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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've suggested somethiong along these lines before. I'd like to see planets with zero default population capacity, and all planets of each size given the same number of facility slots regardless of atmosphere. It's up to the player to decide how much population the planet can hold by building "habitat" facilities. (Colonisers would have one of these habitat facilities built in.)

This way you could have lots of mineral miners on a planet but hardly any population to run them, or lots of population and only a few miners - or anywhere in between. With careful balancing of the population-based production bonuses some really interesting decisions would be necessary.

The clever bit is that "domed" habit facilites would give less population space per facility slot than undomed ones. This way, domed planets have less potential for population growth, but the player can choose to counter this by building more domed habitats (at the cost of other facilities).

The other advantage is that you could have both types of facilities on the same planet at once- then you could have a planet that holds up to 500 million oxy breathers AND up to 60 million domed breathers at the same time - this would solve the problem caused by a minority of non breathers (ie one million) doming a planet that already has 150 million native-breathers on it.

Also, this system could introduce realistic population damage effects during orbital bombardments/ ground combat/ random events: Destruction of a dome or habitat facility would cause the death of millions in a single strike (or it might cause an overcrowding crisis in the other domes- see my suggestion earlier in this thread about allowing overpopulation/ refugee crises). This bit might be a little more complicated to implement than I describe here, but the foundation would be in place for a really effective damage system.

More efficient/ durable habitats could be researched, and if the whole thing was handled as abilities, it could be modded too. Imagine what Proportions mod cultural centres and cities would look like under this this system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

A similar system to the above could be devised for ice/gas/ rock, so that in order to put humans on a captured gas giant, you have to research and build special platforms of some kind there first.

Finally, I always assumed that on ice planets the population was below the ice (ie underwater) rather than above it. In the Star Wars example already mentioned, I would say Hoth was just a very cold rock planet. Some of Jupiter's moons are ice planets in this sense, and some speculate that there might be life under there. (Europa? Io? Can't remember off hand.)

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I like the icon, but get David Gervais on to it anyway! Maybe the installer could give the player a choice of a new icon or the old one.

[ February 24, 2003, 16:20: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

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

Another idea, kind of linked to the one below:

How about if two players could control a planet at once? Habitat facilities A, B anc C are yours, C, D and E are yours. Space yard X is mine, Y is yours.

How cool would ground combat be with this? Could lead to some interesting treaty situations too.

Have I had my "designer treaties" rant on this thread yet? I'll let you all digest this lot first... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, we need new treaties, and the default shouldn't be war. I've never understood why first contact with an alien ship always end up in combat.
Imagine that an alien scout just get to our orbit, but since we don't know them and of course we don't have a trade treaty with them yet, our military decides to blow them out of the sky. Next month an alien fleet arrives asking for their scout, and since we killed all their friends at first contact, they decide to drop us a level 5 Plague Bomb.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'd like to be able to negotiate my own treaty terms:

You can have use of my resupply depots and space ports, in exchange I want free passage through your space and 20000 organics per turn...

I posted a huge 2 page thesis on how this might work a few months ago... I'll try to dig it out...

EDIT: Found it- here. There's quite a discussion there. Also, when searching the forums for something you posted before, knowing your registered user number is a big help...

[ February 24, 2003, 17:15: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">See Master of Orion 3. In it, the planets are supposed to be divided into regions that get colonized separately (or at least, that was the original plan with the game a few years back http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

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

Now, you might call this pedantic, and say that it destroys an interesting tactical aspect of the game, but if a storm is opaque to level X scanners, then if you don't have level X+1 scanners and you're inside the storm, shouldn't you be unable to see outside the storm?

Also, remember SE2's idea of storms - nobody can see you in the storm unless they are in the same sector? What if there were larger storms that didn't make ships entirely invisible but instead reduced sight range? And what if you didn't get to see everything in a system by default, but instead your scanners had a limited range?

I also like Stars! idea of diminishing returns for stacking components - you CAN put two long range scanners/ECM/whatever on your ship, but while the first one might have range 50, the second one will only bump the range up to 65 or something like that.

