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

<font color="black"> </font> What I would like to see even as a patch to SEIV is a little clock to tell me what time it is, so when I need to go to work the next day I don't end up staying up until 3 in the morning. Could make it a little tool bar ditial clock. Help cure the "just one more turn" syndrum.
:-) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

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

Well, judging by the screens, it seems that the two extra "moddable" resources were Research and Intel. Bugger http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

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

Its possible that you can turn resources on or off. Which would mean that they aren't being shown..or they could be used in the ground screen (workforce?)

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

Lmao!
Turin

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

A clock wouldn't do any good unless it had a big audio-visual alarm. I mean the clock isn't helpfull for running your empire so why would you look at it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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

The ability to run it in windowed mode as opposed to the current "Minimized/Fullscreen" options.

Moddable diplomacy, custom treaties and the like.

The possibility of "Councils" or "Senates" or something which acts as an advisory board for the player, and can be used as target for intel.....

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

This may have already been covered somewhere along the way, but I think it would be nice to have more abilities using the Ships/Units, Construction queues and Colonies command buttons.
eg, you can "multi add" units and ships in the Construction queue command button. I think it would be cool to be able to perform other muilti tasks such as putting multiple queues on and off hold. That sort of thing. ???

*Being able to upgrade/scrap/analyze/mothball groups of vessels by going into "Ships/Units", then multi adding the vessels you need to upgrade etc, and from there being able to access the "Scrap/Analyze/Mothball" command from within "Ships/Units"

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

Given that the beta test is already underway, it might be a bit late to implement this suggestion, but here goes anyway:
I'd like to see a 'Points' system set up for diplomacy. This would be completely invisible to the player, but would have huge effects on diplomacy.
There would be two seperate points systems, one when you're at peace with another empire, and one where you're at war.
Each race would have their own individual Point Thresholds.
When you're at peace with another empire, before you have any treaty, you gain points basically just by giving gifts and accepting demands of the other empire, and a small number of points each turn for just staying out of their way. You lose points by making demands, attacking them, hanging around in their space, etc. Once you rack up enough points, the empire will be willing sign a treaty with you. Once you have a treaty, you earn say, two points per turn of the treaty. You can then also get points by being at war with your allies enemies, and lose points by warring with their friends.
As the number of points you have with a given empire goes up, they will sign higher and higher level treaties with you.
This would eliminate a few of the problems from SE4, namely, empires declaring war on you for no reason (if you're staying out of their space, the number of points keeps going up so it's more likely they'll offer a treaty), and also eliminate the practice of AI empires offering the next treaty up every single turn, until you get to Partnership 4 turns after you've met them.
Also, once you have a treaty with an empire, as long as you don't go zooming through their space, or blowing up their allies (or both!), your relations with that empire will keep getting better. Anyone who's played Civ or Alpha Centauri will appreciate this, since it's infuriating in those games that you pretty much have to give presents to your trading partners every single turn to keep them from hating you.

Moving on, once you're at war with an empire, they would have a defined threshold that must be met before they'll agree to peace. You gain points by destroying ships (1pt), capturing planets (10pts), and capturing systems(bonus 20pts). You lose points by letting the enemy destroy your ships, or capture your planets &amp; systems. Once the point threshold has been achieved, the empire will agree to peace with you. Then the system switches over to the Peace Point system, albeit at a fairly low starting point number so it will be a while before your former enemy signs a Trade Agreement with you. A second threshold would be in place if you refuse peace and continue to attack, and once that one is met, the enemy will surrender.

All of these points would be more or less invisible to the player, aside from maybe a little tag under their name that tells you how good your relations are, and maybe a little arrow showing whether they've gotten better or worse since the last turn.

You would have a default starting number of points with every empire, but depending on their set up, they would react differently. ie: Your starting points are 500.
The Praetorians are set up to go as far as a Trade Alliance if points are 500 or greater, so when you meet them and propose a NA treaty, it is accepted.
The Xiati, however are set to declare war if your points with them drop below 600, so upon meeting them, they declare war.
There would be other things that could raise or lower you starting points, such as racial achievements, or research in certain fields. Also, every 10 points you earn with an ally gives you 1 extra starting point when meeting a new empire, since you reputation will procede you, as it were.

Maybe there's another way of doing it, but I think this is the simplest, most easily moddable way of getting decent diplomacy.

Using points, even Trade could be made to make more sense. Eg: 100kT of resources is worth 1 point, a ship is worth 5-50 points depending on size, a planet is worth 500 points, and technologies would be given point values based on their level. ie: level 1 tech is worth 2 points while level 10 tech is worth 20.
Then, when you propose a trade with another empire, it just looks at -We Get: 10000pts -We Give: 10100pts. and then accept, decline or counter offer, based on what sort of Trade Threshold they have. (ie: A race with a trade threshold of 500 would accept this deal, while one with a TT of 50 would not).

