SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Kana]

Well if were going to wish...how about shield arcs to go with the weapon arcs...

Kana

[OrionsBane]

i know in starfury the shields have 4 arcs, and the ships (according to screenshots) look like they are set up the same way in se5. are there arcs i thought that was just a given?

[El_Phil]

Hmm I seem to have missed this, but then so has the zombie mouse...

Hello OrionsBane and welcome to these forums. Here be dragons, temporal penguins and a visceral dislike of US alleged beer. Consider yourself warned. And welcomed of course. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Hi, welcome to the forums. I will now eat your brains with root beer and chedder.

[Q]

A small request:

Make all lists remember the last viewing position (like the log list in SE IV).

And please don't forget the AI!
In the last time I heard very little about the AI in SE V.

[Slick]

Make all lists remember the last viewing position (like the log list in SE IV).



I know it's been said at least a couple of other times in this thread already, but, as small as this is, it would be a great improvement. I also find re-scrolling down lists over and over to be quite aggrevating.

Another great thing would be a hotkey that did this:

"Go to location of next Event Log entry and display what happened there."

Even with the Event Log remembering your spot, you keep having to go back to it many times per turn. This would speed up turn processing tremendously. With a hotkey for this, you could quickly go to all the important places for that turn, take any actions required, then move on to issuing new orders or new business.

[Ed Kolis]

I want the "combat replay" feature to be an external program, freely distributable separate from the main game, so that we can save replays of our most glorious battles and share them with other players - and also with people who haven't played SE5 yet! FRESH BLOOD! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[The Frenchmen]

My biggest wish for SE:V is if your playing a TCP/IP game and there is player to player combat you can play it in real time (with pausing of corse) that would be nice.

[Ed Kolis]

I've probably mentioned this before, but how about the ability to mod different sets of music tracks for each race? They could be the same in stock just to avoid the extra work, but if modders want to take the initiative, maybe borrowing some free MIDI's or something, or if players just want different music to come up when they play a different race... This could be worked into SE4 Deluxe as well, don't you think? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Something like this:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
*** MUSIC.TXT - specifies music for the Anubian Necropolis empire ***

*BEGIN*

Num Strategic Tracks := 2
Strategic Track 1 := moo2-antaran.mp3
Strategic Track 2 := mountain-king.mid
Num Combat Tracks := 1
Combat Track 1 := mm4-pharaohman.mid
Combat Track 2 := mm4-skullman.mid

*END*
</pre><hr />

And maybe even more types, such as "diplomatic contact with this race", "strategic screen while at war", "strategic screen while at peace", etc. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Ed Kolis]

Rules for encounters with races with no treaty or declaration of war - i.e. "attack at first sight", "don't fire on unless fired on first", etc. Would make roleplaying in MP games a bit less cliched - "Oh no, it appears our captain was reckless AGAIN, we propose a treaty of non-aggression" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Starfire512]

Better AI modding.

I've noted that one of the advantages that a player can use over the AI is single use planets. The AI tends to build multiple facility types on a single planet, including R&amp;D on high resource value planets. Players on the other hand, tend to put one main facility type on a planet (say Minerals) and then load up on the bonus facilities (Robotic Factories, Mineral Scanners, etc.). This gives a much larger total production overall when you examine this on an empire wide scale. A poor resource planet, then is loaded with many R&amp;D facilities.
Another AI problem is that the AI considers a tiny domed planet to be equivalent of a Huge non-domed planet. Thus, Default_AI_Planet_Types: "Percent of Colonies:" becomes fairly worthless as a method of tracking overall production balance to the empire.
If the AI could take a broader look at its facility building abilities, it would be better (Empire Wide: running low on minerals, where is the best place to build more -- but restricted by minimum mineral value). I think the AI could be made considerably stronger. Another thing that I often look at is "Am I plus or minus on the resources I'm taking in vs using?". This tells me whether I need to focus on resource production or R&amp;D point production.
The key is that SpaceEmpires is first an economic game, and secondly a military game. Thus, if the economic abilities of the AI are inefficient, then the overall AI will be seen as weak as it just doesn't have enough ships to compete.

[Q]

Redesigned component repair:

1.) Two different repair abilities: One as in SE IV that repairs all ships in the same sector and one that only repairs the own ship but not any other ship.
2.) Repair done in kT with the possibility to do partial repairs of a component per turn that can be continued next turn. That would imply a memory for each ship of partial repair/damage (as it is done in SE IV during combat turns).
3.) Repair ability during combat as it is in SE IV for organic armor but (at least possible) for all component as it is in Starfury.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

#2 I fully support. I mean, it makes no sense if you can repair 3 200kT Stellar Manip devices in as much time as it takes to repair 3 10kT Armors?

Better point defense systems. Right now, PD also acts as a normal weapon and weapons with the PD ability only fire on small stuff. I want to configure PD that, for instance, only (and only) fires during the "opportunity fire" phase, that is, you have no manual control over firing. Or, a PD weapon that also shoots any ships and other large stuff that the ship that carries it happens to pass. This would, in my eyes, improve the "independent turret" idea you tend to get with PD and other "turreted" weapons. Sure, you can set targets for the large, heavy, non-turreted weapons, but the smaller ones have their own gunners and crew, and tend to pick their own targets.

Also, a "priority target system" for PD would be nice. Now, it fires only at whatever target is closest; however, if it wastes all its shots on a small, relatively harmless clutch of missiles headed for another ship, and thereby negates the possibility of taking out a squadron of heavy bombers just 1 square further away, that can get on your nerves.

A PD "strategy" would be nice, too. You set your target priorities and target types (i.e. "Seekers - Only On Us", "Seekers - Only On Others", "Seekers - All", etc.) and you can select a PD strategy as well as a "normal" strategy for your ships. For instance, you might give a certain class of ships, which carry crap-loads of armor and entire batteries of PD, the order to fire only on seekers that target allied ships, while a small, maneuverable ship with no armor and only a few PD might get the order to fire only on seekers and fighters that approach itself.

An example list of PD strategy variables;
-Seekers - Only On Us, Only On Others, All
-[any target type] - Maximum Range, Medium Range, Point Blank Only
-Fighters - Approaching, Retreating, Firing On Us, Firing On Others, All
-Fighters - Light, Heavy, Fast, Slow, Small, Large, Anti-Ship, Kamikaze, Anti-Planet
-Drones - With Normal Weapons, With Many Warheads, Fast, Slow, Anti-Ship, Anti-Planet, Recon (i.e. equipped with scanners, supply tanks), Support (i.e. equipped with repair comps, supply reactors, etc.)
-Sat - Missile, Armored, Shielded, Short Ranged, Med Ranged, Long Ranged, Anti-Planet

So you could have a PD strategy priority list as such;
-Seekers - Only On Others, Medium Range
-Sats - Armored, Long Ranged, Maximum Range
-Fighters - Heavy, Approaching, Medium Range
-Drones - Many Warheads, Point Blank Only
You can have up to three target type priorities on anything except Seekers, though one or two would suffice for most situations. You would create these strategies in a screen similar to the current "create custom strategy" screen, and you could assing one to a class you design, or to an individual ship. Large warships (&gt;1000kT or so) with mostly PD and lots of armor could have "personalized" strategies per ship, while tiny, off-the-shelf PD escorts would just have a general strategy for the entire class, and if you want to change the strategy you just duplicate the design.

[Captain Kwok]

Q said:
...Repair done in kT with the possibility to do partial repairs of a component per turn that can be continued next turn. That would imply a memory for each ship of partial repair/damage (as it is done in SE IV during combat turns)...

Have you been peeking?

[Ed Kolis]

I love it when Captain Kwok posts in these threads... he always lets something slip! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Q]

Captain Kwok said:
Q said:
...Repair done in kT with the possibility to do partial repairs of a component per turn that can be continued next turn. That would imply a memory for each ship of partial repair/damage (as it is done in SE IV during combat turns)...

Have you been peeking?



I am Q! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Aris_Sung]

Just wondering if anyone has voiced the idea of giving planets gravity wells.
If you have it in combat mode, then ships that have their engines destroyed and are close to a planet (say 2-4 grids or will it be hexes now??) will fall towards the planet. Therefore the ship could cause damage to inhabitants on planet, or the planet and any other ships can destroy the ship thus preventing planetary damage, or a salvage ship(a ship with a component that can tug the damage ship to a safe distance) can save it.
If you have it in normal game play, I guess if a ship loses its engines due to battle, or sabotage or some unexplained phenomena, and is around a planet or sun (hmm, probably should have added idea of sun to previous paragraph), then it would also gradually get pulled in towards said stellar body unless something intervened.

Comments?

[Emperor's Child]

I just had this thought: Wouldn't it be cool to have a PBW option where the number of other players (real and AI) was hidden?

Right now you know EXACTLY how many other players are in the game, and can tell who are the human opponents. This gives you an advantage in knowing approximately how large or small the playing field will be, and you can tool your tactics accordingly.

I think it would be interesting to have ways to mask who are real &amp; AI opponents so you don't know who they are, and possibly some way to hide the total number of players in the game. This would make the process of scouting / discovery more interesting.

[Suicide Junkie]

I think it would be interesting to have ways to mask who are real &amp; AI opponents so you don't know who they are, and possibly some way to hide the total number of players in the game. This would make the process of scouting / discovery more interesting.

How about if SE5 were to run all political messages through the altavista translator; from english to french to german and then back.

A system would simulate the such disorder in the communications under foreign races is enough although corresponding, me to believe.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

More in-depth and, more importantly, moddable diplomacy.

Say, you just encountered another race. You can only send General Messages until you've established some sort of consulate there, at which point you can propose the more basic exchanges and such, such as gifts, trades, trade treaties and such. Then, if you were to establish an embassy, you could start working on the more complex agreements, such as Military Alliances, joint war efforts, Surrender and so on. This wouldn't just be a Nothing-Consulate-Embassy system; this would work with numerical levels, so that Consulate is lvl2 and Embassy is lvl3. This way, you can mod in more diplomacy options, so that a basic Consulate would allow you to make gifts and non-aggression pacts, whereas a Trade Consulate would allow trades and trade treaties, Embassies would have even more complex treaties and Joint War Coordination Centers would allow military alliances and joint war efforts.

Also, I would like to see moddable treaties. This would allow for a more complex, in-depth diplomacy system, keyed to the specifics of a mod. And, mod specifics aside, it would give you a potentially vast amount of diplomatic agreements. I for one would like to add at least these following treaties;
Loan, Mutual War Effort, Vassalization, Forced Annexation, Merger of Empires, Trade Boycott, Mercenaries, Multilateral Alliance, several types of more in-depth Trade Agreements, Mutual Intelligence Coordination, Research Alliance, a bare-bones Military Alliance und so weiter.

[Patroklos]

Out of curiosity, since all the models for vehicles will now have actual proportional size, how will planets be fit into tactical combat?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I don't know if I've posted this, but I look for this in every single strategy game I buy: The ability to turn all players into computer players and just sit back and observe.

[Fyron]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
I don't know if I've posted this, but I look for this in every single strategy game I buy: The ability to turn all players into computer players and just sit back and observe.