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

I really like the idea of stacking sensor/ecm components for increased detection capability, but only slightly better (but emissions would still be high -- hey random idea -- how about missiles that target ships emitting more electronic emissions? Like Anti-SAM HARM missiles that hone in on radar sites?)
If you added the sensor stacking along with the ability to share targeting data amongst a fleet (with a very small component that increases the ability to hit), I could very easily imagine a sensor ship that pointed out all the enemies (like the E-2C Hawkeye, or maybe the SPY-1 radar on ships that is shared with other ships.)

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

You should be able to design the missiles your ships use when adding CSM components and such. Not building them separately and loading them on, as that would be micromanagement hell. But, you should have options as to what your missiles are like. Do you want more engines (speed), more/larger warheads (damage), more armor (hit points), better defensive bonuses (ECM), etc.? Or do you want cheap missile launchers? All of these choices should alter the cost of your missile launcher components.

[ February 26, 2003, 06:26: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

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

I just emailed this to MM:

Mines need fixing. In SE4, it is really easy and cheap to get enough sweepers to sweep 100 mines in each of your fleets. So, here is an idea for revamping mines:

Make sweepers do damage to mines instead of just sweeping X mines. Sweeping damage should accumulate until all sweepers in a task force have had a chance to sweep. Then, any partially damaged mines are restored to full strength. Make each sweeper have a chance to hit a mine. If it fails this chance, that sweeper component sweeps no mines. Then, change what can be on mines. Some possibilities include:

Mine Warhead: does more damage, and each one lowers the ECM ability of the mine. More warheads means more explosive materials, and hence is easier to detect.

Mine Armor: adds more hitpoints, so it takes more sweepers to destroy the mine.

Mine ECM: one per mine, increases the ECM ability of the mine. Stacks with the Warhead penalties.

When a task force enters a sector with mines, each sweeper component is handled separately. It rolls a to hit chance, based off of the lowest ECM ability of any mine in the sector. This is to simplify the chances to sweep mines, without losing the whole ability to fail to sweep. If the sweeper is successful, it hits a random mine. It should not necessarily hit the mine that was used to see if it could detect a mine, because there could be multiple mines with that ECM level. Once a random mine is selected, the sweeper's damage ability is done to the mine, and that damage is accumulated. You can either have excess damage hit another mine (with or without a second to hit calculation) or have that sweeper component's excess damage be wasted. Once the first sweeper component is resolved, the game checks the second sweeper component. It has a chance to hit based off of the lowest ECM of the remaining mines, then does damage to a random mine only if it hits. All sweepers are resolved in this manner, one by one.

This system allows for heavily defended mines that take a lot of sweepers to clear, but do little damage. Or, you can have weakly defended mines that do a lot of damage. Also, you can have 2 types of sweepers: one with a high to hit bonus and low damage, and one with a low to hit bonus (or none) and high damage.

I don't think that this would be very hard to implement in a game that has not been started to be worked on yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

I agree Fyron 100%. I have more, but must go to bed now as I can not see nor can I think clearly enought to type.

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

Another email I just sent to MM:

In SE5, all damage should be random. There should be no static damage. Each damage at range value for a weapon should have a range of damage it can do, instead of a set damage. Here is an example of what I mean (not necessarily with actual SE4 values):

DUC V in SE4
Damage at range := 50 50 50 50 50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

DUC V in SE5
Damage at range := 40-60 40-60 40-60 40-60 40-60 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

So, at each range, instead of doing 50 damage with each shot, each shot will do somewhere between 40 and 60 damage. The range of values could be higher or lower; I'll leave that up to you to decide, as it is your game. ;-)

Randomness in damage values is much more realistic than the weapon always doing the same damage. Also, it is more unpredicatable, and reduces the certainty of victory that can be felt in SE4 as it is. If I have weapons that always do more damage than yours, I will most likely win (all else being equal). But if damage is fairly random, this certainty is removed, except with huge differences in tech levels.