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

As for the trade points, I tried to start something similar a while ago; I called it "Star Credits" (crappy name I know) and it also used "points" allocated to certain things. For example, a newly colonized planet with under 5 facilities and under 50M pop would cost, say, 5000 SC IIRC, while a developed world with over 10 facilities and over 100M pop would cost something more like 25000 SC. For ships, something similar; SCs based on the hull size, but also whether or not it had a colony module, whether or not it had Racial Tech comps, Stellar Manipulation, etc. I also implemented "patrols": i.e. you order one or more of your ships to patrol/guard an area for a certain number of turns, and you get paid based on the size and number of the ships and the amount of turns you patrolled/guarded the area.

But what you're saying is much better.

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

I've always thought that you shouldn't be able to kill ALL of the population by bombarding it from space. You would have to practically blast every square centimeter of the planet, and then find all of the populace hidden in mines, basements, etc. I have always thought that planetary damage should never be allowed to kill the last 1-2 million to represent this little point... you need boots on the ground to do that messy work.

Another Alternative is that you could consider a planet "killed" from orbaital bombardment as destroyed from the empire perspective, but then allow 1-2 M of the original race as automatically being added to whoever colonized the planet next (rather than needing to kill them). Basically this could be one way to implement the "bombed back to the stone age" approach. You could also use this same approach for automatically getting "bonus" population upon establishing a colony for Native, pre-warp cultures which could be seeded to planets similar to ruins (basically ruins that give you population rather than tech).


Another interesting thing I'd like to see is options for burning off a planet's atmosphere. Could be used by attackers as another type of planet trashing raid style of attack against stronger / parity opponents, or could be used by defenders in a scorched earth move.

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

Or, what you could also do, make the first few M pop easier to kill, but as you depopulate the planet you'll need to do more and more damage to kill the same amount of population. The amount of damage you need to do is calculated using some sort of formula involving the size of the planet, the size of the original population, the size of the maximum population, one or two random or semi-random factors and perhaps a few other variables.

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

- experience lets you buy more Racial Points

- much stronger AI

- change the threshold of individual empires for declaring Mega Evil (empire A declares Mega Evil when empire C is at 200% of A's score, empire B declares Mega Evil when empire C is at 500% of their score.)

- Civilian ships. They would be autonomous, although you could order them around if you needed to. For example, the ships that handle the "trade" of resources between empires.

- "colonize" button for empty planets, which automagically orders the nearest appropriate colony ship to load up population and go colonize the planet.

- some kind of solution for the problem of colonizing planets that are too small to hold all the population in cargo on the colony ship.

- Remote mine inhabited planets.

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

Good idea, but not at all praticle.

You have my vote on this one.

You can do this in the settings yourself. You can even disallow it entirely.

There is really no trade in the game. You can set up transport ships and have the Transport minister control them currently.

You have that. But I think what your saying is to be able to click on the planet itself and say COLONIZE this world and have the nearest ship come. The game has this, but you have to locate the planet in the list then click colonize.

There is, its call atmospheric converters.


I can see why you might want this ability, have a planet full of research facilities and no room for min/rad/org mining facilities. It would be best if they were far less efficent then the facilities themselves.

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

Welcome to the forums 123456789 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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

[quote]
Atrocities said:
AT, that is after you colonize the planet. What he means (and what I would certainly like too) is that, say, the automatic Colonize order load takes 500M people off your homeworld of 1000M people, and then you colonize a moon..... and it can only hold 100. The remaining 400 (i.e. 40% of your entire population!) is simply gone. This is extremely irritating if you forget this. I fully concur with 123456789 on this one.

And welcome to the forums!

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

For SEVI -

Damage modifiers against Armor and other components. Double Damage To Armor for Acid Launchers for example.

Multiple damage types - Quarter Damage To Shields, Double Damage To Armor for example.

Larger/smaller modifier damage types. Ten Times Damage To Shields, Tenth Damage To Shields.

There was more but I forgot.

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

Thought of a few things that would be nice in the new game:

"Stacking" component mods: It would be nice to be able to split out different effects in component mods. Miniaturization, armor, size, fire rate, etc, are all modeled in several different mods as individual selections, but in each case a component can only have one component enhancement. If you want to model variants that blend two different technologies, under the current system you must create a specific component enhancement that does this. An example from Deathstalker's Mount Mod (DMM) would be combining the miniaturization modification with shield improvements (ie: hard or multiphasic). It would be less complex to allow several component enhancements to be in effect simultaneously.

Edit to correct DMM author.

