Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You have my vote!

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">One way of doing this for ship components is to have miniturization occur after the basic research for a particular component is completed. This would allow us to cram more components into a ship.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

a "50" button in the transfer menu.

Simple, but still lacking.....

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yep. That works, except whether miniturization should apply to specific components (researching miniturized depleted uranium) or if it should be applied in general (miniturized weapons) is a matter I'm undecided.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

You could always create a new tech area called "Miniturization" and as you research it, it gives you new mounts which make components smaller but continue to have their normal strength/abilities.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Wow!!

I haven't read this thread in a few weeks and WOW!!!

You all have my mouth watering... If SEV included most of these I'd be a happy man right there!!

Is there a patch still coming before SEV? I was told by shrapnel that SEV was due mid next year...

Also, some have said there are still legitamate bugs... What are they?

Thanks,

Ken

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

The problem with using mounts is that it would not apply infinitely. That is, someone would have to create each individual level, and probably even different modes of miniaturization, since it would take quite a few levels of improvement for miniaturization to overcome the usefulness of large weapon mounts. Thus, there should be large weapon mount miniaturizations in addition to miniaturization of other mount variants. To do this manualy would be a mess, but using a hardcoded infinite research tree would handle this nicely.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Other things I would like to see:

Discovered ruins should give the the ability to research a new tech area that leads to reproducing and modifying any artifacts recovered. Analysing enemy ships would give a bonus to researching technology the ship uses.

Resources. I found this a bit deeper it the thread and I would also like to see limited resoruce production, though probably based on a per turn basis rather than a mineral conVersion basis.

Population immigration. Another idea deeper in the thread that would make sense. Given that alliances between races, particularly trade alliances, would involve these races mingling, it would make sense to see more than one race on a border planet near an ally.

Partial retention of captured race stats. The idea is that a captured race would probably be enslaved for purposes of the owning empire. Certain aspects of the race might not apply under enslavement, and revolts might turn the planet into an independant or back to the hands of the empire the race belonged.

Battle simulator. This is sort of a love/hate relationship, really. It makes sense that such a race would have the technology to similate their enemy's ships, but this also removes the excitement of only being able to test your new design in real combat.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

My god. I was looking at a turn on PBW... My mouse moved over the play the ship movement for all ships... My brain went... Damn you don't click that button,, don't click that button. My hand went... Left mouse click coming up...

The Horror. The Horror.

That is brutal... There has to be an escape for it...

i waited 25 minutes and then 3 finger .....

Its a 2ghz system...

Get rid of it or make it so we can stop it... Ever watch a fleet of about 150 ships over and over and over... Not nice.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

What i would like to see in the next patch is a

a) Total terriforming Racial trait;
Total terriforming - would speed up TIME in facilitys related to atmosphere and condition by 75%.
b) More varity on mines like; Mine damage only weapons or engines on enemy ships.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is moddable. I think Pirates & nomads might include it. S_J?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Also moddable. Check out Proportions mod.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ummm... it does. Or do you mean that the analyse button should be less powerful, and give you a bonus rather than a full tech level for each tech?

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No one (except MM) is quite sure about this, but it is rumoured that captured races have a happiness modifier that makes them prone to rioting and therefore revolt. Still doesn't happen very often though.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">True, but as far as I'm concerned this is just fine. It wouldn't take too long for one of us to mod in a few dozen levels of miniaturisation, but it would probably take up many hours of Aaron's time to hardcode it. The tech tree doesn't have to be infinite, just big enough that no sane person could usefully research it in a real game. That can be modded.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think there probably will be more se4 patches. We certainly haven't heard that there won't be, and patch suggestions to Malfador are still being accepted with a "we'll add it to the to-do list". As for SEV, the release is a long way off yet and is probably subject to a lot of other factors, including (but not limited to=-) the success/ failure of the impending 3D combat thing.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Im interested in this feature too. Take a look to my post in this thread. All thoughts are welcome http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I would like to be able to suppress the abiltiy of a player to know their score ranking (game setup option) when all scores information is not shared with other players.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

The SS Dedicated has served your nation well.
It has fought in many major battles, and always survived to see another day.
But the ship itself is now heavily outdated.
The crew, however, is still willing to command a starship.

You send the dedicated into a fight with a high tech dreadnought.

An option to transfer crew experience.
In order to do that:

You must have a ship that has 0 experience.
It must be younger than 50 turns
it must be mothballed.

