SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[David E. Gervais]

OK, Aaron agrees that it would be fun to hear what kind of ideas you people have. So consider this an 'official' post, and please do tell what would make your 'Wish-List' in SE:5!

..Remember, Aaron will be lurking and so will I! Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Mephisto: Small edit to Thread Subject

[ May 30, 2004, 17:17: Message edited by: Mephisto ]

[geoschmo]

My biggest wish is that whatever new and cool ideas Aaron adds to SE5, the game still have a simultaneous turn, PBEM play option that is compatible with PBW. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

[DavidG]

Everything in this Poll:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=007348;p=5

[Puke]

there were several old threads along these lines, but im not sure where they went. a search for SEV or SE5 may turn some of them up.

One of the things that I (and several other people) wanted was open-ended research. instead of progressing according to statically defined components, each component would include a formula for improvement. maybe linear, maybe parabolic with deminishing returns. this would make component families easer to create and mod, and would provide truely 'limitless' gameplay without starting a new game. arm's races could Last thousands of years. in theory.

another biggie, is vector based movement. thrust and velocity would be nice to have. but even without thrust and velocity, get us off the grid!

for the candy factor, truely modled starsystems were frequently requested. planets that orbit. maybe outer planets orbiting slower than inner planets. more on the eyecandy factor, is planets that are animated pictures that rotate. even a rectangular bitmap that scrolls by, rather than a 3d rendered sphere, if thats too process intensive.

another biggie that was on the old lists, was the ability to save your turn files before the end of the turn. you spend 30 minutes working on a turn, run out of time, and your not done. currently, you cant save the state of your orders and then come back to them later. It would be very nice to be able to do this.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Briefly, thx for the opportunity to hear our ideas:

-Customizable turn simulation for non-human setups, like setup 10 ai races, let them grow for xxx turns or until a specific event has happened. This would make up a kind of scenario editor or ai test.

-Fuel/Energy feature for components and facilities with abilities which depend on the level of energy, e.g. Talisman is filled with 100% divine energy (refuel at Fate Shrine or such), energy and to hit bonus decreases by ... I do not know yet

-Ability to turn off/on facilities, would be a nice feature for finite resources games or for embargos against allies?

Cheers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ZeroAdunn]

Different kinds of shields beyond phased and nonphased.

I agree on openended technologies.

Systems with orbiting planets would be cool.

Make the system view similar to mooII's only with more planets. Make movement vector based to help ocomodate this.

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.

Space monsters, space pirates.

Shipping lanes that appear as some dull line and go between the spaceport in a system, all planets in that system, and the spaceport in the next system over. Then the ability to blockade that shipping line and steal those resources.

Make tachyon sensors have range like scanners.

Switch the construction quee to be for one entire sector, and then make it similar to the research que.

Change the research method back to SEIII's

Keep warp points!

Opening and closing warppoints.

More to come.

[Puke]

oh yeah, i nearly forgot:

everyone has always been salivating over the idea of having colonies in deep space. building massive space stations (called 'sides' that will eventually break away from the Federation and form the Principality of Zeon...) that can hold population and generate research, intel, and resources.

this could be addressed by having components of those types being added to ships, even without the ship actually holding any population. likewise it could be addressed by enabling some sort of 'lesser' stellar construction that did not have to be built around a star. or, perhaps in the far future of Space Empires, ships / bases will be able to hold population and have facility type abilities.

[Ed Kolis]

Oh God... don't even mention it... I could go on for DAYS :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys:

Just to start off the topic...
"Off-road" travel (move in interstellar space without using warp points)
Support for *.avi (or other animation format) in place of any *.bmp used in the game - probably unnecessary though if there is realtime 3D rendering!
Even more moddability, made possible by plugins - you don't like the resource system? Implement your own in any programming language you like, just make sure it links to the rest of SE5 using some standardized API - or maybe something like Stars! Supernova Genesis' "RDL" (Rules Description Language)
Realtime rendered ships & planets - yeah I know it's already in, but they're cool! (You say that cuts down on moddability? Just make it some standard format - most of us use some sort of 3D program or another, there's got to be a converter for Moray to DXF or whatever you use!)
Better sound effects! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Even SE4 Gold's "enhanced" sound effects, to be honest, aren't all that great http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
Some sort of prioritization system on the SitRep (stole that right off MOO3 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif it means the turn log) - color coding or different font sizes for different levels of urgency, perhaps? or filters - show only urgent Messages, etc.
Ability to order cloaked ships/units not to fight when they enter a sector containing enemies they can see, or those enemies enter their sector... annoying when those fancy unarmed spy satellites initiate combat with an enemy battlecruiser http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif
Ability to queue orders in turn-based games - "I want you to load satellites here, drop them there, and repeat - oh crud the ship already executed its orders! now it won't repeat anything! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif "
Planet Classification Schemes, like in MOO3 - give a planet up to 3 (or whatever #) designators such as "Mineral Rich", "Frontier", "Research Colony", etc. and have AI templates for facility construction on those types of colonies such as "Mineral rich colonies get 1 spaceyard, 1 robotoid factory, and the rest miners" or "Frontier colonies get" - the trouble would be to get the AI to reconcile planets with multiple classifications - what proportion of miners vs. research facilities vs. farmers
Facilities that take up multiple numbers of facility slots
Combination of facility slots, cargo space, and maybe even population space on a planet into "surface area" - you CAN have more defenses on a planet, but you have to sacrifice facilities or population, conversely you CAN make it a mega industrial complex but there won't be room for weapons platforms
Multiple spaceyards per planet!
Realtime 3D combat! :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys: No really, I'm serious, they're doing it with MOO3 (well not the 3D part) - the way it works is, each of your fleets is divided into 1-8 taskforces, and the taskforces are what you actually control in combat, instead of piddling with the individual ships, which can be a pain when you have 100 ships on the battlefield! So early in the game, your TF's might be 1 escort, but later on your TF's could consist of, say, a troop transport with some heavy beam battlecruisers flanking it and PD cruisers on the edges of the formation. Then you just order the TF around - "attack enemy taskforce X" and they attack it, but each ship chooses its own target without having it manually specified. Sort of like a more advanced Version of SE4's "Formations" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Populations and facilities that actually consume resources! (Organics for most populations except mechanoids, none for autotrophs (populations that gather solar energy for food), and all resources for facility operation)
Custom moddable resources - you want Ironium/Boranium/Germanium instead of min/rad/org? You want "special resources" that are found only on rare planets and required to build exotic technology? You want to model every element known to man in the game so you need Titanium to build armor and Hydrogen for fuel cells? You got it!
Variable tech tree - like in MOO3 (a lot of my ideas are from there :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys: ), just because it says you need level 12 Particle Physics to get Phasors doesn't mean you'll actually get it then - there's a random factor and you might actually get Phasors at level 11, or level 14!
Ability to put multiple damage types on a weapon so it can be 1/2x to shields but once it pierces the shields it's armor piercing, or damages only engines - some sort of checklist in the data files like "Damages shields? Yes, how much? 50% of normal? OK, how about armor? Oh, it skips armor...
Component/facility/unit(?) mods (generalization of weapon mounts) that modify any ability of a component, specified by name - "This mod increases the 'Firing rate' of your weapons, cutting it in half. (Works best with real time combat :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys:) And this one doubles the 'Cloak level' of your stealth devices..."
Firing Arcs and Shield/Armor/Component Arcs!!! My phasor can only fire 90 deg. forward and I'm shooting from an angle of 325 deg. relative to your cruiser, so I'm going to hit a hole in your shield and probably hit your engine, since it's on the left!
Real leaky shields/armor - my shield has an 80% deflection ratio, meaning that on average, 20% of shots will pass right through! (or maybe 20% of each attack will penetrate)
Something I've always wished for in a space game - the "Lego" ship design model! (I believe I suggested this when SE4 was in development :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys:) Basically what it is is, your ships are designed modularly - you simply drag components onto a grid, where each component must be connected to another component at specified connection points. Each component has a size and shape in grid squares, so a laser gun might be a 3x3 square with a 5-square line projecting from one side, while an internal component like life support could be represented by a simple block. Each component would also have a weight, which may or may not be proportional to its size (a 20 kT cargo bay will be mostly empty space so it's larger than a 20kT meson bLaster). Then various calculations are done on the ship to determine its vital statistics - a to-defense bonus/penalty could be calculated from the overall size of the ship in grid squares, for instance, while the ship's acceleration would be the thrust provided by the engines divided by the mass. (Could even have retro thrusters for backwards movement and rotational thrusters for turning...) Then, when the ship is damaged from some particular direction, the components on that side are hit first. Of course, this is probably more trouble than it's worth to begin with, both from a programming and a gameplay perspective http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
More realistic/sophisticated planetary habitability and sensor models - take a look at http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=4154&group_id=17579 (this one) I cooked up for the "Universe" project - hey, even something like the temp/grav/rad model from Stars! would work, if atmosphere were thrown in as well!
Remote terraforming!
Planets, ships, and units of fairly continuously varying size - instead of planets being "Large", they would be "24,500 km" and population and storage capacity would vary as the square of the radius. Ships could be built in any size you want, with QNP (or even NP, for combat!) ratios calculated automatically, and shipsets would no longer be "this is an escort, this is a frigate" but instead there could be "lines" of ships (customizable in some text file of course) - standard ships, transports, carriers, colony ships, bases, etc. and your basic shipset would have pictures for various ranges in each of those categories - who needs a neostandard when you can say "this picture is for standard ships from 100-149 kT, this is for standard ships from 151-200 kT, etc." ... of course, this might play havoc with mods that change the basic component sizes for realism or sci-fi universe purposes - Aaah, I decreased the size of components, now all my ships look like escorts! :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys:
Realistic unit sizes - 20 kT fighters are ridiculous! :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys: How about modelling down to the ton on units?
That enough for a start? :insert smiley here, I ran out of smileys:

[Phoenix-D]

Here's mine.

-Keep the modability, add to it.

-Simultanious multiplayer, like SE4 is now only improved (save before end of turn ability, especially)

-Real time combat is not worth sacraficing PBW style multiplayer. However, AI-run real time might work, and RT as a replacement for the current tactical mode would. As long as strategic is still there. Getting rid of the one fleet fires then the other situation is a Good Thing.

-Ability settings for most/all abilities. Say you could make a Self Destruct that works 50% of the time when the ship is boarded, a better one that works 75%, etc.

-Real-time rendered models are OK, but it's not important. Especially since programs like DOGA or Bryce will -not- be able to export to these (even with a filter- waaay too many polygons)

-Better intelligence system

-More free-form treaties. Say I want to offer just resupply and radioactives trade, for example.

-Have the AI ignore things it isn't set to respond to. For example currently you can ask it to leave a system and it will say yes or no. However it never does anything either way, so it should just ignore.

-The current system and planet view works fine. Maybe a few more (hidden?) details.

Phoenix-D

[orev_saara]

I'm in favor of anything that increases modding options, pretty much. That's the best thing about SE, you get to cook it up according to your own recipe. On the real-time combat thing, I'm afraid that if any of this game goes real-time, I'll stop buying it. SE is the Last of the true turn-based strategy games, and I don't think it makes sense to vacate your niche to please a few gamers that could find what they're looking for elsewhere anyway. Maybe this niche is smaller than I like to believe, but I still hope that you'll stay true to the format.

The open-ended tech thing is a great idea, too. I also like the idea of planet sizes and conditions being more continuous, but I'm not sure about the same idea for ship sizes and unit sizes. More animation/artwork is a real good way to eat up development time, and I'm not sure it adds that much to the final product in this case.

On the whole units too big thing, it just occured to me that fighters/troops/satellites can all be considered as representing larger groupings. One fighter may actually be a flight of fighters+support equipment. One ground troop may be a division, etc. So I withdraw my objections on that ground.

Mostly, if any developers happen to read this, I love your work! I'm looking forward to seeing whatever's next.

[Ed Kolis]

Wow, I thought I was posting first but a few people snuck in there ahead of me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Another thing from the SE4-planning days: Techs with "ors" and maybe even "nots" as well as "ands" in their prerequisites - so maybe you need either Particle Physics or Wave Mechanics to get EM Radar (I seem to recall posting a similar example a few years ago when SE4 was in development http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif ), or you can either research The Light Side Of The Force or The Dark Side Of The Force, but once you research one, you can't get the other! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[primitive]

Money. A more advanced economic model.

Diplomacy that actually works (steal the model from EUII):
- Your ally has been attact, join the war or suffer the consequenses (drop in happines and reputation)
- Peacetreaties where the winner of the war (need a point system) gets some concessions from the looser.

[Crimson]

I'm for the research and intel comp, the space lanes, and a MOD script lang. Also I remember somebody wanting a tug ship ability, pull thing to other location like stations. Oh maybe fighter that can attack ships and troop targets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif And also maybe use a number base for shield bypass level, like cloak has. That's all for now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ January 24, 2003, 21:45: Message edited by: Crimson ]

[Suicide Junkie]

I believe that the ability to mod the measurement units that are displayed for each number would be pretty easy to do, and it should solve any complaints about scale that people care to dream up.

[rdouglass]

1. Save mid-turn games.

2. AI's that don't forget about you after you've closed a warp point for 1 turn!

3. A 'programmatical' combat system and rules: IF...THEN...ELSE, CASE, etc. similar to VisualBasic or something like it)

4. Don't sacrifice any current gameplay for 'eye candy'. Graphics are nice, but most of us don't play this game primarily for graphics...

Lot's more, but these are my 'biggies'...

[Arkcon]

Ohhh....oh......oh... don't forget this thread, it may be the one that caused me to originally delurk.

old forum thread (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=006202;p=6)

[dumbluck]

Cloaking that is percentage based instead of level based. That way, you never really know if your ship slipped past his sensor grid until his fleet pounces on it...

[Grandpa Kim]

Improved strategies and combat. SEIV strategies are not entirely intuitive (to put it diplomatically) and some of the selections don't do much of anything. Make more real options available like having a capture ship skirt around the battle to capture the enemy's repair ship or troop transports that will drop troops in the heat of battle. Make it more likely that several ships (not just one or two) will be targeted. Improve the combat movement algorithm.

And one little one. Add an order, something like the sentry order, that will attack enemies entering the system during the turn. This would be especially useful when warp openers are around. Does you no good to defend a warp point when the enemy is more likely to open his own warp point and ravage your planets while your far superior fleet stands by and watches.

I like most of the suggestions so far, but I'm not keen on realtime combat. That's what turned me off Warcraft.

Kim

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
Cloaking that is percentage based instead of level based. That way, you never really know if your ship slipped past his sensor grid until his fleet pounces on it...<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Also, cloaking that has a range, so you can only detect things close to the sensor array.

[Phoenix-D]

"Diplomacy that actually works (steal the model from EUII):
- Your ally has been attact, join the war or suffer the consequenses (drop in happines and reputation)
- Peacetreaties where the winner of the war (need a point system) gets some concessions from the looser."

Maybe one but I don't want to see the second at all, except as part of a treaty system I mentioned earlier. No point systems for treaties! If one player wants concessions they should -demand- them. You can do this now in SE4 for example.

Phoenix-D

[Ed Kolis]

The ability to keep a race's attributes when they become part of your empire! It was always fun (if a bit of micromanagement) sending all my Psilons to the mineral poor worlds so they could do research and spreading out the Silicoids so they'd take all the space nobody else wanted on the planets...

Parasite Spore Bombs that initiate ground combat as if troops were dropped - against organic races, at least... mechanoids would need special computer viruses... allow computer viruses to be used against units as well...

[primitive]

Phoenix-D

Point system is for the AI. It realy bugs me that you never can end a war against the AI (at least I can't)

If SEV gonna be a big seller it need to be more challenging in singleplayer mode.

[David E. Gervais]

How about Terra-Forming? Change a planet from one type to another? (not just the atmosphere!)

Also, I would like the population (and max # facilities) of a planet to be based on more than just the size of the planet and atmosphere. (I mean, even a moon sized planet (tiny) should be able to hold a lot more facilities!) Maybe some planets could be restricted to 'automated' facilities. (too hostile to hold population!)

Just a few thoughts, Cheers!

[HEMAN]

Grandpa Kim & Phenoix, YOU Have the Force.
I would like for SEV;

(1)Research & intell componets - that generate, on orbital structures http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif .I wish it was in se4gold http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif .

(2)Better AI - with diplomatic sense/ compassion/forgivness replys to human player?.

(3)Better intelligence system - .See Phenoix.

(4)Rouge alien trader - alien request 100000 minerals,and player selects alien componet/ship/or teck available.

(5) Stars in background - of planet systems that flicker/go out.

(6) Save/printout- of begining game settings setup.Example With this game setting then playing this game, i may Lose or maybe Win.Know i can go back to a saved settings file, to see what i set, and what changes i need to adjust, so i can play another new game with better performance.

[mac5732]

Make ftrs still worthwhile in later in game

AI's as strong or stronger then the TDM and the other mods...

Some new additional races

Neutral AI's having the ability to expand outside their home systems

A very super Xenophobic Race, Hates everyone and everything, very seldom trades, makes deals, bent on total annialhation (sp) of all other races

Keep Moddable

new additional planet types and atmospheres

new additional atmospheres

new additional types of maps, including those like FQM, and others

Pirates and Nomads

just some ideas Mac

[Puke]

more realistic graphics. what the heck is a green giant, anyway? does it generate caned vegetables?

I would also like to reiterate the request for 'space lanes' or cargo / logistic routes for civilian / non-combattant traffic. these lanes should be able to be intercepted / blocaded.

again, customizeable treaties. take all the components of each of the other treaties, and let the player mix and match. they can trade, but ships can still fight when in the same sector. they can share intel and resupply, but not trade. they can see each others telemetry, but do nothing else. and sliders for anything percentile, so trade can have teriffs where you are not willing to give more than x percent, even if you could be giving more. or subjugation/protectorate would have a user defineable percent of resources to cough up.

[David E. Gervais]

Originally posted by Puke:
... what the heck is a green giant, anyway?
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">He's the 'other' guy that says Ho Ho Ho, but does not wear a red suit! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

You stepped into that one! lol

Cheers!

[orev_saara]

I just remembered another one. It's pretty frustrating that the game has passive and active EM sensing, but they behave identically. I had a great idea for a mod wherein all ships naturally have some passive EM cloaking if they're not broadcasting, or targeting, or anything. If the Passive cloaking could be set to deactivate whenever any of those things happened, that would be awesome. Also, if the "drop troops" ability were implemented, that would be good, since of all the unit launches, putting troops on a planet is the only one that demands specialized equipment. Not so much for, say, mines.

[orev_saara]

Oh yeah, here's another one. When moving cargo, there are options for move five and move ten. What I want is an option to move one hundred. Yes, I play this game too much.

[Binford]

Here's my partial list:

Additional Resource types (money, SPice, etc.) added via mods. I think SE4 is close to being able to Mod the DUNE universe - SPice would be part and VERY rare, but you also need the ability to have an AI race that would act as Navigators. SHips would have no ability to warp - they would have to load aboard guild heighliners (Obviously this would need REALLY big ships)

Obviously, Intel needs to be greatly improved.

Saving Game in turn (as others state) needs to be in an upcoming patch. I spent 2 hours doing a turn the other day and got a phone call that made me run out - I left the PC on but it locked up while I was gone http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

I would like planets to actually ORBIT the stars in a system. Maybe not in Real time, but they would move around a bit in between turns.

MOre Strategys that work. Abilityt o have sub-fleets (aka Task Forces, within fleets with different orders).

Sats should spread evenly around planets!

A note taking system built into the game - I want to be able to add notes to Races, planets/systems, fleets, I forget sometimes what my long term goals were for any given "thing" and this would help facilitate that. Especially in PBW, where some turns don't run for 2-3 days. I don't think that would need to be incorporated in the .GAM file obviously.

Edit Messages already sent and be able to send multiple Messages to other players.

Ability to export current tech levels. (the list that is, so I can print) Maybe even the ability to compare to a Partners for trading purpose.

More soon... I'll probably have a TON of more ideas when MOO3 ever finally comes out...

Binford

[Magnum357]

Ok, here are two things I REALLY want out of SE5!!!

-Bring back the "Armor/Outer/Inner" Hull section for ship designs from Space Empires III! This was one of my favorite ideas from SE3 that I'm really mad that didn't get added to SE4. And to add to this feature, on damage points hitting Outer hull components, have an option in the game allowing the Last point of damage (if more then one point) "leak" through the Outer Hull to inflict damage in the inner hull.

-Speaking of "Leak" Damage, it would be nice if their was some option to add "Leaky Shields" to the game so that a small portion of damage in a volley of fire could "leak through" the sheilds and hit the hull. The ammount to cause a leak would of course be optional in .txt files.

-Bring back the old system of Fleet Management tactics from SE3!!! I like the new fleet formations and new tactics section from SE4, but I think the old SE3 tactical management of fleets was a little better then SE4 is someways. It would be nice if SE5 did base some of its Tactic options on both SE3 and SE4 and combine them together in SE5.

[vonManstein]

Hi all!

Great to hear, that there is an "official-poll"!

First, excuse my bad english, but... i try to do my best.

Wouldn´t it be great, to get an option to build up the formation of my fleet individually? Say...,my battleship should be flanked by this two destroyers ... , and this battleship should always be on slot number 3, the destroyers on slot number 4+5.everytime, when it comes to battle, this specific battleship would be always guarded by this to destroyers, even if the whole fleet counts 100ships.... or in short words, it should be possible to give ships in a fleet a specific place/slot!

The graphics in SEIV never bothered me - but it would be great to see graphics like in MOOII.
The diplomatic actions should be reworked - more characteristics for the races.

Pirates, revolutions/independence wars, better ground combat....still would be great!

thx
greetings from germany
vonManstein7

[minipol]

1) stronger AI. i like singe player very much so this needs work. maybe even a special mode where the choices are limited (limited tech, full resources and so on) so that the ai doesn't have to much areas where it can f*ck up. this can probably be done by making a mod?