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

Aesthetic but make the screen capable of higher resolutions and allowing the capability to open other windows along with the primary ones.

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

Well... supporting higher resolutions is more than aesthetic. Higher resolution allows more information to be displayed on the screen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

Customizable & more detailed ship/fleet experience gain rates:

say
+20 XP/turn for staying alive
-40 XP/turn for being mothballed
+2 XP/kT for killing (or damaging) ships
+1 XP/kT for killing (or damaging) seekers
+3 XP/kT for killing (or damaging) units
+2 XP/kT for damaging (or damaging) planets
500 XP = 1% combat bonus

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

Missiles are quite ineffective now because of the accuracy and power of PD cannons. I suggest PD cannons improving their accuracy up to 70% following way:

PD level1: accuracy 30%
PD level2: accuracy 40%
PD level3: accuracy 50%
PD level4: accuracy 60%
PD level5: accuracy 70%

Of course this would be only one thing to effect PD accuracy (others would be training, combat sensors, etc.) like it happens for normal beam weapons.

Also missiles could be faster (for example their speed would be +1 or +2 than what it is now). It is hardly realistic that space ships would outrun missiles in short range, as battles happen.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is a great idea. Do you know if this can be modded into SE4?

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is a great idea. Do you know if this can be modded into SE4?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In a manner of speaking it can be done now. You simply make scads of different CSM launcher components, each that has it's own missle characteristics. Range, speed, damage and seeker damage resistance can all be modified.

An attempt was made to mod customizable CSM's using drone bodies, but it didn't work quite right for reasons having to do with how drones function. And it's a bit of a micromanagment headache as well keeping the ships stocked with missles that way.

Geoschmo

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

i would like an engine component dedicated to the use of wormholes. that way we can design system ships and design seperate ships for traveling the wormholes. make the component take up say 10-20% of a ships space. you have to synchronize your ship to the harmonic frequency of the wormhole to allow your ship to travel through it. or someother technobabble reason.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some of them (such as the Log) do now. It would be nice if they all did though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This was in SE3. All ships were built immediately, with all components "damaged". Well, "under construction", but it amounted to the same thing, except that a ship with all comps "under construction" was not destroyed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Then, the ships were "repaired" in the construction queue until they were finished. In fact, damaged ships were "repaired" in the construction queue too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif This had advantages and disadvantages (you pay maintenance on all unbuilt ships, for example), and MM decided to try something different in SE4. Hopefully some sort of hybrid of SE4 and SE3 construction can be created for SE5.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You could do this in the original release of SE4, but it lead to easy exploits. Don't have those technologies yet? No problem! Start building ship designs now, and then edit the designs to have the new techs when you have them. As long as you had not finished any ships of a design, you could edit the design still, and change it however you want. This was not a good thing, and was eliminated in one of the first patches.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">At least part of the coding for that is already in there. There is a toggle in the Map Editor that can theoretically give "Requires Comp X" ability to a Warp Point (as there are no wormholes in SE4), although it does not do anything at present. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ February 27, 2003, 17:53: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

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

Hello!

I did not go through the whole thread, so I do not know if this has been proposed before, but a feature I would like to see in SE5 is the ability to upgrade all eligible buildings and retrofit all eligible ships from a single "Upgrade/Retrofit" window (a two-tabbed window perhaps, one for retrofitting and one for facilities upgarding) instead of having to go planet by planet and ship yard by ship yard to do so. It is easy to do when you have 10 planets, but when you have 100 or more it is getting very tiresome.

I think a minister could manage that, but i prefer doing this manually, so I would welcome such a feature very much.

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

I would like to see the AI defend wormholes, at least important ones, with bases, stats, mines and even some small defensive fleets. I think this would enhance SP play against the Ai especially if the human player had to make wormhole assaults.

