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

How about finely dedicated construction facilities?
- The facility decription & abilities restrict it to producing only a short list of items.
- The facility builds at a slow and steady rate, but also gains a big discount on build costs, perhaps even free in some cases.

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For example, you could build an infantry barracks.
It would let you build 2 light infantry, or 1 heavy infantry per turn, at no cost.

When you research Light Cruisers, you could open up an "Escort AutoYard"
It would allow you to build escort hulls at a discount of 25% on materials, and 50% on labour.

---

Best for units, surely.
Especially with auto-launch options, you could have facilities for auto-building mines, sats and fighters too.

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

I'd prefer to see a slight bonus to production after the first item is built when repeat build is used.

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

I would like to see some form of LAN play, rather than just hotseat and PBEM.

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

Excellent ideas Douglas,about planets.My thoughts Just to expand on planet are: When Example: Players troops land on hostle planet fighting,and theres victory after battle for player.Players empire should get(TECKNOLIGIE LEVEL UP)from that enemy planet.Like higher types of tecknoligie facilitys or units left over from battle.

Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition #34 Peace is good for business.#35 War is good for business.

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

Could probably done pretty easily too using something along the lines of what we already have in the emergency build. Just have an emergency research/intel checkbox that is only active while you're at war and you get a boost for x turns followed by the corresponding decrease for x turns.

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

There is a form of LAN play. TCP/IP. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

Declaration of war should have some serious consequences then, else such feature could be exploited to get a free research boost (declaration of war against weak or Ai driven empire, for example).

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

Perhaps the best way to do that would be that a player only gets the boost to research/Intel if he is at war with ALL known races. Any sort of peace cancels the uplift.

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

An auto turn feature. Can be set by player to automatically process the single player turn after a set amount of time. The player can set the time intervals at will and when the turn is processed the player can stipulate if he wants the Ai to make changes or not.

This way a player can have the best of both worlds, Turn based and Real Time. BOTF had this option and it was a great tool to have.

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

I'm not sure if this is already a factor in the game, but I know that sometimes, an empire will have other worlds fracture off from it in rebellions. When you commit genocide on one of these, however, the effect should, I feel, be much worse among the same race than if they were just another alien faction.
I know that if there were another human empire, and some species wiped them out, I wouldn't be very pleased.
Also, there should be a tweak to the AI to encourage recapturing rebelled worlds. I doubt that people would be too happy, if, say, one of the US's states broke away, and the US's military completely obliterated them for it.

Also, again I'm uncertain about whether this is also in the game, but it doesn't seem to be, jettisoning populations into space should be frowned upon. Why, so many times my spies have taken over colonisation ships, or transport ships, and joyfully jettisoned the 'cargo' into the abyss... Okay, well, it WAS me who gave the order, and it WAS hilarious at the time... But still! In fact, it might be an idea to add a chance that the ship's captain will switch alliances for suggesting that he do such a thing. Most people would have some difficulty in pressing a button that would end the lives of possibly billions of people.

Also, I like the improvements to my previous suggestions that people have offered.
In addition to what I said before, I think perhaps the Luminosity value should be used to set the strength of a star. After all, a more luminous star is burning hotter, is it not?

Anyway, as to the point of atmospheric density and worlds being frozen or superhot, or whatever. This also depends, of course, on the atmospheric makeup. CO2 traps heat a lot better than O2. So does Methane. In fact, Methane is 21 times better at it. Hydrogen isn't a greenhouse gas.
Okay, so... for realism this means that we need to take planetary atmosphere density and makeup when deciding whether the planet occupies its habitable band. Obviously, a world with 2 Bar density and say, 90% Methane is going to need to be a lot further out for a habitable temperature than is an Earthlike planet.
So to determine the planet's habitability, we need to find how much heat the star(s) are hitting it with, given its distance out, and adjust this to account for atmosphere with some sort of atmospheric makeup equation.

Also, I'd like to see moons with atmospheres. There's nothing to stop it happening. Many moons in our own solar system have atmospheres, and in any case, you can modify the atmospheres of the moons. Titan happens to have a Methane atmosphere and an atmospheric density of 1.5 Bar.

