Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Suggestions for release

-Bigger skirmish/battle maps

-bigger multiplayer campaign maps (with bigger campaign maps more players would be supported(up to 8?))

-Diplomacy (making alliances with other players/ai, trading, etc.(one of the more important components in 4x games.))

-So far i havent seen any ai enemy dragons during battles, which is interesting since as far as i know you are fighting against other dragon knights (you can even set the ai dragon's appearance).

-Improve multiplayer campaign mode. So far its just a basic capture and hold type of gameplay without political decisions, or any type of diplomacy, where the one holding the most territory, builds the greatest army, and has the most techs researched wins. And it plays way too fast for a tactical map (and you gain cards, gold and research points way too fast as well).
The enemy ai captured 80% of the map by the time (about turn 10) i figured out that my usually defensive playstyle (estabilishing a good economy, building up defenses and than going to wipe out the enemy) is useless in this game mode. This multiplayer game mode needs more depth for the tactical map.

-More descriptions: for things like what are settings like imperialists, the horde and such, because i still have no idea whatsoever. I did figure out that 2 of the same are teamed together. So are they teams? factions? races? what?

-More color choices for multiplayer

-Setting capital placement (starting position) on strategy map during game setup.

-Toggle button for minimap colors that sets enemy color to red and back while friendlies to blue and self to green on the minimap. (this will allow you to add more colors to the game while avoiding confusion) - Inspired by/thought up by Nuju

-If the zealots, imperialists, etc. are factions or races, they need to be more distinguishable from one another, by different tech trees, or the very least different looking units. However if theyre merely teams, why not call them team 1, team 2, etc. Also if theyre teams, please add a no team option in there. So that IF you add bigger maps for 6 or 8 players they won't have to be teamed up if they dont want to.

-In my opinion, when zooming out, units become icons too quickly increasing the distance at which they become icons by about 15%-20% would be nice.

-Why is every unit a machine of some description? Air units i understand. But why is every ground unit a machine? It would be nice to see infantry in there and they could be different depending on what country you fight in.(As in, if you fight in an elf country, the infantry could be elvish, if theyre in lizard country, they could be lizard people, if theyre in dwarf country, they could be dwarves, etc. with different skillsets, appearance and weapon types(elves would be effective against infantry and light vehicles, dwarves against heavy vehicles and so on), recruitable only during battles.) Of course the attacking player would be able to use the infantry from the country from which theyre attacking from. This would add a tactical element to choosing where you want to confront the enemy, and it would make the game even more epic. Not to mention it would add more depth to the game.

-Random encounters (with a settable slider) Adding bandit raids, thieves and such to the game. Would make things interesting.

-On some maps the clouds are too low and need to be raised.

-More types of dragons to choose from as your dragon form, since you cannot customise your character nor choose your gender, choosing you dragon form would be great. I'm not sure wether the current choices(mountain dragon, zephyr and sabre) are only color or shape as well, but choosing from differently shaped dragons would be nice.

-In my opinion, adding turns to make some stronger untits in the multiplayer campaign mode would benefit the game(for example armour would be completed in 2 turns, while devastators in 3 and so on.). Also making a large number of units at once would take longer(for example if the player makes 8 troopers, only 4 would be done in 1 turn and another 4 in the next turn, thus adding a queue to a country's capability to make units.)(training, and building the units takes time, and so does recruitment). This would also allow for some new research options to speed up unit production. It would also prevent players focusing on offense to overrun defensive players quickly.

-Building forts on the strategy map in a country(didn't really think this through fully) could have an effect like:
.add a fort to the map during battle with large hp pool and mounted weapons
.add 50% more armor to your units used in that country during battle
.units in that country do 50% more damage
.can shoot 75% further
and so on
(one of these or a combination of these perhaps?)
Forts would make frontline countries more easily defendable.
Note: only a number of forts can be built by a player, for example 1 maybe 2.

-Sorting the list of cards by a given aspect(mercenary cards, dragon skill cards, etc.) during attack and defense

Don't worry, there will be a lot of Diplomacy and out-off-battle decision making in the single-player campaign.
The beta is only the multiplayer part, which consists largely of combat.

I'm talking about multiplayer too. Since i haven't played the single player, i cannot make any suggestions regarding that.

They actually limited the colour options some time ago, so people like I could recognize foe from friend.

Limiting the color option so you can distinguish friend from foe, they could at least change the colors so they don't look similar.. :P I believe simple tab on blizzard rts games changed the colors to red for all enemies, green being you, and yellow for allies. Why not bring back the colors anyways and allow us to use the tab option? :P

Better question: why didnt you guys use the minimap. The enemy is shown as red. lol

-More color choices for multiplayer

I'm at fault for this, but their initial color choices were colorblind unfriendly. I'm not against it, but I don't think colorblind mode would be a priority.

By default the first AI uses red as a colour, unless you change your colour first, in which case it will take blue (they just go in order of the 5 available colours: blue, red, green, yellow, purple).

