SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Colonel]

I like the idea with hulls in orbit but you should be able to take them out and use half completed but you couldnt just repair them you would have to complete them when you brought them back

Heres something worth mentioning. Two things with Designs

One. You should have to wait X number of turns to be able to use new tech on you ships. Most new techs dont immediately get implamented into ships.

Two. You should have to wait X number of turns in order to build new designs. A new design isn't immedaitly able to be contructed, there is a testing phase then they test out certian portions of the ships systems on a smaller scale

(I compared these to real water ships today)

[Aiken]

Colonel said:
One. You should have to wait X number of turns to be able to use new tech on you ships. Most new techs dont immediately get implamented into ships.

Two. You should have to wait X number of turns in order to build new designs. A new design isn't immedaitly able to be contructed, there is a testing phase then they test out certian portions of the ships systems on a smaller scale




It's an excessively realistic things. I don't see how these features could impove gameplay.
Unless they'll add new racial characteristic "tech mastering" which will decrease a time required to familiarize with new tech/design. Then it has sense.

[Colonel]

I guess you could add that into the game with this idea, that would actually work well with this idea.

[Phoenix-D]

I don't like the idea of tech delay and new designs not being available for X number of turns. With the tech, its easy enough to assume that it isn't brought to your attention until its in a usable form. With ships, it would simply add too much micromanagement and be quite annoying.

[Aiken]

Obvious idea for new Intel projec: "Set bugs". Targeted against enemy ships. Kind of minor Version of Crew Insurrection - you can see the ship path, observe system it passes, cargo, build queue (in case of SY), but you can't actually control ship. I think it's much more interesting than dull Crew Insurrection. Main feature is that enemy is not aware that this ship is a spy.

Or else, make it Advanced Crew Insurrection - crew is yours, but pretend to be loyal to previous master. They follow his orders, but you can cancel them anytime and take full control over ship.

Same for planets (Adv. PPP).

I remember someone else requested something similar somewhere, but I'm not completely sure http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Anyway 2 request mean that it's a popular wish, isn't it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Tanus]

Colonel said:
One. You should have to wait X number of turns to be able to use new tech on you ships. Most new techs dont immediately get implamented into ships.

Two. You should have to wait X number of turns in order to build new designs. A new design isn't immedaitly able to be contructed, there is a testing phase then they test out certian portions of the ships systems on a smaller scale




Instead of this, perhaps going (again) back to SEIII (and I think, unimplemented feature of SEIV?) - the prototype of a new ship design should cost more than subsequent constructions (+25%? +50%?)

In this way you can simulate the added effort of testing a new design

All constrction underway would be considered to be on a prototype until one is complete - from then, all new construction is building the normal design (others started before built still pay prototype cost)

[iaen]

aiken said:
Obvious idea for new Intel projec: "Set bugs". Targeted against enemy ships. Kind of minor Version of Crew Insurrection - you can see the ship path, observe system it passes, cargo, build queue (in case of SY), but you can't actually control ship.



I think it would be even better if there was some intel project "Plant agent", which you could run against planets ships etc. Having more agents in one place would give you bonuses for further intel projects, show you more information, and give you some specific options. (e.g. some info when you have one agent aboard, mutiny when you have LOTS of operatives aboard a ship.)

Counter intelligence would have a (small) chance of detecting them every turn, along with specifc "find enemy spies" projects. (Also possibly targeted at specific ships etc?)

Some further cool things would be having a limited pool of undercover agents. (Fixed number per intel facility or like a construct queue to train them?) This might also make it worthwhile to get them back safely with a "Retrieve agent" project.

Hmm, this might make it all way too complicated.

[Ed Kolis]

Yes! I like the agent idea - that would make it harder to pull out of a former enemy's territory with your spies, because it would take time to successfully retrieve them! This would cause all kinds of intrigue... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Q]

The entire intel should be redesigned IMO. In SE IV intel is too much "all or nothing".

The cost of an intel project should not be automatically equal to the cost of counter intel to stop it.
The race abilities (characteristics, racial trait) of offensive intel and counter intel should be chosen seperately. In SE IV this is always parallel.
And finally intel projects should always have a (moddable) chance to fail even in the complete absence of counter intel (like PPP now).

[AgentZero]

I like the agents idea but I'm not sure if Aaron is a big fan. I suggested when SE4 was underway and it didn't make it. I rather liked the way Imperium Galactica II handled the concept. Basically you have to build a spy base before you can have any agents, and each spy base can support X number of agents. Unlike IG2, I'd like to see the ability to recruit agents from a 'pool' instead of them appearing randomly. Each agent would give certain bonuses to the chance of success for a intel op.

Another little idea, if the idea of Captains makes it into SE5, I'd like the ability to assign spies to your own ships. This would work in two ways: 1) If you assign a spy to a ship that already has a captain, then the spy acts to detect and halt intel ops against that ship.
The second way would require a whole new tech area: Spy Tech. Aside from general advances that would increase chances of success/decrease time & cost, (& maybe implants to cybernetically increase an agents abilities) there would also be ship components basic ones would make a ship invisible to the enemy (regardless of sensor tech. Other spy ships would be the only real way of finding other spies). More advanced components would further increase the success rate of intel ops. Of course, the only reason this would make sense is if agents had to actually enter enemy space in order to perform certain ops. Some ops, like those against planets wouldn't require a spy ship to be sent in, since there's other ways for a master of disguise to enter enemy territory.
Speaking of disguise, if we have agents, one would assume they would be from different races. Thus, using an agent against an enemy of the same species would increase chances of success but his loyalty would be suspect.

[Fyron]

Won't somebody think of the micromanagement hell? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Aaron has stated that the intel system in SE5 will be similar to that in SE3. This may or may not change in the future...

[iaen]

Yes, intel does get way too complicated, very quickly. The only essential thing I think the SE3 intel misses is specific targets like in SE4. I don't know how much SE5 intel will be like SE3, but I doubt that feature will be lost.

A completely unrelated, and much simpler, thing I thought of are secondary explosions. If a component is destroyed, extra damage occurs. Could be easily implemented as a component ability. Chance of explosion when component is destroyed, and amount of damage.

And about SE3 style construction, when a ship appears in SE3, it's components are marked as 'Under construction', instead of 'Destroyed'. The only difference is the picture shown, but what if only spaceyards can 'repair' components marked as under construction, and repair-thingies can only repair destroyed components? If you then also make constructing components cost resources (and repair some percentage thereof), with limits how many resources a spaceyard or repairthing can construct, you'd pretty much have everything SE3 and SE4 do, combined, wouldn't you?
You could also mark emergency pods as 'under construction' once used, so you can't just repair them as easily underway anymore.

Hmm, the explanation is getting a bit long. Maybe it's not as simple as I thought...

The above also kinda implies that repair is also based on resources used, instead of a number of components per turn.
And unles you use a fairly high cost percentage for repair, or a seperate repair and construct rate, spaceyards would repair very quickly.

-edit-

Oh, and you can't base the cost purely on what 'repairing' components that are 'under construction' ofcourse. The cost of the hull can be quite a big part of the ship, sometimes.

[clark]

Here is an idea again...

Create txt files that are refrenced to automatically name individual ships (of course they can be renamed). Create txt files that are refrenced to automatically name a captain for a ship. This can be included in the AI folders. It dosen't have to neccessarily do anything, but it adds flavor, and it seems it might be easy enough to implement.

On micromanaging... perhaps allow for us to search ships by system. Perhaps allow us to give commands for all ships in a system. Basically, click on the system map and give a command that all ships there follow the same order, or same destination. Perhaps allow for the player to choose only certain class types (ie Attack ships, Defense ships, stellar ships, etc.) that the command applies to.

If possible, allow the player to drag and click a square- be it in combat or on the solar system view- all ships, or planets within the square are selected.

Keep a record of events automatically. I hate having to calculate and record when a star is going to explode, or a planet blow up. I should be able to look at a list generated by the computer that keeps track of that, with warnings every so many turns.

Ship designs- don't make a long list I have to scroll through. Put them in a row across the screen, fill each row. Basically an icon of each with their name and type I can click on to get more information.

Let me try out different fleet strategies in the simulator.
Let me assign ship positions within fleets by attaching letters or numbers (whatever) to each ship that corresponds to the appropriate place within the fleet (perhaps associate a fleet position letter in ship settings with class type- A for attack, P for PDC, B for Boarding). The ships will fill those fleet positions they are assigned to first. This might also improve the AI since we can control how they place their ships in combat!

Give me a "guard" command. Similar to sentry, but ignores low fuel, enemy movement, etc. I hate having to constantly click through a ship I just want to leave as a guard or spy.

Let me click on a ship or a fleet in the ship sort, and when I do, let it highlight which system it is in. Having to guess the name of the system is a pain. Clicking on it takes me to the system, but then I have to go back to square one in trying to find other ships.

Let me sort by domed colonies- these are the ones I need to get my alien population to. Let me sort by system. Let me choose which colony ship will head to colonize a planet. Give me more than a green star to let me know a planet is colonizable, or what kind of planet it is. I hate having to guess if the planet is ice or rock, they look almost the same. Either the graphics have to change, or you need to put an optional icon that denotes planet type and atmosphere type (when we get alien populations, it becomes a hassle trying to figure out hydrogen versus methane, or in some instances hydrogen versus carbon dioxide)

Give us the option to hide warp-points with cloak levels so they require sensors of some type to see and use. Let us have more options in the creation of warp points (you don't have to put them in stock, but give us more control).

Have a seperate txt file for planet (and perhaps even system level) descriptions. Rock planets refrence the txt file and places at random a description from the txt file. This way we can compile a moster list for all the planet types and it will add more flavor (similar to the name txts that Users have created) to the game. Perhaps allow for system level too in the same manner- ex. Black hole system might be described as "ungodly monster black hole from which no light or hope may escape". lame, but perhaps you get the idea.

Spice up the event files, or give us more options to utilize them. Perhaps even allow the religious trait to lose the almighty super-targeting device of never missing for a "prayer facility for a random act of vengence from our holy god upon the wicked" it would of course refrence the events txt and smite a selected enemy. Just a wild thought.

Instead of abbreviations for system facilities, let me be able to select a system and see all the current system facilities- regardless of what planet they are on. A system level view perhaps that tells me the total count of resource generation, resupply bases, starports, etc.

[AgentZero]

Imperator Fyron said:
Won't somebody think of the micromanagement hell? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif




OK, scrap the Spy Ships idea because I can see how that would get very micromanage-y very fast. But I would like to see the agent idea implemented since I don't see how it would create any more micromanagement. Instead of having 5 intel projects running, you have 5 agents on assignment, each one giving bonuses to certain ops. So your agent with a 20% sabotage bonus is out trying to cripple your enemy's newest dreadnought, your propagandist is trying to stir up revolt on enemy border worlds, your assassin is out trying to eliminate enemy spies (presumably ones working on counter-intel) and you've got two spy hunters working inside your empire to ferret out enemy spies.

We'd still require intel facilities, etc, to fund all these activities, of course... Just out of curiosity, where can I find the current features list for SE5. People keep quoting Aaron on various features that will or won't be in SE5, but I don't know where they're coming from. Little help?

[Aiken]

Just out of curiosity, where can I find the current features list for SE5. People keep quoting Aaron on various features that will or won't be in SE5, but I don't know where they're coming from. Little help?


Chat sessions with Aaron # 1 & 2 (http://seirc.spaceempires.net/archives.php)

[Q]

Reading the chat sessions there is one wish of what I don't want in SE V:

Common space on planets for facilities and cargo together. IMHO this is a bad idea because it means a lot of micromanagement for humans (moving cargo to get place for facilities) and it will create huge problems for the AI (defenseless colonies because all place has been used for facilities; useless colonies with only cargo).

One thing that I wish very much and believe to be important is the mentionend "reduced graphic mode" for older computers and to speed up large combats.

[Aiken]

A while ago I proposed a separate space on planet for cargo and facility area (facility size is not equal). I hope it will be considered as a viable alternative to common cargo idea.

[AgentZero]

Thanks for the link, aiken...

Personally I prefer the idea of cargo space and facility space being kept seperate, but I'd like to see some way of increasing facility space. Perhaps a facility that provides extra facility spaces? Call it a Modular Resource Centre, for lack of a better term. It could only be built on the 'base' facility slots. So if a planet has 10 slots and a Modular Resource Centre provides 4 slots, then filling the planet with them would allow you to build 40 facilities on that planet, but the maximum number of MRCs would always be equal to the default max number of facilities a planet could support.

[Baron Munchausen]

With the merging of cargo and facility space we'll be able to set the size of facilities! That means 'upgrades' can be smaller than lower tech Versions, effectively increasing facility space on a planet.

[Aiken]

tmce, this is there Terraforming might come to play.
1st variant could work like se4 Atmosphere Converters: build facility (1 per planet effective) and it will terraform your planet in a 2-5 years.
2nd variant is to add Terraform Project to a building queue, make it much like pseudofacility. It should be quite expensive I think.

[Q]

Baron Munchausen said:
With the merging of cargo and facility space we'll be able to set the size of facilities! That means 'upgrades' can be smaller than lower tech Versions, effectively increasing facility space on a planet.



I don't see why the size of facilities can't be made different without merging the space for facilities and cargo on planets. I agree that different/moddable sizes for facilities would be good, but as I said the merging of the space for facilities and cargo IMO is bad.

[AgentZero]

Exactly. If facility space was calculated in kT instead of facility slots, it would make it very easy to have differently sized facilities. So a medium planet that currently has 15 slots would have 1500kT facility space, for example. If each 'normal' facility is 100kT, it's the same thing as in SE4, except we can have facilities that are both bigger and smaller.
I'd like to see Planetary Gun facilities. More or less the same idea as Weapons Platforms, but they're facilities and make up for taking up precious facility space by being a lot more powerful than anything you could put on a weapons platform.

[twilight]

Stellar Manipulation

In the late game it's a nice trick to build a Ship with the Ability to open/close Wormholes. Then your are able to teleport a whole fleet itself into another system. Problem: The Fleet cannot execute any Stellar Manipulations. You have to separate that ship from the fleet, you have to open the Wormhole, then to move both fleet and ship through the wormhole and afterwards you have to close it again (okay, not neccassary but when you want to clean up). So: 1. It would be great if fleets are able to manipulate Systems, now they are not. 2. It would be also great, if you add another stellar option the "Warp Option", or whatever you call it. That means, that the work procedure "open Wormhole", "go through wormhole", "close wormhole on other side" is shortend.

