posted 02-16-99 01:56 PM ET     

1) On the Build seletion screen. When you select a Unit and press "Help" when you get back to the selection window your selection is cleared and some other default unit will be selected. If you have lots of units the unit you were interested in may thus have scrolled off screen. D'OH! It would be much nicer if the unit you selected for "Help" remained selected.

2) On Unit Workshop. When selecting units on the row of icons at the bottom, if you Retire a unit then when it disappears your selection location is lost and you're reset to some default location. Again this means you might have to scroll back (which is rather slow) to find your unit. If you are trying to prune a bunch of obsolete units, you spend a lot of time scrolling back to the "Obsolete" section. Bummer. It would be much easier if the selection location stayed at the unit just before the one that was Retired.

3) Let's say you have a unit with movement left. Then you scroll across the map and bring up a Base dialog. When you finish the dialog if you haven't activated a unit you are popped back to that unit with movement left (with it selected), even if it is clear across the map. Perhaps there is an option to prevent this but I couldn't find it. I would prefer when I pop out of a Base dialog that unless I activated a unit in that Base that I remain in no-unit-selected "View" mode at the Base's location on the map.

Anyone who knows of shortcuts or options that I have overlooked to help these situations please let me know! Thanks.

posted 02-16-99 04:02 PM ET            

Suggestions: Hot keys to move to the first unused slot, the first used slot, the first obsolete unit. A hot key to retire all unused obsolete designs. Shift or control click on the arrows to "page" through the list. Filters to only display units of a given movement mode, chassis, or category (noncombat, combat, defensive, offensive, mixed).

Related suggestions: Give more control over the auto-designer like the governors. Allow for disabling a stock type so it doesn't keep getting re-created after you obsolete/retire it (I never build "scout tanks", or planetbusters, or the funky ECM garrisons with small but >1 attack strengths.) Perhaps have checkboxes that say "Only design upgrades of current designs" and "Only design new unit types when new chassis become available."

posted 02-16-99 04:50 PM ET         

I have been playing the game for a few days now, and I have to say I love it. Its a great game. But while playing a multiplayer game, I could not change the Preferences. I found this to be very bad, especially when I could not turn off the Auto-Desing. When I got fusion engines and drop pods, the computer made so many new unit types, I could not make heads or tails of anything in the workshop. I know it was done this way to make the turns go faster, but that does not happen. I have to go in there and clean things up. I have to remove all the unwanted desings, and that takes forever and makes the other players mad. It would be really nice if I could control the preferences in multiplayer play. It should be left up to us, and not you guys how we want to play the game. turning off auto-design would in fact greatly speed up the game. Another thing also happens when I am trying to upgrade my units in multiplayer games, It wont let me, I hit the upgrade button for my scouts to upgrade them to scythmetal garrisons and all it says "waiting for action to be resolved on other machines" or something like. It lets me do other things and I can still move my units, but it just wont let me upgrade my units, so my 64 slots in the unit workshop are all full. So is there anything I can do now? like changing any values in the Alpha Centauri.ini file or is there any other file I can edit what the preferences are set to for multiplayer games.
Now here is the really big improvement that would be really nice to see, but I doubt I will ever see it cause it may be really hard to implement. Ok, for cities, that are in say a golden age, and have a childrens creche, the social engineering values for that city are now different then that of the empire as a whole. Could there be a way of adding a new window to the city management screen that shows what the exact social engineering values for that particular city are with the improvements it has made.

For example, say you have a city in:
Golden Age,
with a Childrens Creche,
a command center,
and a centauri preserve.

And your global social engineering values are:
+1 +1 energy each base
0 High inefficency
0 support 2 units free per base
-3 -2 moral; + modifiers halved
0 1 unit allowed for police
0 normal growth rate
0 normal ecological tension
0 normal security measures
0 normal production rate
0 normal reseach rate

so in your city it should say something like:

+2 +1 energy each square
+2 commendable efficiency
0 support 2 units free per base
+1 moral inbase only
-1 moral land
-3 moral sea; + modiferiers halved
-3 moral air; + modiferiers halved
+1 life cycle
0 1 unit allowed as police
+4 +40% growth rate
0 normal ecological tension
0 normal security measures
0 normal production rate
0 normal reseach rate

or even better yet, say exactly what a new unit built would be produced as, like:

+2 +1 energy each square
+2 commendable efficiency
0 support 2 units free per base
+1 moral in base
land: veteran (+++)
sea: very green
air: very green
native: boil (++)
0 1 unit allowed as police
+4 +40% growth rate
0 normal ecological tension
0 normal security measures
0 normal production rate
0 normal reseach rate

This would be very nice to have for each city, so you know exactly how that city is doing and what level the units being built there are. Other wise, its almost impossible to sit there and figure this all out to know exactly what level a new unit built at that base will be.