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

Note: Sheesh, I started this yesterday, but SJ beat me to it. Anyway, mine is just a list of the suggestions that I really like, so keep that in mind.

Okay, I've gone through the entire thread, and here's my favourites, edited and rewritten in many cases. I've assumed that it's given that SEV will use a real-time, 3-D, tactical combat system. I've left out "obvious", "too much is never enough" demands like greater modability, eye-candy, better sounds, better AI, better multiplayer support etc., some things into which I might to go into greater detail later and technical, behind-the-scenes stuff.

General Gameplay

1) Diplomacy system with greater granularity, mixing and matching specific conditions and rules, and of course, AIs that can understand and work with such a system. (Puke, Phoenix-D, dumbluck, dogscoff )
2) More realistic / sophisticated and less absolute minefields system, that factors in such things as number of ships moving in the mined sector that turn (small, single ships have a chance of slipping through from pure luck), complex characteristics of mines (instead of just damage) etc. (Pax, Imperator Fyron, LGM, Ed Kolis)
3) More realistic / sophisticated trading system with physical trade routes / ships that need to be defended and is linked to resource procurement even within an empire. (Puke, Slick)
4) Also, trade routes should initially cost resouces to set up and return a profit only over time. (Ed Kolis)
5) The ability to analyze units and facilities for tech, not just ships! (Ed Kolis)
6) Me would like the ability to tow bases in system. (Me Loonn, Ares)
7) Retrofitting should take shipyard capacity so that retrofitting is not a loophole past the capacity limit! (LGM, Erax)
8) Ability to change a race's abilities / characteristics through technology. (Some1, Gryphin, clark)
9) Units and facilities should cost maintenance. (LGM)
10) Realistic implmentation of passive / active cloaking and detection. (orev_saara)

User Interface

1) Ability to use mouse-wheel and move windows within the game, more keyboard support / more hotkeys (Gryphin, Loser, TerranC, Andres)
2) In the Construction Window, ability to right click on a given planet and select "Go to Planet." This will take to to the system map with the planet highlighted. (Stone Mill)
3) A list of spotted enemy ships, a way to remember their positions.
i e a foreign ship log, so that you can quickly see incursions and the way they are going. (Ruatha)
4) Editable / savable/ loadable orders for ships with greater detail and control. (Baron Munchausen, Me Loonn)
5) Queues / lists / reports need more sorting options. (Me Loonn, tesco samoa)
6) Search and replace for queues. (minipol)
7) Be able to give the launch order to planets from the colonies list. (rextorres)
8) Lists / queues / reports should remember their position. (minipol, Imperator Fyron, steveo)
9) Using TAB pages like when clickin planet(detail/facil/cargo/ability) on SECTORS too, when sector has more than one planet or whatnot. (Me Loonn)

Ship Modelling / Mechanics

1) The "Lego" ship design model. (Ed Kolis)
2) Percentage-based cloaking ability depending on many factors including cloak ability, enemy sensor ability, distance, ship size, sector-specific features etc. (dumbluck, Arkcon, Rigelian, jimbob, Ares, LGM)

Combat

1) Randomized damage within a range instead of a fixed number, perhaps influenced by partial successes (the die roll barely made it), critical successes (the die roll succeeded by a large margin) etc. Supplemented perhaps by a critical failure system (the die roll failed dismally, increase reload time for this weapon)? (Krsqk, Imperator Fyron, Baron Munchausen, Ragnarok, Rigelian)
2) Editable, independent damage types, shields only, skips armor, damage only to components with a specific flag etc. Might also be conditional, e.g. if shields, then quad-damage to shields, else normal damage to engines only or whatever. (Ed Kolis, Andres, Krsqk)
3) Damage to fighters should be one-hit, one-kill, instead of having damage spill over to the rest of the stack for normal weapons. (Rigelian)
4) Ability to switch from tactical combat to non-animated strategic combat. (TheBlip, Imperator Fyron)
5) Ability to retreat from combat. (Tenryu, Chronon, Jmenschenfresser, atomannj, Noble713, Magnum357)
6) More variation in the 'hit probability profile' of different weapons. (Rigelian)

