Assigned Tasks

I'm not sure I get you here. by task you probably mean the demands that other empires regularly transmit. in that case, it would really make fairly little sense for them to ask you to research something. something tied to exploration might be interesting though, like "show us your star charts" and then they see all you have explored so far complete with the latest intel.

but really, the system is just designed to bring some sort of diplomacy into the game make it possible to forge alliances in open games. if you are willing to accept its shortcomings, it works somewhat well, bc in larger games its quite vital to have at least one or two sides that you are not at war with. tbh, my take is .... attack whoever suits you from an expansionist point of view with an eye towards satisfying someones taks. if you succeed, you probably get ~25 - 30% relations and a resource related task. fullfil that too and you might strike a cease fire and from thats already a good start and keeps one enemy off your back from now.

geez, what does this have to do with the topic again? anyways, if you have more task ideas, lets hear them, can't hurt. I for one look forward to what the devs plan to improve with diplomacy in mini exp 2.

uh, btw I have a small suggestion too. how about a sort of market table, where you could directly exchange resource a for resource b? sort of like 1000 credits for 400 metal or whatever. could give a small (~ 5%, only every half hour or so) bonus to relations and require trade pact.

I believe the OP is talking about achievements, and how the AI demands help or hinder efforts to get them.

I didn't realize I was being unclear: the other empires in single player games give you tasks that you can complete or fail. If you complete the task you get a bonus, if you fail you get a penalty on the sliding diplomatic 0-100 scale.  You get rewards in gold, metal and crystal if you complete the task in the alloted time.

My gripe is the tasks are too difficult too soon. Asking me to destroy 4 civilian structures on my enemy in the first 30 minutes of the game, when I do not know where the enemy is, nor do I yet have a fleet that can fight my way to their planet and then fight their fleet and then destroy those high HP structures..they take 5 minutes to kill.

I ask for easier, less invovled diplomatic tasks or quests, at least at the start of the game, something that doesn't quite invovle me going into the lions den!

You could look for a mod/mod it yourself. Also, they have an expansion planned to improve diplomacy.

ah, so I was correct after all.

as for the rest, kitkun said it, there is going to be more diplomacy in the second mini expansion pack. which I really look forward to, I hope they also tie in some governmental or religion/ belief thing to create more natural enemies. I do have a good many thoughts on the subject, but first lets see about entrenchment.

oh, one last thing: remember, civilian structure also designates asteroid mines, which are somewhat easier to kill. and tbh the time limits are fairly lash, so in 30 minutes I guess it is possible to determine where a particular player is and send a handful of frigates to one of their more outlying colonies to do some dmg. early harrassing isn't a bad strat anyway.

Generally it works like this: attack missions are only given against enemies within 2 jumps from you. This means that unless you're playing on a very small map where everyone is glued to each other, it will take a bit for you to expand within 2 jumps of any other AI. So, the first mission you usually get is "give me resources". The second mission can be another "give me resources", or it can be a "go kill something" if you've had time to get to 2 jumps. The sooner you do the first, the more likely you are to get an easy second because it will come sooner. But even if you stretch them out, you essentially get 1 hour until you have to blow something up.

The main difficulty is with "destroy tactical structures", because the AI just doesn't build a whole lot of them quickly. So even though he's within 2 jumps of you, getting 4 usually means you pretty much have to assault his homeworld. Ships and civilian are the easiest. Mines count as civilian, so you can just blow up the mines, they have barely any hp and get destroyed quickly. Ships are second easiest, because trade ships and each individual strike craft counts as a ship. By that time, most AIs already have a few squads of fighters/bombers, so it's real easy to rake up the ship kills without really trying very hard.

You can mod it a bit to make it easier (less of a penalty, or longer time limit), but I suggest playing a bigger map with fewer AIs. So say if a map is rated for 8 players, try it with 6 or 5. That way the players will be more spread out and it will take longer to start getting combat jobs.