Space Rangers HD: A War Apart Suggestion Thread

[random50]

Galaxy development:

1) Decouple dominator and coalition development a little. It should be possible for one to overwhelm the other. Use donations by the player as a means by which they can strengthen the coalition.

2) Reduce reliance of coalition status on player wealth. Just because I have paid for the latest equipment doesn't mean every other new ship generated should have similar level tech. Again, player can donate if they want to share the wealth/strengthen coalition in the war.

3) It seems to be basically impossible for the coalition to lose. The dominators stop attacking when there's 3 or less systems remaining (once Keller is eliminated) While that's player friendly, it does make things feel a little empty since winning becomes just a matter of time.

User interface:
4) Having to unload the ship when you want to free up space for a trading run is tedious. Add an "unload cargo" shortcut (similar to the "load all" shortcut)

Custom ships/equipment
5) The ability to order equipment/ships at the appropriate bases/planets. The player pays a hefty premium upfront and has to wait some time for the equipment to be built (so incentive to protect the base from dom attacks). Equipment available and amount of the premium tied to current galaxy tech level.

Wingmen: these could be great, but at the moment they're not.
6) If the stop on dominators attacking when coalition is very small is removed, they would become almost essential to survival. This would greatly add to the challenge/fun IMO but...
7) On higher difficulties, wingmen's ships are too weak. Give the player the ability to pay for upgrades for their wingmen, especially the hulls (replacements would be even better). Also, make it easier to exchange equipment when you're giving them something better. (Dropping in space, waiting for them to pick up, then getting them to drop the extra is very annoying!)

[muffildy]

I would like to see either more skills, or for skills to be extended beyond current limits.
For example, i would love a skill that reduces damage equipment recieves in battle or allows the player to fix broken equipment once per week to 100%; end game can really suck when repairing your ship costs 300000 or more.

[Vaze]

1. There are 60+ star systems. I was thinking about neutral deep-space outposts for refueling, trading, repairing... These places cannot be captured, though occasional raids may occur. They should last about a month and then the attackers leave.
2. Planetary battles are hard at the start. What about a few minutes of not being detected? It could end by a timer or by guns(when the robots meet and exchange ammo ). I think moving to the sides while facing the enemy would be a blessing.
3. There is not enough space in the ship for profitable trading. I was thinking about cargo drones. It would be much like that flying robot in the cargo bay. Compact, fast, powerful, landing on planets simultaneously with me. Imagine after a battle you send out two drones and pack it with loot, well actually connect everything to it, because it is supposed to be only an engine with 'hooks'. These drones could make piracy more interesting. Also they should be upgradeable with new engines and if disabled in a fight they eject all the cargo they have and you can pick up and repair them later so you don't have to buy new ones every time.
4. When I manage to damage a pirate ship, it runs away from a decent fight, lands on a planet to repairs itself. Do I really have to chase PIRATES??? A transport ship I understand but a PIRATE??? They really should risk more than the paint on their ships. Give them some balls .
5. All the equipment, their interesting names... At least one sentence about everything like how it works and not just damage, range, price. It's not too much to ask.

These suggestions are not that time consuming but could make the game far more interesting. A new type of 'star' system - copy, remove everything, add a station, remove conquer, add timed raid option. Planetary battles - add a timer and damage switch for detection. Cargo drones - copy that flying robot, change model, remove guns, always follow + 'go,land,follow me' commands, after HP drops, eject cargo hold, ready for pick up. Pirate tactics - higher chance of not running away from a fight like a rabbit.
I know it seems too much but it is not. Really. I know the very basics of programming and this is mostly just changing numbers on already existing objects and making a few new connections to the same procedures.
I hope I haven't written all this for nothing.

[Pheace]

All I'd ask is a menu toggle for any features that change the game a lot from what SR2 is right now. So we can turn it off if it's not quite our thing.

