Wishlist / Feature Request Compilation

This is a wishlist/feature request compilation. Nothing here pertains to the 'technical preview 1.5' that's currently live. These requests/musings are very likely to evolve with the game as it develops.

I'm not sure if this is the best location for this kind of feedback, but I don't want to bog down sitreps with items beyond the current build's scope. Some of these may get submitted as sitreps-requests later on when the game nears release. Some may be modified and resubmitted as the game is built.

Bias disclaimers:

• I only play in single player and only with random maps. I treat my games as little stories, so I will always focus on seeking immersion into each game’s “world”
• I will always prioritize fun over balance
• My intentions here are merely to throw my $0.02 into the mix
• I have explored the game files for modding purposes; some of my requests may already be possible and I simply haven't put 2 & 2 together yet. I'm new to sins modding..

Game Menu [Art]

• Allow the menu to be reskinned via an art toggle (music, if any, is controlled by this too).
  • Players can set their game menu appearance to use: a TEC interface, Advent interface or Vasari interface. Hopefully, this feature won't require a game restart
  • Allow additional interfaces to be added via mods. The reason behind suggesting this is to help allow multiple mods to coexist by minimizing competition over file overwriting. Players can then choose between any of the skins provided by mods or by the base game
  • (most of my favorite sins:rebellion mods alter the start menu appearance/music - I just think/hope it'd be easier to merge those mods if this was an option)

Art

• [this concept already posted to dev-ama] Planet bonuses can have visual effects for the planet
  • The ionic_storms_planet_bonus grants the host planet additional cloud cover/storm systems with frequent lightning: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gyUKAXRMj0]. Note: displaying the correolis effect would be cool
  • The dust_storms_panet_bonus is similar to the ionic storms, but with a different coloration. Note: displaying the correolis effect would be cool
  • For a [currently non-existing bonus] 'high solar radiation' (star's gravity well & planets adjacent to the star) type bonus its should give the planet perpetual aurora borealis at the planet magnetic poles and impact the shields of all ships/structures in the gravity well
  • The death_world_planet_bonus will cause terran planets to swap the 'green' for the stone grey of asteroids/moons. All planets with this bonus would not show civilization lights on the nightside of the planet
  • The frequent_meteorites_planet_bonus will cause additional small asteroids/meteors to appear in the gravity well. In addition, meteors are seen to randomly strike the planet [seconds 7-8, near top right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNixNC_mAk8]
  • Massive Pure Glaciers (from rebellion) would grant the planet the appearance of glaciers that reach  +/- 40 degrees latitude from the geographic poles (more of an ice age than an ice planet)
• Planet bonuses can have visual effects for ships in gravity well
  • The antimatter_cores_planet_bonus cause the shields of all ships/structures within the gravity well to appear distressed (for realizing this, all that comes to mind is to impact the ships with invisible projectiles that deal 0 damage, or something like 0.000001 damage if zero itself is uncooperative)
• Ships captured with abilities can have art effects. (for mods) This could also just be an alternate skin getting displayed due to an effect on the ship.
• Colonized planets can have art effects applied to the planet by its owner (for mods) This could also just be an alternate skin getting displayed due to an effect on the planet.
• Ships can display faction symbols chosen at game start (currently they all default to the same TEC symbol)

Planet systems [some of these are tweaked from a previous post]

• Binary Stars (with orbit that is a function of each stars size/mass)
• Planet orbits can be elliptical (most would be set to near-circular, but some can be given very elliptical orbits such as comets and asteroid belts)
• Planets can have up to two moons. (No moons is most common)
• Gas Giant planets have [2,5] moons, if no planets, (number here is arbitrary, but the upper end should be w/e fits best with the game)
• Gas Giant planets have [0,2] planets (number here is arbitrary, but the upper end should be w/e fits best with the game)
• Rogue Planets (single or a group of gravity wells that are "shared" across [2,3] stars and will travel between stars. Phase lanes only exist for the planet when its reached the outer reach of the closest star system. Move speed of this planet/planet-group is significantly faster than typical orbit speeds)
• Comets (when/if they are added) have high eccentricity orbits that can deviate +/- 30deg from the typical 'plane' of the star system. Have the comet's tail always face away from the star.

Gameplay

I'm still musing on the militia vs garrison breakdown...

