Suggestions for improvement

[Tetron]

First I have to say there are several unique traits to this game I like. The tech concept in particular is a nice touch. The issue is that right now there are alot of things that do not work well. I will give what suggestions I have for those I have encountered.

First lets look at boarding. Right now boarding doesnt have a value. If you attempt to board ships during combat you are either going to be forced to destroy the ship or its gonna take out a couple of yours before boarding can complete. Additionally there does not appear to be much value to taking over an enemy ship. Construction times are short enough and command point limits severe enough that I cant see alot of reason to take them over in the first place. With that out of the way lets look at methods to improve boarding. First boarding could resolve immediately, you transport over your troops the calculations take place and one side wins or loses right away. Second sub system targeting could be implemented. This would allow for us to disable engines and weapons so that we could afford to wait out the boarding action. Third boarding could cause the boarded ship to not be capable of using its systems until the boarders were dealt with. While functional I think this is likely to make boarding somewhat exploitable. As an additional note on boarding restricting the numbers to the crew size of the enemy ship is strange, you want overwhelming force if you can have it. Additionally the troop module should be useable to bolster the number of people you can board with or there should be a new module for that purpose.

Next lets look at ship combat. If you need an example to get a feeling for what it should look like take a look at the honorverse combat descriptions. Firstly unless the system is completely undefended enemy ships should start at the edge of the system. The system defenders should have a chance to launch long range attacks and prepare before the ships are nose to nose with each other. This would prevent alot of the combats that end up being battle starts, all ships in range of each other, first one to fire wins. Next something needs to be done about the fragility of ships. Two capital ships fighting each other should not have their fate decided in a single round based on who fired first. Stronger shields, more hitpoints, modules to increase toughness, things of that nature could be utilized. There should also be a point defense setting for weapons. Right now the AI does some truly dumb things if given the chance and point defense settings for weapons would allow for the AIs decisions to be more survivable.

Next lets look at system defenses. Right now its far to easy to take out a fully defended system. The starbases are far to fragile and easily destroyed. These structures dont need engines, dont need to worry about going anywhere, and are right next to the planet. They should be strong, defeatable certainly, but not the pushovers they are now. Additionally the missile defense system is only mildly valuable, generally it gets one shot off before its destroyed. The laser defense system doesnt appear to even get off that much. The range of these things needs to be significantly increased, they need to be able to actually help in the defense. Essentially right now planets cant do anything to stop an attack. If you dont have a fleet in orbit your planet will be taken without a chance to stop the assault.

That should give you guys something to do for now, once the next set of changes are in I might post more.

[Zaimat]

Welcome to the boards and thanks for the feedback Tetron. It's always helpful to us to hear perspectives from different folks on the systems in Horizon.

Regarding Boarding:

- Boarding can be used to capture a ship and then use it or scrap it in the hopes of gaining new technology.
- Boarding can also be used to weaken a ship by damaging it even while in battle (requires transporters or the target to be immobile using assault shuttles). Boarding marines will try to disable/destroy ship components and crew if they can't outright capture a ship.
- Ship sizes (not remaining crew size) determine the max number of marines that can board it.
- Boarding results happen at the end of each round. This is to allow marines from multiple ships to board a vessel (either as aggressors or to help the defending crew based on race relations).
- Stations and Immaterial race ships always self-destruct if captured. For other ships there is a chance based on the strength of the crew vs. the boarding party.

P.S> honorverse, I'll have to read them. It's on my radar. Thanks.

[Tetron]

Well as it stands boarding is not useful enough that I use it for anything except ghost ships. Given that shields have to be down, and you have to wait out the crew taking over all the while getting shot at there isnt a whole lot boarding can do for you. If the mechanic works well enough other people use it then it just might be my style.

On other topics if possible it would be nice when your race has researched all technologies to max if the % of your population doing research goes to 0. That way you dont have to go through 400 planets and delete the research centers to get your production maxed out.

I dont know if there is any plans to change this mechanic but currently mothership vs mothership combat is one shot kill. My mothership fires first its first battery kills your mother ship. There really isnt anyway to stop this currently. Fully decked out with shields armor etc, if their mothership fires a single shot my ship blows up, same for starbases. While this makes for fast battles the big guys should be tougher.

I also think it would be nice if you could set the priorities on your governor. He is always building stuff I dont want so while its somewhat efficient I have to go back and delete buildings. If you could allow us to edit their priority list, like a build que, then they would be even better.

[Zaimat]

On other topics if possible it would be nice when your race has researched all technologies to max if the % of your population doing research goes to 0. That way you dont have to go through 400 planets and delete the research centers to get your production maxed out.

It's a good idea I'll try to get this change in the next update.

I dont know if there is any plans to change this mechanic but currently mothership vs mothership combat is one shot kill. My mothership fires first its first battery kills your mother ship. There really isnt anyway to stop this currently. Fully decked out with shields armor etc, if their mothership fires a single shot my ship blows up, same for starbases. While this makes for fast battles the big guys should be tougher.

I'll re-evaluate late game armor/Hp vs. damage and maybe it's time to tweak it up a bit as there have been other additions/changes which may have tipped the balance too much toward the fragile side. At the same time late game tech/weapons are very crippling so to a certain extent ships won't be able to hold too long vs. concentrated damage.

For the governor system, I agree it would be nice to be able to edit their priorities in-game but there are no plans for it at this time. It would be easy to do through modding though, they are not currently exposed to XML but if it's something you would use, I'll make it moddable.

Thanks for the feedback.