Also, for the AI to build more defensive bases. It does build some bases now, more then before, but most of them are only Ship Building ones with out defensive or offensive weapons. Ai needs to build offensive and defensive bases way more then they do currently.

if these have been mentioned before, I apoligize, just don't have time to read all the Posts here at present

just some ideas Mac

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Welcome Mythrantar! The button you are searching is already implemented for facilities. Hit F7 and look for "Upgrade", that's the button right over "Close". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

Having that for Ships would be a bad idea, and the function would have to be very, very complicated. It would have to check every single ship to make sure it can be upgraded, what it could possibly be upgraded to, you'd have to select what they all upgrade to (as it is quite possible to have many designs concurrently), and it would have to check every ship to make sure it is in a sector with a SY so it can be upgraded. Using this would be more work than using the spacebar to cycle through active ships to see which to upgrade. You can already select multiple ships of the same design to retrofit in the retrofit window. The game just does not allow you to retrofit multiple types of ships at once because then it would have to run a lot of checks to see if the various upgrades are legal or not (same ship hull, max retrofit cost limits, etc.).

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

Fyron, you were right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Please ignore all my previous requests for real-time combat. I got MOO3, and you don't even get a chance to figure out what kinds of weapons or tactics the enemy is using before you get blown to smithereens.

Now I remember why I don't like RTS games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks a lot! I guess I should have checked more carefully! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not if you could assign what it can be upgraded too. Then it would be a piece of cake to implement.

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

I have not read the entire post so this might have been suggested before.

1. Lists that remember their position.

2. When you build for example a starbase with a buildship and it's attacked like 0.2 years before completion of the base, the base should already be there but have damaged components. Now you don't get anything which is quite ridicilous.

3. Upgrade of ships would be cool. Now if you have a new design, your queues are not update.
This would have to be the same as the update facilities. For this to work it would have to be possible to assign a successor to a certain shipdesign. For instance, after you upgrade a design, the new design could be automatically marked as the successor to the ship it was upgraded from. Off course you would have to be able to change this. Even if this would not be allowed, this would be more than cool because it would save TONS of clicking.
Same would go for weaponsplatforms, satellites, mines.

4. Allow more than 1 spaceyard component to be used for cooperative building. For instance building a big starbase on a warppoint with a baseyard ship with only 1 spaceyard is SLOOOOOOW.
It should be allowed to have more than 1 component on a ship and even that for instance 2 baseyard ships work together. The construction time doesn't have to be linear but it would at least have to be modable.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not if you could assign what it can be upgraded too. Then it would be a piece of cake to implement.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Which would not make it very much easier than gathering your ships together and retrofitting them in batches. It would require very complex code functions to check to see if each ship can retrofit, and what it can retrofit to. Also, it has to decide which ships to retrofit and which not to when you don't have enough resources to pay for all of them (esp. an issue in turn-based). You would have no control over that. But with how it is now, you can select which ships to retrofit and which not to. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Basically, this feature is for the lazy amongst us (such as myself). But, it would be very problematic to use with ship retrofits. It could be done, but using it would most likely end up being as complicated (if not more so) than retrofitting ships as it is done now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If that is the case, then Real Time combat is not implemented properly in MOO3. It can still be salvaged if they slow it down a bit, or if they give you time before combat begins to see the other side's ships (at least the non-cloaked/stealth ones). For SE games, combat in MP games has no input from the player once combat begins. So, if SE4 (or 5) used real time combat, that would be a null issue for MP games. For SP games, the pacing would have to be timed correctly.

Actually, is there a feature to alter the speed of combat in MOO3? Every RTS game I have ever played has had the ability to slow it down (and to speed it up). I would imagine that they would have this in MOO3 combat too.

[ February 28, 2003, 00:32: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So in your opinion, pressing 1 butting is as complicated as looking at all your ships to find
which ones could be upgraded, then sending them to a shipyard and upgrade them?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No because you as player would have to decide what i can be upgraded too. If you do not select a logical successor, then your retrofit costs would eventually be that of almost a new ship. Granted, some rules would have to be set like you cannot upgrade a ship to a base and so on but i really don't see the complexity.
Maybe because i program a lot at work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anyway, your milleage obviously varies but i think this would save me a lot of clicking.