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

Aaron has already said that you can create your own damage types in SE:V. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

Moddable stacking rules. For each ability that could conceivably be stackable, allow the specification of stacking groups. Wherever stacking groups are defined, possibly in their own file, allow independent specification for each ability value if an ability has multiple values. Both highest-only and lowest-only should be options, as well as infinite stacking. Also, limits should be possible for both the number of distinct source that can stack and the minimum/maximum total value after stacking. Stacking groups should also have a list of other stacking groups that they stack with. Stacking groups may or may not be specific to particular abilities. Which stacking group to use would be specified along with all the other ability information in components.txt, facility.txt, etc., and would be separately specifiable for each ability the item uses.

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

Allow specifying an official policy for first contact other than shoot on sight. Battles shouldn't have to occur just because the combatants haven't had time to establish a treaty yet.

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

Now THAT'S the best, most basic one I've heard in a long time. That makes a whole lot of sense. Maybe it could be tied to your Race-Type as a default but selectable for those who care to do something about it?

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif[/img]Turin[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif[/img]

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

Scenarios &amp; Campaigns.

Scenario &amp; Campaign Editors.

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

I have read some interest in having "heros". This is somewhat simliar to that. Not sure if anyone has suggested this but...

"Personalities"

These would be important people that are noted to be on a planet/ship.They would provide bonuses/penalties to the planets/ships they are on.And them moving or them dying could have an effect on as much as the whole empire.
Here are some examples:

"Emperor": Reprsents the ruler of the empire. Generated on the home planet at the start of the game. Gives a massive bonus to the planet he is one something in the order of +50% to all things that can be increased. And a sizable bonus to he entire system +15%. However should the system he is in have any enemy presence in it, the whole empire takes a huge happiness hit. Should the planet he is on come under attack another huge happiness hit. Now of course the emporer would flee in that case the planet he is on is going to be overwhelmed and would appear randomly on another planet under your control (just to stop the whole emperor dying and somehow you are still playing the game problem).

"Mining Overseer (random name here)"
"Science Director (random name here)"
"Intelligence Head Coordinator (random name here"
and so in that manner

They would be created by different training facilties. They would provide bonuses to whatever area they are experts in. The training faclities would only be able to be used on planets with a large population to choose from. And it could take quite a few years just to find one someon exceptional enough to be qualifed to be one of these personalities.

The "Heros" of ships would too be personalties that could be moved around. They could provide combat bonuses to ships, training bounuses to planets etc. They'd have names like "Big Adimral Man (random name here)".

There are also lots of other ways a system like this could be used, from hostage taking to ruler changes etc..

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

Because I am so lazy that I have no patience to read all 146 pages. So maybe there will be repeat wishes already included before me.

What about remove the warp point system? I think it strange with a galaxy filled with warp points. Instead, Warp engine components wll be needed to make a jump. Warp engine should has warp speed, so a jump also spend times depending on the distance and the engine. Ships could also move to the ajacent grid without a warp engine. So the galaxy map should be contineous.

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

Don't worry. Nobodies gonna re-read this unless their bonkers.

...By which I firmly conclude that I am *Entirely* sane.

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

For my latest suggestion, see this SE.net thread:
http://www.spaceempires.net/home/mod...mp;p=4298#4298

edit: wow, is this thread really almost two and a half years old??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

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

I posted the exact same thing here in this thread when these screenshots were still new.

Great minds think alike http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

Rise of the Robots!

How about as you increase your computer science level you run the risk of having the AI revolt. A type of civil war condition. I'm thinking Cylon/Terminator kind of thing. It could be the kind of change that temporarly changes your empire bonuses for a time until the revolt is put down. Or it could be a full all out civil war until one side wins control.

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

Or just have one of your planets revolt to form a new empire?

Better maybe to link it into facilities, so a system robotoid factory increases the chances of such an event. After all you may research high level AI/Computers but never build them. On the other hand if you have vast armies of robots doing your manual labour they might rebel. Same, but far lower chance, for using master computers on ships.

But it would have to be an option, only a catastrophic level event say.

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

Well, I dont know if it has already been suggested, and there is no way that I am going to read 146 pages to find out, but I think it would be cool if your planets orbited the sun. The planets could move each turn. This would be considerably easier now that the game will have a hex map for systems http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

Something which I personally would like; to be able to determine the duration of Shields and BigExplosion animations. I know it's just eye candy, but perhaps for SEVI?

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

Cost of facility upgrades should be based on the difference between the cost of the old and the new facility, not just the cost of the new facilty.

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

In SE4, it lasts as long as the weapon animation does, which is quite sensible.

