So I have been playing entrenchment and I have to say great job! the update is fantastic, and adds a lot of options that I really REALLY like. there are of course issues with it that i have, and I will list them here, anyone else who has thoughts or suggestions or just thinks I'm completely wrong just list it here. i have highlited the bullets incase your lazy ass doesn' want to read all of my rhetoric.
FIRST of all KNOWN bugs
1. if alloyis active youcannot upgrade space stations. you tell me it doesn't make any sense to me
2. when selecting groups of ships from the zoomed out MAP mode clicking multiple times selects the different ships in the sector. Holding SHIFT while giving commands to said ships should make ALL selected ships do whatever it is you said. Unfortunatly in quite a few swituations only the CAP ship, or the highest level ship or only the first selected ship will follow the command.
3. When holding shift and giving chain commands to ships RIGHT click gegnerally means attack, however if you tell a ship to attack ships in one system, move to a position, jump, and then attack ships in another system that ships interprets the commands for the second system as MOVE TO instead of ATTACK. This has been pissing me off since 1.12, but of course the way to fix it is to click the ATTACK button when issueing the chain of commands.
4. for some reason now, if there is any bounty on anyone and those bountys are = with reguards to any pirate inhibiting upgrades pirates will dispatch for all parties with bounty...huh...I dont get it, I mean if that is on purpose ok sure, but I didn't know if this was intentional or not.
5. I CANT HOST. Primarily becuase I'm playing on a laptop, and my little Dualcore 1.5Ghz with 8 gigs of ram (using readyboost) can't make the server run, I know I need a new computer, but all that aside, 45 minutes into EVERY game it slows to a crawl. I would imagine that this is due to the THOUSANDS of mines, and hundreds of strike craft that littler the screen at any point in time. OK OK this isn't really a bug I just wanted to vent.
#1 Carriers Mines and Strike Craft OH MY!!!
Something SERIOUSLY must be done about the power of carriers. They are uber in every situation, and even the addy to the tec hanger for flak cannons makes little to no difference when 5 or more carriers are nearby. SO!!! I propose the following minor changes that will not only make carrier spam a little less effective, but also make mine spammers think twice about laying 5millions mines anywhere (<--guilty).
A. Strike craft can run into mines. Thats it. It gives me a feasable way to beat carriers without spamming anti air frigates, or an = or > number of carriers, and it solves the problem of clearing mine fields! which currently is very slow and terribly annoying because they are not auto targeted even when a scout is nearby, and it adds a little bit of balance to the field of carrier spam which I think is the lamest thing since pickles and cream cheese iceing (which you really must try).
B. please PLEASE make the thing slower OR drop the hitpoints of the carriers. maybe by HALF or something. as if it isn't dumb enough to have to chase them all over the map with my entire fleet firing, but again all one has to do is spam a ton of carriers, and most small frigates will die on thier way (especially if the players is good) to the carrier. The whole point of the carrier is that it is a sitting duck, and that in its OWN right it should require a great deal more care than it currently does.
NERF CARRIERS, Update strike craft.
#2 Mines
A. In the prior paragraph i explained about clearing mines with carriers. it would be an effective way for someone to clear an area that had been OVER mined if they didn't have a scout in the area because HEY strike craft are expendable. On top of that they travel so fast they would have trouble avoiding the mines even if they COULD see them, so they should die.
B. I dont understand WHY I can SEE the enemy's mines WITHOUT a scout. I mean i know i can't attack them, but it kinda defeats the purpose if they are visable. phased out and cloaked would probably be a better thing. I mean the whole idea is that you surprize the nme with a load of explosions at a place he wasn't expecting them. Obviously if you do this then the area in which a scout can see the mine will be drastically increased, and a fleet should automaticcaly assume the mine is a priority target and destroy if detected. Double blind please.
C. Damage that the mines do is great! no complaints there at all. but why dont exploding mines damage friendly targets? I mean Ill be fine with it if you can explain to me why a vasari mine cant hurt a vasari ship, but you better not steal your explainination from star trek.. Nothing would make me feel better than to suicide one of my strike craft into an nme mine because the moron got his CAP ship too close to it. This is a defeinite MUST for mines, honestly it is silly that they dont do damage to everything within explosion radius. On top of that it requires a little more CARE for placement. I like the idea of creating mine fields at certain locations so that if you are runnning away with your cap ship and you have to jump at a certain spot to miss mines the NME doesn't know about, and BOOM all pursuing crafts dissapear giving my badly damaged cap ship a needed upgrade. this may force players to have a little more artistic liscense when setting up UBER defences at thier homeworlds. It may also force players to make use of the regimenting, engagement range, and fleet cohesion commands that are currently basically useless.
D. Drop the hitpoints of all mines to 50 or less, and let it upgrade with the standard hitpoint upgrade. A large group of scouts should be able to effectively clear an entire mine field a whole lot quicker then they currently can.
E. maybe a smaller graphic for the mines...like a flashign pixel or something because they cause really bad crashes.....
Mines cloak + damage to friendlys + more strategic value + less hp = happy krunk
#3 Capital ships
A. you'd think by now that all the races got a little smarter and mounted a couple of flak guns on thier cap ship. I mean the cap ship has ervery other type of gun, but no flak guns for anti fighter roles? Come on...just 1 or 2, so that a single carrier cant run away from a cap ship in a system, and assuming a 1 on 1 the cap ship shouldn't take any damage at all from just one carrier. not 5 or 10 ok I see that, but 1 carrier can dfestroy a lone cap ship one on one? nah i just don't buy it. Lotf of people have been complaining that cap ships are too easy to kill. THIS I dont have a problem with, if anything I would sacrifice some hull points for a few flak cannons. I was really hoping this might be a part of the expansion.
B. In every space show/movie/whatever about space ships the CAPITAL ships were always able to overtake the smaller ships in a straight line race. Yeah they dont have the same acceleration or maneuverability as a smaller ship, but if something (like a carrier) is running away from a Capital ship, if it is a straight line the capital ship should easily overtake the little bastards. I'll settle for just making the CARRIERS slower though.
Flak Guns, and straight line Top speed increase.
#4 Hostile strategy vs Enlightened strategy
A. It is appearant to me that building hostility, or upgrading for destruction is A+ #1 strategy in this game. I have now triend alsmost everything i can think of to start out getting economy booming and then massing a fleet quickly rather than just spamming a bunch of ships and racing off to an nme homeworld. For some reason the winning start always seems to be the guy with the most ships. I was really hoping that this expansion might offer a couple more ways to win than just spamming more carriers than your "phoe" so in the interest of this here is what i suggest. DOUBLE the fleet upkeep increase expenditures. if ANYONE makes it to the top echelons of fleet they should be LOSING money, and should have a time limit as to how long they can win, meaning that under the duress of taxation planets will start to revolt because you poured too much money into WAR and not enough into economy. ALso if you go too far with fleet you should be able to "Scuttle" your logistics level, becauase if you lose to much money becuase you built too much fleet you lose. no fight no nothing. When my fleet gets wiped out by mines I dont want to be paying 19% of my income. If you want to go back up of course you have to REBUY the level, but at lease the retreating party gets a fighting chance to recover.
This is all for now, I'm sure I will have a lot more input later.