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

I like the idea with hulls in orbit but you should be able to take them out and use half completed but you couldnt just repair them you would have to complete them when you brought them back

Heres something worth mentioning. Two things with Designs

One. You should have to wait X number of turns to be able to use new tech on you ships. Most new techs dont immediately get implamented into ships.

Two. You should have to wait X number of turns in order to build new designs. A new design isn't immedaitly able to be contructed, there is a testing phase then they test out certian portions of the ships systems on a smaller scale

(I compared these to real water ships today)

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

It's an excessively realistic things. I don't see how these features could impove gameplay.
Unless they'll add new racial characteristic "tech mastering" which will decrease a time required to familiarize with new tech/design. Then it has sense.

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

I guess you could add that into the game with this idea, that would actually work well with this idea.

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

I don't like the idea of tech delay and new designs not being available for X number of turns. With the tech, its easy enough to assume that it isn't brought to your attention until its in a usable form. With ships, it would simply add too much micromanagement and be quite annoying.

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

Obvious idea for new Intel projec: "Set bugs". Targeted against enemy ships. Kind of minor Version of Crew Insurrection - you can see the ship path, observe system it passes, cargo, build queue (in case of SY), but you can't actually control ship. I think it's much more interesting than dull Crew Insurrection. Main feature is that enemy is not aware that this ship is a spy.

Or else, make it Advanced Crew Insurrection - crew is yours, but pretend to be loyal to previous master. They follow his orders, but you can cancel them anytime and take full control over ship.

Same for planets (Adv. PPP).

I remember someone else requested something similar somewhere, but I'm not completely sure http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Anyway 2 request mean that it's a popular wish, isn't it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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

Instead of this, perhaps going (again) back to SEIII (and I think, unimplemented feature of SEIV?) - the prototype of a new ship design should cost more than subsequent constructions (+25%? +50%?)

In this way you can simulate the added effort of testing a new design

All constrction underway would be considered to be on a prototype until one is complete - from then, all new construction is building the normal design (others started before built still pay prototype cost)

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

I think it would be even better if there was some intel project "Plant agent", which you could run against planets ships etc. Having more agents in one place would give you bonuses for further intel projects, show you more information, and give you some specific options. (e.g. some info when you have one agent aboard, mutiny when you have LOTS of operatives aboard a ship.)

Counter intelligence would have a (small) chance of detecting them every turn, along with specifc "find enemy spies" projects. (Also possibly targeted at specific ships etc?)

Some further cool things would be having a limited pool of undercover agents. (Fixed number per intel facility or like a construct queue to train them?) This might also make it worthwhile to get them back safely with a "Retrieve agent" project.

Hmm, this might make it all way too complicated.

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

Yes! I like the agent idea - that would make it harder to pull out of a former enemy's territory with your spies, because it would take time to successfully retrieve them! This would cause all kinds of intrigue... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

The entire intel should be redesigned IMO. In SE IV intel is too much "all or nothing".

The cost of an intel project should not be automatically equal to the cost of counter intel to stop it.
The race abilities (characteristics, racial trait) of offensive intel and counter intel should be chosen seperately. In SE IV this is always parallel.
And finally intel projects should always have a (moddable) chance to fail even in the complete absence of counter intel (like PPP now).

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

I like the agents idea but I'm not sure if Aaron is a big fan. I suggested when SE4 was underway and it didn't make it. I rather liked the way Imperium Galactica II handled the concept. Basically you have to build a spy base before you can have any agents, and each spy base can support X number of agents. Unlike IG2, I'd like to see the ability to recruit agents from a 'pool' instead of them appearing randomly. Each agent would give certain bonuses to the chance of success for a intel op.