Tools / Utilities

1) The ability to easily set the game to run for x turns or until some specified condition is reached. (PsychoTechFreak)
2) The ability to save/reload game settings and to regenerate a map on the first turn if you don't like your starting position. (HEMAN, Gryphin)
3) A scenario editor with ability to support pre-scripted events happening when set conditions are achieved. (BadAxe, pmazolo, Noble713)

[ July 03, 2003, 03:35: Message edited by: deccan ]

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

Some elaborations on the Lego-design model for ships.

I really like this idea. Naturally, it would work best in a 3D, real-time combat system, with limited arcs of fire. A simple way to do this would be like in the MechWarrior game. You have predefined, 3-D mechs (hulls) with predefined component slots. Specific types of components go on specific types of slots. You also need to take into account component tonnage and physical size of the slot. Which component takes damage depends on where you hit the mech and what component is located there.

Perhaps, one way to do this for Space Empires would be to predefine a number of hull types (3-D models with predefined component slots) for each hull size. I believe that the model used in Starfleet Command 3 can be considered as a very simplistic way of doing this.

Some problems that I foresee: however you do it, you'll be deviating from the standard SE totally free-form design philosophy. Some hull types will definitely be superior to others and it would be very difficult to strike a balance amongst the different races. Also, it would take a lot of work to do. I'm willing to live with these limitations, but I'd bet that many are not.

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

Space Travel

This has been mentioned before, but I really dislike the "warp point" travel system used in SEIV. My reasons:

1) One of the most fun aspects of SEIV I believe is that it provides a generic system that players can mod into their favorite SF universes. However the most popular SF universes (Trek, SW etc.) use an FTL travel system. Even in B5 with warp points created by big ships, it takes time for ships to traverse from point to point.

2) There's no sense of "deep space" in SEIV, everything is so ... local. The game doesn't really capture the sense that outer space is really huge compared with the scale of solar systems. I believe that in-system travel should take next to no time at all, while interstellar travel would be very, very slow.

3) Like other posters have said, it eliminates heavy defenses at warp points.

4) If you like, make things more interesting by incorporating MOO3-style starlanes (perhaps stick with the original MOO3 idea that they should only be very slightly more efficient than regular interstellar travel at first and only gradually improve with better navigation infrastructure at both ends of the starlane) and stargates.

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

Miscellaneous

Some relatively simple stuff that I haven't seen other people mention:

1) A better resupplying system. Allow supplies to be transferred between ships the way that cargo is transferred. Make a component (Deep Space Refueling System). Give ships equipped with that component a special command that when turned on will make it automatically top off all other non-resupply ships in its fleet.

2) I don't normally have a problem with abstracting supplies to mean both fuel and ammunition in general. I do have a problem with ships with quantum reactors generating missiles and bombs for ships, so perhaps they should really be broken up into two separate areas.

3) Maybe borrow some ideas from MOO3 for formations. Ships should be assigned positions within a specific formation, say, picket, escort, core, vanguard, rear-guard etc. Each formation savefile should save information on how the ships with different assigned positions should be positioned relative to one another in 3-D.

4) In the Ships / Units list, I really hate seeing ships that I have assigned to fleets appear as individual ships. If I've assigned them to a fleet, I manage the fleet as a whole and hate to have to worry about them as individual ships.

5) Make the entire game play in simultaneous mode only. Eliminate the "immediate" mode (or whatever it's called) entirely.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting, but why?

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting, but why?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think it's the way the game really *ought* to be played. If I play in the "immediate" mode, I can use the attack command on a sector, and if 30 rounds of combat isn't enough, launch enough attack command and so forth with using up movement points. Surely, the designers didn't intend this!</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Surely, they did. Otherwise, it would not have been programmed that way. A lot of people prefer to play the game in Sequential mode instead of Simultaneous. The game caters to both crowds, and is not hurt by it in the slightest.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Warp points are what make the game Space Empires. There is almost no chance of them not being used in SE5.