2) improve the intelligence system of the game.
Escpecially the defense system seems to be weird. You should be able to complete a defensive project that then would be stored. In other words, it doesn't disappear after completing but get stored.

3) in combat, turn the sats to face the enemy.
i hate it when they appear on the other side of the planet. they are useless there

[Krsqk]

Randomized damage--listed damage +/- X%. Adds at least a little variety in combat.

Someone in another thread mentioned external combat modules, possibly even for SE4. This would be great for SE5.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by vonManstein:

Wouldn´t it be great, to get an option to build up the formation of my fleet individually? Say...,my battleship should be flanked by this two destroyers ... , and this battleship should always be on slot number 3, the destroyers on slot number 4+5.everytime, when it comes to battle, this specific battleship would be always guarded by this to destroyers, even if the whole fleet counts 100ships.... or in short words, it should be possible to give ships in a fleet a specific place/slot!

thx
greetings from germany
vonManstein7<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree. I'd also like tho option to launch fighters in Groups in a specific formation: Shielded fighters in front, rocket pods behind, a large fighter providing ECM ans combat sensors for the whole group.

Hey is ground combat becomes expanded, we will want the same thing for various troop types.

[dumbluck]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
Cloaking that is percentage based instead of level based. That way, you never really know if your ship slipped past his sensor grid until his fleet pounces on it...<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">To elaborate:
Cloaking becomes a new ability tag "% chance to remain undetected", one for each type of cloaking (i.e. Active, Passive, Psychic, etc). It is, of coarse, a value. Cloaking components/sectors/systems have a positive value, cloak defeating sensors have a negative value. These values should NOT be cumulative (or better yet, make that moddable in settings.txt with a simple true/false line).

The basic sensor ability (before any research) is just the cloaking tag attatched to the hull size. It should probably be about -50% (or 50% chance to detect normal ships). Colonies get an inate sensor rating of about -25% chance to remain undetected. That should be moddable in settings.txt as well. The values, of coarse, aren't set in stone....

If you wanted to get really elaborate, you could have seperate tags for "% chance to remain undetected" and "% chance to detect". Then you could make it so that (for example) the cloaking values don't stack, but the sensor values DO stack. (which IMO would be unbalancing, unless the sensors didn't have a high value...) I think it would also be kinda neat if there were two kinds of sensor tags, System wide, and sector wide. Then you could make all sorts of interesting cominations! (System wide sensors having a lower max ability than Sector specific sensors comes to mind...)

Now comes my favorite part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif A check is made each turn to see if your ship is detected using the following formula:

A - B = C
where:
A = Highest available cloaking %
B = Highest available sensor %
C = % chance of detection.

As an example, we'll use my numbers above. An uncloaked ship enters a system in which you have a single colony. 0%(cloak)-25%(colony sensor)=25% chance that you will detect the ship THIS TURN. The game does a quick random number generation, and determines whether or not the ship is detected. Next turn, assuming that the ship is still in system, the game goes thru the whole process again.

That way, just because you slipped past the sensors Last turn, they might detect you this turn. The opposite is true, as well; just because you detected that star destroyer as it entered your system this turn, that doesn't mean that you will be able to detect it next turn!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Even better would be to make the turns between sensor checks moddable, too. Yet another line added to settings.txt.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

You could also mod a highly negative valued sector % chance to remain undetected tag onto Warppoints, if you wanted. That way, you see the cloaked ship enter the system (since it activated the WP, which would probably be notice). But as soon as it moves away from the warppoint ... I hope you had sensors researched...

I provided a few examples of how versitile such a cloaking model would be. Hopefully, Aaron is convinced now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif (yes, I know he probably will never see this thread...)

[ January 27, 2003, 15:06: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[Crimson]

Hi again I just remeber another thing, different types of warp points. I remeber there was a thread about it sometime ago, but I'm to lazy to look. Also I still the mod script lang idea.

[Ed Kolis]

In simultaneous single-player games, computer players that take their turns while the human player does!

[Pax]

The one thing I'd most like to see changed/added/improved, other than eye-candy issues, is: Race Habitability.

Take a look at Pax Imperia 2. Though most of that game IMO sucked (the demo was better, argh), race design is a true gem.

First off, you could spend more points to breath more than one atmosphere type.

Second off, a planet's habitability was based on comparing the planet's atmosphere and temperature against what your race could breathe (a simple yes/no) and against your race's temperature-tolerance band (a weighted value; the closer to centerline you got, the better).

Thus, a world might be absolute hell for player A's colonists, and a pure paradise for player B's colonists. Player B will therefor value that planet more than Player A will, when negotiating colonisation rights in a border system -- though Player A would be best served by determining what player B likes, and pricing that world accordingly. And so on.

...

So; comparing to SE4/Gold ... allowing the selection of (for race points) additional atmosphere types would be great. Inserting a habitation value for temperature would be great. You could even go a step further, and add one for gravity, and end up with three variables to consider.

Next up, and also from Pax Imperia 2, is an issue I terribly miss in SE4: the issue of flag-versus-shipset. PaxImp2 has TWO seperate places to select those; your flag is one issue, your ship style is another. IOW, picking the (for example) Sallega shipset would not REQUIRE you (barring a customised copy) to use the Sallega flag. PaxImp2 has some 20-30 flags in it, most quite nice. Then maybe a dozen ship styles, also fairly nice (if only game play didn't suck).

...

Now, on to somehting I desperately wish could be added even to SE4, but would wait for SE5 to get if I had to: NEGATIVE PREREQUISITES. Sorry for shouting, but this is something that most 4X games don't currently model: the concept that at certain key junctures (not every tech level, but every now and then), you get the option to "turn" your entire racial technology "paradigm" in one direction ... or another.

You can't do both. You can't have it all; research is no longer like Pokemon ("gotta tech 'em all"). If you get component X, you will NEVER have the option to get facility Y ... or vice versa.

...

Change the way minefields work. Make one "mine" built actually representative of a certain strength of minefield ... when it's laid into a sector (or whatever), that sector gets that strength of minefield. Based on the strength of the minefield, EVERY ship entering, or spending an entire turn inside, the field has a CHANCE, not an absolute, to take damage, based on the initial mine built. If they do, there's a (muchly reduced) chance to take MORE. And so on, until they stop taking damage.

Each impact reduces the overall strength ofthe field by a little. Minesweepers reduce the strength within a random range.

Um, here's an example, with out-of-thin-air numbers: Say each mine built at a world and deployed by a ship or base represents ... 20 points of "depth" for the field. Two minesweeper2 enter the field, able to sweep ... say, 4-6 apiece. Okay, let's say they get exactly average, and sweep 10 from that field.

That leaves a "depth" of 10, still. If we suppose the chance for a ship to be hit is equal to the field's depth, then each of the sweepes now has a 10% chance to impact a mine while sweeping. Let's say both do, but aren't damaged (they're heavily armored). Now, they each have a 5% chance to strike a SECOND mine; let's say only the second one does, and it survives, but is crippled.

Now it has a 2.5% chance (rounded however the program likes) to strike a THIRD mine (which might kill it); let's say it doesn't, however.

Three strikes happened; field depth is down by 3 more, and stands at 7.

Next turn, the defending player lays one MORE mine unit, increasing the strength by 20 more ... to 27. Obviously, those two minesweepers, ESPECIALLY the crippled one, are in trouble.

You can then introduce "decay", and even dispersal. Presume some fraction of a field is lost every turn, at a minimum; let's say 1/20th, or 5%. A 20-depth minefield, not swept and not run into, becomes a 19-depth field for the start of the next turn. If a single ship hits a mine, that satisfies the minimum of one mine gone, so ... no extra loss occurs.

Dispersal can be modelled by increasing the decay rate, for any non-ship entity in the field (planets, moons, asteroid belts, wormholes, etc, etc). And/or decreased by the presence of minelaying ships or bases (who can tend to the field, retrieve strays, and so on).

Decay-and-dispersal represents mines simply drifting away, having their electronics packages go dead, hitting random spacejunk and going "boom", and so on.

...

Other than that ... well, 3D graphics isn't really a big requirement for me; "pseudo3D" would be fine (3d-looking, but still using 2D graphics). I must admit I like the idea of an animated solar system (again, see PaxImp2 for an example, complete with Warp Points). Obviously, in a turn-based game, the animation would be sort of stop-motion, but ... *shrug* ...

You could have the planets move at their own speed during the simultaneous-move replay. You could put a ring depicting the orbit of the planet, and brighten/darken/thicken/etc a segment to represent the planet's expected movement during the next turn.

Lastly, KEEP THE MODDABILITY OF SE4. That's what prompted me to buy SE4/Gold, it's what keeps SE an actively-played game.

I'ms ure my other wants/needs have been brought up by others, but I'll post again if I see something's been missed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[DavidG]

By far the most annoying thing about SE4 is having a superior fleet beaten in simultaneous combat by the crap AI that takes over this. I would like more control over this. Such as when defending a warp point let me set my initial ships position. And somehow give me more control over what my ships do in the combat.

[Ed Kolis]

More options for stellar manipulations:
Create Stars from Nebulas (Hey, that's how they form in real life!)
Create/destroy organic infestations/warp rifts/other new system types added in SE4 Gold

Do not allow mining on ringworlds/sphereworlds. Farming is OK, but mining?!? you BUILT the thing and now you expect to MINE stuff out of it???

[tesco samoa]

ED... Yea...

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
Do not allow mining on ringworlds/sphereworlds. Farming is OK, but mining?!? you BUILT the thing and now you expect to MINE stuff out of it???<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Logical at the face of it, but what if you gift it, capture it, or colonize an empty one?

[dogscoff]

Nearly all of my wish list items fall under "population management". Here are the biggies:

-Population restrictions based on "population centre" facilities, not atmos type. Of course, non-breathing populations would need special domed "pop centres", which don't hold as many ppl...

- Autonomous population migration: Civilians should be able to move around the galaxy without the help of Imperial Population Transports. For example, whole planetfulls of ppl might move away from conflict if they are peace-loving, or toward it if they are warriors/ beserkers=-). They could also be also motivated by things like plague, economic conditions, planetary conditions, overpopulation & the desire to explore. They should even be able to move across imperial borders if necessary, settling in neighbouring empires.

-The above could lead to refugee crises- overpopulation of a planet should be possible, and it should lead to serious problems (Plagues, riots)

-Underpopulation should also be a concern. Please enable the minimum population per facility! (although proportions mod does a good job of this already).

-Plagues need to be more complex (ie less predictable) than just "level 1 medbay cures level 1 plague."

-Captured populations should keep all of their racial modifiers! A planet full of one species shouldn't suddenly lose their +10% minerals extraction just because they have a new govenment! This would introduce interesting choices when it comes to relocating population.

-More structured empires: Yes, I'm talking about imperial capitals, regional capitals, trade routes, cities, localised resource pools... Rather than micromanage these things, let the game decide where they are and how they grow. All the player has to do is defend them=-)

-Less predictable intel: More factors need to be introduced to make it less cut and dried.

-More complex and competitive ground combat. How about giving a positive modifier to races fighting on their "home" terrain? (ie gas races at an advantage when fighting on a gas giant).

-Less rigid distinctions between different game objects, allowing modders to blur the boundaries between (for example) planets and asteroids, or between ships and planets, or between fighters and troops, or between ships and bases... the possibilities for modders would be limitless.

-The ability to warp (ie denying warp travel to neutrals and fighters) controlled by a moddable ability rather than hardcode. This would be great for modders.

-Ability to build treaties in the same way you build trade packages (I'll give you access to my resupply bases in exchange for research alliance.)

-Advanced order queues for ships: adding boolean operators into order queues would enable us to automate loads of ship operations and reduce micromanagement.

Over the Last few years I've posted lengthy monologues on how most of the above things might be implemented. I'd be happy to dig up some links if necessary.

[ January 29, 2003, 15:42: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Krsqk]

Apologies in advance for the lengthy quote:
- Autonomous population migration: Civilians should be able to move around the galaxy without the help of Imperial Population Transports...
-The above could lead to refugee crises- overpopulation of a planet should be possible, and it should lead to serious problems (Plagues, riots)<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So, in essence, dynamic population levels? This would be neat, but it'd have to be fairly minimal to avoid domino bad effects--Snerg II gets a plague; millions go to Snerg III, overpopulating it, causing plagues and riots, millions go to Snerg IV...rinse and repeat.

-Plagues need to be more complex (ie less predictable) than just "level 1 medbay cures level 1 plague."<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Such as, plagues with severity and contagion Ratings? High severity means harder to cure/more deaths; high contagion means spreads rapidly. Plagues can spread to other planets in a system, and planets with spaceports would be more likely to spread/be spread to. Multiple turns to cure. Things like that? That would be cool.

-Captured populations should keep all of their racial modifiers! A planet full of one species shouldn't suddenly lose their +10% minerals extraction just because they have a new govenment! This would introduce interesting choices when it comes to relocating population.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">How about a little variety in production anyway? I mean, the +10% is only an average racial figure; most would be better or worse than the average by +/- 1 or 2 points.

-Less predictable intel: More factors need to be introduced to make it less cut and dried.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Definitely agree, although I'm a little short on ideas this morning. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

-More complex and competitive ground combat. How about giving a positive modifier to races fighting on their "home" terrain? (ie gas races at an advantage when fighting on a gas giant).<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Definitely, along with other more complex changes. Actual functioning damage types wouldn't hurt here, either.

Just one other idea which has been suggested: Damage Family X,Y,Z damage types. Then we wouldn't have to give the Boarding Defense ability to Component X in order to have a weapon to specifically disable it.

[Ed Kolis]

Oh, here's another one... don't know if this will apply since I don't know how SE5's combat will work out, but how about ships and planets that take up different number of squares/hexes/whatever on the combat map? Currently all ships are 1x1 and all planets are 4x4... MOO2 had 1x1, 2x2, and 3x3 ships, and 3x3 through 7x7 planets, IIRC... SE5 could go one better and have moddable ship sizes that don't even have to be squares! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Oh, BTW, is all this just speculation, or did Aaron specifically state that there WILL be an SE5? (pleasepleaseplease http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
Oh, BTW, is all this just speculation, or did Aaron specifically state that there WILL be an SE5? (pleasepleaseplease http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, noone knows the future. But he has specifically asked for suggestions on SE5 at least. I would be very suprised if it didn't happen at some point.

Geoschmo

[Phoenix-D]

"How about a little variety in production anyway? I mean, the +10% is only an average racial figure; most would be better or worse than the average by +/- 1 or 2 points."

Each pop unit represents around a million people. Wouldn't that get you a pretty average overall distribution?

Phoenix-D

[klausD]

Seems, SEV will have a real time tactical engine like starfury. (according to Malfador interview at this site http://rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=39)

[rextorres]

Improved micromanagement features:

Be able to give the launch order to planets from the colonies list.

Be able to send ships or fleets to waypoints, give launch orders to waypoints or pick up and drop troops from the Ship/Units list instead of having to go to each individual ship

Allow sorting in the retrofitting menu and the ship fleeting menu.

[Fian]

My concerns for SE4 that I would like to see addressed in SE5 is micromanagement. To address I would suggest the following:

Almost no facilities:
You set sliders (priorities) to determine what is built. You could still have a research center 3 facility, however you wouldn't be personally building it on the planets. This basically means you could have it the old way, but a planet governor controls based on the slider. You would click Y/N on some checkboxes for SpaceYard and Supply Depot. Terraforming would not be a facility, but one of the priorities that you set for a planet. Also, population moves automatically between planets (sort of - see below)

No direct control of Population Transports/Troop Transports/Fuel Ships
Instead, like MOO2, you have freighter fleets for those areas (or one, I would suppose if you prefer). You might capture a new Oxygen breathing race in combat, and since they are living on a Hydrogen planet, you would tell the planet administrator to move them to an Oxygen planet and replace them with Hydrogen breathers. Based on the size of your population fleet (and how many other demands you have placed on the fleet), will determine how quickly the population on the planet is replaced. Troop and Supply fleets would be a bit different. Your fleet/ships will have a support cost. The support cost goes up or down depending on how close you are to a supply depot. You might also totally cut off support, if there is a blockage between the fleet and the nearest supply depot (which would make the raiding of supply lines - a key tactic in warfare - a valid strategy). Keep in mind this support is not for just fuel. My vision is that when you invade planets, troops from your ships crew do the invasion, not a separate troop unit. So if your supply line is cut, you do not have any more troops being replenished on your ships. Also, through combat and normal attrition, troops die, so in theory you could have pilotless ships if your supply lines are cut off long enough.

Another thing for SE4. On the main screen, show icons to indicate if a planet has a supply depot or spaceyard. Would make life easier than clicking on all of the planets in a system.

[tesco samoa]

reports that are sortable...

and the ablility to name ships and planets and systems what ever you want and only you know...

[Phoenix-D]

"Almost no facilities:
You set sliders (priorities) to determine what is built. You could still have a research center 3 facility, however you wouldn't be personally building it on the planets. This basically means you could have it the old way, but a planet governor controls based on the slider. You would click Y/N on some checkboxes for SpaceYard and Supply Depot. Terraforming would not be a facility, but one of the priorities that you set for a planet. Also, population moves automatically between planets (sort of - see below)"

I can't see how this is any less micromanagement. You still have to set the sliders, you have less precise control. And auto-moving population would drive me NUTS. The AI ministers are stupid enough as it is without removing the ability to turn them off.

"No direct control of Population Transports/Troop Transports/Fuel Ships
Instead, like MOO2, you have freighter fleets for those areas (or one, I would suppose if you prefer). You might capture a new Oxygen breathing race in combat, and since they are living on a Hydrogen planet, you would tell the planet administrator to move them to an Oxygen planet and replace them with Hydrogen breathers. Based on the size of your population fleet (and how many other demands you have placed on the fleet), will determine how quickly the population on the planet is replaced. Troop and Supply fleets would be a bit different. Your fleet/ships will have a support cost. The support cost goes up or down depending on how close you are to a supply depot. You might also totally cut off support, if there is a blockage between the fleet and the nearest supply depot (which would make the raiding of supply lines - a key tactic in warfare - a valid strategy). Keep in mind this support is not for just fuel. My vision is that when you invade planets, troops from your ships crew do the invasion, not a separate troop unit. So if your supply line is cut, you do not have any more troops being replenished on your ships. Also, through combat and normal attrition, troops die, so in theory you could have pilotless ships if your supply lines are cut off long enough."

Another UG, please no from this poster. Why would ship's crews be doing invasions? Dedicated troop transports make more sense, and I don't want my supply ships going off on their own.

"Another thing for SE4. On the main screen, show icons to indicate if a planet has a supply depot or spaceyard. Would make life easier than clicking on all of the planets in a system."

Already can be done. Empire Options screen. It'll show little S, Y, and R for space port, space yard, and resupply depot.

Phoenix-D

[Fian]

"Another UG, please no from this poster. "
Maybe I don't know that much about internet board etiquette, but is it standard fare from this board to tell people to stop posting? Disagreeing with me is fine, but to tell me to stop posting? I think that is bad manners. It is true that I am not part of the SE4 Elite, as I am still in the middle of my first game. I would think the views of newcomers would be a valuable insight to development, assuming they are truly interested in expanding their playerbase. Anyways, in regards to what you posted:

"I can't see how this is any less micromanagement. "
Well, for example. Currently if you want to improve the atmosphere/minerals of a world, you have to scrap some of your existing facilities (the number depends on how quickly you want to terraform) build terraforming facilities. Occasionally check back to see if the terraforming is complete, and when it is, scrap the terraforming facilities and rebuild your original facilities. Multiply this by 100+ planets in your solar system, and you have a micromanagement nightmare. It would be better if such things were not assigned to facilities at all, but were just something in your build queue or a priority in one of your sliders.

"And auto-moving population would drive me NUTS. The AI ministers are stupid enough as it is without removing the ability to turn them off."
I don't think you are understanding me here. Like other units, you would build let's say 50 population transports. You never see these 50 population transports, all you see is a number on your Empire Status screen that says you have 50 population transports with none engaged. Then when you tag 100 million of a population to be moved, it will take your 50 population transports 5 turns to move 50 million people, so 10 turns to move all 100. If you were to assign another 100 million to be moved somewhere else, those would have to wait until the first 100 million were moved (or you could start moving both simultaneously at a slower rate) before the next 100 million were moved. There really isn't much of an AI involved here, it is more of an algorithm that determines how quickly the population is moved. Fuel and Troops are similar, although in their case I imagine a supply line drawn on the screen, showing the hypothetical path that the troop transports take. If you manage to move your fleet over one of the wormholes that the supply line takes, you will have blocked the supply line and cut off support to the enemy fleet.

"Why would ship's crews be doing invasions? Dedicated troop transports make more sense"
Someone has never seen the original Star Trek and Captain Kirk in action. (: OK, seriously, I agree that it would make more sense if the ship's crew was not involved in ground invasions. Maybe you just have an optional troop cargo container added to a ship (like you do now) and that container is restocked by the units you build at your colonies. The rate of restocking depends on how many ships you have in your troop fleet and how far your fleet is from a supply depot. Of course, you would have to still build troops at your colonies in order for there to be troops to send to your fleet to restock.

"Already can be done. Empire Options screen. It'll show little S, Y, and R for space port, space yard, and resupply depot."
Thanks for the tip. I will be sure to use it in my game.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Fian:
"Another UG, please no from this poster. "
Maybe I don't know that much about internet board etiquette, but is it standard fare from this board to tell people to stop posting? Disagreeing with me is fine, but to tell me to stop posting? I think that is bad manners. It is true that I am not part of the SE4 Elite, as I am still in the middle of my first game. I would think the views of newcomers would be a valuable insight to development, assuming they are truly interested in expanding their playerbase.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No offense, but, don't get your panties in such a bunch. The bit you are responding to with the above does NOT read as a "please make the guy who said that go away" -- it's a vote by him against what you suggested. "another 'Ugh,please no' from me" would be a good translation.