Another little idea, if the idea of Captains makes it into SE5, I'd like the ability to assign spies to your own ships. This would work in two ways: 1) If you assign a spy to a ship that already has a captain, then the spy acts to detect and halt intel ops against that ship.
The second way would require a whole new tech area: Spy Tech. Aside from general advances that would increase chances of success/decrease time & cost, (& maybe implants to cybernetically increase an agents abilities) there would also be ship components basic ones would make a ship invisible to the enemy (regardless of sensor tech. Other spy ships would be the only real way of finding other spies). More advanced components would further increase the success rate of intel ops. Of course, the only reason this would make sense is if agents had to actually enter enemy space in order to perform certain ops. Some ops, like those against planets wouldn't require a spy ship to be sent in, since there's other ways for a master of disguise to enter enemy territory.
Speaking of disguise, if we have agents, one would assume they would be from different races. Thus, using an agent against an enemy of the same species would increase chances of success but his loyalty would be suspect.

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

Won't somebody think of the micromanagement hell? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Aaron has stated that the intel system in SE5 will be similar to that in SE3. This may or may not change in the future...

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

Yes, intel does get way too complicated, very quickly. The only essential thing I think the SE3 intel misses is specific targets like in SE4. I don't know how much SE5 intel will be like SE3, but I doubt that feature will be lost.

A completely unrelated, and much simpler, thing I thought of are secondary explosions. If a component is destroyed, extra damage occurs. Could be easily implemented as a component ability. Chance of explosion when component is destroyed, and amount of damage.

And about SE3 style construction, when a ship appears in SE3, it's components are marked as 'Under construction', instead of 'Destroyed'. The only difference is the picture shown, but what if only spaceyards can 'repair' components marked as under construction, and repair-thingies can only repair destroyed components? If you then also make constructing components cost resources (and repair some percentage thereof), with limits how many resources a spaceyard or repairthing can construct, you'd pretty much have everything SE3 and SE4 do, combined, wouldn't you?
You could also mark emergency pods as 'under construction' once used, so you can't just repair them as easily underway anymore.

Hmm, the explanation is getting a bit long. Maybe it's not as simple as I thought...

The above also kinda implies that repair is also based on resources used, instead of a number of components per turn.
And unles you use a fairly high cost percentage for repair, or a seperate repair and construct rate, spaceyards would repair very quickly.

-edit-

Oh, and you can't base the cost purely on what 'repairing' components that are 'under construction' ofcourse. The cost of the hull can be quite a big part of the ship, sometimes.

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

Here is an idea again...

Create txt files that are refrenced to automatically name individual ships (of course they can be renamed). Create txt files that are refrenced to automatically name a captain for a ship. This can be included in the AI folders. It dosen't have to neccessarily do anything, but it adds flavor, and it seems it might be easy enough to implement.

On micromanaging... perhaps allow for us to search ships by system. Perhaps allow us to give commands for all ships in a system. Basically, click on the system map and give a command that all ships there follow the same order, or same destination. Perhaps allow for the player to choose only certain class types (ie Attack ships, Defense ships, stellar ships, etc.) that the command applies to.

If possible, allow the player to drag and click a square- be it in combat or on the solar system view- all ships, or planets within the square are selected.

Keep a record of events automatically. I hate having to calculate and record when a star is going to explode, or a planet blow up. I should be able to look at a list generated by the computer that keeps track of that, with warnings every so many turns.

Ship designs- don't make a long list I have to scroll through. Put them in a row across the screen, fill each row. Basically an icon of each with their name and type I can click on to get more information.

Let me try out different fleet strategies in the simulator.
Let me assign ship positions within fleets by attaching letters or numbers (whatever) to each ship that corresponds to the appropriate place within the fleet (perhaps associate a fleet position letter in ship settings with class type- A for attack, P for PDC, B for Boarding). The ships will fill those fleet positions they are assigned to first. This might also improve the AI since we can control how they place their ships in combat!

Give me a "guard" command. Similar to sentry, but ignores low fuel, enemy movement, etc. I hate having to constantly click through a ship I just want to leave as a guard or spy.

