28-02-2003 19:06									#1
	My two major gripes at this point (suggestions for a patch)... Suffering from ads?

Number one is the grant system. I have found no way to individually assign how much is spent on which planet. The manual says "Grant money will be distributed by the empire to the planets which it feels will make the best use of the funds". What if i have other ideas then the 'empire' though? Nothing I can do I guess. I think it would be a lot better if the grant money was set on the planet screen for each planet individually, and if it sums up to be too much for your treasury, you can scale it down on the empire screen, but if you do that it reduces each planets grant by the percentage you reduced total grants.
I really like to control what I do in a game, not have everything dictated by AI (well, actually personally I dont like to have ANYTHING dictated by AI). This is where MoO3 is seriously lacking, but it can be fixed.

My second worst gripe is related. In MoO2, if you rightclicked on your food/production/research, you got a breakdown of how much you made and why (e.g. 7 total production. +9 from 3 workers, +3 from race production bonus, +2 from morale, -7 from gravity).
In MoO3 you just get a raw number and thats it. No way to track what affects the output how much. Another thing that hinders player control but can easily be fixed.

Another smaller thing is ship design. If you wanted to modifiy a weapon in MoO2, you just doubleclicked it and could tinker with the options. In MoO3, you have to remove it and add it again. Thats mighty inconvenient. Why oh why don't programmers ever adhere to 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'...

Now I havent seen combat yet (except for my scouts being shot down when entering an enemy home system) but from what I hear control is somewhat lacking in there too, so maybe some fixes to add more of it could work there too.

Lata
Krait

	28-02-2003 19:25									#2
	Re: My two major gripes at this point (suggestions for a patch)... Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by krait23 Number one is the grant system. I have found no way to individually assign how much is spent on which planet. The manual says "Grant money will be distributed by the empire to the planets which it feels will make the best use of the funds". What if i have other ideas then the 'empire' though? Nothing I can do I guess. I think it would be a lot better if the grant money was set on the planet screen for each planet individually, and if it sums up to be too much for your treasury, you can scale it down on the empire screen, but if you do that it reduces each planets grant by the percentage you reduced total grants. I really like to control what I do in a game, not have everything dictated by AI (well, actually personally I dont like to have ANYTHING dictated by AI). This is where MoO3 is seriously lacking, but it can be fixed.

You can control it. Enter the system screen and then from there access the planet you want to boost spending on (or you can do it through the Planets screen). Next raise the Economics tab which will reveal the 2 build queues. At which point you can raise funding for say the military queue. It will even indicate when there is insufficient funds on planet to meet your target production rate in which case it will go and take the shortfall from Imperial coffers to make it up.

quote: Originally posted by krait23 My second worst gripe is related. In MoO2, if you rightclicked on your food/production/research, you got a breakdown of how much you made and why (e.g. 7 total production. +9 from 3 workers, +3 from race production bonus, +2 from morale, -7 from gravity). In MoO3 you just get a raw number and thats it. No way to track what affects the output how much. Another thing that hinders player control but can easily be fixed.

This is just poor documentation. If we actually had the hard data on how much food a Bioharvesting DEA produces and the modifier effects terrain has as well as fertillity, it would not be so difficult.

But in the end, its not something you will care about. Each planet averages around 10 DEA's each and once your empire gets to 6 or 7+ systems, there is just way to much for you to micro anyways. The AI does a good job of making sure nothing is screwed up.

quote: Originally posted by krait23 Another smaller thing is ship design. If you wanted to modifiy a weapon in MoO2, you just doubleclicked it and could tinker with the options. In MoO3, you have to remove it and add it again. Thats mighty inconvenient. Why oh why don't programmers ever adhere to 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'...

I totally agree. Ship design is cumbersome.

quote: Originally posted by krait23 Now I havent seen combat yet (except for my scouts being shot down when entering an enemy home system) but from what I hear control is somewhat lacking in there too, so maybe some fixes to add more of it could work there too.

Ship combat is fairly basic. Controls are pretty good from an RTS standpoint. There is no minimap of the system though, which I would like to have since occasionally, my Task forces fire on objects several screens away.

	28-02-2003 20:07									#3
	Re: Re: My two major gripes at this point (suggestions for a patch)... Remove this text

quote: Originally posted by Corentor You can control it. Enter the system screen and then from there access the planet you want to boost spending on (or you can do it through the Planets screen). Next raise the Economics tab which will reveal the 2 build queues. At which point you can raise funding for say the military queue. It will even indicate when there is insufficient funds on planet to meet your target production rate in which case it will go and take the shortfall from Imperial coffers to make it up.

That does not really work. I just specified a 260 AU grant, and the planet I wanted to develop used 54 of that, the rest was distributed to other planets (some of which dont really need it) and there was some surplus, so I guess 54 additional AU is the maximum that planets current infrastructure can make use of. Next turn, I lowered it to 54 AU, so only the planet I want to get it gets it. What does it do? Give 14 AU to each planet, including the one I want to get 54. And all bars are maxed out there, it still won't get more. Thats not my idea of control.

quote: Originally posted by Corentor This is just poor documentation. If we actually had the hard data on how much food a Bioharvesting DEA produces and the modifier effects terrain has as well as fertillity, it would not be so difficult. But in the end, its not something you will care about. Each planet averages around 10 DEA's each and once your empire gets to 6 or 7+ systems, there is just way to much for you to micro anyways. The AI does a good job of making sure nothing is screwed up.

I do like micromanagement, and even if its too much to micro all, I would like to see the exact effects of what the AI does too, and possibly improve it. I NEED those numbers, and best in game as right click context help as it was in MoO2, not just some formulas we have to calc for ourselves.

Lata
Krait