[ July 03, 2003, 19:54: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

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

I'd like the possibilty to add add-ons like in VGA Planets.
New features (EXE files or DLL files) to the game by indipendant authors.
And then a graphical standard UI to handle it.

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

Custom Unit Types
All of the ship and unit types (ship, base, fighter, satellite, etc.) are really defined by a set of attributes or flags - "can move", "can warp", "can be carried as cargo", "launches in Groups", "consumes supplies just by sitting there" etc. So why not allow modders in SE5 to create their own unit types with whatever combinations they want - a fighter that can warp, a ship that consumes supply every turn, drones that launch in Groups, etc. I can try to draw up a complete list of these abilities and which ones are prerequisites or mutually exclusive...

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Does StarFury use warp points as well, or aren't you allowed to say?

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting, but why?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think it's the way the game really *ought* to be played. If I play in the "immediate" mode, I can use the attack command on a sector, and if 30 rounds of combat isn't enough, launch enough attack command and so forth with using up movement points. Surely, the designers didn't intend this!

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

Leaders

I believe that a good model would be the leaders system in Medieval: Total War. Leaders should have a definite physical presence (as opposed to being an abstract package of game effects as in MOO3). As such they can be killed when the ship / base / planet / ground troop unit / fighter group etc. they are on is destroyed, assassinated, take time to move between locations etc.

There should be no practical limit on the number of leaders per empire, although you might specify that there can only be one "active" leader per ship / base / planet / ground troop unit / fighter group etc., and the rest are only passengers / cargo so their bonuses don't apply.

Leaders should have some basic stats, such as Space Combat Command, Ground Combat Command, Acumen (efficiency at being a bureaucrat), Dread (efficiency of keeping troops and population under control), Loyalty (resistance to being bribed), Toughness (resistance to assassination attempts, personal proficiency in ground combat) etc.

They also have special "Vices & Virtues" that are generated randomly / gained through events and have in-game effects. For example, a leader who you consistently assign to a fighter group and excels at it (wins many battles) will eventually gain an "Expert Pilot" trait, a leader who retreats from combat a few times gets a "Coward" trait, a leader who governs a planet that builds a few large-scale infrastructure projects get the "Master Builder" trait and so on. There should be a maintenance cost for leaders as well that goes up as they become more powerful. Oh, and of course, they can have any kind of special ability you want, example if piloting a cloaked vessel, increase the effective level of cloaking ability by some set amount etc.

You get leaders from random events, by building some special buildings (training academies, universities) that add to your pool of recruitable leaders, popping up from un-led ships / units that excel in combat, by bribing enemy leaders, by capturing enemy leaders and turning them to your side etc.

Each empire should have a number of Posts / titles that it can award to leaders. More Posts / titles can be generated by building special one-per-empire buildings. Example: build a one-per-empire StarFleet Command Headquarters to generate the Fleet Admiral post. Award that post to an existing leader to vastly increase his Space Combat Command ability and so forth. Other Posts / titles can be generated by building special one-per-system or one-per-planet buildings, example, build a System Seat of Government to generate a System Governor post. In general, giving Posts to leaders increases their loyalty. Stripping them of Posts vastly reduces their loyalty. In M:TW you had to physically send an emissary to the leader to strip his titles. I don't believe that this is necessary here, you might make it so that leaders with relatively low loyalties already have a good chance of rebelling if they are stripped of titles, perhaps taking ships, troops or planets with them.

For even more fun, make it so that keeping your Fleet Admiral at StarFleet Command Headquarters gives a slight bonus to all of your deployed fleets while assigning him to one specific fleet gives a vast bonus to that specific fleet alone.

Posts / titles available and the buildings that generate them should be race / empire specific. Also make the ability to attract wandering leaders a race / empire trait.

Finally, should the emperor himself be a physical leader as in M:TW? I don't believe this to be necessary. It made sense in M:TW because of leaders riding into battle, princes as successors and so on, but I don't believe it makes sense in terms of an SE game.

