Suggestions

[totally]

Oh, wait, here's another one:
Paypal donations to add motivation. I'm sure that I am not the only one who wants to buy dev guys a latte 

[Jamis]

I would like to see tree prices as different variables.

EG: Seedling trees cost X amount, Defensive trees cost Y amount.



What about if we could "pay" with seedlings the ability to upgrade our trees? 

EG: Faster growth rate, higher defense rating for the tree, higher damage reduction, more tree hitpoints, faster seedling/defensive thingy spawn rate, etc.


I would also like my trees to be "planted" starting with the weakest seedlings I have flying around the asteroid.

[smokinjoe18]

  PLEASE NOTE THIS POST IS NOT TO COMPLAIN BUT JUST TO SHOW MY FINDINGS AND TRY AND SUGGEST IMPROVEMENTS..

Over the last 3 days (30hrs on and off) i've been trying to create new Levels for people to enjoy changing multiple settings available in the level options  Eg:-

Amount of asteroids
Start seedlings
Amount of factions/teams
Greys seedlings & probabitlity
Spawn time length of structures (offence & defence)
Structure strengths
Starting planet atrributes (health, strength, Speed)
Cost of trees
Amount of trees
Defence of structures
Grace period
And many more to list in multiple variations

After playing the Levels already posted and the one's I've created it has led me to the following conclusion:

No matter what you change ALL Levels becomes a walkthrough after differing periods of time or you're overwhelmed straight away (if you're quick enough: build,conquer,build conquer until you get an unassailable Swarm of seedlings as all other factions deplete each others as time goes by (poor A.I) then you walkthrough them)

The Major reason for this happening is all settings that i could effectively change applies to EVERY team meaning theres no advantage / disadvantage to anyone.

SUGGESTIONS:

All available Level settings should be changeable for each INDIVIDUAL  Faction/Team not 1 setting for all Eg:-

Differing amount of max trees for each asteroid/team
Differing cost of trees for each asteroid/team
Differing damage multipliers for each faction
Differing structure strengths for every asteroid (harder to get to the core if it has stronger attributes)
Must kill everything around the asteroid before attack on trees can commence then all tree must be killed before you can get to the core
Greater A.I. tactics req.

You can see where I'm going Each Team/Asteroid/seedlings should have differing factors to them, then you don't know what you're attacking and the benefits of conquering a certain asteroid eg defensive or attacking gains and how much it will deplete you by attacking it without scouting it, etc..

Hopefully the improvements/suggestions above would give the game more diversity and playability to set certain level goals and greater tactical advantages by scouting for better asteroids instead of wiping everything out all the time.

Suggestions put forward in most of the previous posts would definately improve game playability but making those changes different for EACH Team would increase the use of tactics meaning you could play the same Level and have different outcomes using different tactics.

Hopefully I'm not way of the mark here and I do stress these are just suggestions of direction for them game as the developers wil have there own plans but hopefully some of these suggestions could help.

  Would Love to see this game move on and become AWESOME... 

[Rudolf]

Thanks guys, some quick replies:

Regarding:
seperate tree values: This is indeed already being worked on
Individual team characteristics: This is on our task list

:-D

[smokinjoe18]

Looks like you've got a long task LOL.

Hope it doesn't take too long can't wait for the next update..

Thanks..

[wogan]

lol

[Rudolf]

lol

Yah, we have a lot to do still before the game is what we want it to be. It is a tough choice at times, we don't want to take too long to develop it, but we have a certain vision that we want to achieve. Does mean the task list is rather long.

*cries*

[Meat_Grinder]

I haven't read the whole 9 pages, sorry if I'm repeating what someone already said, but here's my 2 cents:

Have Ctrl or Shift make those movement orders permanent, so that every spawing seedling moves to the specified planet, until changed by another permanent or temporary movement order. It's just that when you have more than 5 asteroids, movement orders become too many and too repetitive. Also I managed to micro my way out of almost being wiped out once, by keeping all seedlings constantly going to the battle point, but I could almost sense my mouse dying from all the click & drag I had to do.

For seedling amounts ~2500+ or so the order queue gets overflowed and they stop listening to the orders(or there's an insane delay, I'm not sure, because I kept repeating them until they started moving). Gotta optimize that thing, or have a unit cap.

[wogan]

*cries*

Go for more frequent releases, even if there's just a few incremental improvements over the last version. I'm sure most of us wouldn't mind having to deal with little issues as the game evolved, and I'm sure it'd be a lot more gratifying than holding out until a major release.