[omegaweapon]

well one thing that i realy annoyed and at the same time i abuse is generating of high tech npc's when there is no temporal engine they have temporal engine with weight 20 :S and other things too

i dont like it because i was the one who did the work clear dominators explore planets

and i abuse it by killing them and take their good equipment it realy make the game unbalance

another thing is maybe u can make dominator smarter? they are so stupid they dont have any tactic they just follow u everywhere (and eat your missile ) maybe if they try to surround u or try to retreat and catch u in the middle of their trap when u recklessly follow them

another problem is that the game become too easy after some years seems like dominator dont grow in tech that much specially their engine LOL, when u have top equipment u are invincible no one really can even do anything to u imagine killer uniqe ship with strongster = 32 armor (and its killer not the military one with panzer = 52 amor) good droid with mm can have about 100 repair, good shield with mm can have about 60 protection, any damage to u do 1 or 2 damage so even if u are in middle of 30 dominator ur health does not drop

what i want to see is that npc do different thing in different situation for example in situation above i would try to worn out my enemy equipment so its shield and droid dont work and i can kill it easily

to do it u can easily add another skill: saboteur or u can add tactic to how u are doing damage
1: u do maximum damage and u dont put much attention in maneuver because u try to aim your weapon to the enemy weak point
2: u do minimum damage and u dont care about maneuver but u damage enemy equipment much faster because u try to do critical hit to enemy equipment
3: u do normal damage and have normal maneuver
4: u do minimum damage but have great maneuver

what do u think folks?
i am sorry for my bad english i hope u forgive me

[Vertix]

First of all, English is not my native language, so please do ask for more explanation if you do not understand. I will try to explain more carefully.


* One thing, that frustrated me a lot, was that the game ended. And even if you still choose to keep on playing after killing the last dominator boss, you started losing points.
I wish this game to be infinite, live as long as you want and still evolve. Currently it's like in some Simcity game - hit year 2050 and game looses all meaning.
Some ideas from Galactic Civ could be used to achieve this. But I still made a good choice, when I picked SR2 insead of GC from store.

* I loved the RTS mini-games, but I wish there was more to it.
Build a base, upgrade stuff, better defenses, some Intelligence/hack stuff to screw with opponent and their factories. Add some mysterious technology to help you win - alien structures, where you have to "guess what each button with weird symbols do" to start producing super machines. Just like in some other modern RTS game, AoE, Generals ZH, SC2.
And after you win a RTS game, leave the base there to defend the planet or something like that and in future you could reuse it.
So much potential was put in designing the landscape, beautiful art, but sadly not much to do there except to get your butt kicked.

* I didn't like the logic of space ship hull size - bigger hull = bigger size on screen - made no sense at all - and all of a sudden you found yourself in a ship built for giants, where steering wheel was 10 meters and each button 1 meter wide.
With each new hull size, the ship should have a new look, that's still logical.

* One thing that also didn't make any sense to me, was, why am I allowed to buy any ship, while other rangers just keep buying ranger ships built by their race? Why am I so special? Why aren't others allowed to get themselves the best ship instead of restricting themselves?
Anybody should be able to buy anything, but still do the job, just in a bit more "special way".

* If game would be infinite and always evolving... continuing with ships by expanding the idea of bigger hull = new look idea:
How about allowing to buy super expensive gigantic space ships just as big as that? "Space carriers" or something like that, and many variants of them. Always limited speed to 300, some exceptions may apply, but more room for weapons and for other equipment. Probably need to forbid using of artifacts on that one due to huge ship size or just cut their effect to quarter or even more slots for them.

* I wish I was able to be inside a dominator ship. For e.g. buy a dominator ship from some "Pirate-Scientists Union" base. The ship should be without any limits, the extra equipment could be bought separately and just like originally should never deteriorate until breaking, but it can loose effectiveness and of course, unlimited ammo for missile launcher type weapons. And since it resembles a real dominator, you shall be treated as a dominator wherever you go, except of course, by those, who know that you definitely aren't one.
Since you had an idea to make a separate Pirate life, this could be exclusively just in that plot.

* Talking about missile launchers, why do dominators have infinite missiles?
Add a special device to dominators: "This device collects space trash and forges them into missiles" or something more scientific or complicated. Make that device also purchasable, at later part of the game, for yourself, at a high price of course. Or maybe even multiple parts need to be gathered for this on-board missile factory?

