my thoughts on the problems of spaceO... and how to fix them... spaceO 2.0

was told now would be a good time to voice my opinions on what I think would be awesome in spaceO...
before I begin tho, since a LOT of people reading this will probably never heard of me lately... I'm one of those people that played for a REALLY long time... a REALLY long time ago... and stopped due to X reason...
so as a matter of fact, I probably DO know what I'm talking about.

now then, to the suggestions! (and please disregard if it's already taken care of)

-----first issue: alliances are laughable
this can be improved by:
1: making a better structure system in the alliance, such as leader, then vice leader, then 3rd in command, and possibly 4th
2: make alliance specific goals, such as strategic systems that give bonus's when held
3: make alliance specific bonus's... afaik you already have a bonus in place for people going solo...

-----second issue: ships are hard to perfect
personally I like it, but can be made better by:
1: special systems that grant certain bonus's. to keep it balanced when you have no limit on how the big ship is, I like how MoO3 did it... the systems increase in size as a % of total hull space. ie: stealth, allows ship to fire first regardless of order, size = 10% of hull size
2: instead of having a system that affects everything at once, how about splitting it up? have a forward left right and back sides that each have there own values, weapons and armour especially... and then only the side that's facing the enemy is taken into account in battle. to give armour a purpose, armour affects all sides, special only affects 1.. an extra 2 sides if you take a 10-15% increase in hull size for a 'turret mounted' special characteristic
3: speaking of special systems... the swarm bonus was a great idea... but sadly nerfed... it gave people a choice of going with swarms or with superships, now it's just same old cookie cutter super ships... you obviously have a class system in place for ship pictures... how about broadening that out? ships of x class gets y bonus.
4: weapon and armor types. there's a reason almost every single strategy game implements some form of this. when you have only 1 'type' to fit all, your basically building the same thing, as big as possible. even a simple 'rock-paper-scissors' effect can lighten things up tremendously... such as laser weapons, missle weapons, and autocannon weapons (borrowing from some random game I'm sure... if not 2 or 3) you've got plenty of creative people still out there Emi, they could come up with names if you needed them as for what they do, it can just be an x% increase in damage on certain armour. nothing to fancy, just enough to make it more worthwhile
5: as far as learning curve goes... there's plenty of resources on the forum. just keep an up-to-date tip list on how to make 'good' ships and a link to it on ship creation screen... you should be good (note, this list should not have actual formulas, and only a couple specific ship types as example only, there' sother forum places for those)
6: fix for tinyman. I've said it before, I say it again, you did NOT have to kill swarm ships completely to fix tinyman. tinyman was a problem from the fact that the bonus could get so high, from the total space from space 1 to 10... all you had to do was make it so that any 15 space or less ship, will only be considered as 15 space for swarm bonus. which is basically if (space) < 15; (space) = 15

----third issue: the battle system is monotonous
ok, this one really hit me hard, I spend all day making ships, just to use them for the EXACT same thing... 100's of times over and over again... sometimes I barely even looked at the battle report it got so bad, this could be made better by:
1: easiest yet hardest way? put those nice ship pictures to use... make an actual graphical battle to at least see... occasionally watching a horde of small ships blow away a larger capitol ship would be interesting
2: wanna make it better? add some strategy to it... going back to the thing with ship sides, how about certain ships try to go at certain sides of the other ships? to save cost maybe a commander will only put guns on the front of his ship... however the other person decides to attack from the left, and is undefended and only has hull to lean on.
3: if you wanna go all out, make a grid, and make some random sized pics of the ships, and let us actually control them around like an RTS game... though this may be to much... it may want to be more of the sort that you plan a course for the ship, and plan where for it to fire it's weapons, and then both are done at same time for both sides.
4: different modes of attack. capturing is laughable... even if you win at the harder to win battle via bonus's to enemy, you don't get much because the enemy self destructed... please, if the ship gets boarded and gets overrun by 1 million marines... don't have them just self destruct, and especially the computer.
5: the computer is there to grow off of... stop making it so hard... I understand you want the game to have PvP, however your actions of making it harder to grow off of PvE has been counter productive, and it's actually easy to see why. people aren't going to risk resources on attacks that may gain them little unless they have reason to. so it boils down to how hard is it to get those resources back? if it takes a week to get a ship back, there not going to attack a really good player with it for some measly credits that don't pay for 1/10th the ship. this goes along the same lines as ANY strategy game, if your attack is going to cost you 1000 credits, and all you can expect to get from it is 500 credits... why bother?