Let me click on a ship or a fleet in the ship sort, and when I do, let it highlight which system it is in. Having to guess the name of the system is a pain. Clicking on it takes me to the system, but then I have to go back to square one in trying to find other ships.

Let me sort by domed colonies- these are the ones I need to get my alien population to. Let me sort by system. Let me choose which colony ship will head to colonize a planet. Give me more than a green star to let me know a planet is colonizable, or what kind of planet it is. I hate having to guess if the planet is ice or rock, they look almost the same. Either the graphics have to change, or you need to put an optional icon that denotes planet type and atmosphere type (when we get alien populations, it becomes a hassle trying to figure out hydrogen versus methane, or in some instances hydrogen versus carbon dioxide)

Give us the option to hide warp-points with cloak levels so they require sensors of some type to see and use. Let us have more options in the creation of warp points (you don't have to put them in stock, but give us more control).

Have a seperate txt file for planet (and perhaps even system level) descriptions. Rock planets refrence the txt file and places at random a description from the txt file. This way we can compile a moster list for all the planet types and it will add more flavor (similar to the name txts that Users have created) to the game. Perhaps allow for system level too in the same manner- ex. Black hole system might be described as "ungodly monster black hole from which no light or hope may escape". lame, but perhaps you get the idea.

Spice up the event files, or give us more options to utilize them. Perhaps even allow the religious trait to lose the almighty super-targeting device of never missing for a "prayer facility for a random act of vengence from our holy god upon the wicked" it would of course refrence the events txt and smite a selected enemy. Just a wild thought.

Instead of abbreviations for system facilities, let me be able to select a system and see all the current system facilities- regardless of what planet they are on. A system level view perhaps that tells me the total count of resource generation, resupply bases, starports, etc.

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

OK, scrap the Spy Ships idea because I can see how that would get very micromanage-y very fast. But I would like to see the agent idea implemented since I don't see how it would create any more micromanagement. Instead of having 5 intel projects running, you have 5 agents on assignment, each one giving bonuses to certain ops. So your agent with a 20% sabotage bonus is out trying to cripple your enemy's newest dreadnought, your propagandist is trying to stir up revolt on enemy border worlds, your assassin is out trying to eliminate enemy spies (presumably ones working on counter-intel) and you've got two spy hunters working inside your empire to ferret out enemy spies.

We'd still require intel facilities, etc, to fund all these activities, of course... Just out of curiosity, where can I find the current features list for SE5. People keep quoting Aaron on various features that will or won't be in SE5, but I don't know where they're coming from. Little help?

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

Chat sessions with Aaron # 1 & 2

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

Reading the chat sessions there is one wish of what I don't want in SE V:

Common space on planets for facilities and cargo together. IMHO this is a bad idea because it means a lot of micromanagement for humans (moving cargo to get place for facilities) and it will create huge problems for the AI (defenseless colonies because all place has been used for facilities; useless colonies with only cargo).

One thing that I wish very much and believe to be important is the mentionend "reduced graphic mode" for older computers and to speed up large combats.

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

A while ago I proposed a separate space on planet for cargo and facility area (facility size is not equal). I hope it will be considered as a viable alternative to common cargo idea.

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

Thanks for the link, aiken...

Personally I prefer the idea of cargo space and facility space being kept seperate, but I'd like to see some way of increasing facility space. Perhaps a facility that provides extra facility spaces? Call it a Modular Resource Centre, for lack of a better term. It could only be built on the 'base' facility slots. So if a planet has 10 slots and a Modular Resource Centre provides 4 slots, then filling the planet with them would allow you to build 40 facilities on that planet, but the maximum number of MRCs would always be equal to the default max number of facilities a planet could support.

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

With the merging of cargo and facility space we'll be able to set the size of facilities! That means 'upgrades' can be smaller than lower tech Versions, effectively increasing facility space on a planet.

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

tmce, this is there Terraforming might come to play.
1st variant could work like se4 Atmosphere Converters: build facility (1 per planet effective) and it will terraform your planet in a 2-5 years.
2nd variant is to add Terraform Project to a building queue, make it much like pseudofacility. It should be quite expensive I think.