Anyways, in regards to what you posted:

"I can't see how this is any less micromanagement. "
Well, for example. Currently if you want to improve the atmosphere/minerals of a world, you have to scrap some of your existing facilities (the number depends on how quickly you want to terraform) build terraforming facilities. Occasionally check back to see if the terraforming is complete,<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You never need to check back. Completion of an atmosphere-conVersion, or reaching maximum ("Optimal") Conditions, is reported at the beginning of each turn. IOW, the game tells you when it's done, the moment it's done.

and when it is, scrap the terraforming facilities and rebuild your original facilities. Multiply this by 100+ planets in your solar system, and you have a micromanagement nightmare. It would be better if such things were not assigned to facilities at all, but were just something in your build queue or a priority in one of your sliders.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Reports notwithstanding, I do agree: I wish terraforming was a PROJECT, not a facility. IOW, spend forever on the project, and when the project completes ... *poof* goal accomplished.

"Already can be done. Empire Options screen. It'll show little S, Y, and R for space port, space yard, and resupply depot."

Thanks for the tip. I will be sure to use it in my game.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">And there're even more indicators than only that available, though I rarely if ever turnthem on (usually only if I want tocheck a heavily-colonised system for some key system-wide-effect facility or other).

[Phoenix-D]

Pax is correct about that part.

One thing about the indicators: they don't work on moons, only on the main planet. So if you have a moon-based SY, it won't show.

Phoenix-D

[Fian]

OK, thanks for the clarification. I am glad that you weren't asking me to stop posting. (:

[Crimson]

- Oh another thing the ability to add facility slots. Ex: Build a level facility I on panet X and you just added 2 more slots. Think of what a level facility M would do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .
- Also be nice if you could make people a resource. Ex: Small fighter requires 3 people, pilot and ground crew, while a large ship needs 1,000 people, and a Planet ship yard I 15,000 people. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[Ed Kolis]

Someone mentioned money... Well I personally like the way money is being represented in MOO3. (Yeah, I always have to bring up the MOO games don't I http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif Well they're GOOD - and Aaron did mention that MOO was one of his inspirations for the SE series! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

Anyway, the way money is implemented in MOO3 is that you collect taxes from your population, as well as collecting money via trade treaties, tributes, and a few other sources I can't think of off the top of my head. Also, production and research don't occur automatically - you have to fund them, with a diminishing returns effect. So say you have 10,000 industry and 20,000 research. It will cost 1 AU (Antaran Unit, the MOO3 unit of money) for each industry or research point or research point you want to fund - up to your maximum; if you don't fully fund your industry or research then the extra points are wasted. Likewise, you can overfund your industry and research, but remember that diminishing returns effect? For every multiple of your industry or research, the cost per unit doubles. So with your 10,000 industry, if you want to get 30,000 production done this turn you will have to spend 10,000 AU for the first 10,000, and 20,000 for the second 10,000, and 40,000 for the third 10,000, for a total of 70,000 AU! So it's possible to overdrive your production or research, but very very expensive! (This system would also work for intelligence operations, assuming they will be done on a points basis like in SE4; MOO3 isn't using the system for intel because it uses a different system - you hire and train individual spies to carry out your dirty work.)

[trooper]

Don't know if it has been told, but here is what i would find helpfull in SE V :

- a colony icon for planets that have space left for new facilities.

- a search tools for colonies, that can mix several filters :

- I want all my colonies with a spaceyard, not building something.
- I want all my colonies not building something, and having more than 300 kt free in their cargo space.

- a popup message when you re going to erase a fleet, by removing the Last ship.

- possibility to attach notes on a ship (usefull for transport missions...)

[Tymy]

I´d like the construction yard to be changed
into a more realistic ability.

Now you are CONSTRUCTING predefined DESIGNS.
It is more realistic to construct its components and then give the order to ASSEMBLE.

Space Yard Facilities will then be used for
constructing bridges, CQ, LF, Engines etc etc.
The ´surplus´ of one turns build would be stored
on the planet. (Ability 1 storage 2500kT).
Cargo facilities can enlarge the storagecapacity.

When you have made all components you construct (=assemble) the design. Assembling cost could be
an ability (10 % of the total constructioncost
of all items).

You will be able to produce more efficient but it
will also mean a better planning and transport
of builded items.

Yard Facility on ships can work with a storage ability (500 kT and rising when achieving a higher techlevel). If not sufficient you will have to use more ships !!

Martin

[Tymy]

In addition to my first reply i would like to have a button in the system screen.

If you do an intelligence you can put the
info right where it belongs. A button
next to the buttons construction/next turn
would give you a summery of al notes in all
systems.

Secondly i want the ability to build as many
ringworlds and sphere worlds as there are
stars in a system. I also want to the ability
to ´upgrade´ a ringworld to a sphereworld.
Maybe a new feature to put in a component.

Thirdly, when starting a new game you can
choose how many units and ships you allow
to be in a game for a player (both 20000).
Make this an inputfield where you can put
a number instead of clicking and clicking
and clicking etc etc ..... or is this
being solved in 1.84 ? Haven´t looked yet.

And lost one for now. Give Starbases the
ability to move so i can position them on
warppoints without the need of a ship yard.
I´ll even settle for a movement of 1 sector
in 3 turns or so.

greetings Martin

[Ed Kolis]

Ooh, good idea with the spaceyards...
You know you can mod bases to have engines? Just set "Engines Per Move" to something other than zero, and create an engine component that can be placed on a base...

[Tenryu]

I would love to see:

1. A simple abstracted tactical ground combat "arena" somewhat like we now have for space battles. "2D" would be fine, but something more then now, {pretty please}. {So we can maneuver around a bit and seize stuff and occupy dirt and blow things up more personally. So much more satisfying, lol!}

2. A more interesting "boarding" battle combat arena also.

3. The ability to set the maintenance cost of each individual component. Either as a percentage of builds cost or, better yet, specific values for each of the resources consumed each turn.

4. I'd like to see colonized planets generate usable population points to a pool like resource that are used as a "resource" globally, to build units, man starships, man factories. The "men" required would be specified in the component text. We could have other technologies, traits, components or facilities that reduce these requirements and/or increase their availability.

5. A larger space combats arena and a better "retreating ship" design. Having to go and hide in the corner or run around trying to run the clock down to survive, while cute, leaves much to be desired. How about... If you are slower then the pursuing ships you get caught, and if you are faster you automatically get away. I know it's a bit more complex then that and yes maybe there could be techs that modify that basic concept but generally if you are slower you don't get away, unless the enemy chooses not to pursue. If you are faster you get away even if they are pursuing, barring the uber-secret long-range tractor beam or temporal glue your mad scientists just invented. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[orev_saara]

Good thoughts, Tenryu, but can't you already do number 3?

Well, partly, anyway.

Or not. I guess the maintenance change ability changes it for the whole vehicle, but that should still kind of work. As for specific resource values, couldn't you give the component negative resource generation values? Or do those only work when around asteroid belts or the like? Never tried any of this stuff myself.

Here's my biggest wish: For Aaron to magically change his mind about the real-time combat for SEV. If I wanted real-time combat, there are already fifty or so games on the mainstream market form much larger companies with flashier graphics that I could get. I know that the end of turn-based gaming is inevitable, but maybe you could put it off for another year or two?

[Ed Kolis]

More realistic planetary damage! Drop 100 nuclear bombs on a planet and all that happens is the weapon platforms blow up? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif Every weapon in the game should have one or more "collateral damage Ratings" which specifies how much damage it does to population, planet conditions, troops, etc.

[Omega_Prime]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by vonManstein:

Wouldn´t it be great, to get an option to build up the formation of my fleet individually? Say...,my battleship should be flanked by this two destroyers ... , and this battleship should always be on slot number 3, the destroyers on slot number 4+5.everytime, when it comes to battle, this specific battleship would be always guarded by this to destroyers, even if the whole fleet counts 100ships.... or in short words, it should be possible to give ships in a fleet a specific place/slot!

thx
greetings from germany
vonManstein7<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree. I'd also like tho option to launch fighters in Groups in a specific formation: Shielded fighters in front, rocket pods behind, a large fighter providing ECM ans combat sensors for the whole group.

Hey is ground combat becomes expanded, we will want the same thing for various troop types.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Both of these are genius ideas. To be honest, micro-managing the ships and fleet...or at least to have that as an option, would bring the game to a whole new level. I have been looking for/waiting for, a miniatures space battle on the computer for ages.

If you could micro-manage to the level of say, this rule set, http://www.thanesgames.com/gsc2/gsc2main.html and maybe even have a "battle mode" where two sides have a certain ammount of points to spend before they field their fleets on equal footing, well...it would just rock. That kind of game play must have a market, Starfleet battles is in it's third edition....but some of us don't like star trek so much, on account of it sucking so bad. (Ignores it's own continuity and naming schemes, and the hard to watch Redenberry-Gambit...you know, Vulcans don't show emotion, so here is a Vulcan with emotion....Borg are ruthless and undefeatable, so here is a friendly Borg, and Janeway can defeat them at will....you get the idea.)

[Omega_Prime]

From Space Empires: Starfury interview with Aaron Hall

Located at: http://rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=39)

Q: Space Empires: Starfury uses a 3D graphics engine. What do you feel are the advantages and disadvantages of using such an engine?

A: The advantages of the engine are pretty obvious in that they lead to a great looking game. You really get to see the size and power of these ships first-hand as your ship interacts with them. Also, we'll be using the 3D engine in SE5 for combat and strategic movement, so its a must for us. The disadvantages of using a 3D engine are the resources involved. Some much time and effort goes into each ship, and each ship takes up so much time and resources on your computer, that you cannot have anywhere near as many as you did in SE4. Fleets can't have hundreds of ships, they can only have a handful.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Can that be right? SEV will only have small "hand full of ships" type battles?

Let me change my vote to have the option of 2d or 3d, if the 3d is going to crimp fleet size.

[capnq]

It is more realistic to construct its components and then give the order to ASSEMBLE. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMO this is a terrible idea. Why add such a pointless level of micromanagement to ship construction?

I don't want to have a ship take even longer to build because I didn't notice that all of the components were ready.

It would make building every ship as tedious as building ringworlds and sphereworlds is now.

[ February 03, 2003, 19:53: Message edited by: capnq ]

[Some1]

maybe stupid idea, maybe not, but wouldn't a "evolution" research line be something? ... like research and intel.

Ok evolution takes a lot more time usually, but space colonization also takes more time to do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

But for example, you are terran.. and go to space more and more, you lose physical strength a lot, but you develope (with added research: genetic manipulation, cloning, random factors) telekinetic skills and telepathic abilities.

With the goal to ascent to a higher being? or like a very powerfull "ancient" space race that pocesses abilities beyond normal comprehension...
(like shadows and vorlons?)

R.

[ February 04, 2003, 15:14: Message edited by: Some1 ]

[Tymy]

some more things to consider for SE 5.

1 System and Galaxy
1.1 Sector limitation
1.1.1 If i can put 100 mines TL 3 and 100 Satellites TL 3 in the same sector
then it should be possible to put more then 100 mines TL 3 in one sector.
Change the sector limitation into a maximum of kT instead a certain number
of units.
1.1.2 Moving ships/drones through a "full" sector will not be possible.
You will have to engage combat or go around it.
1.2 Asteroids and Meteorites
1.2.1 Asteroids and meteorites which move through the galaxy (on a collision course).
1.2.2 Asteroids and meteorites can be destroyed by all weapons by reducing
the damage resistance to zero.
1.2.3 Asteroids and meteorites will move 1 sector each turn.
1.2.4 Asteroids and meteorites will move through warppoints and will be
handled as a ship while passing through.
1.3 Components and Facilities
1.3.1 Massive Energy Shield
1.3.1.1 Promote the Massive Energy Shield to a facility in the tech area of shielding.
1.3.2 Standard Movement Power
1.3.2.1 Propulsion is based on standard kT Movement Power (MP). An Ion Engine will have
100 kT of MP. 6 Ion Engines on a frigate will give you (100x6)/150 is 4 movement.
1.3.2.2 MP will be rounded down to an integer. (eg 4.8 will be 4 !!).
1.4 Units
1.4.1 Troops
1.4.1.1 Combat with troops will be desplayed just like combat screens for ships/planets etc in a arena.
1.4.1.2 Troops will have to have the ability to move (see 1.4.1.1)

@capnq 1.3.3 Construction Yards
You´re right that it will increase the time to manage your construction queues. But the idea was to make it more realistic. Centralizing your construction queues to a few planets would compensate for the increase of management.

Normally i´d use 5 planets as maximum as construction planets. One facility and about 10 space yards do the job quite well. Combine this with the suggestion to use more slots for a even bigger construction yard and more cargo space and the possibility to have more yards on a planet.

I think it will eventually make it easier to play the game and managing your construction queues.

[gregebowman]

I can't think of too much of what I want to see in SEV, but the one thing I do want to see is that it meets the same hardware requirements of SEIV Gold. I don't know when I'll be able to upgrade my computer, so if the hardware requirements change, I won't be able to play the game. And I so want to continue playing this game in whatever form the new game will take.

[leo1434]

Here is my wish list for a future release of SE:

Tactical ship combat screen: bigger, and when a ship reaches an edge, it will appear in the opposite side of it, as representing a spherical sector of space. Its not very realistic to destroy a ship by cornering it.

Tactical ground combat: a ground tactical combat map! Yes you can also create your ground / air units bearing in mind mobility / protection / firepower. Maybe some combat like in Panzer General I, with several categories of units: artillery, infantry, armor, aircraft (and may be ships in worlds with oceans?).Of course, turn based, as it should ALWAYS be a good strategy game! Allow use of all kind of weapons (seekers!) and other componets (engines) for ground units.
Maybe some ideas may be taken from Star General(not a good game, but I liked the combination of ground and space combat, someone remembers it??). Of course if the player don´t feel like to emulate Erwin Rommel, he can resolve it the¨"strategic way"

Fighters should be capable of operations on planet surfaces to support ground units from ground bases (the equivalent of fighter bays but on the ground), but perhaps they must not be allowed to go to outer space by their own propulsion, only when they are transfered to a spaceship in a "space strategic" turn.

Bigger stellar system screens, with more or less the same number of stellar bodies in it but more distanced, as a stellar solar system is in most part "empty" space. I dont think very realistic to send reinforcements from Earth to a base in Pluto in one or two months. Players wil be more careful when deploying their defense units.

A bigger universe map: allow more, much more than
255 stellar systems, maybe a higher proportion of un-colonizable systems, but it will make the logistics of space travel a little more fun.

Ship movement: move up the limit of 255 standard movement units for ships in order to allow more freedom in selecting a scale for Quasi Newtonian Propulsion use.

This is what come to my mind now, I am sure I will have more ideas in the next few minutes...
Some of those ideas were already posted by other people in more or less the same words, but I think this reflects the fact that SEIV is a great game and it only needs some additions to make it THE PERFECT STRATEGY GAME!

Please allow me to know what do you all think about those ideas posted here, as we can always make a wish, then wait for an answer from game developers!

Leo1434

[Gryphin]

:: Caution Gryphin is fantasizing again :: You have been warned ::
Just a thought that evolved from Some1’s post about evolution.
Specialized research faculties. They might be in Metallurgy, Environment, or Genetics or more general Biology.
Using these facilities there would be Research ques for each of them. Areas of research could be Enhanced Racial Traits, Breathing Types, Home Planet Types. These could lead to “Specialized Populations”. With enough research you could create a race that could colonize planets and atmospheres you did not have.
Example: You are Gas Giant / Hydrogen. With enough Research you could “design” a race that was Rock / Oxygen.

Note: I don’t expect this to ever get coded but I can fantasize.

[Omega_Prime]

Originally posted by Gryphin:
:: Caution Gryphin is fantasizing again :: You have been warned ::
With enough Research you could “design” a race that was Rock / Oxygen.

Note: I don’t expect this to ever get coded but I can fantasize.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Eugenics....a much maligned science.

http://www.eugenics.net/

[tbontob]

Originally posted by capnq:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> It is more realistic to construct its components and then give the order to ASSEMBLE. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMO this is a terrible idea. Why add such a pointless level of micromanagement to ship construction?

I don't want to have a ship take even longer to build because I didn't notice that all of the components were ready.

It would make building every ship as tedious as building ringworlds and sphereworlds is now.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmmmmm

There seems to be a common theme that runs through SE4 threads. And, I suspect, most other games.

Realism vs expediency. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The desire for a realistic game is countered by the desire for a game that is flexible and easy to play. And vice-versa.

Faster and more complex computers, better software which assist in the creation of better programs and better programming skills will bring these two supposed 'opposites' together.

[raynfala]

How about this one:

Design the game with a client/server architecture, where clients would be:

* the user interface screen
* computer AI's
* ministers

and the server would be the game engine & state.

This would allow (among other things):

* aspiring AI designers to implement their own AI's (virtually no limits on what the AI examines from its vantage point when making a move)
* avid players to code their own user interfaces
* avid players to implement ministers that do exactly what they want them to do

Comments?

--Raynfala

[Slick]

I would also like to see some expansion on the idea of trade. Right now, trade is completely transparent to the player. I would like to see trade ships which are not really under your control (since they are free traders) but do require protection. This would not really add to the micromanagement, and would add realism since a government has far less control of free traders compared to military ships. These autonomous ships would establish their own trade routes (viewable only to the home empire and the empire to be traded with). Both empires would share the responsibility of protecting their trade ships. You could fleet your ships with them as protection, but then fleet control would be turned over to the computer.

Trade ship construction would also not be under your control. It would be controlled by some sort of suppy & demand routine. Possibly the player could have a method to increase/decrease trade ship construction over the whole empire at the cost of lowering the empire's overall construction rates accordingly.

An attack on an enemy trade ship would disrupt trade, and the movement of resourses & supplies around your empire. Maybe even be able to capture enemy trade ships. This would make the spaceport idea a little different in that you would need a spaceport and trade ships operating from that system.

There could also be trade ship related research areas. These would not be able to give the trade ships any offensive military capabilities, but would be in the areas of speed, defense, capacity, increased exchange rate, etc.

Trade should be linked to happiness and resource procurement at the system level. It should also fill the role of supply lines. If a part of an empire is cut off, it should suffer in supply, and its ability to send/receive resources.

Slick.

[DavidG]

It occured to me while adding SectTypes to my modding program that it might be nice if the descriptions for the planets actually had an in game effect.

You could perhaps add a bunch more fields to the SectTypes file so that for example on a "Tiny planet dominated by carniverous flora." people would be less happy and reproduce slower. or a "Huge planet which is rumored to be the home of ancient powers." would give a bonus to research facilities.

[dogscoff]

Has anyone mentioned warp point toys? For example delayed-exit warp points, moving warp points, randomly opening & closing warp points.

Oh and here's a biggie:
If you have static defences by a warp point, your enemy should have to fight them in order to go through it. As it is now, you can fly up to the warp point on the same side as the defences, start combat, spend 30 turns keeping out of range of all those bases/ sats, and then after combat has ended just warp through. AGH!

[stecal]

Change neutral empires to allow ships to warp after a human player takes over.

[Aloofi]

What about getting rid of the Warp points and allowing any capital ship to have an Hyperdrive to jump to any system in line of sight (not blocked by other system) within a 100 light years ?
That would be far more realistic, would get over all those "warp point shock point defenses", and would dramatically change the strategy.
I'm playing now with the in-house rule of not defending any warp point, and it feels very diferent. It forces you to defend every colony independently, plus keeping a colonial fleet for counterstrokes.
There is nothing like a hostile alien fleet warping out in middle of your home system without warning.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Aloofim:
Try playing a game using my FTL map against a few humans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

It should be to your liking, without requiring any house rules.

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Aloofim:
Try playing a game using my FTL map against a few humans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

It should be to your liking, without requiring any house rules.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks!
One question, how did you get rid of the warp points? Can I do that to all the maps in the Proportions mod?

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Aloofim:
Try playing a game using my FTL map against a few humans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Can it be played against the AI?

[Suicide Junkie]

No, maps like my FTLmap can't be created automatically.

To use the map, start a new game, using whatever mod you like, and then in the quadrant choosing screen, select "load map".

Each sector in a hyperspace system corresponds to one square on the galaxy map, or 10 light years per MP, IIRC.

And, no, the AI dosen't work with it. I guess there are just too many paths to pick from when going from point A to point B, that they just freeze up.
When giving orders to your ships, you need to give them line of sight orders.
IE: instead of saying "move to Ikyak VI", say "move to the warppoint (to ikyak) at (0,2), warp, then move to planet VI"

[ February 10, 2003, 17:50: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Stone Mill]

Re-balance the weapons using the fine work of the modding community.

One recurring example:
(Progressively increase the structural points needed to destroy seekers at higher levels, or apply a progressive defensive bonus to the seeker).

Please? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[raynfala]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Oh and here's a biggie:
If you have static defences by a warp point, your enemy should have to fight them in order to go through it. As it is now, you can fly up to the warp point on the same side as the defences, start combat, spend 30 turns keeping out of range of all those bases/ sats, and then after combat has ended just warp through. AGH!<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If I may tweak your tweak... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

How about not permitting ships through a guarded warp point until the defenses have been eliminated, but... add the ability (during tactical combat) to allow ships to leave the combat map via the warp point. This would give players the option of "running the blockade".

So, ships that hang back during combat stay on the near side of the warp point, but ships that exit the map via the warp point have permission to proceed through the warp point (and, in fact, must move through the warp point on the next turn).

Granted, this would put a bit of a monkey wrench in the works, what with fleets splitting up during combat as some members of the fleet get through while others hang back. But hey, who knows how SE-V will work anyway...

--Raynfala

[raynfala]

Oh yeah, one more feature request:

Add a button to the game that will get the kids ready for bed, wash the dishes, fix anything in the house that needs fixing, and create a time bubble around my computer that would extend the standard 24-hour day by another 5 hours or so.

{begin Harvey_Fierstein_voice}

I just want to play... is that so wrong? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

{end Harvey_Fierstein_voice}

--Raynfala

[orev_saara]

Here's something: self-destruct devices. I really, really hate these things. One of my favorite elements of any space combat game is boarding actions. And they're in SE! Which is great, except they don't really work. Because of the Damned self-destruct devices. All anybody needs is level three propulsion and suddenly the whole ship capture system is useless.

