SEV 1.74 misc. Issues and Suggestions

- Bring back the SE4 racial characteristics customisation (points AND sliders).
- .zip / .rar support for saved games (mainly because it's easier to send them when everything is already pre-grouped in a single file)
- a strategy for fighters guarding capital ships => stay close to picket/escort/core/tfleader
- the colony tech should be a racial tech, or at least the setup should have an option to enforce this
- make troops 5-10x bigger, ground combat is unplayable as it is now
- the supply system has to be changed: free supplies from emergency/supply storage components that make all supply (&ordnance) generating components totaly useless; weapon platforms not using supplies making planets impervious to attrition/supply draining attacks, no component for ships/units that would automatically ressuply other ships/units in the sector and no way to automatically make a fleet take all supplies available from other ships/units/planets in a sector.
- fix alliances. at the very least, they shouldn't cancel current treaties. In the meantime, remove the damn alliances.
- area effect weapons
- An alliance victory; tone down Mega Evil Empire; relations should gradually decline; alliances that MEE has should decline even more gradually; empires further away should be less affected towards the MEE
- scrapping population causes unrest and lowers relations with others; mass destroying opponent population lowers relations with others
- selecting a no warp-point game should give you the option for a costly limited use warp point creation item so you don't have to sit through a ton of turns to even get to the tech level.
- more than one ship yard for Ringworlds and Sphereworlds. Perhaps One shipyard for each Huge planet size of facility slots.
- only have the non-breathers of a planet domed incurring a penalty to production. Still keep the term "Domed" for the games tradition sake: example: "10% Domed incurring _____ penalty.
- an option to make warp point travel need several movemetn points, depending on the warp line lenght
- overpopulation should be bad for your colonies
- the possibility to order ships with space yards to add a % of their production capabilities to planet-based/ship-based yards of the same sector.
- crew casualties from weapons hitting ship armor/internals
- range ring colors depend on race color or weapon type. Several range rings, one for each weapon type.
- include player stats in an encrypted file if the the players can only see allies stats
- store separate turn combat replays in separate files
- Cooperative intel should protect your allies, not merely help them in their counter-attacks (which is rather poitnless)
- a blockaded homeworld should still give (at least some - 25%?) ressources to the empire
- shields and shield regeneration should draw supplies. They should partially regenerate during combats (depending on the number of days between the combats)
- max range ships are not paying attention that they are getting close to other enemy ships. This should be chaged.
- end turn auto save
- directed espionage/sabotage like in SE4!
- sats & drones (weapon platforms? => option to add crew) vulnerable to computer virus
- ressource conversion should be done at the same time as you receive ressources from colonies/trade, it should not be just another order (currently it's one of the last orders to be executed, since a planet has a movement speed of 0, which is problematic when you want to use these converted ressources to retrofit ships). Ressource converters should be limited in the amount they convert per turn to force you to build several of them.
- retrofit is very micro annoying but also very effective right now (just like emergency components) since you can execute several retrofit orders per turn. I propose to double the retrofit cost and to remove the 150% limit (this should also be beneficial to the AI).
- to make diplomatic contact, the empires should have seen each other - it should not work when one of them was cloaked (the cloaked one should still receive the other empire info)
- Planet-enhancing abilities (what's done in FQM is a good start, but it could be more diversified and frequent)
- Special projects (or wonders if you're more aware of this term)

An idea to fix emergency components:
1 - they should only be repaired at a planet, not any construction yard
2 - hitting "Use Component" for a fleet, will open the same window as for a ship, but it will use all the emergency components available on the fleet.

The way the supply/ordnance system might be improved:
- supply containing components should be build without any supply inside them.
- when built ships should automatically be ressuplied from the planet or a ship/base/unit stack with a "ressuply component" in the same hex
- planets shouldn't have unlimited supplies in combat, and supply/ordnance depleting weapons should work against them.
- a column listing the current available supplies on the planet in various report screens would be nice (if it doesn't exist already).

Suggested before: (there is a image of it somewhere)
Allow to place lower level components on a ship:
In the Available Components list , next to (I,O) indicator, there could be up and down arrows to change that component's level. These arrows would be greyed out if the current selected level is the min/max available. The current selected levels should probably be remembered from one design to the next.

- When the default don't get hurt strategy is used, if the ship has a weapon, it won't flee. And if it has no weapon it will flee regardless of which one of the default strategies is selected. So Don't Get Hurt is pointless right now.

- When playing in a turn based solo game, if you alt-tab out the game, the moving ships won't cross any warp points. Since moving ships takes some time at the start of each turn, it would be great if they still moved when the game is alt-tabbed out. (It would be even better if you could set them to move without the game having to track and show each one of the ships moving).
Also, when alt-tabbed out, you don't know if there's a combat waiting for you, since the tab only shows "Player X". A "Combat vs Player X", or "Combat vs the Drushocka Empire" would be a lot better indicator.

Good point. I have one other example though where using old designs is useful: If you fear that your ships might be stolen, or to confuse your opponent into thinking that you are weaker than you are. Some mods might also make higher level components a lot more expensive.
Also bigger hulls are sometimes worse at turning and acceleration.

But I agree with you that other features and bug fixes are more needed and/or easier to do.