SE3 and SE4 have this. It seems reasonable to assume that SE5 will probably have it too.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Not exactly. You can turn on all ministers, but they don't perform exactly as the computer (I don't think).

I meant literally an observer - Like watching an FPS game played by bots in observer mod.

Your view wouldn't be limited to one empire; you could look at all empires, without having to password your way through empires.

[Captain Kwok]

The 'Complete AI ON' button turns all the ministers on and the player will act exactly like the AI. Do this for each player and you can just go player to player watching.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I covered that.

[Q]

Narf is right for turn based games there is a difference: even with all ministers active the computer will still ask you if you want to attack and which colony type you want for a new colonized planet. You don't know exactely what the AI would do in this situation when the empire were under computer control.
For simultaneous games however there is no difference AFAIK except the AI bonus and if chosen the team mod.

[Emperor's Child]

How about system grav shields that have a on and off button. If you build them, you should have the option to have some control over them. (other than demolishing them)

[Alienboy]

I would like to be able to adjust the brightness of my screen in the game. I am finding that I have to adjust my screen brightness every time I go to play. It just seems to be too dark otherwise. Another thing that might make the game simulator a bit more user friendly is if you could save your simulation. If I am testing a new ship design against a fleet of an enemies ships I find it difficult because if I want to change my design I have to re-select all the ships to re-start the simulation again. I have found a way around it but it is still a hassle.

[Fyron]

Emperor's Child said:
How about system grav shields that have a on and off button. If you build them, you should have the option to have some control over them. (other than demolishing them)

This would make turtling 100 billion times worse.

[Atrocities]

The only way to effectively counter Turtling aside from turning off the tech that allows it, would be to allow players to send ships to those systems locked off by allowing them to traverse the space between them. In steps light speed, faster than light, and so on.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Alternative 1. Interstellar FTL travel is possible, and it's none too slow to prevent turtle-breaker fleets from having to spend decades in interstellar space.
Result: Everyone's going to have fleets scooting around in interstellar space to avoid WP defenses.
End result: WPs reduced to civilian transport networks only, system defense becomes a b**ch, borders change faster than you can keep track of, fleets start popping up and disappearing everywhere etc.

Alternative 2. Interstellar FTL travel is possible, and it's not too fast to avoid the mess of the End Result of Alternative 1.
Result: People still use WPs.
End result: When you dispatch a turtlebreaker fleet, it'll be rather severely outdated by the time it reaches the turtler, and he'll sweep it aside even though he's outnumbered 3 to 1. To build a fleet capable of breaking a turtle, you'd have to devote your entire production over several years to this goal, and you'll end up dead as the other empires'll take advantage of this to invade.

Alternative 3. Interstellar FTL travel is impossible. System grav shields have an on/off button.
Result: SE as we know it.
End result: Turtlers gain vast amounts of power as they can now strike out from a turtled system without fear of retribution.

Alternative 4. Interstellar FTL travel is impossible. System grav shields have no on/off button.
Result: SE as we know it.
End result: People will still resort to turtling.

Alternative 5. Interstellar FTL travel is impossible. System grav shields use up vast quantities of resources each turn.
Result: SE as we know it.
End result: Turtlers will not be able to sustain a turtle if they don't have a nice resource base spread out across several systems. Turtles will become a lot harder, but not impossible.

Alternative 6. Interstellar FTL travel is impossible. System grav shields only last for a set amount of turns after which they fizzle. The structure can be scrapped.
Result: SE as we know it.
End result: Turtlers will have to deal with a vulnerable period every so often, unless they synchronize queues on multiple planets.

Alternative 7. Interstellar FTL travel is impossible. System grav shields only last for a set amount of turns after which they fizzle. The structure cannot be scrapped.
Result: Non-turtlers using a system grav to prevent a solar nuke from going off will have to deal with the fact that the slot they use to build the grav is lost.
End result: Turtlers will have to deal with the fact that eventually, they'll run out of space in their system, at which point the entire system becomes utterly useless, unless he's got a few planet-killers, planet-creators and colonizers tucked away somewhere. Nuke all planets, create new ones and rebuild your empire. Vulnerable period lasts longer and turtlers are more vulnerable, however as stated above non-turtlers will be more vulnerable to solar nukes and planet-killers.

Take your pick.

[Emperor's Child]

I've yet to get to a point in a game where turtlers are a problem, but if this is the case, why not counter with another facility that can pierce the grav shield. In order to be fair to the Turtler, they should get some warning that their grav shield is being assaulted. Maybe something like it takes several turns (years?)to burn through during which the turtle-ee is given warnings.

Maybe another tactic would be to give an intel project the ability to target Grav Shield Facilities.

Again, I've never experienced a "turtler", but a on/off switch is not mutch different from building a separate grav shield facility and then halting the construction one turn from completion. This is pretty much the same effect as an on/off switch.

[R.Daneel]

Quest for Ship And captain. To increase Exp. and Found Technology and misterius things. (fully moddable) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Possibility you can assign a specific captain or crew to a ship to boost his capacity.

Naturally Full stat to captain and crew...

This add open the door to new rpg (stng mod will benefit)
Tank you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Randallw]

disclaimer: post made under some frustration.

What would be interesting is some way to tell ships to attack the rear column support vessels in an enemy fleet. They'd have to get through the warships first, but they could make a suicide run against the minesweepers and supply ships. I just spent an hour or so trying to figure out how in SE4 to no luck.

[Emperor's Child]

I would really like to see in SEV the ships go where the little lines showing their path says they are going. I've noticed on many occasions that ships go by different routes over long distances, usually due to some warp point that has a tagged minefield or something similar in their displayed route.

Recently in a game my assault fleet was on my side of a warp point, the order was given to jump into the enemy system and take a planet, and the next turn I find they had gone the OPPOSITE direction back into my own sector. The opposite side of the warp point has a minefield, so the fleet I'm sure was taking a path around it. The problem is that the course I thought they were taking was displayed as going through the warp point when in fact the computer was taking them around another route. In fact, when I clicked on the battlegroup, their laid out course still showed them going back to the warp point and going through even though all the ships were moving directly away from that particular warp point.

Anyhow, this display of the intended track but going another route when the turn is processed is annoying and counter-intuitive. I'd REALLY like to see this fixed in SEV.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Emperor's Child said:Again, I've never experienced a "turtler", but a on/off switch is not mutch different from building a separate grav shield facility and then halting the construction one turn from completion. This is pretty much the same effect as an on/off switch.



Not so. An on/off switch would allow the turtler to switch the grav shield off at any given moment without having to wait until the other grav shield's finished, also an on/off switch doesn't (necessarily) cost resources.

I personally prefer Alternative 5. You can't support a turtle without a resource base spanning multiple systems, unless you're in a trinary system with three fully populated, fully exploited sphereworlds. Also, it allows people to still use the shield to prevent an enemy solar nuke from hitting the system, keeping it just long enough to allow a fleet to take out the solar-nuke after which you scrap the shield.

[Puke]

im sure aaron does not check this list any more (its grown far to long, and there are too many tangents and repetitions)

but maybe some beta testers will catch this and pass it along:

There are two things currently on my wishlist. Fisrt - the ability to blockade wormholes. This would require the game to perform pathfinding to determine if there was another way to get resources back to the homeworld(s), but that sort of thing is already done to check if empires are able to communicate with each other. so it shouldnt be very hard. It could also create a real use for "palace" type facilities, that could act as additional homeworlds for the purposes of pathing systems to supply centers.

As an extension of the above, I would like to see blocades of a system's starport cut off all resource production in the system.

Second - I would be very happy if "can warp" was a component ability. I understand that it is currently a hull ability, (so you can determine wither fighters or certain ship types can warp, or can be carried in cargo), but it would be nice if it was a component ability. so you could add a large component to a ship that was its "warp engine"

[TurinTurambar]

Emperor's Child said:
I would really like to see in SEV the ships go where the little lines showing their path says they are going. I've noticed on many occasions that ships go by different routes over long distances, usually due to some warp point that has a tagged minefield or something similar in their displayed route.

Recently in a game my assault fleet was on my side of a warp point, the order was given to jump into the enemy system and take a planet, and the next turn I find they had gone the OPPOSITE direction back into my own sector. The opposite side of the warp point has a minefield, so the fleet I'm sure was taking a path around it. The problem is that the course I thought they were taking was displayed as going through the warp point when in fact the computer was taking them around another route. In fact, when I clicked on the battlegroup, their laid out course still showed them going back to the warp point and going through even though all the ships were moving directly away from that particular warp point.

Anyhow, this display of the intended track but going another route when the turn is processed is annoying and counter-intuitive. I'd REALLY like to see this fixed in SEV.



You can uncheck the standard "Ships should not enter minefields" &lt;paraphrased&gt; and "Ships should not avoid restricted systems" radio buttons in the Empire Options screen. I also keep all the "Ships should clear orders **" crap turned off too. Micromanagement is my reason to wake up in the morning

/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif

[AgentZero]

Atrocities said:
The only way to effectively counter Turtling aside from turning off the tech that allows it, would be to allow players to send ships to those systems locked off by allowing them to traverse the space between them. In steps light speed, faster than light, and so on.



Or just have the system grav shield not affect WPs being opened or closed. Possibly a toggleable option during game setup.

[Fyron]

Or a quick mod that removes the WP blocking abilities.

[Emperor's Child]

TurinTurambar said:

[responding to my suggestion that ships routes should account for deviations due to minefields and the like]

You can uncheck the standard "Ships should not enter minefields" &lt;paraphrased&gt; and "Ships should not avoid restricted systems" radio buttons in the Empire Options screen.
/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif



Yes, I have now done that, which is what we term a "workaround" in my business (a user procedure that solves a software problem). But I was recommending that the problem be fixed so a workaround not be necessary.

[TurinTurambar]

It's not a workaround!?!?! It's a game option! What.. to you Minister Control is a "workaround for people who can't manage detail"? Don't be silly.

[Ed Kolis]

"Avoid when out of fuel" - an alternative setting to "avoid this system"; a ship coming across a system set to this will avoid the system only if it is out of fuel. Useful for systems with random movement or systems with movement toward center!

[Atrocities]

Let us pick our own starting date.... the date 2400 is to limiting.

[dogscoff]

Puke said:
im sure aaron does not check this list any more (its grown far to long, and there are too many tangents and repetitions)




That would be a shame, but you might be right.



Second - I would be very happy if "can warp" was a component ability. I understand that it is currently a hull ability, (so you can determine wither fighters or certain ship types can warp, or can be carried in cargo), but it would be nice if it was a component ability. so you could add a large component to a ship that was its "warp engine"



Yes, this has been suggested before, several times. I might even have emailed Aaaron with it, and I am very hopeful that it has made its way into se5.

The other side effect of this, of course, is that the neutral no-warp ability can be defined by their failure or inability to research the necessary component tech, allowing players to gift them the tech and 'uplift' neutrals to full star-faring empires. You could also mod warpable fighters or non-warp drones if you wanted.