A much more useful model would be to include some sort of device that would set off explosives when boarded, and you could decide how many explosives you needed. An even better addition would be to give the self-destruct device some sort of percentage failure chance. Another good thing would be more incentive not to carry them, so a way for someone else to set them off? How many sci-fi movies have there been with some super-duper ship or space station that gets trashed by some guys sneaking on board and setting off the ever-present self-destruct device?

Another good thing would be if the devices were connected to specific components. Suppose you have some shield technology that you don't want to fall into enemy hands, so you put a bomb in the shields so that they'll be blown up if the ship is boarded.

Actually, I hate to say this, as I mostly don't believe that SE should emulate any other game, but MOO2 had a pretty good boarding model, even to the point of having breaching pods (assault shuttles) and specific missions for boarding parties.

Just a few ideas.

[Ed Kolis]

Something little... but you know how trade grows by 1% per turn up to 20%, where the 20% is moddable (like in P&N it's 10%)? Well, how about if the rate was moddable too, and could be set for each of the individual resources and points - so you could have Minerals, Organics, and Radioactives trade growing by 1%/turn up to 10%, say, and Research and Intel trade growing by half a percent a turn up to 5%.
Also, MOO1/2 had this and I think it adds a bit of realism - establishing trade or research treaties doesn't initially produce a profit - in fact it initially costs money to set up trade routes, but after a few turns you start making money.

(I wish I could be on the design team for the next SE game... too bad Aaron does most of this himself! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

[Aloofi]

Note to self:
-Mod out Self-Destruct devices. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
-Mod in Crew Quarters with the Security Station values (60 turrets for anti-boarding defense)

[Suicide Junkie]

Another good thing would be if the devices were connected to specific components. Suppose you have some shield technology that you don't want to fall into enemy hands, so you put a bomb in the shields so that they'll be blown up if the ship is boarded.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">A self destruct mount! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif 2x the price, but that component becomes uncapturable.

[Ed Kolis]

The ability to analyze units and facilities for tech, not just ships!

[larrybush]

1) Better implementation of TCP/IP
2)Making a new component call it a warp generator, with the abilites of the gravitational condenser and the grav. quantum resonator. Open and close your own warp points, maps would not need stars interconnected (If you wanted it like that) This would better simulate, babaylon 5 type movement.
3)Ability to choose square to square movement. Forget warp lines/points altogether. Better to simulate Warp speed (Star Trek) type movement. This might be mutually excludable with other Light speed styles upon choosing which to use on game start.
4)When ground combat was initiated, switch to a small hex map and play a simple board wargame with ground "counters" with odds rations, zones of control etc.. Make this a different scale of play--- Ten round of ground combat for every 1 "space" turn. Also adding a ground unit logistics model of some sort, so that every "space turn" could effect the ground supply situation. Create ground counter type units instead of the component type units with size Bn, Rgt, Div etc.
5)Allow for a component called "system ship racks" allowing for the piggy-back ride of ships not equiped with warp generators on ships with them.. Makes for interesting strategies.
6)Allow for map editing with name tags with possibly a dashed line, that would appear on the map-- neutral zone--Romulan border--etc.
7)Allow map editing for more than one starting point for each race--like homeworld:fully developed--Colony:minor development--outpost-- minimum development. allow for starbases to start the game already built in the map editor.
8) Create an AI that will use the "proportions " mod effectivly.
And do this all underbudget and ahead of schedule

[raynfala]

I second larrybush's suggestion of conducting everything on a hex map instead of a square grid. It makes no sense to me how a ship can travel along a hypoteneuse and end up with the same x & y offsets that would otherwise take two turns to accomplish by moving directly along the x-axis and y-axis for one turn each...

--Raynfala

[dogscoff]

Allow for a component called "system ship racks" allowing for the piggy-back ride of ships not equiped with warp generators on ships with them..
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'd like to further this by suggesting a new way of defining ships, planets, fighters, satellites, weapons platforms, asteroids etc.

If all these objects were derived from the same basic "object", then modders could blur the lines between one and another: Fighters could be given warp abilities, bases could produce research and intel, ships could be stored in cargo, planets could require supply, ships could have "crew" (ie population)... the modding possibilities would be endless.

To implement it (in vague terms), a planet would be an "object" just like a ship, except that it's flagged to disallow movement, supply usage and components while allowing population growth and facility construction. A ship would be a similar, smaller object with different flag/ ability settings. Modders could tweak these settings to create (for example) nomad ships with living populations, or true battlemoons that have facilities and weapons platforms as well as core mount weapons, and can be taken over with ground combat... Think about it...

[Some1]

Eugenics....a much maligned science.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thats selective evolution, i mean evolution through time/enviroment/space travel, maybe even races? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif i like to see the human-EEE cross-bred http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif ...

Anyway, i like to see a tech-list that go on indefinatly, like it does more damage every level and gets smaller, same for buildings.

Gouverment types, that make some things easier... dictatorship or maybe an advanced form of technocracy? and each give you a benefit and disadvantage..

more abilities, like create pocket dimension? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

ok,ok,ok i'll keep on dreaming http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

R.

[Krsqk]

dogscoff, I think this is the best solid idea I've heard yet. I'm all for it!

[capnq]

I second larrybush's suggestion of conducting everything on a hex map instead of a square grid. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It would be even better to shift to polar coordinates (angle and radius) rather than cartesian (x,y).

Figuring positions this way would also eliminate the "edges" of the combat map.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
dogscoff, I think this is the best solid idea I've heard yet. I'm all for it!<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah - and make it all moddable with something like the RDL (Rules Description Language) of the sadly departed Stars! Supernova Genesis! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif It seems what we want isn't so much a 4X game but rather a build-your-own-4X-game kit!

Here's a feature I think someone suggested for SE4... warp points of varying sizes such that you can't send a ship through a warp point smaller than the ship. So do you attack the obvious route that restricts you to smaller ships, or use dreadnoughts but take the long way around? Perhaps longer warp-points would be smaller - sort of like Stars! stargates, you have to trade off distance for capacity - or the warp point creation components would have a maximum size as well as maximum distance...

[Gryphin]

raynfala,
Hex Grid
Has a lot of issues. Most likely the biggest one is programing. It would be a nice feature but the time and effort required would (In my Opion), not be worth it. I personaly would rather see the time and effort go into other aspects of the game.
I shudder to think what it might require in the re doing of ship sets.
who knows, I could be way off base.

[raynfala]

Originally posted by Gryphin:
raynfala,
Hex Grid
Has a lot of issues. Most likely the biggest one is programing. It would be a nice feature but the time and effort required would (In my Opion), not be worth it. I personaly would rather see the time and effort go into other aspects of the game.
I shudder to think what it might require in the re doing of ship sets.
who knows, I could be way off base.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mmmmm, I can see two areas where hex-mapping would throw a bit of a wrench in the works:

* Path finding -- writing an algorithm that can pick its way along a hex path instead of a grid probably takes significantly more effort, especially if it's going to do it right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
* Coordinate system -- everything tied to those nice, tidy Cartesian coordinates (movement orders, planet/unit positions, etc.) needs to get reworked. In short, Aaron would have to create a new coordinate system: one that is both intuitive and consistent, so that when your orders window says "move to -blah-,-blah-", you know exactly where on the map its refering to.

There are plenty of war games that use hex-maps, although I've never actually played 'em. I wonder how they deal with it...

--Raynfala

[raynfala]

Regarding hex-maps:

Now that I think about it, there is an alternative.

We can take a cue from Master of Magic. In that game, the battles were coducted on a Cartesian grid. But, units were chaged 1.5 movement points for going diagonally, which is a fair approximation of reality (the actual distance is 1.414). And units were not allowed to move at all if they have 0.5 movement points remaining.

People may now debate whether or not a unit with a fractional movement point should have it added to their movement points for the next round or turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

--Raynfala

[Crimson]

hi, I think somebody, who has time, needs to sum up this tread up til now. That way we don't repeat thing over and people don't need to read all of this to catch up.

- I just know sonebody is going to say this again just because I said that, oh Well.

[ February 14, 2003, 23:05: Message edited by: Crimson ]

[Stone Mill]

Yeah, what he said!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Sorry, Crimson. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Gryphin]

For the solo player:
A delay befor you know everything about a race. Possibly the delay would be reduced by components, experiance such as combat, or a treaty level

The abilty to randomize some of the traits of a race at the start of a game so when you do run into them you would not know what they would be like from memory.

[Hugh Manatee]

Wow, my first post, Ahem, I don't know if this has been said yet but I think a new "Aqua" planet type would be cool so we can make "fish/sea mammal" races. Like in Moo2. or maybe a "liquid" type of atmosphere.

[ February 17, 2003, 07:39: Message edited by: Hugh Manatee ]

[orev_saara]

How about if the game actually read the roman numerals for components instead of just deciding what was most advanced based on its position in the file? It would also be good if components/facilities were tied to there names, not position in the text file, so you could mod a game in progress without destroying the universe http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Krsqk]

Well, you can always add levels to the end of the file. Changing the order is what messes the game up.

[Suicide Junkie]

Besides, you don't always want roman numerals in the names, and sometimes you want duplicates, etc.

Its more flexible this way.

What you can do is add the components to the end of the file while modding and while running/debugging with a test game.

Then go back and sort things nicely for the public release of your mod.

[Aloofi]

Research:
Research should not be based in the number of research points avaliable per turn, instead the number of research points should make for a percentage of the chance to discover the tech that its being researched. This way it will be more realistic. Research its not an exact science, in real life you can't tell when a research proyect will be acomplished.
Think about it. It could take anywhere between 1 and 10 turns to discover PD weapons, for example. Every game would be completely diferent. They way it is now I can predict almost to the minute when I'm gonna have my Meson BLaster VI. It could have a maximum of the equivalent to 30% research chance, and thus forcing the player to put any extra reasearch points into another research proyect. Maybe researching a new level of an already known tech should be easier than researching a completely new tech....
What about a random research tree?
Humm............. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[raynfala]

Originally posted by Aloofim:
Think about it. It could take anywhere between 1 and 10 turns to discover PD weapons, for example. Every game would be completely diferent. They way it is now I can predict almost to the minute when I'm gonna have my Meson BLaster VI. It could have a maximum of the equivalent to 30% research chance, and thus forcing the player to put any extra reasearch points into another research proyect.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sounds cool, but then Aaron had better make sure that there's a random number generator seed that is exclusively devoted to tech breakthrough "rolls", and that this seed is stored to the save game file.

Otherwise, people will have a nasty habit of saving the game just before the end of a turn, hitting the next turn button, and reloading the game if their breakthrough "roll" fails.

Not that I've ever done anything like that before... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

--Raynfala

[Ed Kolis]

MOO2 had random research costs (100%-200% the stated cost) but I never heard of people cheating like that... then again I never even thought of the idea so I wouldn't know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

edit: another idea, someone might have posted this before, but an in-game communications log of all Messages sent, received, or intercepted by your empire! (at least SE4 lets you copy it out to a text file with a right-click menu - most games wouldn't support that at all! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

edit again: ah, one more thing - if there's not going to be a full-fledged Rules Description Language like in SSG, at least make the data files in CSV format - they might be harder to read, but they can be very easily imported into any spreadsheet or database program for advanced editing!

[ February 19, 2003, 04:00: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

[DavidG]

< /BEGIN RANT >

My wish is that MM would figure out what a "percentage" is. Oh like lets say you got a couple opposing ships at a range with a 10% hit chance. The ships (and training, racial stats) are identical except one has Combat sensors I giving plus 25% hit chance. Thus the chance to hit for that one ship should be 10% + 25% which of course = 12.5%. But oh no it doesn't it is acutaly 35%. So your little combat sensors have actually improved your accuracy 250%!! There are several other areas of the game such as race setup where you may think you are getting a certain "percentage" improvement but it is actually much differenct
< /END RANT >

[ February 21, 2003, 03:59: Message edited by: DavidG ]

[Phoenix-D]

Or it could mean it makes you 25% more likely to hit..which is exactly what it does.

Phoenix-D

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Or it could mean it makes you 25% more likely to hit..which is exactly what it does.

Phoenix-D<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Does not. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif Are you disagreeing with the example I gave were your to hit chance was improved 250%??

[ February 21, 2003, 04:46: Message edited by: DavidG ]

[Puke]

regarding randomized research, i must point to an example from another empire building game. Imerialism II, if you have ever played it, had a very nice research modle.

prerequisites were randomized, within a pool. for example, road building required maybe 2 out of a possible 5 base technologies. saw mills, required 2 out of another pool of 5, with maybe some overlap - but each would not require the same tech.

i dont know if this makes sense to you. let me try again.

tech A, B, C, D, & E are base technologies, low on the research tree.

tech 1 requires two techs from the group ABCD and tech 2 requires two techs from the group BCDE, but their prerequisites may not overlap. so 1 may need A+B, and 2 may need D+E, but they must not both need tech B. or they must not both need the same tech..

and the whole tech tree went like this. and most of the pre-requisites made some sort of sense, even given their random nature.

but sure, random technology costs would be the sissy way of doing it.

and while im on a drunken rant, let me tell you that Imperialism and Imperialism 2 were MAN's empire games! politics mattered! strategy was important! 1 was more political manuvering and turmoil, 2 was more resource raping conquest. they were both great games, and still worthy to play today. Trade Empires was written by the same company, and is possibly the greatest economic / merchantile sim of all time. In short, Frog City is probably one of the most ingenious development houses on the face of the planet, bar none. if you have not played their games, you should go pick them up on the discount shelf, or order them Online. you have not played a real empire building game unless you have played these. SE4 and its brethren are alot of fun, but it cant compare.

of course, you cant blow up suns in the Frog City games, and as far as i can figure, its not so easy to make mods. so you are all cursed with my presence.

[Aloofi]

That sounds good, Puke, but being easily moddable its a must. Otherwise how can I "fix" what I don't like? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

My greatest wish for SE5 its to be even more modable than SE4.

[Baron Munchausen]

Let me take this opportunity to bring up again the idea of 'types' of research. Doesn't it seem odd that you can channel ALL of your empire's research into some physics related project like propulsion, then whip-saw it into a completely unrelated project like bio-weapons the next? This is bizarre. We need different 'types' of research just like there are different 'types' of resources. There are at least 4 clear major types of sciences:

Physics/Astrophysics, Chemical, Bio-medical, Psych/social

Then there are 'technology' fields that might not be pure sciences but are pretty elaborate and can be justified as independent fields of research. Engineering, for example. It needs physics for basic facts about structure and stress, but can also involve chemistry (materials). I guess you'd have to make Engineering a field that requires several types of research to advance a level.

If we had four seperate types of research facilities producing these different kinds of research, and science/tech fields could require one or more than one 'type' of research, it would be a bit harder to just rush down the tech trees.

[ February 22, 2003, 05:13: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Ed Kolis]

Ooh, I like! Just like how SE2's "money" got expanded to "construction points" and "research points", and SE3's "construction points" got expanded to "minerals", "organics", and "radioactives"!

Better yet, make the different research types moddable! (Hey, I might divide sciences differently than you or Aaron does - you skipped Mathematics, for one! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif And someone else might try to simplify things and combine Chemistry and Physics...)

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
If we had four seperate types of research facilities producing these different kinds of research, and science/tech fields could require one or more than one 'type' of research, it would be a bit harder to just rush down the tech trees.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I like this idea with the exception of the Last bit. It sounds like an unecessary comlication. How about just one type of research facility but you could then channel the research into each of the four different areas you mentioned. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ February 22, 2003, 03:29: Message edited by: DavidG ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by DavidG:
The ships (and training, racial stats) are identical except one has Combat sensors I giving plus 25% hit chance. Thus the chance to hit for that one ship should be 10% + 25% which of course = 12.5%.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, 10% + 25% equals 35%. 10% + 25%*10% = 12.5%

The screen says to-hit increase, which is exactly what it does. It increases your accuracy rating by 25%, not 25% of what it currently is.

There are several other areas of the game such as race setup where you may think you are getting a certain "percentage" improvement but it is actually much differenct
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The only other one that could be confusing is maintenance, which isn't really that bad.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by DavidG:
I like this idea with the exception of the Last bit. It sounds like an unecessary comlication. How about just one type of research facility but you could then channel the research into each of the four different areas you mentioned. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Then wouldn't it be the same as the current system only with just four tech areas? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif

[Ruatha]

Perhaps already stated:
I'd like a way to give/trade tech where I can se what tech levels I got.
And also trade for example shields 7 by pressing shields and then something labeled 7, instead of shields 7 times.
And a "Send all" button would be appriciated.

AS stated in the GUI thread I'd liek a 3d map as that in the Space game "Elite II Frontiers"

[David E. Gervais]

I noticed another "SE5 Wish List" thread was started. So I renamed this one to clarify that this thread was not a 'Poll' but the Official (as in Aaron has it bookmarked) thread where you should all post your wishes.

I'm trying to make life a bit easier for Aaron. He is a very busy man and when he drops by his time is limited. Hopefully this will save him the task of searching through a bunch of threads that all have the same theme!

It's probably my fault in the fisrt place for originally calling this thread a 'Poll' when in fact it was/is a depository!

Cheers!

[ February 22, 2003, 16:12: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]

[Fyron]

There should not be a colon in SE5. The game is not Space Empires: 5, it is (or will be) Space Empires 5. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by DavidG:
I like this idea with the exception of the Last bit. It sounds like an unecessary comlication. How about just one type of research facility but you could then channel the research into each of the four different areas you mentioned. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Then wouldn't it be the same as the current system only with just four tech areas? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't think so. What I meant is that you could say allocate 20% of your total research to say "Physics/Astrophysics" Then the actual tech areas that required Physics/Astrophysics would use that portion of your research points.

[Gryphin]

I guess if I was to sum up my personal self centered wants:
More data that is easier to read on each screen. I'll be happy to go through each screen and specify. It should be ready by Monday the 24th

I would love as many tweaks to the AI as he can justify.

I would love a scroll mouse

I would love to be able to move a window

I would like the enter key to close a window
I would like the Tab key to move between fields, (I think it does this)
I would like to be able to save "New Game Settings" up to and including the AI I have chosen.
The settings should the races, pt values, type of quadrant, game mechanics, etc... It should not include the name of the game.
That was suggested by someone long ago. It is a matter of conveinance. It makes things a lot easier.

[stecal]

The ability in the game creator to specify exactly the # of planets you want in a generated map (without having to change settings.txt)

Scrolling, or repeat on hold button, for ship design screen component list so I can quickly get to the other end of the list, esp if "hide obsolete" is not checked.

Make phased shields a separate class from shields for upgrade purposes.

Add a component ability: "Works only X % of the time" This would be very useful for mines and unreliable components.

[Fyron]

For research, go look at how SE3 did it (there is a free shareware download available). That system would be the best to use.

[SamuraiProgrammer]

This is a bold idea. I hope you like it. I realize that this will not apply to everyone who plays this game, but it could possibly be implemented in such a way that it does not preclude the way things are. Please have an open mind, it may not be as off the wall as you think.

This game is a great game. Unfortunately, it is a bit too big. It takes quite a long time to play a game with a large group. Even if everyone is able to play a turn a day (which in my experience is seldom), games can easily Last 6 months.

The alternative seems to be writing an AI and battling other AIs with it. This has its drawbacks as well. There does not seem to be enough fine control over the AI.

*IF* (yes it is a big if) the internal calls to the AI routines were structured properly, they could (at the request of a race setting) call an external DLL that is provided by the programming skills of the player!

The first call to the DLL could pass a data structure that contained the game state as known by the AI.

Subsequent calls to the DLL would be function calls that ask specific questions about what to do.

As an alternative, there could be a call to a function that returned a data structure that represented all of the orders given.

I realize that this may be totally incompatible with the way the program is currently written. I have no idea how much code will be reused or rewritten for Version 5. If the AI is part of the rewrite, it might not be much trouble to include this feature.

For the record, I have not tried to write an AI. I have looked at it and am willing to accept that it is more flexible than it looks at first blush. I am certainly impressed the accomplishments of Malfador Machinations, and I feel that enabling the gaming community to have direct control over this feature would bring some surprises in how certain problems are solved. This might open the door for this game to have the most proficient computer opponent in strategy gaming.

This is a wonderfully customizable product. The AI is already customizable to more extent than any game I have ever seen. Perhaps this is asking too much. Of course, you never know until you ask...

Thanks for a great game!

[Fyron]

This game is a great game. Unfortunately, it is a bit too big. It takes quite a long time to play a game with a large group. Even if everyone is able to play a turn a day (which in my experience is seldom), games can easily Last 6 months.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is the point of a PBEM game.

*IF* (yes it is a big if) the internal calls to the AI routines were structured properly, they could (at the request of a race setting) call an external DLL that is provided by the programming skills of the player!

The first call to the DLL could pass a data structure that contained the game state as known by the AI.

Subsequent calls to the DLL would be function calls that ask specific questions about what to do. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is already handled through text files, which is much better than a dll, because anyone can edit text files. Dll's require some more knowledge of programming code.

[ February 23, 2003, 01:20: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Mephisto]

But the point is, that you can directly alter the way the AI does things in the game. At the moment, you can just adjust some values but cannot alter AI behaviour. For example, the AI will at the moment only scrap atmospheric converters after they have done the job. What Samurai is suggesting is, that if you don't like it, you write your own routines to teach the AI how to scrap different building and under what conditions. In effect it would allow you to write your own AI. I personally would love it and it has been suggested in the beta forums to Aaron. I hope he will implement it, even some simple if...then conditions would be of great help.

[Gryphin]

This was discussed months and months ago:
The other "programing" ability I would like is commands for a ship. For example:
Go to < System Name > Cordinates
Do < Action >
Go to < System Name > Cordinates
Do < Action >
It would be a bonus if there could be conditional aspects to it as well.

[Andrés]

I like the idea of allowing plugins.
I wouldn't be able to write them, and the primary way to make mods should still be editing txt files, but there seem to be a lot of programers among the players.
External plugins to add some function or improve some AI behavior would be great.