AI - Setting

We are able to give all AIs boni in all generated ressources, if I am right. I want to 1. give boni to special races (I want the Borg for my final war, but the pretorians are only cannon fodder etc., so only the borgs should have boni) and 2. give special boni to the races. So perhaps I want to give them all cool ressources, but no research points.

Furthermore it would be a good option to be able to set some start locations without working with the map editor. For example I am Star Fleet and want the Borg for a final showdown. Then it would be perfect if I am at the one side of the galaxy and they at the other. Only a thought. Perhaps not possible.

Game - Setting

Setting up a game with 20 players means hard work. You have to edit every Empire for that they are computer controlled. Afterwards you have to check every empire again if they are or not. It's possible to change that.

Flavour - Details

Without any changes for the game it would be nice to see the names of ship captains, cultures of old ruins, planet gouvernors and so on. No Stats, only names for flavour (But Stats are even more cool).

Savegames

Should show not only the time they were saved, but first of all the game turn (year, month).

Construction

The Construction is weird in some ways. You may multiadd objects to build, but you can't multi"subtract". I mean it's impossible to use 100 Space-Yard-Bases. You may need 20 sec to multiadd something so they all build but you need half a hour to stop them all.

The Repeat Function could also be improved. Now you can use it to repeat only the first item on the construction list. But it would be 1. more rational to repeat the complete List (first it builds 2 destroyer, then 1 cruiser and 20 mines, then start with the destroyers again) or 2. set some items not to repeat but then the rest (First it builds a research computer and then it repeats and repeats only research facilites - as in Moo2).

Facility Upgrading and Planet Gouvernors

There is an option "Automatically use Indiv. Ministers for
newly built vehicles". Why not for newly colonized planets?

If you upgrade your facilites manually you have a serious problem. There is a colony-list able to show you the planet types (research compound etc.). But from there you can?t reach the construction queue. So it's hard to go into that queues for each planet of that type. Perhaps an update-button would be nice. Press the button and ALL updatable Facilies will go automatically into the construction queue for that planet.

Galaxy - Map

We should customize the indicators. The red triangles for ships from other races are nice, but not more. We should be able to customize it that ways: planets from allies/neutrals/enemies/certain races, the same for fleets. Also for YOUR fleets. Perhaps some other indicators like Black Holes, Sphere Worlds and so on are also interesting or even the possibility of seeing own or enemies planet types (research facilites etc).

General Awareness

If we visit a system we see the colonized planets by another race. When we leave the system we loose all information about that. In other games we see the Last information about such a system and that is a much better way. Also it would be very, very good to see information about planets and ships in the normal view. AND to see DETAILLED information. I think we are able - without any intelligence - to visit Rigel VI and see that it's a planet with very much Factories. Even a very very secret factory world would produce enough signs to say "okay, that planet produces many minerals". No need of intelligence.

The "Next"-Function

Press Ctrl-F or N and you get the next Fleet or lonely ship. In huge games this is kind of hard and unneccassy micromanagement. Some Fleets do I place at locations to guard them. But there is no guard-option. Everytime I want to Ctrl-F through my empire I always get these dumb guardians. I don?t want to see them again, they guard something and should be not of further interest till I wake them. Also it's interesting why bases are shown in that way.

Bases

We all need resupply Bases. We don?t want them join our fleets. We want to stop at them and then we want to be resupplied (I assume I can write it that way: We ALL want them) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Automatic Orders

Very nice idea, however, we must be able to edit them, or they are quite useless.

Mines

Hundreds of wandering ships of all races laying mines in hundreds of systems in which the only presence of that race are exactly those mines. No, Sir! Don't know what you think about, but I think mines should be placed at locations owned by those races, or am I wrong? Should we're able to go to our neighbours to lay some mines, just in case for war?

Stellar Destroying Manipulations

The destroying of a sun should be a hard, a very hard thing to do. I am speaking about the political situation. It should be more like the use of Nukes in Civilization. A race doing this is an "evil" race. And first of all: It should count as a war declaration. I experienced a not very kind starfleet wandering around and destroying my suns without any war. Hey, they also killed Millions of Traders and Visitors from other races (all in that system at that time) but noone mind. Weird. Disturbing.

New Race Fature

What about a racial trait "good race", "Evil race". Some star destroying weapons and some others only for evil races, the good ones must have a bonus, perhaps better maintainance or whatever. It has to be balanced but so the good races don't wander around devastating the whole universe.

Intelligence

Some nice ideas, some not. For example I don?t know why we need Intelligence Level 2 for general information about a race ot the location of planets. Why we don?t visit the Klingon Homeworld buying a tourist?s leaflet (Welcome at Klingon Homeworld. The Klingons are a very old race ... 31 Star System ... 142 Planets ... a mighty race ... Kahless ... visit the Blood Sea at Rigel IV), that's all we need. We also know if the use Cloaking Devices and whatever, we dont not need Super-Special-Spys for such stuffs. It's enough to hang around in Bars, to trade with them and so on. Level 1 intelligence should be enough.

Customized Key Settings

I want to customize them. It's not cool to use two fingers for my favoured option "next Fleet". Furthermore it would be cool to give certain Fleets certain Keys. So my "Warfleet I" could be on the "1"-key. And so on. You know that from other games.

Diplomacy

Please write a new game from scratch. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Fyron]

if you add another stellar option the "Warp Option", or whatever you call it. That means, that the work procedure "open Wormhole", "go through wormhole", "close wormhole on other side" is shortend.

The current method of waiting a turn seems like a good design for balance purposes. Gives the enemy a chance to react.


Press Ctrl-F or N and you get the next Fleet or lonely ship. In huge games this is kind of hard and unneccassy micromanagement. Some Fleets do I place at locations to guard them. But there is no guard-option.

There is the Sentry order. Ships on sentry orders will not be cycled through.

[twilight]

The current method of waiting a turn seems like a good design for balance purposes. Gives the enemy a chance to react.




Yes. It could be a new component that is destroyed after use.

Thanks for the sentry-Tip. It seems not to have any effect when I used it. I will try it again next time.

[Fyron]

twilight said:
Thanks for the sentry-Tip. It seems not to have any effect when I used it. I will try it again next time.

If there are enemies present in the system, sentry orders are cleared. It works better in simultaneous movement games, where the sentry order will at least not be cleared until the next turn, so it can be used as a "do nothing this turn" order when enemies are present.

[clark]

Sentry does that, true, but I think we would all benefit from a "guard" function similar to sentry in that it ignores (or even user defined) things like enemy, low fuel, damage.

I think it would also help from a micromanagement standpoint if there was someway to order a ship to refuel as neccessary as it travels to a set destination. Doing the waypoint dance can be aggrivating. Something as simple as "when ship has half fuel, refuel at nearest resupply base on the way to final destination". I want to conquer the universe, smight my enemies, burn their planets- not play traffic cop.

Since the combat is going to be more or less real time, I might suggest that self-destruct components be given a moddable failure rate. Sometimes the captian isn't quick enough on the button, and this would add a little more variety to the current situation. "If I try to board, I will lose this ship- as opposed to... maybe, maybe not"

It might also open up interesting possibilites where certain components can be given "if destroyed, ship explodes". Hello engineering warp core! Maybe that uber weapon would have a certain drawback... or, another way to balance out the religious shrine (the staff on board, saddened at the defilement of their holy ship shrine all commit suicide to appease their pagan god) You get the idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I think a resuplly capability for a starbase (similar to the ship yard) would be a good addition. This would go a long way towards solving the resupply issues because of routing (assuming that a routing routine as expressed above could not be met). Make it big, make it exspensive, but damn it, make it so we can resupply (via a base only component) at a starbase on a warppoint!

This was touched on above, but how about happy modifiers with the use of certain stellar manipulations or types of weapons. You use certain devices (destroy a sun for example) and it makes your peaceful people rather unhappy. Bloodthirsty of course revel in it. Whatever.

Perhaps this is one for the modders, and not a stock game option, but how about the ability to research alien tech- the catch is that you do so at an extreme disadvantage (thing multipliers of 10 or 100) and the end product is never as good as a race who has a natural affinity for the alien tech. So temporal space yards would produce less for a non-native temporal race (but they could research it!) compared to a native temporal race. You could over course mod certain things as unattainble even then (such as the religious shrine) but damn it, why can't I grow organic armor!? I got a vat, I got the research! Gimmie. :p

[twilight]

It would be good to be able to break through the facility families. Think about upgrading Organic, mineral and radioactive facilities to monolithes. That solves the problem with scrapping old ressource generation for creating a completely new one (the ai won't do that).

In the moment all three basic ressource generating facilities have different facility families. So if we change the monolithes' facility family to a value identically to one of the basic ressource generators we can upgrade those facilites to monolithes. But not the other two ones.

Even if not interesting for the basic game, please make it possible to mod something around with that stuff. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[TurinTurambar]

The intel thingy....

I love the ideas of the spy/agent/plant bugs stuff. But like Fyron said, that's pretty freakin intense.

My idea... someone of you supergeeks make an Intel Mod with that in it somehow. I'm actually playing in a game right now where out of 15 players, intel was voted completely out of the game. It is therefore obvious to me that quite a few players would not appreciate an in-depth intel program in the stock game.

Mod, baby... Mod.

Turin
The Master of Your Doom...

<font color="blue"> &lt;edit&gt; OK and then this ended up in the thread nowhere near the topic of the intel discussion... wtf was I looking at... sorry.
Turin </font>

[TurinTurambar]

clark said:
damn it, why can't I grow organic armor!? I got a vat, I got the research! Gimmie. :p



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif <font color="blue"> LMMFAO!! </font> http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Ed Kolis]

Unlimited (or at least some relatively huge number, 255 or 1000 or something) of human/AI/neutral players.

Think about it - a neutral in each system to conquer or negotiate with! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif Perfect for a Star Trek mod, since Star Trek always has the "generic alien of the week" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

if you add another stellar option the "Warp Option", or whatever you call it. That means, that the work procedure "open Wormhole", "go through wormhole", "close wormhole on other side" is shortend.

The current method of waiting a turn seems like a good design for balance purposes. Gives the enemy a chance to react.

Given a proper set of movement and stellar manip orders, plus a relatively simple alignment of warppoints, it is technically possible to open a point, warp a fleet through it and then close it again in less than a full turn.
Such an action takes a lot of pre-planning, organization among many ships, and specialized ship designs to make it work, though.

[Fyron]

TurinTurambar said:
I'm actually playing in a game right now where out of 15 players, intel was voted completely out of the game. It is therefore obvious to me that quite a few players would not appreciate an in-depth intel program in the stock game.

Erm... to me, that seems more like a good indication that the intel system in SE4 is terrible, and people realize this... Most of those players would probably appreciate a decent system.

[Ed Kolis]

Here's to what Fyron said! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[clark]

Speaking of intel...

The single greatest thing Araon can do is to open it up to the user and mod maker community. Perhaps create a txt file with all possible combinations of affecting the game via intel, and have these as moddable intel defense/attacks that can be adjusted. Include chance of success/failure rates in command lines within the txt files.

In this way we can mod resource specific intel attacks, or ship class/type planet type specfic attacks- whatever.

SE4, you get what you get, where as the rest of the game tends to be open ended. Go back to SE3 intel model, but open it up so we can make the fine tune adjustments which have made this game so great!

[Gandalf Parker]

OK I cant read the 103 pages here so here is my list so far and others can tell me if its all already been covered or I just failed to RTFM:::

a button to copy enemy designs

when someone surrenders to you, a way to find them quickly on the map. Maybe have "go to" take you there from the announcment

when selecting star charts, let hovering show it on the map

a way to select large batches or even all for things like tech and star charts

a placeholder for worlds which should not build (at the moment I make a mine named "place holder" and put the queue on hold so I can tell in the menu displays not to keep checking it

maybe a "build item" meaning "concentrate on population increase" like Master of Magic had

non-gui command-line hosting on linux

let me name my ship when I add it to the queue (would be great for reminding me WHY I built that colony ship)

hitting the HOME button should go to the home world

flags are hard to read in the charts. hovering a flag should give a pop-up help of the empire name

a Magnetic component for mines. By itself it could create a "spy bug" which attaches itself to visiting ships. With a bomb it could become a delayed mine you could set off at a time of your choice. Possibly scanners or visitng a shipyard would remove them (yes I got the initial idea from someone else)

the "upgrade facilities' button lets you quickly check a plaet for upgrades. Can we get an "upgrades" button for ships and units?

Shft-Click and Ctrl-Click to work in all selection menus for mass selecting

Double-clicking should serve SOME purpose for everything. A good-guess at a result at least. For mines and satellites maybe the scrap menu, unowned ship maybe the enemy fleets screen to see if you know its makeup, owned planet maybe the construction queue, a sun could bring up the notes screen on the system,

Its slightly irritating that if roman numerals are going to be used, then can the displays sequence it numerically instead of alphabetically? IX does not come before VI

a cheap "drop colony" for colonizing moons or from a spaceship shipyard. No engines or crew, just a drop box. Or maybe a 1-engine limit on it. At the moment I build them but it doesnt seem to give much of a speed or price break. Maybe even a cheap engine that wont warp

all settings in the AI files should mean something. Allow an AI to be affected by government types, leader titles, planet/environment types, everything in case a player wants to write the ai files that deep. Such as a race which does not tend to want to help a nation which has the same planet preference as they do or dislikes dictatorships.

[Gandalf Parker]

ZeroAdunn said:
Replace atmosphere types with a slider. There would be the atmosphere types (oxygen none argon methane hydrogen etc,) each representing a number. Your race would then have a number on the slider. The closer a planets slider is to yours, the more facilities/population you could have, the easier it would be to mine, the faster your population would reproduce. Eventually, the planets slider gets so far away fromy your number the colony becomes domed, or you can't colonize at all.



If this was done I would still like to see the planets appearance be color controlled based on atmosphere. I see that the basic planet images did this abit anyway. If I get around to it I might provide a test run in a thread or someone else can.

Oxygen has been fairly decided as blue/green, Carbon Dioxide alot of green, Methane purple, None grey, etc etc. If a planets geographical appearance was set by the bitmap but the colors used were slid to show atmospheric changes then I THINK the effect would work. The change in appearance is quite drastic and impressive.

Instead of using the same images with different colors as has been done a bit now, the images could be gray-scale and used as apparently seperate images for each of the environments. It would provide a much larger variety with a much smaller library. But the effect of this is hard to see unless someone actually tries it and Posts a thumbnail set.