[Q]

dogscoff said:
The other side effect of this, of course, is that the neutral no-warp ability can be defined by their failure or inability to research the necessary component tech, allowing players to gift them the tech and 'uplift' neutrals to full star-faring empires. You could also mod warpable fighters or non-warp drones if you wanted.



Which would be great IMO.

[Swarm]

Technological degradation

...The idea being that an empire has to spend a certain amount on research just to keep still. Below this amount and it will lose build, then repair capability.

I'm thinking of any number of SF worlds e.g. Asimov's Foundataion where an empire is fallen from its great days.

So an empire may have ships and technologies lying around from the old days which it can no longer build, or even repair.

This could lead to a number of interesting scenarios -- you might have Uber war vessels more advanced than anyone else -- but you daren't commit them to a battle where they could get damaged.

The research points required to stand still could be a simple function applied to the empire population (on the basis that large societies tend to become decadent and collapse), and age (on the basis that old societies tend to become decadent and collapse). These could be tuned to disable the effect entirely if desired. (Personally, I'm in favour of anything which acts as a brake on the ridiculous tech escalation in the game :-))

[Yef]

I don't think Technological degradation really happens.
Do you think in the future we are going to forget how to make computers?
Unlikely, unless something catastrophic happens. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Siirenias]

I have a few...they've probably all been proposed a dozen times, if only for the gargantuan size of the thread vrs. probability.

System blockades: You know how you can blockade a planet? Well...commerce can't really flow if an enemy power is blockading the warp points. Ships and space installations would have to rely on locally industry and space ports, or a variation on the concept. This could also allow for certain fleet units to remain in local logistics, which would make finding out about them harder for intelligence.

Speaking of intel...privateering and anti-piracy. For privateers, you devote resources as well as intel points to disrupt commerce, and a simple probability "dice roll" can decide if tonnage is destroyed or claimed as assets to the empire.

Anti-piracy would require devoting light units, up to maybe heavy or standard cruisers, to the task, along with intel points. This is arguably more cost effective, because you could take ancient mothballed escorts and frigates from your empire's infancy to this sort of thing. A branching on this would be devoting light units for system customs or escort duty. You could also opt to construct Q-ships for piracy deterrant.

Data-links are a tactical sort of hybrid like the US Navy's Aegis, allowing the captain of one ship to see an engagement from the point of view from any other. If you have a flagship sporting a datalink component, then the ships in your fleet unit acquire the experience of the most experienced crew in the unit. Also, datalink-tied point defense would offer much hightened reflex, accuracy, and, through combined sensor nets, possibly even range bonuses vrs. less sophisticated seekers.

Fleet formations. Making formations based on divisions within established fleets would be very useful. Also, to be able to detach these...detachments and retain their detachment experience would be quite useful. This would allow another aspect of experience bonuses. Instead of direct bonuses, fleet xp is a bonus multiplier for detachments. If you have two detachments operating together fromt he same, seasoned fleet, you could maybe get a multiplier of 5-10% for fleet xp (that's an additional 1-2% as far as bonuses are concerned), and it doubles with every fleet detachment combined with the others. A detachment would be the size of a squadron, meaning at least 2 and at most 6. Since the bonuses are pretty small for infantile navies, combining two undersizerd squadrons into a 4-5 ship squadron would provide better bonuses than to attempt to abuse the thing with 3 undersized squadrons working in concert.

Divisions or detachments or squadrons, however you wnat to look at it, allows you to work with multiple pre-formed formations in one fleet unit, able to work together and provide mutual bonuses and point defense. It also allows you to contol screening squadrons independent of the capital ships, and allows you to use cruiser squadrons to act as heralds and cavalry for the heavy players.

EDIT: Also, it would be neat to provide an emperor the option of constructing warp point-side installations to provide commerce control. This would directly effect commerce for neighbors who are enemies, and the opponent has taken and regulated a system in the shortest distance route to the biggest commercial ally. Also, this would allow for monumental warp point raids, like I try to emulate by building starbases on warp points. Of course, making these things customisable to a degree would be good. Have it as a financial option for a system under total control to be funded by either (as an option) local control or from a specific system, or from the pooled Imperial resources. You give it an option of installations, fighter bases, commerce centers and light/heavy garrisons which can be either custom jobs like what you can do in the ship design windows, or standard units, depending on how interested you are in it. Customs stations around planets and warp points would serve as bases for piracy and anti-piracy operations, as well as a way to institute tarrifs for foreign merchantmen passing through the system to a destination beyond the system. In the actual window you would order one of these warp point defense/commerse installations would provide a choice of how much to put into the project every tenth of a year, and what part of the warp point installation to build first.

[Suicide Junkie]

Re: Datalink

See:
Neural Combat Net.

Also:
Point defense autofiring (reflex?) is bad. The game plays much better without it. See Carrier Battles Mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Siirenias]

I will have to see about that mod. However, I ddin't say the point defense had to autofire. The effect could be represented by accuracy bonuses caused by proximity to other ships.

I...dislike the neural net technology itself with some passion. It sounds kind of tacky to me, and I think there should be a mechanical alternative, that could possibly enhance a neural net. Say...by processing the data collected into a neural network, this allowing commanders to see it in their mind and show their fellows what they see. Frankly, neural nets bother me a bit. But...that is just me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Three words: Racial Facility Pics.

I mean, what's the logic behind a human space yard looking exactly the same as, say, a Cryslonite space yard? Or an EEE SY? I would like the option to have race-specific facility images, so that modders could give different races different facility pics. There wouldn't (or mightn't) be any race-specific facil pics in the stock game, but modders could put them is as needed/preferred. I think it wouldn't be that much code, and so won't be such a major upgrade. Perhaps it won't be implemented in the release version, but there's always patches, non?

[JAFisher44]

I would like to be able to delete old design types.

[Suicide Junkie]

Siirenias said:
I...dislike the neural net technology itself with some passion. It sounds kind of tacky to me, and I think there should be a mechanical alternative, that could possibly enhance a neural net. Say...by processing the data collected into a neural network, this allowing commanders to see it in their mind and show their fellows what they see. Frankly, neural nets bother me a bit. But...that is just me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Eh? The description and picture are trivial to change to something more tech based.
In stock it is an ancient ruins tech, so the exotic description is appropriate.

I always thought of it as a "communication network that connects directly to the neurons in the brain during combat" myself.

[Suicide Junkie]

JAFisher44 said:
I would like to be able to delete old design types.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/uploads/399104-designtype.jpg


If you meant old *Ship Designs*, that's automatic.
1) The design must be marked *obsolete*
2) There must be no ships remaining in existence which use the design in question. This includes those owned by other empires.
3) Every ten turns the game will run a cleanup routine to clear out the unneeded obsolete designs.

[Siirenias]

Oh...huh. I thought it was part of the psychic thing, and I just found it on a planet by coincidense. In that case, I suppose the exotic description would be justified.

Also, you have some pretty nifty ship design names.

[jpinard1]

A good tutorial. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Proposed many times before, but I still motion for a Scenario Editor. It would make certain mods much more fun, as scenarios for canon or custom situations are created. For example, if Atrocities could make Star Trek Mod scenarios of/revolving around certain (major) battles, episodes, series or movies (such as Wolf 359, Voyager, DS9, The Final Frontier), wouldn't it add much to the mod? Or if, in the B5 mod, you could start with Babylon 5 itself? Or, as proposed a long time ago, a Schlock Mercenary mod with appropriate scenario(s) (for example, one where you start with your Tausennigan Superfortress, with all the background of that time, another where you start with the Serial Peacemaker, a third where you play as Admiral Breya and your objective is to blow up a buuthandi, another starting at the current point in the series, with the Touch-and-Go, etc.)? Wouldn't all that be great, if only there was a way to accomplish it?

[StarDragon]

All this talk about real tiem comabt has me a little worried. Can the Devs leave a "classic mode" so it runs like SE4? SE4 and BOTF were my two favorite RTS games of all time.

[Patroklos]

Mentioned before, several times, by me, in this thread, but a topic that is dear to my heart and that I must have in SEV.

Space Yards should be restricted in what they can build by level. You should require a certain level shipyard to build certain level componets/size ships. This way you would have to have large sprawling shipyards to produce the largest most advanced ships. Orbital shipyards should be prohibitively expensive, capital investments that take a long time to build. Planetary shipyards should be resticted to building Frigate size vessels and smaller.

I also like the SEII style of building ships where the ship shows up in the sqare with all its componets destroyed and then has to be "built" a component at a time. This might be how it worked in SEIII, I did a generational skip however. This allows for two things.

1.) You can attack a shipyard and destroy a building vessel.

2.) In emergencies you can launch a vessel prematurely before it is done. Maybe require 50% complete before launch or something like that.

And though I know this is moddable, ships cruiser and up should take a significant amount of time to build increasing proportionally to their size. This would

1.) make the production of smaller ship classes always nessecary and add more depth to ship design/fleet strategy.

2.) make your larger warships scarce, prestegious, and important. In SEIV ship size becomes meaningless since everyone can build the latest size within say 10 turns of each other. Once everone is on par fighting with Dreadnaughts they might as well be Frigates.

What I am really trying to do with this is make ships more important "living" things. If you can only produce three large capital ships every 5 years (because you only have three large shipyards capable of building that scale vessel) those ships become important, trackable units. They will be behemouths among the many smaller vessel you have to maintain, renowned and well know within your empire and your neighbors.

[Me Loonn]

ZOMG ?

Does this thread NEVER die ? rofl

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Nope http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Making large warships important assets would also be a boon to roleplaying, as keeping track of them when your empire is huge can get hard (or at least less easy), and there's also a larger probability of the ship getting destroyed in combat. But you can mod it in; simply make the large warship hulls cost a lot of resources and scale SY sizes, costs and rates accordingly. Voila; you have to keep track of your large, important warships, lest some sneaky enemy strike reduces it to slag! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Try GritEcon.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/

In that mod, ship build times go up proportional to size CUBED.
Maintenance costs are flat rate.

So it costs about the same amount of resources to maintain two 200kt scouts as it does to maintain two 800kt battleships.
However, those battleships take 64 times longer to build.

Thusly, big ships are super-awesome, but really hard to acquire. Small ships are nessesary as cannon-fodder in combat to protect your larger ships.

[TurinTurambar]

That seems like a really good balance. Is the Proportions mod similar in that respect?

TT

[Atrocities]

I want to thank the developers of GAL CIV for reading this thread and using many of the ideas out lined in this thread in their recent game GalCiv II. Job well done guys. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Yimboli]

amen.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

An ability that allows you to board ships with no shields remaining, sabotage a component and/or steal the required technology and get the hell outta there. In short, boarding parties that do not capture the ship but instead either A.) destroy one single component (Boarding Sabotage Attack value must be higher than the comp's hitpoints) or B.) destroy the component and steal the tech needed to build it (BSA value must be higher than 2x the comp's HP).

[dogscoff]

Something I'd like to see in SE5 would be for planets to be allowed facilities and cago when there is not active colony on them - so if you plague a thriving colony into extinction, the buildings left behind by the dead population don't myseteriously vanish.

