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  #1  
Old January 24th, 2003, 08:44 PM
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Default SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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!

Mephisto: Small edit to Thread Subject

[ May 30, 2004, 17:17: Message edited by: Mephisto ]
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Old January 24th, 2003, 09:04 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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.

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Old January 24th, 2003, 09:07 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

Everything in this Poll:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...3;t=007348;p=5
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Old January 24th, 2003, 09:10 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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.
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  #5  
Old January 24th, 2003, 09:37 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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
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Old January 24th, 2003, 09:42 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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.
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Old January 24th, 2003, 09:47 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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.
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Old January 24th, 2003, 09:56 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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! Even SE4 Gold's "enhanced" sound effects, to be honest, aren't all that great
Some sort of prioritization system on the SitRep (stole that right off MOO3 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
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! "
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"
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
More realistic/sophisticated planetary habitability and sensor models - take a look at http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=4154&group_id=17579 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:
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  #9  
Old January 24th, 2003, 10:14 PM

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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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.

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  #10  
Old January 24th, 2003, 10:22 PM
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Default Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List

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.
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