Regarding Ice planets in Multistar systems, yes, of course they can exist. But they do, as you say, have to be far away. Also, take into account that ice reflects sunlight, so it inherently cools a planet. This is how worlds can snowball. In fact, Earth itself once snowballed. This was undone over time by increased CO2 in the atmosphere, which allowed the world to heat up until the ice melted.

Good grief, I'm going to get a reputation for rambling.

Apart from this, there should be a greater penalty for ignoring demand Messages from other factions. And less of the AI demanding I get out of my most heavily fortified systems. Without some sort of system presence, they don't really have a right.

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

Well I personally would drop a transports load of troops onto it to recapture it. It would be interesting however if we had different cultural political systems, that way if a planet rebels and you have a dictatorial system (much like the type I regularly choose) nuking the lot of them will actually reduce unhappiness on other planets as they see the price of disobedience (if they know whats good for them).

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

Well, yes, I do too. The AI doesn't seem to, though. It just glasses the planet and recolonises.
I mean, I can't even count the number of enemies I've used spies on, in order to make their worlds rebel so they would gradually wipe themselves out.

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

When you say you use Intel to make the AI planet rebel do you mean cause unrest or actually make them split off?, because I am damned if I can make puppet political parties actually work (even when they have no intel defense).

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

I like to max out my intel and have One level 3 Counter-Intelligence running, and the rest all Puppet Political Parties. Works a treat on less espionage oriented people, especially during a war.
Sometimes they join me, sometimes they make their own governments, all the time they get totally glassed by their former rulers.
And when that stops working, I change it to have one level 3 Counter-Int and all the rest are Crew Insurgents. I tend to take over most of their fleets with little work, and glass whatever is left.

[Edit]
I should also mention that they're all completed in one turn, and I have it set to repeat projects. That's how much much I'll put into it. With that much, I can bankrupt most factions.

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

We could really use a master log file. A file that logs all significant information. Things that the log should include but not limited to are:

1. Records date ship was constructed
2. Records date ship was lost, destroyed, sold, traded, other
3. Records date system explored
4. Records date planet colonized
5. Records date of first contact
6. Records all Messages from contacts
7. Records all events


Additionally a note pad feature in the game would be a god send. The current one does not meet the requirements needed by those of use who use it. Additonally switching alt tabbing in and out of the game is a PITA.

The system note system is good, but it would be helpful if there was a master log file of these. IE a text file that we could open that contained each systems notes, if any, in alphobetical order by system name.

Just some thoughts.

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

Some other things:
Technologies that require multiple prerequisite techs.
Sensors for mines. These should be expensive additions to the mine, and only work on the sector the mines are in.
Also, higher sector limits on mines. Or at the very least adjustable ones.

It might also be nice to have a Terraformer ship type, which acts like a colonisation vessel, in that it is entirely consumed after use. To go on this design alone should be Atmospheric Modifier Plant and Climate control facility components that, that, when ordered to 'colonise' or whatever, are changed to be planetary facilities. By making the ship a small one, you can limit the number of facility components it can hold to 1, so there'll never be a problem when there aren't enough facility slots on the planet for the terraformer to fill. Also, I feel that this would indeed be balanced, if the facility component is the same cost as the facility itself. This is because you have to build it one the ship, and so have to pay for the other components too, and the maintenance while it is in transit, and the entire ship is consumed on use, so there's no 'repair and do it again' method, like how I build my Quantum reactor Planet Builders and Warp point openers and closers.

Anyway, this has the result of being a faster way to build this facility on all needy worlds in the empire, since a high population world can build faster, and will easily produce it in less time than the colony would be able to.
Possibly, you could make it so that the 'unpacked' facility was a different one altogether with a slower terraform ability than the planet built one, only 'buildable' by being unpacked. Although I would say that the cost of having the major production centres' shipyards focussed on building terraformers instead of warships should be tradeoff enough.

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

A small note: Mine limits per sector are already adjustable. I think you have to tweak the data files, but it's a tiny adjustment. But yeah, it'd be nice to have an adjustable bar or something in the game setup where you could change the # of mines, satellites, etc per sector.