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

I don't see why the size of facilities can't be made different without merging the space for facilities and cargo on planets. I agree that different/moddable sizes for facilities would be good, but as I said the merging of the space for facilities and cargo IMO is bad.

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

Exactly. If facility space was calculated in kT instead of facility slots, it would make it very easy to have differently sized facilities. So a medium planet that currently has 15 slots would have 1500kT facility space, for example. If each 'normal' facility is 100kT, it's the same thing as in SE4, except we can have facilities that are both bigger and smaller.
I'd like to see Planetary Gun facilities. More or less the same idea as Weapons Platforms, but they're facilities and make up for taking up precious facility space by being a lot more powerful than anything you could put on a weapons platform.

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

Stellar Manipulation

In the late game it's a nice trick to build a Ship with the Ability to open/close Wormholes. Then your are able to teleport a whole fleet itself into another system. Problem: The Fleet cannot execute any Stellar Manipulations. You have to separate that ship from the fleet, you have to open the Wormhole, then to move both fleet and ship through the wormhole and afterwards you have to close it again (okay, not neccassary but when you want to clean up). So: 1. It would be great if fleets are able to manipulate Systems, now they are not. 2. It would be also great, if you add another stellar option the "Warp Option", or whatever you call it. That means, that the work procedure "open Wormhole", "go through wormhole", "close wormhole on other side" is shortend.

AI - Setting

We are able to give all AIs boni in all generated ressources, if I am right. I want to 1. give boni to special races (I want the Borg for my final war, but the pretorians are only cannon fodder etc., so only the borgs should have boni) and 2. give special boni to the races. So perhaps I want to give them all cool ressources, but no research points.

Furthermore it would be a good option to be able to set some start locations without working with the map editor. For example I am Star Fleet and want the Borg for a final showdown. Then it would be perfect if I am at the one side of the galaxy and they at the other. Only a thought. Perhaps not possible.

Game - Setting

Setting up a game with 20 players means hard work. You have to edit every Empire for that they are computer controlled. Afterwards you have to check every empire again if they are or not. It's possible to change that.

Flavour - Details

Without any changes for the game it would be nice to see the names of ship captains, cultures of old ruins, planet gouvernors and so on. No Stats, only names for flavour (But Stats are even more cool).

Savegames

Should show not only the time they were saved, but first of all the game turn (year, month).

Construction

The Construction is weird in some ways. You may multiadd objects to build, but you can't multi"subtract". I mean it's impossible to use 100 Space-Yard-Bases. You may need 20 sec to multiadd something so they all build but you need half a hour to stop them all.

The Repeat Function could also be improved. Now you can use it to repeat only the first item on the construction list. But it would be 1. more rational to repeat the complete List (first it builds 2 destroyer, then 1 cruiser and 20 mines, then start with the destroyers again) or 2. set some items not to repeat but then the rest (First it builds a research computer and then it repeats and repeats only research facilites - as in Moo2).

Facility Upgrading and Planet Gouvernors

There is an option "Automatically use Indiv. Ministers for
newly built vehicles". Why not for newly colonized planets?

If you upgrade your facilites manually you have a serious problem. There is a colony-list able to show you the planet types (research compound etc.). But from there you can?t reach the construction queue. So it's hard to go into that queues for each planet of that type. Perhaps an update-button would be nice. Press the button and ALL updatable Facilies will go automatically into the construction queue for that planet.

Galaxy - Map

We should customize the indicators. The red triangles for ships from other races are nice, but not more. We should be able to customize it that ways: planets from allies/neutrals/enemies/certain races, the same for fleets. Also for YOUR fleets. Perhaps some other indicators like Black Holes, Sphere Worlds and so on are also interesting or even the possibility of seeing own or enemies planet types (research facilites etc).

