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

i don't know why i didn't think of this before. a quieu done message when a planet has finished construction.

it does have a message for failed retrofit.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah but it has the same title in the log as a successfull retrofit.

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

Yep, there should be a "Warning" button to see warning Messages, failed retrofits, alien ships spotted, damage taken by warp points (Events now), etc.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IE: Make a new ability for SE3-style emissive armor.

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

Have AI build Battlestations on wormholes for defense..

just some ideas Mac

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

Not sure if any of these have been mentioned but...

-A races Streangth rating effects its boarding attack and defense.
-The ability to make components create planets from nothing
-The ability to transfer crew(experience) from one ship to another. Also on this point, Escape Pods.
-Chlorine, and Nitrogen Atmosphere types.
-Desert, Dead, Machine and Forest planet types
-Negative Ruins! "Youve gone and woken Cthulhu! nice going! moron!"

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

"unfortunatly, the artifact your scientists discovered is a giant dimensional transporter. it just needed a little more energy and your ships' was it. guess your scientists will take a little more time getting home."

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Even better:
Arbitrary Atmospheres and surface types.

The ability to set abilities on the planets depending on type...

(Eg: +50% organics production from Forest worlds, maximum value 30% on Dead worlds)

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah but it has the same title in the log as a successfull retrofit.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">More importantly tell us in simultanesous games if a retorfit will be over that 50% as soon as we issue the command. I hate having to get a calculater or pen and paper out to do a calculation when I working on a 3Ghz Pentium 4.

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

I'm sure this was mentioned, but another plug for:

Communications history with each empire should be appended to a viewable .txt file, easily accessible in the interface. So you can look at what was discussed 10 or 100 years ago...

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wow, that would be great in those really long PBW games, especially when you have 4 or 5 other games at the same time. This one gets my vote as well.

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

open the calculater before you run se, then alt-tab to it.

i don't know if it works when you have a window up, though.

[ August 01, 2003, 17:21: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It works, but you shouldn't have to do it, I agree that you should get an instant warning; the post attempt warning should be pre-attempt!

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Even better:
Arbitrary Atmospheres and surface types.

The ability to set abilities on the planets depending on type...

(Eg: +50% organics production from Forest worlds, maximum value 30% on Dead worlds)</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">YES! More moddability! <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Moddable Ruins Too!

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

I like the warp points travels, but I also liked the free travel in VGA planets.
Can't there be both?
Add hyperspace engines to the tech tree, these will enable travel outside of the warp point lanes, much slower travel between starsystems but it canm be a real surprise when you show up, plus turtelling becomes impossible.
This will add spin off tech like deep space scanners, to see if anyone is coming through space.
The possibility to create new starsystems, bases in deep space, scanners to seek for such bases.
Navigation computers that enable hyperspace travels, better navigation computers is lesse chance of death by hitting a star etc.

If it takes no time to travel through warp points, you could have speed in hyper space travel, so better engines equals faster travels, as the normal engines does, but you need both normal engines and hyper engines if you want to by-pass the warp-points and a nav computer.
And then if it's say 20 light-years between the systems, the first engines could have a speed of half a light-year a month, and then increasing up to several light years a month with higher tech levels.
This way you could start a game on a custom map without WP and have stellar manip turned off, so if your a fan of free travel you can have a game with only that.
But as I've already stated, I'd like to have it all.

to sum it up:

Both Warp points and free deep space travel through extra hyperspace engines.

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

It would be great to be able to mod in free-space travel, but then, that is really counter to the flavor of Space Empires, so I do not know if there is much chance of such being added to the stock game.

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

Ah, but if it isn't added to the stock game, it won't be do-able in any game (we need the hard-code in place for "normal" travel as well as warp point travel).

I'd really like this dual travel thing too.. I think it could make for some interesting ruses and better cross-over mods. I still think that the most efficient system should be the warp points however. Travelling from star to star in normal space should take a long time until very advanced propulsion systems are created.

My question is, would the advanced propulsion systems (hyperspace, warp drives, etc.) add points to in-system and combat speed? I vote no.