[Fyron]

Gandalf Parker said:
OK I cant read the 103 pages here so here is my list so far and others can tell me if its all already been covered or I just failed to RTFM:::

Why do people keep expressing concern over this? This is not some kiddie forum where you will be flamed just because you made a suggestion someone else already did... The more people that request a specific feature, the more likely it is to be implemented, due to Malfador being very responsive to the fan base.

[Colonel]

Here is a screwly little idea that can be easily modded. If the organic infestation systems are kept in the game, it should eat ships if they stay in the sector.

[Argitoth]

How about a seamless world?

I think a seamless world would be a great idea. Warp points could be used to get to distant places, but aren't needed to get to different systems.

A seamless world where there's a solar system for a group of planets and their moons all orbiting and moving around whatever object is in the middle.

Some of these ideas were already mentioned.

[Q]

Scenario creator or at least starting tech levels as in SE III.

[AgentZero]

I find it a bit eerie how many features from SE3 people want back. Not that I don't agree... Of course, the one SE3 feature I really want back is the right-click menu. And I'd like it to be customizable, so it would start out with the basic Move, Warp, Colonize &amp; Resupply, but you could add as many other orders to it if you wanted. Maybe even create seperate right-click menus for different ships, so Colonize will only show up for Colony ships, and the Stellar Manip. options would only show up for Stellar Manip ships. I'm not saying this should all come pre-defined, but should be something we can do if we want.

Oh, and does anyone know what the Attack order actually DOES? As far as I can tell it's just another Move button. Maybe this could be changed so if you use the Attack button you aren't given the prompt 'There are enemy ships is that sector...' Since you've given an Attack order, you KNOW they're there and you want to attack.

Can I also just say again how desperately missiles need to be reworked? They're just not an effective weapon at the moment. A few ways they could be improved:
1) Increase the amount of time required to close to non-missile weapons range. Thus, a fleet without missile weapons would take a serious pummelling before they could even use their weapons.
2) Only PDC &amp; Fighter weapons should have a reliable chance of hitting missiles. Other weapons could be fired at them, but hitting them would be more fluke than anything.
3) Missile Mounts. I know these already exist in certain mods, and it's something I've put into my own SE4, to great effect. What I've done is have missiles opperate as they do now up to the BC hulls, after which you can install Heavy Missile Mounts (Or Massive on DNs), which don't significantly increase the size of the component, but vastly increase the amount of damage it does. At the moment a Massive CSM V does about 4000 damage points. I'm also playing with altered ships sizes so a DN is about 3200kT, but even still 1 CSM will pretty much strip a DNs shields. I've also increased the speed of seekers, but this is more to compensate for the short time it takes for two fleets to close on another.

[Alneyan]

The Attack order is only useful when playing simultaneous games where you are willing to take a gamble. It will order your ships to chase a peculiar enemy ship, no matter what else may happen. If you are unlucky, you could end up chasing a single lone ship, or being lured into a wormhole ambush, into a blackhole, or other annoying things.

[Tanus]

tmce said:
Oh, and does anyone know what the Attack order actually DOES? As far as I can tell it's just another Move button.




In Simultaneous games (PBW), the attack order is 'seek after'. So if you tell your ships to 'attack' an enemy ship/fleet, your ships will follow those ships until combat, whereas the move command would just move your ships to the sector where the enemy ships were at that time, and won't take into account if the enemy ships move.

Also, if you are attacking a stack of planets with a fleet containing troop transports, only one planet will be taken, and the rest glassed (or at least, I can't seem to get my fleets to *take* all the planets), the attack order will let you specify which planet to take, rather than just relying on luck or some unknown game mechanic.

Hope that helped.

[Ed Kolis]

I may have mentioned this before, but I'll bring it up again: No hardcoded relationships between the system movement speed and the combat movement speed! SE4 has Afterburners which increase combat movement but not system movement... why can't I define Warp Drives which do the reverse??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif This would also come in handy if I specifically want ships to move very slowly in combat but quickly around systems, so as to make missiles more viable per tmce's suggestion without making the strategic game obscenely slow. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[douglas]

Have you tried giving your warp drives a negative combat movement ability?

[Ed Kolis]

That won't work because the negative will be overridden by any positive value on whatever does give combat movement... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[clark]

Depending on how strategic movement is handled, combat movement might be amoot issue. Remember, combat is in simulated real time- meter per sec kind of stuff. So, if I reckon correctly, there might be a seperate line item that controls combat speed-each engine in effect giving an overall m/sec. This would be meaningless in the strategic view where &lt;I THINK&gt; movement is turn based (it could very well not be!)

[Kana]

Well slow in combat would probaby mean slow in strategic as well...unless there were two different types of engines...like thrusters or something for combat, and 'lightspeed' or 'hyperspace' engines for strategic movement.

So if SE5 is 'completely' moddable, you should be able to design either a single engines with two different attributes for combat and strategic movement values or seperate engines for the two movement type.

&lt;crosses fingers&gt;

Kana

[AgentZero]

I think just splitting the two values into two seperate categories would solve the problem nicely.
A 'Normal' (meaning strategic) Speed Value and a Combat speed value. And of course the bonus movement atribute could be applied two speed types differently so you could have things like Combat Drives which generate a less strategic bonus speed but more combat speed.
So a Quantum Combat Drive might only give you 2 bonus moves instead of 3, but you'd get an extra speed point in combat.

[Argitoth]

TCP/IP Multiplayer game --&gt; QUICKHOSTING &lt;-- when all players have submitted turns, generate next turn.

[AgentZero]

The SE3 ship purchase menu. That window was a lot simpler way of quickly getting planets and spaceyards quickly working on building a new fleet with significantly less menu-clicking as in SE4. Perhaps a few refinements as well, such filters to select the system, and only planets and/or shipyards.

Also, I'm in favour of bringing back SE3s Repair/Build Queue window, and also the ability for Bases to have more than one Space Yard comp on them. The main reason I'd like to see this is so that ship hulls can have the requirement 'Can Only be Built By Base with X number of SYs'. A tech that decreases the size of SYs would also make this interesting since you'd have the choice of researching bigger bases or smaller SYs (to fit more into an exisiting base) in order to build your big new Battle Cruisers.

Also, I'd like to see techs that once researched provide immediate bonuses in certain areas. So research in one area might uncover some new mining technique that could be applied to existing mines without needing to refit them, so all your mines get produce 10% more minerals. Or advanced targeting algorithms that give all your ships 5% accuracy bonus. This would allow players to make small, evolutionary improvements to their empire without having to take the time and expense to upgrade everything.

[AgentZero]

I'd like to see a ship design 'wizard'. For vetran players, ship design is nice and easy, but for those new to the series, the ship design could be a bit intimidating, especially if they start a game with all techs researched and/or install a mod that adds a load of new comps.
Basically, if you clicked on the 'Wizard' or Helper or whatever you want to call it, a window would pop up with a series of tabs that would guide a player through ship construction. So you'd have 'Required Comps' which would show basically just bridge/CC/LS, or fighter bays/cargo/colony pods if applicable (and reactors if we get them!), then once those were in place it would move on through Propulsion, Armor &amp; Shields, Weapons, Combat Support , Misc.

I know we can do something similar by changing which component types are displayed, but for a new player who isn't really sure what they're doing, it'd be quire helpful.

[Colonel]

Privateers, When you make a design you should have a choos to make it a privateer ship, the difference between pirates and privateers is that a pirate would be its own race and a privateer would be a ship you control but it has a hidden race. The draw back is the more ships you have in porportion to the size of your empire the more chance you have at getting caught. So if you have a huge empire and say 10-15 privateers you would have a small chance to getting caught but if you had the same amount and a small empire you would have a large chance of getting caught

[Fyron]

tmce said:
I'd like to see a ship design 'wizard'. For vetran players, ship design is nice and easy, but for those new to the series, the ship design could be a bit intimidating, especially if they start a game with all techs researched and/or install a mod that adds a load of new comps.
Basically, if you clicked on the 'Wizard' or Helper or whatever you want to call it, a window would pop up with a series of tabs that would guide a player through ship construction. So you'd have 'Required Comps' which would show basically just bridge/CC/LS, or fighter bays/cargo/colony pods if applicable (and reactors if we get them!), then once those were in place it would move on through Propulsion, Armor &amp; Shields, Weapons, Combat Support , Misc.

I know we can do something similar by changing which component types are displayed, but for a new player who isn't really sure what they're doing, it'd be quire helpful.

This is what the Ship Design AI minister is for. No need for any special wizards...

[Ed Kolis]

But the AI minister doesn't actually TEACH the player how to design ships... it just does it for the player, and not very well anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Randallw]

Clearly Diplomacy has been discussed before, but in such cases it seems to be a discussion on how to improve AI diplomacy. What I would like to see is a more elaborate diplomacy option towards other human players. As it stands now the highest treaty, partnership, means you have to allow your ally to see all your systems and everything you see. This makes sense if you are fighting a common foe. However without the opportunity to block vision of your internal systems from your ally, I usually choose not to have a partnership with others unless the benefits outweigh the penalty. Having a partnership with someone means you value the alliance and is an indication of a willingness to cooperate (Although some people seem to want to sign partnerships with everyone they meet), but there are some things you don't want to share even with your allies. "Have a military alliance" you say, but then the ally will side with the person who has a higher "Partnership" treaty.

[AgentZero]

Ed Kolis said:
But the AI minister doesn't actually TEACH the player how to design ships... it just does it for the player, and not very well anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif



That's exactly what I mean. I'm talking about something that would guide new players through the process, showing them how all these components go together to make a ship. Once they've gotten good at it, they can keep using the wizard or use the conventional approach instead. Teaching someone how to do something is a lot different then doing it for them.


As it stands now the highest treaty, partnership, means you have to allow your ally to see all your systems and everything you see. This makes sense if you are fighting a common foe. However without the opportunity to block vision of your internal systems from your ally, I usually choose not to have a partnership with others unless the benefits outweigh the penalty.



This got mentioned during the initial phases of SE4 as well. What I was thinking is that trade treaties and military treaties should be seperated out. So you could have a Non-Intercourse treaty militarily, but still have a Trade &amp; Research treaty. I'd also like to see access to your space being something that you would grant seperately from any treaty, like the Civ3 Right of Passage. That way one could have a full Partnership treaty, but still not allow his allies ships into his space. I think this would be good for xenophobic races especially.
An ability to 'automate' certain types of trade would be good to. For example if I'm pouring my research points into say, WMGs, and my ally is researching Shields, it'd be nice if we could set up an agreement that each time we reach a new tech level (in specified techs) the two are automatically traded. This could also be done with resources, so if I have a massive mineral surplus but a defecit in radioactives, and my ally has the opposite problem, then we can set up a system where every turn I give him 10,000 minerals in return for an equal ammount of radioactives. This would save us the hassle of having to go into the trade screen every turn.

[Fyron]

What I was thinking is that trade treaties and military treaties should be seperated out.

Have you read the SE5 chat transcripts with Aaron Hall (http://seirc.spaceempires.net/archives.php)? I believe this exact subject was discussed there... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Colonel]

Stellar Manipluation, You should have a new componet say around 2400kt it would create a warp point to empty space. It would create a war point and a whole new system at the other end. It would have randome planets and stars or anything black hole, nebulua, and anything else. It would randomly generator.

[Aiken]

I'd like to be able to write some sequence of my ingame actions to macros and then save/load it to/from separate text file.

There could be and easy to use api interface which will allow 3rd party software to gather information about your empire and known universe, make more or less sophisticated analysis and give some results in form of advices: e.g. best planets for colonisations, best colonies to develop industry/research/intel, etc.

[Colonel]

This is hard to explain bit. But I always end up doing math playing this game. Is there anyway to at the very least be able seperate cargo amounts so I dont have to figure out how many fighters can go into this ship and then I have to figure how many drones can go in then how much excess cargo there is. Does anyone understand that???

[Ed Kolis]

Like in SE3, where a fighter bay could store X number of fighters and no drones or population or whatever?

[Fyron]

Or like in SE3 where all cargo types were wholely separate... how do you store people in a mine bay anyways? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Captain Kwok]

I'd settle for just population quarters and cargo the way it is now for units.

[Colonel]

I dont even care about it seperateing so I cant put a Fighter in a mine bay but I wish it would tell me how many fighter space i have how much drone space and how much it could store I go insane haveing a piece of paper next to me with all kinds of numbers on it that I usually lose track off if I dont play for a day or so

[TerranC]

Imperator Fyron said:
Or like in SE3 where all cargo types were wholely separate... how do you store people in a mine bay anyways? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



Easy, you give them a blanket, some rations, stuff as many people you can, and hope that the doors won't open by accident.

What? Don't look as if you've never done it either. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Fyron]

Colonel said:
I dont even care about it seperateing so I cant put a Fighter in a mine bay but I wish it would tell me how many fighter space i have how much drone space and how much it could store I go insane haveing a piece of paper next to me with all kinds of numbers on it that I usually lose track off if I dont play for a day or so

You could just make specialized launch ships that launch only a single type of unit.

[AgentZero]

I think what the good Colonel is trying to say is that in SE4, when you design, say, a carrier, you're told it has 3000kT of cargo space. But how many fighters is that?
I've got a mine layer with 1500kT of cargo space. How many mines is that?
It'd be nice if after you designed a ship to carry specific units (carrier/troopship/minelayer/etc), then beside the cargo space it would tell you how many units of that type it could hold. eg: 100 Light Fighters/80 Med Fighters/60 Heavy Fighters.
Obviously if you're mixing between sizes, it doesn't work, but it'd at least give you an idea without having to pull out the calculator, and have the unit capacities of all your ships scribbled down somewhere.

[Kana]

I was think the other day about how research is usually increased or sped up during wartime. Right now in SE4 we can 'emergency' produce ships and units at an increased rate. Which I think should also come with a penalty to happiness as well, but the only penalty is the reduced production for like number of turns. Anyway...I way think that something similar could be done for research points, either by percentage of total points, or maybe choose one select catagory to have research faster. This should only be during wartime...ie have a war treaty against another race. Also it should have a economic cost as well for the increased rate of scientific research...

What do you all think?

Kana

[Ed Kolis]

Good idea, Kana!

[AgentZero]

This should only be during wartime...ie have a war treaty against another race. Also it should have a economic cost as well for the increased rate of scientific research...



I like this! Maybe even just the fact that you're at war would give you a bonus to your research (and maybe other things?). The advantage is you research faster, the downside is you're at war, so most of your new inventions have a tendancy to get blown up.