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

I would love to be able to save progress on my turn, open it later, and continue working on it.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Something like this would be great. But it doesn't have to be Part of the Game, just build into the game the ability to let us mod this.

Oh yeah, and let Leaders go Rogue, taking Planets, Ships, or just Troop stacks with them (moddable like everything).

[ July 04, 2003, 03:48: Message edited by: Loser ]

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

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

I WANT TOAST!

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

Woo !
Just figured what might stop retro exploiting.

Make max difference when retroing to 10-15% and not the 50% what it is now.

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

More miscellaneous requests:

1. Make a start game option in which all players' characteristics and traits are hidden from each other.

2. Make sure that the Tech reports correctly remembers all tech levels inferred from scanned ships, facilities seen on planets, spying activities etc.

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

I would like to go through all of the threads and put all of the suggestions into catagories so that Aaron can review them. There are literally a thousand plus suggestions for SEV spread over at least 10 threads in two or more forums catagories and more than one overall forum.

So if you do continue to post suggestions PLEASE put then under a catagory. Now we need suggestions for the catagories. Any one want to offer a few?

Economy
--Resources Managment
--Economic Structure

Intel
Research
Setup
Combat
Map

Game Play
--Graphics
--Documentation

Politics
--Trade
--Diplomacy

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Narf, posting this stuff all over the place is not funny in the slightest.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Narf, posting this stuff all over the place is not funny in the slightest.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, I did smirk when I saw it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

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

i havn't posted it that much, have i?

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

Temperal
Organic
Armor
Stealth
Tracking

[ July 05, 2003, 01:31: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

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

and i know the perils of overusing jokes.

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

I believe almost everything that I could suggest has already been mentioned in this huge topic. But I would like to highlight three fields that are the most important for me:
1.) Modifiable. The possibilities to modify should be increased even more compared to SE IV (it was a huge improvement from SE III). Even abilities or possibilities that are not used in the standard Version might be very valuable for modders. Just an example: abilities working for facilities usually can't be used for components in SE IV.
2.) AI. I know many people here in this forum play mostly PBW and therefore the AI is not that important for them. However if you compare the number of SE IV copies sold (see topic about that) and the number of PBW players, you must conclude that the majory of the people who bought SE IV are playing solo games. Therefore any improvement of the AI will be an important sales advantage.
3.) Low hardware requirements. Again for computer freaks, who upgrade their computer every 3 months, this might be not very important. But I appreciated very much that I can play SE IV with a 5 year old machine!

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

the ability to add abilities. dll or built-in language thing, like stars!:supernova was going to have.

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

I have a few major things on my wish list that I don't think has been covered.

1)Real Homeworld Abilities
There should be a big difference between your colonies and your homeworld... even in a late game or 200-300 turns.

A homeworld has 1000s of years of development, population growth, culture, facilities, etc... a colony, even after 100 to 200 years of colonization, should never match the importance that a homeworld has. Currently, after a 30/40 turns for example, a colony can have the same population and industrial importance as a homeworld... this is nuts.

Imagine us colonizing Mars. After 20/30 years there might be thousands living there and they may be contributing significantly to science and industry, but they would be insignificant in terms of industrial production capacity, population, real GDP (or rather GPP), culture, science, etc. Even after a couple of centuries they would still be small (maybe important) compared to Earth.

That's one...

2) Many Very Minor races
One thing that SE is missing is the feeling that there is lots of intelligent life in the universe. It would be good to have minor races that are planet bound that you could trade with, conquer, or form a union with. They would provide huge population base, industry, economics, and science. It would also add to the importance of the concept of a "homeworld (see # 1)." You could aquire serveral important homeworlds through conquest (empire) or peaceful assimilation (United Federation of Planets).

Not to be confused with minor space faring races.

3) Emphisis on Planetary Conquest
OK, how many time has an alien fleet showed up over one of your colonies and destroyed it? This is not very economical.

Destruction of a colony or homeworld should be a Last resort and very rare occurance. Empires are formed by conquest not destruction.

