Suggestions for Space Empires V

[Kid]

Please excuse me if these have already be put forth. I am new to the game and have not had time to get to know the community.

1. When building satellites, please give the option to have them auto-launch from the planet that constructed them. I spend a lot of time going from planet to planet launching satellites after they have been built. With this option, a player could set a planet to built satellites and launch them into orbit until the 100 max limit is reached, and not have to check on that planet every turn.
2. In the construction queue when building Units, in the “Item Details” window please show how much cargo room the unit is going to take up. I often build units I have no space for.
3. New Tec – Planet Shields - NM I just discovered it - LOL
4. New Tec – Hardened Bunkers (like ship armor but for planets)
5. Judging from the rulebook on pages 43 and 44 it looks like the formations are built depending on where the ships are in the fleet list. I would like to have a way to reorder that list in the same fashion as building queues. If you included numbers on the ship list, then players could look at the formation diagrams and actually pick where they want the individual ships to show up in the formation. The Fleet Leader would always default to the top position.
6. Please improve the trading options for technology. I can’t select the item I want only the category and after getting burned twice I never used it again. I know you want to keep the other player’s tec a secret but I think it was over done. Maybe put some kind of indicator up showing if it will be a bad trade or not. After all, the parties would never trade in the blind. Or you could drill down based on what you have discovered in combat and through spies.
7. On the screen where you pick Strategic or Tactical could you indicate if the planets you own have defenses? I always like to use Tactical if my planets have defenses but it hit or miss most of the time.

[Suicide Junkie]

#2:
Cargo requirements are usually quite easy to estimate. Round your small/medium sats up to 100kt.
Fighter counts can be rounded off to the nearest 5 or 10, and worked out from there.
Putting a cargo base in orbit can help. Any excess cargo the planet can't hold will go into the base.

#4:
Just build weapon platforms that are all shield generators.
That will give your planet a few thousand hitpoints that works just like armor.

[Mephisto]

Nice suggestions, especially 7 and 8 haven't been mentioned before IIRC. Let#s see what's going to come...

[Kid]

Thanks Suicide, I'll give it a try

[Kid]

You know if I could only have one thing it would be to pick where my ships show up in the formation. I like to make specilized ships for capturing enemy ships and often they show up way out on the flanks.

[Gandalph]

#1
After you build the first satellite and order the planet to launch, you simply click on the repeat orders button.

[Zereth]

That only works in Simultaneous movement. If you're in turn-by-turn, that just makes the planet launch some satellites right now.

[Phoenix-D]

Besides, the topic is suggestions for SEV, not what you can do in SEIV. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Zereth]

Ah, but it would be pretty nice to be able to do that sort of thing in sequential movement as well. Some option to have things _not_ execute orders until you tell them to or you end the turn, say.

[dogscoff]

I noticed in one of the se5 screenies that space stations still have "endless" supply. I believe this can be turned off in se4, (I think S_J used it to make supply into a finite resource in one version of P&N) and so I imagine this has been carried over into the sequel, but further options for making supply into a more finite resource would be great:

- An option to allow planetary supply depots to generate a finite, rather than infinite, quantity of supplies per turn. This kind of implies the introduction of planetary supply storage, which might be contraversial with the players as well as difficult to implement this late in development. THerefore, don't bother with plentary supply storage, and instead just have any 'unclaimed' supplies lost, which will force players to build massive "supply stations" in orbit to catch all the excess.
Please note that I request this as a modding option, not as a part of the stock game.

-A modding option to generate finite resources per turn out of thin air from a component, and/or by converting min/org/rads with a facility or component. At the moment the only such options we have are the Qunatum reactor (infinite supplies from component) or solar panels (finite supplies from component, dependent on stars in the system.) THese are great, but I'd like MORE to play with
:-)

-"Get supply from..." and "give supply to..." orders for ships/ fleets. This way a ship or fleet can chase after another one (or a planet or a base), share supplies and move on in one turn, rather than having to manually rendezvous the ships, fleet them together, wait for the supply pool to be distributed and then break the fleet, which can take several turns.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fyron]

SJ converted them into ships instead of bases to eliminate the infinite supply aspect. In the IRC chats, Aaron made references to moddable hull definitions, which could allow all sorts of crazy ideas to be implemented. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Moddable vehicle types are a modder's best friend..... well, at least where eccentric ideas or other sci-fi universes are concerned http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif no but really, if this is an actual function in SEV I'd be overjoyed.

[Exan]

As long as I can create starbases/space stations that can open wormholes/warp points to other systems my modding wishes are fullfilled.

[Zereth]

Warp gates rather an or in addition to warp points? Yeah, that'd be good.

What _I_ want is to be able to build a border control station on a wap point so that nobody else can use it without authorization or going through with force, or possibly stealth.

[Kid]

I would like to see the component list scroll when I hold down the mouse. All the clicking is getting to me.

[douglas]

Kid said:
I would like to see the component list scroll when I hold down the mouse. All the clicking is getting to me.


Once you satisfy all the requirements of the design (bridge, CQ/LS, cargo/colony/fighter bay requirement, etc.), the mouse wheel scrolls the component list in SEIV.

[henk brouwer]

I did some thinking about intelligence projects, I don't really like how they work in SEIV, it seems to be too much of a all or nothing situation. Either you can not breach the enemy defenses and nothing will happen, or you can breach them and there's nothing the enemy can do.