-----fourth issue: the mothership
this is your homebase for all your galactic travels... right now it seems it just sits there growing carrots and being a remote warehouse, however you could:
1: make it an actual ship in combat... kind of like the space station as it is now
2: make the max size ship you can make based off how many workshops you have
3: add some new structures to influence gameplay, such as research centers to help lower research costs, or long range targetting arrays to give a boost to fleet power when defending/attacking with the mothership

-----fifth issue: the galaxy
some people may claim it's awful... but actually it could be used in MANY interesting ways if done right, including:
1: instead of having it free roam between everywhere, how about limiting it some? I'm not suggesting a lot, more like, you can go from any quadrant to any quadrant freely, however once inside you must go along certain paths. this will allow:
2: territory wars. having a really good mining spot in the middle of a system will now mean fighting TO it
3: building a base and starbase will not only mean production, but a frontline base to protect your newly made planet behind it
4: give new meaning for system structures, especially a structure that allows direct access from 1 system to another (preferably a max distance of 3-4 quadrants away)
5: give new options for quests, since you now have to go certain ways, you may add special events to run into on the way there
6: more forced encounters as well for increased chance of PvP
7: planets should have specific structures that can only be built on them, such as extra bonus's from it. imagine having a combination of a bonus to attack from a planetary magcannon, another bonus from orbital space station cannons, and another bonus mothership ion cannon's. it would make attacking locations where someone is actively defending much better
8: make a seperate place for varying power lvl's, right now, it don't matter how much you work for that new planet, the #1 guy may come over and attack it freely without repercussion. instead have it so that either you do not see at all, or are not affected by, structures and planets outside your 'ranking' and what would those rankings be? this is a good place to start: 1-50, 51-200, 201-1000, 1001+. the only exception should be alliance

-----sixth issue commander traits and exp lvl's in general
don't get me wrong, so far commander has been done fairly well... except it could be better with:
1: with the ability to gain cp's freely independently of gaining lvl's... you should make a set bonus specifically for reaching certain level's, whether it be another bonus to fleet stats, or possibly having an extra fleet or 2 in battle at a single time
2: instead of having it based solely on damage it has done, have it be more like the amount of damage it's done compared to how big the ship is. this way a ship gains veterancy for actually fighting, not for being big. this will allow small ships and small time commanders to experience this aspect of the game, and not just let big ships get huge bonus's for nothing, this will also allow you to:
3: change the exp for ships the way it was before... I understand that it may have made ships overpowered a little, but I thought it was extremely well done. the more experience you got ships, directly made the ships more powerful. if it had 1000 exp, it got 1% boost to something. plus if done with number 2, it will be completely balanced
4: when the ship gets to the next lvl of veterancy, give them an actual boost, on top of that

-----seventh issue DDay could be a bit better
usually by the time DDay starts, you already know whether or not they will succeed... how about making it go like this:
1: 20 commanders sign DDay petition (current rules for joining DDay petition remain the same)
2: the 20 commanders must then conquer an entire quadrant (may be any at this point)
3: once the entire quadrant is conquered, they may select a single star system, and adopt this as the 'harbinger system'
4: the rest of the community will then be charged with attempting to assault the quadrant, and must take out the DDay structure in said harbinger system. To assist in this matter, the DDay member may enjoy a chat that is limited to ONLY the 20 members
5: to make this event more timed, the community will have 24 hours to take out the device, however to move on to the next system in the quadrant, they must keep an active force inside the system for 10 minutes without being destroyed. if they are able to do this, they will then be able to attack a special 'inhibitor' structure placed in each system. when the inhibitor is destroyed, people may freely go past this system to the next, to repeat the process until they get to the DDay device, and take it out. the inhibitor device, when attacked, will generate a battle like a normal battle, with a fleet 100% of your power.
6: now for the fun part... remember those rankings to protect lower people from the higher up's in the galaxy? to keep it actually fair, and actually make the doomsday commanders have to strategize, not power up, to win, you will NOT be able to attack everyone inside the quadrant. it will be divided just like normal galaxy ranking levels, only those within the same ranking, may attack each other. however, the special 'inhibitor' structures AND the DDay device itself, CAN be attacked by anyone in system, regardless of ranking. once again, the ranking differences are based on the ranking boards at the time, being ranks 1-50, 51-200, 201-1000, 1001+. if you counted them, that's right, there's 4 total ranking's, meaning the 20 DDay commanders can split up, 5 each.
7: to maintain fairness inside the contested quadrant, if someone loses all of there ships or gets to where they would be nebbed, they are teleported to a random quadrant (not the dday system) and cannot move for 30 minutes. the only exception to this is if they are one of the 20 dday commanders, in that case they will be teleported to the DDay system. if they are already in the DDay system when they get hit, then they will be moved outside to a random quadrant
7: while those who paid attention may have noticed already, I feel it is important to mention this... I never said the 20 commanders are the -only- ones that can protect the structures. they shall just be the only ones to get the special bonus's. if someone not in the 20 commander list wants to help defend... there will be nothing stopping them from attacking fellow commanders, save for the ranking restriction.
8: all rules currently in place for if the DDay device goes off, are great as they are, and can remain as they are, including the free-for-all... no power or ranking limitations on attacking apply anymore.

that's all I can think of... a long list, a lot of ideas, I hope some of this gets applied... I know this is almost completely redoing all of space O, however I doubt anyone here will really disagree in that if done this way, would completely reshape SpaceO for the better

--editted DDay device completely... take a look and tell me if it sounds like it might work