[Ed Kolis]

More populous planets should logically enough require more UPC facilities/troops/orbiting ships to get the same happiness boost, while larger planets should require more Value, Conditions, or Atmosphere Improvement Plants for the same benefit. (Oh, and this time make the Conditions plants actually *useful* by incorporating larger population bonuses into the stock game and/or increasing the plants' effects http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

[Colonel]

Player set Tonnage. I think you should pick a size class like there are now only you would set what you wanted the tinnage to be. So you could have a battle crusier with 659KT or a battleship 901KT. So you could have a more veried fleet also it would make more of an arms race type thing. Also the max tonnage for each ship could only be reached after the ship constuction was reashed. So like now we have three techs for each differnet engine now after you got up to the next tech ship construction your max for the previous ship would increase and it would do that continueously until that ship maxed out and so on and so on

[Arkcon]

Suggestion: that inteligence projects that capture ships and planets, events that cause you to lose a ship or planet, ships subverted with the alliegence subverter or boarding parties, whatever the cause: only have a temporary effect, say a few turns, then control reverts back. This could be a way to balance these effects, instead of making an all or nothing defense available.

[Kiedryn]

I want supply drain weapon :-)

[Captain Kwok]

Kiedryn said:
I want supply drain weapon :-)



All weapons already drain supplies when used in combat.

[douglas]

Captain Kwok said:
All weapons already drain supplies when used in combat.


But not from the ship its shooting at.

[Colonel]

Like a pirate weapon that takes supplies and adds them to your own

[Captain Kwok]

douglas said:

Captain Kwok said:
All weapons already drain supplies when used in combat.


But not from the ship its shooting at.



Yeah, it was early this morning. I understand now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif

[Kana]

Allow a flag or option for a seeking weapon to be able to be damaged by weapons fire. Said damage will decrease the effectiveness of the strength of the seeker. This would be similar to SE3. A yes or no tag will allow us to simulate different types of seekers.

Kana

[Aiken]

About happiness:
2 new settings for happiness.txt

Max Positive Anger Level
Max Negative Anger Level

so you could limit max/min happiness level availiable for any happiness type, ie no more than Happy(120)/no less than Angry(60).

[Tanus]

aiken said:
About happiness:
2 new settings for happiness.txt

Max Positive Anger Level
Max Negative Anger Level

so you could limit max/min happiness level availiable for any happiness type, ie no more than Happy(120)/no less than Angry(60).



I'm sure it's been said, but also to have happiness based on a percentage.

losing 10 planets in a 500 planet empire should not affect things nearly as much as losing 10 planets in a 15 planet empire

[Kana]

A supply ability that can be tied to things other than facilities. That way you could make a resupply component, that you can put on Bases. Also allow some whay of supplying ships from bases without having to 'fleet' them together...

Kana

[AgentZero]

Kana said:
A supply ability that can be tied to things other than facilities. That way you could make a resupply component, that you can put on Bases. Also allow some whay of supplying ships from bases without having to 'fleet' them together...




I'm all for that! At the moment I make supply bases that are just a station full of supply components, but in order to resupply ships, I have to send them to the station, 'fleet' them with it, then 'unfleet' them and send the ships on it's way. And I'm still trying to figure out a way to resupply the base when it runs out. A Base-only resupply component would be great, and that one simple addition would add a lot to the game's strategic depth.

[Renegade 13]

Unless I'm really mistaken, bases already have unlimited supplies, so you don't need to worry about your base "running out" of supplies....ever.

[Ed Kolis]

I know we've bugged you enough about the formulas in data files, Aaron, but you think it would be possible to calculate any field from any other field?

E.g.

Tonnage Structure = 30 * 0.95 ^ [Tech Req Level 3]

for a component that miniaturizes when tech req 3 is Miniaturization? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Planetary Indices, using the equations. Pop growth rates, production and build rate, even some atmosphere modification, all based on race settings among other things.

High organics-value planets would convert CO2 into oxygen, high rads (of the volcanic variety) planets would emit lots of H2 and methane, and more.

And a separate reproduction rate and death rate index.
You could have a heavy metal value for the planets, which could reduce reproduction rate in regular races (toxic), but be required for self-reproduction in the case of mechanoids.
You could have planets where a small colony will die off from natural events unless you can grow it to a stable size, or keep feeding replacements to it as the people die.

You could have a rapidly-reproducing race that uses up all the methane, say, in an atmosphere and then dies off when the methane runs out.
They would come in giant pop transports, turn the atmosphere into population, and then leave to find another world to consume.

[AgentZero]

Renegade 13 said:
Unless I'm really mistaken, bases already have unlimited supplies, so you don't need to worry about your base "running out" of supplies....ever.



I meant running out of supplies to give to other ships. Then you're just left with a useless station sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

[Tanus]

I meant running out of supplies to give to other ships. Then you're just left with a useless station sitting out in the middle of nowhere.



If you've modified the settings.txt so that bases can be fleeted, unlimited supplies means unlimited supplies.

If you built a base with just the control components and nothing else (bridge, ls, cq), and fleeted it with your ships, every ship will have full supplies next turn.

[Patroklos]

Make warp point capable engines a seperate component. Please!

[Randallw]

Interesting. Some form of emitter to open a natural Wormhole perhaps. A jump drive, uses wormholes, but still needing normal engines to move in system.

[Tanus]

A proper "fog of war".
- when your ships leave a system, all colonies you saw should remain shown, and unchanging until another ship moves in, just like in other similar games
- also, it should not update with stellar manipulation. If I create a planet in my homesystem, or rearrange warp points, some ancient race should not be able to see all these changes. They're ancient. They know how the galaxy used to be.


I also think it would be neat if further down the stellar manipulation path (if it works similarly), beyond normal warp openers to existing systems, you should be able to open warp points to empty space - no planets, stars, asteroids - just empty space. But with proper fog of war, no one would see this, and you could gather your fleet in a secure, secret system that could be on or even behind the enemies frontier systems.

[Patroklos]

Warp point is tricky, because what if I own the other end. And we can "see" planets around a star right now with our primative atrological tools (even if the picture is a few thousand years old), I would assume advanced races could do better than us.

I see your point though.

[Sefter Aruna]

Has any body posted to suggest that the combat not have set pause points, but instead start paused then you just right click on your ship to give it new orders?

I have played a few games that have pause points and they STINK! you have a huge advantige in pauseing agenst missiles, becouse all you have to do is know the way a missile moves and turn your ships the right way and the missiles shoots past!

Without the pause points you have to think on your feet more.

[Randallw]

I do not understand your reference to the term "Pause Points". The nearest assumption I can make is that you are adressing the ability to move into range of a planet, fire, than move again out of range of missiles. To my knowledge there is no possibility of missiles "shooting past" merely of moving away faster than the missiles move so that they reach their range limit and dissapear.

[Colonel]

I think its a bug in the game which he is refering to. Sometimes if you move a certian way when they shoot missles at you they completely miss. As for the pause points he is refering to the where you stop at the end of your combat turn, He wants it to be simotanous tactical combat

[Colonel]

Little Idea of mine, Does anyone know what you call the opposite of a Black Hole, Where instead of pulling it towards it, it would repulse it, anyways add that as a system type

[Suicide Junkie]

Missiles will almost certainly be "always hit" just like in SE4 as well as Starfury.

Running sideways will increase the distance the missile travels by some amount, and may give your Point Defense a little extra time, but you won't be able to dodge.

-----

I've heard reverse-black holes typically be termed white holes.

[Ed Kolis]

Colonel said:
Little Idea of mine, Does anyone know what you call the opposite of a Black Hole, Where instead of pulling it towards it, it would repulse it, anyways add that as a system type



A white hole? Good idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Aiken]

Indeed there are theories where black holes of our universe are white holes emmiting matter in adjacent universe. But from our observations white holes don't exist.

Anyway, how do you think white hole system could look like?

[Gandalf Parker]

Post deleted by Gandalf Parker

[Gandalf Parker]

Well according to some, it would be spewing light. Or at least throwing back out all light which headed its direction. Taking the black-hole image from the game and doing a straight color-reverse on it might work. Or just dropping 255/255/255 extreme white into the middle of it. Hmmmm that would look like a galaxy. Maybe dragging lines outward using a smudge brush-tool or something.

It would be another interesting thing to have show up but Im not sure what it would offer in game terms. Maybe if it absolutely forced all traffic to follow the wall of the system? Maybe also a slow down in speed? Missiles wont work? Maybe cannons also. Hmm even beams if light is affected. No weapons? only null weapons? warp weapons?

[/quote]

[Fyron]

There was a White Hole system in the old Ultimate Mod if you can locate a copy of that...

[Captain Kwok]

Imperator Fyron said:
There was a White Hole system in the old Ultimate Mod if you can locate a copy of that...

How come you never finished that mod? It was shaping up well.

[Ed Kolis]

Because it wasn't his mod... it belonged to Hadrian Aventine http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Captain Kwok]

Ed Kolis said:
Because it wasn't his mod... it belonged to Hadrian Aventine http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Are you certain? Didn't Fyron have that whole number #1 in space empires website and stuff too? /threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif

[Fyron]

Kwok is just being a troll. Ignore him.

[Atrocities]

Machine worlds should provide a bonus to production thus making them highly sought after. Machine worlds are used in mods but should be considered for use in SE V.

Artifical Warp Points, another mod specific item, should also be considered for use in SE V. Perhaps as a comerce tool, or as an acient technology. When encountered a race must either pay a toll, or posess the technology to operate the "gate."

You should be able to mine black holes, nebulas, organic infestations, or commet systems for resources.

I said this before and want to bring it up agian. I would love to see a system filled fully or partially with an acient mine filed that modern mine sweepers cannot clear until they have a very high technology level. Also make the mines self replicating.

Brings me to my next suggestion. Self replicating mines. I think they speak for themselves. Very advanced mine tech. If not all cleared at once, will reproduce themselves.

I would also like to have something like a Stargate system on planets so that you can move resources or such things as troops, fighters, or weapon platforms from one planet to another within the gate system. Have these gates as "rare" finds until later in the game when the player gains the ability to "build and place them" on planets themselves.

Also have a huge orbital stargate system that can move one ship instantly to another gate in another system each turn.

The player would have to build these over the planets they want, and put a limit of one per system on them.

[Atrocities]

I would love to see in SE V a tool tip icon that when either clicked or rolled over by your cursor, shows the HOT KEYs.

Put it in an out of the way part of the UI so as not to cause accidental pop ups.

I think this would be much more user friendly then having to click on two or more buttons.

[Patroklos]

More Orbital componets to make stations and orbital facilites more diverse and useful. Maybe special city components you can put in Starbases (would be that big) that store population but lets the planet below use it for production. Orbital Cities.

Make larger ship classes require more than one type of facitliy to build it. An escort requires only a planetery space yard, but cruisers and up require an orbital one, and dreadnaughts require monstrous orbital space dock facilities.

[Colonel]

Patroklos said:
More Orbital componets to make stations and orbital facilites more diverse and useful. Maybe special city components you can put in Starbases (would be that big) that store population but lets the planet below use it for production. Orbital Cities.

Make larger ship classes require more than one type of facitliy to build it. An escort requires only a planetery space yard, but cruisers and up require an orbital one, and dreadnaughts require monstrous orbital space dock facilities.



GREAT, Glourious idea. But in order for that to work you would need differnet uberly large components for such monstorous Oribitial factilites

[Kana]

Is there a Intel project that allows you to intercept Messages from one empire to another? If not, then that could possibly be any intersting addition to Intel...

Kana

[douglas]

Yes, there is, but it's not much use against out-of-game communication. It's only really useful if you can keep doing it every turn and the two empires in question are trying to send gifts, trades, or treaty proposals.

[Arkcon]

It's prbably been mentioned before, but I'd like to add my vote as well ...

...for a Linux compatible SE5 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[AgentZero]

Colonel said:
GREAT, Glourious idea. But in order for that to work you would need differnet uberly large components for such monstorous Oribitial factilites



I mentioned something like this before. Easy way to do it would be get rid of the 'Only 1 SY Comp per base' limit. Then Just say Escorts-LCs require at least 1 SY (ergo planets can build them too), Cruisers-BCs require a base with 2 SYs, and DNs and Baseships need a base with 4 SYs. That way you can't just start building Dreadnoughts on the tiny planet you just colonized with 5M people. Only your most developed worlds would have the Starbase needed to build DNs (this might get interesting if to build a Starbase you first needed a base with 2 SYs on it!), and therefore would be even more valuable.

Another thing I'd like to see would be upgradeable 'colony types' as per the Proportions mod, where I colony starts out as a Settlement, and you slowly upgrade it to Colonial Community, Minor City, Major City, Metropolis, etc. Each upgrade would bring with it a boost in all resource production, cargo capacity, defence (in the form of shields), and even Planetary SY production. Rather than being researched (as in Proportions mod), the ability to upgrade each level would be dependent on the planet's population. The upgrades would be very costly and take quite a while to complete but the result would be more than worth it.

[Tanus]

I mentioned something like this before. Easy way to do it would be get rid of the 'Only 1 SY Comp per base' limit. Then Just say Escorts-LCs require at least 1 SY (ergo planets can build them too), Cruisers-BCs require a base with 2 SYs, and DNs and Baseships need a base with 4 SYs. That way you can't just start building Dreadnoughts on the tiny planet you just colonized with 5M people. Only your most developed worlds would have the Starbase needed to build DNs (this might get interesting if to build a Starbase you first needed a base with 2 SYs on it!), and therefore would be even more valuable.



This would also make small "lightning strikes" and raids much more useful, and require even large empires to defend their major construction centers.

I also like the fact that this would allow you to have some major construction centers in remote backwater systems with no planets, hidden from prying eyes.

[Fyron]

One thing that can be done now is to use Space Yard Expansions to get multiple Space Yards on a planet (as in mods such as Pirates and Nomads, Adamant, and GritEcon (at least I think GritEcon has them...)). If you set the initial Space Yard facilities to have a low construction rate, you essentially need a lot of Space Yard type facilities on a planet to build large ships there in a reasonable time frame. You could also add a special ability such as Boarding Defense to them, and add weapons that target only planets, and do damage only to Security Stations. I have no idea if that works, but it might... This way, you have special weapons that can eliminate only Space Yards. Alternatively, add Resupply ability to the Space Yard facilities, and the existing Smart Bombs can be used for lightning strikes agaisnt construction worlds...