General Awareness

If we visit a system we see the colonized planets by another race. When we leave the system we loose all information about that. In other games we see the Last information about such a system and that is a much better way. Also it would be very, very good to see information about planets and ships in the normal view. AND to see DETAILLED information. I think we are able - without any intelligence - to visit Rigel VI and see that it's a planet with very much Factories. Even a very very secret factory world would produce enough signs to say "okay, that planet produces many minerals". No need of intelligence.

The "Next"-Function

Press Ctrl-F or N and you get the next Fleet or lonely ship. In huge games this is kind of hard and unneccassy micromanagement. Some Fleets do I place at locations to guard them. But there is no guard-option. Everytime I want to Ctrl-F through my empire I always get these dumb guardians. I don?t want to see them again, they guard something and should be not of further interest till I wake them. Also it's interesting why bases are shown in that way.

Bases

We all need resupply Bases. We don?t want them join our fleets. We want to stop at them and then we want to be resupplied (I assume I can write it that way: We ALL want them) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Automatic Orders

Very nice idea, however, we must be able to edit them, or they are quite useless.

Mines

Hundreds of wandering ships of all races laying mines in hundreds of systems in which the only presence of that race are exactly those mines. No, Sir! Don't know what you think about, but I think mines should be placed at locations owned by those races, or am I wrong? Should we're able to go to our neighbours to lay some mines, just in case for war?

Stellar Destroying Manipulations

The destroying of a sun should be a hard, a very hard thing to do. I am speaking about the political situation. It should be more like the use of Nukes in Civilization. A race doing this is an "evil" race. And first of all: It should count as a war declaration. I experienced a not very kind starfleet wandering around and destroying my suns without any war. Hey, they also killed Millions of Traders and Visitors from other races (all in that system at that time) but noone mind. Weird. Disturbing.

New Race Fature

What about a racial trait "good race", "Evil race". Some star destroying weapons and some others only for evil races, the good ones must have a bonus, perhaps better maintainance or whatever. It has to be balanced but so the good races don't wander around devastating the whole universe.

Intelligence

Some nice ideas, some not. For example I don?t know why we need Intelligence Level 2 for general information about a race ot the location of planets. Why we don?t visit the Klingon Homeworld buying a tourist?s leaflet (Welcome at Klingon Homeworld. The Klingons are a very old race ... 31 Star System ... 142 Planets ... a mighty race ... Kahless ... visit the Blood Sea at Rigel IV), that's all we need. We also know if the use Cloaking Devices and whatever, we dont not need Super-Special-Spys for such stuffs. It's enough to hang around in Bars, to trade with them and so on. Level 1 intelligence should be enough.

Customized Key Settings

I want to customize them. It's not cool to use two fingers for my favoured option "next Fleet". Furthermore it would be cool to give certain Fleets certain Keys. So my "Warfleet I" could be on the "1"-key. And so on. You know that from other games.

Diplomacy

Please write a new game from scratch. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

The current method of waiting a turn seems like a good design for balance purposes. Gives the enemy a chance to react.

There is the Sentry order. Ships on sentry orders will not be cycled through.

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

Yes. It could be a new component that is destroyed after use.

Thanks for the sentry-Tip. It seems not to have any effect when I used it. I will try it again next time.

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

If there are enemies present in the system, sentry orders are cleared. It works better in simultaneous movement games, where the sentry order will at least not be cleared until the next turn, so it can be used as a "do nothing this turn" order when enemies are present.

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

Sentry does that, true, but I think we would all benefit from a "guard" function similar to sentry in that it ignores (or even user defined) things like enemy, low fuel, damage.

I think it would also help from a micromanagement standpoint if there was someway to order a ship to refuel as neccessary as it travels to a set destination. Doing the waypoint dance can be aggrivating. Something as simple as "when ship has half fuel, refuel at nearest resupply base on the way to final destination". I want to conquer the universe, smight my enemies, burn their planets- not play traffic cop.

