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

Aack, not race experience! That's just a way to give some races an unfair advantage at the beginning of the game! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

Now how about mercenaries and other for-hire units? You pay them a certain fee per turn and in exchange you get a leader to add to your empire who gives bonuses (increased research on the planet you assign him to, etc.), or a fleet of ships with unique or powerful abilities? (You could spend 200,000 points researching Ubermachium Armor... or you could hire Zero the Avenger for 10,000 GC a turn, who brings a fleet of 15 battleships that cannot be broken up or analyzed for tech, but is equipped with Ubermachium, not to mention the dreaded Polaris Cannon... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

Also, please disallow one-ship fleets... it is really silly (not to mention a micromanagement headache) to be able to gain "fleet experience" in a fleet of that size! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

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

I haven't been following this thread (and i'm not going to read this huge thing now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) but Ed Kolis' post made me think about a independant merchant guild.
Something like in Imperium Galactica, or EFS.
Or perhaps connect the guild to a something like a United Planets in GalCiv, where only UP members can trade with the guild.

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

Speaking of unfair advantages I'd say that cultures are the really wide-open hole in the design of SE IV races. You can give some race a 200 percent boost in everything if you want and the game won't even hiccup. I think we need to have some sort of 'accounting' for culture settings in the design of a race. Ideally, I'd say we ought to combine the 'happiness' settings with the culture settings in some sort of coordinated 'psychological profile' for each race. It could be a seperate system from the attributes chosen in the game setup but it ought to be controlled by 'points' or some other real cost/benefit controls.

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

Tradable and/or Scocketed Components:

As it stands now you can only trade technologies or whole ships to one another. But what if I can make UberParasite Missile IX but I'm only at Propulsion level I. There's no way that I'll be able to sell off my Uberparasite weapons to other races becuase 1) they can't research Parasite missiles without being Organic and 2) nobody would want to buy my ships if they only have propulsion level 1. And as a result, little (in my experience) trading goes on in the game, and specialization in one are of research or use of special tech trees guarantees that nobody will want to trade tech with you... so much for playing a Ferengi or Pirate like race!

But if there was the ability to trade individual components, that would open up an entirely new role within the (PBW) game - the role of arms dealer!! Maybe it should be a racial trait, being able to buy and sell components. Now wouldn't that be cool?

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

FYI, Suicide Junkie is doing pretty well as an armsdealer in "P&N on PBW, take 2", and both Geoschmo and myself are giving the strategy a try in "Strange Races"...

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">My se4 folder is not very messy, and I have most mods installed. It could be less messy by having them all in a Mods folder, which can be done now already. But, having the mod files all archived cause unnecessary loading time for using the mods. Saving a few MBs of space is meaningless with how cheap hard disk space is nowadays.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah well, me guess it is 'easier' to combine several mods in SE4g currently, yes ?

Say, me wants to use FQM with Proportions and some racial techtree mod on the side ?

Why make it simple, since you CAN do it manually. You just need to check EVERY text file in EACH of those mods, to see whitch has what in it..

(copypaste, copypaste, repeat, oh joy)

It's not like combining mods that should be easy, right ?

Zipping them mods is only to help to keep them files intact. If 1 or 2 sec longer delay at starting the game pains you, well, nevermind ..

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

FQM is the exception, not the rule. Very few mods can actually be combined without a lot of work. The game could not possibly be programmed to do this well at all.

[edit]Actually, Proportions makes a number of changes to the quadrant and system files, so you would lose all of those if you use it with FQM. This may not be a problem for you, just pointing it out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif [/edit]

It takes much longer than a second or two to extract larger archived files so that the game can use them. It also requires more RAM usage to store the temp files when the game is running. Using something like the Babylon 5 Mod, FQM Deluxe or TDM Modpack would make nearly all Users have to wait for a few minutes before they could play each time they load up the game.

Subfolders keep the mods together nicely. How often do you randomly go in and move files around? I don't know anyone that does that.

[ March 14, 2003, 03:30: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That would be like a battleship getting automatic upgrades from 14" main guns to 16" main guns while cruising solo on the open sea.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">'Reasonable' does not always mapped to 'Fun', or there shall be a 3D universe map.

And my example shows something like - a battleship with 14" main guns set sail immediately after it construct, full speed toward battlefield. When it arrives, 18" main guns technology is already there.

Slow down technology is better way to solve it. Automatically retrofit is just a secondary option. Both of them are used to solve the annoying problem, and also these suggestions reduce the micromanagement level.

[ March 14, 2003, 04:18: Message edited by: Foreman ]

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

mmm.. but if you want to slow down research, just choose it in the game set up screen (Research = Expensive). It's already an option, I would hope that SEV would leave us as many options as possible.