[AgentZero]

One thing that can be done now is to use Space Yard Expansions to get multiple Space Yards on a planet (as in mods such as Pirates and Nomads, Adamant, and GritEcon



Right... So we can already mod this idea into SE4. I don't see how this is a pro or con towards the idea being implemented as a stock option in SE5. Some of the best ideas for games' sequels have come from mods made for their predecessors. And after all, this is a thread about what we want to see in SE5 in terms of the stock game. We know it's going to be moddable so we can do whatever we want with it, but that doesn't mean the stock game shouldn't come packed full of as many new features as we can cram in there.

[Fyron]

AgentZero said:
Right... So we can already mod this idea into SE4. I don't see how this is a pro or con towards the idea being implemented as a stock option in SE5. Some of the best ideas for games' sequels have come from mods made for their predecessors. And after all, this is a thread about what we want to see in SE5 in terms of the stock game. We know it's going to be moddable so we can do whatever we want with it, but that doesn't mean the stock game shouldn't come packed full of as many new features as we can cram in there.

I don't see a point? Who said anything about such a feature not being in SE5? All I said was that in the mean time you can add such a feature in your copy of SE4...

[Atrocities]

I would like to know how many and of what type colonyship I have in the colonization window. Would be very helpful.

[AgentZero]

I don't see a point? Who said anything about such a feature not being in SE5? All I said was that in the mean time you can add such a feature in your copy of SE4...



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif You don't see the point in my post about me not seeing the point in your post. Classic... Just noticed that there's a lot of suggestions in this thread where you've said the same thing, and it seems to me, though I apologize humbly if I'm wrong, that there's a bit of a 'If we can mod it in, then it doesn't need to be in the stock game, because we can add it ourselves later'. Which of course wouldn't be a good idea...

[Ed Kolis]

I'd like to see the old system of allowing multiple colors on a system in the galaxy map so you can tell WHAT empires are in a system, not just that there is more than one with the triangle. Failing that, maybe a triangle if it's only you and allies, and a star if it contains enemies?

[Fyron]

AgentZero said:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif You don't see the point in my post about me not seeing the point in your post. Classic... Just noticed that there's a lot of suggestions in this thread where you've said the same thing, and it seems to me, though I apologize humbly if I'm wrong, that there's a bit of a 'If we can mod it in, then it doesn't need to be in the stock game, because we can add it ourselves later'. Which of course wouldn't be a good idea...

This would be a false assumption/conclusion. I don't really see how anything I have said leads to saying, "If we can mod it in, then it doesn't need to be in the stock game, because we can add it ourselves later." If this were the case, I should really be saying that the stock game should have blank data files, as everything in it could be modded in... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif SE5 is still a long ways off, so having the capability of playing with various feature ideas in SE4 now would be beneficial, no?

[Renegade 13]

Add a new field to planets...gravity. Have a value of say, .5 G's to 1.5 G's (For example, a small planet would have a value of .7 G's, and a large planet would have 1.2 G's). If you started on a medium planet, your people would have 1.0 G's as their racial norm. If they colonize planets with 1.0 G's or less, they get optimal population/cargo/facility space. However, if they colonize planets with gravity values greater than 1.0 G's, the cargo/population/facility space would go down, etc, etc.

This could lead to racial traits, similar to advanced storage or hardy industrialists, which would allow a race to get optimal value from planets with different G values than their home planets. For say, 1000 racial points, you could colonize planets with 0.8 - 1.2 G's without reduction of optimal cargo/population/facility spaces.

[Randallw]

Back when I played STARS! there was either a feature of the game or something a user came up with where you could look at the representation of the galaxy map and the space around your systems was filled in with your empire colour to indicate the size of your empire. Colouring each system you claim works well enough, but it would look a bit better if you could look at the whole map and see each empires region shaded in.

[jimbob]

&gt;decloak&lt;

I'd like to see
1) formations for satelites around your planet
2) the ability to have "if" "or" "and" functions in the tech trees
3) multiple weapon effects per weapon (ie. targets engines AND computers)

Sorry if these are already in a patch. been a while since i've been around.

cheers
Jim

[Ed Kolis]

jimbob said:
1) formations for satelites around your planet
2) the ability to have "if" "or" "and" functions in the tech trees
3) multiple weapon effects per weapon (ie. targets engines AND computers)




Pretty sure from the chats that #2 and #3 are in http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[DarkAnt]

I have no idea if this is mentioned(109 pages!!!), but I'd like to see is components doing damage after they are destoryed. For example, one of the engines is destory and this causes 5 extra damage. If something potentialy explosive ends up blowing up in a ship then I think it should do something do extra damage to the ship.

[Kana]

DarkAnt said:
I have no idea if this is mentioned(109 pages!!!), but I'd like to see is components doing damage after they are destoryed. For example, one of the engines is destory and this causes 5 extra damage. If something potentialy explosive ends up blowing up in a ship then I think it should do something do extra damage to the ship.



A completely viable idea considering that SEV will have munitions stats for guns and missiles and such...would add to any modding as well...

Kana

[AgentZero]

This would be quite interesting. A direct hit to a ship's magazine would be rather disaterous. Of course, there'd have to some way of reducing the damage done if the magazine was empty, no?

[Colonel]

I was playing around with modding the cloak to make it more useful for myself and makeing it so once you have all techs it doesn't go completely obsolete in the end and I think I have an idea. Have the most advanced tachyon sensors only equiptable on Bases. So then all cloaked ships would have free reign in the areas not protected by a base. So only the farthest out planets would be unprotected from cloaked ships. This would allow the cloak in atleast some.Also the sensor may need to be bigger so not to have it have a big advantage and only the most secure areas would be protected by it.

The cloaks would go up higher then the first three tachyon sensors so onl the new one would see them.

[Ed Kolis]

Sounds good, Colonel! Pirate ships ahoy in the neutral zone! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Except that tachyon sensors are already the most expensive type to research... do you really want to add another level? Maybe tachyon sensors could be a separate tech area unlocked by level 3 research into sensors, so you could make them a bit cheaper?

[Atrocities]

A stargate system would be cool to have.

[Ed Kolis]

What, you mena like with lots of warp points and nothing else?

[Suicide Junkie]

Colonel said:
I was playing around with modding the cloak to make it more useful for myself and makeing it so once you have all techs it doesn't go completely obsolete in the end ... So only the farthest out planets would be unprotected from cloaked ships ... Also the sensor may need to be bigger so not to have it have a big advantage and only the most secure areas would be protected by it...

For P&amp;N, I split the cloaking into 5 different pieces.
You'd need stealth armor to protect against passive scanners.
Scattering armor against active scanners.
Master computers (lack of crew) to protect against psychic.
Some technobabble tachyon dealies against tachyon scanners
And small hulls (low mass) to protect against gravitational scanners.
Cloaking devices did all 4 non-mass, but were an extra level weaker.

The gravitational scanners were made to be really huge and cost a couple hundred thousand resources, so they'd only be present in a few critical systems, leaving gaps like you did.

Also, because you need all 4 components to fit on a small hull in order to be completely undetectable, a frigate with 1 engine would have about 20kt of space left after cloaking. Destroyer or larger could be spotted by the 1500kt grav scanner.
Enough for a plague bomb, perhaps, or armor for sweeping mines http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

[Colonel]

Ed Kolis said:
Sounds good, Colonel! Pirate ships ahoy in the neutral zone! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Except that tachyon sensors are already the most expensive type to research... do you really want to add another level? Maybe tachyon sensors could be a separate tech area unlocked by level 3 research into sensors, so you could make them a bit cheaper?



What I did with the files I was playing with was copy the sensor tech and paste it once right below. Then renamed it Advanced Tachyon Sensors then doubled the price in base research with only one level. So it was 100000 to get it which would have been about the same as the Last level of regular sensors. Also you would need to get all of the sensors to be able to research this tech.

[Ed Kolis]

How about regions of space where the laws of physics are different from those in normal space? That is, when you enter a system or sector with this property, the game switches to a "patched" set of data files, which would supplant the original files in places where they conflict! So you could have a system where, say, shields are at half strength, or to-hit chances decrease twice as fast with distance, or any combination of weird effects! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif
If this is implemented, it's only one step away from loading multiple mods at once and resolving the conflicts via some sort of internal diff program! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
And if that's too much, there could always be multiple sets of complete data files which apply in the various anomalies or regions of space! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[jimbob]

Hey Ed. True, I finally went and read the archived IRC with Aaron. Cool stuff!

Mod-ability will be great in SEV! I can't wait to see what you guys do with it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

So what about satelites with formations instead of being clustered all in one location?

[thorfrog]

I might have mentioned this before but I'd like to see some of these things in the game.

Politics: Different governments. I'd also like to see other empires shift in government policy because of new leadership that might lead to war and other situations.

Economic: Add a currency and unique trade items. Owning certain item would earn a financial benefit and allow use of certain technology. It might make certain tech cheaper. Opens up possiblity of an economic victory.

[Captain Kwok]

A couple simple things I'd like to see are the ability to change your empire name and leader during the game.

[Colonel]

Captain Kwok said:
A couple simple things I'd like to see are the ability to change your empire name and leader during the game.



I would like to second that.

[Kana]

Captain Kwok said:
A couple simple things I'd like to see are the ability to change your empire name and leader during the game.



This could be cool for RPG type games...but might be a form of exploit in other games...IE use for deception or other nefarious means...Needs some form of control or restriction...

Kana

[Fyron]

The race name would be the same, as would all images associated with them, and their traits... I don't see how this could be exploited, really...

[Renegade 13]

Captain Kwok said:
A couple simple things I'd like to see are the ability to change your empire name and leader during the game.


This would be great for when a replacement player takes over someone elses PBW game, they could change the names to ones of their own preference.

[Captain Kwok]

The only cautionary measured that you'd need to take is to prevent two empires from having the same name. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Kana]

I'm sure this has been mentioned before...but after looking at the current Play by Committee turn, and updating some info in a spreadsheet, I figured I would bring this stuff up again...would be really useful for Role-Playing oriented games...

1. Allowing units to accumulate experience especially fighters and troops.

2. Being able to name Groups of fighters or troops...there by forming squadrons, or armies (divisions, regiments, battalions, etc...) This would be very similar to the fleet options for ships. Allowing these 'fleets' to be carried on ships as well.

Kana

[iaen]

Kana said:

This could be cool for RPG type games...but might be a form of exploit in other games...IE use for deception or other nefarious means...Needs some form of control or restriction...



There was some talk about a galactic news service or something like that in one of the chat transcripts. It cant be all that difficult to generate a newsflash like, "Emperor Flubbux resigns and hands the reigns of the Moblox empire over to his successor Welzot."

[AgentZero]

Tweaking of ship experience. Basically, instead of the current 1% per kill, ships gain experience almost like characters in an RPG. This would allow ships to be given an experience value, and therefore destroying larger ships would give ships a greater bonus. ie: An escort is only worth 200 experience, but a dreadnought might net you 10,000. Also, there should be experience bonuses for when a ship destroys a ship that's bigger than it, and penalties for taking out smaller ones. If the game could track how much damage each ship did to another, it would also allow for a more fair distribution of the experience. So if one ship does 90% of the damage to another, but doesn't land the 'kill-shot' then it still gets 90% of the experience value of the ship.
Every 'level' a ship would gain a small boost to various abilities, and every say, three levels it would move up a rank (from green, vetran, elite, etc) and get a larger bonus. This would also have the side-effect of ships continuing to get better once they hit Legendary status.
I know it's not the most realistic of things, but I think it'd make the game more interesting.

[Captain Kwok]

If you're going to give experience based on ship size, it should done relatively, because I don't see why a 1000kT ship wiping out a 600kT ship should be given more experience than a 300kT ship taking out a 500kT ship. Which one seems like it should be gaining more experience here?

[AgentZero]

Well, it would be relative. If each hull size has an experience 'value' and you get a bit extra on top of that value by destroying one ship with a smaller one, and a bit less if a larger ship takes out a smaller one. So, to answer your question, lets say each 100kT of ship gives 10 experience points. and you get 10% plus or minus for each 100kT difference between the hull types.
Therefore, it the case of your 1000kT vs 600kT, the ship destroyed has an experience value of 6000, but the victor is penalized 2400 pts (40% of 6000 since there's 400kT difference between the two) so it gets 3600 experience.

In the case of the 300kT ship taking out the 500kT, the destroyed ship has an experience value of 5000, plus a 20% bonus for the difference in ship size=6000. Which makes sense, because it'd be a lot easier for a 1000kT ship to take out a 600kT ship than for a 300kT to take out a 500kT.

[Captain Kwok]

Good compensation for sizes.

I read your post too fast and replied before I caught that line about penalities/bonuses. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Ed Kolis]

Tracer or target-painting weapons... tracers do minimal or no damage, but if a tracer hits, all fire from the source ship to the target ship gets a bonus to hit for a short period of time as specified in the tracer weapon's component entry (maybe +10 to hit for 2 seconds). If a neural combat net or similar component is installed on the firing ship, the bonus applies to ALL similarly equipped ships firing on the target. Tracers could be any type of weapon, from direct fire to seeker to point defense to even ramming warhead. Since they would typically do little or no direct damage, they could even be area of effect or arc weapons without causing too much game imbalance http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Skirmish mode - much requested in Starfury, but maybe now that you've got the combat engine worked out, you could include a mode where a player chooses ships/planets/units/etc. of any tech level and chooses an enemy fleet and then runs a battle a la Starfleet Command. Perhaps even a multiplayer Online skirmish mode, and/or multiplayer Online tactical combat? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

If the game includes AI scripting, having user-defined variables and arrays could allow someone (Not me! Eep!) to create a learning AI.

[Gandalf Parker]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
If the game includes AI scripting, having user-defined variables and arrays could allow someone (Not me! Eep!) to create a learning AI.



Since some of the game apparently reads the files each time (not just when the game is created) then it would be possible to program a changing AI. What would help would be exported data. Dominions has a switch which outputs a scoreboard.html file but it doesnt allow midgame changes since that game doesnt re-read text files. Too bad to because the -prepost and -postexe switches allow running a 3rd party program before or after each hosting which is great for backing up or notifying players. It would be sweet for an AI rewrite.

If SEV would output information then it might be possible to have the AI "decide" to alter its tactics?

[Graeme Dice]

This has probably been said before, but I'd like some way to decouple component cost and build time, so that I can make a unit that costs a million resources, but only takes a turn to build as an extreme example. I'd also like to see the return of the separate facility and space build queues for planets.