In order to stop the transfer whenever it wants to:

The Transfer must take in a space yards.
Or the crew *experience* is lost due to the lack of Environment suits. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

In order to prevention of abuse Ie: a battlemoon with 50 experience:

The transfer is only allowed once.
The transfered ship has no movement points for 2 turns.
The transfer is only allowed with crews with 25-30 experience. (0-25: too young. 30-50: Too old. Admiral status)

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

How about this one:
(perhaps more of an SE V possibility)

The ability to upgrade a ship that contains componets you can't build yourself. Then you could for example buy an organically armoured vessel from your allie and then just put your own weapons engines etc. on it. Could make for an interesting game with lots of trading going on as races trade their unique techs.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Terran: Brilliant thought about the transfer of skilled crews. Instead of limiting the number of times a crew could be transfered, or on the basis of their skill level, what if you assign a specific # of crew needed per ship mass (this is clumsily represented by the number of crew quarters needed).
Then, if you wish to do a transfer, you would select how many crew members would be transfered between the ships. The new skill level of each ship would then be recalculated.
You could therefore load up a planet sized ship with a veteran crew from a scout, but their skill level would be diluted out by the new recruits who make up the majority of the crew. Likewise you could split up a veteran crew from a huge vessel between many smaller ships and bring up their skill levels considerably.
Some people may even start overcrewing their ships so that as the ship gains experience, it can be slowly bled of officers who can now command new ships.

DavidG: I think this would be best accomplished through plug-N-play components. Just buy and trade the individual components from others. If you capture a ship with interesting plug-N-play components, disassemble for it's components instead of analysing it for the technology.

That's just my 2 peso's.

[ September 06, 2002, 01:06: Message edited by: jimbob ]

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Keeping track of 'crews' is a bit difficult since a 'crew' is actually a composite of hundreds or possibly thousands of people/creatures. And the number of crew required for each given size/class of ship is going to be different, not to mention differences caused by changes of the equipment in use. An 'experienced' crew of a missile ship is not going to be nearly so competent if you transfer them to a carrier. How do you track the 'type' of training that the crew has? And anyway, the AI cannot use the current system. How will it handle a more complex system?

I think that what is required is some sort of 'pool' of crew experience based on the number of ships in you have in service and how long they are in service. A sort of 'accumulated hours of operation' measurement, averaged over the number of ships you have. As this pool grows larger relative to fleet size, the default experience of your ships can increase because you can assume a better general level of training in your 'armed forces'. But ships getting destroyed in combat means dead crew, so you should also suffer losses from your pool due to combat losses. Ship and fleet training facilities will still have a use, but they should just add to the 'experience pool' and all ships just rely on the global 'average' experience/training level. This would be much more usable by the AI then the current system.

Ships should still gain experience individually for success in combat, but this system would tend to 'even out' the difference between ships and make your fleet have a similar level of effectiveness. I suppose some people will not like this feature of the system. But isn't that how it works in real life? Do navies in our world generally have radically different levels of crew competence among their ships? If you still want to have 'elite' units than maybe you should be able to give some ships a special designation as 'elite' and pay extra maintenance costs for their extra training so they can be above the fleet average. The AI could also deal with this more easily than having to park ships over a given planet until they are trained.

[ September 06, 2002, 02:49: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I really like the crew xp ideas floating around. I'd like to add that I personally feel crew should be treated as a resource. You just cannot instantly train the crew for 10 baseships every month. Combined with Baron Munchausen's global crew experience system, you could do something like:

You have X crew in your empire. You have Y experience evenly divided among them. Each crew quarter carries 1 (moddable) crew. Whenever a ship dies, your total experience becomes Y/X*(X-n) where n is the number of crew that ship carried. You total crew in the empire obviously becomes X-n.

Training facilities add crew every year. The base experience of these new crew members varies based on the level of the facility. Lower ones add 0 xp crew to your empire, reducing the overall experience. You could also have the ability to draft crew, which requires no facilities but the drafted crew have negative experience and therefor more strongly reduce the overall experience of your fleet.

Further, you could still track individual ship experience. Say the system worked just like now. Only every year, each ship has its experience "harvested" out of it to add to the empire pool. So any given ship's actual combat ability would be determined by Empire Experience per Ship plus the ship's own Experience. Losing ships before their earned xp could be harvested out could obviously be rough.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

In Tactical Combat, I'd like to be able to set individual ships on auto, rather than it being all or none the way it is now.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I've wanted to have auto-movement and auto-fire as seperate options, like they were in SE III. Still ask once in a while. You never know when MM might actually do something. I asked for the hotkeys to disable or enable all weapons at once for months before he finally did that.