We all want SE3 like research!
(will this make AI research harder to mod?)

I also want se3 like construc/repair queues!
and my multy SY bases!
and a construction system that resembles more SE3

The ability to save initial setup to start another game with the same settings and to save during a simultaneous game turn.

Editable damage types! Choose if they skip shields, if they target, skip or do some % more/less damage to a specific family/ies of components ect.

Ground combat could resemble space combat in SE4 (space combat should of course be in 3d space, but the surface of a planet can be asumed to be flat). Just change the space background with some ground background, give move points to troops.

Orbiting planets.
Orders should be move to this planet, since actual coordinates of the planet will change during its year.

Researchable domes!
Early in the game you can only colonize planets of your type and atmosphere, later you can research a dome for every other atmosphere, there can even be several levels of domes getting cheaper and allowing more space.
You should allways need a dome in a planet of a diferent type.

Supplies of all types can be transfered between ships like cargo, and delivering supplies is an important part of an empire's strategy.
There are several types of supplies, generating supplies has a cost, and that cost is the manteinance cost of your ship.
EG even if a ship has a QR, an endless supply of energy it will still need other supply types, such as "ammo", or "spare parts".

Another thing from the SE4-planning days: Techs with "ors" and maybe even "nots" as well as "ands" in their prerequisites - so maybe you need either Particle Physics or Wave Mechanics to get EM Radar (I seem to recall posting a similar example a few years ago when SE4 was in development ), or you can either research The Light Side Of The Force or The Dark Side Of The Force, but once you research one, you can't get the other!<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I really like this, this would allow for more complex tech trees.
But if you want to be realistic with the SW example, while you're researching "the light side", "the dark side" will allways be there tempting you with cool looking easy to get stuff, but as soon as you star researching it, you'll be unable to use all you had researched in "the light side". But even then you should be able to return to the path of light by reffusing to use dark side items and researching the light side.

Messages such as "the star will explode in 3 years" should be followed by a countdown.

What if the game would actually remember enemies seen in systems you no longer have presence, old Messages, and almost anything players may need to remember and are usully to lazy to take notes.

The abilty to randomize some of the traits of a race at the start of a game so when you do run into them you would not know what they would be like from memory.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The solution to this problem is having enough races so everytime you play they are not the same old friends and enemies but someoun you hardly know.

I would love to be able to move a window

I would like the enter key to close a window
I would like the Tab key to move between fields, (I think it does this)
I would like to be able to save "New Game Settings" up to and including the AI I have chosen.
The settings should the races, pt values, type of quadrant, game mechanics, etc... It should not include the name of the game.
That was suggested by someone long ago. It is a matter of conveinance. It makes things a lot easier.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sounds like you're saying I want windows standard GUI like SE3.
But yeah a game like this should be almost fully playable only using the keyboard.

[tesco samoa]

Turn Based games are still available...

[Gryphin]

Andrés Lescano,
Laughing at myself.
I never thought of choosing other AIs to get the unknown. I usualy choose an AI based on the ship set.
Thanks for the wakeup call. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Chronon]

One thing I would like to see is the ability to retreat from space combat - especially if your ships are faster. It's frustrating that your three light cruisers cannot escape from a sector when confronted by a fleet of ten dreadnoughts.

I realize this would add a whole level of fleet and ship orders in simultaneous games (always retreat, stand and fight, retreat at 20% losses, etc.), but I think it would alleviate the two fleets enter, one fleet leaves (almost completely intact) aspect of space combat, and make smaller ships more valuable. It would also allow support ships a much greater survival rate.

[Andrés]

SE5 needs a better icon, why is SE4 icon an SE3-like star?

[Hugh Manatee]

I had an Idea about the colony dome thing Last night, What if you could just build more "domes" on a planet that is unbreathable? just put it in the construction que or have another colony modual land on the planet. Or perhaps a new type of modual, There are three types already, rock gas and ice, how about a 4th, "Domed", or make that a smaller thing you have to use in combination with the three colony components.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Mephisto:
But the point is, that you can directly alter the way the AI does things in the game. At the moment, you can just adjust some values but cannot alter AI behaviour. For example, the AI will at the moment only scrap atmospheric converters after they have done the job. What Samurai is suggesting is, that if you don't like it, you write your own routines to teach the AI how to scrap different building and under what conditions. In effect it would allow you to write your own AI. I personally would love it and it has been suggested in the beta forums to Aaron. I hope he will implement it, even some simple if...then conditions would be of great help.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is possible with text files, too. Yes, it would be nice if MM would give us control of more of the AI's decisions in the text files. I'd especially like to be able to select which planets to send colonizers to (size vs. resources vs. atmosphere) and which Intel projects to use. More complex chois ein existing controls woul dbe nice, too. You cannot teach the AI to use anything other than the default colony types which MM has created for it, for example. Why can't we have different scripts for 'large' and 'small' mineral mining worlds, or for worlds with a good level of several resources?

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Hugh Manatee:
I had an Idea about the colony dome thing Last night, What if you could just build more "domes" on a planet that is unbreathable? just put it in the construction que or have another colony modual land on the planet. Or perhaps a new type of modual, There are three types already, rock gas and ice, how about a 4th, "Domed", or make that a smaller thing you have to use in combination with the three colony components.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Or what if there was a facility to increase population capacity just like there is for cargo capacity. Another long-standing request.

I would like to see colonization changed, though. It should not be possible to live undomed on a non-native planet type. Gas giant planets aren't suddenly good environments for surface-dwelling creatures just because they have been altered to different gases. Gas-native races are 'flyers' or 'floaters' of various types, remember. So your colonies on non-native type worlds should be domed regardless of the atmosphere. Your race will always require special structures to live there.

[Fyron]

We all want SE3 like research!
(will this make AI research harder to mod?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not by much. AI research modding would be identical to how it is in SE4. You would still specify the max number of techs to work on and the tech areas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You would have to decide whether to try to give different percantage rates in the different tech areas, or to use equal amounts. In SE3, the AIs researched technologies pretty well, so I guess it couldn't be too hard to mod what they do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Actually, the only major difference is that you don't get extra points going into the next tech area, but into the next level of the same tech. But that isn't really a bad thing IMO. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ February 23, 2003, 23:24: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
I would like to see colonization changed, though. It should not be possible to live undomed on a non-native planet type. Gas giant planets aren't suddenly good environments for surface-dwelling creatures just because they have been altered to different gases. Gas-native races are 'flyers' or 'floaters' of various types, remember. So your colonies on non-native type worlds should be domed regardless of the atmosphere. Your race will always require special structures to live there.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Of course, I can just as easily say that the SE4 universe represents a tech level similar to that of Star Wars, where colonizing a gas giant with a breathable atmosphere is no more difficult than building a standard repulsorlift platform. If you have the technology needed to build sphere/ringworlds, then atmosphere and planet types are non-issues to your race. You could easily cover then entire surface of a planet with a dome with those levels of construction abilities.

[Fyron]

SE4 is not at the tech level of Star Wars though. Not by far. It takes years to cross the galaxy with starting tech in SE4. SW ships take weeks.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
SE4 is not at the tech level of Star Wars though. Not by far. It takes years to cross the galaxy with starting tech in SE4. SW ships take weeks.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Their transportation is inferior, true, but their construction abilities are overwhelmingly superior. Building a ringworld or sphereworld is a task that makes building a Deathstar about as significant as me drawing a circle on a piece of paper.

[Nodachi]

Baron Munchausen pointed out:
I would like to see colonization changed, though. It should not be possible to live undomed on a non-native planet type. Gas giant planets aren't suddenly good environments for surface-dwelling creatures just because they have been altered to different gases. Gas-native races are 'flyers' or 'floaters' of various types, remember. So your colonies on non-native type worlds should be domed regardless of the atmosphere. Your race will always require special structures to live there. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">With all due respect Baron, this is not completely accurate.

We'll assume a rock native population for this.

You have a domed colony on an ice world and your atmosphere converter just finished its job. You may now disassemble your dome, because you don't need it to hold in your atmosphere, and spread out. Of course your buildings must be heated but now you can put them anywhere you want.
Real World Example: Antarctica
Sci-Fi Example: Hoth

Now the fun one! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
You have a domed colony on (should be in) a gas giant. How would this even be possible? Bubbles. A "domed" colony would be nothing more than an airtight bubble floating in the atmosphere. How does it float? Just like a ship in water. The higher atmospheric pressure of the planet would hold it up (we won't discuss keeping it in place http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ). Now your atmosphere converter has been working its little heart out and manages to convert the atmosphere. You can now build pylons on top of your bubbles tall enough to put platforms up where the pressure is more comfortable. With enough bubbles and platforms you get more usable space. If anything you should get more facility slots on a gas giant even if it's "domed" and tons more after the atmosphere has been converted. How many Earths would fit in Jupiter?
Real World Example: Yeah, right! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
Sci-Fi Example: Bio of a Space Tyrant series by Piers Anthony

It all comes down to being able to use the space more efficiently. I'm not saying that all the physics involved are correct, but hey, this is science-fiction. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I'm also not saying that the game should be changed to reflect these ideas, that would destroy game balance. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[raynfala]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Mephisto:
But the point is, that you can directly alter the way the AI does things in the game. At the moment, you can just adjust some values but cannot alter AI behaviour. For example, the AI will at the moment only scrap atmospheric converters after they have done the job. What Samurai is suggesting is, that if you don't like it, you write your own routines to teach the AI how to scrap different building and under what conditions. In effect it would allow you to write your own AI. I personally would love it and it has been suggested in the beta forums to Aaron. I hope he will implement it, even some simple if...then conditions would be of great help.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is possible with text files, too. Yes, it would be nice if MM would give us control of more of the AI's decisions in the text files. I'd especially like to be able to select which planets to send colonizers to (size vs. resources vs. atmosphere) and which Intel projects to use. More complex chois ein existing controls woul dbe nice, too. You cannot teach the AI to use anything other than the default colony types which MM has created for it, for example. Why can't we have different scripts for 'large' and 'small' mineral mining worlds, or for worlds with a good level of several resources?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Earlier I posted the suggestion that SE-V be architected using a client/server approach, where the game engine is the server, and the client(s) can be an AI program, the user interface, a third party's user interface, etc.

Same thing for ministers, too. I would love to be able to code my own ministers so that it would do exactly what I want it to do.

--Raynfala

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Nodachi:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif[/img]
You have a domed colony on (should be in) a gas giant. How would this even be possible? Bubbles. A "domed" colony would be nothing more than an airtight bubble floating in the atmosphere. How does it float? Just like a ship in water. The higher atmospheric pressure of the planet would hold it up (we won't discuss keeping it in place http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ). Now your atmosphere converter has been working its little heart out and manages to convert the atmosphere. You can now build pylons on top of your bubbles tall enough to put platforms up where the pressure is more comfortable. With enough bubbles and platforms you get more usable space. If anything you should get more facility slots on a gas giant even if it's "domed" and tons more after the atmosphere has been converted. How many Earths would fit in Jupiter?
Real World Example: Yeah, right! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
Sci-Fi Example: Bio of a Space Tyrant series by Piers Anthony

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nah....I don't agree. In an Ice planet, even with the right atmosphere type, you could never build as many buildings for the same price as in a rock planet. Ice planets would freeze anything. You would need far more heating power than in Antartica. And don't try to go out for a walk in the park. The other point is how many people would prefer to live in a freezing planet than in a cozy rock planet? Look at Alaska for a real life example.

[dogscoff]

I had an Idea about the colony dome thing Last night, What if you could just build more "domes" on a planet that is unbreathable? just put it in the construction que or have another colony modual land on the planet. Or perhaps a new type of modual, There are three types already, rock gas and ice, how about a 4th, "Domed", or make that a smaller thing you have to use in combination with the three colony components.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've suggested somethiong along these lines before. I'd like to see planets with zero default population capacity, and all planets of each size given the same number of facility slots regardless of atmosphere. It's up to the player to decide how much population the planet can hold by building "habitat" facilities. (Colonisers would have one of these habitat facilities built in.)

This way you could have lots of mineral miners on a planet but hardly any population to run them, or lots of population and only a few miners - or anywhere in between. With careful balancing of the population-based production bonuses some really interesting decisions would be necessary.

The clever bit is that "domed" habit facilites would give less population space per facility slot than undomed ones. This way, domed planets have less potential for population growth, but the player can choose to counter this by building more domed habitats (at the cost of other facilities).

The other advantage is that you could have both types of facilities on the same planet at once- then you could have a planet that holds up to 500 million oxy breathers AND up to 60 million domed breathers at the same time - this would solve the problem caused by a minority of non breathers (ie one million) doming a planet that already has 150 million native-breathers on it.

Also, this system could introduce realistic population damage effects during orbital bombardments/ ground combat/ random events: Destruction of a dome or habitat facility would cause the death of millions in a single strike (or it might cause an overcrowding crisis in the other domes- see my suggestion earlier in this thread about allowing overpopulation/ refugee crises). This bit might be a little more complicated to implement than I describe here, but the foundation would be in place for a really effective damage system.

More efficient/ durable habitats could be researched, and if the whole thing was handled as abilities, it could be modded too. Imagine what Proportions mod cultural centres and cities would look like under this this system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

A similar system to the above could be devised for ice/gas/ rock, so that in order to put humans on a captured gas giant, you have to research and build special platforms of some kind there first.

Finally, I always assumed that on ice planets the population was below the ice (ie underwater) rather than above it. In the Star Wars example already mentioned, I would say Hoth was just a very cold rock planet. Some of Jupiter's moons are ice planets in this sense, and some speculate that there might be life under there. (Europa? Io? Can't remember off hand.)


SE5 needs a better icon, why is SE4 icon an SE3-like star?
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I like the icon, but get David Gervais on to it anyway! Maybe the installer could give the player a choice of a new icon or the old one.

[ February 24, 2003, 16:20: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[dogscoff]

Another idea, kind of linked to the one below:

How about if two players could control a planet at once? Habitat facilities A, B anc C are yours, C, D and E are yours. Space yard X is mine, Y is yours.

How cool would ground combat be with this? Could lead to some interesting treaty situations too.

Have I had my "designer treaties" rant on this thread yet? I'll let you all digest this lot first... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Have I had my "designer treaties" rant on this thread yet? I'll let you all digest this lot first... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, we need new treaties, and the default shouldn't be war. I've never understood why first contact with an alien ship always end up in combat.
Imagine that an alien scout just get to our orbit, but since we don't know them and of course we don't have a trade treaty with them yet, our military decides to blow them out of the sky. Next month an alien fleet arrives asking for their scout, and since we killed all their friends at first contact, they decide to drop us a level 5 Plague Bomb.

[dogscoff]

Yeah, we need new treaties, and the default shouldn't be war.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'd like to be able to negotiate my own treaty terms:

You can have use of my resupply depots and space ports, in exchange I want free passage through your space and 20000 organics per turn...

I posted a huge 2 page thesis on how this might work a few months ago... I'll try to dig it out...

EDIT: Found it- here. (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=007238#000012) There's quite a discussion there. Also, when searching the forums for something you posted before, knowing your registered user number is a big help...

[ February 24, 2003, 17:15: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Fyron]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Another idea, kind of linked to the one below:

How about if two players could control a planet at once? Habitat facilities A, B anc C are yours, C, D and E are yours. Space yard X is mine, Y is yours. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">See Master of Orion 3. In it, the planets are supposed to be divided into regions that get colonized separately (or at least, that was the original plan with the game a few years back http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

[Ed Kolis]

Now, you might call this pedantic, and say that it destroys an interesting tactical aspect of the game, but if a storm is opaque to level X scanners, then if you don't have level X+1 scanners and you're inside the storm, shouldn't you be unable to see outside the storm?

Also, remember SE2's idea of storms - nobody can see you in the storm unless they are in the same sector? What if there were larger storms that didn't make ships entirely invisible but instead reduced sight range? And what if you didn't get to see everything in a system by default, but instead your scanners had a limited range?

I also like Stars! idea of diminishing returns for stacking components - you CAN put two long range scanners/ECM/whatever on your ship, but while the first one might have range 50, the second one will only bump the range up to 65 or something like that.

[Instar]

I really like the idea of stacking sensor/ecm components for increased detection capability, but only slightly better (but emissions would still be high -- hey random idea -- how about missiles that target ships emitting more electronic emissions? Like Anti-SAM HARM missiles that hone in on radar sites?)
If you added the sensor stacking along with the ability to share targeting data amongst a fleet (with a very small component that increases the ability to hit), I could very easily imagine a sensor ship that pointed out all the enemies (like the E-2C Hawkeye, or maybe the SPY-1 radar on ships that is shared with other ships.)

[Fyron]

You should be able to design the missiles your ships use when adding CSM components and such. Not building them separately and loading them on, as that would be micromanagement hell. But, you should have options as to what your missiles are like. Do you want more engines (speed), more/larger warheads (damage), more armor (hit points), better defensive bonuses (ECM), etc.? Or do you want cheap missile launchers? All of these choices should alter the cost of your missile launcher components.

[ February 26, 2003, 06:26: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Fyron]

I just emailed this to MM:

Mines need fixing. In SE4, it is really easy and cheap to get enough sweepers to sweep 100 mines in each of your fleets. So, here is an idea for revamping mines:

Make sweepers do damage to mines instead of just sweeping X mines. Sweeping damage should accumulate until all sweepers in a task force have had a chance to sweep. Then, any partially damaged mines are restored to full strength. Make each sweeper have a chance to hit a mine. If it fails this chance, that sweeper component sweeps no mines. Then, change what can be on mines. Some possibilities include:

Mine Warhead: does more damage, and each one lowers the ECM ability of the mine. More warheads means more explosive materials, and hence is easier to detect.

Mine Armor: adds more hitpoints, so it takes more sweepers to destroy the mine.

Mine ECM: one per mine, increases the ECM ability of the mine. Stacks with the Warhead penalties.

When a task force enters a sector with mines, each sweeper component is handled separately. It rolls a to hit chance, based off of the lowest ECM ability of any mine in the sector. This is to simplify the chances to sweep mines, without losing the whole ability to fail to sweep. If the sweeper is successful, it hits a random mine. It should not necessarily hit the mine that was used to see if it could detect a mine, because there could be multiple mines with that ECM level. Once a random mine is selected, the sweeper's damage ability is done to the mine, and that damage is accumulated. You can either have excess damage hit another mine (with or without a second to hit calculation) or have that sweeper component's excess damage be wasted. Once the first sweeper component is resolved, the game checks the second sweeper component. It has a chance to hit based off of the lowest ECM of the remaining mines, then does damage to a random mine only if it hits. All sweepers are resolved in this manner, one by one.

This system allows for heavily defended mines that take a lot of sweepers to clear, but do little damage. Or, you can have weakly defended mines that do a lot of damage. Also, you can have 2 types of sweepers: one with a high to hit bonus and low damage, and one with a low to hit bonus (or none) and high damage.

I don't think that this would be very hard to implement in a game that has not been started to be worked on yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Atrocities]

I agree Fyron 100%. I have more, but must go to bed now as I can not see nor can I think clearly enought to type.

[Fyron]

Another email I just sent to MM:

In SE5, all damage should be random. There should be no static damage. Each damage at range value for a weapon should have a range of damage it can do, instead of a set damage. Here is an example of what I mean (not necessarily with actual SE4 values):

DUC V in SE4
Damage at range := 50 50 50 50 50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

DUC V in SE5
Damage at range := 40-60 40-60 40-60 40-60 40-60 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

So, at each range, instead of doing 50 damage with each shot, each shot will do somewhere between 40 and 60 damage. The range of values could be higher or lower; I'll leave that up to you to decide, as it is your game. ;-)

Randomness in damage values is much more realistic than the weapon always doing the same damage. Also, it is more unpredicatable, and reduces the certainty of victory that can be felt in SE4 as it is. If I have weapons that always do more damage than yours, I will most likely win (all else being equal). But if damage is fairly random, this certainty is removed, except with huge differences in tech levels.

[Wizarc]

Aesthetic but make the screen capable of higher resolutions and allowing the capability to open other windows along with the primary ones.

[Fyron]

Well... supporting higher resolutions is more than aesthetic. Higher resolution allows more information to be displayed on the screen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Ed Kolis]

Customizable & more detailed ship/fleet experience gain rates:

say
+20 XP/turn for staying alive
-40 XP/turn for being mothballed
+2 XP/kT for killing (or damaging) ships
+1 XP/kT for killing (or damaging) seekers
+3 XP/kT for killing (or damaging) units
+2 XP/kT for damaging (or damaging) planets
500 XP = 1% combat bonus

[Karibu]

Missiles are quite ineffective now because of the accuracy and power of PD cannons. I suggest PD cannons improving their accuracy up to 70% following way:

PD level1: accuracy 30%
PD level2: accuracy 40%
PD level3: accuracy 50%
PD level4: accuracy 60%
PD level5: accuracy 70%

Of course this would be only one thing to effect PD accuracy (others would be training, combat sensors, etc.) like it happens for normal beam weapons.

Also missiles could be faster (for example their speed would be +1 or +2 than what it is now). It is hardly realistic that space ships would outrun missiles in short range, as battles happen.

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
You should be able to design the missiles your ships use when adding CSM components and such. Not building them separately and loading them on, as that would be micromanagement hell. But, you should have options as to what your missiles are like. Do you want more engines (speed), more/larger warheads (damage), more armor (hit points), better defensive bonuses (ECM), etc.? Or do you want cheap missile launchers? All of these choices should alter the cost of your missile launcher components.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is a great idea. Do you know if this can be modded into SE4?

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
You should be able to design the missiles your ships use when adding CSM components and such. .....<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is a great idea. Do you know if this can be modded into SE4?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In a manner of speaking it can be done now. You simply make scads of different CSM launcher components, each that has it's own missle characteristics. Range, speed, damage and seeker damage resistance can all be modified.

An attempt was made to mod customizable CSM's using drone bodies, but it didn't work quite right for reasons having to do with how drones function. And it's a bit of a micromanagment headache as well keeping the ships stocked with missles that way.