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

You can adjust it now. Open up Settings.txt in the Data folder and find the following setting:

Maximum Mines Per Player Per Sector := 100

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

Hey thanks. It would still be nice to have it in game, however. Is there any upper limit that anyone knows of?

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

Probably some power of two or one less than a power of two...

These already exist - e.g. Small Phased Polaron Beams (requires Smaller Weapons and Phased Energy Weapons) - though I agree that more such techs would be interesting, and many mods do add more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

This should be moddable as long as Aaron makes all sensors range-based and not just system-based, which I *think* he said he was planning to do... anyone else remember that or am I just dreaming? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Oh, and he would also have to make some way to differentiate between sensors that have a range of zero and no sensors at all, since currently if you create Long Range Scanners that have a range of zero, they simply don't work; the game treats the two the same and thus the minimum range for Long Range Scanners is 1 (a 9 square coverage). Perhaps a range of -1 or null or something for no sensors at all, Aaron? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

I did this for the STM mod but thought it might be a good idea to incorperate into Space Empires Five as a RACE SET UP option.

Instead of a one size fits all approach for Computer Player Bonus Aaron could adopt this concept.

Advanced Trait
Mild Research Boost
Medium Research Boost
Heavy Research Boost

Now for Single Players you can set your Computer Player Bonus to low or medium and then give these trait to one or more of the AI's. By doing so you will be giving the AI a boost in research and an advantage over you. In this way you can make a more unique game for yourself by giving each race its own level for research boosting. For example: Give the Heavy Research Boost trait to the Phong and they will research faster than you and say an AI with the Mild trait. These settings will provide for a more unique type of game play whereas the AI players will research at differant levels in stead of one size fits all.

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

I had a thought that might be a good addition to SE V.

Say you capture or are given a ship from another race and when you go to anylize it, it explodes. This would not be the same as the self destruct device, but simular. Think of it as a spin off of of the SDD in that it only works if the ship is anylized.

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

Incorperated settings function.

In SEIV we must manually reset the upper limit for systems, say from 100 to 255, and the same for units per sector.

What would be nice is if in SE V we had the option to change these settings, all settings, in the game and not have to manually modify the data files.

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

Have a SE V idea worth mentioning;
(1)Special Outpost Facilitys that are clocked or have stealth levels.Reason behind this?,To create a outpost centers on asteroids / boarder territory,In enemy territory.You can see them?,but they cant see you,Cloak and dagger & strategical intel fun. Anyone ever watched WING COMMANDER,The ShipBase on a asteroid?.

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

You can mod this now into SE IV.

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

Not really. You can't colonize an asteroid. Also, you would have to make the entire planet disappear, not just the colony itself, with a cloaking facility.

Now, you can certainly have cloaked ships and bases in enemy territory, just not colonies...

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

Here's an idea: Starbase colonies.
You could have them assembled like ringworlds and sphereworlds, but obviously smaller and unable to be mined.
They'd be ranked as Tiny obviously, but they'd be an excellent way to establish a foothold in a system, especially if they were able to be moved.

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

On that note, another idea: Perhaps a component that would allow a ship to haul other ships. Some sort of tractor beam that would make it like a tugboat. Possibly the speed that can be reached would be related to the size difference between the tugboat and the ship being hauled.

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

I was thinking about this for awhile to figure it perfectly. Corruption-Your Home planets would have little amounts of Corruption but the farther you got away from a Homeworld the more corruption. The only way to decrease this is by either stationing troops or ships\bases on or near the planets in question. Distance would be determined by movement cost. also as you got more advanced your Empire would expierce less corruption-so long as you implament the new facilties.

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

I remember that was in STARS!. Can't remember more than that however.

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

And it was in Civilization long before then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If corruption is included, it should be kept to a minimum... Nothing is more tediously annoying than Civ-style corruption.

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

How about persistent status effects other than damage?

EG:
Ion Cannon hit: Disables intact engines. Repair cost: 0.25 repair points per component.

Space barnacles. Effect: Ship mass increased by ##kt for movement and combat calculations. Repair cost 1 point per 10kt of barnacles scraped off.

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It seems to me that corruption should really be the opposite...