* The mysterious unexplained black holes/jump points...
Add some guest about revealing, what are those mysterious spaceships in there. Also a possibility to obtain one for yourself. Why are they so strong even if they only have ancient trash on board? Maybe a ship specialty? Should definitely be a ship specialty.
One idea is to give regular weapon appearance in that hyperspace for non-black hole spaceships and only that "black hole ship" specialty would turn those weapons into something else and much stronger, as they are currently and that effect should also work outside the black hole.
While doing the Pirate life, you could also add the possibility to "join" the black hole gang to ambush others who might visit it.

* Which brings me to another question.. Why am I again the only one able to do that? Make at least rangers brave enough to go harvesting for stuff from black holes.

* Also, why only I buy satellites to explore uninhabited planets for abandoned stuff?

* I wish that Blazer also had it's own system, like Terron, where it lives, and had a bigger, factory, space station, immovable, that produces current Blazer ship and reproduces a new one, if current gets destroyed. Blazer ship should be 2x weaker to be fair.
And, to kill that station, you can land on it and do a FPS like mini-game instead, similar to Dead Space game. Unveiling what went wrong, what infected the systems and then fight the cool looking Blazer itself..
Well, if FPS seems impossible, then at least make a RTS, big map, where Blazer appears as a regular, "hero" robot, limited to defend the base and killing it will end the Blazer factory.

* The text based missions should not be mandatory, like in SR1 and should have more visuals, like in a proper Visual Novel. For e.g. don't use letters and other symbols to draw a map, make a real map instead with proper markings!
I also wish, that somebody, outside of the text mission, could give me hints on, how to complete a specific text mission. I really hated the random effects that occurred on some choices. Sometimes you got these parameters when you started and sometimes you got other parameters, but most of the time, they were against you.

* Radar and logic.
I sometimes get "chased off the map screen"... Why is my, even my multibillion cr radar limited to only show the current solar system? Is the sun some kind of an amplifier? Is that game about another parallel universe, where (space?) radars went wrong, really wrong and always require a sun to be near to work properly?
Here's an idea, split radars to 3 tiers:
Tier 1 - current radar programming, tier 2 - radars that start centering on you if you get too far from the solar system, but will still cease working at some distance. And finally, tier 3 radars, which will center on you and never stop working.

* Hyperjump spots, minimap and logic ...and engines.
Okay, I can bend my mind to think that maybe it is the sun, that requires me to be in the boundaries of the minimap to take a jump (actually you should explain that in game, e.g. engine related topic). But why a square? And the same for all systems? How about we turn the minimap to a circle instead and turning the solar system's hyper jump spots from square formation into a circle?
Yet another equipment requiring for a sun: engine - let's divide them into tiers too:
tier 1 - needs to be close to the sun, tier 2 - the minimap is the limit, tier 3 - no limit.

* Weapons space time logic.
It takes me 1 day to shoot from all of my 5 guns? Yet another parallel universe "went wrong in evolution" thing, where all weapons always take 1 day to shoot and hit its target (except missiles ofc, which may take weeks to get somewhere)?
Well, plausible for alternate reality, but it's not realistic to have a "low tier" weapon, that shoots a beam a whole day! How many movies do you know, where space battles take several weeks or months, just because everybody has to wait until their "always big and heavy, but low cost weapons" shoot? I really don't like to bend my mind to think, that that one beam was actually 100 shots and even though the ship visually stood still and could fly at 1200mph, it actually did a lot of maneuverings to evade some shots defined by the pilot's skill.
To fix this, add more HP to ships and divide the gun's shooting ratio. For e.g. one gun will shoot several times at once. With some better tier weapons you could pick several targets for one gun ("- better targeting mechanism").

* Space stations. So big, so weak. They could have something more. And less.
First, let's at least give more guns to that Military base! And a bit more to Pirate base.
Military base has visually some kind of a weapon moving on it, what is it? Well, whatever it is, let's make it special! Something really heavy, strong, irreplaceable, but repairable and with better durability. Doesn't have to appear in weapons section, but is always there and will shoot and do a lot of damage, even if heavily damaged, but will not break.

SR2 - Reboot Add-on allowed to buy access to modify space station's equipment.
But I don't understand, does a space station even have any use of a scanner? A top notch engine, a fuel tank or a radar? Why do we even have access to edit those equipment slots?

