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.