Also, I think zero-population colonies should become "unowned". The previous owner loses any line-of-sight from that colony, and anyone who can put some population and/or troops down on it can claim it (and any facilities/ cargo on the planet) as theirs.

Maybe this is how se5 works already, I don't know.

[dogscoff]

Here's something else I'd like to see. The great thing about this idea, by the way, is that it's largely cosmetic and so (hopefully) it wold be relatively easy to code in at this late stage.


Now, take a look at this se5 screenshot from malfador.com. (http://www.malfador.com/SE5scr011.htm)
See where it says "surface", "races"...."Abilities"? I'd like to see an additional tab there, called "notes". When you click on this tab the game would search for an external text file named after the planet, in a folder named after the game, which in turn would be kept in a special "notes" folder.

By default, this notes/gamename folder would be empty. The game doesn't generate anything at all to go in there, so it isn't taking up any extra disk space unless the player chooses to create files himself using notepad. Also, the file would only be stored locally, and would be for the exclusive use of this player, so these notes would be completely secure and wouldn't bulk out the savegame files at all. This also means that each player could keep their own notes about each planet- you could annotate your own planets, enemy planets or any other planet as far as you liked, without interfering with or seeing notes made by other players. Of course, players would be free to email notes files to one another and trade them or merge them or whatever, but that's all happening outside of the game mechanics so we don't need to worry about it.

Ok, so you've clicked on the "notes" tab. If no notes file for that planet is found (which is the default, remember), then nothing is displayed. However, if the file is found, what happens next is pretty obvious. The contents of the text file are dumped into the window. Players could keep game information in there ("atmosphere conversion due to complete in 2422.8", "Had 3 CSM weapons platforms when I attacked it on 2416.4") or roleplay information ("this is where the 3rd fleet gloriously brought the Phong Empire to its knees", "This is where the enemy's third fleet notoriously brought our empire to its knees") or absolutely anything else you like ("mum's birthday next week, buy flowers").

The file could be plain text - that would be fine - but some markup would be even nicer: a few select html commands would go a long way and would allow roleplaying players to publish their notes direct to the web if they wanted. H1, H2 tags etc spring to mind, UL, OL and the like. Tables might be overdoing it a little, but IMG tags would be cool. Imagine if you could use href tags to set up your own links and click the game directly from one planet to another- very handy for executing population tranfers etc.

Finally, this system needn't apply only to planets- it could be done for asteroids ("Claimed by Jraenar under treaty of 2413.1"), stars ("going nova on 2406.3"), and ships and fleets too ("commissioned in 2402.2, destroyed three enemy light cruisers in battle of Ceres").

Imagine the possibilities...

[Louist]

Yef said:
I don't think Technological degradation really happens.
Do you think in the future we are going to forget how to make computers?
Unlikely, unless something catastrophic happens. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Any Classicist or Medievalist can tell you all about the fall of the Roman Empire and the following Dark Ages. That is the first example of technological degradation that comes to mind.

Second, Heron of Alexandria had devoloped a primitive "steam engine" which was used in religious ceremonies to create an atmosphere of majesty and wonder. These "steam engines" harnessed steam to open bronze doors, lift ceremonial thrones, and make statues of snakes hiss. Heron lived just under 2000 years ago.

And, more recently, it was discovered that the world as a whole seems to have lost the ability to maintain or create old WWII Lancaster Bombers. There is a group of engineers in Canada dismembering one in an attempt to figure out how build a new one. I think they were expecting it to take ten years.

Off topics aside, I'd like to see this as well. Think of it as a research 'maintentance' to be paid. I think degradation would be dificult to work out in SE, but there should be a base research point cost to be paid each turn before research can take place, and if these points can't be paid, you lose a tech. Just like if you cannot make maintenance costs can't be paid, you lose a ship. Think of it this way: If you have a large empire spanning 50 systems, and you have run to the end of the tech tree. You will likely scrap all those research facilities in favour of something more useful. Suddenly you've removed the intellectual core of your empire. There is no one training the coming generations, and the knowledge of all the empire's techs dies out with the old scientists. Sure, the old textbooks and whatnot still survive, but do you really think you could really build a nuclear plant after reading some books on nuclear physics? Thats why we have teachers. Words on paper can only instruct and convey so well.

Also- I'd like to see some turnbased gameplay OUTSIDE of hotseat. We play a lot of SE V over the lan over here, and none of us are very fond of simultaneous game play, even if it is faster. It takes so much of the control away.

Just my two cents.

[Suicide Junkie]

Louist said:
Also- I'd like to see some turnbased gameplay OUTSIDE of hotseat. We play a lot of SE V over the lan over here, and none of us are very fond of simultaneous game play, even if it is faster. It takes so much of the control away.

You are talking about making the game into an RTS. All of the beta testers are committed to avoiding such a nasty fate.

This is a hard-core turn based strategy series. Plan your strategies around your hull designs, and plan your hull designs around your available strategies. Then send in your hundred-ship fleets to do battle.

Tactical combat is fun when you're playing with 10 or 20 ship fleets...
But, as my one poker buddy would say "we ain't playing tiddlywinks here". Send in your 300 ship fleets, primed with fine-tuned strategies and designs.

In CB3, I just schooled a guy by sending 300 ships against his 400 ship ambush. My well controlled ships executed a two-pronged pincer attack, with dedicated assault ships, PD ships, antifighter boats, missile bombardment and carriers with bombers and interceptors. All did their own thing, and worked together to overcome his 30%-50% statistical advantage (many of his vehicles were actually huge carriers)

Screenshot:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/Tudran2_02.jpg

You simply *can't* play a serious game using hotseat tactical combat. That took 12 hours to process (admittedly on an old machine), and resulted in a six megabyte combat file.

[Louist]

I can see your point. But then, the SE series being a bit of a niche game has its own niche players. I can't speak for everyone I play and lan with, but I have trouble managing larger or later simultaneous games. I realize that it's beneith a lot of you pbw players, but I'd just like the option to play turn based. Or even a simultaneous game without end of turn processing, which a few other turn based games have worked out. I'm certainly not looking to make SEV an RTS, but I would like to be able to suppliment my designing and fleet ordering skills with pure hands on control.

[Fyron]

How would that work, though? Lets say player A has a fleet in player B's space. He could move it to a safer, defensible position in a turn before player B happens to look at the system in question. Now, player B is at a disadvantage not due to better strategy or better gameplay, but purely because he didn't click fast enough. This sort of click-festing nature can work ok in a mind-numbingly simple RTS game where there are very few locations and units on the map, but falls apart in a complex strategy game. If you have simultaneous issue ordering and execution, in real time, the game will become a mess.

Real time combat hairiness can be mitigated by agreeing not to issue any orders during the active time phases, only during the auto-paused phases. But how do you translate this to the main portion of the game?

[Louist]

Try games like Age of Wonders, which uses a simultaneous-turn system. Believe me, it's not a mind numbing click fest. To the best of my knowledge, what it does is processes the turn bit by bit. It is much more like everyone playing a turn based game at the same time. It places a limit on how quickly you can move units (So you don't suddenly have player B's fleet surrounded by ships player A brought in from neighbouring systems) but otherwise works out just like a regular turn based game mode. When you are done your turn you just hit end turn like normal, and when everyone has finished, the game moves on to the next turn. I understand your point, but I suggest you give a simultaneous/turn game a quick play to see what I mean. It works out very smoothly, and without the rush of real time games (Which I myself can't play worth a damn). I realize it would never make it into SEV, but I'd love to see it added to future SE titles. Who knows, you might find that you actualy enjoy it.

If you do want to give that style of play a look, if nothing else, you could find Age of Wonders and AoW2 in a bargin bin somewhere, or on amazon for 10$. I'll try to think of what other games I know uses the system.

[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, but see?
It IS turn based!

You can tell your ships to move hither and yonder, and chase this or that, and drop troops and load fighters.
They execute the orders simultaneously.

And you give these guys their combat orders ahead of time in the form of strategies.

Personally, I love playing tactical combat and wincing as my ships take fire and trying to manoeuver them just so to protect the damaged ones and get everybody out alive.
But playing big games with lots of stuff is great too. And by creating your own strategies you can really make the ships do some surprisingly effective things.

Tactical combat just dosen't work in non hotseat multiplayer. Because you're not there to play it!


---

As for the map orders, you have better control in simultaneous... you can still do almost everything, and you can even cancel orders if you think better of it.

[Louist]

I'm not trying to argue that it is or isn't turn based lol. All I'm trying to say is that I'd like to see SE current turn based mode as an option for lan/internet games. We all wan't SEV and following to be the best possible game (in our view) and for me that would do it. 156 pages of posts from everyone just proves that.

As for the tactical combat- I play mostly lan games (and a few internet games) with friends. We don't use pbw or email, but are playing at the same time, so we would be there to play it.

Like I said, though, this is a wish list and I'm putting forward my wish. I realize it's too late for it to ever make SEV, but I think it's far too early to take it off the list at all.

[Major_SNAFU]

Please someone tell me that there will be an integrates note-pad so you can annotate individual planets, fleets, etc. in SEV.

This series of great games is long overdue for this feature.

[dogscoff]

Major_SNAFU: See my post about half a dozen posts down from here...

[Captain Kwok]

There's actually notes pages available for some of the items but I can't recall offhand which ones.

[Major_SNAFU]

What Dogscoff said about being able to add notes into the game, time a thousand. Make that a million.

Haiving to keep a notebook or seperate text files is possible, but a real pain in the ###.

[Yimboli]

there is a decent note-taking feature in se4... but I find it hard to use. Example: system Malfador has something special. I note it in the system's notes. Then 50 turns later I think "hmm i vaguely remember something special about some system" so now if I really want to find it I have to search each system's notes... eventually if I don't miss it, I find it.

Here's the solution: make the included note system very basic. hit F8 for a notepad window! done! then, make this MODDABLE. I'll download the note system that works best for me. If nothing works well for me, then I get off my *** and make one.

BAM

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Tech level interdependencies. What I mean, is that for instance, level I of tech B requires level III of tech A. Now, in SEIV, you can research the entirety of tech B without researching tech A any further. But what if you want research in tech B to require advances in tech A? In SEIV you'd have to create whole new tech areas to accomplish that. But why can't you just say that tech level II of tech B requires tech level V of tech A, and lvl III B requires lvl VII A, usw. What with the formulaic tech levels, this shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, would it?

[wake_of_angels]

shoud be interesting concept.
Alike, I think about multiple possibilities to get a tech:
To research ion canon, I can think from ion physic and particle guns, or from lasers and high energy weapons.

