Here are some ideas on how I think the capturing system could be improved, please do add your own suggestions.

Capturable Military bases, possibly MWS and capitols too.
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Right now the way to capture a planet is to just destroy all Military Weapon systems (MWS), turrets and shield generator , then destroy the military base. That's it. No infantry needed. All cities on the world suddenly yield. In the old system you needed to destroy the MWS to get close to the city to beam down troops to capture flags or you could be sneaky and go in with troops from outside the firing arc of the MWS or use a spacetransport or small ship. Basically there were many more options and it was actually fun to capture the flags. It was also kinda fun to capture a city at a time, so a planet could have cities owned by different empires. I understand there were some exploits with placing flags in/near other cities, multple smaller cities, etc.

Instead it would be nice if all military buildings could either be destroyed by ships OR be captured by infantry. A Military building would not be a valid design, unless it had doors and hallways leading to a command chair (or the shield/firing console), which you could then defend by placing lots of troops around it and some turrets perhaps. (maybe with some restrictions to avoid 100 turrets, possible troop mumber restrictions and having to spread them over different sites)

So in addition to destruction from orbit, infantry/special forces gameplay would become an option again.

Having to capture each city capitol as well would be neat also. Each city could have a small garrison of troops/police officers stationed at the capitol or even each police station. That could however lead to the exploit of placing alot of police stations or even alot of small cities, so I'm not sure about capitols needing to be captured. We could perhaps have max 1 city per zone, but that's a bit of an artificial limitation. Other possibilites are a minimum number of inhabitants and morale. Or a minimum number of police jobs for the city to matter in the control of the planet, to avoid spamming many small cities. Maybe someone else has better ideas on how to tackle this.

A capitol could perhaps only become capturable once the military base has been captured or destroyed.

Doors also need to be destructible again with C4 to enable this.

Troop control:
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Also I think it would be good if a person in the chain of command of a World (City) was able to control the garrison of the Miltary base (and the Capitol/police stations) in the same way that you can now control troops from your ship. It aways bothered me in the past that this was not possible.

Perhaps even a list of active troops should be added in some menu concerning military bases (or cities) somewhere.

1. Instead of forcing player to scroll trough long list of items for an item player might not even remember the name off, provide a button that opens UI to select an item or category like it is done in 'chat'.

2. Please add an option to specify not just minimum but also maximum quality as well.
Reasons: send low quality items away to be forgotten, or to provide a planet with a 'jump start' material wise without touching high quality stock fresh planet doesn't need for construction.

3. Stop sending shipments if planet stock is lower than defined.
Reasons: you might want to keep some food or tools in system if you overestimated production capacity. You also might want to send away only unused excess to free space for more production.

Example UI in attachment.

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Drop Pod
This one has been on my list for a long time. There is a room on the Atlantis called the Pod Bay that has always been empty.

This has been a fun one. I added a new vehicle called a Drop Pod. The model was designed in the Designer.

• Drop pod is rocket propelled, like a space rocket.
  
• Flight controls use the Space Rocket controls.
  
• Drop pod is manufactured at aircraft factories.
  
• Drop pod has retractable landing gear. The default key for this is I. You also get an on-screen 'Landing Gear' button. That button appears and the state of landing gear is depicted on the screen when the current vehicle has retractable gear.
  
• New Aircraft Factory and Colony Aircraft Factory blueprints are included. They now have a drop pod shop so there is a place for the drop pod to be parked when manufactured. There is a dozen parking spots so there will be a lot of pods handy when a ship needs to load them.
  
• Buildings do not fetch drop pods to drop pod parking spots, in case the aircraft factory is used for some other purpose.
  
• A 'Launch' button appears when you are in a drop pod aboard a spacecraft. The engine does not have to be on. Launch is immediate, placing the pod just outside the bottom extent of the hull heading away at 200m/s with its engine on and gear retracted.
  
• Recovery system can recover drop pod if the ship has a drop pod parking spot.
  
• Atlantis was updated to carry drop pods in the Pod Bay.
  

Undersea Buildings
Someone reported being unable to place a wharf at an undersea city. This prevented the undersea city from being connected by sea with surface cities that have wharves.

