Since the maker of the game sometimes logs on here(He's posted once or twice), I decided to post these here, and be a bit more serious with it than with my other suggestions for games like Eador. In this case, I'll suggest some things I think would be easier to code, and see what others think of them.

Now, first three are alterations to the menu/cheat menu. The easiest is the first, and then I'll move on to more complex.

1) Move the Age Cheat to the main menu.
There's a blank space on the settings menu, and this one is mentioned in the manual for the game, so I say, put it where it's more easily found. Personally, while I do understand the desire to put a turn limit on games like this, I hate the practice, as it interrupts my fun, and makes me have to think about what I'm doing(Like hauling larger ships to port with reduced crew). I say this is important just because now you don't have to mention a cheat menu at all, and it'll keep that hidden for a while longer.

Now, what to replace it with...well, my next two suggestions.

2) Add a cheat for Double Dodge, and another for Double To Hit
Basically, replace that toggle with two others, one that doubles your dodge rating, making you even harder to hit, and one that doubles your to hit, allowing you to snipe in long range even with normal guns. Yes, I know, the low to hit and high dodge ratings in the game are basically how you make combat winnable in multi ship fleet battles, or just overall with the whole shield only regens a bit between fights. Still, this is a cheat, so it needs to be overpowered. Not like there isn't one just to blow the crud out o the other guy.

3) Add a cheat for instant travel.
Again, pretty basic. It's another toggle, and it reduces all travel time to zero, so you can instantly move anywhere. This will mean you can get involved in wars more easily, and take systems quickly, before the other side can move much. You would have to do fights or just go in and out of planets to move the clock forward. It would also remove the need for the age cheat, since now you'd basically have infinite or near infinite turns anyway.


Okay, my next one is a double thing. One's a mechanic suggestion, the others a cheat version of the same.

4) AP Saver
Whenever you have AP left over at the end of a round, it rolls over into the next round of combat, up to twice what you normally have. I'm stealing this from Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, but I think it would work here. It would add a new layer to combat strategy. Do you use all your AP now, or skip your turn, hoping you can survive the next onslaught, and then come back with two turns in a row worth of kick butt.

5) AP Collector
A Cheat version of the above. Again, a toggle cheat. In this case, you save AP same as above, but either with no upper limit, or more likely a limit of 255 AP collected at max. More, it's continuous, so you can engage, say, a fighter while you're in a cruiser, and then skip turns until you have that saved AP, then go and fight a Battleship, lowering its shields and just annihilating it before it can move.



That's all I've got for now, but I'll try to think up more later. Anyway, what do you guys think?

I don't want to nitpick here, but let's have a look at the Actions Points (AP).

The key of winning a battle is the management of the AP.

The more efficient you use them, the better your chances of survival are.
While an AP saver would make things easier it would simply reduce the strategy involved to optimize your combat and use of Action Points.
There are a lot of skills that allow you to use one AP in order to make use of all AP each turn.

The EMP blast would become redundant as well, as the enemy can shoot back with all accumulated once the effect wears off.

I would like to have more action points. Or Alternatively abilities that cost no action points but have a longer cooldown but that would create a huge balancing problem, I guess.

I still end far, far too many turns in my Bounty Hunter with 1 point left over, and no skills to spend it on. I would much rather have that point carry over. True, it would take some doing, like EMP should disable it or something, but otherwise, I think it would still balance correctly.

In case of doubt use quick firing gattling cannons with 1 AP per shot.

While I don't want to spoil your experience:
They are especially effective with Maneuver (1 AP) and Target shot (1 AP) for more damage and hit ratio.
Another good one is Ace (1 AP and the sacrifice of 2 active abilities) Especially if you know that the abilities won't last until next turn or have some drawbacks like the Maneuever skill.
If you want even the Taunt skill can be a life safer for 1 AP.
These cheap 1 AP skills are incredibly usefull once you get a powerful missle or rather torpedo that needs ECM shielding (another 2 AP skill with a sacrifice of 2 active abilities)
You can actually make 100% sure (Well except maybe the odd random EMP blasts disabling you) that a torpedo hits in the later stages of a game, which means that as long as you survive until it hits you can always win a fight.

Some ships have no ability to equip those type of guns(which I do, which is why I'm annoyed now that I can't with my current boat)

As for the abilities you mentioned...well the last just wasn't a 1 AP skill, so that's really not a valid point of discussion, the others are, and I use them, except for maneuver, which is a very dangerous skill that I regret getting now. It's not useful at all(IMO) against larger opponents, who get more out of it than you do, and since, until you get your own battleship, the computer loves only giving me targets/missions wherein I have to fight one size better than me, I don't find it useful at all.

I use, if you're curious, all the skills I have but maneuvers, the ! skill and the one with the cross hairs. I don't use the Spade skill often since it takes away two skills from me, and I might be using something, say a tractor beam, and don't want to lose it.

I am thinking about adding the possibility to collect APs to a new skill or a new ship equipment item. It´s definately interesting and gives the game a twist. What does everyone else think?

New Equipment would be nice. Say for targeting software? Personally, not a big fan of it, since the better stuff comes with too many drawbacks, or requires you to already have a skill to use, or is just something to use in place of a skill(Yes, as I said above, I understand that's how you balanced the game, still, annoying). This would give me something good to put there.

Oh! And add in something to either allow us to buy skills(say it's a brain enhancement or the like), or to reset the skills we've already bought for some insane price, like 10 million or so. I'm a Min/Maxer who hates not being able to get all the skills/maxed stats.