* Grippers. Mine's more expensive, so I should win the mini-battle of gripping!
No seriously - higher tier gripper = higher success % of snatching space junk from sb else. You could even turn this to a third attribute of gripper.
In Pirate bases they should sell a special micromodule, that will speed up the gripping process and also increase that %.

* Space objects, without that disease.
There's a disease in SR2 that makes you hallucinate that there are some cool looking space objects in space. Why can't we have those by default? Space is so boring without that "disease".

* Weapons idea..
What's the most destructive thing in whole SR? A high velocity space rock of course! And a mine.
At later parts of the game, those rocks get bigger and meaner. Sometimes, even a 1-hit-KO may occur with you. I like it.
The "Pirate-Scientists Union" base could develop a weapon just like that (for a special "suicide" mission, but if you survive, you can keep the weapon)! It will require minerals as ammo and it will require 3 weapon slots for itself. But it will throw "anonymous" meteors at target. The rock throw ratio in a day, rock size and rock's flight speed will increase if you upgrade the thrower. Bigger thrower will also require a ship with bigger hull size.
There's also another thing you could buy from a Pirate base or "Pirate-Scientists Union" base: a prototype of a mine laying ship and then the real deal for 4x more money! The prototype will have everything disabled on it, except the engine and fuel tank and the ability to lay about 20 mines or so. And then the real ship will have it all enabled, but only 2 weapon slots, since 3 are taken by the mine layer and mine containers. It will be a big ship. The mine laying "gun" can be reloaded, just like a missile thrower, for cheap in any pirate related station, and can hold about 60 mines, but mines will be 3-4x weaker at first. After series of upgrading, the mines will have magnetic sensory and possibly even a camouflage, but definitely remote detonation. Magnetic - if a ship passes by, the mine will start to follow it and go boom and the faster the ship the bigger the "drag" towards the ship. Mines should be able to be upgraded to have an advanced anti-missile defense that will redirect the rocket/torpedo away or to another target or even back to attacker. If redirecting at another target, the mine could be programmed to change the source identity to anonymous or to the real owner, so if the target gets hit, then it will think that the attacker of the mine attacked it. The mine should be able to be upgraded to have higher endurance to any attack, so others could not be able to get rid of it too fast and it should also have a "safe" self-destruct, if unwanted at that location. Those special mines should not be allowed to be picked up by anyone and only by destroying or "safe" self-destruct. If under camo, it would be a nice idea to allow it to be disabled temporary or permanently until next time you actually need it at that place. Removing or forging mine's owner identity should also be an option.

* About the advanced anti-missile defense - that should be sold (or given as a special prize) as a micromodule for force shield generator in both Scientific and Pirate bases. Or a separate device or an upgrade option for either hull or force shield gen. But only the Pirate base will give you the one with identity forging.

* Races should be more different from each other, rather than just color and equipment durability. They should have some new specialties. They probably have something already, but those are so minor, I don't even notice them. For e.g. give Maloqs special, seriously big guns or smthn or weapon dmg bonus.. Give Faeyans something about intelligence, like repair equipment to 20% and artifacts to 10%, without needing to land on a repair capable place.

* Show hull, equipment damage indicators on screen, without me having to open up ship menu to check things out myself.

* Sun's burn ratio should be increased. The more you stay in fire, the more it will start burning you. Start selling a special hull cooling technology at later part of the game, that will decrease the heat or better versions of it even to nullify Sun's burn and even decrease dmg taken from heat based weapons.

* Probably impossible to achieve currently: Space sim, like in FreeSpace or as shown in SR2's intro video, but without the technicality to shoot specific targets of the ship to disable it etc. It would be really fun to fly around just like that. Either hunt transports or run from pirates and hide in meteor clouds.

* Something I just remembered seeing in that intro video: what the hell did that Peleng throw at that Ranger to evade that powerful attack? That should be visually shown too. The higher the defense skill, the more capsules will be thrown or whatever self-defense there might be. The dead Peleng also held a timed bomb. Why don't we have that? That could be exclusive to pirates.