I tried to make a massive mod and this feature would have a great interest to make it more realistic.

note: Strategia_In_Ultima, you are german, no? (usw)

[Dejavuproned]

I dono if anyone has suggested this yet... But what about wormholes? Like natural wormholes that dont lead to the neighbouring system, i mean unstable wormholes which can lead to anywhere in the galaxy! Would make things interesting if you found one and succefully got a scout through to the other side of the galaxy, maybe even a colony ship? It would be tough though, and you could very easily lose many ships trying to enter it. This could tie into moral to, if you send a colony ship with millions of pop to their doom and then try to send another one (especially right away) the ships (and systems/empires to a lesser degree) moral would take a hit, but naturally they would follow your orders anyway (being the supreme ruler and all). But what if that ship is lost as well and you try AGAIN? The moral of the next ship would be even lower, eventually you could get to the point where the ship refuses to follow that particuar order, knowing it means their doom, and quoting some human (or Abbion/whatever) rights act you thought you got rid of http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif This could spread empirewide, happyness would fall and there would be a public outcry for your actions.

Would be interesting, these wormholes could lead to new and fascinating destinations, and be very strategically valuable but could also be a very bad thing if your not careful.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Another thing I'd like is sustained beam weapon firing, doing damage over time, and torpedo weapon volleys. Sustained beam fire could allow another thing; Strafing. Beams could be used to strafe across a ship, or even a few smaller ships. Also, fighters/small ships could perhaps go on strafing runs near a small enemy fleet.

Ships that stay cloaked in combat. You could set this as a toggle for your own ships; "Decloak and Enter Combat" or "Remain Cloaked in case of combat". Would be handy in case of tankers and such. (Of course, with high enough sensors level you can goad the enemy into combat, but if you don't they stay cloaked.....) You cannot see or control the cloaked ships during combat, and they will not decloak, to prevent you from abusing this option by keeping your most powerful forces cloaked, then decloaking them during combat.

No, I'm not German, I'm Dutch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I just wanted to use something other than "etc.", and I just like the abbreviation "usw." for some reason http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Dejavuproned]

One thing I hope is already included for the game is an starfury style resistance system for armor and such. Like for example emissive armor rather then ignoring 15 points of damage it ignores 15% of damage, this i think is more balanced early through late game and makes weapons with really low damage but really high rate of fire doable without making them useless against emissive armor. Same goes with fighters since it looks like their weapons wont stack anymore rather they act like real fighter swarms and manuver/attack the target.

[Yimboli]

wake_of_angels said:
shoud be interesting concept.
Alike, I think about multiple possibilities to get a tech:
To research ion canon, I can think from ion physic and particle guns, or from lasers and high energy weapons.

I tried to make a massive mod and this feature would have a great interest to make it more realistic.




very similar to the civ4 tech tree, no? This would be an awesome addition to the game. With civ 4, there are so many more possible game progressions. I've gone all the way to the rennaissance (sp?) without horse back riding! This is a very popular facet of civ4 I think - there are different strategies to begin with, but add different tech paths to the key technologies (like civil service, astronomy, gunpowder...) and you get even more creative strategies!!

A tech tree that isn't strictly heirarchal adds a LOT of replay value to the game.

[Ed Kolis]

Dejavuproned said:
One thing I hope is already included for the game is an starfury style resistance system for armor and such. Like for example emissive armor rather then ignoring 15 points of damage it ignores 15% of damage, this i think is more balanced early through late game and makes weapons with really low damage but really high rate of fire doable without making them useless against emissive armor. Same goes with fighters since it looks like their weapons wont stack anymore rather they act like real fighter swarms and manuver/attack the target.



Really? I hated SF's emissive armor... it was rather bland compared to SE4's! After all, if your EA blocks 25% of all damage, rather than 25 points of damage per hit, all that does is effectively multiply your hitpoints by 1.2; it has no real tactical effect such as making your ship immune to fighter weapons and rapid fire weapons! Some may consider those effects unbalancing but I maintain that when modded properly, they can be quite interesting... MOO1 and MOO2 had "emissive" style shields, after all, and they were not horribly unbalanced! Instead, you had ships with Class 7 shields which were immune to mass drivers (6 damage) but not to heavy mass drivers (9 damage)... fascinating don't you think? Ships with heavy defenses requiring heavier armaments to damage them? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

edit: oh, given that SE5's combat will be realtime, perhaps a better model for emissive armor would be "bleedoff rate"? So an armor might be able to bleed off, say, 100 points of damage per second (calculated per game tick internally so you don't have silly "the second is up, now the ship is invulnerable" exploits), so if it gets hit with an alpha strike from a bunch of fighters all at once, it would get damaged, but if one fighter fires repeatedly over the course of a second, the ship would not get damaged? The concept of "bleedoff" is a bit more in tune with the name of the armor, anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Dejavuproned]

I dont think it would work, what about fighters? They never do much damage, and since they all act as their own unit now rather then stacking up to deal more damage, everyone would fly with emissive armor and make fighters obsolete because they cant damage any of the ships. To me the percentage system made more sense. Hey I loved it too in those odd times when you got emissive armor III and came across a ship that couldent hurt you at all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif but it was unbalanced. IMO and this actually would make it more usefull against heavy weaspons, if your getting delt say 200 pts of damage which would you rather have a measly 15 pts taken of or 15% resisted, I would take the 15%!

[Ed Kolis]

In MOO2, fighters could carry powerful bombs which ships could only use against planets, but fighters (due to their agility) could use against ships as well. Why couldn't this be done in SE5? After all, fighters in SE4 have Small Rocket Pods, which are less than 10% the size and cost of CSM's but do comparable damage, just with a shorter range and longer reload time, and they're DF rather than seekers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
All in all, I think it would be best for both styles of emissive armor to be available to modders... who knows, with the scripting engine, they might be already! For all I know, you can do something like this to emulate the SF way:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
/* Functions.txt */
Name := CalculateHullDamage
Num Parameters := 4
Parameter 1 Type := Integer
Parameter 1 Name := amount
Parameter 2 Type := DamageType
Parameter 2 Name := type
Parameter 3 Type := Unit
Parameter 3 Name := source
Parameter 2 Type := Unit
Parameter 2 Name := target
Return Value := amount * type.HullDamage * (1.0 - target.Abilities["Emissive Armor"])
</pre><hr />
And to emulate the SE4 way:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
/* Functions.txt */
Name := CalculateHullDamage
Num Parameters := 4
Parameter 1 Type := Integer
Parameter 1 Name := amount
Parameter 2 Type := DamageType
Parameter 2 Name := type
Parameter 3 Type := Unit
Parameter 3 Name := source
Parameter 2 Type := Unit
Parameter 2 Name := target
Return Value := amount * type.HullDamage - target.Abilities["Emissive Armor"]
</pre><hr />

But of course all this is only speculation http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

On a related note, both CBmod(se4) and GGmod(for se5) make big use of a pseudo-emissive damage system.

Small guns can't hurt the heavily shielded ships. But big guns blow through defenses.
Fighters are far from useless in practice. Sure, you have to design your fighters right, with just one or two heavy weapons for the bigger damage per hit. But that is perfectly reasonable.

If you consider today's armor, it follows a similar scheme.
9mm bullets are good, but if there is any armor, they just bounce off.
Rifles punch through light armor, but will still bounce harmlessly off a tank.
Modest tank shells can punch through thicker armor, but would still bounce off a battleship.
And so on.

The weapons all have their place, but if you use them against things with more armor than your weapon is rated for, it does pretty much nothing.
And if you use bigger guns (main tank gun) against things that are too small (infantry), then you waste major ammo on overkill. And, to a point, you can arm smaller units with bigger guns, or bigger units with smaller guns.

And therein lies the key to variety.

[Kana]

This would seem unbalancing, in that especially the smaller ships will not be able to compete with a bigger ship with more or 'bigger' armor and weapons. Which means we go back to the whole build your biggest ship only problem.

Yet historically this is was very similar to the whole development of cruisers, battlecruisers, dreadnoughts, and battleships in the 19th, and early 20th century. One country would field a ship with X gun, another would counter with a ship with X armor. Then to counter they would have to build a ship with Y gun, and so on...

It might be interesting if done right...yet historically as well...Battleships where basically fodder for subs, and carrier based bombers/torpedo plans in the 1930's and 40's.

[dogscoff]

Suicide Junkie said:
And if you use bigger guns (main tank gun) against things that are too small (infantry), then you waste major ammo on overkill.



S_J, I'm ashamed of you! Rule 37 man, rule 37!

[Wade]

(This is a copy of my post in the thread 'SE:V Screenshots at the SE Depot')

I was wondering if the following sizes from the Neo- Stabdard ship set are included in Space Empires 5?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Also, I have some proposals:

TroopTiny- Machines and creatures the size of insects and small animals.
TroopMassive- Like TroopHuge, but...even bigger.
(There is FighterMassive, CarrierTiny, CarrierMassive.)
FighterTiny- Similiar to TroopTiny, but in space.
*Gigantic* size- More Massive. Gigantic is also the word used to describe Worldship.

So this would be the range: Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Massive, Gigantic.
Or maybe we could add three more to even it out at ten sizes: Enormous, Titanic, Colossal.(These three are the most likely candidates because they most often appear in a dictionary.)

So there would be sixteen sizes of ships from Scout to Worldship. I propose one more: Sphereworld Ship- The Ultimate. A current structure size but with mobility. (In 'Ringworld's Children' the Ringworld was made mobile.)

-Wade
-----------------------------------------------------------
Scout- A ship smaller than an escort.
Corvette- Between Escort and Frigate.
DestroyerHeavy- Between destroyer and light cruiser.
CruiserHeavy- Between cruiser and battlecruiser.
DreadnoughtHeavy- Between Dreadnought and Baseship.
BaseShip- Very big base sized ship.
BaseShipHeavy- A larger version of the baseship.
WorldShip- A gigantic ship which resembles a moon or planet.
ResourceShip- A ship designed with resource production in mind.
ResourceStation- A station designed with resource production in mind.
CarrierTiny- Smaller than the light carrier
CarrierMassive- Bigger than the large carrier
WarStation- A base between BattleStation and StarBase
ColonyShipLarge- A larger version of the colony ship
TransportTiny- Smaller than TransportSmall.
FighterHuge- Bigger than FighterLarge.
FighterMassive- Bigger than FighterHuge.
TroopInfantry- Good old fashioned foot soldier (or tentacle soldier, wing soldier...)
TroopHuge- Like TroopLarge, but bigger.
Barge- A vast ship used for the construction of artificial worlds.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Also,:
If Space Empires V will not have a ship creator similiar to below then will it let us choose any shipset during the custom race creation?

Space Empires V ship designer has a map / blueprint that we place components into. How about a unique map for every planet that we place facilities onto?

If customized ship sets are so popular for SE4 then maybe have a ship set creator as part of the in game for SE5.
Or, even better, we pick a basic shape : pyrimid, cube, sphere \ we stretch and shape it : triangular, rectangular, tubular, etc. \ we add a "hull material texture" and colors : smooth, moderate, rough: metal, ceramic, biological, crystal, energy etc.: glossy, glowing, moderate, dark, etc. \ we add hull "items" and customization : engine nacelles, wings, command bridge structure, etc. \ we add the components \ Complete .

-Wade

(Should I, instead, put these concepts in the 'SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List' thread?

[se5a]

dogscoff said:

Suicide Junkie said:
And if you use bigger guns (main tank gun) against things that are too small (infantry), then you waste major ammo on overkill.