Geoschmo

[Desdinova]

i would like an engine component dedicated to the use of wormholes. that way we can design system ships and design seperate ships for traveling the wormholes. make the component take up say 10-20% of a ships space. you have to synchronize your ship to the harmonic frequency of the wormhole to allow your ship to travel through it. or someother technobabble reason.

[Fyron]

1. Lists that remember their position.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some of them (such as the Log) do now. It would be nice if they all did though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

2. When you build for example a starbase with a buildship and it's attacked like 0.2 years before completion of the base, the base should already be there but have damaged components. Now you don't get anything which is quite ridicilous.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This was in SE3. All ships were built immediately, with all components "damaged". Well, "under construction", but it amounted to the same thing, except that a ship with all comps "under construction" was not destroyed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Then, the ships were "repaired" in the construction queue until they were finished. In fact, damaged ships were "repaired" in the construction queue too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif This had advantages and disadvantages (you pay maintenance on all unbuilt ships, for example), and MM decided to try something different in SE4. Hopefully some sort of hybrid of SE4 and SE3 construction can be created for SE5.

3. Upgrade of ships would be cool. Now if you have a new design, your queues are not update.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You could do this in the original release of SE4, but it lead to easy exploits. Don't have those technologies yet? No problem! Start building ship designs now, and then edit the designs to have the new techs when you have them. As long as you had not finished any ships of a design, you could edit the design still, and change it however you want. This was not a good thing, and was eliminated in one of the first patches.

i would like an engine component dedicated to the use of wormholes. that way we can design system ships and design seperate ships for traveling the wormholes.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">At least part of the coding for that is already in there. There is a toggle in the Map Editor that can theoretically give "Requires Comp X" ability to a Warp Point (as there are no wormholes in SE4), although it does not do anything at present. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ February 27, 2003, 17:53: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Mythrantar]

Hello!

I did not go through the whole thread, so I do not know if this has been proposed before, but a feature I would like to see in SE5 is the ability to upgrade all eligible buildings and retrofit all eligible ships from a single "Upgrade/Retrofit" window (a two-tabbed window perhaps, one for retrofitting and one for facilities upgarding) instead of having to go planet by planet and ship yard by ship yard to do so. It is easy to do when you have 10 planets, but when you have 100 or more it is getting very tiresome.

I think a minister could manage that, but i prefer doing this manually, so I would welcome such a feature very much.

[mac5732]

I would like to see the AI defend wormholes, at least important ones, with bases, stats, mines and even some small defensive fleets. I think this would enhance SP play against the Ai especially if the human player had to make wormhole assaults.

Also, for the AI to build more defensive bases. It does build some bases now, more then before, but most of them are only Ship Building ones with out defensive or offensive weapons. Ai needs to build offensive and defensive bases way more then they do currently.

if these have been mentioned before, I apoligize, just don't have time to read all the Posts here at present

just some ideas Mac

[Mephisto]

Originally posted by Mythrantar:
What I would like to see in SE5 is the ability to upgrade all eligible buildings and retrofit all eligible ships from a single "Upgrade/Retrofit" window (a two-tabbed window perhaps, one for retrofitting and one for facilities upgarding) instead of having to go planet by planet and ship yard by ship yard to do so.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Welcome Mythrantar! The button you are searching is already implemented for facilities. Hit F7 and look for "Upgrade", that's the button right over "Close". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Fyron]

Having that for Ships would be a bad idea, and the function would have to be very, very complicated. It would have to check every single ship to make sure it can be upgraded, what it could possibly be upgraded to, you'd have to select what they all upgrade to (as it is quite possible to have many designs concurrently), and it would have to check every ship to make sure it is in a sector with a SY so it can be upgraded. Using this would be more work than using the spacebar to cycle through active ships to see which to upgrade. You can already select multiple ships of the same design to retrofit in the retrofit window. The game just does not allow you to retrofit multiple types of ships at once because then it would have to run a lot of checks to see if the various upgrades are legal or not (same ship hull, max retrofit cost limits, etc.).

[Ed Kolis]

Fyron, you were right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Please ignore all my previous requests for real-time combat. I got MOO3, and you don't even get a chance to figure out what kinds of weapons or tactics the enemy is using before you get blown to smithereens.

Now I remember why I don't like RTS games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

[Mythrantar]

Welcome Mythrantar! The button you are searching is already implemented for facilities. Hit F7 and look for "Upgrade", that's the button right over "Close". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks a lot! I guess I should have checked more carefully! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[minipol]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
[QB]Having that for Ships would be a bad idea, and the function would have to be very, very complicated. It would have to check every single ship to make sure it can be upgraded,<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not if you could assign what it can be upgraded too. Then it would be a piece of cake to implement.

[minipol]

I have not read the entire post so this might have been suggested before.

1. Lists that remember their position.

2. When you build for example a starbase with a buildship and it's attacked like 0.2 years before completion of the base, the base should already be there but have damaged components. Now you don't get anything which is quite ridicilous.

3. Upgrade of ships would be cool. Now if you have a new design, your queues are not update.
This would have to be the same as the update facilities. For this to work it would have to be possible to assign a successor to a certain shipdesign. For instance, after you upgrade a design, the new design could be automatically marked as the successor to the ship it was upgraded from. Off course you would have to be able to change this. Even if this would not be allowed, this would be more than cool because it would save TONS of clicking.
Same would go for weaponsplatforms, satellites, mines.

4. Allow more than 1 spaceyard component to be used for cooperative building. For instance building a big starbase on a warppoint with a baseyard ship with only 1 spaceyard is SLOOOOOOW.
It should be allowed to have more than 1 component on a ship and even that for instance 2 baseyard ships work together. The construction time doesn't have to be linear but it would at least have to be modable.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by minipol:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
[QB]Having that for Ships would be a bad idea, and the function would have to be very, very complicated. It would have to check every single ship to make sure it can be upgraded,<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not if you could assign what it can be upgraded too. Then it would be a piece of cake to implement.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Which would not make it very much easier than gathering your ships together and retrofitting them in batches. It would require very complex code functions to check to see if each ship can retrofit, and what it can retrofit to. Also, it has to decide which ships to retrofit and which not to when you don't have enough resources to pay for all of them (esp. an issue in turn-based). You would have no control over that. But with how it is now, you can select which ships to retrofit and which not to. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Basically, this feature is for the lazy amongst us (such as myself). But, it would be very problematic to use with ship retrofits. It could be done, but using it would most likely end up being as complicated (if not more so) than retrofitting ships as it is done now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
Fyron, you were right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Please ignore all my previous requests for real-time combat. I got MOO3, and you don't even get a chance to figure out what kinds of weapons or tactics the enemy is using before you get blown to smithereens.

Now I remember why I don't like RTS games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If that is the case, then Real Time combat is not implemented properly in MOO3. It can still be salvaged if they slow it down a bit, or if they give you time before combat begins to see the other side's ships (at least the non-cloaked/stealth ones). For SE games, combat in MP games has no input from the player once combat begins. So, if SE4 (or 5) used real time combat, that would be a null issue for MP games. For SP games, the pacing would have to be timed correctly.

Actually, is there a feature to alter the speed of combat in MOO3? Every RTS game I have ever played has had the ability to slow it down (and to speed it up). I would imagine that they would have this in MOO3 combat too.

[ February 28, 2003, 00:32: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[minipol]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Which would not make it very much easier than gathering your ships together and retrofitting them in batches. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So in your opinion, pressing 1 butting is as complicated as looking at all your ships to find
which ones could be upgraded, then sending them to a shipyard and upgrade them?


It would require very complex code functions to check to see if each ship can retrofit,
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No because you as player would have to decide what i can be upgraded too. If you do not select a logical successor, then your retrofit costs would eventually be that of almost a new ship. Granted, some rules would have to be set like you cannot upgrade a ship to a base and so on but i really don't see the complexity.
Maybe because i program a lot at work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anyway, your milleage obviously varies but i think this would save me a lot of clicking.

[ February 28, 2003, 00:38: Message edited by: minipol ]

[Phoenix-D]

"Please ignore all my previous requests for real-time combat. I got MOO3, and you don't even get a chance to figure out what kinds of weapons or tactics the enemy is using before you get blown to smithereens."

This would be an example of real-time done badly then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

If it was real-time in Strategic combat, for example, there would be no negative effect. You aren't giving orders there anyway..

Phoenix-D

[Fyron]

Originally posted by minipol:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Which would not make it very much easier than gathering your ships together and retrofitting them in batches. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So in your opinion, pressing 1 butting is as complicated as looking at all your ships to find
which ones could be upgraded, then sending them to a shipyard and upgrade them?


It would require very complex code functions to check to see if each ship can retrofit,
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No because you as player would have to decide what i can be upgraded too. If you do not select a logical successor, then your retrofit costs would eventually be that of almost a new ship. Granted, some rules would have to be set like you cannot upgrade a ship to a base and so on but i really don't see the complexity.
Maybe because i program a lot at work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anyway, your milleage obviously varies but i think this would save me a lot of clicking.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No. You have to do all the work of decided what should and should not upgrade at the time of hitting the button. This takes as much (if not more) work than using the current method of ordering retrofits.

[dogscoff]

How about an additional type of warp-point generator that requires a component/ facility at BOTH ends of the connection? For long-range warp points, you'd need to control both systems because you'd be required to build some massive starbase at either end. For short range ones you could use the existing method, with a ship at one just one end carrying the warp point opener we are familiar with.

This could really help balance stellar manipulation by making it harder to just warp into the heart of your enemy's territory and create havoc.
Oh, and allow stellar manip to be used by bases=-)

[Andrés]

It makes perfect sens e to me to have a button to retrofit all Design A ships currenlty in a SY to Design B.
It lists all designs in use first so you choose design A and shows you all designs of the same size to retrofit into.
Ships that are not currently in a SY will be ignored and will continue with their previous orders.

[dogscoff]

Here's a tiny one - how about an option in game setup to determine the starting date. Not that there's anything wrong with 2400.00, but it might be handy for roleplayers and scenario-makers.

[Nodachi]

Here's a new ability I'd like to see, either in 4 or 5 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif , Can Attack When Cloaked. Mines can already do it but I'd like to be able to mod it in for other things. Maybe it would allow sweepers to function while cloaked. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Nodachi:
Here's a new ability I'd like to see, either in 4 or 5 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif , Can Attack When Cloaked. Mines can already do it but I'd like to be able to mod it in for other things. Maybe it would allow sweepers to function while cloaked. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If cloaking is changed this will not be necessary. Currently a ship is flagged as 'invisible' or not. There is no transition phase. But if sensors have a real 'range' effect then cloaking is just reducing the range of sensors. By the time you reach combat range you're almost certainly going to have become visible to the target(s). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[JLS]

Agreed, possibly even a guaranteed first shot for Cloaked ships! If they are cloaked beyond your currant sensor level in that fleet.

[ March 03, 2003, 19:40: Message edited by: JLS ]

[Unknown_Enemy]

today I saw MOO3 running !!!!

If there is just 1 thing to salvage from this disaster, it is the galaxy map !!!!

This is EXACTLY what needs to be done for SE5.

Full 3d thing you can rotate in any way you want. I want to play SE5 with such a galaxy map !!

[Ed Kolis]

Huh, I just find it confusing - some stars are farther away than they look because of the Z-axis, and if you rotate to check then you can't find any of the stars anymore...

How about custom Messages for Communications Mimic? Doesn't work too well in multiplayer - if you get some AI message for someone declaring war on you you know what it is... but if they could actually put in a custom message then it really would be like they mimicked your ally's communications!

[Aloofi]

Nooooo.....Minesweepers shouldn't be able to sweep while cloacked!
The mere action of removing one of your mines would give away the sweeper location.

[Aloofi]

About the starmap, keep in mind that in a game we, the player, are roleplaying an Imperator, President or whatever you wanna call it, and a President have an staff to give him all information well detailed, so when i look to the starmap I don't expect to see a Galaxy like looking at the real stars, but a representation of the information that my aids gave me upon which I'll make my decisions for the whole Empire.
So I don't care for a "real" starmap, but for one that tells me clearly which system is closer and which one is more strategically important. If you can make a 3D starmap that acomplish this, then is ok with me, but if the 3D starmap is in any way confusing, I would keep the current starmap, because I don't have an staff next to me when I'm playing to ask them what I need to know.
I can even argue that the current Starmap is a 2D representation of real Space to show the distances in an understandable way.
I'm all for a better 2D starmap, but I have big doubts about a 3D map.
Even if we get a 2D starmap with rotation planets I would hope that I can turn that thing off and play with stationary planets.
I expect to be an all powerful Imperator, not a lowly starship commader that needs to worry about planet orbital location in a system!

[mottlee]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Nooooo.....Minesweepers shouldn't be able to sweep while cloacked!
The mere action of removing one of your mines would give away the sweeper location.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've found that IF mines are removed W/O going BOOM you get no word as to being removed so if clocked you will not know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Rigelian]

(I'm on 1.49, so apologies in advance if this is fixed in Gold, but I think not).

If I could change one thing in code, it would be the trade algorithm. In a multiplayer, there is nothing more frustrating than smashing an opponents 'real' economy completely, then having him come back at you with his massive trade revenues from multiple allies. Especially when someone has gifted him a safe moon somewhere in the corner of the map to keep him alive. This would be an incredibly simple fix:

Trade bonus = 20%(max) * value of SMALLER "real" economy.

By "real" economy I mean output of planets and remote mining. This of course makes much more sense in 'realism' terms as well.
Slightly OT, if anyone knows a mod to achieve this effect or similar I will be very interested.

[capnq]

In a multiplayer, there is nothing more frustrating than smashing an opponents 'real' economy completely, then having him come back at you with his massive trade revenues from multiple allies. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't find this at all unrealistic. It's roughly what happened in World War II.

[SalsaDoom]

Here is what I want.. I want to be able to use 3d models directly in the game. Converting them to flat images is very 90s. Heh. And, most importantly, I want the model to be something that I can directly export from Blender (http://www.blender.org) because having to buy something like 3DS Max is unrealistically expensive -- I KNOW that all those mod makers for other games pirate their copies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Also, you lose a lot of detail converting.. being able to move the map around in a 3d fashion and zoom in on ships and stuff. Battleship eye candy to go with my Gunboat diplomacy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Ed Kolis]

Just not like MOO3 where your ships look like gnats and you can't tell a Trilarian from a Psilon - sure, it might be cheezy to have ships appearing to be bumper-to-bumper in combat, but at least we can SEE the pretty models that took so long to develop! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

(Yes, I know you can zoom in on MOO3 combat, but then you can see about three of your ships on the entire screen, the enemies are pounding you from what would be Toledo at that scale, and they're STILL about half an inch tall, surrounded by acres and acres of empty black space! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif )

[Rigelian]

I don't find this at all unrealistic. It's roughly what happened in World War II.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, the SE4 analogy for that would be GIFTS from Allies, i.e. massive transfer of 'real economy' resources to a flagging ally/allies. Did the US get any of that lend/lease stuff or Marshall Aid back again?. I think not. Thanks again, by the way... bet you wish you'd left the French out now, eh? 8-)

Back on topic, when I talk about trade I mean the 'free' resources generated for both sides by a trade treaty. In classic economic terms, the bonus to both parties from trading a surplus for a scarcity - everyone wins. But on average everone wins about the same amount, based on the amount of trade, based in turn on the surplus available to be traded. If the smaller economy has, say, 20K of surplus to trade, that's about what the other side will get out of it too. This is why I think the algorithm is in error. How can I get 100k of resources from trading the surplus of my 10k of actual production? 2K is what I should actually make out of it.

Why do I have such a problem with this? Several times I've been in games where someone is dominating the game and will win soon. The difficulty is in persuading people to drop their super-lucrative treaties with him to even begin an alliance.

Plus the situation where you have almost wiped someone out but their 'virtual economy' remains huge. As I said, no problem with a larger ally GIVING resources, that's fine because its costing them. Trade doesn't.

Rigelian
(My trade-limited game ConventionalWarfare_1_49 begins this Saturday)

[Fyron]

Originally posted by SalsaDoom:
Here is what I want.. I want to be able to use 3d models directly in the game. Converting them to flat images is very 90s. Heh. And, most importantly, I want the model to be something that I can directly export from Blender (http://www.blender.org) because having to buy something like 3DS Max is unrealistically expensive -- I KNOW that all those mod makers for other games pirate their copies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Also, you lose a lot of detail converting.. being able to move the map around in a 3d fashion and zoom in on ships and stuff. Battleship eye candy to go with my Gunboat diplomacy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I would rather have MM spend their time making a good game than making an impressive 3d system. Gameplay wins over graphics any day. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Wizarc]

Stay away from 3D, it seems when game creators try to move their games to 3D First: you gota buy a new computer. Second: the gameplay goes in the crapper. Stick with good gameplay and micromangment(kidding, not too much micro).

[mac5732]

AI to aggressivly defend wormholes with bases, mines, sats and defensive fleets, also to increase the number of defensive bases over his major worlds. Currently mostly ship building bases.

Tactical ground combat, maybe on the order of the old Star General game, simple but fun

AI to carry out all Diplomacy aggreements, ie; they agree to attack someone, they do, etc.

just some ideas Mac

[Rigelian]

Replace attitive calculations with multiplication, to reflect actual probabilities; eliminate bizarre 'edge effects'.

This is best illustrated by example: I have a 25% chance to hit a ship at a certain range. If that ship is equipped with ECM-1, that gives him a 20% defence bonus. Logically I should be 20% less likely to hit him (.25*0.8), giving me a 20% chance to hit. Of course the mechanics in SE4 do not currently work like this. The percentages are simply subtracted, giving me a 5% chance to hit. In this situation his '20%' ECM is actually giving him more like 80% protection. There are examples like this wherever percentages are calculated.

To correctly implement probabilities, factors should _always_ be multiplied.

I'm sure Aaron was/is well aware of this fact. My strong suspicion is that the floating-point maths required to do this correctly, as opposed to much faster integer maths for addition, was one of the limiting factors. Given the massive increase in processor speeds since the original SE games, I think that the average PC could cope with this now. I would much, much rather have this than any whizz-bang rotating 3D maps..

And while I'm here.. can we have sizeable windows and right-click support back again? I'm sure the code is still out there somewhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

[Rigelian]

A few user-interface enhacements (and one on fighters). Usability over eye-candy every time.

Large zoomable (2-D!) galaxy map, with detailed sidebar, so I can choose a system and get a list of planets, values etc in the sidebar. A bit like the old Mac classic Spaceward Ho!, or the little I saw of SE3.

What would be perfect for me would be the ability to 'zoom' to an area of the galaxy and show several systems as 'scaled-down' system maps. With fleet locations, WPs and ship movement lines, and ability to issue orders from here. I currently do this manually on a sheet of A3. See note on high resolution below!

Fleet list and galaxy map shown at same time, so I can
- see what fleets are in which system on the galaxy map.
- click on a fleet in the list and have its location highlighted in galaxy map.

Construction queue to show list and details for higlighted item at same time. Ability to select multiple queues and add same job (build a frigate at all 6 of these systems..)

Support for my 1600*1200 screen to show all this at once.. 8-)

Simplified, Starfire-like fighter combat with separate, low, 'anti-Fighter' hit probablities for most ship weaponry. One hit, one kill, no killing the whole stack.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Rigelian:
Replace attitive calculations with multiplication, to reflect actual probabilities; eliminate bizarre 'edge effects'.

This is best illustrated by example: I have a 25% chance to hit a ship at a certain range. If that ship is equipped with ECM-1, that gives him a 20% defence bonus. Logically I should be 20% less likely to hit him (.25*0.8), giving me a 20% chance to hit. Of course the mechanics in SE4 do not currently work like this. The percentages are simply subtracted, giving me a 5% chance to hit. In this situation his '20%' ECM is actually giving him more like 80% protection. There are examples like this wherever percentages are calculated.

To correctly implement probabilities, factors should _always_ be multiplied.

I'm sure Aaron was/is well aware of this fact. My strong suspicion is that the floating-point maths required to do this correctly, as opposed to much faster integer maths for addition, was one of the limiting factors. Given the massive increase in processor speeds since the original SE games, I think that the average PC could cope with this now. I would much, much rather have this than any whizz-bang rotating 3D maps..

And while I'm here.. can we have sizeable windows and right-click support back again? I'm sure the code is still out there somewhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">How can you be sure that MM does not prefer many of these bonuses/penalties to be additive instead of multiplicative? Additive values make sense in a lot of places. ECM does not alter the current chance to hit, it alters the base chance to hit.

[Lemmy]

Stay away from 3D, it seems when game creators try to move their games to 3D First: you gota buy a new computer. Second: the gameplay goes in the crapper. Stick with good gameplay and micromangment(kidding, not too much micro).<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But in this case, most of the 3d part is already done in Starfury, so it won't be at the expense of gameplay.
About the first part...i guess it depends on the game, and how many cutting edge 3d features are used. May i ask what computer you have now?

[Stone Mill]

In the Construction Window, ability to right click on a given planet and select "Go to Planet." This will take to to the system map with the planet highlighted.

Pretty please?

[Baron Munchausen]

Speaking of combat, there's a simple (and logical) feature of most games which the SE series has never had. Variable damage. If your weapon hits it always does the same damage. This is a bit odd. Can't you get a 'near miss' where your missile explodes near but not near enough? Can't you have a beam hit but not stay on target long enough to do full damage? Maybe MOO went a bit far with such widely variable maage for all weapons, but there really ought to be some sort of fluctuation in damage in SE combat, even if it's just a random chance for an occasional near miss. On the flip-side of course, there are also things called 'critical hits' in many other games. This would also be a nice feature for SE to have.

If we had a user controllable (setting in the text files) chance for both 'near miss' doing half damage and 'critical hit' doing double or quadrupal damage we could add a very nice element of unpredicability to combat. Ship could occasionally do surprising damage, or survive much more damage than expected, as happens in real life.

This could be done with SE IV right now, let alone in SE V.