With planetary conquest comes the possibility of rebelion and liberation as well as long term ground war commitments.

Also, there should always be survivors of a planetary attack. That could prove interesting if the enemy desides to colonize the planet he's just bLasted for a few months... guerilla war anyone?

4) Lastly, like in our own history, empires rise, fall and rise again (and fall) and wars don't Last forever. Currently in SE, your can tell early in the game who will prevail (or at least who will surely lose). The strength of races over centuries should be a little more dynamic with the possibility of strong empires suddenly falling while weak ones suddenly rise. You get the idea...

That's my wish list. Oh, and more ship classes and serveral possibilities in the same class.

Thanks for reading.

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

4 would have to be done carefully so as not to randomize the game. perhaps periods of culteral strength/weakness which strengthen/weaken all of the attributes of your federation or empire, but not so much that your success/failure would be determined by them.

i just had an idea: perhaps your culture modifier's could modify as you play. if you have a lot of research facilities, you slowly get better a research. or, if you only have a few, you get worse.

[ July 06, 2003, 07:13: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

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

One small addition more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

When a sector with sumthing in it is selected, moving cursor shows the range to that sector. What I want is to extend it to also other systems, automatically calculating shortest route there.

Only a small change but can reduse alittle time to finish each round, if one doenst have to manually count all those 10 wps route to that colony far far away, only so see if there is enough supplies left.

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

There is a current solution for simultaneous games. Turn on "movement lines" and then order your colony ship to move to the destination. You can see how many turns it will take. The end will be + or - 1 turn due to the way it calculates the number of turns. For turn based movement, the ship will move when you give the order so this won't work.

Slick.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Take a look at the Proportions mod. I think you'll find just what you need in there. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">While I believe it is not possible to increase the number of Neutrals beyond six (Would an Experienced Modder Please Clarify?), minor races can be modded into the game. Lood for the threads about Primative Races. It's a very promising concept. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some of the TDM AIs are more interested in landing Troops than glassing the planet. Try playing a few games against them. Also, if you are playing agaisnt humans, perhaps you should let them know that each time they glass a world it lowers it's value. This may encourage more Troop-focused behavior. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you take a look at the timescale of the game, it doesn't take a few centuries. A long, long game can take a number of decades. It's just a matter of scale, and the scale of the game is one long war. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This also can be modded, in fact almost every mod has additional ship sizes. All, I think, except for TDM, FQM and a few mount mods. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks for posting. The community around the game is the reason I come back to it and I'm sure others feel the same.

It sounds like a lot of the changes you want made to the game are changes you could realistically make yourself. Give modifying the game a shot, it's a bLast; even if you're like me and never make mod anything worth sharing.

[ July 06, 2003, 23:19: Message edited by: Loser ]

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I haven't noticed this screenshot before:
http://www.malfador.com/starfury/sfscr11.html

But from it, it seems that Aaron does indeed use something similar to what I described for StarFury and hence for SEV.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The problem with this is many weapons increase more than 15% in cost per level. With Minerals this is probably not an issue since the Engines and Command and Control structures use so much Minerals, but with Radioactives or Organic weapons, a 15% limit is too restricting. Phased PPB I cost 100 Rad, PPB II costs 150 Rad. There is a 50% cost increase there alone.

Instead, I would suggest that retrofitting only be allowed for similar class components. You can replace a weapon with a different weapon. Countries did weapon retrofitting in WW II.

Retrofitting would not be exploited so much if it took Queue time to retrofit instead of repair time. In my opinion, repair only components should have resource capacity, not number of components capacity. Repairing a stellar Manipulation component should take a lot longer than one turn to repair. Currently, you can repair a 60K Min component in one turn, but it takes you over a year to build one. Perhaps there should be an "expired" state that differs from a "damaged" state on ships.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm guessing you haven't pushed the limits of the retroseries 'exploit' yourself. The limitation is not %50 difference in each of the three resources, it's the summed total. I'm not sure, but I think that might make a difference in your discussion.

