I think i posted in the wrong beta area about that..doh! Er anyhow the only thing ive found so far is i wish there was a way to implement a way to control which system the AI sent our trade ships. In space empires 5 you could simply click the solar system and tell it "avoid system" and all your ships would avoid it. I think you could implement something like that here for the planets. It would add more control over the AI's choices, plus help save a few silly traders that cant understand the concept of not flying into enemy territory.

Positive things, im enjoying the beta more and more each time you come up with an update. For kicks i broke out my old copy of IG2, played for about an hour and realized..i liked Sins beta more

Keep up the good work!

Into my second game on hard, The first was just to cut my teeth.

I really have some issues with the AI and some suggestions that will make fleet management easier. I am sure that some of these items have been mentioned before, but there is nothing like a little re-enforcement to get the point across. I will also refer to the AI in 2 separate areas, battle (BAI) and campaign (CAI). I also want you to understand my background. I mod strategy games, I have modded Moo3, Jagged alliance 2, Rome total war, and Medieval total war 2. I mod elements of the game to be more balance or realistic. SO I do understand what is going on with the game.

1) Fighters:This is either a bug or the amount of targets fighters can attack needs to be changed. Fighters by their nature are for CAP (Combat Air patrol, No buzzwords here) to protect the fleet. They should not be able to attack targets other than Bombers and fighters and bombers should be the #1 priority, However I see them all over the place attacking targets they have no business attacking, while bombers are blowing up my fleets. They need a CAP zone of control around their fleet so they protect it.

1a) New feature,Fighter and Bombers orders commands: Fighters could have CAP to protect the fleet, and Air superiority where they go out and destroy Bombers and fighter outside of the Cap zone. Bombers need 3 priorities: Fleet attack, 1) Capital ships first then planetary attacking ships etc. 2)System defenses Bomber facilities then turrets. Finally auxiliary targets which would include everything else, giving priority to repair facilities, trade ports and culture generating items.

That priority system should also be used for the main fleet to a certain degree. With the planet being last.

2a) BAI retreating: Even if I am more powerful, the BAI needs to be attacking with out retreating, even to sacrifice some its fleet to make damage to the system or fleet it is attacking. It should be willing to commit up to a strength of 1.5 :1 , more than that would be suicide. In that case, the CAI needs to kick it into high gear and start producing ships to get it's numbers up. It's fine for the AI to do hit and run raids but it needs to accomplish something before it retreats, like blow up a cap ship, or a defense turret.

2a) BAI Combat Priorities:in combat is not making good decisions when setting priorities when attacking a system you own. If you have a fleet in it it should give priority to Cap ships first. As I said above in the bomber priorities, the fleet needs better decision guidelines.

3) Planet Area is too small, It needs to be expanded 2 to 3x for fleet operations. Have 2 areas the gravity well area, then free space for fleet operations and to jump. I know it's late in the development phase for this, but it would really add a lot to the epic feel of battles. With the "free space area", If you have watched the new Battlestar Galactica and the way they "jump" would be perfect, that way your fleet can stay in formation but appear at slightly different times. This makes them Combat ready when entering the system. It also allows for the fleet to protect the Capitol ships when leaving a system.

4) Some serious work needs to be done for fleet cohesion and orders (both AI and manual commands), certain ships should never leave the core of the fleet. Yet they go out toodling around and try and destroy things they have no business destroying. Flack and missile ships should be staying with core group. Quit separating the carriers at the edge of the system, they have no protection there, they need to stay with the fleet. In your AI you need to assign priorities to each specific ship type, so they quit acting so stupid. If it is to support the fleet keep it there. If it is offensive then it should be on the outer edges of the fleet so it can engage targets. Fleet cohesion is a joke for the single player because when a fleet is formed the default setting of the fleet need to be change to small area, instead of "gravity well"

5) I would like to have a merge(to make it one task force not two) and a split function for my fleets, because it takes way too much time to do this on my own and I might get pummeled while doing it.