All the corrupt people will gather in your capitals and other areas of high-importance, since that is where individuals can have lots of power to abuse.

Of course, planets that are left without defenses would be vulnerable to raiders and pirates and theives...
Building defense sats, fighters and troops on the planet could help prevent these kinds of losses, but its not really fair to call it corruption.

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

The idea wasn't so much corrupt politicians, but rather lack of organized control far from the center of power. As more advanced government systems are developed, corruption in far flung regions decreases. Monarchy has slightly less corruption than despotism, for example. Government systems such as communism and democracy have very low corruption, representing much higher levels of control over all regions of the civilization and higher levels of efficiency compared to more "primitive" governments. It is really a corruption of the efficiency of organization and centralized governmental control, rather than how many politicians are accepting bribes or whatever. It is a measure of how effective the government is at managing a far-sprung empire. It is a symbolic representation of realistic situations where a centralized government can not effectively manage every aspect of every portion of the empire. The corruption is just how much can not be used effectively on a national scale by the government. This is opposed to the SE2/3/4 system where every planet (or system, based on spaceports) is essentially a completely automous state capable of 100% effective control over every aspect of everything in the empire, and every state is absolutely loyal to and efficiently run by the centralized government.

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

Something I'd really like to see make it into SEV is a way to set which space yards have automatic "move to" orders in an easier way than we currently have to do it. Right now, you must go into each space yard queue and then tell it to move all constructed ships to any given waypoint. A better way to do this would be to have a system similar to the one used for multi-adding ships to multiple queues. Hold down shift and click on however many queues you want to move to the waypoint, tell them to do it, and voila! there you go.

As things are, I'm in a PBW game where I had to go into about 100 queues individually and give them each "move to" orders. It sucks. And takes way too much time.

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

Hehe.
How about a graceful way to handle loading a 50 megabyte mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

- Suicide "64% and grinding" Junkie

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

In SE4 tactical combat, Baseships take up the same number of squares as an escort. I find this somewhat odd... I'm not sure what the look of the combat will be in SE5 but it'd be nice if this sort of thing wasn't the case.

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

I don't think there will be any "squares" per se for combat in SE:V, so each ship will occupy a varying amount of space depending on the size of its 3D model. It'll be interesting to see how MM scales the planets etc, in the combat map.

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

Alright, that sounds cool. Will Newtonian movement also be modelled?

Also, another idea for help for modding, getting rid of the roman numerals on the weapon boxes and just replacing them with numbers. It'd mean less trouble for people wanting to create a weapon of a hundred levels, or something, I'd guess.
In any case, Roman numbers can get too long, though really, the numbers for 83, and 87 are the longest. LXXXIII and LXXXVII

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

Er, I should probably point out that I'm not saying that there should be, say, an Anti-Polaron beam C, just that our number system requires less characters than does roman numerals.

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

Or right, also, building a sphereworld practically always sends me into Mega Evil status, because of all the components needing building, despite the fact that those components are about as dangerous as me weilding a piece of soft cheese. Very soft cheese.
Perhaps the score shouldn't be influenced so much by Bases that have no weapons.

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

Right now the roman numerals drop into Arabic numerals when they get big enough to be unweildy (i.e. around 30). It works fine.

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

Quite frequently I'm lacking the ability to set individual strategy for a particular ship (not to a whole class). I guess it's easy to implement by enabling Fleet Startegy button for a single ship (but skip the formation choice of course). It would be a very useful feature.

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

Humour and easter eggs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I remember myself rolling on the flour then I saw almighty DIRE PENGUINS in the Age of Wonders I.

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

Just a small interface point, the ability to set a race to AI while in the Players in Game menu, so that you don't have to go into each and every faction and set it. This helps save time, and makes it easier not to miss any.

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

I believe the game host login lets you do this.

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

I'd like to see a planet's resouce value unknown until you've occupied the same sector with a ship, i.e. scanned it.

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

Detection ranges in general being arbitrary distances would be nice.

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

Not to mention long range scanners that work against planets! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

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

I'd like to see the ability to make shipyards that can only build up to a certain hull size.

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

I hope the game will be released in a jewelcase. I really hate the paper "bag" that came with SE IV Gold.