But then do come up with an automated patch system...

[topmo3]

sorry, but yet another suggestion in already very many
if it possible, may would be good to have "Play random level" button.
i mean not random selection from exists levels, but some random generated level with user-selected difficult.
of course, is is not too good as human-maded levels, but it will be good for its constant unsufficiency.

[Mr Frank]

I've been hooked on this game ever since someone posted about it on the Phun forum (another awesome game).  Favorite feature?  Procedural maps.  Never the same fight twice, love it.  Least favorite?  Not sure.  Probably the AI cheating on sending ranges.
The other thing that annoys me is when you send a scout to an unexplored asteroid near the edge of your asteroid's range, and then it is unable to return because home is beyond the newly explored asteroid's range.  Anyone thought of a good way to fix that, or is getting marooned just going to be a risk of scouting?

Unlike everyone else who's posted in this thread, I'd actually be opposed to waypoints.  The difficulty of moving up backwater seedlings fairly accurately represents the organizational issues of a gigantic empire, and it's the only thing that makes the endgame even interesting.  If you could just whip out a near-infinite stream of seedlings from the far side of the asteroid belt without paying attention to it, the late game becomes even easier.  Much better for the really far back ones to be almost cripplingly inconvenient so you have to work with what's on hand.

Seemingly contrarily, I'd really like to see better seedling control more than anything else.  I know mouse-only control is some sort of theme here, but goddammit I want my hotkeys.
SHIFT+right click: select five seedlings.
CTRL+right click: select twenty-five seedlings.
With those two commands, it would be very fast to control even massive swarms.  In the time it normally takes to select ten seedlings, you could split a swarm of 500 in half.
I'd also really make use of any stat-sorting abilities, because seedling stats make all the difference in the world the way I play at least.
Holding A, S, or D when giving a command to preferentially select the seedlings with the most Attack, Speed, or Defense (so conveniently right in a row, commonly used, perfectly placed, and make good abbreviations too!) would be awesome.  Send the seedlings that are all attack and nothing else to go claim an empty asteroid without giving up the ones that are actually useful for defense, or avoid sending any painfully slow seedlings to go and scout.
Using Q, W, and E or perhaps ALT+A, S, or D to select the seedlings with the least attack, speed, or defense would also be really useful.  I could use my crappy seedlings to build and keep my uber seedlings ready for fighting.

[Rudolf]

I've been hooked on this game ever since someone posted about it on the Phun forum (another awesome game).  Favorite feature?  Procedural maps.  Never the same fight twice, love it.  Least favorite?  Not sure.  Probably the AI cheating on sending ranges.
The other thing that annoys me is when you send a scout to an unexplored asteroid near the edge of your asteroid's range, and then it is unable to return because home is beyond the newly explored asteroid's range.  Anyone thought of a good way to fix that, or is getting marooned just going to be a risk of scouting?

Unlike everyone else who's posted in this thread, I'd actually be opposed to waypoints.  The difficulty of moving up backwater seedlings fairly accurately represents the organizational issues of a gigantic empire, and it's the only thing that makes the endgame even interesting.  If you could just whip out a near-infinite stream of seedlings from the far side of the asteroid belt without paying attention to it, the late game becomes even easier.  Much better for the really far back ones to be almost cripplingly inconvenient so you have to work with what's on hand.

Seemingly contrarily, I'd really like to see better seedling control more than anything else.  I know mouse-only control is some sort of theme here, but goddammit I want my hotkeys.
SHIFT+right click: select five seedlings.
CTRL+right click: select twenty-five seedlings.
With those two commands, it would be very fast to control even massive swarms.  In the time it normally takes to select ten seedlings, you could split a swarm of 500 in half.
I'd also really make use of any stat-sorting abilities, because seedling stats make all the difference in the world the way I play at least.
Holding A, S, or D when giving a command to preferentially select the seedlings with the most Attack, Speed, or Defense (so conveniently right in a row, commonly used, perfectly placed, and make good abbreviations too!) would be awesome.  Send the seedlings that are all attack and nothing else to go claim an empty asteroid without giving up the ones that are actually useful for defense, or avoid sending any painfully slow seedlings to go and scout.
Using Q, W, and E or perhaps ALT+A, S, or D to select the seedlings with the least attack, speed, or defense would also be really useful.  I could use my crappy seedlings to build and keep my uber seedlings ready for fighting.