S_J, I'm ashamed of you! Rule 37 man, rule 37!


there's no such thing as overkill, only "open fire" and "reload".

was that it?

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah, the problem with using guns that are too large is the reload part.

[Wade]

Asteroid Domains

Could we have asteroids provide bonuses such as hidden and defensive. The drawback could be a chance each combat turn of taking small asteroid minor dammage.

Guide:
Escort: 50% chance of being hidden per game turn, +50% defense / 10% chance of dammage per combat turn.

Frigate:..............40%, +40% / 20%
Destroyer:.........30%, +30% / 30%
Light Cruiser:.....20%, +20% / 40%
Cruiser:..............10%, +10% / 50%

These are some game play possibilities: more use of smaller ships to hide in asteroid rings and clusters; we never know what might be hiding in them; ambush possibilities; mid sized ships can attempt to hide but if they are seen and attacked then they will take more asteroid dammage then smaller ships and have a smaller defensive bonus then the smaller ships.

Asteroids could be the "hide and ambush" domain of smaller ships. Monsters of the appropriate sizes could also benefit.

-Wade

Also, the asteroid fields could be a natural barrier on the maps to slow down ships and monsters. Perhaps in a way similiar to the above guide. Larger ships will be slowed down more tha smaller ships.

[Wade]

-----An "Epic Generator". Just expand on SEIV's History in the Diplomacy screen.

-Wade

[wake_of_angels]

I suggest only to make the game ready to sell, and let patch of the next propositions!
Otherwise, I will never play SE V

[zaracyn]

Don't know if this has been suggested or not (there's a LOT to read through), but a quicker way to create modded galaxies would be nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Wade]

-----Can we have...?

- the ability to upgrade Ringworlds to Sphereworlds?

-the "Neo-Standard" shipset(or a "create your own" type system I posted earlier): *World Ship*, Base Ship, Barge, Scout, Corvette, Huge Troop, Huge Fighter, Infantry Troop, etc.?

-less expectation that newbies will or want to start modding?...a complete game with every idea...within reason?

-the ability to eventually recreate any thing that is destroyed?...Like, from what I've heard in SE4, creating a black hole is "the end" for that system. I may be mistaken.
-the ability to eventually destroy any thing created. Like a single star with a Ringworld or Sphereworld. I heard that you cannot destroy it in SE4.

-excellent Ministers? I guess this would coincide with excellent Artificial Intelligence. But I assume this is already a priority.

-the ability to travel between any stars without using Warp Points? This should include the ability to alter course to another destination if the appropriate communication technology is available. The travel should be much, much, slower and available from the start. It could be with current engines. This "conventional" travel would increase in speed with engine research; but always much, much slower than Warp Points.it should require no supplies used because it is assumed that the ships are resupplying at lesser systems in between the major systems that are shown on the map.

-a highly advanced form of travel similiar to warp point generator but leaves no warp point.

-"Stargates"? These could be a later technology that allows special intellegence missions once you aquired a pass code key to the destination Stargate and a means to bypass defenses, if any. The Stargates could also be used for easier and quicker population tranfers via a automatic migration concept. Deciding to constuct a Stargate will also open you up to these new possible forms of infiltration.

-neutral/minor empires that are significant in that they are insignificant. They would be so unimportant to the more intelligent races that their empire does not effect the major empires untill the minor advances enough to become a major; they could even be on the same planet together. The minor would then be in the same class as the other majors and can now be conquered, conquer, and colonize other systems in the new class.
There could be several layers of classes, perhaps using the empire age system(newborn,young, moderate, ancient, etc.). This would be a great way to play online so that newbie empires are not instantly conquered(this could even be a form of continuous massively muliplayer). Minors could still communicate and trade with the majors to advance quiker to the next class if the majors would even acknowledge them.
The minors will colonize and conquer systems between themselves but when one becomes a major in the new class his home planet and technology and ships is based upon his empire in the lower class.
Also, remember, all majors of one class are just minors to the next higher class...Enjoy!
I don't know all the particulars to programming but "Wouldn't this be cool?!".
-Wade

[Wade]

If Aaron Hall frequently still receives any of the latest posts in "Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List" then please state so here. Thank you...a Customer...-Wade

Any others please feel free to comment or elaborate on interesting ideas and concepts you have seen or posted there/here.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

-----Can we have...?

- the ability to upgrade Ringworlds to Sphereworlds?

I don't think this has been suggested before..... good one!

-the "Neo-Standard" shipset(or a "create your own" type system I posted earlier): *World Ship*, Base Ship, Barge, Scout, Corvette, Huge Troop, Huge Fighter, Infantry Troop, etc.?

Neo-Standard is just a player-created mod. IMO it should remain that way. As for the "create-your-own-shipset" thingamajig, that would simply be too much coding and would require too much HD space.

-less expectation that newbies will or want to start modding?...a complete game with every idea...within reason?

Aaron is mainly concerned with getting the game code to work right; to let the game itself work right is the responsibility of those who buy it. Leave it as it is, or go and mod it. There's tons of modern games that allow and even encourage modding; why should SEV be any different, especially given the fact that its predecessors were easily moddable too?

-the ability to eventually recreate any thing that is destroyed?...Like, from what I've heard in SE4, creating a black hole is "the end" for that system. I may be mistaken.
-the ability to eventually destroy any thing created. Like a single star with a Ringworld or Sphereworld. I heard that you cannot destroy it in SE4.

Most of this sounds good..... but if a star is collapsed into a black hole, it would mean the end of the system, as planets and whatnot would be pulled in. Also, Ringworlds and Sphereworlds are gigantic, colossal structures in space, and must inherently have immense structural integrity to prevent it from collapsing, tearing, breaking, etc. Hence, it would be very difficult indeed to destroy a Ring/Sphereworld, at least without destroying the star inside it. With Ringworlds this is quite difficult but not all that difficult; simply avoid/absorb enemy fire, fly over the Ringworld's edge and let 'er rip. But Sphereworlds are closed spheres, and its entrances for ships are most probably protected by hatches of the same construction as the rest of the sphere, and hence destroying a star inside a Sphereworld would be very difficult indeed.

-excellent Ministers? I guess this would coincide with excellent Artificial Intelligence. But I assume this is already a priority.

IIRC, Aaron is indeed working on the AI as a priority project.

-the ability to travel between any stars without using Warp Points? This should include the ability to alter course to another destination if the appropriate communication technology is available. The travel should be much, much, slower and available from the start. It could be with current engines. This "conventional" travel would increase in speed with engine research; but always much, much slower than Warp Points.it should require no supplies used because it is assumed that the ships are resupplying at lesser systems in between the major systems that are shown on the map.

Suggested many times before. This would simply not fit into SE mechanics, which rely on warp points for traveling between the stars.

-a highly advanced form of travel similiar to warp point generator but leaves no warp point.

I.e. an FTL drive? See above.

-"Stargates"? These could be a later technology that allows special intellegence missions once you aquired a pass code key to the destination Stargate and a means to bypass defenses, if any. The Stargates could also be used for easier and quicker population tranfers via a automatic migration concept. Deciding to constuct a Stargate will also open you up to these new possible forms of infiltration.

Sounds OK, but then the late game, where every major planet is equipped with a stargate, would be a total chaos with troops hopping from planet to planet, all planets changing hands every few turns, borders dissolve, etc.

-neutral/minor empires that are significant in that they are insignificant. They would be so unimportant to the more intelligent races that their empire does not effect the major empires untill the minor advances enough to become a major; they could even be on the same planet together. The minor would then be in the same class as the other majors and can now be conquered, conquer, and colonize other systems in the new class.

Sounds good!

There could be several layers of classes, perhaps using the empire age system(newborn,young, moderate, ancient, etc.). This would be a great way to play online so that newbie empires are not instantly conquered(this could even be a form of continuous massively muliplayer). Minors could still communicate and trade with the majors to advance quiker to the next class if the majors would even acknowledge them.
The minors will colonize and conquer systems between themselves but when one becomes a major in the new class his home planet and technology and ships is based upon his empire in the lower class.
Also, remember, all majors of one class are just minors to the next higher class...Enjoy!
I don't know all the particulars to programming but "Wouldn't this be cool?!".

Mmmmno. Sorry. Turning SEV into an MMO4XG would simply require too much time, energy, HD space, and servers. MM is a single-man company; do you think Aaron's capable of setting up and maintaining his own server? This is a whole lot different from PBW, you know.

[Wade]

Strategia_In_Ultima,
Thanks for your in depth review and some compliments of my comments.

[jeffel]

I know this is way too late in the scheme of things, but Wade's comments made me want to post these as they are closely related to his points. (I'd bet that these points have been brought up before, but in case they haven't)

Temporary Warp Points
I'd like warp points that only last for a limited amount of time. Then a warp opener could open one, move a fleet through and then have it automatically dissapate at the end of this (or the next) turn;

Targeted Warp Points
I'd really like the ability to target the exit point of my warp points as well as the opening point. There are two ways I would like this to work.
1. Must also have an opener on the other end. (Setting up resonant points that link)
2. Self contained.
These options would give modders more ways to set-up unique universes where different creatures react in different ways.
I'd still like to have the SEIV warp point as well, but I'd like to see more options.

[Dizzy]

What I want to see is LOCAL Resources ... not empire wide resources.

Be nice if there could be an option, or if this were to be a standard part of the game, to switch the game to use local resources than empire wide.

For example, say you have 100k worth of minerals available to your empire which comprises two systems. One system has 40k and the other 60k. I'd like to see the systems be able to share the resources between the two systems IF their respective warp points between the two are friendly controlled (includes all allies and trade alliance income as well) and the warp points are not blocked by an enemy. Otherwise, each system would have to use 40k and the other 60k.

This is kinda similar to how a fleet blockades an enemy planet. But unlike a planet, the system blockaded would be on their own able to produce units ships and facilities only using the local resources of that system.

This would change games where you have a distant colonized system or trade alliance with another empire that is seperated from you by an enemy empire or enemy fleet blocking a warp point between the two. I'd really like to see this. I think the three resources could be set up this way, but intelligence and research may just have to be empire wide. I dont see how they could be local...

[Atrocities]

The ability to specify if a hull can have weapons or not. This way when you design a resource ship, people won't load them full of weapons early in the game to have uber ships.

The only way to prevent this now is too have scaling weapons mounts.

[Q]

Atrocities said:
The ability to specify if a hull can have weapons or not. This way when you design a resource ship, people won't load them full of weapons early in the game to have uber ships.

The only way to prevent this now is too have scaling weapons mounts.



I like this idea.
Or even better make a "maximum percent of space for weapons" like you have now a minimum space for cargo or fighter bays in SE IV. That way you can allow a few weapons on a transport if you want.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Atrocities said:
The ability to specify if a hull can have weapons or not. This way when you design a resource ship, people won't load them full of weapons early in the game to have uber ships.

The only way to prevent this now is too have scaling weapons mounts.



Or you could give the hull -1000 to hit offence. But then Seekers and Talismans can work around this.....