Being able to individually tag ships as AI controlled is an interesting idea. I'll add that to my list. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

This would be probably for SE V not for a patch but anyway:
1.) The possibility to give a weapon one or several families of component/facilities as target. You could then expand dramatically the special weapons you have now, e.g. a weapon that destroys only allegiance subverters or religious talisman.
2.) For every weapon a line of the shield level they can skip: 0 = no shield skipping; 1 = skips shield level 1 and so on.
3.) Introduce shield levels: you could create a almost never ending race of research for higher shield levels and weapons that can defeat them.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I'd like to be able to research a small tech tree that enabled additional population growth on a planet that had reached it's maximum based on planet size. Super Skyscrapers, Underground or Orbiting population habitats, etc. that added a percentage increase or a fixed # of additional population...

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In a similar vien how about a way to aim a weapon. You could select targetting priorites for your weapons. ie aim for the engines or weapons. aiming could be done such that your chance to hit would be less but would increase your chance to hit a certain component

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I'd like to see a "Shield Damage Multiplier" added to every weapon. So if you wanted to do quad damage to shields, set it to four. Want to do 20% more, set it to 1.2 . That would allow the new Weapon Damage Types to be removed and let us use various levels of shield damage along side special Weapon Damage Types. You could make an engine damaging weapon that did half damage to shields, etc. Easy change too.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

More features I'd like to see:

Upgrading facilities. Upgrading a facility should only reduce the cost by one half of the old facility rather than decreasing the new facility cost by half. Furthermore, when upgrading you should be able to choose from different levels along the same tree, which can be toggled by the "show latest" checkbox.

Space yard construction. Apparently the minimum a space yard can construct per turn is 2000 of each resource. I would like to see this minimum removed to reflect large penalties, such as those found in Proportions.

Additional building/facility traits: Extra living space (adds set amount or percentage to maximum population) and production bonus. Both these options (and perhaps many of the other facility traits) should be optional whether they stack or not. Thus, a planet with two cities (Proportions Mod) could build faster than a planet with one or none and reflect the additional development.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Me confused. What do you mean by this? Space Yards can construct with less than 2000 if they are on slow build or if you take a negative in Construction for your Race.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

In Proportions, when I build a space yard II my production shoots up from about 500 or so per turn to 2000.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Perhaps the spaceyard 2's are just that much better than not having a space yard.

Space yards ARE affected by the population modifiers.
Take a look at the abilities tab, and add up all those modifiers to SY rate, then multiply by the base rate of your yard.

What you might be seeing is:
Empire Base Planet Mineral Usage Rate := 500 instead of 2000.

So you only get 500 build rate until you finish your spaceyard...

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Actually, it seems that if the modifiers would set the space yard rate to less than 2000 resources per turn, it is set to 2000 resources per turn. When I have 40M population or so I have a -60% modifier. The modifier is still there after building the space yard, but the production still makes a dramatic jump. Thus, bonuses apply quite well, but only limited penalties actually apply in that the space yard constructs 2000 instead of the advertised 2500.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Again, I'm not seeing this in my Proportions game. Planet with SY II, 80m people- 1370 build rate.

Phoenix-D

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

How about a way to edit a message that was sent in game! How many times have you sent a message only to realize later in your turn you want to add or change something in it.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I would like to see seperate Componets that can generate research or intell points. Example ; Research Station http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif . This was in the Jim bob poll, but i dont know the reason this didnt make to the patch v1.78.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, we've been asking for this forever, but I guess Aaron just doesn't like the idea.

As for the crew thing... I'd love to have a really involved crew management system. Each ship would require a certain number of crew to operate, according to size, and how many weapons, engines and so on it has.

Different amounts of crew would affect the ship's performance, kind of an extension to the current "destroy crew quarters and lose half your movement" situation. Crew members could be killed in combat, boarding attempts and random events, and so it would be important to carry some "spares". Of course you'd need extra crew quarters to house them.

Anyway crews would have to be recruited from planets (maybe even tracking their racial abilities=-) and could be transferred from ship to ship. That way you could rescue a crew from a crippled ship by sending out another ship with extra crew quarter space or some free cargo space. It would make boarding parties and allegiance subverters far more interesting as well=-) Throw in morale tracking as well and you'd have a brilliant system. Micromanagemnt hell, but a brilliant sytstem.

More ideas:
How about an option to NOT display unexplored systems of the galaxy map? It kind of narks me that you can see the general "shape" of the galaxy and can guess where some warp points are going to and from before you have explored the whole map.

Oh, and how about if ships that had been taken over with the Allegiance Subverter had a chance to overcome their psychic programming and convert back for a few (strategic or tactical) turns?