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

Yes, that does indeed make a big difference. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

After playing this game and making patch suggestions for two years, I now realise that nearly everything I've ever asked of Aaron boils down to one thing, which can be summed up below. I know a lot of you will disagree with this, but tough, this is my opinion (and I doubt Aaron will agree with me anyway=-)

SEIV currently plays like a wargame. It is a wargame. Empire management, diplomacy, resource production, colonisation... these things are all, in the end, nothing more than infrastructure to support your military effort.

I'd like a game that flips this concept on its head. I want an empire management game, in which war is nothing more than one of many interesting complications.

I'd like a game where you could happily play for a thousand game turns without ever even seeing another race. Just keeping the population happy is enough of a challenge (ask your local president/ prime minister/ monarch/ dictator-for-life if you don't believe me) and I'd like a game that reflects this.

This fits any "real-world" model more closely imho, and would provide a far more absorbing game. Maybe this game won't be SE5, but I'd like to think it could be, with the right modding.

That's also why I only play proportions, btw- because it puts (slightly) more emphasis on empire management and less on warfare.

[ July 08, 2003, 09:04: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

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

So go play Sim City. Sure, it has no warfare, but you only wanted warfare to be a small part of the game anyways. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

SE4 is not a war game, it is a strategy game. A war game is just that; war. They focus on manuevering predetermined forces against each other in combat. They are complex, but they do not encompass nearly as much as SE4 does. A strategy game is war + economics, essentially. I am not certain, but I do not think there is much research done in-game in very many war games. A strategy game is about building up your empire, then a military, then war. They cover more areas than war games do.

Strategy games are not about managing the minute details of your populace. Stuff like that will undoubtedly bog down a strategy game into unplayability if it goes too far into the minutia. What you are looking for is a completely different genre, and there is no guarantee that Aaron would be able to make a game of that genre well (as there are few (if any) game programmers that can make awesome games in every genre).

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've heard some bad things about the latest Sim City games. I wouldn't mind playing "Sim Galactic Empire", but as far as I know that hasn't been made yet. SE4 goes most of the way to what I want, I just want it to go that little bit further.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">As usual, you're trying to divert the discussion into tedious quibbling over semantics. My point (as you well know) is that the focus of SEIV is warfare.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But the economics- as well as the research, colonisation, ship design, and diplomacy- are all represented simply as support services for warfare. But in reality, it's the other way round. War exists to defend/expand one nation's economics and culture, economics and culture do not exist simply to perpetuate war. (Although there's probably potential for a whole new thread out of this statement.)

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not necessarily. It would probably involve a lot of extra code, but from the player's point of view things would not necessarily have to be much more difficult or complex. I'm not going to repost all my lengthy suggestions for dynamic populations, improved plague modelling, settlement growth, regime types and everything else, but if you don't remember from the Last time I posted them just believe me when I say that nearly all of the extra work would be done in the background. Not in a "MOO3 taking control from the player" kind of a way, but in a "this is what the indirect results of your actions would be" kind of a way.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'll grant you that it is a different genre, but not a completely different one. Like I say, SEIV is half way there already.

All I'm really asking for is an empire that actually feels like it's a complex, unpredictable, living, breathing society rather than a collection of variables to be considered when designing my next fleet. Conquering the galaxy is all very well, but I want an empire worth conquering the galaxy for.

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

Facility Management: It would be nice to plot facility replacement in the construction queue and to repeat this item. For example, Replace Research with Intelligence. When the turn for this item comes up, it will scrap a Research facility and build an Intelligence facility. This would allow you to change the function of a planet without having to either go back to it each turn or to prescrap everything before starting to build the new stuff.

Blocaded planets should only be able to utilize resource equal to their own production per turn.
Or production + 1/10 of their storage (1 yr rationing). Better yet, blocated planets should have their own resource pool (cut off from the rest of the empire).

Partitioned Empires should have resources pools per partition. Partitions are created by cutting warp-points (no known connection path), enemy occupying warp-points.