So I tried to come up with a solution in the form of a new class of intelligence projects that could be added to the existing ones: tactical or combat espionage. This project would send spies out to study enemy combat tactics, and learn from them. When completed this project would give a small(1%)permanent combat bonus against the race that was spied upon, the project could be completed multiple times and the bonus would stack. there would be NO DEFENSE against this project, other than doing combat espionage on that enemy yourself, to get your own combat bonus. maybe the cost of the project should increase depending on how many times it has already been completed

This would make intelligence far more interesting, having a race that specializes in intelligence could be a viable alternative to a race with a high natural combat bonus, races that would be the victim of such intelligence would still have a change to win, if they compensate with more research and better sensor technology..

any oppinions?

Henk

[Suicide Junkie]

Check out the "Leaky Intel" for SE4.

The idea there, is you delete the counter-intel projects.
You make all of the projects relatively expensive, except for the "intel sabotage", which you make very cheap.

Suddenly, intel is dynamic.
You have to actively target an enemy race to defend against, and even with constant counter-intel, they can slip projects through (especially the cheap ones).

The more expensive projects are more likely to be stopped by counter intel, since they take longer to complete, and the defender gets more chances to discover and sabotage the project before it is launched.

You can team up for defense or attack, and you can't defend without the target knowing that they are under suspicion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Kid]

douglas said:

Kid said:
I would like to see the component list scroll when I hold down the mouse. All the clicking is getting to me.


Once you satisfy all the requirements of the design (bridge, CQ/LS, cargo/colony/fighter bay requirement, etc.), the mouse wheel scrolls the component list in SEIV.



So it does. Thanks!

[Kid]

henk brouwer
I like your idea. I think it could work.

[henk brouwer]

Suicide Junkie said:
Check out the "Leaky Intel" for SE4.




There is such a thing as leaky intel for se4? sounds very interesting, which mod?

It sounds like a huge improvement over the original system, the proposed combat espionage project would still be interesting as a new project though.

[Suicide Junkie]

I don't have a list of mods which use it, although I have implemented it in Carrier Battles Mod for one.

It is quite simple to do, although AIs will certainly have trouble.
The thing to do for the AIs is either (A) mod in a racial tech which gives the AIs stock counter intel, or (B) disable intel when playing solo.

Against human players on PBW, though, it is great.

[ak_vader]

Well im new to these forums so forgive me if this is a stupid question. Ive looked at many threads and websites and cant find out if SE5 has multiplayer or not? Ive been playing Star Fleet Command 2 for the last 5 years many hours every night, and absolutley love it its the best space tactical game i can play with and against my buds online. I was liking the way SE5 sounds but again cant find out if its
multiplayer or not. Seeing as in 5 years ive never even played the single player of star fleet multiplay is where the real thrill of the kill comes in. If anyone could answer this id appreciate it. Thanks from a fellow tactical gamer.

[Slick]

It will have multiplayer, but it will be turn-based, not real-time combat like SFC2. I play SFC2 and OP from time to time as well. Both games are great, but I don't think it's fair to compare them. The SFC series is based on Star Fleet Battles and simulates combat ship-to-ship with possibly a couple of wingmen. The SE series is about managing an entire empire. Combat (in the SE series so far) doesn't have the detail of SFC (weapon arcs, hit&run raids, shield facings, transporter bombs, etc.) but it isn't meant to.

[Suicide Junkie]

Instead of the details of arcs, shield facings and one-off special attack tactics, you have the details of designing the ships, picking strategies to follow, fleeting them together in the right combinations, and retrofitting them as technology improves.

Then you hope they're outfitted well enough as fleets, easily over 20 per side and sometimes hundreds or a thousand per side, clash in space. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Escaflowne]

The primary suggestions I have are:

1. Larger galaxies or multiple galaxies.
2. Larger tech tree. - I believe all technology is infinite in SE5 so that solves that problem. Now to find some clueless low-tech computers to plunder...
3. In addition to all the yummy modding abilities in SE4, I would have liked there to be a way to control supply generation. As it was, it was either infinite ot dependent upon the number of stars. Rather clunky.
4. A stronger AI. I know they are a LOT of work to code properly but a decent AI should be included. As it was, even on hard with high bonus I could *usually* beat the AI at least 8 times out of 10. And usually the only times I lost were when my starting position sucked. Or I had it set for teams.

I'm sure there are a few more but that's really my wishlist.

[ak_vader]

Thanks slick for the answer, i will keep my eye on this one, cant wait to try the demo, hope the demo lets us test the multiplayer part of it. looks like could be a cool game to play with a friend. I am wondering if maybe the turn mode in multiplayer will have a speed setting or something so it plays at which ever speed is set the lowest on the folks all playing together, like maybe slow, medium, and fast. but it would only go as fast as the lowest setting. Just an idea.

[Phoenix-D]

The turn mode in multiplayer is likely to be the same as Space Empires IV: all sides enter their orders, then when the last person sends it the game runs it, all the orders executing at the same time.

In that mode, you don't have any tactical combat, so you don't get to fight the battles and there's no need for a speed setting.

[Ron_Lugge]

Modable vehicle definitions as in I can change what a ship / base is? Cool... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[MrSnuggleBunny]

Dear Santa,

When SEV is released I would like to have...

