Things we'd like to see in the next patch

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by jimbob:

2) the introduction of Plug & Play components. That's right, introduce a component that is essentially a socket, into which you can plug specially designed components of the correct size. Then players can trade individual pluggable components to one another (or purchase with cash on the open market) that can then be integrated onto any ship with the correct socket size/type.
While this would require huge amounts of hard code change, just think of the possibilities!

The original (1977) Version of Starfire had this. You put whatever letter represented your weapon inside [] on the control sheet. It cost extra, but then you could swap out weapons at no cost. That Version really had no campaign (well the "Starfire III: Empires" expansion, but not until 1980), just suggestions for how one might be implimented, but IIRC that is where the optional rule for this was, and it suggested that you could build the weapons separately and store them at planets. One thing we talked about doing was using Stellar Conquest as a strategic module for Starfire, converting each Stellar Conquest IU into some number of Starfiire McR, and otherwise following the suggested rules from the back of the STarfire manual. We never got around to trying it, though.

[geoschmo]

You can give a resupply facility a negative amount of resource production. It does work. It's like maintenance for facilities. There owuld be a couple of wierd things though. If you can get past them though it will approximate what you are wanting I guess.

First of all, it would cost you resources every turn the resupply facility is in operation, not just when ships are refueling. And it wouldn't cost you any more to refuel a bunch of ships than it would to refuel one, so it wouldn't be a true "resources to supply" converter.

Secondly in a regular infinite resource game it would be cheaper to put a resupply depot on a low resource world than on a high resources one. Just as a resource extractor produces less on a low resource world, the negative production on the facility would be factored by the value of the planet. On a planet with all zeros it would be free to operate.

Thirdly in a limited resource game, the facility would actually improve the value of the planet it was on, just like a value improvement plant. But it would work on a fixed rate instead of a percentage like a value improvement plant does.

Geoschmo

[Krsqk]

You could give it the Solar Resource Generation ability with a negative number--but then binary and trinary star systems pay more.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
You can give a resupply facility a negative amount of resource production. It does work. It's like maintenance for facilities. There owuld be a couple of wierd things though. If you can get past them though it will approximate what you are wanting I guess.

First of all, it would cost you resources every turn the resupply facility is in operation, not just when ships are refueling. And it wouldn't cost you any more to refuel a bunch of ships than it would to refuel one, so it wouldn't be a true "resources to supply" converter.

Secondly in a regular infinite resource game it would be cheaper to put a resupply depot on a low resource world than on a high resources one. Just as a resource extractor produces less on a low resource world, the negative production on the facility would be factored by the value of the planet. On a planet with all zeros it would be free to operate.

Thirdly in a limited resource game, the facility would actually improve the value of the planet it was on, just like a value improvement plant. But it would work on a fixed rate instead of a percentage like a value improvement plant does.

Geoschmo

I'd never even considered modding the current game to include paying for supplies... sounds like my initial thought holds true, that it's fairly useless unless resupply depots are changed to produce limited amounts of supply. Which isn't likely to happen as a patch for SE4; but maybe for SE5 (which, if all the way-out ideas on the forum as a whole are implemented, could really be micromanagement hell... but we'd probably all still love it )

[HEMAN]

What i would like to see in the next patch is: (Print out) feature, when i finished setting up a game i would like to see everything on(setup) related to this. this way after playing 500 turns in a certain game, my memory is kinda Blank.

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition #97 Enough...is never enough.

[Elowan]

We all know (most of us - that is) by now -- that SE IV can be a micro-management nightmare.

One of those nightmares was upgrading a facility on a zillion planets. This is a breeze if you click on the Planet icon (upper left) and then click on Upgrade Facilities. Yahoo!

This doesn't help - though - for those inevitable 'lost' planets whom you (the emperor or whatever) has neglected to fill the build queue. Now you have to wade through a zillion planets to find the ones that have some slots open.

If there's a way of showing just the 'open-slot' planets -- I haven't found it yet. But wouldn't it be nice if you could set the list so that only undeveloped or partially undeveloped planets would show up?

Works for me!

[Captain Kwok]

If you select the wrench (constuction queue menu) that lists all the planets - click on the heading "Construction Queue" - that will sort them by alphabetically order showing all the empty queues at the top.