Since the combat is going to be more or less real time, I might suggest that self-destruct components be given a moddable failure rate. Sometimes the captian isn't quick enough on the button, and this would add a little more variety to the current situation. "If I try to board, I will lose this ship- as opposed to... maybe, maybe not"

It might also open up interesting possibilites where certain components can be given "if destroyed, ship explodes". Hello engineering warp core! Maybe that uber weapon would have a certain drawback... or, another way to balance out the religious shrine (the staff on board, saddened at the defilement of their holy ship shrine all commit suicide to appease their pagan god) You get the idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I think a resuplly capability for a starbase (similar to the ship yard) would be a good addition. This would go a long way towards solving the resupply issues because of routing (assuming that a routing routine as expressed above could not be met). Make it big, make it exspensive, but damn it, make it so we can resupply (via a base only component) at a starbase on a warppoint!

This was touched on above, but how about happy modifiers with the use of certain stellar manipulations or types of weapons. You use certain devices (destroy a sun for example) and it makes your peaceful people rather unhappy. Bloodthirsty of course revel in it. Whatever.

Perhaps this is one for the modders, and not a stock game option, but how about the ability to research alien tech- the catch is that you do so at an extreme disadvantage (thing multipliers of 10 or 100) and the end product is never as good as a race who has a natural affinity for the alien tech. So temporal space yards would produce less for a non-native temporal race (but they could research it!) compared to a native temporal race. You could over course mod certain things as unattainble even then (such as the religious shrine) but damn it, why can't I grow organic armor!? I got a vat, I got the research! Gimmie. :p

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

It would be good to be able to break through the facility families. Think about upgrading Organic, mineral and radioactive facilities to monolithes. That solves the problem with scrapping old ressource generation for creating a completely new one (the ai won't do that).

In the moment all three basic ressource generating facilities have different facility families. So if we change the monolithes' facility family to a value identically to one of the basic ressource generators we can upgrade those facilites to monolithes. But not the other two ones.

Even if not interesting for the basic game, please make it possible to mod something around with that stuff. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

The intel thingy....

I love the ideas of the spy/agent/plant bugs stuff. But like Fyron said, that's pretty freakin intense.

My idea... someone of you supergeeks make an Intel Mod with that in it somehow. I'm actually playing in a game right now where out of 15 players, intel was voted completely out of the game. It is therefore obvious to me that quite a few players would not appreciate an in-depth intel program in the stock game.

Mod, baby... Mod.

Turin
The Master of Your Doom...

<font color="blue"> &lt;edit&gt; OK and then this ended up in the thread nowhere near the topic of the intel discussion... wtf was I looking at... sorry.
Turin </font>

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

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif <font color="blue"> LMMFAO!! </font> http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

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

Unlimited (or at least some relatively huge number, 255 or 1000 or something) of human/AI/neutral players.

Think about it - a neutral in each system to conquer or negotiate with! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif Perfect for a Star Trek mod, since Star Trek always has the "generic alien of the week" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

Given a proper set of movement and stellar manip orders, plus a relatively simple alignment of warppoints, it is technically possible to open a point, warp a fleet through it and then close it again in less than a full turn.
Such an action takes a lot of pre-planning, organization among many ships, and specialized ship designs to make it work, though.

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

Erm... to me, that seems more like a good indication that the intel system in SE4 is terrible, and people realize this... Most of those players would probably appreciate a decent system.

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

Here's to what Fyron said! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

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

Speaking of intel...

The single greatest thing Araon can do is to open it up to the user and mod maker community. Perhaps create a txt file with all possible combinations of affecting the game via intel, and have these as moddable intel defense/attacks that can be adjusted. Include chance of success/failure rates in command lines within the txt files.

In this way we can mod resource specific intel attacks, or ship class/type planet type specfic attacks- whatever.

SE4, you get what you get, where as the rest of the game tends to be open ended. Go back to SE3 intel model, but open it up so we can make the fine tune adjustments which have made this game so great!