But in a mod with scaling seeker mounts and no Talismans, it should work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

You could have this as a method of creating specialized "Orbital Bomber" hulls; -1000 to hit, give all anti-planet weapons +1000 to hit and scale mounts, and the only anti-planet ships are orbital bomber hulls http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Atrocities]

Not a bad idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Makes the ship pretty useless as attack platforms. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Brillant call.

[Wade]

-----An opening cinematic to be in line with most other games. This will help, some, to lift the series out of "obscurity".

-----(This has probably been mentioned.) We need Infantry or Tiny Troop as a starting technology in order to have a choice of planetary invasion in the beginning game. They should be weak and plenty of them would be needed to succeed over several turns. Later,they can also be cheap police units on all planets.

[Suicide Junkie]

Personally, I think the best would be adding the ability to take video screenshots.

SE movies would flood the internet in a word of mouth torrent!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Try Fraps.

[Alienboy]

Any chance of having a "drone recovery component" for ship hulls. Would be cool to be able to retrieve your drones after you have used them!?? Perhaps a "drone recovery Facility" for the planets as well!??

[Suicide Junkie]

Narf:
I was thinking something in the game itself to let you move the camera around, order actions, and such without the UI getting in the way of your movie capture.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Yeah, that would be cool. Not if it delays the game, though.

[Wade]

SEIV: The "Ships/Units" list should show the class under the name like the ship lists in a system. This way I can better decide what needs retrofitting in the "Ships/Units" list.

For this reason I keep my ship names the same as the class.

Examples: "Date-Tactical Role-Strategic Role-Size"

Tactical Role:Short, Medium, Long, Missile, Carrier, Rock, Etc.
Strategic Role: Sentinel, Guardian, Defender, Attacker, Supporter, Collector, Colonizer, Scout, Etc.

2410.0-Med-Def-Cru
2410.1-Car-Def-LigCru
2410.5-Mis-Gua-Des
2410.0-Gas-Colo-ColShi
2410.9-Min-Coll-Des

-Wade

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

But then if it turns the "tactical/strategic" roles into acronyms by taking the first 3 letters, you'll only get confused if you have two (or more!) roles with the same 3 first letters; "Missile - Anti-Ship"/"Missile - Anti-Planet", for example, or "Drone Carrier"/"Droid Ship".

So then you think you've got ample anti-ship missile defenders in Kartogia, but when the Xiati invade, it turns out that you've only got planetary bombardment ships stationed there http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif owch.....

[AngleWyrm]

Here's a thought: Something that comes because we can save, upgrade, and obsolete ship designs, and pick different technology with each fresh start.

Ship Design &amp; Selection Suggestion: DesignTree
http://home.comcast.net/~anglewyrm/DesignTree.jpg

The several upgrade paths are because of different technology selections, and perhaps the discovery of some Ancient Artifact that affects ship design.

It would also be handy if we could put a player note next to ship upgrades, as a reminder of why the new model exists/how to get it. "Fighter-3 tech" or "to Counter the new Phong Confederacy Missile Frigates" or some such. That would make a nice mouse roll-over.

[Vore]

I wish to be able to have Huge Fleet battles or at least fleet battles like on MOO3 but more ship-to-ship combat I.e. Star Trek DS9 sacrifice of the angles type battles or something like that if its possible.

[Atrocities]

Vore said:
I wish to be able to have Huge Fleet battles or at least fleet battles like on MOO3 but more ship-to-ship combat I.e. Star Trek DS9 sacrifice of the angles type battles or something like that if its possible.



Welcome to the forum,

Right now in SEIV you can have huge fleets of thousands of ships.

As for SE V, don't hold your breath. With a 3d environment the more models you have the lower your frame rates. Look to BOTF for a good example of that.

[wake_of_angels]

I think that it will be interesting to allow mounts to add abilities.

I saw mods with mounts for shields (like cristaline mount) armors...

I imagine some other ones SEIV can't support like:
- cristaline layer for armor that add shield generation from damage
- aiming computer that make weapons point-defense
- pack rats that add cargo capability on crew quarters
- ...

Another thing could be hull mount (inspired from big thinker).

[AngleWyrm]

The ability to specify if a hull can have weapons or not. This way when you design a resource ship, people won't load them full of weapons early in the game to have uber ships.

The only way to prevent this now is too have scaling weapons mounts.



GalCiv has that special hull size to make an exception for the huge part that wont fit on anything; it comes from assigning too much value to "bigger is better".

Another way to accomplish the original intent might be to modify the Resource Gathering parts so that they are much smaller, and produce much less resources individually.

The result would then be similar to cargo ships; that for a player to build a dedicated resource gathering ship, they would load a hull full of many resource parts, whereas just a couple would be something to do just to fill out extra space in a hull.

For example, maybe set it up so that if you loaded the ship with about 10% resource gathering parts, then it would cover the cost of operating that ship. Less would just cut down on the cost, and more would turn a profit, helping with other fleet maintenance, etc.

Which brings up another point: We've got Cargo, Resources, and Supplies. I wish the resources were physically located, so that construction required the conversion of locally available resources into a vessel. Then resources could be transported as cargo, and control of the route from mining to construction would become important.

There could also be a more direct conversion of resources into supplies. Currently ships use supplies but ships also use resources as an upkeep fee. Mostly it seems like a historic reason from a time when the game had less detail. It would be good to have resources converted to supplies, and then supplies shipped as cargo.

This could also pave the way for mods that involve specializations in cargo, maybe some rare fruit from Betelguese or green slave women from Orion...could be fun!

[Wade]

-----I assume that the Mega-Evil Empire function will be present in Space Empires V. Is it still quite drastic where everyone declares war on you? Even a neighboring weak empire that will be destroyed?

It would be better if the closer empires and those in good relations to you would slowly detoriorate relations with you over many turns.

-----('Renagade 13' said in the demo bug thread):"You should have seen a bug in the early beta...if you selected a planet and a fleet, then tried to move the fleet, the planet would move as well!! It was really quite amusing."

(I said): "Hey! That would be a great peice of late technology! The ability to move planets and travel like a ship. Once the planet has attained self sustaining heat from the civilization. This was in the Ringworld series by Larry Niven. The Puppeteer race have their "Fleet of Worlds" of 5 planets. Home world and 4 farm planets.

Ringworlds and Sphereworlds could be made to travel also!
The Ringworld in the story was also adjusted to travel in the fourth novel, 'Ringworld's Children'.

-----The natural phenomonon of a planet being hidden inside a storm cloud/nebula in Space Empires V. Like the New Caprica planet on the 2006 series of Battlestar Galactica.

Or is this already a random possibility during map generation?

How often do we pass by those small one sector storm clouds/nebulas with out peeking inside?

-----There could also be a chance of a space creature or prize in the clouds(not necesarilly hostile though). Clouds could be similiar to the ruins in Civilization. Will there be a planet, some thing hostile or friendly, or nothing at all?

[dogscoff]

Wade said:
-----The natural phenomonon of a planet being hidden inside a storm cloud/nebula in Space Empires V. Like the New Caprica planet on the 2006 series of Battlestar Galactica.




Thanks for the spoiler Wade... some of us are a series or two behind the US you know.

[Wade]

Well, I did not know of that.

I am not sorry though. I am an American that mentioned an American show in regards to an American game on an American site(I think...?) utilizing the internet, an American made technology.

"You can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time."

I just finished watching the two hour season opener of Battlestar Galactica. I can easily post some interesting events of the show here. All you would have to do is take a glance...I won't though. I'm not inconsiderate like that. Even though some will think I am for my "American" comments.

I also watched the new episode of the British show, 'Doctor Who'. Nicely done episode. Though I missed how the doctor is a different actor now. Will this happen much?
I vaguely remember the old series.
So is the British showing of 'Doctor Who' ahead of America? Or has an American company bought it out?

May peace be with you.

-Wade

[Q]

Not that it matters, but was the internet not invented first by members of the CERN in Geneva?

[Alneyan]

Q said:
Not that it matters, but was the internet not invented first by members of the CERN in Geneva?



The World Wide Web mostly hails from the CERN, yeah. If you want to browse websites using only American technology, I'm afraid you'll have to settle for Gopher (from the University of Minnesota).

[Wade]

History of th internet:

http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml#Introduction

"The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962 discussing his "Galactic Network" concept."

"Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA, 4 starting in October 1962. While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept."

"To explore this, in 1965 working with Thomas Merrill, Roberts connected the TX-2 computer in Mass. to the Q-32 in California with a low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built."


"The original ARPANET grew into the Internet."


http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/cerf.shtml

"In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The objective was to develop communication protocols which would allow networked computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet networks. This was called the Internetting project and the system of networks which emerged from the research was known as the "Internet." The system of protocols which was developed over the course of this research effort became known as the TCP/IP Protocol Suite, after the two initial protocols developed: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP). "

http://www.wdvl.com/Internet/History/

"The Internet had its roots during the 1960's as a project of the United States government's Department of Defense, to create a non-centralized network designed to survive partial outages (ie. nuclear war) and still function when parts of the network were down or destroyed. This project was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), created by the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency established in 1969 to provide a secure and survivable communications network for organizations engaged in defense-related research."

"In order to make the network more global a new sophisticated and standard protocol was needed. They developed IP (Internet Protocol) technology which defined how electronic messages were packaged, addressed, and sent over the network. The standard protocol was invented in 1977 and was called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). TCP/IP allowed users to link various branches of other complex networks directly to the ARPANet, which soon came to be called the Internet."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Computer_Science_and_CERN

"It is also known for being the birthplace of the World Wide Web."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Computer_Science_and_CERN

"The World Wide Web began as a CERN project called ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

"The World Wide Web is accessible via the Internet,..."

-----The following one I found seems to sum it all up.-----

http://www.bartleby.com/65/in/Internet.html

"The Internet evolved from a secret feasibility study conceived by the U.S. Dept. of Defense in 1969 to test methods of enabling computer networks to survive military attacks, by means of the dynamic rerouting of messages. As the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency network), it began by connecting three networks in California with one in Utah—these communicated with one another by a set of rules called the Internet Protocol (IP). By 1972, when the ARPAnet was revealed to the public, it had grown to include about 50 universities and research organizations with defense contracts, and a year later the first international connections were established with networks in England and Norway. A decade later, the Internet Protocol was enhanced with a set of communication protocols, the Transmission Control Program/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), that supported both local and wide-area networks. Shortly thereafter, the National Science Foundation (NSF) created the NSFnet to link five supercomputer centers, and this, coupled with TCP/IP, soon supplanted the ARPAnet as the backbone of the Internet. In 1995, however, the NSF decommissioned the NSFnet, and responsibility for the Internet was assumed by the private sector. Fueled by the increasing popularity of personal computers, e-mail, and the World Wide Web (which was introduced in 1991 and saw explosive growth beginning in 1993), the Internet became a significant factor in the stock market and commerce during the second half of the decade. By 2000 it was estimated that the number of adults using the Internet exceeded 100 million in the United States alone."

[dogscoff]

Wade said:
I am not sorry though. I am an American that mentioned an American show in regards to an American game on an American site(I think...?) utilizing the internet, an American made technology.