[Rathar]

Someone will likely point out a way to do this but.. I would like to see a way to make a fleet use a component.

My example is that if you have a pile of individual ships with say, emergency propulsion, they can do it one by one but if assembled into a fleet they cannot even though they all have the capability.

[Atrocities]

How about a new racial trait. Pacifists (sp) Weapons are all non leathal.

[Colonel]

Atrocities said:
How about a new racial trait. Pacifists (sp) Weapons are all non leathal.



I like the idea but what would be there advantage.

[Ed Kolis]

Could give you free race points, or special boarding/engine/weapon destroying weapons...

How about variable ship speeds like in Stars? In Stars if you had a warp-9 ship, it didn't have to always travel at warp 9 - it could travel slower with the advantage of reduced fuel usage. If adding a speed slider or emergency/slow move toggle is too much micromanagement, the supply usage can always be automatically reduced when the ship is fleeted with slower ships http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[AgentZero]

I could see how an emergency slow/fast toggle might be a bit interesting. Emergency slow would cause your ship(s) to move at 1/2 speed, so a ship that normally had 8 moves would have 4, but the advantage is that you only use 1/4 the supplies. Might be a good for long range scout ships.
Emergency speed on the other hand would give you 50% more movement, so our 8 move ship would then have 12, but it would use double the supplies &amp; run the risk of damaging or destroying engines. But it'd sure be helpful if you needed to get ships to the defence of another planet that was about to be attacked &amp; said planet was just outside your normal range.

[Atrocities]

There advantage would most likely be in their subduing weapons. Instead of nuking a planet into submission they would simply use an allegance subverter on them. They would have a very high cultural advantage over other races and by that I mean other races populations would want to be more like them. So if they colonized a planet in a shared system the other planets in that system would grow unhappy with their own government and rebel. The planets would ask to join the pasifist race.

Their ship weapons would be shield depleters, weapon destroyers, engine destroyers, and advanced boarding and allegance subverters.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

[Stars! joke]And their populations would grow at half the speed on a transport, allowing you to build up a potentially near-infinite population and over-run all the other races in the galaxy with colonists.[/joke]

[Makinus]

Hey! i loved to play Inner Strength races in Stars!

[Ed Kolis]

Hey, Aaron said there would be space colonies... maybe that will be doable http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Colonel]

Has anyone thought of a way to implament a crew. As in you would need to actually assign X number of crew\enlisted people to each ship and you could have certian building be like recuriting offices and the more advanced those become the more crew\people generated per turn. I mean you all can really think that the people on board ships come from no where. This would sort of be negated with the advent of the Master Computer for ships as they would no longer need a crew really.

[AgentZero]

I'd like to see some ships with 'innate abilities'. These would be things such as 'Comes equipped with 200kT of Cargo Space' or '500kT extra space for missiles only'. I don't think they'd come into play much in the stock game, except maybe in derelict ships you find as you explore, but it would open up a lot of interesting options for modders. Which is always a good thing.

[Atrocities]

There has been discussion about crew, but many feel that it adds an extra layer of confusion to the game.

[Atrocities]

You know, you could mod in crew right now to SE IV.

Make a new component, give it the crew quarter ability and require 5 for small ships, and more for larger ones. Then with the crew component, set it to like 1kt and have it use a lot of organics. Remove the Crew Quarters component as to avoid conflict.

[AgentZero]

Atrocities said:
There has been discussion about crew, but many feel that it adds an extra layer of confusion to the game.



What's confusing? Ships have crew. Iddy-biddy lil' fellas that run around and make the ship do what you want. Kill them, and the ship doesn't work so good. Crew comes from planets, where there are many, many iddy-biddy lil' fellas running around all over the place. You round up a few, stick 'em in fancy uniforms, and voila! Crew!
Simple concept, no?
Well, you all know which side of the fence I'm on. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Atrocities]

<font color="brown"> FIX THE ONE PER VEHICLE BUG </font> This is most annoying. when you set a restriction for a component with multiple abilities to ONE PER VEHICLE the AI should not add more than ONE.

This is a most annoying bug.

[Atrocities]

New Racial Trait:

Ancient Race

Race has access to advanced weapons, components, ships, and facilities from game start, but has no access to what non Ancient Races have.

Eventually None Ancient Races will surpass the Ancient Race in many technologies thus making this trait of limited value.

The reason I suggest it is so that you can set up games where you have one race that is older than all the others and I know for a fact that many of us would love to play as the Vorlons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The trick would be to get set it so that when you play as an AR your have to make strong treaties because the number of ships you allowed to have is limited. So a non AR could eventually out produce you in ships and beat you. Even though your ships are far more powerful, the old saying the bigger they are the harder they fall comes to mind. One sting may not hurt you, but a 100 or more, well thats a differant story all together.

This race would also have to start the game with at least one more world than all the other traits.

[Aiken]

Weapon idea: Neurodestructor. This dreadful device obliterates any and all forms of sapient life in the system and leaves colonies depopulated but physicaly untouched. It should be possible to capture 0M pop colony of course, else it would be useless.

Another WMD idea is an asteroid bombardment - so you could establish some monstrous device in the asteroid field and push the field toward a planet.

[Colonel]

Two little things. You should one be able to move small to medium astriod feilds. Also you should be able to create a planet artifically but not like a sphereworld but a regular world but you would need a mining ship that once it was filled you would take it to whereever you need.

[Ed Kolis]

Need WMD ideas? How about Radiation Bombs that can be used against uninhabited planets as part of a "scorched earth" policy - if my empire can't use it because it's the wrong atmosphere or planet type, I'm gonna darned well make sure nobody else can get anything else out of it! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Also, how about negative population growth for planets with Deadly conditions and/or races with horridly low Reproduction? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[AgentZero]

Colonel said:
Two little things. You should one be able to move small to medium astriod feilds. Also you should be able to create a planet artifically but not like a sphereworld but a regular world but you would need a mining ship that once it was filled you would take it to whereever you need.



You'd need yourself an awful big mining ship to transport enough material to build a planet. After all, Earth, which we agree is a Medium planet in SE terms, tips the scales at 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. Even converted into kT, that's a lot. Personally I like the idea of using temporary Warp Points to transport material from one solar system to the next.

Just had a little idea on changing something we've already got in SE4: Nebulae Destroyers. Instead of just blowing the neubula off to wherever they go, when you use a ND, you should be required to place the ship using it at the centre of the map, and when the ND is used, the nebula is collapsed, forming a new star surrounded by debries (asteroids) which you can then use to create planets.


Atrocities said:Race has access to advanced weapons, components, ships, and facilities from game start, but has no access to what non Ancient Races have.

Eventually None Ancient Races will surpass the Ancient Race in many technologies thus making this trait of limited value.



I really like this idea, but I'd change it in a few subtle ways. Instead of making non-Ancient tech eventually become superior, Ancient tech would just cost WAY more to research. So the younger races would be able to quickly close the gap fairly easily and even surpass the Ancients for a while, but at the end, Ancient tech would still be superior.
Same thing with the ships. An Ancient race could build just as many ships as a younger race, if they could afford it. Ancient ships would of course cost WAY more to build than normal ships.
Done this way, you'd have a race that would be reasonably powerful at the start, but not overwhelmingly so, since they wouldn't be able to pump out enough ships to do that much damage. They'd be weak mid-game, as younger empires surpassed them in technology, and would only really come into their own in the late-game, where their super-technology would allow them to maintain a pretty good sized fleet, which of course would be vastly superior to anyone else's similar-sized fleet.

[Atrocities]

Good idea's AgentZero. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[AgentZero]

Atrocities said:
Good idea's AgentZero. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


Many thanks, my esteemed collegue. ;-)

Another thing I'd like to add is that we need better victory conditions, and even default victory conditons. At the moment if you forget to set VCs, your only option is the genocide or enslavement of the entire galaxy.

I think even a sort of campaign would be really cool as well. Nothing that would seriously constrain you like in many story-driven 4X games. Basically you're just given a series of missions that come along to slowly advance the story. The first mission would pop up as soon as you started a Campaign Game (we'd still have Free Play for those who couldn't be bothered), and subsequent missions would pop up at pseudo-random intervals. All I mean by pseudo-random is that each mission would pop up not less than X turns, but not more than Y after completing the Last one. So Mission 2 might come up 5-10 turns after M1, M3 might come along 15-20 turns later, and so forth. Not only would it make the stock game a bit more interesting, but it would make for all kinds of modding fun.

[Atrocities]

I have a new idea for systems

SYSTEM TYPE:

Debree field. Basically at one point the system was home to either a very large constructed planet that blew up or a huge battle was fought here. Either way the system is littered with metal debre that can be mined for resources.

This would be a system wide phenominon or even just a sector one.

[Fyron]

Atrocities said:
<font color="brown"> FIX THE ONE PER VEHICLE BUG </font> This is most annoying. when you set a restriction for a component with multiple abilities to ONE PER VEHICLE the AI should not add more than ONE.

This is a most annoying bug.

It is not that the AI ignores that particular restriction, it is that the AI ignores pretty much _all_ restrictions when designing vehicles... You could get it to create transports without any cargo bays, carriers without any fighter bays, and so on if you tried hard enough... You can even have the AI add fighter-only components to a ship design if you set your components up poorly (ie: using the same family numbers for a normal sized, ship-only weapon and the equivalent small, fighter-only weapon).

[Atrocities]

Fyron I really do hope that in some small way Aaron will get board with working on SEV for a day or so and address at least this one bug.

I know why he won't, and it makes me kinda sad to think about it. Oh well, will just have to live with it.

[Mayday]

Renegade 13 said:
One thing in SEV I'd absolutely love is something that other people have suggested previously: Very detailed planetary/solar descriptions. For example:

Name: Sol III
Gravity: 1.00 standard G's
Atmospheric Composition: 74% Nitrogen, 22% Oxygen, 3% Carbon Dioxide, 1% Other gases
Planetary Conditions: Optimal
Planetary Surface: 77% Water, 17% Landmass, 6% Polar Ice Caps

...and so on, and so on. These wouldn't necessarily even affect how your race is able to thrive (or not) on the planet, or use it for resources, but it would add a lot of realism and its just plain more interesting that way!



Why wouldn't it? You could determine a planet's habitability based on these numbers. Or even on the part of the planet that is useable by you. This would limit the number of people capable of living on there in much the same manner as atmosphere type currently does. Worlds would then be classified as gaseous or solid, I suppose.
Hell, you could even get aqautic worlds.
Thusly, a Land dwelling race would be able to colonise the land parts of a world, and you'd have population restrictions based on the availability of land.
This means that while you could colonise practically any solid world, you'd be better suited to colonising those worlds that have a greater amount of land.
In addition, subsequent research of Ice colonisation, and possibly aquatic colonisation would open up those areas of the worlds for habitation, thus increasing the population limit. Also, you could restrict the ocean, or surface areas for aquatic races, based on atmosphere, since aquatic life is going to need domes on the surface, but not undersea, and vice versa.

Additionally, I would like to see domes removed for races not needing to breathe, since it makes no sense for an android race to be restricted to domes with no atmosphere in them because they can't survive in atmosphere.

Regarding star system description, I think it should be flexible, depending on the state of the star system at the time.

Also, again regarding planets, it would be nice for star systems to possess habitable bands, and for the worlds in these bands to have better planetary conditions than those outside of it. This should affect the planets themselves, too. Those planets further out should have more polar ice caps and land than water, as well as planetary conditions.
Those planets closer to the star should have considerably worse planetary conditions but only land. So while land would indeed be abundant, it would be abundant in less hospitable places.
Because of this, giving the planet a distance from the star(s) would be required. Also, giving the stars a strength factor, which of course increases the total system star strength, would be required to set the habitable band.
Also, the description of a dyson sphere, which is what I assume sphereworlds are, is that it is a massive interlocking set of platforms, and while it wouldn't block out the sun completely, it should at least decrease its strength for the rest of the star system, meaning the habitable zone would be shifted inwards.
To deal with the ramifications of this, you could in fact create multiple 'bands' based on how far the world is from the habitable zone, and the further it is, the worse the initial planetary conditions, and the faster any change in this will be over time. So although you could conceivably alter planetary conditions using climate control facilities for a world a stone's throw from the sun, getting rid of them to build other things would mean that this work would rapidly be undone by nature.

In the same vein, you could increase the stars per system limit to 3, and it would be a good idea to limit their construction to be at the centre of the system, so it just doesn't look weird (also, creating a star at a distance of say, Mars, in an already existing system would destroy the system, which would be silly. Anyway, the 9 innermost sectors should be the space limited for this.
Also, construction of more stars, while it would increase the effectiveness of solar collectors in that system, would rather dramatically shift the habitable zone, so while in a system with mostly distant worlds this would be a good thing, it wouldn't be so good for systems with worlds closer up to the habitable zone.
On the worlds themselves, there would be gradual shifts in planetary conditions and in the amount of liquid water or ice. It seems strange that there can be ice worlds in a trinary star system where there are 3 intense stars. If anything, they should be barren desert worlds, possibly with the water locked in clouds that never rain, like Venus, but maybe without the poison.

Also, through this, one could change an ice world to a rock and water world. Using terraforming facilities or ships, you could push for the species' ideal habitation type, though it would have to be kept there for all time, to stop nature from taking its course. Having a starbase in orbit that not only defends the planet but also keeps it snowballed sounds like an achievable tech.

Also, in regards to Atmospheric percentages that were presented in the above quote, I would suggest that allowing a race to breathe the atmosphere if there is at least a 30 or 35% presence of their required atmosphere. For the hell of it you could throw in 'Atmosphere toxicity' as an attribute that could be resolved by the atmosphere convertors alongside the normal atmospheric makeup.
For example, an atmosphere with say, 40% oxygen would be breathable by humans if it weren't for, say, the chlorine gas that makes up another 20%.

Also, on a different subject, there needs to be a better reason to capture a planet, than there currently is. Right now, in SE4, it seems so much easier to just kill everyone and repopulate with your own people. I think this should be addressed.
Also, if the combat is indeed going to be real time, may I suggest that Imperium Galactica 2 has an excellent method of doing this. It is fully 3D as well, and doesn't require extravagant system requirements to be this way, as the ships have low poly counts.
Weapons have recharge times as well, and there are also fighters. Above a planet, the battlements on the planet are also capable of hitting the starships. And while I realise that the idea of having satellites and starbases orbit during the battle sounds a good idea, the reality is that the orbit speed suggested is likely to fast for the time period the battle supposedly occurs in. Perhaps a movement every couple of turns would be better representative of this.