[ March 07, 2003, 19:21: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[ts22]

1. One feature that I would love to see is a way to implement 2 ways to enter a system. The first is via the wormhole (ie SEIV) and the second could be through a slower more direct path which ignores the wormhole. I haven't played Moo3 but I think it institutes ship travel like that. Anyway, I think it is a good idea b/c it still enables you to attack an enemy homeworld that has a well defended wormhole. The cost, of course, is that it will take you much longer to get to the enemy homeworld without using a wormhole.
2. Would love to be able to add more then 20 races in the next game.
3. How about being able to set pre-game racial enemies, etc.
Maybe this has been mentioned, maybe not. Just my 2 cents...

[Ragnarok]

I like that idea Baron. Someone, but I forget who mentioned this before. Right now the damage system is set, if you hit it does whatever damage at that range.
Such as, for example: 80 80 80 70 70 60 0 0 0 0 0
The other person that mentioned this said the system could be changed to do this: 80-60 80-60 80-60 70-50 70-50 60-40 40-0 0 0 0 0 0
To me, this would be a good system to use. I give credit for this idea to that one person. Dang memory can't think of who it was though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Sorry whoever you were. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[thorfrog]

How about Palaces.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Ragnarok:
I like that idea Baron. Someone, but I forget who mentioned this before. Right now the damage system is set, if you hit it does whatever damage at that range.
Such as, for example: 80 80 80 70 70 60 0 0 0 0 0
The other person that mentioned this said the system could be changed to do this: 80-60 80-60 80-60 70-50 70-50 60-40 40-0 0 0 0 0 0
To me, this would be a good system to use. I give credit for this idea to that one person. Dang memory can't think of who it was though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Sorry whoever you were. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I mentioned that I emailed that suggestion to MM a week ago or so. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I doubt I was the first person to think of variable damage, but I was the one that posted about it a short while ago. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The critical hits would be another nice addition.

BM:
It would require major rewriting of many code functions to implement such systems, and so it is very unlikely that it would be introduced in SE4, as SE4 seems to be done with patches adding major new features. It better be done for SE5 though, or else a certain game developer is going to get a lot of complaints. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Stone Mill]

Leaders!!!! Ones that improve specific areas of your empire, addding, for example a % bonus. Kinda like an upgraded minister. Or other examples:
- a legendary fleet commander that adds +5%
- Scavenger- ship/fleet needs no maintenance
- Defector Scientist adds +3 empire research
- Hot Rod- commander gets extra movement
- Games comissioner- may upgrade the happiness state of any given planet by 1 each turn.
- Black market contact- random boosts in minerals

You can run wild with this concept! will also add to the roleplaying feel.

Basic % chance per turn of acquiring one (like 05%), may trade for them, or find them (special tech).

Include Facilities that improve your chances or attracting leaders.

This would be Kool!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

[Captain Kwok]

Stone Mill:

The Star Trek mod does have 'Captains' which give various bonuses and things like that.

[Gryphin]

I hate to admit I have never looked at the Star Trek Mod but I'm guessing the "Captains" are small components with various Abilities such as:
Repair, Attack, Deffend, Storage and others?

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by Gryphin:
I hate to admit I have never looked at the Star Trek Mod but I'm guessing the "Captains" are small components with various Abilities such as:
Repair, Attack, Deffend, Storage and others?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You'd be correct, but your first statement causes me great pain http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif !

[Gryphin]

captain,
It is a reflection of my limited mind and newly found self control. I also admit I like to try devloping in a vacume.
Maybe when the Gryphin mod is semi finished.

[Rigelian]

This thread went forum -> private -> back to forum because we thought it would be of general interest..

Rigelian: Posting this as private because it's getting OT for that thread (do you agree?).
Fyron: No, because this is directly related to suggestions for SEV. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">And so it returns.. 8-)

Rigelian: 1) I don't think I understand that distinction between current and base chance; if all the modifiers are additive surely the end result is the same? If that's too simple a question please direct me to a link that explains the mechanics.

Fyron:The base chance to hit is 100%. A 20% bonus makes this base chance 120, a 20% penalty makes is 80. Then, range modifiers are taken into effect, which decrease the base chance to hit by 10% for each square distant. The problem with a multiplicative system is that if you have a lower base chance to hit (such as 50%, as 10% of 50 is 5, so each range of distance would give a 5% penalty in additive terms to the to hit chance), then the range modifiers are much less (half in this instance). MM seems to be of the opinion that it is better for the range modifiers to remain constant, as well as some of the other modifiers.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm, we obviously don't agree on how to interpret something like "range modifiers to remain constant". To be clear, I am advocating a probability-based, multiplicative system across the board, including for range modifiers. So instead of having a 10% penalty per square and applying that in an additive manner, I would have a multiplicative factor by range. Translating the current scheme directly, that would be 1.0 at range 1, 0.9 at range 2 and so on: 0.8, 0.7, 0,6 and so on down to a factor of zero at (max range +1). My argument runs along the lines that in this scheme, the range modifiers are MORE constant, not less. So if the factor for range 6 were 0.5, and the factor for range 7 were 0.4, you would always be 20% less likely to hit at range 7 than range 6.

Let's extend this a little further, because I think this is interesting. This also 'bleeds' into another thread currently running on variable damage. In fact I would not use the scheme above, translated directly from the current additive one, because of course you could never hit at beyond range 10. What you would actually need is some scheme which expressed your relative chance of hitting based on actual range versus maximum range.

Option a) Constant for all weaponry
This would have to replace the 'base chance of 100%' with a factor based on range. That would then be modified, in multiplicative probability fashion of course, by factors like crew quality, ecm, sensors and so on. For a nominal range 10 weapon, you could have a scheme looking like:
Range 1 - base chance = (11-1)/10 = 1.0
Range 2 - base chance = (11-2)/10 = 0.9
..
Range 7 - base chance = (11-7)/10 = 0.4
..
Range 10 - base chance = (11-10)/10 = 0.1

But for a range 5 weapon, the base chance would go 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4. 0.2

Now, the subtle bit about this is that it does eliminate a situation where you can be 5 squares from an enemy and have a ~100% chance of being hit, because you are within his maximum range and the other factors favour the attacker. But if you were 6 squares away your chance would be ZERO. This is precisely the sort of 'edge effect' I was talking about. I did not support this point very well originally, so thanks for disputing my original idea and making me think about this much more deeply 8-)

Option b) - weapons vary in their range profile. This is where we are crossing over into the 'variable damage' thread. This is also where I'm plagiarising Starfire and SFB shamelessly. What we would have here (and this is an increase in complexity, granted) would be a table per weapon of its base 'to hit' chance and damage at each range within the maximum. The hit chance should always 'tail off' towards the maximum range. The damage does not have to. Like missiles in Starfire, or SE4 for that matter; a hit is a hit. Or the old SFB Photons versus Disruptors argument. So some of those very long range energy stream/pulse weapons could have attenuated 'to hit' profiles. Conversely, the base chance to hit for some weapons might be lousy or nil at short range. Run the destroyers in close to the battleships and their guns can't be brought to bear... you can also have some weapons that are inherently more or less accurate than others (analagous to the additive WMG bonus.. but I would spread it out over its optimum range bracket).

Rigelian: 2) I still think it _should_ work as probabilities rather than the abstract additive system. Firstly because expressing the bonuses/penalties in percentage terms implies that, and it is intuitive. Secondly, because it makes it too easy for chances to go 'off scale' to zero or 100 (1 or 99, whatever), given the large numbers flying around. That's what I mean by 'edge effects'; an effect at the limits of a range that is wildly different to that nearer the middle.

Fyron: No, it actually does not imply either system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There's a limit to how far that 'implies' argument can be taken of course, because we are postulating what others, or at least a majority of others, might understand by a 'percentage chance'. But for me, at least, "50% chance" is synonymous with a probability of 0.5. Similarly, I interpret "20% bonus" for a particular factor as meaning "20% more likely with that factor than without it", and hence I would think of that as being 1.2 times the probability. Conversely a 20% penalty would mean (20% less likely with that factor than without it", and hence 0.8 times the probability. As I said above, in probability terms that bonus or penalty always has exactly the same effect.


Fyron: If a ship has many advanced ECM-related components and excellent training and you have no Combat Sensors or training, you should not expect be able to hit them very often.

One of the major problems with a multiplicative system is that it degrades the value of each modifier. If 20% lowered the overall to hit chance after range was taken into effect, it would have nearly no effect at long ranges, but large effect at short ranges. This also has your edge effect problems. Another problem is that you have to set up a complicated system of when each modifier goes into effect in the calculations, which makes it much harder for players to figure out chances to hit on their own, for not that much benefit (as you eliminate one edge effect, but create another).
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Disagree. . As argued above, in probability terms the relative chance of hitting at range X versus range X+1 would always be the same. No edge effect at all. The argument about "when each modifier goes into effect in the calculations" I reject because it depends on using a mixture of addition and multiplication. Both operations are associative and commutative in themselves;

a + b + c = c + b + a = (a + b) + c = a + (b + c)
a * b * c = c * b * a = (a * b) * c = a * (b * c)
BUT
(a + b) * c != a + (b * c)

In fact the current system has mixed the operations; in that we have a series of additive operations, resulting in a number. That number is then divided by 100 to give a probability. I'm advocating no additives at all, but multiplication for all these calculations.

Rigelian: 3) In terms of additive values making sense. Part of the problem there is again that a percentage implies a proportion. For example take maintenance reduction. I know how this works, but in my Last game I had to explain to an (experienced and pretty good) ally why it was so critical to take maximum. He had assumed, quite reasonably, that a 20% reduction meant just that; a reduction from the base, not a 20-point reduction from the 25% default. Now I agree that here the calculation makes perfect sense, but it's not intuitive. If you look at Construction rate or resource production for example it works in precisely the intuitive manner - a percentage, multiplied bonus on the base amount.

Fyron: Actually, no. The construction bonuses are additive too. Take Hardy Industrialists and 120 Const. Apt. That gives you a 45% bonus to planetary SY rates, which is definitely additive. The pop modifiers are also added to this bonus amouny.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I stand corrected completely on this one. 8-) As someone who habitually makes use of that particular nice little additive modifier, I am hoist on my own petard now... but in the interests of consistency I guess I would have to swallow that if we went multiplicative...

Rigelian: I'd be really interested to find out if machine limitations led Malfador to go with addititive and the corresponding integer math; I guess we will find out with SEV.
Fyron: You could always email MM asking about this. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think I did, when I first downloaded the SE4 demo, a long while back now. I've had an enforced 1 year break from SE4, so the talk of SEV had not even begun at that stage. Part of the reason I suspected machine limitations/unacceptable overhead of floating-point calculations was that large battles can take so long to calculate as it is, on a lower-spec machine.

This grew to a real beast of a posting, apologies to anyone who made it down here...

[Fyron]

The additive system allows for more bonuses and penalties to be applied at the same time without making the mathematics unnecessarily complex.

The percentage to hit is indeed a probability, but the method of acheiving the final probability currently used in SE4 allows for more flexibility and more options.

Hmm, we obviously don't agree on how to interpret something like "range modifiers to remain constant". To be clear, I am advocating a probability-based, multiplicative system across the board, including for range modifiers. So instead of having a 10% penalty per square and applying that in an additive manner, I would have a multiplicative factor by range. Translating the current scheme directly, that would be 1.0 at range 1, 0.9 at range 2 and so on: 0.8, 0.7, 0,6 and so on down to a factor of zero at (max range +1). My argument runs along the lines that in this scheme, the range modifiers are MORE constant, not less. So if the factor for range 6 were 0.5, and the factor for range 7 were 0.4, you would always be 20% less likely to hit at range 7 than range 6.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Your system makes all bonuses/penalties have less effect at long range than they do at short range though. A 20% penalty to hit from the enemy having ECM I currently gives you a to hit chance of 80%, modified by range. In your system, you get to hit chances like this with a range 10 weapon:

range 1: 1.0 * .80 = .80
range 2: 0.9 * .80 = .72
range 3: 0.8 * .80 = .64
range 4: 0.7 * .80 = .56
range 5: 0.6 * .80 = .48
range 6: 0.5 * .80 = .40
range 7: 0.4 * .80 = .32

So, at range 1, the ECM provides a 20% to hit penalty (from 100% to 80%). At range 5, it provides only 12% to hit penalty (from 60% to 48%). Your system makes the ECM less effective at longer ranges, which does not make any sense (being counter-intuitive and all). The same thing applies to all other modifers too. They are not supposed to provide variable bonuses, but constant bonuses.

There's a limit to how far that 'implies' argument can be taken of course, because we are postulating what others, or at least a majority of others, might understand by a 'percentage chance'. But for me, at least, "50% chance" is synonymous with a probability of 0.5. Similarly, I interpret "20% bonus" for a particular factor as meaning "20% more likely with that factor than without it", and hence I would think of that as being 1.2 times the probability. Conversely a 20% penalty would mean (20% less likely with that factor than without it", and hence 0.8 times the probability. As I said above, in probability terms that bonus or penalty always has exactly the same effect.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This requires that the to hit modifiers be very strictly limited to only a few input values, instead of all possible modifiers just being added to the to hit chance. It also unnecessarily complicates the calculations, while granting counter-intuitive effects.

Disagree. . As argued above, in probability terms the relative chance of hitting at range X versus range X+1 would always be the same. No edge effect at all. The argument about "when each modifier goes into effect in the calculations" I reject because it depends on using a mixture of addition and multiplication. Both operations are associative and commutative in themselves;

a + b + c = c + b + a = (a + b) + c = a + (b + c)
a * b * c = c * b * a = (a * b) * c = a * (b * c)
BUT
(a + b) * c != a + (b * c)

In fact the current system has mixed the operations; in that we have a series of additive operations, resulting in a number. That number is then divided by 100 to give a probability. I'm advocating no additives at all, but multiplication for all these calculations.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I know how algebra works...

Converting a percentage to a decimal probability value is completely irrelevant to this argument. That one operation of division in no way makes the se4 system have mixed operations. All chances to hit are added, there is no multiplication in them.

Part of the reason I suspected machine limitations/unacceptable overhead of floating-point calculations was that large battles can take so long to calculate as it is, on a lower-spec machine. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Only if you use unnecessarily large floating point variables. With the to hit chances, you really only need them to have 4 digits, the 1 place and 3 decimals. Any more does not have a significant effect with rounding errors on the calculations. These variables are not much larger than the integer variables, as they can also get 4 digits in them. Both require negative input values, so that balances out in the memory size of the variables.

[Fyron]

Also, how would you propose to implement both ECM and Combat Sensors? Which gets priority? Say both have a 20% modifier. Base chance to hit is, say, 80%.

Do CS first, then ECM (the other way gets the saem answer):
.80 * 1.2 = .96
.96 * .80 = .768

With either method, the 20% bonus and 20% penalty do not cancel each other, and you are left with an overall penalty to hit, even though you have the same power of ECM and CS. You would have to very carefully calculate the values of ECM and CS to make sure that they actually cancel each other, and not end up with stupid results like getting an overall to hit penalty. Or, you have to add the .2 and -.2 to the base 1.0 modifier, which results in using additive properties again. The current SE4 system does not have any of these problems. They become more severe when you start adding even more factors to the calculation (various armors, training, racial bonuses, facility bonuses, etc.)

[Stone Mill]

Originally posted by Kwok: The Star Trek mod does have 'Captains' which give various bonuses and things like that.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I checked out the site (nice!) and I'm eager to heve a look. I had no idea. Pardon my ignorance. I hope this does roll forward into SEV.

[Saarud]

Malfador has produced the best Space strategy game ever (SEIV) and I am sure they could do a great planet base strategy game kinda like Smac or EOFS (Empire of the fading suns). What does this has to do with SEV you might ask yourself.... well I was thinking that it would be really fun to combine such game with SEV into one. And since I still want SEV to be a Space Empire game that SMACalike game should be a seperate game but fully linkable with SEV. It might be a micomanagement hell but I am sure I am not the only one that enjoys that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Also Malfador has come up with great solutions in SEIV to reduce the micromangement so I guess they could do so as well in this.

[Rigelian]

Your system makes all bonuses/penalties have less effect at long range than they do at short range though. A 20% penalty to hit from the enemy having ECM I currently gives you a to hit chance of 80%, modified by range. In your system, you get to hit chances like this with a range 10 weapon:

range 1: 1.0 * .80 = .80
range 2: 0.9 * .80 = .72
range 3: 0.8 * .80 = .64
range 4: 0.7 * .80 = .56
range 5: 0.6 * .80 = .48
range 6: 0.5 * .80 = .40
range 7: 0.4 * .80 = .32

So, at range 1, the ECM provides a 20% to hit penalty (from 100% to 80%). At range 5, it provides only 12% to hit penalty (from 60% to 48%). Your system makes the ECM less effective at longer ranges, which does not make any sense (being counter-intuitive and all). The same thing applies to all other modifers too. They are not supposed to provide variable bonuses, but constant bonuses.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is the absolute heart of the disagreement here. Because I regard that effectiveness as being exactly the same _relative_ chances to hit with or without ECM.
So at range 1, if I fit ECM to my ship the enemies chance of hitting me is 0.8 times what it was...(80% / 100% )
At range 5 the enemies chance of hitting me is 0.8 times what it was... (48% / 60% )
At range X ... and so on.

You see the result as different because you are subtracting the percentages, and I think that is incorrect.


This requires that the to hit modifiers be very strictly limited to only a few input values, instead of all possible modifiers just being added to the to hit chance. It also unnecessarily complicates the calculations, while granting counter-intuitive effects.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But what do you think of the idea of a 'to hit' chart then? Base chance to hit depends on range _and_ weapon, all modifiers to that based on multiplicative maths.


I know how algebra works...

Converting a percentage to a decimal probability value is completely irrelevant to this argument. That one operation of division in no way makes the se4 system have mixed operations. All chances to hit are added, there is no multiplication in them.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No offence intended, and I had assumed you did. I only decided to define my terms when we moved this back to the public forum. I disagree on the relevance because a percentage and a decimal probability are synonymous in my view, and this implies that percentages should never be added, only multiplied.


Also, how would you propose to implement both ECM and Combat Sensors? Which gets priority? Say both have a 20% modifier. Base chance to hit is, say, 80%.

Do CS first, then ECM (the other way gets the saem answer):
.80 * 1.2 = .96
.96 * .80 = .768

With either method, the 20% bonus and 20% penalty do not cancel each other, and you are left with an overall penalty to hit, even though you have the same power of ECM and CS. You would have to very carefully calculate the values of ECM and CS to make sure that they actually cancel each other, and not end up with stupid results like getting an overall to hit penalty. Or, you have to add the .2 and -.2 to the base 1.0 modifier, which results in using additive properties again. The current SE4 system does not have any of these problems. They become more severe when you start adding even more factors to the calculation (various armors, training, racial bonuses, facility bonuses, etc.)

The additive system allows for more bonuses and penalties to be applied at the same time without making the mathematics unnecessarily complex.

The percentage to hit is indeed a probability, but the method of acheiving the final probability currently used in SE4 allows for more flexibility and more options.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I would implement them exactly as you have calculated, because I don't regard that as a stupid result, but a correct one. But I completely agree that the vast majority of people would not find that intuitive, and would expect a 20% bonus to cancel a 20% penalty. But ask the majority of people what 80% of 120% is and I suggest that they would get it wrong. That is, I guess, sufficient argument when we are talking about a game, not putting people on Mars here..

Agreeing to disagree on the additive modifiers then, what about 'to hit' charts? Base chance to hit depends on range _and_ weapon, all modifiers to that based on (multiplicative/additive) maths. I'd be interested in your views on that, because whether you add or multiply there is a huge 'edge effect' at maximum range with standard 10% penalty per square.

Rigelian

[steveo]

An API for reading game files and producing .plr files.

There are times when I'm travelling that I wish I could create a turn from a web browser on a public machine. The interface could be fairly simple, just showing the incoming Messages, what my previous orders were and options to edit the orders. It would be a bit clumsy, especially for dealing with a battle situation, but better than not playing at all.

Also, I saw a request 5 pages back for lists that remember their position. This would be nice and, I imagine, fairly simple to implement.

[Ruatha]

A list of spotted enemy ships, a way to remember their positions.
i e a foreign ship log, so that you can quickly see incursions and the way they are going.

[Ack]

I'm not terribly fond on how planets are arranged on the system maps.

It would be nice if the planets were in a more natural arrangement with each planet having its own elliptical orbit around the star(s) which would be updated each turn. The equations for an elliptical orbit with gravitational effects are not complex if done on a 2d plane.

[Fyron]

This is the absolute heart of the disagreement here. Because I regard that effectiveness as being exactly the same _relative_ chances to hit with or without ECM.
So at range 1, if I fit ECM to my ship the enemies chance of hitting me is 0.8 times what it was...(80% / 100% )
At range 5 the enemies chance of hitting me is 0.8 times what it was... (48% / 60% )
At range X ... and so on.

You see the result as different because you are subtracting the percentages, and I think that is incorrect.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, and your view is counter to how it should work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

But what do you think of the idea of a 'to hit' chart then? Base chance to hit depends on range _and_ weapon, all modifiers to that based on multiplicative maths.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think that is a very, very bad idea. It makes things unnecessarily complicated, for no real gain.

I disagree on the relevance because a percentage and a decimal probability are synonymous in my view, and this implies that percentages should never be added, only multiplied.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Of course they are synonymous. But, there is no reason why probabilities can not be added. There are many benefits to doing so, which I have already enumerated.

I would implement them exactly as you have calculated, because I don't regard that as a stupid result, but a correct one. But I completely agree that the vast majority of people would not find that intuitive, and would expect a 20% bonus to cancel a 20% penalty. But ask the majority of people what 80% of 120% is and I suggest that they would get it wrong. That is, I guess, sufficient argument when we are talking about a game, not putting people on Mars here.. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The point is that (in this example) the level 1 ECM is supposed to cancel out the level 1 CS, and vice versa. There is not supposed to be a net ECM bonus. To get this set up with multiplicative values is next to impossible when you take other modifiers into effect.

