SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Phoenix-D]

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

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

[thorfrog]

AgentZero said:

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

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

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

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

[Fyron]

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

[Atrocities]

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

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

[Atrocities]

Something for Space Empires VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just my two cents worth.

[Ironmanbc]

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


The game is to beat the CR*P out of the other players and make your mark as #1 right.

[Atrocities]

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

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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


The game is to beat the CR*P out of the other players and make your mark as #1 right.

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

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

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

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

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