[Baron Munchausen]

Originally Posted by Alikiwi

Just a quick reply, as my question got buried. Yes temperature and gravity may be factored in but we dismissed Radiation as just not necessary and adding too much complexity to it, given numreous other factors being comsidered.
Whilst there will be 'generic' research, factors etc. across the board, there will also be trait and/or race specific things included in the stock game. Remember we will have at least one race that is Nomadic, ie, lives in space not on planets.
Having medical fields that vary due to each and every planet type (likely to be hundreds) is just not practical. Instead of one entry in a file, you'd need hundreds and then you'd need the coding to match it
But there will be virus weapons and infectious weapons....(No, not me, I didn't say that!)

Hm, thats a very interesting idea. But then if theres 15 races (which is expected), then you'd need 15 weapons! That's actually doable but I have my doubts I'd get permission, but I'll try.

Not planet type, species. Each species in the game should have a unique biological ID. What's complicated about that? All you need is a bitfield, code it as a hexidecimal number and it can be put into a text configuration file. Yes, you would need to research medical tech specific to a given race in order to cure their plagues, and yes you would have to research a specific weapon then load that specific weapon to attack a specific race. That's called realism! It might be complicated to setup but no more so than many other options in the game. Using it should not be complicated at all.

But then upgrading your ships should not be complicated either. One of the biggest failings of all 4X games I know of has been the cruddy interface. SE III was actually pretty good for the options it had available. But MM got intimidated by people saying "spreadsheets in space" and started trying to make the games 'look cool' instead of play well. I hope there will not be any ambition to 'look cool' and people will just make the game easy to use -- meaning use well known GUI conventions without trying to jazz them up and make them 'unique'.

How about drop down boxes for all those bioweapon options? As I recall there is an ability in SE5 to make stellar manipulations devices repairable only by spaceyards. (Or was that not actually implemented?) The same thing could be done for the bioweapon options. You can build a launcher into your design and then only set them at a spaceyard. This would keep you from having to refit every time you wanted to use a different weapon, and would be useful for more than bioweapons! With this ability you could finally separate missile launcher tech from missile warhead tech. Launchers could have improvements in speed or capacity or launcher size, warheads in damage amount and/or type. Install a given launcher and then you can select your missile type when a spaceyard is present.