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

make it moddable.

i like moddable.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think this could effectivly be accomplished by the feature I've heard in demand that is warp points with some abiliteis. ie they only Last one turn. so you could have a component that could open a temporary warp, then on the same turn you could give your ship warp orders (something u can't do now unless it starts on a warp) And then when you get your turn you would see your ships in the next system and the warp point would already be closed.

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

wouldn't include deep space.

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

Perhaps this is impossible but I would like that some of the great work that has been done for SE IV could be used for SE V too, especially the new races and mods. So somehow SE V beeing a super patch for SE IV.

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

Hmmmm.... maybe just a little more graphics... and slightly better sound just a few cosmetic touch ups you know everything else is great

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

Make ground combat different in some way that surprises, amazes, and impresses us.

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

Add the ability to transfer supplies and resources like any other cargo.

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

I want more Targeting Options:

Random (allows ships with same combat plan to spread missle fire over more targets)
Has Shields
Has no Shields
Worst Defense
Best Defense
Easiest To Hit (net all modifiers)
Hardest to Hit (net all modifiers)
Has Quantum Reactor
Has Stellar Manipulation
Most Cargo
Least Cargo
Has Shipyard
Most Supply
Least Supply
Most Boarding Defense
Least Boarding Defense
Has Minesweapers [added Aug 5]
Has No Minesweapers [added Aug 5]

----------------------------------------

I would a fleet to have a wait period before ships breaking formation. Best I can currently do is use a formation that puts the leader in front and make the weakest ship the leader so the fleet disperse once combat begins. Of course if they target strongest, they will ignore the lead ship. Perhaps a checkbox to break formation as soon as first fire occurs or a range to enemies at which the formation breaks up. This change would allow mixed speed fleets to close together for a while and then when close enough, the faster ships can do their thing (board, ram, etc).

-------------

Missles ought to be smart enough to retarget with remaing movement capability. It really stinks when 20+ missles disappear because the target was destroyed.

[ August 05, 2003, 18:08: Message edited by: LGM ]

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good idea. Don't forget: Target Minesweepers.

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

I didn't play SE4 much but did enjoy SE3 quite a bit so sorry if some of these are already in.

-Nomadic race style. This race would for some reason or another have abandoned their world. Instead they live in space stations or orbital stations. (at the very least, stations with populations would be nice). Maybe even a special tech to allow mobile habitats.

-More personality to Organic races. Maybe growing everything rather then building it. This way they'd use nearly entirely organic resources. Maybe with a longer build time to compensate.
-Similar change for Crystal races but with metal used entirely rather then organics.

-Larger ship classes. After all we get to build planets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

-And of course better AI. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

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

Khemul:
You should Try my Pirates & Nomads mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

Just curious whether anyone has heard any official word on SEV yet? I haven't seen anything on the Shrapnel's or Malfador's site about it but...it is listed for pre-order on Chips & Bits with a 10/03 release.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hahahahaha!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Well, don't believe them... word around here is it's slated for summer 2004 at the earliest! Perhaps they were thinking of Starfury, which is scheduled for September 2003? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

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

Here's another idea... support image and sound file formats other than BMP and WAV - these are uncompressed, so they take up a LOT of space on your hard drive! I know using compressed formats like PNG and MP3 won't save on download times for mods (everyone zips their mods anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) but it would at least save some space on our hard drives http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

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

AI's to build Battlestations and Starbases on wormholes for wormhole defense along with Sats, The Ai needs some stronger wormhole defenses especially against human players http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

just some ideas Mac

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

yeah... just borrow the defense algorithms from SE2, man those AI's kicked butt! or did they just use a resource multiplier cheat? hmmm... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

instead of my slider idea for moving stuff, just click on the number. like if you've got 52454634 and you want to move 1000000, you click on 5>2<454634. left click, move out. right click, move in.

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

Here's something that IMHO would help SE5 appeal to a broader audience...