• Militia Trait 'bonus' - Allow the outlaw sectors militia (uncontrollable) to return for specific factions.
  • TEC rebels - don't have garrisons, instead your planets randomly spawn militia that attack border worlds.
  • Vasari loyalists - don't have garrisons, instead your planets randomly spawn militia that attack border worlds. Vasari militia can see/use phase gates
  • Advent loyalists - don't have garrisons, instead your planets randomly spawn militia that attack border worlds.
• Garrisons Trait 'bonus' - only used by specific factions
  • Allow the garrison to be set as either defensive (only enters friendly gravity wells) or territorial (current behavior of attempting to clear enemy ships in range)
  • Tec Loyalist - can have/use garrisons
  • Vasari Rebel - can have/use garrisons. Vasari & Vasari-ally garrisons can see/use phase gates.
  • Advent Rebel - can have/use garrisons
• Planet Bonuses
  • Frequent Raiders - has pirates/militia spawning at the planet/asteroid every couple of min [max supply is 100]. (ships spawned by this bonus don't give XP)
  • Pacifist society - planets cannot build garrison recruitment centers or spawn militia
  • Militaristic populations - inherently have planet garrisons. Capital Ships/Titans built here have a small bonus to XP gains
• Planet Slots
  • Smuggler's Den - reduces pirate raids against the planet by X supply (loot is already being acquired, so fewer pirates are interesting in direct attacks)

Pre-Game Settings

• Occupation Victory - controlled by a slider-bar in game menu as a percentage range of {Off,[51%,100%]}
• Minor Faction - behavior toggle.
  • No minor factions
  • Default minor factions
  • Expanded minor factions - a rework/elaboration. currently based on what we saw with sins"rebellion & as of technical preview 1.5
• Pirates - mode toggle
  • No pirates
  • Default pirates - they just attack with fleets, similar to what we see in-game
  • Expanded pirates - multiple pirate factions can exist, or pirates 'level-up' and add-in utility/complexity as players make use of their services. Whichever works better

Minor Factions [Default]

• Allow minor factions to apply their own effects to themselves (i.e. the miners grant themselves the mining boost)
• Please allow Militia & Minor Faction AI the capability to use the following: (even if they are left blank in base-game)
  • research subjects (if they are defined within the player file)
  • buildable units/unit limits (if they are defined within the player file)
  • buildable structures (if they are defined within the player file)
  • planet level upgrades (if they are defined within the player file)
  • planet level upgrades (if they are defined within the player file)
• Currently, minor factions can globally be set to as ally/enemy of playable factions & minor/militia factions. It would be appreciated if we could whitelist or blacklist additional factions using faction 'race' and using faction names.
  • Example 1, Naibor Liberation Front is an ally to all TEC factions, but are enemies to the advent/vasari races (regardless of playable/NPC)
  • Example 2, Renzo's Resistance Fighters, Laesinda Dominion & Arankul Mercenaries would be hostile to each other specifically as they 'compete' as mercenary factions
  • Example 3, Pranast United is hostile to the Advent Race, but has whitelisted Alutar Enclave specifically (this advent breakaway is pacifist)
  • Note: if this would cause too many issues for the MP crowd, then please allow it to be a possibility for the expanded minor factions (just leave the blacklist/whitelist blank in the base-game file)

Minor Factions [Expanded]