He's playing an introductory map in chapter 1 with only 4 or 5 units unlocked, and barely any skills. Chapter 1 is meant as a bit of a tutorial so you can get used to units, upgrades, the dragon, controls... Not really a good vid to get an idea of the SP campaign

Choosing capital spots sounds like fun though.

Hmm you are right.

Added a new suggestion to my list

I hope no one minds this, but considering that it's a suggestion for release, and I didn't want to start another topic that's basicaly the same thing... :P

The saves that now work for a bot only lobby, why can't the same thing work for people too? It's easy for a game to last for quiet a while in turn based things, endless space my friend and I easily take 30 turns in a session, while the game itself tends to last like, 150-180 or so.

It makes sense for the moment that the saves are only allowed with bots atm, because bots are, with you all the time. :P Your computers not going anywhere while your playing right? :P

But thinking about endless space, personally I haven't been in a game for the whole game at once myself, DC takes a lot less time but the same idea is still there. With other peoples lifestyles and the time it takes to brb and afk in a game also adds up. Endless space allows you to host the lobby again at a later point, and invite your friends back to the same game to finish up later.

I don't mean to make any copyright issues for Larian of course but the idea simply works. :P

Saving an online multi-player game is more elaborate than against AI, so the AI saving was enabled first. There are also changes still being made to the lobby system (expected to be done tomorrow), so it would probably be easier to wait until that is finished before working on online saves.

As a colourblind it helped me that they limited the colour options, but they could be a lot more distinguishable still (like wc3, only had a few problems there with primarily green/yellow/orange).

I like having lots of colors to play with, so I hope they'll eventually implement a colorblind mode and more colors to play with for the rest of us.

Added a few new suggestions and credited Nuju for giving me the idea for the minimap color toggle button.

Giving me CREDIT? ^,^
If you insist... :P - It wasn't really my idea though, it was added in starcraft and warcraft and such, was a nice idea, I thought, "why not?" :P

I like the minimap color toggle button idea

Added a new suggestion, and while i know that most of these cannot be implemented until release, i do hope that they will implement some of them in the future after release.

yeah, i still like to see dragons being used by AI too.

Skirmish still felt a bit too easy at times.

Added some more suggestions to the list.

Can you at least add your newer suggestions to the posts? It's more convenient if it's "added some more suggestions, which are as follows", instead of having to go back up to the top to see what's new.

It's almost certainly too late to add maps designed for 8 players. There would need to be both new RTS and new Campaign maps. Maps designed for 8 players would likely be too large for 2 players, and 2 player battles is where the fighting mostly takes place.

While it bears some resemblance in single-player, I'm not sure that this is intended to be a 4X game. It's two weeks until release, way too late to add in additional mechanics like Diplomacy or Trading.

I definitely want to see enemy Dragons. They hope to get those in, but it might be post-release.



The multiplayer campaign is a bit shallow compared to single-player. I'm not sure how to improve it. They can't have parts where you roam the ship and talk to people in multiplayer, because some people want to do that, others just want to get on with the fighting. I think watser suggested adding a General selection to the multiplayer options, alongside the Dragon selection, that could grant some kind of bonuses to auto-resolve and possibly unique skills in RTS mode.

There will be different kinds of victory conditions implemented, so maybe some of those other win conditions will be possible.




According to the manual, the story in singleplayer says that this is basically a civil war. All the different factions used to be part of the same army, then they split up and are fighting each other.




Yes, absolutely. I'd like players in the campaign map to start out in a different location. The same starting locations against the same AI plays out the same way so many times.



I don't think I follow. If you don't want to be on a team with another player, then pick a different team and presto you are on your own team. If they're playing 2v2 and you want to play a free-for-all, play a free-for-all.



Maybe base that on unit size, because the infantry are so small that you need the icons. Larger vehicles could have a longer distance, but it's not critical.



The scale is such that individual people would be too small to reasonably see.

Your army is composed of a mix of races:
Humans are Troopers, Shaman and Zeppelins,
Elves are Transports and Hunters
Dwarves are Grenadiers and Ironclads
Imps are Warlocks and Imp Fighters
Undead are Devastators and Bomber Balloons
Lizards are Armours and Juggernauts.

It is possible that the single-player campaign might have race specialized units, maybe as part of the faction arc, but I doubt it.



That doesn't seem to fit at all - especially for multiplayer. You want to lose because the other player beat you, not because a random number generator decided you took losses from a random bandit attack.




Different appearances for the three base types of Dragons would be nice, but not terribly important.




Earlier build showed that research sometimes lasted for multiple turns, but you could buy it sooner. Earlier in the beta, it used to be you needed to wait until the current turn had finished, or buy it now. I'm not sure why Larian changed it, I suppose it was probably to promote faster gameplay.




This game is designed for a more offensive playstyle. That makes a bit of sense given the size of Campaign maps. There are a lot of RTS matches, which they generally want to be over much faster. Making defense harder to crack would slow RTS matches down a lot. People might only play one or two battles in a campaign before they got tired. Even now I can't finish a campaign without saving.