[ February 28, 2003, 00:38: Message edited by: minipol ]

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

"Please ignore all my previous requests for real-time combat. I got MOO3, and you don't even get a chance to figure out what kinds of weapons or tactics the enemy is using before you get blown to smithereens."

This would be an example of real-time done badly then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

If it was real-time in Strategic combat, for example, there would be no negative effect. You aren't giving orders there anyway..

Phoenix-D

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So in your opinion, pressing 1 butting is as complicated as looking at all your ships to find
which ones could be upgraded, then sending them to a shipyard and upgrade them?

Quote:

It would require very complex code functions to check to see if each ship can retrofit,

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No because you as player would have to decide what i can be upgraded too. If you do not select a logical successor, then your retrofit costs would eventually be that of almost a new ship. Granted, some rules would have to be set like you cannot upgrade a ship to a base and so on but i really don't see the complexity.
Maybe because i program a lot at work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anyway, your milleage obviously varies but i think this would save me a lot of clicking.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No. You have to do all the work of decided what should and should not upgrade at the time of hitting the button. This takes as much (if not more) work than using the current method of ordering retrofits.

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

How about an additional type of warp-point generator that requires a component/ facility at BOTH ends of the connection? For long-range warp points, you'd need to control both systems because you'd be required to build some massive starbase at either end. For short range ones you could use the existing method, with a ship at one just one end carrying the warp point opener we are familiar with.

This could really help balance stellar manipulation by making it harder to just warp into the heart of your enemy's territory and create havoc.
Oh, and allow stellar manip to be used by bases=-)

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

It makes perfect sens e to me to have a button to retrofit all Design A ships currenlty in a SY to Design B.
It lists all designs in use first so you choose design A and shows you all designs of the same size to retrofit into.
Ships that are not currently in a SY will be ignored and will continue with their previous orders.

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

Here's a tiny one - how about an option in game setup to determine the starting date. Not that there's anything wrong with 2400.00, but it might be handy for roleplayers and scenario-makers.

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

Here's a new ability I'd like to see, either in 4 or 5 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif , Can Attack When Cloaked. Mines can already do it but I'd like to be able to mod it in for other things. Maybe it would allow sweepers to function while cloaked. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If cloaking is changed this will not be necessary. Currently a ship is flagged as 'invisible' or not. There is no transition phase. But if sensors have a real 'range' effect then cloaking is just reducing the range of sensors. By the time you reach combat range you're almost certainly going to have become visible to the target(s). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

Agreed, possibly even a guaranteed first shot for Cloaked ships! If they are cloaked beyond your currant sensor level in that fleet.

[ March 03, 2003, 19:40: Message edited by: JLS ]

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

today I saw MOO3 running !!!!

If there is just 1 thing to salvage from this disaster, it is the galaxy map !!!!

This is EXACTLY what needs to be done for SE5.

Full 3d thing you can rotate in any way you want. I want to play SE5 with such a galaxy map !!

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

Huh, I just find it confusing - some stars are farther away than they look because of the Z-axis, and if you rotate to check then you can't find any of the stars anymore...

How about custom Messages for Communications Mimic? Doesn't work too well in multiplayer - if you get some AI message for someone declaring war on you you know what it is... but if they could actually put in a custom message then it really would be like they mimicked your ally's communications!

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

Nooooo.....Minesweepers shouldn't be able to sweep while cloacked!
The mere action of removing one of your mines would give away the sweeper location.

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

About the starmap, keep in mind that in a game we, the player, are roleplaying an Imperator, President or whatever you wanna call it, and a President have an staff to give him all information well detailed, so when i look to the starmap I don't expect to see a Galaxy like looking at the real stars, but a representation of the information that my aids gave me upon which I'll make my decisions for the whole Empire.
So I don't care for a "real" starmap, but for one that tells me clearly which system is closer and which one is more strategically important. If you can make a 3D starmap that acomplish this, then is ok with me, but if the 3D starmap is in any way confusing, I would keep the current starmap, because I don't have an staff next to me when I'm playing to ask them what I need to know.
I can even argue that the current Starmap is a 2D representation of real Space to show the distances in an understandable way.
I'm all for a better 2D starmap, but I have big doubts about a 3D map.
Even if we get a 2D starmap with rotation planets I would hope that I can turn that thing off and play with stationary planets.
I expect to be an all powerful Imperator, not a lowly starship commader that needs to worry about planet orbital location in a system!

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've found that IF mines are removed W/O going BOOM you get no word as to being removed so if clocked you will not know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

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

(I'm on 1.49, so apologies in advance if this is fixed in Gold, but I think not).

If I could change one thing in code, it would be the trade algorithm. In a multiplayer, there is nothing more frustrating than smashing an opponents 'real' economy completely, then having him come back at you with his massive trade revenues from multiple allies. Especially when someone has gifted him a safe moon somewhere in the corner of the map to keep him alive. This would be an incredibly simple fix:

Trade bonus = 20%(max) * value of SMALLER "real" economy.

By "real" economy I mean output of planets and remote mining. This of course makes much more sense in 'realism' terms as well.
Slightly OT, if anyone knows a mod to achieve this effect or similar I will be very interested.

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't find this at all unrealistic. It's roughly what happened in World War II.

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

Here is what I want.. I want to be able to use 3d models directly in the game. Converting them to flat images is very 90s. Heh. And, most importantly, I want the model to be something that I can directly export from Blender (http://www.blender.org) because having to buy something like 3DS Max is unrealistically expensive -- I KNOW that all those mod makers for other games pirate their copies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Also, you lose a lot of detail converting.. being able to move the map around in a 3d fashion and zoom in on ships and stuff. Battleship eye candy to go with my Gunboat diplomacy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

Just not like MOO3 where your ships look like gnats and you can't tell a Trilarian from a Psilon - sure, it might be cheezy to have ships appearing to be bumper-to-bumper in combat, but at least we can SEE the pretty models that took so long to develop! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

(Yes, I know you can zoom in on MOO3 combat, but then you can see about three of your ships on the entire screen, the enemies are pounding you from what would be Toledo at that scale, and they're STILL about half an inch tall, surrounded by acres and acres of empty black space! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif )

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, the SE4 analogy for that would be GIFTS from Allies, i.e. massive transfer of 'real economy' resources to a flagging ally/allies. Did the US get any of that lend/lease stuff or Marshall Aid back again?. I think not. Thanks again, by the way... bet you wish you'd left the French out now, eh? 8-)

Back on topic, when I talk about trade I mean the 'free' resources generated for both sides by a trade treaty. In classic economic terms, the bonus to both parties from trading a surplus for a scarcity - everyone wins. But on average everone wins about the same amount, based on the amount of trade, based in turn on the surplus available to be traded. If the smaller economy has, say, 20K of surplus to trade, that's about what the other side will get out of it too. This is why I think the algorithm is in error. How can I get 100k of resources from trading the surplus of my 10k of actual production? 2K is what I should actually make out of it.

Why do I have such a problem with this? Several times I've been in games where someone is dominating the game and will win soon. The difficulty is in persuading people to drop their super-lucrative treaties with him to even begin an alliance.

Plus the situation where you have almost wiped someone out but their 'virtual economy' remains huge. As I said, no problem with a larger ally GIVING resources, that's fine because its costing them. Trade doesn't.

Rigelian
(My trade-limited game ConventionalWarfare_1_49 begins this Saturday)

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

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I would rather have MM spend their time making a good game than making an impressive 3d system. Gameplay wins over graphics any day. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

Stay away from 3D, it seems when game creators try to move their games to 3D First: you gota buy a new computer. Second: the gameplay goes in the crapper. Stick with good gameplay and micromangment(kidding, not too much micro).

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

AI to aggressivly defend wormholes with bases, mines, sats and defensive fleets, also to increase the number of defensive bases over his major worlds. Currently mostly ship building bases.

Tactical ground combat, maybe on the order of the old Star General game, simple but fun

AI to carry out all Diplomacy aggreements, ie; they agree to attack someone, they do, etc.

just some ideas Mac