Good stuff, I will be looking into most of these things for sure. I think that the calls for waypoints point at a more general problem of seedling control and the fact that seedlings are too similar at the moment. (So people treat all seedlings as part of one big force) I am not comitting to anyhting yet untill we have implemented all our ideas on send controls etc and the features that affect it becasue I suspect their ompact will be severly positive :-)

[SnukJam]

SHIFT+right click: select five seedlings.
CTRL+right click: select twenty-five seedlings.

Holding A, S, or D when giving a command to preferentially select the seedlings with the most Attack, Speed, or Defense

Using ... ALT+A, S, or D to select the seedlings with the least attack, speed, or defense

EXCELLENT (and simple) suggestions for seed selection - I like it ... this would, in my opinion, greatly reduce the need for waypoints AND keep one of the original facets of "game play" intact.

[Sheogorath]

I've been talking to my friends who play this game a lot and we have come up with a few suggestions.

New Tree Suggestions

1. Acorn Trees- These would work off the same principle as the Defense trees, but instead of reducing the heath points of the enemy, they would target your own troops and increase the health attribute above the maximum, and then tag the troops affected so they could not receive multiple health buffs. These would be useful on planets with not much else going for them, because you could use them as rally points that would boost the health of troops stationed there.
     Variables- Identical to defense trees and missile variables, but damage would become health boost
     Possible Restrictions- Need # Dyson trees to unlock, size of planet would still affect the strength of the health boost.

2. Lightning Rod- This would just be like chain lightning, and would be very effective against enemy swarms that are very numerous. It would be useful in making sure people do not build up too many forces and wipe out all opposition without effort. If the range that the lightning could jump was fairly low, then they would be worse than defense trees against small incursions, but very good against a large charge of troops. the speed would be instantaneous with a longer reload time than defense trees as default.
     Variables- Jump range of bolt from enemy to enemy, damage of bolt, trigger range, maximum number of enemies affected in a chain
     Possible Restrictions- Need # defense trees to unlock, only one per planet, perhaps would deplete asteroid's core energy as it fires.

Asteroid Suggestions

1. Movement- Asteroids drift in relation to each other, changing the battlefield in a dynamic way. I do not know if this is a realistic suggestion.
     Variables- How fast they drift, how fast different sizes of asteroid drift,
     Possible Restrictions- I do not know if they would collide.

2. Upgrading Asteroids- Spend Seedlings to improve the quality of the troops produced on the asteroid. This would be very simplistic, it would just increase all stats of newly produced troops a certain amount, but never above the maximum. Different than acorn tree because it only affects the troops from the trees on the upgraded asteroid, and only after upgrading do the new troops start getting better. It would be like adding fertilizer to an asteroid.
     Variables- Level of attribute boost, what attributes to boost, Cost in seedlings
     Possible Restrictions- Limited number of times to improve asteroid, would carry over to enemy if they take the asteroid,

General Suggestions

1. Multiplayer- Would allow for more complex strategies to emerge.

2. Improved Interface- Perhaps a faster way to tell what type of trees are on each planet without having to zoom in on them and check

3. Wireframe mode- Option to take away everything that makes Dyson pretty and remove limits on number of seedlings at any time, would also reduce lag in end game on big scenarios

[Surcouf]

This game is pretty cool.

Here are my suggestions:

As I find the end game too easy, here are the way I thought would make it tougher:
- A population cap relatively low
- Creating another variable that is the amount of ressources you can extract from each asteroid. After ressources are depleted, he asteroid would stop producing seedlings or would only produce seedling with half the stats they would normaly have. The other way of putting this up is that each asteroid gives a limited amount of ressources but the amount of ressources a player posses is the sum of ressources of all his asteroids.

- I would also add some special asteroids that gives the player that controls it a bonus. For instance, reducing spawning times, attack, speed or energy bonus for all unit, higher population cap, regenerate a low percentage of your ressources over time, allows the player to see the entire map etc. Also, those specials asteroid would have a lot of core health but no stats and it would be impossible to build trees on them. So controlling the asteroid is a great advantage but cost a lot of seedlings to conquer and needs a good number of seedlings guarding it.

-Another suggestions is waypoints like suggested before but i'd like to add a dimension to it. We could use the waypoint system to attack behind the enemy lines by sending a large group of seedling on an enemy asteroid and then immediatly skipping to another enemy planet that was previously out of reach. Of course the attacking force would take damage from the passage over the first enemy asteroid but this technique would force players to keep some defending forces behind instead of moving everything forward to attack.

Anyway, Dyson is a great game and I'm looking forward to the next update hoping for some cool imporvement