Would love to buy skills to get a better edge. Cheat wise I would love a cheat on boarding.

More equipment is always fine :)

More AP would be nice together with a rebalance of the skills.

Reworking the shildrecharge would be usefull, i use fleetbattles know to recharge shilds but outside the Warzones it's a pain...after you aquire a ship of the higher classes.

I think there is no need to gather AP amd it would greatly reduce the tactical part of the battles that is anyway somehow small.

@Star Sage
Hmm..i loved the target missions with the enemy being my class+1 because it was such an fast way to earn money&fame.

Maneuvers is very usefull if you're battleling larger enemys and getting a Warship wan't save you :) because you then get battleship groups(The battleship+ ;) as targets...

Wich Ship do you have now?

I got a Battleship. My loadout is.

Guns
Gatling Cannon(1 AP to fire, and shoots down missiles at a good rate)

Missile
Destroyer(1 Hit Kill on anything)

ECM
Defender Mk. II(50% rate, but can be used twice in one round, and doesn't drain shields)

Targeting System
Command HQ(Doubles my effect on Warzones)

Engines
Traveler Mk. II(Speed enough to do most jumps in a day or two, rather than a month or two)


Also, I have fought and won several warzones now, and am probably close to winning the game now. I no longer find myself with 1 AP left over, but that's because I have a gun with 1 AP shots. As stated, I like those, and use them, it's just the Cruiser I had didn't have that, and I still think my point stands about annoyed with 1 point left over all the time.

Anyway, an amusing game, will try some other classes and groups next.

Gratz :) but wich cruiser did you used ?

I am just curios because it might be a Bug, as far as i know the all Ships of the lower classes can have Turbolasers and all higher Ships of the higher classes can use Gatlinglasers.


And some Suggestions i forget yesterday...

I think several thinks around boarding could use a rework (aside from checking the number of defenders)
-the boarding command itself shouldn't have a to-hit chance because i need to disable the enemy before i can send a
boarding party...that they miss the "peacefull" drifting ship should be only the case for specialevents like shuttlepilot is drunk or in panic...
-if i am the attacker, i decide wich of my crewmember i send in...it's a bit annoying to have crewmember die like flys that where not part of the attack, that i hadn't even send in
-a additional attackoption that let attack only marines would be fine
-i should'nt be forced to tow the conquered ship to another Planet even i am allready at a friendly one...that other ships block me could be a special but not a annoying-(timesink) standard

Again, I don't want to argue. More Equipment sure is nice. But the 1 AP isn't that much of a problem in my opinion.
If you want we can analyze the sitution in a more detailed way but I don't want to derail this thread much further.

I suppose you got your hands on a Stonewall Battleship class, considering that you have miniguns.
I was very happy with my Marauder, giving me two additional 2 AP,

Gameplay wise, I'll find a tad strange that you have only about 150 crewmen on board capital class Warships.
On the USS Missouri (the last Battleship the U.S. built) you had a 2700 crew onboard as comparison.
Are those spaceship actually smaller than maritime battleships?

I don't think comparing a sci-fi setting with real life really works. A lot of things may well be done automatically by the ships computer systems itself, not requiring a huge crew to run and maintain it.

Neptun it does seem like a bug, considering the other ones seem to be able to use the Gatling.

Oh, and I end up with the Marauder usually. Gatling guns was the weapon I was using, BTW. Miniguns are the ability, and I find them less useful than the one that gives me +2 AP per round.

Oh, two spelling errors that come up a lot. First, it's Independent not Independend. That one happens a lot, so I figured I'd mention it. Also, when you want to show possession(I.E. when you have an empire), it would be your name and then apostrophe and an s, like this 's . I mention it because I had an empire with my character Reese, and it just added an s, so it was Reeses Empire, when it should have been Reese's Empire

BTW, I'm not trying to insult you, you speak English way better than I do German, I'm just trying to help.



Oh, and now that I've beaten the game 3 times, I'll list some stuff I would like altered for the game.

First off, the War Bonds. I think they're a great idea, awesome, but the mechanic itself is kind of broken. Selling them is just worthless, since the Percentage possible to lose is so much larger than the gain that it always goes down. Besides the time limit on selling tends to prevent me from every taking advantage of it. So, instead of letting us sell, just turn these into Investments through the banks.

Invest in Military
Same as the bond as it is now, except no option to get it back. It serves the same purpose, however, in place of the sell bonds...

Invest in Infrastructure
This one has two purposes. First it improves your standing with the Governor, while also adding items to the local store. More than that though, if you're a pirate and making your own Empire, this option improves your standing with the local population, and adds that money to the surplus of the system, helping you to maintain control.



Also, one small thing, if you've got your own empire, you should be able to access the System Management screen without having to go to the system itself, like from the System Diagram. Sorry, but I find it annoying to hear my system rebelled against me, with no prior warning, after I left it with what should have been a positive opinion setup. Anyway, that's all I've got for now, but anyway, fun game, will try for a fourth win soon.

No insult taken ;), if you see errors in one of my posts you can always leave a comment.
I started to "re-awake" my english after my first posts at the GOG-Forum but i wasn't willing to attend a regular lesson again..so it's a permanent struggle with temporary repairs because i'm used to speak english but didn't wrote it for nearly 30 years...soo..my written english is really "rusted in".