Occuppying warp-points should cut enemy contact links through those warp-points to other races.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm guessing you haven't pushed the limits of the retroseries 'exploit' yourself. The limitation is not %50 difference in each of the three resources, it's the summed total. I'm not sure, but I think that might make a difference in your discussion.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I guess I shall have to exploit that more! Just what I need, another way to more fully micromanage the game! I wish I didn't know this!

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Umm... no. I have never tried to divert any discussions into tedious quibbling over semantics. The only times I argue about semantics are when it is directly relevant to the discussion. Also, my post was nowhere near a diVersion into semantics. That one line was about classification, not word meanings.

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

Dogscoff, you really sound like someone who would actually enjoy MOO3... it's been described quite accurately as "SimGalaxy"... me, I can't stand the Sim games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

A few more ideas for SE5 (or even an SE4 patch):

When you trade tech or analyze ships, if you don't have the prerequisites for a tech, the data is just thrown away, even if you get it later in the same package! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif What I'd like to see is, if you get say Shields 2 but you don't have Shields 1 or even Physics 1, the data is stored away in a database (i.e. the tech is placed in a "pending" list that you can view from the research screen), and when you research or otherwise acquire the prerequisites, the tech finally becomes available. Note that I'm treating Shields 1 as a prerequisite for Shields 2 here, and I'm saying that Shields 2 could be explicitly gifted to an empire that doesn't HAVE Shields 1 - this would make tech trades much simpler, since you wouldn't have to play the game of "subtract my tech level from your tech level and hope the other guy isn't lying" - you just give him levels 3 through 5 of Advanced Military Science and if he was lying about his tech level, well tough for him because he either won't be able to use the tech right away (if he overstated his level) or one or more levels will be useless (if he understated it)! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

edit: Oh yes, and it would be handy to have a display of our tech level vs. their (known) tech level in the tech gift/trade window next to each tech e.g. (dunno if this will look right on the board)



Ours Theirs

Advanced Military Science 3 1

Construction 1 ß blank represents not yet known that they have it

Energy Stream Weapons 4 6

Physics 3 1

Phased Energy Weapons 0 3

Also, about the resource value distribution across planets - currently, all resources have simply a minimum and maximum value, which is the same for all resources, and the statistical distribution is (I think) flat - you're just as likely to get a 23% mineral planet as you are to get a 100% mineral planet. What I'd like to see is a more varied distribution, with separate settings for each resource - so minerals might run from 0% to 150% with a fairly flat distribution, much like in SE4, but organics might cluster around 100%, and radioactives might run all the way up to 500% but most of the planets would have very low values.

[ July 08, 2003, 21:56: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

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

Hey, let's keep this forum a friendly place, okay? If I wanted nasty arguments, I would've stayed in the MOO3 forums http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

I think that the thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as what a strategy game, or any game at all, *ought* to be like. What any game is like depends strictly on what the designers and players would like it to be. I think that you can avoid a lot of bitterness by avoiding such phrases like, "A strategy game should have such-and-such features..." and rewording them into phrases like "I would personally really enjoy it if a game had such-and-such features..."

As a matter of personal taste, I would side with Dogscoff in wanting more detailed modelling of planets. I would also greatly enjoy a space strategy game in which combat is optional, not required.

However, I would disagree with Dogscoff if he implies that all of the extra detail would have little impact on the level of micro-management required to play the game. If all of the added detail were to be meaningful, then surely the control that the player has over them should (uh-oh, the "should" word again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) have a discernible impact on gameplay, and dealing with the control of those details means added micro-management time. Doing otherwise would replicate the MOO3 problem of plenty of "look-but-don't-touch" details. In other words, I agree with Imperator Fyron that those details that won't require constant player attention and oversight "ought" to be abstracted.

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

To be fair to Dogscoff, I'd like to add that there does seem to be a huge disparity between the level of detail modelled for planets and that for ships in SEIV, considering that in the "real-world", a planet would be a far, far more complex thing than a ship.