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I'd like to see either a larger combat area, or less rounds in combat. The effect is that I would like to see unarmed ships actually capable of outrunning (in combat) armed ships. If a ship moves too far on the combat map, this could be reflected by movement on the system map, with the ship that moved being down one movement point for that turn. It seems rather silly for ships to get stuck against the "edge" and then pounded by dreadnaughts.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

1 · The ability of editing the orders list for ships, with the posibility of change the orders order and delete them.

2 · Displaying a note when the units that you are trying to build in a planet will not fit in the storage space of the planet.

3 · Some type of "Auto launch units" order.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

The encryption of the .exe and savegames is a great feature that i like very much.

But please switch it off for the maps so we have the possibility to code our own editors (with all the missing features like generation of single systems, cut & paste ...).

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In settings.txt, there is:
number of space combat turns := 30
Number of Ground combat turns := 10

I'd reccommend setting the ground combat turns down to 1 or 2 as well as fiddling with space combat. Set like that, battles for a homeworld can take a year!

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

What I'd really like to see is more detail of what is happening in the combat screen in simultaneous games. Like you get if you do auto turns in tac combat in a single player game. You can see what components are getting dammaged in combat. Why is it not like this when you replay a combat in a simultaneous game? It makes it hard to asses you efective your weapons are. And ground combat is even worse. You either win or lose. There is no way to tell how close you were to winning. Why not the ability to replay ground combat like you in the tac combat of a single player game?

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

SEIV is a lot about micro-managment and we could use some additional help with that.

For example: more waypoints in a scrolling list.

The ability to assign actions such as picking up pop and unloading same through the waypoint button. If the waypoint is at a planet, then allow the move else - warning or gray out action selection.

Ditto sending off pop to another planet. If the destination planet does not have enough room for the pop - you should get a warning. And if you've automated the pick-up and delivery of pop - if the target planet cannot accept any more pop - you should get a msg to the effect that the planet is at capacity.

Ditto sending out a sentry ship: go to waypoint 5; assume sentry duty at waypoint 5.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Yes! More stats to go by when making designs!

Heh... I was wondering why I used to be able to see what components were destroyed and now I can't. I didn't know it was because of strategic and tactical combat. Another thing I would like to see is the two renamed a little, because I keep getting them confused! I had to turn off the manual combat mode at game start 'cause I kept clicking on that one for the unimportant battles I didn't want to see. "Strategic" and "Tactical" are too close in meaning to really be too separate.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

The ability to mod treaties....

I.e. I would like a level above partnership where what ever you research is given to your partner since this is already available. It would solve all that screwed up tech trading and you would not have to worry about.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Ten pages in this topic with wishes only for the next patch!!!
If I was Aaron this would give me a serious headache http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, hopefully he will just see it as a good thing. At least it's ten pages of feature requests instead of ten pages of bug reports. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

And maybe if some of these things don't ever make it into an SEIV patch, they will be considered for SE5.

Geoschmo

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, hopefully he will just see it as a good thing. At least it's ten pages of feature requests instead of ten pages of bug reports. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
Geoschmo</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, I've only heard about 2 bugs so far: some kind of problem with the ship/fleet window scroll buttons, and a bug with certain special damage types (the .5x, 1.5x, 2x, and 4x vs. shields damage are applied to both shields AND regular damage now).

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

Various warp point effects would be an amazing mod tool... like "create warp point - unstable X turns" where X can be any number up to 10 for example. Or "create warp point - random turns" where the worm hole will close spontaneously after a random number of turns. Then it would be so easy to simulate various types of FTL propulsion, etc. etc.

This might be asking for the sky, but how about "create warp point - unstable X ships" where any number of ships up to 10 can pass through before the worm hole colapses!? Of course "create warp point - unstable random ships" would be an obvious addition http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Man, we could do some nifty stuff with this.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thats what I say also. In SE III you could do just that. Idon't know why Aaron tossed it out.

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">While I am not opposed to the idea of retreat in principle, I have yet to hear a suggestion for how it could be implemented that I like. Simply allowing ships to reach the edge and withdraw as they could in SEIII would be fine for turn-based games, but it would have some serious issues in simultaneous turn games. Since you can't change orders in mid turn and allow a retreating ship to go on it's way, you could very easily pull an enemy fleet way out of position by giving your ship a retreat order.

Geoschmo

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I can't agree with you more! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes...we have an artificial system now where ships are in a box... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Things we\'d like to see in the next patch
 

I think the best solution to the combat map problem is that when a ship reaches the edge of the map it should be able to "withdrawl" or "retreat".