Wow, long first post.

[Renegade 13]

Long post indeed, and good suggestions in it! Welcome to the forums http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Just some notes on astrophysics:
- If you break up one star into a binary, the energy output (after it settles from the action) will be dramatically lower. You'd be turning one yellow star into two dim red ones, or collecting massive amounts of hydrogen from somewhere.
- Planets can easily be ice in a bright/multistar system, they'll just be farther away. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
- Orbits in multi-star systems will generally be unstable. Really close to one star, or really far from the group of stars, or locked into a resonance with a binary's orbital periods would work though. (Planets at the lagrange points of a pair of cool stars?)

-----

As an extention to the breathing thing, perhaps a couple of classes of breathability:
- Optimal
- Filter/concentrator-Assisted (passive, gas-mask style)
- Isolated-assist (active, scuba tank type stuff)
- Fully Domed ("space suits" for outdoor activity)
- Deadly (Just too nasty, people in domes still die off regularily)

Some sort of piecewise curve for productivity/reproduction/death rate/pop maintenance costs

You'd need to be in the first two categories to have no major penalties to population limits on that part of the planet, the first three to avoid major work penalties, etc.

[Kana]

Talking about crew and such...

Maybe a flag or indicator for components that will designate a component as being able to carry crew (ie: small portion of population, or individual crew type units) like a cargo space would....

And if that component is destroyed, then the 'cargo'/'crew' would be destroyed and have to be replaced....

Kana

[Colonel]

Suicide Junkie said: can easily be ice in a bright/multistar system, they'll just be farther away.



An Ice planet could also survive in such a system if it had a REALLY dense atmosphere.

[Renegade 13]

A dense atmosphere could also trap the heat, along the lines of Venus. Surface hot enough to melt lead.

[Colonel]

Renegade 13 said:
A dense atmosphere could also trap the heat, along the lines of Venus. Surface hot enough to melt lead.



True but it can work both ways.

Anyways I have a little Idea, Atmospheric Fighters:They would be able to enter the atmosphere of a planet and much more easily to take out space ports and such... also you could use them to help Troops

[AgentZero]

Mayday, I quite like your ideas on planetary conditions. The idea of a habitable band within the solar system where the planets most suited to your race would be found would make a great addition to SE5. The only thing is that we would need more than just a little green star over a planet to let us know it's habitable if things as complex as atmospheric composition were taken into account.
I can think of two ways of adding this level of detail without making it too complex for new players.
1) A slight rework of the Conditions Category. Assuming a planet is roughly habitable, the Conditions will be compared against your homeworld to determine it's habitability. So a planet with a bit more sulpher in the atmosphere than Earth's might be Unpleasent, and so forth. If a planet doesn't match your race's requirements (ie: Methane atmosphere for a Oxygen race), the conditions will read Uninhabitable, though that wouldn't stop you from putting down a dome colony.
2) Underneath 'Planet Size' add 'Available Landmass Size' (ALS). This expressed as a percentage of the planet's 'normal' available space. So you would have 50%, 75%, 100%, 125% and 150%. For simplicities sake we could use Small, Medium, Average, Large and Huge, with the percentage in brackets. ie:

'Planet Size: Large'
'Available Landmass Size:' Small

This would describle, for a terrestrial race a large planet made mostly of water, for example. This would of course require that a player pick whether they will be a Terrestrial or Aquatic race when creating their empire. One also have technologies that would eventually eliminate the penalties and increase the bonuses from ALS.

Just for an example of the Large/Huge ALS, imagine a planet the size of Earth (considered to be Medium size), but covered mostly by land. That planet would have a lot more space for terrestrial races to build stuff, even though it was the same size as Earth.

[Ed Kolis]

I had a lot of free time at work today, so I came to thinking up this design for a 4X game... feel free to steal any of my ideas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[AgentZero]

I'd like to add in a request for a bit of improvement when it comes to the AI Ship Design files when we're modding. At the moment it's pretty involved and it can be pretty hard to get the AI to do what you want.
I tried a little while ago to make a mod based on a universe of my own creation which ended rather badly.
For example, in this universe, a Solarian Frigate starts out armed with a few Meson BLasters, then trades in a few for APBs, sticks with them for a while and ends with WMGs. Not the most brilliant ship design, I know, but I was trying to have the game fit in with the fiction I'd wrote, and vice versa.
Also, I ran into the problem where if I wanted to set certain ship design requirements that were a bit different for each race, I had major problems. eg: The Solarians discovered the propulsion system that allowed them to power something as big as a Cruiser from their research into missiles, but their allies, the Untarii, used a completely different propulsion system derived from advanced shield tech.
So, I figured if I created Solarian Cruiser designs with missiles on them, and Untarii Cruisers all needed phased-shields, then I wouldn't see Solarian or Untarii Cruisers until they'd aquired Missile tech (which was expensive and modded to require Military Science), and Phased Shields, respectively, right?
Nope. The AI, apparently unwilling to wait until it had researched the techs needed to build the designs I specified for it, simply cobbled together it's own designs and started pumping them out...
So really if the SE5 AI just does what we tell it to in it's AI files, I'd be pretty happy.

[Atrocities]

GAME PLAY IDEA

Research / Intel Points:

When at war a race should get a bonus for research and intel. This is how it is in the real world. When we are at war we spend more on researching new weapons and defenses as well as intel operations. I think it would be a good addition to SE V if Aaron could empliment this into SE V.

[Patroklos]

I would like speialty high teck componets like sensor suites and command centers. These would be very large and expensive components that give bonuses to every ship in the fleet or combat with it. Also only one effective per sector.

This would lead to some unique command or support ships.

[Captain Kwok]

Patroklos said:
I would like speialty high teck componets like sensor suites and command centers. These would be very large and expensive components that give bonuses to every ship in the fleet or combat with it. Also only one effective per sector.

This would lead to some unique command or support ships.



You can actually mod such components in SE:IV.

[Atrocities]

Modding is half the fun of playing SEIV. Just be certain to copy the data files you intend to mod into a new folder before you make any changes. For modding help visit the mod works at www.spaceempires.net/home (http://www.spaceempires.net/home) forums mod works.

[Suicide Junkie]

Atrocities said:
GAME PLAY IDEA

Research / Intel Points:

When at war a race should get a bonus for research and intel. This is how it is in the real world. When we are at war we spend more on researching new weapons and defenses as well as intel operations. I think it would be a good addition to SE V if Aaron could empliment this into SE V.

That dosen't really make too much sense, unless you take the funding out of something else, or go into massive debt.

Dosen't it already work that way a bit, though? When you're at peace, you're busy growing your economy and researching those advanced mineral miners and urban pacification centers, along with some military tech just to keep up with your neighbours.
When war comes, you dump all your points into getting a military edge instead.

Some sort of E-research and E-intel could be handy though.

E-research could increase your research production while increasing the chances of unfortunate and destructive "side effects".

E-intel could tend to deplete your trained agents, and you'd have to slow down later to get your agent quality back up.
- Or perhaps just have a number of skill points generated by each facility, and the more projects you run, the more thinly you spread your skill points.
(At peace you'd want to use just a few, so you keep your skill very high, and even if the project fails, you probably won't be IDed as the offending empire. At war, they'd be blaming you no matter what the outcome, so you can spread the skill out and run lots of projects that get IDed even when they succeed)

[AgentZero]

E-research's unpleasant side-effects should occur before the research project is complete. ie: No 'Sire, we have developed a new WMG' that ends up exploding when you use it in combat. Research in SE should encompass both the research and development.
Possible side-effects of e-research might be a chance the project will be reset to zero &amp; you'll have to start over (Ooops, we blew up the lab) and the results of you research becoming available to other empires ('Did I post the results of the Phased-Poleron tests on the secure R&amp;D forum, or on the SEMXVI forum?'

E-intel would also have a higher chance to fail, since your skilled agents would be run ragged and/or you'd be fielding agents who weren't ready for covert ops....

[Patroklos]

I don't want to have to mod them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I would also like regular ship born weapons to have little effect on planet population and unit planetside. We have a whole teck level for the weapons that are supposed to do this, yet what is the point if normal weapons do this just as well. Would again require more depth in ship design.

Would also make ground combat more nessecary.

[Kana]

Patroklos said:
I would also like regular ship born weapons to have little effect on planet population and unit planetside. We have a whole teck level for the weapons that are supposed to do this, yet what is the point if normal weapons do this just as well. Would again require more depth in ship design.

Would also make ground combat more nessecary.



This is actually a good idea. Ship to Ship weapons should have a reduced effect on planet or none at all. It would force people to use other specfic types or troops. Maybe certain ship weapons like missiles or drones might have full effect, but certain beam types do not...this is something to consider, or all to be moddable...

Kana

[douglas]

While you're at it, the whole system for how planets take damage should be revamped. Yes, it's hard to miss something as big as a planet, but aiming for individual weapon platforms on that planet should be a lot harder. Normal weapon shots at a planet should have a moderate chance, modified by CS, ECM, experience, etc, of hitting a weapon platform. Shots that miss the weapon platforms should do most of their damage to facilities, and only a little to troops and population. There should also be a chance of hitting an area that has nothing of importance, effectively "missing" the whole planet, that goes down with greater development and population. Mass genocide should require special planetary assault weapons or an obscenely large amount of regular firepower.

On another subject, I know treaties will be much more customizable in SEV, but here are a few customization options that I don't think have come up yet: sharing physical charts of astronomical objects should be a separate option from sharing ship/colony locations and details; it would also be nice to be able to make exceptions to sharing ship and colony data on the basis of ship/colony's owner (friend, enemy, specific empire), ship's design or design type, colony type, location, cloaking status, and even individually, or any combination of these factors. Exceptions should be applicable and separately designatable both for the ship/colony being observed, and for the ship/colony doing the observing. This might be a little too detailed to be worth implementing fully, but it would be nice to have for players suspicious of other players' motives and plans.

[Suicide Junkie]

How about finely dedicated construction facilities?
- The facility decription &amp; abilities restrict it to producing only a short list of items.
- The facility builds at a slow and steady rate, but also gains a big discount on build costs, perhaps even free in some cases.

---

For example, you could build an infantry barracks.
It would let you build 2 light infantry, or 1 heavy infantry per turn, at no cost.

When you research Light Cruisers, you could open up an "Escort AutoYard"
It would allow you to build escort hulls at a discount of 25% on materials, and 50% on labour.

---

Best for units, surely.
Especially with auto-launch options, you could have facilities for auto-building mines, sats and fighters too.

[Captain Kwok]

I'd prefer to see a slight bonus to production after the first item is built when repeat build is used.

[orev_saara]

I would like to see some form of LAN play, rather than just hotseat and PBEM.

[HEMAN]

Excellent ideas Douglas,about planets.My thoughts Just to expand on planet are: When Example: Players troops land on hostle planet fighting,and theres victory after battle for player.Players empire should get(TECKNOLIGIE LEVEL UP)from that enemy planet.Like higher types of tecknoligie facilitys or units left over from battle.

Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition #34 Peace is good for business.#35 War is good for business.

[Beck]

Atrocities said:
GAME PLAY IDEA

Research / Intel Points:

When at war a race should get a bonus for research and intel. This is how it is in the real world. When we are at war we spend more on researching new weapons and defenses as well as intel operations. I think it would be a good addition to SE V if Aaron could empliment this into SE V.



Could probably done pretty easily too using something along the lines of what we already have in the emergency build. Just have an emergency research/intel checkbox that is only active while you're at war and you get a boost for x turns followed by the corresponding decrease for x turns.

[Fyron]

orev_saara said:
I would like to see some form of LAN play, rather than just hotseat and PBEM.

There is a form of LAN play. TCP/IP. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Aiken]

Beck said:

Atrocities said:
GAME PLAY IDEA

Research / Intel Points:

When at war a race should get a bonus for research and intel. This is how it is in the real world. When we are at war we spend more on researching new weapons and defenses as well as intel operations. I think it would be a good addition to SE V if Aaron could empliment this into SE V.



Could probably done pretty easily too using something along the lines of what we already have in the emergency build. Just have an emergency research/intel checkbox that is only active while you're at war and you get a boost for x turns followed by the corresponding decrease for x turns.



Declaration of war should have some serious consequences then, else such feature could be exploited to get a free research boost (declaration of war against weak or Ai driven empire, for example).

[bearclaw]

Perhaps the best way to do that would be that a player only gets the boost to research/Intel if he is at war with ALL known races. Any sort of peace cancels the uplift.

[Atrocities]

An auto turn feature. Can be set by player to automatically process the single player turn after a set amount of time. The player can set the time intervals at will and when the turn is processed the player can stipulate if he wants the Ai to make changes or not.

This way a player can have the best of both worlds, Turn based and Real Time. BOTF had this option and it was a great tool to have.

[Mayday]

I'm not sure if this is already a factor in the game, but I know that sometimes, an empire will have other worlds fracture off from it in rebellions. When you commit genocide on one of these, however, the effect should, I feel, be much worse among the same race than if they were just another alien faction.
I know that if there were another human empire, and some species wiped them out, I wouldn't be very pleased.
Also, there should be a tweak to the AI to encourage recapturing rebelled worlds. I doubt that people would be too happy, if, say, one of the US's states broke away, and the US's military completely obliterated them for it.

Also, again I'm uncertain about whether this is also in the game, but it doesn't seem to be, jettisoning populations into space should be frowned upon. Why, so many times my spies have taken over colonisation ships, or transport ships, and joyfully jettisoned the 'cargo' into the abyss... Okay, well, it WAS me who gave the order, and it WAS hilarious at the time... But still! In fact, it might be an idea to add a chance that the ship's captain will switch alliances for suggesting that he do such a thing. Most people would have some difficulty in pressing a button that would end the lives of possibly billions of people.

Also, I like the improvements to my previous suggestions that people have offered.
In addition to what I said before, I think perhaps the Luminosity value should be used to set the strength of a star. After all, a more luminous star is burning hotter, is it not?

Anyway, as to the point of atmospheric density and worlds being frozen or superhot, or whatever. This also depends, of course, on the atmospheric makeup. CO2 traps heat a lot better than O2. So does Methane. In fact, Methane is 21 times better at it. Hydrogen isn't a greenhouse gas.
Okay, so... for realism this means that we need to take planetary atmosphere density and makeup when deciding whether the planet occupies its habitable band. Obviously, a world with 2 Bar density and say, 90% Methane is going to need to be a lot further out for a habitable temperature than is an Earthlike planet.
So to determine the planet's habitability, we need to find how much heat the star(s) are hitting it with, given its distance out, and adjust this to account for atmosphere with some sort of atmospheric makeup equation.

