A few ideas for gameplay that seems a bit one sided

[DarthExactor]

So here I am, my first post. Yay!!!!! I'm loving this mod so far. It is definitely better than the vanilla base game, even with the ZC added. However, I found a few things that bug me, and wanted to see if I could make some suggestions to improve the game a bit. Take or leave this, it's just mainly my two cents.

Please bear in mind that I only play GC, so these ideas are all for that mode, space and land both.

1. From the Ground Up GC: I was wondering if we could get a GC where you begin with one planet, in Era 1, and have to advance by destroying enemy heroes? I like the current start with one planet mode, bit starting at advanced eras takes a bit of the fun from the mode for me. Being able to start one at Era 1 would be fun, as not only do you build your Empire form the ground up, you also build up your technology.

2. The Empire of the Hand pretty much gets shafted in GC From the Ground Up. Especially on Captain or Admiral. You're pretty much going to spend all your time defending your one planet from endless attacks by the Republic and The Remnant, often with much better ships than you can hope to have. Maybe move them to another planet?

3. I understand Captain and Admiral are supposed to be harder, and I've never even played Admiral, but for example, Empire of the Hand, From the Ground Up GC: You will be attacked within 6 minutes by a large Imperial or Republic fleet. If you got lucky and had the time to build your best defensive station, you might survive one, even two of these attacks...but on the third, the empire shows up with 2 Praetor 2 Battle Cruisers. Needless too say, this is too much for my entire fleet and defenses too handle. It seems like 15 minutes into the game, already being owned is a bit much. Maybe tone the assaults on Captain down a bit, give us a fighting chance. Likewise, Recruit is WAY too easy. Once I begin building my Sovereign Destroyers, I just give up, because I know the computer is not going to attempt to take me seriously, and I wind up steamrolling them.

4. When a ship has a cap limit, the computer should acknowledge and follow it too. I've now destroyed FOUR Viscounts in 2 hours, and I know via my probe droids that they had all four of them on different planets.

5. why is it the AI can cap planets so fast in GC mode? It's endless, and unrealistic. They should have the same starting units, count wise, as us, so how are they fighting battles, losing 25 units, 30 seconds after the dang GC has started?

Other than these, love the game. So far it is easily my favorite SWEAW mod. Keep up the good work. Oh! A sixth idea below.

6. A lot of the new units have no abilities. Any eta on these if they are coming?

[tlmiller]

Can't answer everything, but here's what I can...

So here I am, my first post. Yay!!!!! I'm loving this mod so far. It is definitely better than the vanilla base game, even with the ZC added. However, I found a few things that bug me, and wanted to see if I could make some suggestions to improve the game a bit. Take or leave this, it's just mainly my two cents.

Please bear in mind that I only play GC, so these ideas are all for that mode, space and land both.

1. From the Ground Up GC: I was wondering if we could get a GC where you begin with one planet, in Era 1, and have to advance by destroying enemy heroes? I like the current start with one planet mode, bit starting at advanced eras takes a bit of the fun from the mode for me. Being able to start one at Era 1 would be fun, as not only do you build your Empire form the ground up, you also build up your technology.

FTGU is "the best of the best" for each faction.  So every faction is at their most powerful, and has access to their absolute best units in it.  If you started it at Era1, it would be SUPER hard to play as the NR, as their ships in that era quite frankly can't compete easily with the IR's.

2. The Empire of the Hand pretty much gets shafted in GC From the Ground Up. Especially on Captain or Admiral. You're pretty much going to spend all your time defending your one planet from endless attacks by the Republic and The Remnant, often with much better ships than you can hope to have. Maybe move them to another planet?

3. I understand Captain and Admiral are supposed to be harder, and I've never even played Admiral, but for example, Empire of the Hand, From the Ground Up GC: You will be attacked within 6 minutes by a large Imperial or Republic fleet. If you got lucky and had the time to build your best defensive station, you might survive one, even two of these attacks...but on the third, the empire shows up with 2 Praetor 2 Battle Cruisers. Needless too say, this is too much for my entire fleet and defenses too handle. It seems like 15 minutes into the game, already being owned is a bit much. Maybe tone the assaults on Captain down a bit, give us a fighting chance. Likewise, Recruit is WAY too easy. Once I begin building my Sovereign Destroyers, I just give up, because I know the computer is not going to attempt to take me seriously, and I wind up steamrolling them.