* System requirements, bugs, forced destructive RTM...
Since Reboot Add-on came out, the new RTS maps crashed a lot. I have a pretty decent machine, so they are your bugs. If you want a wider market, bigger audience, more income, please do not make the game to be such a ***** about end-user's PC.
And I still remember what your favourite RTM StarForce did with my 3 PCs. Most of StarForce protected games never got popular, and even I got SR2 with only 9$. When I thought I just got lucky, the real financial damage came after I installed that SF virus, which I could never remove, even with official SF remover. Compare yourself with GalCiv game and their success. Rattle your brains, thinking hard, how did they succeed. And of course, if SF kills my computer, I will hate you, I already hate SF and I won't have a working PC to play any of your other games, meaning I will hate you even more = no more money income for you. Sb may even sue you to get money for a new PC and since SR3 will be resource demanding, it will require a very expensive PC = even bigger jackpots in court.
I really hope you learned from your mistakes.


Well, those are just few thoughts of mine. You may or may not like them, but remember, that you are making the game for other people, not for yourself. We bring in the money, if you even want any.
If you like my ideas or "my way", let me know and I can write few billion more or explain current ones in more detail.

[Noctilucus]

I would agree with some of the previous posts:
1) Limit the time you spend on the RTS section of the game, this is a cherry on the cake and not the game's main attraction; tweaking it might help to make it more popular but there will be limits to what you can achieve...

2) Some improvement to the trading part would be great:
- larger quantities of goods available on planets (for me it doesn't make sense that a single ranger ship can load the entire output of a planet in one go), just keep the price mechanism in place to avoid that this becomes a too profitable loop
- incentivize players more to come to the rescue of planets who urgently need a certain good: often I would be too late or the reward would be rather small
- I would love the idea of having access to bigger trade ships. They would be slow and therefore not suitable for "hunting" but you could easily transport a few thousand items and make significant profits.

3) Give the player a bit more access to advanced hulls / weapons / equipment when he has large amounts of cash (or as time evolves). I often had more than half a million in cash, yet would not find any decent piece of equipment or a better hull to spend it on.

4) I also concur with the idea of letting the player buy more defense mechanisms (e.g. platforms or weapons) for military or trade centers so they stand a better chance of surviving an attack. It gives you something to do with excess cash and it gives you more reason to "donate in support of the galaxy"

[MeVII]

Greetings:

I heard that the SRHD team is in close touch with the SR2 community, so I thought Id drop in to mention something’s Ive always found lacking in SR2, in hopes they maybe added to HD.

First of all, don’t let the word “lacking” mislead you. SR2 is installed on my PC even now and it is the primary game I play. It’s a very interesting, and very well made game. Perhaps instead of saying Im pointing out things that are “lacking”, Ill switch it and say things that can be “enhanced”.

Really it all boils down to meaningful choices…

Ive always thought things would be much more interesting if your race and pilot type had a much more profound effect on the game you played. As SR2Reboot stands, it doesn’t effect things all that much. Your starting ship is a little different, but you can buy a new one after only a very short while, and the missions you receive aren’t any different at all. Merchants get assassination missions, and fighters are asked to deliver packages.

What if for examples…
…merchants were asked to
1- “sell 100 units of our luxuries to XXX”
2- “Go to X, pick up A, sell A at Y, and buy and bring B from Y back to us.”
3- “Were giving you as much of our A as your ship can hold, sell it making at least XXX much profit. We what to show that our items are the best in the solar system!”

Fighters should get more dominator focused missions from military stations…

Mercenaries should get more assassination and escort missions.

Corsairs should get missions were a planet asks them to smuggle in contraband from their planet to another, or perhaps, assassinating a rival pirate who is messing up the trade routes.

(high traffic trade routs would be a good idea also for that matter)

Pirates have obviously been quite taken care of in HD.
(P.S. Shouldn’t pirates be able to rob places? Especially business centers?)

I also think that each pilot type could have a “license” that allows them to buy only certain ship hulls. So that merchants cant buy fighter hulls, and a pirate cant buy merchant hulls. NORMALY…
… but to make things interesting there can be ways to buy items off the black market, but then if your caught with one with out the license there can be trouble.

… or there can be ways to get the licenses legitimately, such as, shoot down xxx to get a fighters license, or trade so much goods to get a merchant license, or perhaps a license type can be givin as a quest reward, (not all races accept all licenses types from all races? Perhaps licenses are race founded? So that if you have a human fighter license its accepted and you can buy fightere equipment on all planets except Pailings, who have something to prove, and insist they are better fighters that humans) or you can buy fake licenses at pirate bases, that again, you cant get caught with… etc…

Lastly are races.