Also, I'd like to see moons with atmospheres. There's nothing to stop it happening. Many moons in our own solar system have atmospheres, and in any case, you can modify the atmospheres of the moons. Titan happens to have a Methane atmosphere and an atmospheric density of 1.5 Bar.

Regarding Ice planets in Multistar systems, yes, of course they can exist. But they do, as you say, have to be far away. Also, take into account that ice reflects sunlight, so it inherently cools a planet. This is how worlds can snowball. In fact, Earth itself once snowballed. This was undone over time by increased CO2 in the atmosphere, which allowed the world to heat up until the ice melted.

Good grief, I'm going to get a reputation for rambling.

Apart from this, there should be a greater penalty for ignoring demand Messages from other factions. And less of the AI demanding I get out of my most heavily fortified systems. Without some sort of system presence, they don't really have a right.

[Randallw]

Mayday said:
When you commit genocide on one of these, however, the effect should, I feel, be much worse among the same race than if they were just another alien faction.
I know that if there were another human empire, and some species wiped them out, I wouldn't be very pleased.
Also, there should be a tweak to the AI to encourage recapturing rebelled worlds. I doubt that people would be too happy, if, say, one of the US's states broke away, and the US's military completely obliterated them for it.



Well I personally would drop a transports load of troops onto it to recapture it. It would be interesting however if we had different cultural political systems, that way if a planet rebels and you have a dictatorial system (much like the type I regularly choose) nuking the lot of them will actually reduce unhappiness on other planets as they see the price of disobedience (if they know whats good for them).

[Mayday]

Well, yes, I do too. The AI doesn't seem to, though. It just glasses the planet and recolonises.
I mean, I can't even count the number of enemies I've used spies on, in order to make their worlds rebel so they would gradually wipe themselves out.

[Randallw]

When you say you use Intel to make the AI planet rebel do you mean cause unrest or actually make them split off?, because I am damned if I can make puppet political parties actually work (even when they have no intel defense).

[Mayday]

I like to max out my intel and have One level 3 Counter-Intelligence running, and the rest all Puppet Political Parties. Works a treat on less espionage oriented people, especially during a war.
Sometimes they join me, sometimes they make their own governments, all the time they get totally glassed by their former rulers.
And when that stops working, I change it to have one level 3 Counter-Int and all the rest are Crew Insurgents. I tend to take over most of their fleets with little work, and glass whatever is left.

[Edit]
I should also mention that they're all completed in one turn, and I have it set to repeat projects. That's how much much I'll put into it. With that much, I can bankrupt most factions.

[Atrocities]

We could really use a master log file. A file that logs all significant information. Things that the log should include but not limited to are:

1. Records date ship was constructed
2. Records date ship was lost, destroyed, sold, traded, other
3. Records date system explored
4. Records date planet colonized
5. Records date of first contact
6. Records all Messages from contacts
7. Records all events


Additionally a note pad feature in the game would be a god send. The current one does not meet the requirements needed by those of use who use it. Additonally switching alt tabbing in and out of the game is a PITA.

The system note system is good, but it would be helpful if there was a master log file of these. IE a text file that we could open that contained each systems notes, if any, in alphobetical order by system name.

Just some thoughts.

[Mayday]

Some other things:
Technologies that require multiple prerequisite techs.
Sensors for mines. These should be expensive additions to the mine, and only work on the sector the mines are in.
Also, higher sector limits on mines. Or at the very least adjustable ones.

It might also be nice to have a Terraformer ship type, which acts like a colonisation vessel, in that it is entirely consumed after use. To go on this design alone should be Atmospheric Modifier Plant and Climate control facility components that, that, when ordered to 'colonise' or whatever, are changed to be planetary facilities. By making the ship a small one, you can limit the number of facility components it can hold to 1, so there'll never be a problem when there aren't enough facility slots on the planet for the terraformer to fill. Also, I feel that this would indeed be balanced, if the facility component is the same cost as the facility itself. This is because you have to build it one the ship, and so have to pay for the other components too, and the maintenance while it is in transit, and the entire ship is consumed on use, so there's no 'repair and do it again' method, like how I build my Quantum reactor Planet Builders and Warp point openers and closers.

Anyway, this has the result of being a faster way to build this facility on all needy worlds in the empire, since a high population world can build faster, and will easily produce it in less time than the colony would be able to.
Possibly, you could make it so that the 'unpacked' facility was a different one altogether with a slower terraform ability than the planet built one, only 'buildable' by being unpacked. Although I would say that the cost of having the major production centres' shipyards focussed on building terraformers instead of warships should be tradeoff enough.

[Renegade 13]

A small note: Mine limits per sector are already adjustable. I think you have to tweak the data files, but it's a tiny adjustment. But yeah, it'd be nice to have an adjustable bar or something in the game setup where you could change the # of mines, satellites, etc per sector.

[Fyron]

Also, higher sector limits on mines. Or at the very least adjustable ones.

You can adjust it now. Open up Settings.txt in the Data folder and find the following setting:

Maximum Mines Per Player Per Sector := 100

[Mayday]

Hey thanks. It would still be nice to have it in game, however. Is there any upper limit that anyone knows of?

[Ed Kolis]

Probably some power of two or one less than a power of two...


Technologies that require multiple prerequisite techs.



These already exist - e.g. Small Phased Polaron Beams (requires Smaller Weapons and Phased Energy Weapons) - though I agree that more such techs would be interesting, and many mods do add more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Sensors for mines. These should be expensive additions to the mine, and only work on the sector the mines are in.



This should be moddable as long as Aaron makes all sensors range-based and not just system-based, which I *think* he said he was planning to do... anyone else remember that or am I just dreaming? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif Oh, and he would also have to make some way to differentiate between sensors that have a range of zero and no sensors at all, since currently if you create Long Range Scanners that have a range of zero, they simply don't work; the game treats the two the same and thus the minimum range for Long Range Scanners is 1 (a 9 square coverage). Perhaps a range of -1 or null or something for no sensors at all, Aaron? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Atrocities]

I did this for the STM mod but thought it might be a good idea to incorperate into Space Empires Five as a RACE SET UP option.

Instead of a one size fits all approach for Computer Player Bonus Aaron could adopt this concept.

Advanced Trait
Mild Research Boost
Medium Research Boost
Heavy Research Boost

Now for Single Players you can set your Computer Player Bonus to low or medium and then give these trait to one or more of the AI's. By doing so you will be giving the AI a boost in research and an advantage over you. In this way you can make a more unique game for yourself by giving each race its own level for research boosting. For example: Give the Heavy Research Boost trait to the Phong and they will research faster than you and say an AI with the Mild trait. These settings will provide for a more unique type of game play whereas the AI players will research at differant levels in stead of one size fits all.

[Atrocities]

I had a thought that might be a good addition to SE V.

Say you capture or are given a ship from another race and when you go to anylize it, it explodes. This would not be the same as the self destruct device, but simular. Think of it as a spin off of of the SDD in that it only works if the ship is anylized.

[Atrocities]

Incorperated settings function.

In SEIV we must manually reset the upper limit for systems, say from 100 to 255, and the same for units per sector.

What would be nice is if in SE V we had the option to change these settings, all settings, in the game and not have to manually modify the data files.

[HEMAN]

Have a SE V idea worth mentioning;
(1)Special Outpost Facilitys that are clocked or have stealth levels.Reason behind this?,To create a outpost centers on asteroids / boarder territory,In enemy territory.You can see them?,but they cant see you,Cloak and dagger &amp; strategical intel fun. Anyone ever watched WING COMMANDER,The ShipBase on a asteroid?.

[Atrocities]

HEMAN said:
Have a SE V idea worth mentioning;
(1)Special Outpost Facilitys that are clocked or have stealth levels.Reason behind this?,To create a outpost centers on asteroids / boarder territory,In enemy territory.You can see them?,but they cant see you,Cloak and dagger &amp; strategical intel fun. Anyone ever watched WING COMMANDER,The ShipBase on a asteroid?.



You can mod this now into SE IV.

[Fyron]

Not really. You can't colonize an asteroid. Also, you would have to make the entire planet disappear, not just the colony itself, with a cloaking facility.

Now, you can certainly have cloaked ships and bases in enemy territory, just not colonies...

[Mayday]

Here's an idea: Starbase colonies.
You could have them assembled like ringworlds and sphereworlds, but obviously smaller and unable to be mined.
They'd be ranked as Tiny obviously, but they'd be an excellent way to establish a foothold in a system, especially if they were able to be moved.

[Mayday]

On that note, another idea: Perhaps a component that would allow a ship to haul other ships. Some sort of tractor beam that would make it like a tugboat. Possibly the speed that can be reached would be related to the size difference between the tugboat and the ship being hauled.

[Colonel]

I was thinking about this for awhile to figure it perfectly. Corruption-Your Home planets would have little amounts of Corruption but the farther you got away from a Homeworld the more corruption. The only way to decrease this is by either stationing troops or ships\bases on or near the planets in question. Distance would be determined by movement cost. also as you got more advanced your Empire would expierce less corruption-so long as you implament the new facilties.

[Randallw]

I remember that was in STARS!. Can't remember more than that however.

[Fyron]

Randallw said:
I remember that was in STARS!. Can't remember more than that however.

And it was in Civilization long before then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If corruption is included, it should be kept to a minimum... Nothing is more tediously annoying than Civ-style corruption.

[Suicide Junkie]

How about persistent status effects other than damage?

EG:
Ion Cannon hit: Disables intact engines. Repair cost: 0.25 repair points per component.

Space barnacles. Effect: Ship mass increased by ##kt for movement and combat calculations. Repair cost 1 point per 10kt of barnacles scraped off.

-----

It seems to me that corruption should really be the opposite...

All the corrupt people will gather in your capitals and other areas of high-importance, since that is where individuals can have lots of power to abuse.

Of course, planets that are left without defenses would be vulnerable to raiders and pirates and theives...
Building defense sats, fighters and troops on the planet could help prevent these kinds of losses, but its not really fair to call it corruption.

[Fyron]

The idea wasn't so much corrupt politicians, but rather lack of organized control far from the center of power. As more advanced government systems are developed, corruption in far flung regions decreases. Monarchy has slightly less corruption than despotism, for example. Government systems such as communism and democracy have very low corruption, representing much higher levels of control over all regions of the civilization and higher levels of efficiency compared to more "primitive" governments. It is really a corruption of the efficiency of organization and centralized governmental control, rather than how many politicians are accepting bribes or whatever. It is a measure of how effective the government is at managing a far-sprung empire. It is a symbolic representation of realistic situations where a centralized government can not effectively manage every aspect of every portion of the empire. The corruption is just how much can not be used effectively on a national scale by the government. This is opposed to the SE2/3/4 system where every planet (or system, based on spaceports) is essentially a completely automous state capable of 100% effective control over every aspect of everything in the empire, and every state is absolutely loyal to and efficiently run by the centralized government.

[Renegade 13]

Something I'd really like to see make it into SEV is a way to set which space yards have automatic "move to" orders in an easier way than we currently have to do it. Right now, you must go into each space yard queue and then tell it to move all constructed ships to any given waypoint. A better way to do this would be to have a system similar to the one used for multi-adding ships to multiple queues. Hold down shift and click on however many queues you want to move to the waypoint, tell them to do it, and voila! there you go.

As things are, I'm in a PBW game where I had to go into about 100 queues individually and give them each "move to" orders. It sucks. And takes way too much time.

[Suicide Junkie]

Hehe.
How about a graceful way to handle loading a 50 megabyte mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

- Suicide "64% and grinding" Junkie

[Mayday]

In SE4 tactical combat, Baseships take up the same number of squares as an escort. I find this somewhat odd... I'm not sure what the look of the combat will be in SE5 but it'd be nice if this sort of thing wasn't the case.

[Captain Kwok]

I don't think there will be any "squares" per se for combat in SE:V, so each ship will occupy a varying amount of space depending on the size of its 3D model. It'll be interesting to see how MM scales the planets etc, in the combat map.

[Mayday]

Alright, that sounds cool. Will Newtonian movement also be modelled?

Also, another idea for help for modding, getting rid of the roman numerals on the weapon boxes and just replacing them with numbers. It'd mean less trouble for people wanting to create a weapon of a hundred levels, or something, I'd guess.
In any case, Roman numbers can get too long, though really, the numbers for 83, and 87 are the longest. LXXXIII and LXXXVII

[Mayday]

Er, I should probably point out that I'm not saying that there should be, say, an Anti-Polaron beam C, just that our number system requires less characters than does roman numerals.

[Mayday]

Or right, also, building a sphereworld practically always sends me into Mega Evil status, because of all the components needing building, despite the fact that those components are about as dangerous as me weilding a piece of soft cheese. Very soft cheese.
Perhaps the score shouldn't be influenced so much by Bases that have no weapons.

[Phoenix-D]

Right now the roman numerals drop into Arabic numerals when they get big enough to be unweildy (i.e. around 30). It works fine.

[Aiken]

Quite frequently I'm lacking the ability to set individual strategy for a particular ship (not to a whole class). I guess it's easy to implement by enabling Fleet Startegy button for a single ship (but skip the formation choice of course). It would be a very useful feature.

[Aiken]

Humour and easter eggs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I remember myself rolling on the flour then I saw almighty DIRE PENGUINS in the Age of Wonders I.

[Mayday]

Just a small interface point, the ability to set a race to AI while in the Players in Game menu, so that you don't have to go into each and every faction and set it. This helps save time, and makes it easier not to miss any.

[Captain Kwok]

Mayday said:
Just a small interface point, the ability to set a race to AI while in the Players in Game menu, so that you don't have to go into each and every faction and set it. This helps save time, and makes it easier not to miss any.



I believe the game host login lets you do this.

[Captain Kwok]

I'd like to see a planet's resouce value unknown until you've occupied the same sector with a ship, i.e. scanned it.

[Suicide Junkie]

Detection ranges in general being arbitrary distances would be nice.

[Ed Kolis]

Not to mention long range scanners that work against planets! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[DarkHorse]

I'd like to see the ability to make shipyards that can only build up to a certain hull size.

[Timstone]

I hope the game will be released in a jewelcase. I really hate the paper "bag" that came with SE IV Gold.