although i see what people are complaining about regarding siege frigates, the solution to nerf them could easily result in players having the converse response when on the offensive ("my siege frigates don't last long enough to take the planet").

i suggest having a toggle option in the siege frigate tactics menu that would allow for two types of attack. you could call the button light/heavy, humane/drastic or my personal favorite: subatomic/nuclear.

The first option (subatomic) would essentially be a "nerfed" version of the current system. it would take a bit longer (or require more frigates) than it does now. but the second option (nuclear) would be a more desperate and devastating assault. i would recommend actually increasing the effectiveness of siege frigates for this option. the drawback is that the planet's biosphere will be damaged. post-invasion colonization will be much more difficult, costly, or cannot be accomplished for some period of time (and perhaps in later versions the planet could even disintigrate).

AI would need to be instructed to only use nuclear if in desperate need (say if the enemy player's reinforcements translate insystem) or if under an aggresive personality.

This is off the top of my head, but with some planning I think this could ultimately please both camps on the siege friagte controversy.

I would like the Ability to host games

Capital Ships ONLY MP mode

I played single player game and just built capital ships to get a achievement. It was a Tempest Map with 26 planets.
At the end, it turned out to be a totally different game experience. 3 Hard AI were bashing me with huge fleets where I had to fortify all the planets to buy time for my groups of capital ships to move in, to defend the planet.

I hope there is a Capital Ship ONLY mode in MP game where you can only make 3~4 of each capital ships (or player can adjust how many each you can make, like 5X, 7X each in huge maps). (if not I am sure players will only spam carriers)

I like all of the ideas posted by frogboy, and would like to add just one more. Increase the PJI's radius to that of the gravity well of its planet and buff it to something more useful like a minute or so of not being able to jump possible have a system of stacking higher time delays through research, but it should at least cover the entire gravity well.

Diplomacy - Would it be more logical to have a system where you start out with something like a 25% approval rating or so with the AI, and originally start with small missions like - Give X resources to us/team... - with only a small decrease in friendship if you do not complete the missions. When you get past, say, 50%, the missions get harder and you lose more friendship, and once past 75%, well, lets say thats when the - Kill X ships/structures of enemy - diplomacy comes in. This would get rid of early game problems, and allow the player to actually (possibly) be able to FIND the AI they are being asked to destroy. The original way seems a little off. I mean, do you go to somebody you just met and go, "Hey, can you go and infiltrate this facility that you have never seen of or heard of, and destroy these things. If you don't, its war. Have a nice day. It just doesn't seem right.

Also, I had an idea for the siege frigate stuff (and it works for other things too). Say, for instance, that an enemy fleet pops in on your planet and manages to destroy most of the major defenses on that side of the planet, then they destroy the colony on the planet. However, your influence on the planet is strong, and they can't colonize it. One of your fleets jumps in and manages to chase out the enemy fleet. You send in a colonizer ship and re-colonize the planet. I was thinking, rather than having structures destroyed when the colony is destroyed, they go into a sort of "stand-by" mode. If you manage to re-colonize the planet, you can pay a certain percentage of their original cost and "re-activate" them. If the enemy colonizes there, however, they self-destruct, and the enemy can't use them. It could be like a tech or something to have them go into stand-by.

I was just thinking they may be cool ideas. I hope no one has posted them before, because I was too lazy to look through 13 pages of creative feedback  .

Edit: Sorry folks, this would be more for a 4.0 patch, since 3.0 is more technical. Oh well...

My copy of SOASE finally arrived today, and I have a fairly simple feature request: there needs to be a sensitivity slider for rotation. As an old Homeworld player, the rotation feels just a bit too fast. Not enough to really hurt the game, but enough to make me think that a "Rotation Sensitivity" slider beneath the "Zoom Sensitivity" slider would be a really nice touch.

  I'd like to see cooldown timers for special abilities. A greyed out button that 'ungreys' as the cooldown progresses or a numerical countdown would be nice.

   Jump supression feilds that cover the whole gravity well. The delay they give is fine with me. No need to change that IMO.

   Starting neutral with other factions would make diplomacy better.

   Rather than just saying that there isn't enough support, I'd like it say say how many more you still need. A fraction like "5 of 12" or 5/12. Something like that.

   A fighter control button to let me grab all friendly fighters in the gravity well so I can send them at priority targets like siege frigates.

   The ability to toggle off the auto-follow. I HATE my POV being dragged away by some damned fighter.

   Mouse over info on all buttons and a toggle on and off for after you've memorized everything.

   An in-game database for all three factions tech and ships that you can get to during game play.

   A friggin real-time clock in the upper right-hand corner and an alarm feature!!!

   Make superweapons unique so only one can be built.

   A bunch of different combat musics. The current one is beginning to get annoying. Have the game assign a random combat theme for each fight so as you bounce between fights, each fight has it's own theme. Also, it should remember the theme so it doesn't change each time you caome back.

   An MP3 player so I can import my own battle music!!!

Multiple Victory Conditions - Everything now is just wipe out the other player. Add in tech victory condition, diplomatic victory condition, or economic victory conditions.

Allowing random maps to be generated with multiple stars.

Also I noticed the AI does not use everything a player might do. It should change tactics and research and develop more things as the player forces develop at least.

Finally I agree with an early post. Why are ALL small race planets hostile? I understand the main opponents could be but there is no need for every minor race on a map being hostile. They should be a mixture. Some hostile. Some neutral. Some even offering to be friends? It kind of lessens the interest in the diplomatic and political research tree since everybody starts off hostile anyway.

Finally finally, for multiplayer add the option to allow players to choose their starting location (to an extent). This can be helpful for team vs team if you want to start reasonably close to your ally!

@ Darkside, best solution i've found to the "AI Gangs Up on Me" problem was to play FFA but with locked teams and each AI in its own team. Then they'll happily slaughter eachother aswell as you. It really deminishes the early gangbang issue. However it nullifies any diplomatic scheming you might want to do...

Add a toggleable option to remove cap limits altogether. Seriously, it is misleading advertising to claim "limits are hardware only" when in fact there are artificial caps placed on unit numbers.

Ahem, since all aspects of the user interface in this game needs to be as good as possible to manage the size of this game, I think you should turn "Auto Join Fleet" off for ships/frigates built.

Even better, make it so that each frigate/capital factory has an tactical menu for adjusting the tactical standpoint in the ships being built. !


EDIT: Now stop it, I will go totally apeshit if my fleets are moving parts of itself into unfavorable positions while I manage something else/another battle!