to build the first colony ship. (With Cultural Archives it would be possible.)

As another thing I'd like to see changed for v.3.18 ... When I check my planets I get the benefits and penalties from focus reported as my species name, not the focus name. This is quite strange for Heavy Mining, Where my population could be:
Human +20.0
Human -10.0
Federation Tech Subterranean Construction +12.0
Federation Tech Transdimensional Housing +4.00
I think that later on when species have bonus/penalties this should be marked by species name (maybe followed by the ability/penalty name - like technologies). The Focus bonuses and penalties should be labeled as such.
Also population and health should show enivironmental modifers (such as Hostile/Good), so it is obvious which planets could benefit from terraforming, when I have lots of different species. Mining should be affected by planet size and this should be listed.

IIRC, the techs Orbital Construction and Galactic Infrastructure will increase resource supply on all planets. Unless you're only talking about buildings, in which case I believe the Megalith also increases resource supply.

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