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

Slowly strips planets, yes..... but "real" strip mining would be a very fast, highly productive mining exploit that would earn you a helluva lot of resources in a few turns, but would reduce planet quality extremely fast and perhaps eventually reduce it to asteroids after a few turns.

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

Nope real strip mines have lives measured in decades as they're so bloody expensive to setup you don't bother unless there is so much resources it's ridiculous. Taking German lignite mining for instance, if you've just chucked several hundred million at bucket wheel excavator then you need to mine a lot of coal just to break even. And your mine is going to need seveal of those BWEs. And you're going to have to relocate several villages and even small towns during the mine's life.

So for 'real' strip mines you'd want high production but at a massive price and a negative for planet value and probably population happiness as well (Lets be honest kicking people out of their houses and then levelling their entire town is going to annoy them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

Ohh here's an idea. Types of mining facility: Normal mines with good production and no penalties, unsafe corner cutters with better production but happiness bonuses, strip miners with value and condition penalties but even better production and b***ard miners with huge production but every penalty.

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

Notice I put "real" between quotation marks. I didn't mean actual daylight strip mining, I meant sciencefiction massive-scale strip mining that can literally strip a planet's outer crust away completely in under a year or so.

I like your idea about the different types of miners, mind if I use it?

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

Sure go ahead, I was going to chuck it in my mod, but then I realised I was just looking for an excuse not to start the game story. I had promised myself that I would start it when I had finished my mod, the problem that it was an open-ended mod...

You might want to consider for Organics say: normal farms, hi-chemical use farms for -ve value and -ve conditions but + output, organic farms lower production but +ve for conditions and happiness and slash and burn agriculture for massive output but all penalties and fast -ve value.

Radioactives: Normal, 3 Mile Island type big -ve for hapiness but no other penalties and increased production, Rossing type for -ve conditions and value and of course Chernoybl for all -ves except up production. In fact could the Chernobyl type have a negative luck modifier as well? If so then massive price, massive production for rads but taking a risk.

That's some of the ideas I had knocking around for production side, instead of just making all facilities the same give each a different flavour.

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

Now this might be asking for a lot, but would it be possible to bumpmap planets ? or moons, or actually make a lighting model (use DX8+ etc) I have no idea how difficult this would be and it's imho not a priority, but sometimes small things can make big differences in looks (defenetly bumpmaps and a realistic lighting model)

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

Now that new screen shots are out and the beta testers are chosen I would like to add some more wishes:

1.) Maximal clearness of the maps, especially system and galaxy. The screen shots are very nice, but I am not sure if in a crouded system or very large galaxy you might be a little bit lost.
2.) Not too much micromanagement.
3.) A request to the beta testers: please test all abilities to avoid the situation in SE IV, where even in the final version some abilities are not functional (see known bug list).

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

> 3.) A request to the beta testers: please test all
> abilities to avoid the situation in SE IV, where
> even in the final version some abilities are not
> functional (see known bug list).

I'll do my level best to kick the tires and try as many things as I can. Honestly, I think my work with DoGA CGA and other 3D modelling technologies may have influenced my section. I'll definately be trying out new ship models and looking for flaws/limitations in that arena. I suspect that other people were chosen for similar talents.
--
TAZ

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

There was some mention of "pre-space faring" races on planets. Take it a couple steps further.
-Be able to colonize the planet or invade it and use the indigenous population (nothing new)
-Be able to attack an enemy empire and "bomb them back to the stone age". Take out all their facilities, weapon platforms, sources of technology thus turning them into a "pre-spacefaring" race. They would retain the population.
-Accomplish this by making normal weapons not hurt populations except for a little collateral damage. This forces planetary bombardment research.
-Allow for "pre-space faring" races assent to space faring empires. So, you can bomb them back to the stone age but they can again research space flight and turn into a new empire (not related to the original).

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

As for making normal weapons powerless against population, this is very simple. (but it will mean that normal weaps would be powerful against cargo, and that you get true WMDs that can take out 50 large WPs in a single shot).

Simple go to Settings.txt, and change the line that says "Amount of damage required to kill one population" or something like that into a very high number - say, 1000 - then go to Components.txt and increase orbital bomb damages in a similar way. You could/should then also change some entries in TechAreas.txt to make orbital bombs more expensive to research and require more tech requirements. Also, you could add multiple types of bombs, ranging from small cluster bombs of 10kT which will enable you to create Escorts in swarms as orbital annoyments, right up to the 1k WMD that kan depopulate a Small Breathable world in a single shot but is prohibitively expensive.

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

The right click menu, please make a very good right click menu, make it gui consistent, right clicking on a planet anywhere should give the same meny anywhere, the left click should execute the default action for the list you're viewing (construction queue for instance in the construction queues list) but the right click should offer the same options everywhere imho. because now it's impossible to go directly to a planet from the construction queue window, whereas the planets are shown, I'd like to be able to do that.

A todo list, it would be nice if you would be able to make a todo list for yourself with reminders, like "send colony ship to planet X as soon as I have the appropriate tech" which could have a reminder enabled that triggers as soon as you have the appropriate tech, the key is that the planet would be triggerable (you click on it and you go to it, you right click on it and you get it's menu) and so would be the requirement.

Besides that, now comes my biggest request:
Now this might be definetly stretching it. But it's something i'd soooooo like to have: Macros, scripting & plugins

Since space empires is heavily micro management based these could greatly reduce micro management overload (players with over 300 planets to manage in a game probably know what I mean)

The plugin thing is the ability to take someone else's script and make it a menu item somewhere (be it right click, be it on a submenu somewhere else)

This idea has to be further refined in my head, but I have one example of what I'd like to be able to script.

Situation: You found a freshly colonizable planet, it has a ruin, but you have also spotted an enemy scout, so you're going to make a run for it.

My idea is that you make a plugin script which adds a menu item to the planet with the ruin "grab ruin"

The script would be something akin to:
Send closest colony ship to this planet to colonize, send new colony ship to planet which was to be colonized by that ship, if no colony ship available, display message in todo list


Now I know all these ideas are quite big and grand (to code, because I have a vague idea how i'd code em)

But please considder them for SE 6 (we should start making an SE 6 request thread somewhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

Since micromanegement is a part of SE i'd like to be able to manage the micromanagement http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Thanks for even reading this post.

Boran.