Since the combat's going to be realtime anyway, wouldn't it be cool to have multiplayer realtime combat in LAN and TCP/IP games? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Imagine the kinds of things you could do with the Furball games - a constant slugfest where you actually control the ships! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Don't you think that would attract at least a bit of the RTS crowd? (And since SE5 will be fully moddable, those of us who prefer a more strategic game can always slow down the speeds of ships in combat or something so it doesn't turn into a clickfest! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

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

something was said about a Last patch. if that's not out yet, how about bumping all the 2^8 and 2^16 variables up to 2^32?

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

Gee... if SE5's graphics are realtime rendered... you know what THAT means?

Spinning Tech Items like in MOO2!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

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

ooh, spinny...

[ September 05, 2003, 05:47: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

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

I have always had a special affection for things that are shiny or go 'round-and-'round.

If the GUI could be made to support few frames of animation, the image-mod-happy among us could make the spinning things for any mod.

But I still want to be able to save during a Simultaneous Turn.

And leave many-selected ships selected after I give them Just One Order.

And when I open a Construction Queue from the F7 Construction Queues window, and clear that queue, and it was on Hold, it turns Hold off, but does not turn off the Hold indicator. So when I click to turn off the Hold indicator it actually put the Queue on Hold.

And make it so I can choose not to have ships already in fleets displayed in the F6 Ships Window.

And more Hotkey. Lots more Hotkeys. I want to be able to do everything with the keyboard.

But it's a great game as it is. I love it. Really.

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

How about using XML to store the data files? It's a standard but flexible format so it shouldn't be hard to find programs to ease editing the data files or code libraries to assist in creation of modding utilities.

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

More importantly- what advantages would XML give? I can think of a couple disadvantages right off the top of my head.

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

There are already existing programs which will, given an XML schema, which could be supplied with the game, let you edit XML data and automatically validate it as you edit, so you don't have to rely on the game's cryptic error Messages and search for errors in a half-meg text file. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Also, there are existing class libraries which can handle XML data in an object-oriented fashion, making it easier for Aaron to write the game and easier for people like Suicide Junkie, DavidG, and myself to create modding utilities.

What disadvantages did you have in mind? (I can think of the huge file size with all those opening and closing tags, but it couldn't be much worse than the current data files with their repeated field names... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif )

Another idea I just had is the ability to export (and possibly even import) any sort of data from the game as a text, XML, CSV, Excel, or whatever type of file the game uses to store its data - not just the tech tree, but ship designs, system maps, colony lists, you name it. This might seem like I'm going a bit far for just a game, but bear in mind it's been done for Stars! - you could run programs on the data and calculate, say, the refueling range of all your ships in one fell swoop! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif And what would be even cooler is if there were some way to call those custom programs from some menu or something within the game interface... whoa! talk about moddability! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

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

Additional area's of gameplay that let you play an interesting strategic game, without resorting to violence, and still win.

I'm thinking here of interesting cultural, technological, scientific, diplomatic, exploration etc type ways to play and win the game. I have some ideas about this might be implemented, actually. So I might send them to MM if they are interested.

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

I read a thread about a week ago by Renegade that had a lot of great ideas in it. Perhaps he should post them here as well.

Here is one more of my many ideas. (I think I have suggested something on the order of 200 now over the span of 20 or so threads such as this.)

You know what would be a great addition to Options for SE V? The option to select the starting planet name and or system for each player. This way if you are playing the Federation you can set the starting name of your planet to Earth and the system name to Sol.

To go one step above this, have the ability to design "pre-established" systems and be able to set these systems as your players starting system wether the map is custom or randomly created.

[ October 15, 2003, 03:21: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

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

it's alive!

*cue thunder, lightning, spooky music*

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Dude you truly scare me.

Are you paid to be weird, or do you just do it for free?
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

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

it's funny. most people don't have enough funny. you want to know what's scary? people who seem to think humor can only involve other peoples pain, when the best kind of humor releaves pain.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Very true. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

I would still like to see more keyboard functionality.

Hotkeys, Hotkeys, Hotkeys!

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

but ai humor is the one that truly bites.

*whaps himself with a hammer*

*whaps david with a hammer*