In Starfury, the shield animation was an arbitrary length, and you just needed to specify what the sequence of sprites should be. It repeated the whole cycle if nessesary (due to a long-cycle beam hitting, say)

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

I dont know how exactly this would work but have weapons which attack specific types of weapons cutting threw armour and shields. So race A has weapons which target energy based weapons, you would be forced to use projectile weapons. I hate in the end of the game where Im stuck with have only a specfic group of weapons because all others are too weak.

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

Colonel;
You need some mods!

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/
Check out Pirates &amp; Nomads, or my new Carrier Battles mod (no AI for CBmod, but there is a "newbie" game open on PBW)
Devnull is also quite popular.

Or, if you don't want to have it be too different, you can pick up the SE3 mod I made (For SE4 gold). Something was lost in the translation from stock SE3 to SE4, and this puts it back. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In general, most mods do a significant amount of weapon balancing.

---

PS:
For those who still think a realtime combat can't be controllable, check out the demo of the predecessor to the new Wierd Worlds game.
http://www.digital-eel.com/sais/files.htm

Space bar is the hotkey to toggle the pause.
It only has "play" and "fast forward", no slo-mo, and the weapons are quite different, but you should get the general idea.

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

SJ, have most of the major mods, granted I need to update most of them due to new versions made in my absencse but even with mods I still end up chooseing one specific type of weapons never needed any other, nothing forces me to choose weaker or other weapons. I simply want something that forces you to have fleets each with different weapons to battle differnt enemies.

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

Hmm... that makes me think of Dominions, because in Dominions, you definitely need different types of units (or at least strategies) to defeat the different nations. For instance, to defeat Abysia, you will need a lot of fire resistance spells and items just to counteract their deadly radiant heat. In SE5, last I'd heard, we'll be able to make up our own damage types and resistance types, so you could for instance give the Eee different components than everyone else (to reflect the fact that they're energy beings) which are particularly vulnerable to shield depleters. Actually, this is already being done in a somewhat different way in SE4 by Fyron in the Adamant Mod; the Eee, being an energy race, will get components with half the normal hitpoints, but extra phased shield generation, so they literally will be vulnerable to shield depleters! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

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

One thing I would really like to see in SEV is some sort of 'galactic council', like in MoO3, but better and with more options. I think it really adds alot to the game to be able to vote on different sorts of rules, have all the council members isolate someone diplomaticly, go to war against someone, etc. Makes you feel less alone and the universe more alive.

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

One of the announced features is a new alliance system in which (if I understand it correctly) you can even have multiple rival galactic councils, much like NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
Of course, it's hard to say if that feature will actually be present when the game's released - if you followed SE4's development, you might have noticed that drones were planned to be in from the start http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

Well, its not so much for fighting different empires...
But in CBmod, a mixed fleet does far better in combat than a monolithic one against most/all enemies.

Any one race might be particularily vulnerable to a type of weapon due to their research path or culture, but you still need to mix in other weapons in order to maximize your effectiveness.

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

Still, that sounds terrific! I love the game already &lt;3

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

I hope it works well with game mechanics. It sounds like it might be difficult to implement:

- empires A, B &amp; C join an alliance
- empire A proposes to attack empire D
- empire B agrees, but empire C disagrees and offers a counter-proposal
- empire A &amp; B agree
- alliance moves fleets toward empire D
- meanwhile empire E has declared war on the alliance
- *sigh, politics... here we go again...*

each of these would take at least 1 turn during a multiplayer game (unless communication (via email or equivalent) outside the game is allowed)

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

Option to have user/modder assigned 'generic buttons' for the activation of stellar components, and any other component that needs manual activation. That way when modding components for SEV, we will have the option to flag a button to a specific component and effect...

Kana

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

If the game setup of SE V is as complex as in SE IV (as I hope), a save option before you start the game would be very helpful.
Game setups take sometimes more than half an hour for me and then I start the game and realize that I forgot someting important: back to the beginning http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif
If you could save the setup it would be a matter of seconds to fix the problem instead of going through the entire process all over again. That would allow of course to save your favorite setups too.

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

Hey Q, have you looked in the bottom right corner of this screenshot? http://www.malfador.com/SE5scr017.htm

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

Bottom right you mean? And I could have sworn I posted a link to one of those screenshots already... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

Another interesting thing I'd like to try in the game is some type of planet-to-planet wormhole / gate technology to move troops / cargo between planets.

There are a lot of sci fi themes that use this, but it is impossible to model in this game. It would be nice to have some way to accomplish this at least in the mods.

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

I see a button that says "starting Positions" as well. I wonder if we can change starting positions manualy before starting the game or if it just shows us where they are.

It would also be nice if we could add or remove warp lines right from the quadrant setup screen. It would be easier than saving the map and loading it in the map editor.

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

Oops, yeah bottom right was what I meant. Thanks for pointing that out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

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

I've sometimes had to re-start several times.