The forum has slowed down

[capnq]

Well, I read the Forum at least once a day, but I only post if I have something to say.

Here's an idea I had for a PBW game victory condition: "MEE First". You'd win the game by meeting the requirements for the AI to declare you Mega-Evil Empire.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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How about this : what do people think about someone starting up a 'tech council' for an uber-mod.
Such a council would review suggestions for new technologies and then, after balancing, include them into a mod.
This way we could perhaps get a *huge* mod incorporating everything available.
Also, it could be designed in such a way as to allow Users to switch on/off sections of the mod (splitting it up into modular tech areas springs to mind)

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There are only two problems (AFAIK) to creating an Ultimate Mod.

1) Many ideas are mutually exclusive.
Eg. P&N v2 propulsion, and Plain SE4 movement bonuses.
Eg. Shields vs Armor. weaker, stronger, by how much, etc. You can't do both, since players will just use the stronger and ignore the weaker.

2) Everybody has their own view on what is "Ulimate." At the very least you would have a fractured mod, divided up into "Plausible tech", "SF-TV tech" and such. Also, any mod trying to incorporate all reasonably good ideas would be a bloated, 100MB monster and take years to build.

Thus, I believe that there cannot ever be an Ultimate mod. Really Super Great mod, sure, but you can't please everyone. You can't even please one person all the time.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 22 August 2001).]

[Matryx]

I have started a dedicated thread regarding a mod council.
I have also updated it's 'goal' somewhat.
See that post for more details.

SJ. I agree entirely so the council has been clarified somewhat and will be more of a "service" now, where they take peoples ideas and turn them into new mods or incorporate into existing mods.
In doing this, those that are unable to code to save their lives can still get to see their vision of a mod created.

There will still be the occasional large mod, where a themed mod keeps getting added to. But it will be more of a resource for smaller mods.

[mac5732]

There are numerous ideas on the forum for incorporation into the game, but the council would go thru them, see which ones are feasible for patch & mods, put changes to vote of the forum members, then send to MM and modders. This keeps fresh input into the game, keeps interest up, and makes the game better. Some of us are not modders and don't like to tinker with a game but would like to see changes put into the original game for better play. A super Mod, realisticly, is not feasible like SJ stated, but a Better Realistic Mod could be made possible if the council keeps and sorts which ideas to use. To put all ideas into the game, would be an impossible task, but a lot of them could be done if everyone cooperates and a nunber MM could patch into the game itself. I like the concept and idea of the council. Changes could be by majority vote by the council for specific ideas, then to the forum for majority of members, then sent to MM. This would cut down on the number of e-mailes to Aaron & Richard & MM and put foreward and would help with patchs to incorporate that which the majority would like to see...

just some ideas mac

[Antonin]

I'm a relative noob (only 3 mo as a SE4 player), but I check the forum several times a day from work.

I don't post much, but I find the forum to be an excellent resource.

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"Gentlemen, we have nearly a thousand ships waiting to be thrown into the fight at the proper moment to seize control of the Foundation. I say we should change that. I say, throw those thousand onto the board now--against the Mule."
-- Randu of Haven, from "Foundation and Empire," by Isaac Asimov

[DirectorTsaarx]

I'm one of the "veterans" here - started with Space Empires back on SE2, got up to officer rank; but I haven't posted much the Last couple weeks because work has been absolutely overwhelming lately. I finally have a couple hours to spare, so I'm skimming for interesting threads.

BTW - the AI is kicking my butt right now. I went with a cluster quadrant, hard AI & medium bonus, hand-picked the AI races & made sure they'd spent a full 5000 racial points, and ended up one system away from the Ukra-Tal on one side and one system away from the Xi'Chung on the other side. With no colonizable/breathable worlds in "my" systems (other than the 3 homeworlds, of course). It's been rough; the Ukra-Tal actually managed to glass one of my homeworlds. I finally re-colonized and have been (barely) keeping it defended with minefields. But I haven't been able to expand into other systems very much. I did manage to depopulate a Xi'Chung homeworld - one hit from a plague bomb ship, wait a few turns, and bye-bye alien scum. I also invaded a few of the Xi'Chung worlds, but they got glassed a few turns later. Oh well, aliens killing their own people is OK with me.

Enough rambling... time to get back to work.

[Taqwus]

For my part, it's a combination of factors, such as being busier with work (and more drained of energy afterwards. Just finished a coding binge of sorts -- ported some computationally expensive Perl code to ~1800 lines of C++ [ including comments/whitespace... and I comment header files very heavily. Saves time that would otherwise be spent later wondering what the heck a given function does, particularly when it's handed off to other folks to use. ] in 2 nights and a day; a 10x speedup would be really useful to me), and and briefly going on a CM mod frenzy.

And next week I won't be posting much, if at all, since I'll be in San Francisco for a conference.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night