This really isn't surprising given that most players really enjoy customizing ships down to the smallest detail possible (and there are players in this thread asking that ships be built component by component and then assembled). Even Imperator Fyron is on the record for requesting better customization options for missiles and more sophisticated modelling of minefields. In fact, I don't recall anyone saying, 'Hey, enough is enough, ships and combat are plenty detailed already!"

Detailed modelling of planets / population / economies is quite a different matter, but I'd like to go on the record that I'd like a better, more sophisticated modelling of these aspects of the game. I suspect that Proportions-mod fans, who enjoy building up planets over time, will like this as well, but of course, I can't speak for them.

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

Hear, hear! And here's to hoping the SE3 idea of "over/underworking" your population with an effect on their happiness returns... but this time, there could be different ethoi (happiness types in SE4-speak) - the "workers" ethos, for example, might actually ENJOY being overworked (to a degree) and get angry if you don't provide enough work for them! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

A simple idea I thought of which could probably be implemented in an SE4 patch is to have a setting on the planets list where you can filter it to planets within X distance of a resupply depot (yours or an ally's) - very handy for Ancient Race players, since their planet list gets all cluttered up with stuff on the far side of the galaxy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">like it.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">See what I mean?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Don't worry, Fyron knows I'm just poking fun out of him. It's kind of like the national passtime around here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, not if those details were modelled as indirect rather than direct consequences of your actions. You'd still only be managing the same old things, but you'd have to think a little more carefully about the fallout.

For example, it's all very well releasing a plague on a neighbouring enemy's planet, but you'd have to consider that the plague might infect your planets by means of a friendly third party trading across both borders.

Or you might think twice about bombarding that stubborn breakaway planet if you knew it would create a refugee crisis on your nearest planets.

Another thing to consider is that if somehow extra micromanagement is involved, you can always hand it over to the ministers. Let's just hope the ministers in se5 are better than those in se4.

As for me liking Moo3... I've never played it, but from what I hear I don't think I'd liike it. I'ma micromanagement nut. While I believe that some things should be handled in the background by the game, there are also some things that the player needs to be in control of, and it sounds to me like Moo3 took those things away.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I saw what you meant as soon as I read the post. Yes, that Last post was about semantics (well, the Last sentence was), and, it was directly relevant to the discussion at hand.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Noone has said what a strategy game ought to be like. Classifications exist for a reason. The game genres are well defined so that almost all new games can easily be placed in one of them without a second thought. Games are not made so that they have everything they need to fit into a genre, they are just placed in the most relevant one when they are done. There is really not any list of things that a game has to have to be a strategy game (or for any other genre). Both SE4 and Chess are strategy games. What do they have in common? They require similar types of thinking to play them, and pretty much nothing else (turn based is irrelevant, as that is not genre defining). If there was a list, one of these games would not be classified as a strategy game.

That being said, a strategy game ought to require future strategic planning. It ought to have varied choices available. It ought to have depth. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Tragically this is not true. Big, impersonal, method-driven companies will frequently target their search for a concept around the money-making genre (MMPROG, RTS, whatever). I can't think of a 4X game made so, and I don't imagine companies like Malfador or Shrapnel take this approach, but sadly it does happen. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">True: I'd say Chess is a Tactical game, to use the genre-ish terminology (Warcraft is strategic, MechCommander is tactical). <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In situations like these I'll go into the Empire window and mark every damn system in Systems to Avoid. Setting the Planet window to No Systems to Avoid cleans up the display. Then, as you open up a new ring of colinizable worlds, take those worlds out of Systems to Avoid. This can cause a problem when ships are set to avoid Systems to Avoid, but it's a decent trade in my book.

[ July 09, 2003, 13:17: Message edited by: Loser ]

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

On a more upbeat note http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

How about an option for fleet strategies that prevents faster ships from "flying ahead" of slower ships, thus breaking the formation?

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Fyron, is there a contradiction here ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Personally, I see no reason to make a distinction between 'war' and 'strategy' games, they're all strategy games to me, with war games as a subset. The important point is that they all appeal to the same kind of player.