Fixed an error checking placement of coastal buildings at underwater cities.

Designed a few buildings specifically for undersea cities. They can be found in the exchange.

• Undersea Capitol - I decided to give this building an interior, so I could go inside while building and managing my underwater city. It features a bottom entry up into a dive chamber, like on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and other sea fiction. This presented some challenges because a number of small bugs prevented this from working properly; they are fixed.
  
• Undersea Factory 5 - A basic factory with 5 shops.
  
• Undersea Nuclear Power - Single generator nuclear power, nothing fancy.
  
• Undersea Wharf - A simple wharf with a few submarine parking spots.
  

Hull Volume Calculation Inconsistency
Hull volume is not calculated consistently between unfinalized and finalized blueprints that have a turbo lift. This makes finalizing the blueprint impossible.

Fixed.

Hull Volume Calculation Error
Buildings do not consider weapon bays when reconciling hull volume. This makes it impossible to finalize a building with a weapon bay.

Fixed.

Helmet Status Indicator for Suit Broken
When my suit is broken, the status indicator in my helmet blinks faintly yellow.

Fixed. Blinks red now like it was supposed to.

Season on Planetoid
Compass should not show season on a planetoid.

Fixed.

Disable Subscribe Button
Subscribe button should be disabled while a blueprint is being downloaded.

Done.

UI Freeze Making Spacecraft
Selecting a huge spacecraft in the spacecraft buy/commission/build dialogs causes a gigantic lag.

Fixed.

Achievements on Accounts Page
Accounts page should show my Steam achievements.

Done.

Exchange Size Sort
Size column does not sort properly in the building and spacecraft exchanges. Sorts alphabetically.

Fixed.

Finalize all Spacecraft and Buildings
All of the spacecraft and building blueprints included with the software were finalized. A few of them needed slight changes.

Done.

Achievement Graphics
The last of the basic set of achievement graphics were received from the graphic artist. Now all achievements have a graphic.

Done.

Planetary names disappear from the list when trying to do an orbit planet order from within the system.

   

Other times when trying to add an orbit planet to an open mission I get this. (intermittently it seems)

     

The data is still present on the survey report but missing from the world and system maps. You can choose the planet and still fly there. Mission will say "Orbit current planet."

When you have started the regularly/repeated manufacturing of a spacecraft blueprint at a spacecraft factory, it is not possible to stop it again.

Only work around is to bulldoze the spacecraft factory or leave it with "Employ Citizen" unchecked.

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When you are not onboard the harvester, it will show the bays of your current ship instead of the bays of the harvester you're trying to give the order to. (yes I'm using the correct button, below the chat window, with the harvester's channel selected).

If you are not onboard a ship it will not show any bays.

This means you cannot remotely give harvest orders to a harvester with 2 atmosphere condensor bays to harvest 2 different resources.

For other harvesters you can use the harvest by module command.

A minor nuisance, but still a nuisance.

A recent update changed it so buildings now all radiate light as if there were mini stars hidden inside of them, when seen from a distance. Nearby on ground level it is still normal. Switching between top down view and first person makes it obvious how weird it looks.

Imho it looked alot better before when only windows and lampposts were lit at night. Now it just looks very odd with light coming from nowhere.
Maybe the light from lampposts could illuminate larger areas or something, but walls/buildings without a lightsource should not emit light.

EDIT: it actually even looks as if the ground area of the entire city is emitting light


Idk it just looks very odd to me. I mean bricks don't emit light.


And if other people like it, then i guess I'll just have to live with it.

Items do drop now, and weapons now fire visible shots, but I'm not sure if kinetical weapons work correctly. My ship wasn't able to hit an 'extinction asteroid' from within 5km, neither from behind, nor ahead the asteroid and shots behave weirdly: trails seem to go almost straight forward and backwards of the ship simultaneously (trails present on both sides) but not towards target which is to the side (but that might be me not being familiar with how things are supposed to work).

One Round Damage 33-111hp, 3m Radius
Full Barrage of 35 Damage 1 121-3 885hp
Lock range around 35km.
I assume I should be dealing damage, it's an asteroid not a maneuvering fighter.

Firing from roughly behind the asteroid: