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

Ok, here are two things I REALLY want out of SE5!!!

-Bring back the "Armor/Outer/Inner" Hull section for ship designs from Space Empires III! This was one of my favorite ideas from SE3 that I'm really mad that didn't get added to SE4. And to add to this feature, on damage points hitting Outer hull components, have an option in the game allowing the Last point of damage (if more then one point) "leak" through the Outer Hull to inflict damage in the inner hull.

-Speaking of "Leak" Damage, it would be nice if their was some option to add "Leaky Shields" to the game so that a small portion of damage in a volley of fire could "leak through" the sheilds and hit the hull. The ammount to cause a leak would of course be optional in .txt files.

-Bring back the old system of Fleet Management tactics from SE3!!! I like the new fleet formations and new tactics section from SE4, but I think the old SE3 tactical management of fleets was a little better then SE4 is someways. It would be nice if SE5 did base some of its Tactic options on both SE3 and SE4 and combine them together in SE5.

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

Hi all!

Great to hear, that there is an "official-poll"!

First, excuse my bad english, but... i try to do my best.

Wouldn´t it be great, to get an option to build up the formation of my fleet individually? Say...,my battleship should be flanked by this two destroyers ... , and this battleship should always be on slot number 3, the destroyers on slot number 4+5.everytime, when it comes to battle, this specific battleship would be always guarded by this to destroyers, even if the whole fleet counts 100ships.... or in short words, it should be possible to give ships in a fleet a specific place/slot!

The graphics in SEIV never bothered me - but it would be great to see graphics like in MOOII.
The diplomatic actions should be reworked - more characteristics for the races.

Pirates, revolutions/independence wars, better ground combat....still would be great!

thx
greetings from germany
vonManstein7

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

1) stronger AI. i like singe player very much so this needs work. maybe even a special mode where the choices are limited (limited tech, full resources and so on) so that the ai doesn't have to much areas where it can f*ck up. this can probably be done by making a mod?

2) improve the intelligence system of the game.
Escpecially the defense system seems to be weird. You should be able to complete a defensive project that then would be stored. In other words, it doesn't disappear after completing but get stored.

3) in combat, turn the sats to face the enemy.
i hate it when they appear on the other side of the planet. they are useless there

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

Randomized damage--listed damage +/- X%. Adds at least a little variety in combat.

Someone in another thread mentioned external combat modules, possibly even for SE4. This would be great for SE5.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree. I'd also like tho option to launch fighters in Groups in a specific formation: Shielded fighters in front, rocket pods behind, a large fighter providing ECM ans combat sensors for the whole group.

Hey is ground combat becomes expanded, we will want the same thing for various troop types.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">To elaborate:
Cloaking becomes a new ability tag "% chance to remain undetected", one for each type of cloaking (i.e. Active, Passive, Psychic, etc). It is, of coarse, a value. Cloaking components/sectors/systems have a positive value, cloak defeating sensors have a negative value. These values should NOT be cumulative (or better yet, make that moddable in settings.txt with a simple true/false line).

The basic sensor ability (before any research) is just the cloaking tag attatched to the hull size. It should probably be about -50% (or 50% chance to detect normal ships). Colonies get an inate sensor rating of about -25% chance to remain undetected. That should be moddable in settings.txt as well. The values, of coarse, aren't set in stone....

If you wanted to get really elaborate, you could have seperate tags for "% chance to remain undetected" and "% chance to detect". Then you could make it so that (for example) the cloaking values don't stack, but the sensor values DO stack. (which IMO would be unbalancing, unless the sensors didn't have a high value...) I think it would also be kinda neat if there were two kinds of sensor tags, System wide, and sector wide. Then you could make all sorts of interesting cominations! (System wide sensors having a lower max ability than Sector specific sensors comes to mind...)

Now comes my favorite part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif A check is made each turn to see if your ship is detected using the following formula:

A - B = C
where:
A = Highest available cloaking %
B = Highest available sensor %
C = % chance of detection.

As an example, we'll use my numbers above. An uncloaked ship enters a system in which you have a single colony. 0%(cloak)-25%(colony sensor)=25% chance that you will detect the ship THIS TURN. The game does a quick random number generation, and determines whether or not the ship is detected. Next turn, assuming that the ship is still in system, the game goes thru the whole process again.

That way, just because you slipped past the sensors Last turn, they might detect you this turn. The opposite is true, as well; just because you detected that star destroyer as it entered your system this turn, that doesn't mean that you will be able to detect it next turn!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Even better would be to make the turns between sensor checks moddable, too. Yet another line added to settings.txt.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

You could also mod a highly negative valued sector % chance to remain undetected tag onto Warppoints, if you wanted. That way, you see the cloaked ship enter the system (since it activated the WP, which would probably be notice). But as soon as it moves away from the warppoint ... I hope you had sensors researched...

I provided a few examples of how versitile such a cloaking model would be. Hopefully, Aaron is convinced now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif (yes, I know he probably will never see this thread...)

[ January 27, 2003, 15:06: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

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

Hi again I just remeber another thing, different types of warp points. I remeber there was a thread about it sometime ago, but I'm to lazy to look. Also I still the mod script lang idea.

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

In simultaneous single-player games, computer players that take their turns while the human player does!

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

The one thing I'd most like to see changed/added/improved, other than eye-candy issues, is: Race Habitability.

Take a look at Pax Imperia 2. Though most of that game IMO sucked (the demo was better, argh), race design is a true gem.

First off, you could spend more points to breath more than one atmosphere type.

Second off, a planet's habitability was based on comparing the planet's atmosphere and temperature against what your race could breathe (a simple yes/no) and against your race's temperature-tolerance band (a weighted value; the closer to centerline you got, the better).

Thus, a world might be absolute hell for player A's colonists, and a pure paradise for player B's colonists. Player B will therefor value that planet more than Player A will, when negotiating colonisation rights in a border system -- though Player A would be best served by determining what player B likes, and pricing that world accordingly. And so on.

...

So; comparing to SE4/Gold ... allowing the selection of (for race points) additional atmosphere types would be great. Inserting a habitation value for temperature would be great. You could even go a step further, and add one for gravity, and end up with three variables to consider.

Next up, and also from Pax Imperia 2, is an issue I terribly miss in SE4: the issue of flag-versus-shipset. PaxImp2 has TWO seperate places to select those; your flag is one issue, your ship style is another. IOW, picking the (for example) Sallega shipset would not REQUIRE you (barring a customised copy) to use the Sallega flag. PaxImp2 has some 20-30 flags in it, most quite nice. Then maybe a dozen ship styles, also fairly nice (if only game play didn't suck).

...

Now, on to somehting I desperately wish could be added even to SE4, but would wait for SE5 to get if I had to: NEGATIVE PREREQUISITES. Sorry for shouting, but this is something that most 4X games don't currently model: the concept that at certain key junctures (not every tech level, but every now and then), you get the option to "turn" your entire racial technology "paradigm" in one direction ... or another.

You can't do both. You can't have it all; research is no longer like Pokemon ("gotta tech 'em all"). If you get component X, you will NEVER have the option to get facility Y ... or vice versa.

...

Change the way minefields work. Make one "mine" built actually representative of a certain strength of minefield ... when it's laid into a sector (or whatever), that sector gets that strength of minefield. Based on the strength of the minefield, EVERY ship entering, or spending an entire turn inside, the field has a CHANCE, not an absolute, to take damage, based on the initial mine built. If they do, there's a (muchly reduced) chance to take MORE. And so on, until they stop taking damage.

Each impact reduces the overall strength ofthe field by a little. Minesweepers reduce the strength within a random range.

Um, here's an example, with out-of-thin-air numbers: Say each mine built at a world and deployed by a ship or base represents ... 20 points of "depth" for the field. Two minesweeper2 enter the field, able to sweep ... say, 4-6 apiece. Okay, let's say they get exactly average, and sweep 10 from that field.

That leaves a "depth" of 10, still. If we suppose the chance for a ship to be hit is equal to the field's depth, then each of the sweepes now has a 10% chance to impact a mine while sweeping. Let's say both do, but aren't damaged (they're heavily armored). Now, they each have a 5% chance to strike a SECOND mine; let's say only the second one does, and it survives, but is crippled.

Now it has a 2.5% chance (rounded however the program likes) to strike a THIRD mine (which might kill it); let's say it doesn't, however.

Three strikes happened; field depth is down by 3 more, and stands at 7.

Next turn, the defending player lays one MORE mine unit, increasing the strength by 20 more ... to 27. Obviously, those two minesweepers, ESPECIALLY the crippled one, are in trouble.

You can then introduce "decay", and even dispersal. Presume some fraction of a field is lost every turn, at a minimum; let's say 1/20th, or 5%. A 20-depth minefield, not swept and not run into, becomes a 19-depth field for the start of the next turn. If a single ship hits a mine, that satisfies the minimum of one mine gone, so ... no extra loss occurs.

Dispersal can be modelled by increasing the decay rate, for any non-ship entity in the field (planets, moons, asteroid belts, wormholes, etc, etc). And/or decreased by the presence of minelaying ships or bases (who can tend to the field, retrieve strays, and so on).

Decay-and-dispersal represents mines simply drifting away, having their electronics packages go dead, hitting random spacejunk and going "boom", and so on.

...

Other than that ... well, 3D graphics isn't really a big requirement for me; "pseudo3D" would be fine (3d-looking, but still using 2D graphics). I must admit I like the idea of an animated solar system (again, see PaxImp2 for an example, complete with Warp Points). Obviously, in a turn-based game, the animation would be sort of stop-motion, but ... *shrug* ...

You could have the planets move at their own speed during the simultaneous-move replay. You could put a ring depicting the orbit of the planet, and brighten/darken/thicken/etc a segment to represent the planet's expected movement during the next turn.

Lastly, KEEP THE MODDABILITY OF SE4. That's what prompted me to buy SE4/Gold, it's what keeps SE an actively-played game.

I'ms ure my other wants/needs have been brought up by others, but I'll post again if I see something's been missed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

By far the most annoying thing about SE4 is having a superior fleet beaten in simultaneous combat by the crap AI that takes over this. I would like more control over this. Such as when defending a warp point let me set my initial ships position. And somehow give me more control over what my ships do in the combat.