Point of FTGU isn't to build defensively, it's to QUICKLY take over as much territory as possible around you so that you can afford the bigger, stronger fleets.  I can't remember the last time I played FTGU as the EoTH, but I'm sure their starting position is similar to everyone elses (who the AI does not start with only 1 planet).

4. When a ship has a cap limit, the computer should acknowledge and follow it too. I've now destroyed FOUR Viscounts in 2 hours, and I know via my probe droids that they had all four of them on different planets.

We all wish that.  There's nothing the mod team can do, the AI in this game is simply coded to ignore build limits if it so chooses.

5. why is it the AI can cap planets so fast in GC mode? It's endless, and unrealistic. They should have the same starting units, count wise, as us, so how are they fighting battles, losing 25 units, 30 seconds after the dang GC has started?

If the AI doesn't have nearly inexhaustible funds and significant resources, then they stop trying to do ANYTHING.  Having essentially unlimited income/resources makes the AI work.  So this is a requirement for the AI to function, nothing Corey & co can do to change that without making it so the AI just sets there building nothing and lets you stomp it (which would be dull).

[Corey]

1. From the Ground Up GC: I was wondering if we could get a GC where you begin with one planet, in Era 1, and have to advance by destroying enemy heroes? I like the current start with one planet mode, bit starting at advanced eras takes a bit of the fun from the mode for me. Being able to start one at Era 1 would be fun, as not only do you build your Empire form the ground up, you also build up your technology.

Several problems with this. First, the AI quite enjoys to use most heroes, and also can only rely on autoresolve (since obviously it's not actually playing through those battles against other AI-controlled planets). In a single-planet start, heroes would be a significant portion of your starting forces and advancement through eras is less based on you destroying anything and more on the will of the RNG God of Autoresolve.

Secondly, and more crucially, keep in mind that "advancing in eras" is a CHRONOLOGICAL advancement, not necessarily a technological advancement. For the Remnant, it's quite the opposite most of the time (era 3 being the exception).

5. why is it the AI can cap planets so fast in GC mode? It's endless, and unrealistic. They should have the same starting units, count wise, as us, so how are they fighting battles, losing 25 units, 30 seconds after the dang GC has started?

If the AI doesn't have nearly inexhaustible funds and significant resources, then they stop trying to do ANYTHING.  Having essentially unlimited income/resources makes the AI work.  So this is a requirement for the AI to function, nothing Corey & co can do to change that without making it so the AI just sets there building nothing and lets you stomp it (which would be dull).

That's not strictly true. What's actually going on is more that if it goes below a certain threshold, it essentially seems to decide it's lost the game and will then do nothing. Without starting with more planets, it simply won't do anything. Also, single-planet starts are exceptionally susceptible to EaW's unit selection freeze bug, since by the time you get to the "starting point" for any other GC, you've already had every planet taken at least once.

3. I understand Captain and Admiral are supposed to be harder, and I've never even played Admiral, but for example, Empire of the Hand, From the Ground Up GC: You will be attacked within 6 minutes by a large Imperial or Republic fleet. If you got lucky and had the time to build your best defensive station, you might survive one, even two of these attacks...but on the third, the empire shows up with 2 Praetor 2 Battle Cruisers. Needless too say, this is too much for my entire fleet and defenses too handle. It seems like 15 minutes into the game, already being owned is a bit much. Maybe tone the assaults on Captain down a bit, give us a fighting chance. Likewise, Recruit is WAY too easy. Once I begin building my Sovereign Destroyers, I just give up, because I know the computer is not going to attempt to take me seriously, and I wind up steamrolling them.

The AI isn't based on timers of "attack here at minute X," nor is it given some sort of quota of number of times to attack. The AI in EaW almost never loads any changes, either. More importantly, it's all one AI, so if we made it easier on Captain in FTGU, it's also going to be easier in every single other GC, which are already fairly easy.