I have more, but these are top priority fixes, the Battle AI is no joke, because most people do not play multi-player. These changes would make this game much stronger.

As it is I am pwning your AI currently on the hardest level. IMHO Single player needs fixed in order to make sure the AI works, ore all other effort are futile. You have a very good game here. I really like playing it, which says alot in itself. You should take my advice because I have been strategy gaming for over 25 years. I have played Star fleet battles, and Battle Tech intensely, before I even played games on my commodore 64!!

I'd think most people would understand Combat Air Patrol -- and it isn't a vague enough term to make me snap over it

Devs have acknowledged that the fighter AI needs work -- they should prioritize fighters above all else, not hare off after other ships.

Ah, but some of us like having them sit on the entrance point -- that way, they can jump out fast. And they aren't half as big a target as they would be in the middle of my fleet, inside enemy weapons range.

The devs are well aware of the fact that the AI is a joke. they've working on it, but other changes to gameplay and technical matters take priority.

If the game doesn't run, it doesn't matter how good the AI is. And polishing the AI while in the middle of changing game mechanics isn't just difficult, its a foolish waste of time.

... that's not necessarily a bad thing. Human players/other AI's might be influenced by bounties as well. Of course in a 1v1 you are absolutely right, there would be no point, but otherwise there still might be something to gain.

The Ironclad Multiplayer needs to be improved.

When you create a game you're stuck in the chat area for the game and can't get back into the general chat area to recruit players. Why can't the general chat area and the game chat area be in the same screen with two scroll areas and text input areas? Why must these be separate forms?

Why must you go to a separate screen to see what games are available to play? Why can't the available games be displayed in the general chat area. Would be nice if you could left or right click on a game to see what scenario it was, number of players allowed and who was already in the game? Would also be nice if some optional descriptive text could be added to the game name like 'anyone can join'.

When someone doesn't talk for a long period of time could you mark them as AFK so you can tell if players in the general chat are available? You now have to ask 'anyone around' to see if anyone is still at the keyboard.

The ability to move constructors is very nice, but it added imho one big annoyance to the game.

Constructors are shown as ships in the planet overview, when zoomed out.

Before that, I could see with one glance which planets have ships and which not.

Now I have to hover over it to see if there are only constructors, or other ships besides.

I don't think that it is important to see constructors or to be able to select them when zoomed out, but it's more important to see where your ships are. Thus I would like it if you could change it, so that constructors aren't shown as ships in orbit anymore when zoomed out.

that too would be nice.

however, to counter the "fight it to the end" problem, how about surrender/ vasselage? the idea is that once you take out a few of a player's planets they are effectively out of the game. a human player would probably leave instead of fighting it out, but surrender would be an alternative.

basically what I think of is that the winning side grants a non agression treaty and full visibility. for this he spares the the vassal, but the latter needs to pay a percentage of their regular income to his overlord, said percentage can be negotiated in the game.

in a ffa that way a player can turn their ressources elsewhere and get some more ressources and ship support from a beaten player. the question is just whether this option is interesting enough for the beaten one to even consider. but if it is people that know each other and want to continue to chat and maybe play another game later on, it could be interesting to keep all players in the game until it is finished.

Think it would be nice to have an auto develop for planets/asteriods. On larger systems its pretty hard to manage them all especially when your steamrolling past the enemies defenses with 200 ships. Maybe have a que system so you just build things in line and not look back.

Or replaced with something that isn't a placeholder. Which, BTW, is exactly what the devs have confirmed it to be (repeatedly): a placeholder.

Play close encounters -- once scout can cover both of the asteroid belts using that technology. And without the enemy even knowing you've done it.

Yep, they now only block enemy ships from jumping to planets which you also own, ie. prevent them from jumping farther into your territory.

It's not true in my experience. I had a situation exactly as you describe earlier today--scout killed a fraction of a second after the probe pod deploys--and it worked just fine.