Agreeing to disagree on the additive modifiers then, what about 'to hit' charts? Base chance to hit depends on range _and_ weapon, all modifiers to that based on (multiplicative/additive) maths. I'd be interested in your views on that, because whether you add or multiply there is a huge 'edge effect' at maximum range with standard 10% penalty per square.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is highly possible that those edge effects were intended, and not they are not necessarily a bad thing. At extremely long range, you should not have a very good chance to hit.

Overall, the additive system allows for much more flexibility and customization, with much less work involved in getting things balanced properly.

Originally posted by Ack:
I'm not terribly fond on how planets are arranged on the system maps.

It would be nice if the planets were in a more natural arrangement with each planet having its own elliptical orbit around the star(s) which would be updated each turn. The equations for an elliptical orbit with gravitational effects are not complex if done on a 2d plane.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, the equation is not complex. But, the coding gets more complex and requires a lot of CPU clock cycles when you have several thousand (or more) planets on the map to move around each turn.

[Stone Mill]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
A list of spotted enemy ships, a way to remember their positions. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ohhhh, very good! Very good suggestion indeed!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

You know, I find all these abstruse arguments about the proper way to factor ECM and sensors to be much less interesting than the idea of having several different types or categories of sensors and ECM just like cloaking. So you can be really good at one or a few but not necessarily good at ALL of them. Look at what we have today -- Radar (radio wavelengths), microwave (near visible light but not quite), visible light (laser/lidar)... they all behave differently and have their advantages/disadvantages. Maybe there's an advantage to x-ray sensors? Countermeasures for each would be very different, of course. I'm sure that nebulae would have different effects on these various types of sensors, too. That would be a good way to make the game more interesting.

Decoys and chaff would be nice, too. I hope we can get MM to include those in SE V combat.

[ March 08, 2003, 19:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Fyron]

P&N PBW has different types of CS and ECM that add together. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

P&N has differently named components in different tech fields that use the same ECM and sensor values. If they were different they wouldn't stack.

MM has to change the hard code to allow different types of combat sensors and ECM.

[Fyron]

Actually, they are in the same tech field, just different families. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Your proposed system just gets unnecassarily complicated, with little (if any) real benefit. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ March 08, 2003, 19:49: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Rigelian]

Getting near time to put this one to bed (right before me)
But a couple of (quick) rebuttals:

Yes, and your view is counter to how it should work. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You know, that's dangerously close to an 'argument from authority'. See my post about Galileo in the 'Rating Fyron' thread.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

(Re to-hit charts)I think that is a very, very bad idea. It makes things unnecessarily complicated, for no real gain. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I didn't think it was that bad! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif After all, as I said a lot of existing games work that way. In terms of complexity, players already look up and compare damage profiles by range for the weapons - why not an 'accuracy profile'. If nothing else, tell me why having (for example) a minimum range for missiles would be a bad idea.

Of course they are synonymous. But, there is no reason why probabilities can not be added. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you apply a strict mathematical definition of probability there is a very good reason. It's wrong! But the driving factor here is what works best for the game, as you say. I don't think we are any closer to convincing each other though.

The point is that (in this example) the level 1 ECM is supposed to cancel out the level 1 CS, and vice versa. There is not supposed to be a net ECM bonus. To get this set up with multiplicative values is next to impossible when you take others nothing like what you were talking about, and can already be acheived. Set the first ranges to 0, and the missiles will not be launched at those ranges, but will be at the ranges where they have damage values. I know that you can do this with Direct Fire weapons, and it would make sense that it works with seekers too, though I have never tested that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you apply a strict mathematical definition of probability there is a very good reason. It's wrong! But the driving factor here is what works best for the game, as you say. I don't think we are any closer to convincing each other though.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Speaking strictly from pure mathematics, maybe. But this is more of a reality thing, and not theoretical mathematics. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

That comes down to the original design for the game, on which topic I'm quite prepared to defer...to an argument from authority <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Bah. As I already stated, arguments from authority do not apply to the game (except maybe if you are arguing with the game designer, but that is still stretching the argument from authority definition very, very far).

But - when I was arguing about edge effects at maximum weapons range, I was actually agreeing with your second point! You can go from 70% chance to hit at range 4 to 0% chance to hit at range 5... I wanted to express the chance to hit as a factor of actual range versus maximum range, so it would tail off more gradually.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now this is different than what you have been saying before... but, consider that the maximum range is the range until the weapon dissipates (for an energy weapon, at any rate) so much that there is not enough energy to cause significant damage. So, it doesn't matter if you can hit them, if the weapon is no more powerful than a laser pen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Why not simply have bonuses multiply and penalties divide?

So X% chance times 1.2 (+20%) sensor bonus, divided by 1.2 (+20%) ECM penalty = X% again.
No matter what X is. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Because that limits you to having only 2 bonuses. Or, you have to limit them to 1 of 2 categories that add together to get the multiplicative value. Which again, is more limiting than the current system. Also, what is 1.0 / 1.2? 0.833. Now, the 20% ECM penalty has dropped to 16.7% (or .167).

[ March 09, 2003, 01:38: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Because that limits you to having only 2 bonuses. Or, you have to limit them to 1 of 2 categories that add together to get the multiplicative value. Which again, is more limiting than the current system. Also, what is 1.0 / 1.2? 0.833. Now, the 20% ECM penalty has dropped to 16.7% (or .167).<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">What are you talking about?
If you want many bonuses and penalties, you just keep multiplying or dividing. I don't see the problem here.

And, come on now. You wanted the so called "20% ECM" description to mean that it cancels a "20% CS"
Now you're complaining that the effect isn't exactly 20% when the combat sensors are not involved?
Diminishing returns are part of the point of using multiplication!

[Fyron]

What are you talking about?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am talking about an example where the CS I and ECM I were supposed to cancel each other out.

If you want many bonuses and penalties, you just keep multiplying or dividing. I don't see the problem here.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The problem is that you get unpredictable results doing this. It creates many more complications than the few "problems" it solves.

And, come on now. You wanted the so called "20% ECM" description to mean that it cancels a "20% CS"
Now you're complaining that the effect isn't exactly 20% when the combat sensors are not involved?
Diminishing returns are part of the point of using multiplication! <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">My point was that using multiplication is not that great of an idea. With your system, ECM does less than it should when there is no CS component.

[Me Loonn]

Ok ok, here is me 2 cents worth for SE5 :

*MODDING* - The same way as they did it in i-war2-EoC: All mods are zipped (with the corrtect paths in them) and will override the base game files (ONLY if they exist in the zip) and the zips are all placed in se5/mods subdir. Ingame then you choose just by clicking those mods that you want to turn them on.

*ORDERS* - (Re)make order queueing: All orders (say, for a ship) can be handeled same way as facilities in contruction queues; using mouse you can move orders up/down, replace or remove them. ALOT easier than clicking cancel and doing ALL those 20+ orders AGAIN due misclick on you minelayer...

[Suicide Junkie]

Fyron,
Its not unpredictable. If it were, then you'd get a different answer each time you did the math.
It may not be blatantly obvious, but it is quite simple.

"ECM does less than it should when there is no CS component."
Bah, Fyron.
An ECM-50 device (50% defense bonus) under this system will halve your chance of being hit.

It will turn a 20% into 10%, and an 80% into 40%. You take (statistically) half the damage during combat. That is the way it is supposed to work.

[ March 09, 2003, 17:37: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Fyron]

*MODDING* - The same way as they did it in i-war2-EoC: All mods are zipped (with the corrtect paths in them) and will override the base game files (ONLY if they exist in the zip) and the zips are all placed in se5/mods subdir. Ingame then you choose just by clicking those mods that you want to turn them on.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Zipping them is overkill. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You can already place the mods into a Mods subfolder if you want. You just have to make sure to include that in the Path.txt. An in-game option to select the mod would be nice though.

Fyron,
Its not unpredictable. If it were, then you'd get a different answer each time you did the math.
It may not be blatantly obvious, but it is quite simple.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is unpredictable at the modding stage. You have no idea what other types of bonuses a ship is going to have when you design the values of the ECM components, for example. Sure, you can guess, but you end up with different levels of effects with your proposed system depending on what else is affecting the ships. This is what makes it essentially unpredictable.

"ECM does less than it should when there is no CS component."
Bah, Fyron.
An ECM-50 device (50% defense bonus) under this system will halve your chance of being hit.

It will turn a 20% into 10%, and an 80% into 40%. You take (statistically) half the damage during combat. That is the way it is supposed to work.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If there was only one or two things that modify your to hit chances, then sure. But, there are many, many things that go into the calculations, which make your proposed system not a good one to use. That statement was made under the assumption that you did not forget about my previous post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif With your system, a 20% ECM that cancels a 20% CS only gives 17% defense when there is no CS on the ship. When there are other modifiers in play, it will get even messier.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
It is unpredictable at the modding stage. You have no idea what other types of bonuses a ship is going to have when you design the values of the ECM components, for example. Sure, you can guess, but you end up with different levels of effects with your proposed system depending on what else is affecting the ships. This is what makes it essentially unpredictable.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Um, Fyron, it's not quite so unpredictable as you think. As SJ said, an ECM-50% will halve your chance of getting hit. Regardless of any other factors. Period. If you had a 50% chance to get hit, it would drop to 25%. If you had a 10% chance to get hit, it would drop to 5%. And a CS-200% would either double your chance of hitting or halve your chance of missing (there is a difference, read the Stars! manual http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ), regardless of any other factors. How is that any more unpredictable than the current system, where a 40% to-hit bonus could be a big boon (if your tohit is 10%) or useless (if you have a Religious Talisman)?

More ideas...

Resource converters that can only convert specific types of resources, so you could have a "Radioactives Denaturing Facility" which converts radioactives into ordinary minerals but won't work at all on minerals or organics... and why not treat population as a resource for this purpose, so you could have a "Soylent Green Processing Plant" which converts people into organics (or minerals or energy or whatever your race is made of), but at a cost of unrest? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Racial traits that have more than one effect on the game, and racial traits that have a certain effect a specific ability or family of components/facilities/etc. without having to make duplicate entries for them - so I could create a "Natural Merchants" trait that not only eliminated the need for spaceports but doubled the carrying capacity of cargo modules, or a "Regenerating Shields" trait like in Stars! - all shields are 50% stronger and regenerate 10% per round, but internal components and armor have only 65% the normal hitpoints. (slightly modified from Stars! since Stars! treats armor differently)

[Fyron]

Um, Fyron, it's not quite so unpredictable as you think. As SJ said, an ECM-50% will halve your chance of getting hit. Regardless of any other factors. Period. If you had a 50% chance to get hit, it would drop to 25%. If you had a 10% chance to get hit, it would drop to 5%. And a CS-200% would either double your chance of hitting or halve your chance of missing (there is a difference, read the Stars! manual ), regardless of any other factors. How is that any more unpredictable than the current system, where a 40% to-hit bonus could be a big boon (if your tohit is 10%) or useless (if you have a Religious Talisman)?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Did you read the rest of my Posts? I said it becomes unpredictable when you have more than just CS and ECM affecting to hit chances. Then, I went on to do some math to show that the ECM has a different level of effect when the attacker has CS and when the attacker does not have CS. Now, add 10 other factors into the calculations, and they get extremely messy, with not enough net gain to justify it.

[Baron Munchausen]

Orders for ships: How about an editable order sequence like Stars! -- That is the one feature of the game that I really liked. You could create a complete sequence of actions and 'apply' them to any given ship. It would be really great to be able to tell a transport in SE to go to here, pick up exactly this many mines/sats/troops, go to here, drop this many mines/sats/troops, etc. You could hve one transport handling many types of cargo at once instead of crudely picking up all it can carry of ONE cargo type and dumping all it carries of that ONE cargo type. This degree of automation would reduce 'micro-management' dramatically in SE V.

Resources: You know, the 'Value Improvement Plant' strikes me as stupid and I've modded my SE IV to have seperate facilities to improve each resource. I put them in the upper three levels for each resource extraction field since the Robotoid Factory is always a better choice than any of the specialized facilities, and it actually makes sense to combine those abilities since automation can improve all forms of production/harvesting.

ConVersion could logically be split up as well, but the hardcode would have to be changed to allow it. There are lots of good applications, too. Organic races ought to be able to convert organics to minerals early on, for example. Call it 'bio-mining' where they have the plants extract the minerals from the soil and then harvst and refine them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Other types of conVersion should be very rare and difficult. Converting anything to radioactives, for example.

As for 'Soylent Green'... that's an 'ethical' thing. There ought to be a racial trait, call it 'Xenophage', where your race regards other races as food and is willing to eat them. This would provide extra food when you capture alien populations (boosting population growth) but would make most other races hate you and affect diplomatic relations very badly. Resistance on conquered worlds would logically be much more persistent and desperate, too. I suppose you could logically let these races have a special facility to convert population to organics to represent other uses of the corpses. We use 'everything but the squeal' with pigs, as they say. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

It has been asked more than once in the beta forums why the 'advanced storage' trait doesn't affect ship cargo like it does planet cargo. Keep asking. MM will notice sooner or later.

As for regenerating shields, I was thinking that Temporal races need some defense advantage. Self-regenerating shields would be a good one for them. Shields normally regenerate after combat anyway. It makes sense for time manipulation to let you get regeneration in combat more easily than other races. Give them a same sized shield generator that also does regeneration. No need for extra component.

[ March 10, 2003, 00:38: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Then, I went on to do some math to show that the ECM has a different level of effect when the attacker has CS and when the attacker does not have CS. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">And what we are saying is that it has THE EXACT SAME effect when the attacker has CS and when the attacker does not have CS.
"It halves (quarters/4-5ths/etc) the to hit chance" Is that so hard?

What you are saying is that the absolute chance to hit goes down by a varying amount. Very true, but a constant absolute change means that the real effect of the bonus varies depending on the situation.

---

Examples:
Base to-hit chance = 100%
ECM bonus: 50%
Additive : 100-50 = 50% chance. Your ship survives twice as long.
Multiplying: 100*.5 = 50% chance. Your ship survives twice as long.

Base to-hit chance = 50%
ECM bonus: 50%
Additive : 50-50 = 0% chance. Your ship survives FOREVER.
Multiplying: 50*.5 = 25% chance. Your ship survives twice as long.

When adding multipliers, that ECM-50 changed from a decent defense to an invulnerability device.
When multiplying, the effect on the combat was the same independent of the base chance.

Baron Munchausen:
Lots of good stuff there, but I'm sure the xenophages would be horrible to implement.
Perhaps it would be better to have a simple
"each turn, mixed populations change into race's population (max 10M converted per turn)"
and
"Reproduction rate doubles when mixed populations are present"

[ March 10, 2003, 00:03: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Me Loonn]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Zipping them is overkill. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You can already place the mods into a Mods subfolder if you want. You just have to make sure to include that in the Path.txt. An in-game option to select the mod would be nice though.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm... ?
You ever played independence war 2 WITH few dozen mods ? You'll be supprised how much less messy it is with all different mods in self contained zips instead like in the current se4g.

[Andrés]

It can't be less messy than launching SE4 with the modlauncher program.
The only point of zipping them would be to save disk space.
Then the modlauncher would have to unzip the mod before playing, or worse the game itself would need to search files inside the zip adding an unnecessary delay.

[Me Loonn]

*AUTOROUTING* - New autorouting choises for ships, atleast "nearist waypoint"-option (and should be able to made default from Empire options, btw http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif ), or even like in Stars!-game, autorouting to a planet of your choise - whitch autoroutes all ships with route order again next round and so on.

[3HattedDragon]

Originally posted by Andr&eacutes Lescano:
It can't be less messy than launching SE4 with the modlauncher program.
The only point of zipping them would be to save disk space.
Then the modlauncher would have to unzip the mod before playing, or worse the game itself would need to search files inside the zip adding an unnecessary delay.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I can imagine additional benefits to having mods in a zip file.

Instead of specifying a single directory in paths.txt, your could specify a comma-separated list of zip files that would all be loaded (combined) at runtime. If the same file exists in multiple mods, the one with higher priority would be picked (where priority is defined by the order of the list). This would allow the creation of 'base' mods (like image mods) to be easily used with other mods. Currently this requires manually copying files from one directory to another.

Of course, this really doesn't require zip files, the paths.txt file could just as easily have a comma-separated list of directories.

[Suicide Junkie]

FYI: The Imagemod requires no copying.
It is designed to be able to replace the base files without affecting any games.
You install it, and you're done; it will be used by any mod that calls for it.

Besides, due to the interconnectedness of the files, (and balance issues, of course) there are few mods that are actually compatible in that way)

[ March 10, 2003, 12:37: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Foreman]

I'd wanna to see these features in SE5:

- Saving/reloading new game options, or restart game with same option button.

- Adjustable starting technology level in new game options, not only the disable/enable choice.

- Moddable tech level cost function, maybe:
Tech Level Cost Low = 5000 12000 20000 35000 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tech Level Cost Normal = 10000 24000 40000 70000 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tech Level Cost High = 20000 72000 160000 350000 0 0 0 0 0 0
Just like the weapons range-damage list.

- Reduce technology poverty gap between strong and weak empires. Maybe a naturally 3% science pts trade between all empires, or exponentially growing tech cost in overall like Civ series, or labs in same system have decayed efficient as their number grows like Imperialism Plus.

- Slow down technology advancement, or at least automatically/freely component upgrade of same family. I don't want to see my ship on battle carrying PPB-II when I already developed PPB-V.

- Seperate spaceyard queue and planet facility queue like MOO3. Players may assign some spaceyards to local ministers (maybe with abilities/skills), and ask them to build certain type of ship series.

- A campaign editor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

- Better troop combat. Maybe a small battlefield of chess size board.

- Different chasis classes that belong to different technology tree.

- Improvement of colony modeling. Europa Universalis would be a good reference - some planets are just not worth to be developed, while some are critical and must be managed carefully. Make the planet environment and population more important.

[ March 13, 2003, 07:23: Message edited by: Foreman ]

[Stone Mill]

Make empire experience points somewhat meaningful!

Perhaps add a very small amount of additional racial points to spend for every "x" points.

Also, the option to disable it in settings so players don't exploit it in multiplayer games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Jmenschenfresser]

I've pretty muched stopped playing SE4...(it sounds strange to even write)...and I feel the need to write a short diddy about what will bring me back for part 5.

Combat. Combat plain and simple.

Even with all the tech, the weapons, ship sizes, offensive and defensive components, space combat in SE4 feels like salvos with nuclear weapons. Many times the first strike wins the battle. I am not sure how it came to be, but in spite of all the gadgets, combat is won before it begins. By that I mean, combat starts with your first spent research point. By the time your ships face-off, the script is largely written. There is little room for tactics. Perhaps the present system would be sufficient if two humans (beyond the scope of hotseat) could go toe to toe in tactical combat mode. Dunno.

That being said here's what I suggest:

-Retreat option (it's been suggested a billion times.
-Expanded individual ship settings to allow in combat tweaking for special roles. (In other words, treat ships more like the large complex machines they are. Perhaps power levels effecting movement, weapon strength & shield strength)
-Add reality to ship movement (no abrupt u-turns, etc)
-Location placement for weapons and armor (i.e. if you unwisely placed all your PPBs forward, you won't be able to fire at anything aft.)
-Make damage location specific.
-Ship statistics which would effect performance...readiness, morale, supply, etc.
-Human on human tactical combat (although I am at a loss to suggest how it should be done)
-Small scale phenomenon to spice up the combat playing field (i.e. Planetary gravity, atmosphere, asteroids, blah blah blah.)
-Friendly ships should be able to occupy the same square. Perhaps even non-friendly, but I haven't thought through that one yet.

As far as ground combat goes...some could be added, but I think it could still be kept at a simulated state like it is. Perhaps it could be done with a map and orders, allowing the player to drop the troops, after which they attack by themselves. Perhaps it would be fun to also have an extraction option to save their lives if they start to lose.

I realize SE4 isn't solely a space combat sim, but to me half the fun of building and researching kick *** armadas would be to see them tested under a combat system allowing tactical and operational depth.

Maybe turn based tactical combat between humans would be more viable under a simulaneous move system, rather than U-GO-I-GO. Not necessarily real-time, which would turn it into a click fest, but an order phase where both players essentially pre-move their pieces. Then both sides moves are executed simultaneously. Would be interesting if you wanted Frigate A to move forward 5 squares and then fire at the closest ship, but wouldn't know exactly which ship would be the closest.

Perhaps I am talking about another game as yet undeveloped...

[Suicide Junkie]

- Slow down technology advancement, or at least automatically/freely component upgrade of same family. I don't want to see my ship on battle carrying PPB-II when I already developed PPB-V.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That would be like a battleship getting automatic upgrades from 14" main guns to 16" main guns while cruising solo on the open sea.

You should alter your strategies, and regularily swap out the front-line warships with the brand new ships, and retrofit the old ones.
Another good option is to include a SpaceYardShip in with your fleets, so you can do on-the-spot retrofits.
If you're just swapping out 2 or 3 guns, that can be done easily.

Even with all the tech, the weapons, ship sizes, offensive and defensive components, space combat in SE4 feels like salvos with nuclear weapons. Many times the first strike wins the battle. I am not sure how it came to be, but in spite of all the gadgets, combat is won before it begins.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Have you tried any mods to reduce damage (and thus the advantage of first-strike?)
The B5 and Trek Mods should give you a good, complex battle, too:
With leaky armor and shields, everyone takes some amount of permanent damage from each hit.
Plus, firing until the ship is vaporized will mean a lot of wasted firepower into a hunk of scrap armor with perhaps only a single tiny weapon still active.
If your strategy tells the ship to switch targets too early, though, you could be leaving a deadly opponent firing broadsides into your fleet.

Playing a Pirate or Nomadic race in P&N might be good for you, too. Fleets remain small, tactical combat lets you run complex combat strategies, and there is always a hint of danger as you hide from the large AI fleets and try to sneak in and ambush the small convoys.

[ March 13, 2003, 16:57: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Dralasite]

This may have been said, but I know that AI is a big issue in seiv that people want changed. I'd suggest that the AI in the released game can just be so-so, as long as you have good AI modding tools. Of course, this might be as difficult as building a good AI.