1) Maneuverability - It just doesn't seem realistic that a unit can go from dead stop to full speed and make a bootlegger's reverse (180-degree turn) all in a single turn.

Can we please have some mechanism to dictate the acceleration and decceleration of a unit? Nothing extravagant but something along the lines of: a unit can acel/deccel 1/2 of its total current movement allowance in a single turn.

Limiting the number of turns a unit can make in a single turn should be reduced as its speed increases, i.e. at a dead stop a unit can make a complete 360-degree revolution, at half speed and can turn up to 4 facings at full speed it can turn up to 2 facings (assuming a square map with facings being the four sides and four corners collectively).

2) Firing Arcs - One aspect of this game that makes it so entertaining is that the vast expanse of the tactical battle map and the limited range of weaponry means that maneuver actually matters. If a ship gets hammered on one side the commander should have to manuever to reposition his ships to present a new broadside. Designating firing arcs at time of construction would be a plus. The tonnage allowed by arc could be set ratios of the overall unit tonnage.

This would be particularly helpful whn making planetary assaults. Let's face it: attempting to take a planet with troops while the planet has a robust array of weapons platforms mounting missiles and point defense weapons is all but an exercise in futility. Why should platforms mounted at the south pole be able to hit me if I'm concentrating my forces at the northern pole?

Dividing a planet into quadrants for the purposes of basing platforms and troops would be nice. Troops could be limited to moving to one new quadrant per strategic turn.

3) Stacking Limits - I can understand that stacking all of one's units in a single space could lead to some lop-sided tactics but can we have limits on the tonnage, say 500 to 800 kT? At least allow us to move a unit through a space occupied by a friendly unit; sometimes the AI will designate a movement path for a unit that costs me 1 or 2 movement points and ruins the calculated movement I had planned.

4) Customizable Formations - A formation editor and some method of designated which units are 1st, n 3rd etc within the fleet would be really keen.

5) Customizable Weaponry - Can I trade range for damage/rate fo fire/etc? Weapon mounts allow me to trade range and damage for tonnage; let's make a good thing better.

6) Interstellar Travel - besides warp points. A system 2 sectors away can take less time to reach than a system 10 sectors away depending upon the placement of warp points within a system. What if I want to cut "cross country" to save time? Such movement could also balance us mid-tech slobs against empires that can open and close warp points at will.

7) Planetary Orbits - I exploit the fact that planets do not revolve around their suns by picking planets equidistant betwen/near warp points to place military installations. MAKE ME STOP! In real life the planets would be orbitting the sun thus denying the use of "permanent basing."

8) Auto-Retrofit/Upgrade - If I lewt ministers handle upgrading production facilities they tend to onle upgrade one facility per turn...over the entire bloody empire! Fire these bums. How about upgrading one facility per planet per turn? Designating units to auto-upgrading ship/base designs as a particular technology improves would be nice.

9) A Pony - I promise to take care of it, and brush its long silky mane and name him Buttercup and I'll be good forever and ever. Puh-leeeeze!

Anyway, that's my wish list...

...for now.

[Mylon]

One thing I'd like to see is the ability to modify ship components/building facilties with technologies as opposed to having to create a new component for each possible combination of technology.

Thus, one could have the Mega Uber Laser, research up on lens technology to make it do more damage, research up on minituraization to make it smaller (and thus fit more on the ship), research manufacturing methods to make it cheaper, ect... And this is all just one component. None of this model I, II, III, ect...

Old ships would still use the outdated versions until retrofitted, which I imagine would make things a lot more complicated since the ship no longer is a collection of components and now the game has to remember the individual stats, but I think it would be more rewarding as a whole.

Imagine, say, the cities in Proportions where all of the mineral extraction, research technologies, shielding technologies, storage technologies... _Everything_, made the city better in some way.

Second is unset ship sizes. The ability to use a simple slider/text box to scale the size up and down to any value desired, as governed by some non-linear function. Ideally, hull technologies will increase the sizes that can be used before cost becomes incredibly prohibitive. So no more cases of having unused space on the ship becaue of odd-sized hull components, plus there's less concern with the enemy getting dreadnauts first. Everyone can build dreadnauts in the beginning, it's just a matter of how much they're willing to spend. This better reflects the mentality that _anything_ is possible with enough manufacturing capital, it's just that technology is what makes it feasable.

Finally, I'd like to see better upgrade management. In SEIV, upgrading from one facility to the next only halved the cost of the new facility. Thus, in games like Proportions, it was cheaper to build a minor city (cost of 15kT across the board) and upgrade it to a metropolis (cost of about 200kT across the board, saving a total of 85kT of production) than it was to build the metropolis outright. It'd be nice if the current facility only applied, say, 80% of it's value to the new facility.

[Suicide Junkie]

How would you handle damage if ships are not made up of components?

[Mylon]

Oh, I intended ships to still be made of components, I was just referring to the overall hull size being customizable (instead of limited to pre-set sizes). Thus, if you have a size 500kT hull and you fill it with 45kT components, you would only have 495kT used. You could either scale it back by 5 kT or scale it up by 40kT to elimate the excess space (and make the ship slightly cheaper) or make room for one extra component.

If gravity isn't an issue, space ships don't have to support their own weight, so there shouldn't be any limit on size. The limit should just be on how feasable it is to put it together, which is more a matter of how much the empire can pay.

edit: Oh wait, you were talking about the first suggestion I made. By all game purposes, yes, the ships will still be made of components, but for the purpose of programming and file structure, the game will have to remember each of the individual components instead of just remembering what model of component and how many. That is, using the one component with properties defined by current technology levels (instead of multiple components for each combination of technology levels), your old ship will have to be remembered as "Uber mega laser with lens tech 3, mini. tech 2, manuf. tech 5" instead of, "Uber mega laser CVIII".

Though if it stored it entirely based on stats ("Component name: Uber mega laser. Damage: 1337, range 2, size 35kT, ect...") then there could be some interesting possibilities... Imagine an engineering bay that subtle "optimized" your ships each turn they spent in the bay. You can research technologies to make your whole fleet better, or you can invest resources to make an extremely optimized fleet. Or your fleet just stumbles on an alien artifact that latches onto your hull and merges with it, increasing armor for that particular ship/fleet but refusing to give up any secrets. Or other fun stuff.

[Sabin]

I like that idea...have some of my own to propose. Someone mentioned firing arcs playing a role...which gives me the idea that perhaps some weapons can have "adjustable" firing arcs...say a "Guided Laser" which can be shot from the South Pole of a planet, that as it navigates to it's target that is orbiting above the North Pole, it loses power and accuracy, but can potentially hit and cause damage. Or missiles, that have fuel considerations...things like that.

Also, on the topic of Components...I very much like that idea. It can potentially simplify matters in ship design, and you have definately come across a potentially good idea. For example, it would be perfect for a Star Trek modification featuring the Borg - you can have incredibly huge ships, and that all of them can be adapted with "assimilated" technology on the fly...also, if new technology captured and then researched on-ship would be good: You can have mobile research stations that capture any ships that fly by...

[Baron Munchausen]

If you have played Starfury you have seen the new component system. And yes, it does allow essentially 'unlimited' levels of components without having to write out an entry for each one. It also allows component abilities based on more than one tech field, meaning you can have very complex situations such as missiles advancing in damage from warhead/explosives tech, advancing in speed from propulsion tech, and advancing in damage resistance from armor tech.

As for ship sizes, we seem to be stuck with the fixed sizes. Hopefully we can still persuade MM to use some sort of 'Quasi-newtonian' propulsion system so that there will be a logical relationship between ship size, engines installed, and performance. We shall see.

[Xaren Hypr]

Something that I want, is to be able to mod the ability to turn a facility on or off. SOmething like:

Can be disabled: yes/no

Got the urge for that ability when i was playing my first 'finite resources' game, and trying to manage my resource extractors (w/ no way to disable them, short of continuous scrap/build, it was an experience). I know it's already in beta, but it wouldn't be a bad thought, yes/no?

[douglas]

That ability would also be very useful for system gravitational shield facilities.

[Q]

Some features I have seen and liked in Starfury (but may be impossible for SE V):
- long term shield regeneration (not complete shield regeneration after each combat).
- slow auto hull repair (not at least one component per turn or nothing) and retaining of patial damage to components after combat.
- side differences of shields and armor (four different sides).
- side difference/arcs for weapon firing.
- cost for repairs.
- limited/variable ranges of sensors.

[Slick]

I would like to string complex orders together to minimize management each turn. Example:

Build spaceyard,
build rock colonizer,
when rock colonizer built, transfer 1M (only) population of oxygen breathers to colonizer,
send colonizer to colonize planet X,
build spaceyard space station,
once spaceyard space station built, have it load saved build queue #3 and commence building.


or

to population transport: move correct breathing population to planets taking population only from planets >90% full. Do not reduce planet population to less than 50% full. Fill planets to no more than 80% full.


or

to ship: meet up with and join fleet ABC. (While fleet ABC continues carrying out its orders)


or

all planets without spaceyards not building anything right now with at least 1200 free cargo, build Weapon Platform XYZ.


to a carrier: pick up fighters from planet(s) [a, b, c, or d] until full then rendezvous with ship/fleet; or go to location xyz.


=============================================

I'd also like more "overall empire management" type information easily available, especially for the system and empire level. I see from the screen shots that MM is moving in this direction. Example:


Show me how many resources are being produced at each system that currently does not have a System Robotoid Factory. Sort with highest on top.


or


Overlay on the quadrant map the distribution of my "attack" ships. (This could be graphical or numeric)


or


on the quadrant map, show me all systems that have:
- system robotoid
- system grav shield
- undefended warp points
- etc.

[Mylon]

Originally posted by 123456789 in the other suggestion thread:
- experience lets you buy more Racial Points



I soooo want this. I noticed races had exp in SEIV but unfortunately it didn't do anything. It'd be great to be able to play a race that gets more racial tech/advantages as time goes on and even better is playing "ancient" races that have been divorced from their supertech or whatnot in a fresh galaxy, too, being able to repeat the cycle so get to keep building up your race's abilities...

Likewise, there should be an option for AIs to auto-adjust to your experience, too. But yes, putting a usefulness to racial exp (that carried between games, even) would be wonderful.

[Suicide Junkie]

I don't see any benefit, there...

How exactly would it be good, and how would it avoid munchkin-ism?

[Mylon]

I always love a bit of RPG elements thrown in. It gives a form of continuity to link one game to the next. Even better is if you loose to the AI, you have a stronger race to try next time. It also allows players to discover new possibilities with their race otherwise totally too expensive and without modding.

As to avoid munchkinism... The players can already cheat anyway by modding their own game. I suggested scaling AIs to compete for those that want a challenge, and there's always the option of making the AI harder or giving them more resources to compensate, too.

[Suicide Junkie]

I really don't see why there should be any link between two different games of SE.

If you want more stuff for your race, just choose a higher racial points setting.

If experience affects the race you can design, then players could cheat without modding the game. And you can't mod the game to cheat when you're playing against other people.

PS:
Where roleplaying should be is in the happiness types, cultures and whatnot.
Be your people Peaceful, bloodthirsty, or masochistic... Planet-hugging hippies or hard core industrialists.

[Atrocities]

The ability to specify specific hull strengths for each ship class.

The ability to lock a weapon to a specific hull size without the use of mounts.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Partial damage to components. Say, a 400kT Space Yard can build with 400 resources of each type per turn (just as an example). A weapon hits with an impact force of 100. The Space Yard is still mostly intact, but it has received 100 points of damage and thus is less efficient - it constructs with 300 resources per turn. Then, it receives a hit from a weapon with 50 damage. This time though, since it's already damaged, the efficiency reduction will be more drastic - it can now only construct with 200 per turn.

This way, you can disable components without destroying them, which has an impact on boarding action and its importance - since the component is not yet fully destroyed, you can repair it even though you may not have the required race technology.

This could also balance out severely unbalancing components like the Talisman and, to a lesser degree, Combat Sensors/ECM, since they can now be damaged without actually being destroyed enabling you to repair them and either use them in combat or analyze them for better techs.

You could have weapons that specifically only damage components and do not destroy them. This way, you can simply use swarms of cheap Escorts with these damaging weapons and boarding parties to take on high-tech enemy Dreadnoughts using their defense bonuses to their advantage against an otherwise far superior enemy.

[dogscoff]

Partial damage to components. Say, a 400kT Space Yard can build with 400 resources of each type per turn (just as an example). A weapon hits with an impact force of 100. The Space Yard is still mostly intact, but it has received 100 points of damage and thus is less efficient - it constructs with 300 resources per turn. Then, it receives a hit from a weapon with 50 damage. This time though, since it's already damaged, the efficiency reduction will be more drastic - it can now only construct with 200 per turn.




A better way to implement this would be to have "stackable" spaceyard components. Jusst as having 6x10kt engines on a ship rather than one big 60kt engine allows you to lose some (but not all) of your propulasion in combat, having 8x50kt spaceyard components (each one supplying one eight of the build rate) instead of a single 400kt component would allow you to lose some (but not all) of your construction ability.

What I'd like to see (and I've said it before) is to have the ability to use warp points brought out of hard-code and put into a component/ hull ability. This means we could mod interstellar fighters, warp-incapable system defence ships, and also allow 'uplifting' of neutrals and primitives who lack the technology to escape their own system.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Not just for SYs, for all components. Say, a 10kT Bridge. A weapon hits the bridge with damage 5. The Bridge component is still there, but it does not have the Bridge ability any more and as such the ship will resort to using an Auxiliary Control or will lose its movement.

Or, a component with double Crew Quarters ability and one Life Support ability - one component - and that it loses one Crew Quarters ability when it is damaged slightly. Also, you should be able to mod components to actually lose efficiency when damaged or that it does not lose efficiency or does not get damaged at all.

Plus, besides the combat gimmick of damaging all comps on an enemy ship without destroying a single one, thus capturing a ship essentially intact, it adds great roleplay elements IMO.



DS, I fully concur with what you say, though I believe that with the moddable hull definitions you could create jump-capable satellites and non-jump-capable courier ships. JOY!

I really hope we will be able to mod vehicle types in SEV.....

[Suicide Junkie]

Starfury has the components degrade in ability as they are damaged.

Eg: A 400-point shield generator which is 50% damaged will only put out only 200 points.

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
I don't see any benefit, there...

How exactly would it be good, and how would it avoid munchkin-ism?


People would enjoy it. So there is the benefit right there.

Munchinism is easily avoided - just have a setting for Racial Experience minimums and maximums (default to 0 and 0) during game setup.

[Suicide Junkie]

Would it not be better to simply have a text field for entering the exact number of racial points allowed in your game?

[spoon]

That is a good suggestion but it solves a different problem.

People want experience gains so they can feel like their race grows in strength over time. If they just assign themselves a number arbirtrarily, rather than being an in-game mechanic, it would be less satisfying.

[Suicide Junkie]

That would be fine if one game had anything to do with the next... But they don't (and IMO, they shouldn't)

What if you were allowed to purchase those additional race modifiers as the game progressed... say, every 10 turns you get 1 racial point for every "X" racial experience points you've collected so far?

[spoon]

That would be fine if one game had anything to do with the next... But they don't (and IMO, they shouldn't)



They don't because there isn't anything connecting them. Add experience, and they do.

[spoon]

What if you were allowed to purchase those additional race modifiers as the game progressed... say, every 10 turns you get 1 racial point for every "X" racial experience points you've collected so far?


Another fine solution to a different problem!

[Suicide Junkie]

But why should they have anything connecting them?

It would be like playing Doom, and starting out with a blue armor because I got to level 10 before dying in my last game.
Makes no sense!

[spoon]

Making sense < Having fun.

People like the sense of gaining experience. Doesn't have to be completely logical. SE4 isn't a sim game, and so it shouldn't worry about realism if it gets in the way of fun.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Suicide Junkie said:
Starfury has the components degrade in ability as they are damaged.

Eg: A 400-point shield generator which is 50% damaged will only put out only 200 points.



Yes, but I meant also being able to mod in exponential efficiency decrease with linear damage. That way, if a powerful component (say, a Talisman) is damaged only, say, 10%, it would be rendered ineffective, yet if another empire who does not have Religious tech captures the ship, they would be able to repair, e.g. *use* it.

[Suicide Junkie]

spoon said:
Making sense < Having fun.

People like the sense of gaining experience. Doesn't have to be completely logical.

No, it dosen't. But it has to make some sense, or its just arbitrary and silly.

If you set limits on the racial experience allowed in your EMPs, then everybody will have to make theirs *just* that high by playing a single player game until they get it.
Its no different from allowing more racial points in the game setup as far as I can see, except more work before you even start the game.


I guess the real question is; how is it fun if you have to play 50 turns singleplayer just to set up your race for the real game?

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
No, it dosen't. But it has to make some sense, or its just arbitrary and silly.

It's abritrary and silly that all these races exist at the same time and have the same tech level and similar planet values at the start of the game. Should those be changed to something more realistic as well? It's a game. Games are allowed to be arbitrary. I wouldn't find a mechanic like this to be "silly" at all. Just a game reward for time played.

And remember, this would be a predominantly single player thing. For single player games, having experience is fine, since you opt into it and don't have to worry about balance so much. For multiplayer games, of course most people aren't going to want to play a game where somebody has 5000 more points to spend. You can just give everyone the same number of points via a bonus.

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
Its no different from allowing more racial points in the game setup as far as I can see, except more work before you even start the game.



More work, as in a couple more buttons to click during game creation: Allow x Racial XPs; Equalize Races.

So, yes, in multiplayer games, it would be the same as just assigning more points. But like I said, this is mostly a single player feature. The difference here, as I said before, is it represents a reward that the game gives you rather than a "reward" that you give yourself. This makes a big difference in terms of satisfaction.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm still not seeing any reason why though.

It would be like starting with armor and/or guns in Doom because you got all the way to level 10 without dying last time.
Or starting with three settlers instead of one in Civilization because you conquered the world so fast in your previous game.
Or making PacMan move 10% faster because you got to level 50 on your previous quarter.

Why in the world should the game be getting easier when you do well?
If you win, it is time to increase the difficulty, not decrease it!

Automatic cheat codes when you least need them don't make any sense to me!

[Suicide Junkie]

To put it in RPG terms, it would be like starting a new game with a level 1 Barbarian who has a +20 Hammer of Skull Smashing.
And the only reason you justify that with is because in the previous game, your party was able to kill 99 imps in a row.

I don't see how that kind of thing can be justified.

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
I'm still not seeing any reason why though.

It would be like starting with armor and/or guns in Doom because you got all the way to level 10 without dying last time.

This is essentially what happens in Counterstrike. Each side gets money after completing each round, regardless if you live or not. The better you did, the more you get. Warlords III (or was it IV) had persistent heroes. Lots of games do this. It's not about realism. It's about gradual increases in power and/or creating a "bond" with empires or characters. Because those kinds of things make the game more enjoyable to a lot of people.


Or making PacMan move 10% faster because you got to level 50 on your previous quarter..

You joke, but this would actually have made the game even more addictive. Or does this violate your concept of the PacMan universe somehow http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Why in the world should the game be getting easier when you do well?
If you win, it is time to increase the difficulty, not decrease it!

I think the OP said something about helping out when the game is too hard. Additionally, you could ramp up the AI on a seperate power curve. The AI bonus could be tied directly to Racial XPs on new games. Games you lose could be restarted without the AI getting their extra bonus.

Automatic cheat codes when you least need them don't make any sense to me!

I agree completely. But I don't think a Racial XP system needs to be implemented in the off-balancing ways you are suggesting it would be. To me, it's all gravy to the kind of people that like that sort of gameplay, and completely optional to those that don't.

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, the counterstrike makes a good example.
Each round isn't a whole game, but is in fact just a round.
After the victory conditions are met, (# minutes, # rounds won, # kills, etc) you compare scores and see who won the game.

You then change maps, begin a new game, and everybody starts from scratch.

When you do well in a round, just like doing well in a big fleet combat, you end up with some advantage over your opponent in the next round. But once you've conquered all and been declared the winner, its back to square one plus only a golden trophy to hang on your ego.

[Atrocities]

One thing that I find most frustrating is the fact that Torpedeos are added as a component. Torpedeos are not a component, they are weapon, and by there very nature, a weapon that is expended. They are not a beam weapon, thus rechargeable, they are use weapon that once used are gone and need to be restocked.

Would it not be a novel idea to have Torpedeo Tubes or Launchers instead?

Each Tube or Launcher would have a max limit of Torpedeos that could be restocked when the ship pulls in for supplies.

The more tubes/launchers you have, the more Torpedeos you have. You could even have a Torpedeo Storage Compartment that could additional Torpedeo's.

If the ship has a Q-reactor, the same would apply, they would still need to restock Torpedoe's.

And on the subject of Torpedeo's, they are a feared weapon amoung navy's around the world. A hit by one or two of them could destroy a ship and for the most part they cannot be intercepted or destoryed. I think that torpedeo's should act simularly in SE V. Armor and shields would begin to play a larger part in if this was the case.

And what about the ships that most often use Torpedoe's? How are they represented in SEV?

I offer this suggestion: Make a new class of ship, a subspace hunter class. The ship, varying in size, would work much like a modern day submarine but instead of being under water, it would be under a special cloak field - to simulate subspace. The ship would not be able to use shields while in subspace, but its armor would work. It would fire torpedeo's while in subspace, but have very poor manuaverablity in combat.

On the contrast, a standard ship could be equiped with subspace depth charges. These would work kinda like point defense cannons. Couple them with a specialized subspace scanner and you could target the subspace hunters and engage them.

I know this is an ambitious suggestion, but one that I think would add a lot to the game and would be the first time such a concept was used in this type of game.

Couple these suggestions with the suggestion that I have already made for Hull Strength abilities, and you could build ships with superior hull strength to hunt the subspace hunters.

[Suicide Junkie]

From the IRC chat logs:

[11:34:43-AM] Malfador: Limited Ammo will be through the use of Ordinance and Supplies. If you run out, you can't fire anymore.

He meant "ordnance" though.

PS:
Surely you should know how easy it is to explicitly add "launcher" to the name of the component if it makes you happy and you don't mind the extra wordiness.

[Atrocities]

Thanks SJ.

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
Actually, the counterstrike makes a good example.
Each round isn't a whole game, but is in fact just a round.
After the victory conditions are met, (# minutes, # rounds won, # kills, etc) you compare scores and see who won the game. You then change maps, begin a new game, and everybody starts from scratch.

That's a really stretched analogy. A closer analogy would be to play several complete games of SE4 back to back, using the same map, gaining extra racial points to spend after each game based upon how you do. Switching maps in counterstrike is more like starting a new game with a new empires, and starting from scratch with that empire.

[Suicide Junkie]

Storing your default settings and trait choices is handy.
But having anything leak across between games is a really bad idea IMO.

If you are going to add that kind of thing, it definitely needs to be much more than one teeny effect, though.

Unfortunately, everything I can think of for that just reeks of massive cheating holes.

[Kana]

Atrocities said:
Would it not be a novel idea to have Torpedeo Tubes or Launchers instead?

The more tubes/launchers you have, the more Torpedeos you have. You could even have a Torpedeo Storage Compartment that could additional Torpedeo's.

If the ship has a Q-reactor, the same would apply, they would still need to restock Torpedoe's.

And on the subject of Torpedeo's, they are a feared weapon amoung navy's around the world. A hit by one or two of them could destroy a ship and for the most part they cannot be intercepted or destoryed. I think that torpedeo's should act simularly in SE V. Armor and shields would begin to play a larger part in if this was the case.

I offer this suggestion: Make a new class of ship, a subspace hunter class. The ship, varying in size, would work much like a modern day submarine but instead of being under water, it would be under a special cloak field - to simulate subspace. The ship would not be able to use shields while in subspace, but its armor would work. It would fire torpedeo's while in subspace, but have very poor manuaverablity in combat.

On the contrast, a standard ship could be equiped with subspace depth charges. These would work kinda like point defense cannons. Couple them with a specialized subspace scanner and you could target the subspace hunters and engage them.

Couple these suggestions with the suggestion that I have already made for Hull Strength abilities, and you could build ships with superior hull strength to hunt the subspace hunters.



I like the ideas...except for the cloak, there are sort of ways to do this in SEIV, Unforuantely they are very broke. The Drones could be considered a from of expendable torpedo...they just don't work well in the combat engine. Seeking Weapons can emulate via supplies...but of course the replenishment of supplies is quirky. As for being feared...make any weapon that does a crap load of a damage, and people will be forced to defend against, or plan for it... It seems SEV will hopefully allow us to better mold our ideas into a playable format...

Kana

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
Unfortunately, everything I can think of for that just reeks of massive cheating holes.


That's just because you keep thinking up horrific ways for it to be implemented! Use your brain for good, not evil!

What if we called it the Leaky XP system. Then you'd love it! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

"Leaky XP" would be good if it involved, say, ships and fleet experience leaking away over time.
Having to brush up your crew's skills after a year or two on a peaceful patrol would make sense.

Having bonuses spawn from something you did in a previous game (racial experience) has already been shot down as a bad idea in SE4.
I seriously doubt that anything SE5 is doing will change that.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

If you could turn it on or off and the AI empires had equivelent XP and if you couldn't use the XP setting in multiplayer, it would work.

That's three things, though.

[Aris_Sung]

Here's an idea: the ability to tow ships with ships that having tractor beams. huh, huh?

[Emperor's Child]

I hope we get around the problem of faster ships not being able to withdraw from combat from slower ships. I've always thought it rather unrealistic that fast ships just stop at the board edge and wait to be killed. Why can't those ships be allowed to "disengage" from the battle?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Have the battle area scale and follow the 'center of mass'.

[Emperor's Child]

That would require lots more coding. I simply propose that if a ship reaches the edge of the battle area it should just drop out of combat and be listed as survived. In simultaneous games, this would likley translate into more of a running engagement between fleets where the first battle the escorts fight it out and the loosers auxiliary ships run, and then a series of fights as the winning fleet chases down the auxiliary ships if they can catch them.

[Captain Kwok]

The combat area is not limited in SE:V. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Emperor's Child]

Aewsome! This will change the game play for the better IMHO.

[Kana]

If the AI is externally scripted...I would think it would be a snap to have the ships name list work in a similar scripted fashion instead of just a list. This would allow it to be in a format so that it can point to a descripter prefix like 'HMS' or 'USS' and then possibly list name by ships class instead of alphabetical or random order...

Kana

[Emperor's Child]

I had an idea about a way to give the game some additional kick: Facility location tags.

I was playing a P&N game and had the idea of trying to model a Habanna gas mine-like fuel station – like thing into game play. My idea was that if you could tag a facility to only be built on a certain type of world, you could tag them so they could only be built on gas worlds. I would then make the gas-mine refueling stations places where unlimited supplies would be available and then make some restriction (or outright-prevent) on all others.

Anyhow, I think that while that particular idea won’t work well, the concept of tags for facilities and worlds that identify type of world and atmosphere would have lots of interesting possibilities.

Refueling stations on Gas giants or methane worlds only.
Solar collectors on worlds with no atmosphere that work much more efficiently (and a whole raft of other things that will work better or worse under no atmosphere).
Farms could be made 20 times as expensive on worlds with no atmosphere to reflect domes, etc…

Lots of possibilities for playing around with some interesting concepts.

[ToddT]

Well after being burned by it again. It would be nice that when select ai off, that it does just that. Leaving a seperate option at the bottom of a menu, off the screen , that operates the reverse of that, is just wrong.
i do not play offline and do to the way things have played rarely start a new game very often and, most if not all missed turns where do PBW issues.
Sorry just had a game in turn 35 irrepairable trashed by this feature.my other pet peeve is the fact that the warp screen has everything swithed off by default, hadn't used Stelar manip in a few years, an din't remeber right way how to use it, it got me in hot water During the race for SEV games.

[Kamog]

Oh, another thead of SEV suggestions! Didn't know this existed, in addition to the big sticky one at the top. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Is there still time for Aaron to incorporate suggestions into SEV before the release?

[douglas]

Kamog said:
Oh, another thead of SEV suggestions! Didn't know this existed, in addition to the big sticky one at the top. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif


This thread was originally in the SEV forum, which got merged into this one a while ago.


Kamog said:
Is there still time for Aaron to incorporate suggestions into SEV before the release?


That all depends on how major the suggestion is and how long you're willing to wait for the release.

[inigma]

Two ideas I'd love to see:

1. real time combat
2. custom hotkeys, and macros

1. I wonder if battle will be in real time. I think that would be very very very very very cool.

You set your ship, task force, and fleet strategy, formations, and primary, secondary, and trinary orders before the battle, hit start when you're ready, and the computer plays out the entire battle in real time. I think the ability to create your own scripts for how your fleets "react" to enemy forces during real time combat would also be one of the coolest inventions in 4x games.

2. Custom hotkey combinations would be awesome in setting up some system of macros for empire management, battle management, and others.

Imagine watching a 200 ship battle in real time, your carriers are preprogrammed to stay with the fleet near pd ships, instead of running away once they've launched their fighters. The fighters form up in preprogrammed flight groups and wings, and your cruisers provide perimeter defense while firing their heavy mounts from long range. Light cruiser task forces move in for close encounters of the third kind, forming the front line of the battle, rotating their positions so as to soak up the most enemy fire, the computer almost seemingly working hard to provide cover for weakened ships.

You can pick a ship to command personally, be it part of a formation, or a leader, or even the fleet flagship, and as the battle changes and your preprogrammed responses appear to be failing, you quickly call up hotkey macros which load entirely new strategies and responses for your fleet to follow, which eventually change the formations within battle as the enemy is flanked, surrounded, and defeated soundly in a shooting retreat as the battle ends.

Now THAT would be the Space Empires of my dreams.

[Ed Kolis]

Well, realtime combat has long been a feature of SE5, and the AI is said to be scriptable - check out some of the screenshots and the preview video (sorry I can't give you an exact URL but I think it's at IGN...)

[Aris_Sung]

In regards to Atrocities idea of Torpedo Launchers, I thought wouldn't it be cool that as you researched better torpedo launchers you could fire more than 1 torpedo/launcher. Therfore, the more advanced you get, you can reduce the number of launchers but maintain the same number of torpedoes fired (compared to a less advanced period) or keep on adding launchers and fire even more torpedoes.

Just my $0.02.

[Aris_Sung]

Oh, one last suggestion before I forget.

If you put mines around your planet, it should decrease the amount of resources that gets exported from that planet.
Think about it. The more you mine a planet for its defense, you're basically cluttering up the space lanes that resource transports need to use to come and go. So with reduced lanes, there would only be so many transports that can come and go at a time.
This idea is just for balance, so that a defender doesn't mine all his planets with no down-side.