Suggestions

[mineteaser]

Hello, I really liked this game. It's not only fun to play, but very beautiful to look at (something I like in a game (though obviously not the only thing)).
I only have one suggestion, but I guess a whole thread for people's suggestions would be a lot more appropriate and cut back on meaningless topics.

My suggestion is to add planets in the mix of asteroids. The planets would be slightly bigger than the asteroids and obviously would have larger benefits than asteroids if owned such as more trees, better stats, and other such qualities. The planets would also orbit the sun, making you have to wait for the right time to strike. There obviously wouldn't be a lot of planets (probably only 3 or 2). I know this is a simple game, and planets might be a little complicated, but maybe you should add it as an option.

EDIT: Oh, and I would like to see procedural trees where they would randomly have between maybe 2-5 branches or maybe every time a tree branches out it has a different number of branches. Like it starts off with 3 branches, but those branches branch out to 2 branches and those branches branch out to 4 branches. I think it would be a very interesting visual effect.

[Rollins B.]

EDIT: Oh, and I would like to see procedural trees where they would randomly have between maybe 2-5 branches or maybe every time a tree branches out it has a different number of branches. Like it starts off with 3 branches, but those branches branch out to 2 branches and those branches branch out to 4 branches. I think it would be a very interesting visual effect.

http://http://www.omni-labs.com/

If you look a little down the page, Alex put up a video of new tree code he is working on.

The only problem with the planets would that they would have to be extra hard to conquer. Or you might even have to do something like break a little outer shield before you reach the core.

[Alex]

We have plans for both these things, yes. As you can see we have some prototype tree code up and running, but it's not integrated into the game yet. I need to get back to that and balance it out a bit and extend it a little.

With the asteroids, we're going to vary their size, with several gameplay implications resulting from that. You'll see when we do another release

[ryandaniels]

I absolutely LOVE this game! One suggestion I have is about unit control. I would like to see the greater control over the seeds, such as:

1. Be able select a percentage to take from a asteroid, because somethimes you need alot, but taking everything just means the guys you are attacking will just run away from the fight to the exposed asteroid, which makes you have to run back and forth trying to catch them. I would suggest maybe having this accomplish by when the player left clicks and drags, he has the ability to scroll with the mouse wheel to select what percentage to send, 100% by default.

2. Mass move orders; Be able to conscript a percentage of all your forces to a certain astreroid(s).

Oh, and I just wanted to post a screenshot off my first game, I was taking my nemisis's last, and possibly home, asteroid;

By ryandaniels at 2008-07-20

[Rudolf]

Hey man, thanks for the suggestions. We are implementing a similar system as what you are suggesting that will allow you to quickly and easily select a group of seedlings of varying sizes. The mega selection is an interesting one, we will have to think about it but with some of our changes in the pipeline it probably won't be appliccable anymore.

Nice screenie! I love moments like that in the game.

[Kaze]

Here's some suggestions which I'd really like to see in this game..

• Multiplayer! Yes! This would be amazing!
• Higher contrast between race colors; I've found myself playing against the same colour (Or similar colour) a few times.
• A larger world! Perhaps you could include more asteroid belts? Or maybe an infinite sized game world?  
• Saving/loading

[Rollins B.]

• Multiplayer! Yes! This would be amazing!
• Higher contrast between race colors; I've found myself playing against the same colour (Or similar colour) a few times.
• A larger world! Perhaps you could include more asteroid belts? Or maybe an infinite sized game world?  
• Saving/loading

Multiplayer? That ... would be ... AMAZING! The only problem would be setting up a server to run the games. I don't know if you guys have any spare servers sitting around, but what could work is PC Based servers. Soldat comes packaged with a program that runs a game server on your PC while you play. The only problem is the guy that designed the game is Polish, so you might not be able to get much help from him. Of course, I'm sure you'd be able to figure it out on your own.

The infinite sized game world would be something awesome to implement too. Maybe it could scale up from Asteriod Belt>Solar System>Galaxy. Ever stage has to be accomplished from the ground up. It would afford hours upon hours of game play.

[mineteaser]

Maybe it could scale up from Asteriod Belt>Solar System>Galaxy.

I really, really, really like that idea. You guys should implement it.
And MULTIPLAYER! AWESOMENESS! Maybe even powerups >_> or not, I don't care about those as much. Also, I think the star in the center should have some use as well. I don't know what that might be, but it just seems as if it's missing something...

[Alex]

there's definitely something similar to Sins if a Solar empire in the way Dyson works. For some thing like that we'd have to impement a couple more levels of detail in the graphics, reduce the number of seedlings or optimise their a.i., and maybe provide some boundary condition that stops you going from one group to another before you've taken over say a certain proportion of you local belt. Sounds fun, maybe if there is time after we've sorted out the stuff we want to do first we will look at stuff like this

[Rollins B.]

there's definitely something similar to Sins if a Solar empire in the way Dyson works.

After playing SOASE, I needed about a hundred aspirin. Everything was way to complicated. Dyson is definitely like SOASE, but about a million times more user friendly.

Congrats on the $200 cash in. It got me thinking though. Do you guys have a paypal? If you do, I might be able to "convince" my parents to give a little cash to help you guys along.

Also, I find it weird that the same spambots join the Omnilabs and Dyson forums at the same time.

[Alex]

Hi Rollins! That is monumentally generous of you. Thank you for the offer. We haven't put up a donation box yet, but we're hoping to get that done soon. We are planning to make Dyson into a game we can sell, or at least sell a portion of, which should be interesting. That won't be for a while, but yeah. Heads up. All news will be well broadcasted

[Vlad]

Count me in the "loving this game" camp, but I also have a few suggestions to throw in...

Mostly, I'd love to see some sort of territory system, or maybe just beef up the defensive capabilities of an individual asteroid.  As-is, I can have an asteroid with a full six trees, 100+ seedlings, and even with a force that size, the AI only needs to take out a single tree and get maybe 10 seedlings into the core to take the planet over.  Now not only have I lost a good source of production, but if I want to retake it, I've got to sacrifice enough seedlings to take over the core, plus another 50 to plant the additional five trees again.  Perhaps make it so that the asteroid can't be captured until all trees are destroyed, giving trees more value than just production.

The whole idea of "territory" comes from the fact that aside from one playthrough of the game, every attempt has come down to huge swarms of AI fighters floating around the map and swarming all over my territories as soon as I move enough ships off it to take it over.  I can't order the ships back until they get where they're going, so I have to pull them from surroundnig territories, leaving them exposed.  So, when the attackers see the cavalry coming to them, they always take off running and end up capturing at least one or two of the asteroids that the other ships came from.  And since it takes far fewer attackers to take over an asteroid than it does to re-establish one, I end up slowly losing ships at best, or in a long, drawn-out stalemate at worst.  I was thinking that maybe some sort of bonus for adjacent asteroids would be useful to help with this:  You could capture any asteroid at any time, but having adjacent ones to the one you're capturing will make it easier (less ships to take the core or something).  This way an enemy could still attempt a risky attack into the heart of your turf if they wanted, but they wouldn't be able to completely steamroll your defenders as easily as they can now.  Similarly, this could also be helped by making ships orbiting asteroids attack passing enemies.  You could then just stack certain asteroids with ships to defend certain areas.

Trees:  It'd be nice to have a list of the current tree status on a given asteroid on the prompt on the lower right (the one with the "plant" button).  As-is, if I'm rebuilding an asteroid that just got attacked, I have no idea how many trees it has without either zooming way in or mousing over the asteroid itself.  On a related note, I think my most wanted feature is some sort of "always on" indicator of how many trees an asteroid has.  You can get a good feel for the number of ships orbiting an asteroid by the density of dots surrounding it, but when I'm controlling half the map and just had ten random asteroids attacked, I hate having to mouse over every single one to make sure that they're all at 6/6.

[Pfhortipfhy]

My suggestion is adding to the FAQ the estimated time of arrival of a mac version, or whether or not one is coming at all.  I haven't actually played this game yet, but it looks great!