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

OK I cant read the 103 pages here so here is my list so far and others can tell me if its all already been covered or I just failed to RTFM:::

a button to copy enemy designs

when someone surrenders to you, a way to find them quickly on the map. Maybe have "go to" take you there from the announcment

when selecting star charts, let hovering show it on the map

a way to select large batches or even all for things like tech and star charts

a placeholder for worlds which should not build (at the moment I make a mine named "place holder" and put the queue on hold so I can tell in the menu displays not to keep checking it

maybe a "build item" meaning "concentrate on population increase" like Master of Magic had

non-gui command-line hosting on linux

let me name my ship when I add it to the queue (would be great for reminding me WHY I built that colony ship)

hitting the HOME button should go to the home world

flags are hard to read in the charts. hovering a flag should give a pop-up help of the empire name

a Magnetic component for mines. By itself it could create a "spy bug" which attaches itself to visiting ships. With a bomb it could become a delayed mine you could set off at a time of your choice. Possibly scanners or visitng a shipyard would remove them (yes I got the initial idea from someone else)

the "upgrade facilities' button lets you quickly check a plaet for upgrades. Can we get an "upgrades" button for ships and units?

Shft-Click and Ctrl-Click to work in all selection menus for mass selecting

Double-clicking should serve SOME purpose for everything. A good-guess at a result at least. For mines and satellites maybe the scrap menu, unowned ship maybe the enemy fleets screen to see if you know its makeup, owned planet maybe the construction queue, a sun could bring up the notes screen on the system,

Its slightly irritating that if roman numerals are going to be used, then can the displays sequence it numerically instead of alphabetically? IX does not come before VI

a cheap "drop colony" for colonizing moons or from a spaceship shipyard. No engines or crew, just a drop box. Or maybe a 1-engine limit on it. At the moment I build them but it doesnt seem to give much of a speed or price break. Maybe even a cheap engine that wont warp

all settings in the AI files should mean something. Allow an AI to be affected by government types, leader titles, planet/environment types, everything in case a player wants to write the ai files that deep. Such as a race which does not tend to want to help a nation which has the same planet preference as they do or dislikes dictatorships.

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

If this was done I would still like to see the planets appearance be color controlled based on atmosphere. I see that the basic planet images did this abit anyway. If I get around to it I might provide a test run in a thread or someone else can.

Oxygen has been fairly decided as blue/green, Carbon Dioxide alot of green, Methane purple, None grey, etc etc. If a planets geographical appearance was set by the bitmap but the colors used were slid to show atmospheric changes then I THINK the effect would work. The change in appearance is quite drastic and impressive.

Instead of using the same images with different colors as has been done a bit now, the images could be gray-scale and used as apparently seperate images for each of the environments. It would provide a much larger variety with a much smaller library. But the effect of this is hard to see unless someone actually tries it and Posts a thumbnail set.

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

Why do people keep expressing concern over this? This is not some kiddie forum where you will be flamed just because you made a suggestion someone else already did... The more people that request a specific feature, the more likely it is to be implemented, due to Malfador being very responsive to the fan base.

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

Here is a screwly little idea that can be easily modded. If the organic infestation systems are kept in the game, it should eat ships if they stay in the sector.

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

How about a seamless world?

I think a seamless world would be a great idea. Warp points could be used to get to distant places, but aren't needed to get to different systems.

A seamless world where there's a solar system for a group of planets and their moons all orbiting and moving around whatever object is in the middle.

Some of these ideas were already mentioned.

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

Scenario creator or at least starting tech levels as in SE III.

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

I find it a bit eerie how many features from SE3 people want back. Not that I don't agree... Of course, the one SE3 feature I really want back is the right-click menu. And I'd like it to be customizable, so it would start out with the basic Move, Warp, Colonize &amp; Resupply, but you could add as many other orders to it if you wanted. Maybe even create seperate right-click menus for different ships, so Colonize will only show up for Colony ships, and the Stellar Manip. options would only show up for Stellar Manip ships. I'm not saying this should all come pre-defined, but should be something we can do if we want.