• Allow modders to set a research-bias for AI
• Allow modders to set a planet-component-bias for the AI to use
• Allow modders to set a ship-component-bias for the AI to use
• Allow modders to set expansion capabilities of the AI
• Allow modders to define planet structure placements and to set NPC gravity well placements
  • Allow for structure/starbase/weapon-defense platforms to be set as being clustered near a resource asteroid
  • Allow for structure/starbase/weapon-defense platforms to be set as being at, say, 30degree intervals (and AI will slowly fill in the gaps as it can)
  • Allow for totally random structure/starbase/weapon-defense placement
  • Currently, my take on how to implement this is using a polar coordinate system and for the "r" just use a [0,100]% placement for distance from the planet surface
• Minor factions use their income + the gold/resources they get from auctions/black-market to build their fleets and pay for their research
• Allow minor factions to place bounty on other minor factions (those they are hostile with)
• Minor Faction NPCs can research the items defined for them in their player file
• Minor Faction NPCs will build the structures defined for them in their player file
• Minor Faction NPCs will build fleets using the ships defined for them in their player file
• Minor faction NPCs will search their planets for bonuses/artifacts (possibly without revealing their artifact finds directly to the player?)
• Behaviors (allow modders to grant 1 or more of these AI behaviors to minor factions)
  • Allow modders to give individual minor factions the "militia trait" bonus and/or the "garrison trait" bonus
  • Economy-type minor factions: focus on an excessive number of trade port structures. For planet slots they’d focus on commercial districts, media conglomerates & autonomous refineries. They would have technologies to research that improve their resource income
  • Aggressive-type minor factions: these have militia that will randomly spawn and attack enemy worlds. For planet upgrades, they’d focus on garrison upgrades. Research would focus on damage & offensive abilities
  • Defensive/Turtle-type minor factions: focus on starbase construction and defensive structures (with a trade port). For planet upgrades they’d focus on Hardened Bunker & Tactical Relays. Research wise they'd focus on buffing fleet supply & ship durability
  • Research-type minor factions: like to explore and will usually have smaller, but better fleets. They’ll max out their planet upgrades with Surface Research Labs. For tech priorities, they’d prefer to increase credits/metal/crystal first to fund their research, then focus on improving the hull/armor/shields/weapons of their ships. Structures would be focused on research labs. Giving them unique capital ships that bolster their research could be flavorful as well
  • Colonizing-type minor factions would be focused on colonizing worlds adjacent to their own. Per the player files we can determine the types of planets they would want to colonize
    • Allow the factions to be set to colonize within a specified number of jumps from their homeworld
      • Some can be set to only expand to planets adjacent to their homeworld
      • Some can expand as they please up to the specified distance
    • This type of faction could function similar to the playable factions, but it would never be capable of "winning" the game. Perhaps due to it not being classified as a playable faction
• Minor Factions can have/apply homeworld planet bonuses (as of tech preview 1.5 the TEC can have planet bonuses assigned to them, but minor factions cannot)

Pirates [Expanded]

• Mercenaries - these pirates specialize in stealing ships (once they Board ships, they retreat from the planet they attacked). Early game they're only able to capture corvettes & frigates. With research, they gain abilities to capture Cruisers. Late game they can capture capital ships and weapon platforms/hanger bays
• Racketeers - these pirates send a single, durable 'diplomatic' ship. When it reaches a planet, it uses an ability that siphons credit & resource income [25%,50%] away from the affected planet for a long duration [600s]. They use these resources to strengthen their fleet/planet/research. They will not attack planets with a smuggler's den.
  • Players can spend resources to clear the debuff sooner, via the planet card (planet ability)
• Cartels - these are the default pirate design. You hire them to attack planets. They die attacking the planet (if they bomb it out, they'll colonize it and rule it as their own)

Militia Factions

• Allow militia worlds to spawn in (similar to sins 1 with ability to set % of colonized worlds). My head-cannon is that these are simply colonies that haven't yet developed into minor factions is all - maybe they're untrusting or maybe they don't have anything to sell.
• Allow these NPC to make use of any tech trees/structures/buildable units they are given. Personally, I plan to mod them to be very simple if able

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= devs can ignore the following

Sit-reps [requests] (these have been submitted already, I just keep them here so I don't forget about them and repost..)

1. Allow fleets to be named
2. After researching psidar, research centers reveal the time left for phase lanes. Alternatively, psidar upgrade instead reveals time left for phase lanes
3. From the game UI, create a tab that expands on the game information. Allow the tab name to vary based on faction (i.e. TEC use 'Almanac', Advent use 'Repository' & Vasari use 'Index'). This database would comprise of subtabs, such as: [note, each item provides lore & stats]
   1. Star types (and effects from being in their gravity well)
   2. Planet/Asteroid gravity well types 
   3. Uncolonizeable gravity well types
   4. Planet Bonus list
   5. Ship/Structure catalog, by faction (minor factions too)
      1. basically the dev journals you've been doing on the TEC capital ships so far, just for every ship and allow it to also display the weapon damage/shield/hull/armor & ability upgrades available
   6. Random Event list (this will only get updated based on encountering them within a game)
   7. Artifact List (this will only get updated based on encountering them within a game)
   8. Faction List (this will only get updated based on encountering them within a game)