Yes, the battle screens need to be improved quite a bit. We need:

• To see what upgrades the units have researched.
• What map will the RTS be played on
• Much better sorting of cards, by types, the ability go through your deck in circles.

4X games are a genre of strategy video game in which players control an empire and "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate". The term was first coined by Alan Emrich in his September 1993 preview of Master of Orion for Computer Gaming World. Since then, others have adopted the term to describe games of similar scope and design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X

So lets see the main feature of this game is the single-player campaign in my opinion, which does make this a 4x game. However they remove a lot of the features for multiplayer, but it still is a 4x game.

Also i did say that i know that they cannot implement most of these until release and that i hope that they will implement some of them in the future after release in one of my posts.



Since there are 4 "factions" if they do add bigger maps for more players, the no team option will allow them to play free for all matches.



My problem isn't with the units already in, nor with the effects and abilities they have it's with the fact that all of them are machines. Sure its fine that there are so many machines, since it's part of the story, but why is everything a machine? I mean weren't there any infantry in that age? Did every single soldier have a tank? That sure would ruin the economy. Not to mention it would use up a lot of manpower to build all those tanks. (no offense intended by this).
Also infantry would be cheaper, less effective units, used mostly as distraction and cannon fodder, or as a last resort defense, or attack force, when you are low on recruits. As i've said, this would add more depth to combat. They would also do well when capturing points, since theyre cheap, so you can concentrate on attacking the enemy base with your other units, while the infantry captures points.




They could make it work, also without random encounters, "long" matches would get stale while random encounters could shake up things a bit. Also i understand what you are saying, hence the settable slider, with which you can set the random encounter chance, or disable it altogether. Also there are loads of games with random encounters that pulled it off quite well in multiplayer.




Interesting, so far the most it took me against 3 ais was about 50 mins to kill em all. After destroying the first ai i became so op that the rest died fast.(on hard difficulty) By the time i reached the last enemy, i had 265 cards of which at least 45 were mercenary cards, and an army so big that it had 90%+ chance to win against everything. Tho true, pvp might last longer. I'd really like a chance to play defensively.

They could specifically add variations on the game type in the server list, so that instead of just Multiplayer Campaign, it could be "Campaign - 2v2" or "Campaign - FFA", but if those are added, I'm not sure what's stopping you from playing FFA now. It's even possible to play 3v1.

Maybe in the future if there's enough demand, Larian could add in an 8-player mode.




I already answered that. I think somewhere they said they thought about adding in infantry, but the scale of the units was such that infantry were too small to see. Infantry aren't in because of gameplay reasons.



Three Troopers cost 3 Campaign Map gold to build. It's pretty clear that when a country says it has an economy worth 2 gold, it's not literally 2 gold pieces. It's probably something like 2000 gold.

Using up manpower? What do you think all those Recruits you spend to build factories and units are? Those are literally the people it takes to build, pilot, and maintain those units No, it's not a completely perfect representation, but it's good enough for gameplay.

You are missing the point though, the reason why no teams would be nice is because if they add diplomacy, eg.: making alliances during a match, making peace treaties etc. you dont need to use factions and the balance of power could shift, but if they only have 4 factions as it is now, any attempt to add diplomacy will fail, since if you are teamed up with someone, you cant make alliances and peace treaties with others. You will simply play out the match with the person you teamed up with.

Besides the obvious benefit for making free for all matches with 5+ players.

Also about adding infantry, i can see troopers when zoomed out and before they become icons fine, so idk what's with this need icons coz we dont see the units thing. which is why i suggested the increase in units becoming icons distance in the first place. Which means that i could probably see infantry fine as well.

Not to mention, you can always zoom in. You dont need to play the game from space.

Troopers are much, much, larger than people. Take a trooper to the center of the brand new "Sentinel Island" map. There are trees there. The troopers legs alone are taller than the trees. People would be too small to see.

Ahh that's what you meant.

Hmm can't edit my first post anymore. Oh well i'll just post my new suggestions here.


-now i understand that these units would be too small. So how about adding a small block into one of the corners, like the one starcraft 1-2 and warcrafts and some other games have, in which an animation would play, that shows the driver of the vehicle you clicked, and also would talk when you click it or order it. Of course, most vehicle type's driver would be unique as they're made by other races.

-improve autoresolve (from personal experience and from other forum topics).

-multiplayer campaign strategy map phase still feels shallow, and feels unfinished (also requires minimal skill against ais(make units and send them in with minimal amounts of cardplay, since if you capture enough territories, you can make a lot of units in a single turn)). To make it more understandable, a somewhat relevant quote from lk.

-maybe increase the maximum zoom in for battles (this is just a personal wish as i'd like to see the units up close for some eyecandy, would also allow me to make good screenshots). Also this would make the units seem a lot bigger, since now, even with max zoom in, even though i can see the size of the trees, i still think that the units are small for some reason(i know that it's just an illusion but still more zoom in would be nice).