Oh, and does anyone know what the Attack order actually DOES? As far as I can tell it's just another Move button. Maybe this could be changed so if you use the Attack button you aren't given the prompt 'There are enemy ships is that sector...' Since you've given an Attack order, you KNOW they're there and you want to attack.

Can I also just say again how desperately missiles need to be reworked? They're just not an effective weapon at the moment. A few ways they could be improved:
1) Increase the amount of time required to close to non-missile weapons range. Thus, a fleet without missile weapons would take a serious pummelling before they could even use their weapons.
2) Only PDC &amp; Fighter weapons should have a reliable chance of hitting missiles. Other weapons could be fired at them, but hitting them would be more fluke than anything.
3) Missile Mounts. I know these already exist in certain mods, and it's something I've put into my own SE4, to great effect. What I've done is have missiles opperate as they do now up to the BC hulls, after which you can install Heavy Missile Mounts (Or Massive on DNs), which don't significantly increase the size of the component, but vastly increase the amount of damage it does. At the moment a Massive CSM V does about 4000 damage points. I'm also playing with altered ships sizes so a DN is about 3200kT, but even still 1 CSM will pretty much strip a DNs shields. I've also increased the speed of seekers, but this is more to compensate for the short time it takes for two fleets to close on another.

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

The Attack order is only useful when playing simultaneous games where you are willing to take a gamble. It will order your ships to chase a peculiar enemy ship, no matter what else may happen. If you are unlucky, you could end up chasing a single lone ship, or being lured into a wormhole ambush, into a blackhole, or other annoying things.

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

In Simultaneous games (PBW), the attack order is 'seek after'. So if you tell your ships to 'attack' an enemy ship/fleet, your ships will follow those ships until combat, whereas the move command would just move your ships to the sector where the enemy ships were at that time, and won't take into account if the enemy ships move.

Also, if you are attacking a stack of planets with a fleet containing troop transports, only one planet will be taken, and the rest glassed (or at least, I can't seem to get my fleets to *take* all the planets), the attack order will let you specify which planet to take, rather than just relying on luck or some unknown game mechanic.

Hope that helped.

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

I may have mentioned this before, but I'll bring it up again: No hardcoded relationships between the system movement speed and the combat movement speed! SE4 has Afterburners which increase combat movement but not system movement... why can't I define Warp Drives which do the reverse??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif This would also come in handy if I specifically want ships to move very slowly in combat but quickly around systems, so as to make missiles more viable per tmce's suggestion without making the strategic game obscenely slow. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

Have you tried giving your warp drives a negative combat movement ability?

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

That won't work because the negative will be overridden by any positive value on whatever does give combat movement... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

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

Depending on how strategic movement is handled, combat movement might be amoot issue. Remember, combat is in simulated real time- meter per sec kind of stuff. So, if I reckon correctly, there might be a seperate line item that controls combat speed-each engine in effect giving an overall m/sec. This would be meaningless in the strategic view where &lt;I THINK&gt; movement is turn based (it could very well not be!)

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

Well slow in combat would probaby mean slow in strategic as well...unless there were two different types of engines...like thrusters or something for combat, and 'lightspeed' or 'hyperspace' engines for strategic movement.

So if SE5 is 'completely' moddable, you should be able to design either a single engines with two different attributes for combat and strategic movement values or seperate engines for the two movement type.

&lt;crosses fingers&gt;

Kana

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

I think just splitting the two values into two seperate categories would solve the problem nicely.
A 'Normal' (meaning strategic) Speed Value and a Combat speed value. And of course the bonus movement atribute could be applied two speed types differently so you could have things like Combat Drives which generate a less strategic bonus speed but more combat speed.
So a Quantum Combat Drive might only give you 2 bonus moves instead of 3, but you'd get an extra speed point in combat.