Yes, you can put the flag down now. This is an international community, and always has been. Apology accepted BTW =-)



"You can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time."




Even if it had been a US-only site, a spoiler warning would still have been appropriate. (And spoiler warnings *do* actually please all the people all the time. )



I just finished watching the two hour season opener of Battlestar Galactica. I can easily post some interesting events of the show here. All you would have to do is take a glance...I won't though. I'm not inconsiderate like that. Even though some will think I am for my "American" comments.




Just flag the thread or post with the word "spoiler" and an indication fof what is being spoiled and ppl can make up their own minds whether to read it or not.



I also watched the new episode of the British show, 'Doctor Who'. Nicely done episode. Though I missed how the doctor is a different actor now. Will this happen much?




Yeah, the Doctor has been played by at least 8 or 10 different actors over the years. They invented a handy plot device to explain it, whereby the Doctor (being an alien timelord who just happens to look human) regenerates every now and again, getting a whole new body and (to a certain extent) a new personality.



[/quote]
So is the British showing of 'Doctor Who' ahead of America? Or has an American company bought it out?


[/quote]

I think you are on the same series as us, if you've just seen the doctor regenerate. However, they are advertising a Dr Who spin-off over here now, "Torchwood", which will probably hit the screens soon.

I believe it's all owned and produced by the BBC. I very much doubt they'll ever be selling the rights to Dr Who, it's been one of their most popular and characteristic products for 4 decades now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_who


May peace be with you.



You too.

[Ludd]

Dogscoff, nice post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Fyron]

The ability to specify if a hull can have weapons or not. This way when you design a resource ship, people won't load them full of weapons early in the game to have uber ships.


This is already doable, and trivial. Look for my thread "mod out lcx as early game warship" to see how.

[Spectarofdeath]

I'd like to have a 4th resource, money, strictly for trading purposes, I know some ppl are for this, some aren't, I just think money (which as we all know, runs everything) should be in the game. Yes, I know the resources count and everything, I just think that having a money source would be good. Honestly, I would love to have merchants (yes I know just make a ship with resource generating components, but does the ship have to move to generate them? no, so whats the point?) and be able to attack enemy shipping.
Also, I noticed that the warp points have "sizes" mainly 10,000 kt, wondering if this means that only certain size ships can use certain warp points....if this is not the case that is definitly something that would be cool to see.

[thorfrog]

It seems to me that this topic will make little difference. Most ideas I've seen mentioned here over the years were ignored in SEV.

[Atrocities]

thorfrog said:
It seems to me that this topic will make little difference. Most ideas I've seen mentioned here over the years were ignored in SEV.



I would say the word ignored is a bit missleading. Aaron had a huge huge list of things, he did use a lot of our suggestions but since he is only one guy, and has no programing staff, many great ideas just couldn't be acted upon. We had hoped that with the joining of malfador and SFI, Aaron would get some programing help. Unfortunetly that didn't seem to occur. As for the suggestions in this huge - mega huge, list, chances are the ideas will never be realized at any level. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Sorry to be the barer of bad news, but one can always learn to program for ones self and then make their own game.

[Suicide Junkie]

As far as I can tell, Aaron didn't even get any code monkeys to do regression testing for him.

This is still a good place to post ideas... the best ones may be picked up by the community.

Just beware of ideas that sound good on the surface, but have horrible repercussions on gameplay...

[thorfrog]

That's my point, this thread should really be called wishfull thinking or posts of dreams. This seems to be the same way things went down for MOO3. The developers for that product stated they where listing to the fans and when it came to for the game to release it was anything but what was expected. What SEV could have been. Well at least SEIV is easy to mod.

[Atrocities]

The thing is throfrog, Aaron did listen to us. The problem is, unlike with the developers of Moo3 who had tremendous resources and a huge team backing them, Aaron is just one guy funding the project on his own and doing all the programming hismelf. So it stands to reason that many of the excellent ideas didn't make it in. You never know, he still has the list and might at some point in the future be able to add some to the game in a patch or perhaps even in an expansion pack.

[AgentZero]

thorfrog said:
That's my point, this thread should really be called wishfull thinking or posts of dreams. This seems to be the same way things went down for MOO3. The developers for that product stated they where listing to the fans and when it came to for the game to release it was anything but what was expected. What SEV could have been. Well at least SEIV is easy to mod.



I for one am getting mighty fed up with the MOO3 comparisons. Yes they're both 4X games. Yes they were both released buggy. And? That's it. Jumping around and claiming the same thing that happened to MOO3 is going to happen to SE5 (because they're the same genre?) is a slap in the face to Aaron and all the hard work he's put into his games. Consider the fact that the original release of SE4 was v1.02, and the most recent version is 1.94. Do I need to do the math for you? That's a hell of a lot more patching than most games, let alone MOO3, ever get. And a lot of those patches didn't have anything to do with fixing bugs, they had to do with adding features that the community had asked for!
Next time, take a bit more time to think before spouting off like this.

[Phoenix-D]

AZ: the point here is how they were on release, not how they were patched.

I do think the idea that MM isn't listening is silly. This thread is 160 pages long; if you implimented everything in it you'd have a mash of conflicting ideas, not a game.

[thorfrog]

AgentZero said:

thorfrog said:
That's my point, this thread should really be called wishfull thinking or posts of dreams. This seems to be the same way things went down for MOO3. The developers for that product stated they where listing to the fans and when it came to for the game to release it was anything but what was expected. What SEV could have been. Well at least SEIV is easy to mod.



I for one am getting mighty fed up with the MOO3 comparisons. Yes they're both 4X games. Yes they were both released buggy. And? That's it. Jumping around and claiming the same thing that happened to MOO3 is going to happen to SE5 (because they're the same genre?) is a slap in the face to Aaron and all the hard work he's put into his games. Consider the fact that the original release of SE4 was v1.02, and the most recent version is 1.94. Do I need to do the math for you? That's a hell of a lot more patching than most games, let alone MOO3, ever get. And a lot of those patches didn't have anything to do with fixing bugs, they had to do with adding features that the community had asked for!
Next time, take a bit more time to think before spouting off like this.



AZ, spout on this. I been a fan of this series for a very long time and even did my bit of modding too. So if I want to post my gripes as to how I feel the ball was dropped I will. I can tell you that my comments are thought out and researched. My point is I don't want SEV to fail the way MOO3 did. But I'm getting the same vibe I had when the MOO3 developers promissed every thing and then didn't deliver. I'm glad to see the support for patches but I think the original game really needs help. This game really needed 6 more months.

I have to hand it to the GalCiv2 team that they just seem to keep on adding on to their title. I hope that Strategy First gets a clue an finally offers some assistence to MM to improve on this title. I for one will only buy this game when it's worth it. I give props to Aaron for being able to create these game on his own. I couldn't do it. SEV really needed a larger development team for this to be a winner. 6.6 is a terrible score but for someone who built this solo it's not so bad. But what's the point of complaining about that now.

I want SEV to be the game SEIV is today but more. That will get me to purchase it. But I still hate the ground combat.

[Fyron]

What has MM promised but not delivered? What big features were cut out?

[Atrocities]

I want SEV to be the game SEIV is today but more. That will get me to purchase it. But I still hate the ground combat.



Hey I respect what you have to say and feel that you have every right to be miffed at the current state of SE V. That aside I would like to point out that SE IV is what it is today because it was a lot more like SE V when it was released and years of patching and support have made it into the game that it is now. This is why many of us know that SE V will evolve and improve over time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Atrocities]

Something for Space Empires VI

What would be nice would be if the AI had predisposed demeanor settings.

You choose Aggressive / Cunning and the game automatically uses a preprogramed AI that is aggressive and cunning. Of course you can always edit this and tweak it or add new combinations.

The nice thing about an option like this would be the ease of pick and choose your AI type without all of the guess work and lack of actual benefit of a races predisposition that we currently have.

The Ai will know that it is to attack in X way if X predisposing is selected. IE if the AI is set to Friendly / Peaceful, then it will not declare war upon you the instant it meets you like the AI currently does.

The problem with the current AI is that it does not understand demeanor, race definers, or mood settings such as peaceful, hostile, etc.

If we had preestablished parameters for the AI to use, that could be edited of course, then the AI would have a solid foundation on knowing how it is suppose to react. Oh sure you can make the agreement that we have this ability now, but the truth is we do not. All AI's, regardless of settings, seem to act an awful lot alike.

The second thing I thing should be included as a must have improvement is something that I have discussed many times before. The addition of the AI to understand Demeanor in diplomatic Messages. IE if I send a message and tag it as friendly, then the AI knows it is a friendly message and will respond accordingly. Now if I send a hostile message then the AI will understand this and our relations will grow strained.

Couple these two ideas together and you will have an AI that will act like it is told to act, and will respond accordingly to other races demeanors and tones.

So when I select Gun Boat Diplomacy as an AI setting along with Aggressive, the AI will know that I expect it to respond aggressively and with force to any unsatisfactory diplomatic situation.

The reverse is true for a race that is set up to be Peaceful and Polite.

Just my two cents worth.

[Ironmanbc]

"The reverse is true for a race that is set up to be Peaceful and Polite"


The game is to beat the CR*P out of the other players and make your mark as #1 right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Atrocities]

To bad it wasn't optioned for SE V. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif I am sure it can be modded in, but that takes way too much time and should have been part of the original game. I mean a benevolent race of do gooders would have been ideal cannon fodder for my Anti-Proton Beams.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Ironmanbc said:
"The reverse is true for a race that is set up to be Peaceful and Polite"


The game is to beat the CR*P out of the other players and make your mark as #1 right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I'm sure my Cultures &amp; Demeanors Mod is still floating around the nether regions of this forum somewhere, I actually made a couple of cultures (Pacifist and Transcendi) with totally crap combat that would have to rely on careful diplomacy to get ahead.

Look at it this way: You have lots of stuff to blow the cr*p out of each other with, but playing a peaceful race that needs to rely on diplomacy, intelligence, and downright cleverness rather than brute force would be a nice change of pace, no?

Especially in PBW or other kinds of multiplayer games, choosing to play such a race would present you with a whole array of new challenges but also a vast amount of opportunities. You can choose to out-colonise your enemies, expanding fast enough to deny your enemy valuable resources, or forge a stable, long-standing alliance, using your larger production and research yields to pay your partner in return for military protection. Or you could set up a trade empire, centered around a few walled-in systems protected by obscene amounts of minefields, building highly advanced ships and producing resources at a much faster rate than any other race in the galaxy and selling those ships at a healthy profit.

You might not be able to crush all other races under your mighty heel, but it would be fun, wouldn't it? (IMO) (Alternatively, if you play with different victory requirements, going Pacifist would give you a potentially immense advantage but with great risks - you will expand very rapidly and might accrue points an order of magnitude faster than other races, but if a warlike, aggressive race comes along with fleets full of troop transports it's bye-bye.)

And of course it makes the game more like a space opera, where every race isn't at each other's throat or there aren't just a few major alliances of equal members vying for dominance.