Ive never seen much point in picking different races, other than slight relation changes, that can be fixed with cash.

Race choice should impact a lot of things, like, a race will only trust one of their own with certain missions, Malogs wont offer Fayans military missions because they think its absurd, while everyone treats a Malog merchant like their stupid.

I think it would be a neat thing if the player got a slight discount on items and such on locations that are the same race as their pilots race. This can also be affected by relations with that planet. (This would make things specifically interesting if not all races sold all races things. Malogs would not sell Faiyan weapons thinking they are inferior, and Fayians may push there own scanners for thier superiority, humans wouldn't care much one way or the next, but being superb merchants, have higher prices, in the sweet spot sota speak and etc...) This also could give much more weight to gaining “excellent” relations with a location. Perhaps Fayian or not, if you garner excellent status with a Malog location, they give you military missions because they treat you as one of there own.

I think my idea is clear by now… : - ) anything that adds choice meaning and diversity to the game.

What if there were some items and hulls only specific races could even use due to anatomy?

The Palings have 4 arms, Malogs are strong and huge, Fayians have Psi powers, humans have 10 dexterous fingers, Galains also have 4 arms… uhh, and and extra head in there belly. : -)

I could go on, but Im sure by now there are people hoping I wont.

Im a USA player. I think Space Rangers is one of the most inventive games ever made, and Im excited and looking forward to HD being sold to us gamers in the US so I can get a copy right away!

Thanks for looking over my input all!

MeVII

[shibata33]

Hi, I'm not sure if you guys are still receiving suggestions, but here's some of my recommendations with the game, mostly with the GUI.

Inventory management:
- Make it possible to expland the base's inventory view. The ship's inventory can be expanded to better sort through items, how come bases' inventory cannot ?
- Create a few Tabs on ship inventory screen (Standard equipment, Artifacts and Micromodules, Misc Items, etc) so it is easier to manage items.
- Make it possible to "Quick move" items from base to ship and vice versa. Like Shift + Lclick or something.
- Add more slot for ship configurations ("Furnishing" in the English version). This feature is extremely useful, but 3 slots is a little lacking. Maybe 5 (Flying, Trading, Space fight 1, Space fight 2, Black hole fight) ? (This one is not terribly important though)

Quest management
- Can you move the "Quest info", "Properties not on ship" and notes to the Log book? I feel the log book is very underused and it would be more logical to have a proper log book to keep things organized than a bunch of post-it notes at the bottom of the screen. A standard RPG Quest book is perfectly fitting here. You can have various tabs for Quest, Planet info, News tidbits and Properties not on ship. The original notes at the screen bottom will only display the most essential items, i.e quest deadline
- A tiny sidenote on quest, can you also add "Quest destination" to the quest detail?

I hope some of this suggestion can be considered and will improve what is already a great game.

[MeVII]

Originally Posted by shibata33

I feel the log book is very underused and it would be more logical to have a proper log book to keep things organized than a bunch of post-it notes at the bottom of the screen.

I wanted to add a counter input that while I agree there needs to be a real auto updated log book, the current system of information pins on the bottom, and the "note pad" styled manual input to the F1 log book should not be removed.

I personally like the info pins at the bottom of the screen. No need to click, enter and read a log book, for me, the quick pop up of information on a mouse-over is perfect. This includes all the items you can copy to the info bar by clicking the "i" in most text windows. (even then including your own F1 notes if desired!)

However, even I agree that quest info pins should not have the entire text to the mission, but only the basics of "who" wants you to do "what" "where" and by "when". This includes the handy time left day countdown at the top.

Bottom line: Do both. Add an official journal and use info pins. There should be a settings option allowing the selection of the default to either be to Auto post information in a journal, or the info bar, or "ask me every time."
Even better also, for thoes that find the info bar cluttery, an option to hide or disable it could be added as well.

Extra Note: That just made me think, a "Hide HUD" option would be good, since the backgrounds, ships, planets, stars and etc are so nice to look at...especially in the HD version!