Welcome back devs! Don't let the haters get you down about this being a "wasted" development diary. So many developers and companies don't give a crap about communicating with their player base or taking their suggestions seriously. And what do the Paradox devs do the first day they come back? Update us on the status of the game and the future development of it! It is one of the things I love about the Paradox team because you all actually care about your games and the community that supports them. Keep it up! Some of the things I would like to see in the next patch:
1. Further UI Improvements: The UI has gotten better, but it still needs a lot of work especially when trying to access information on the galaxy or other empires. For example, when I want to trade for a strategic resource, I have to click on every empire one at a time and enter the trade screen to find out if they even have what I want. And when I go back to the empire screen, it automatically scrolls up to the top making me have to scroll back down to my original place. Repeat this 30+ times trying to find the right rare resource and you can see the problem! Another example is late game with the overview on the main screen. As you research the repeat tech to give you more core systems, the planet section on the overview becomes terribly huge so more filters or the ability to select what planets appear would be awesome!
2. Ship Designer. Give us the ability to make larger ships, military stations, and spaceports. A 3 section battleship, which has the same sections as a cruiser is underwhelming. A 4 section battleship would be awesome. Basically 1 front section, 2 mid sections, and a end section. Make the current 3 section battleship a battle cruiser and make the new 4 section battleship the battleship or just call it a dreadnought. Make a new level of military station above fortress and call it a citadel. Right now military stations just don't have enough stopping power. Also reduce military station maintain cost. Right now they just cost too much to maintain for what they do. Overall, more ship options and sections would be awesome. And perhaps the ability to reskin current ship modules, like dark avian ships with green light effects etc.
Oh and some different engine sections for the larger ships like battleship and cruiser would be amazing. Right now some of them look so small compared to the rest of the ship. The engines on a ship that size should be one of the biggest things on the ship!
3. Improve Sector Management. With all the additional influence costs, give us the ability to rearrange sectors at no or at reduced influence cost. Restrict it to only be possible every X years. One thing that stops me from using sectors more often in the late game where I can have most of my systems in my core is the 25% resource reduction from having a max 75% tax rate. Perhaps a tech that increases the max rate further would be a good improvement so we can reduce micro and clutter as sectors are intended to do while reducing the resource penalty from using them because mid/late game every credit counts when you are trying to maintain the fleet!
4. Improve Sector Appearance. Sectors can look horrid at times in contrast to an otherwise very beautiful game. You can have very jagged and sharp unnatural sector borders in contrast to the smooth empire borders. The white overlay also looks bad over the empire colors. Changing the sector appearance to better harmonize with the empire borders would be awesome. At the very least give us the ability to filter the borders on or off. If off the sector borders would be removed but leave the sector name centralized over the sector so you know generally where the sector is and what it contains. You would still be able to see the exact borders in the menu where you can adjust sectors or create new ones.
5. Relocate Capital. Make it cost influence/credits/minerals and remove capital only tiered buildings from the original capital and restrict it however to make it balanced. A galactic civilization should be able to move their capital when it grows in size, new species are incorporated into the civilization, or another that grows higher in wealth or prominence surpasses the original capital. For example, you start on some backwater world on the outer rim with little resources and only one cognizable planet. 300 years later your empire has expanded and incorporated many new species and planets with systems having multiple planets larger and with more resources than your pathetic little starter world and yet it remains the undisputed capital? Before I started using a mod, I would let empires conquer my original capital so I could forcibly change it to a better system!
6. More flavor events especially in the mid to late game.
There are many other improvements or additions I would like as others have mentioned in this thread and others, but these are the main ones for me.
I only bother nitpick on some of these small issues because I know Paradox devs love what they do and truly care about this game. Keep it up Paradox!