[ryandaniels]

Count me in the "loving this game" camp, but I also have a few suggestions to throw in...

Mostly, I'd love to see some sort of territory system, or maybe just beef up the defensive capabilities of an individual asteroid.  As-is, I can have an asteroid with a full six trees, 100+ seedlings, and even with a force that size, the AI only needs to take out a single tree and get maybe 10 seedlings into the core to take the planet over.  Now not only have I lost a good source of production, but if I want to retake it, I've got to sacrifice enough seedlings to take over the core, plus another 50 to plant the additional five trees again.  Perhaps make it so that the asteroid can't be captured until all trees are destroyed, giving trees more value than just production.

The whole idea of "territory" comes from the fact that aside from one playthrough of the game, every attempt has come down to huge swarms of AI fighters floating around the map and swarming all over my territories as soon as I move enough ships off it to take it over.  I can't order the ships back until they get where they're going, so I have to pull them from surroundnig territories, leaving them exposed.  So, when the attackers see the cavalry coming to them, they always take off running and end up capturing at least one or two of the asteroids that the other ships came from.  And since it takes far fewer attackers to take over an asteroid than it does to re-establish one, I end up slowly losing ships at best, or in a long, drawn-out stalemate at worst.  I was thinking that maybe some sort of bonus for adjacent asteroids would be useful to help with this:  You could capture any asteroid at any time, but having adjacent ones to the one you're capturing will make it easier (less ships to take the core or something).  This way an enemy could still attempt a risky attack into the heart of your turf if they wanted, but they wouldn't be able to completely steamroll your defenders as easily as they can now.  Similarly, this could also be helped by making ships orbiting asteroids attack passing enemies.  You could then just stack certain asteroids with ships to defend certain areas.

Trees:  It'd be nice to have a list of the current tree status on a given asteroid on the prompt on the lower right (the one with the "plant" button).  As-is, if I'm rebuilding an asteroid that just got attacked, I have no idea how many trees it has without either zooming way in or mousing over the asteroid itself.  On a related note, I think my most wanted feature is some sort of "always on" indicator of how many trees an asteroid has.  You can get a good feel for the number of ships orbiting an asteroid by the density of dots surrounding it, but when I'm controlling half the map and just had ten random asteroids attacked, I hate having to mouse over every single one to make sure that they're all at 6/6.

I like your ideas, but, just on a strategy note, right now the game is really offense-based, and so defense doesn't work very well. You have to go on the offensive. I can take the whole belt in about 20 minutes by just sending out scouts as quickly as I can to all the asteroids, finding the ones that are uninhabited. Then, you start end out teams of around 10 to 20 seeds to every one of those asteroids, not even planting any trees. You use the seeds that are too far from the frontlines to be of any help in offense to plant a few trees on the choice asteroids, and build up large militias, which you then you use those to squash roving bands of enemies and the local asteroids they own.

[Rollins B.]

Count me in the "loving this game" camp, but I also have a few suggestions to throw in...

I like your ideas, but, just on a strategy note, right now the game is really offense-based...

I have to agree with Ryan that the game is a lot about offense, but Vlad's ideas are pure gold. I do find it frustrating to see a swarm of AI opponents pass 3 feet away from an occupied planet and my warriors do jack s**t about it.

What I'd add to Vlad's defense idea's would be the capability to run patrols. The game could actually do this for you. It could simply take about a third of an asteroids population and distribute it to any close by asteroids. If it does this again and again, you'd end up having a practically endless flow of seedlings patrolling around your owned territories. Of course, this system could be super hard to implement, so it might just be a better idea to have a player controlled patrolling mode.

Once you selected the size of your patrol force, you could chose a path for them to continuously take. They'd proceed to skip form asteroid to asteroid, pausing at each for a couple of seconds, and continuing on if no enemies are detected. The only problem I can see right know is how to select said patrols for reassignment or otherwise. Another panel bound to a certain key, lets say "P", could be popped up and down to see all patrols currently running. They could then be individually selected for editing or to be called of for a more specific task.