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

Re: Datalink

See:
Neural Combat Net.

Also:
Point defense autofiring (reflex?) is bad. The game plays much better without it. See Carrier Battles Mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

I will have to see about that mod. However, I ddin't say the point defense had to autofire. The effect could be represented by accuracy bonuses caused by proximity to other ships.

I...dislike the neural net technology itself with some passion. It sounds kind of tacky to me, and I think there should be a mechanical alternative, that could possibly enhance a neural net. Say...by processing the data collected into a neural network, this allowing commanders to see it in their mind and show their fellows what they see. Frankly, neural nets bother me a bit. But...that is just me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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

Three words: Racial Facility Pics.

I mean, what's the logic behind a human space yard looking exactly the same as, say, a Cryslonite space yard? Or an EEE SY? I would like the option to have race-specific facility images, so that modders could give different races different facility pics. There wouldn't (or mightn't) be any race-specific facil pics in the stock game, but modders could put them is as needed/preferred. I think it wouldn't be that much code, and so won't be such a major upgrade. Perhaps it won't be implemented in the release version, but there's always patches, non?

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

I would like to be able to delete old design types.

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

Eh? The description and picture are trivial to change to something more tech based.
In stock it is an ancient ruins tech, so the exotic description is appropriate.

I always thought of it as a "communication network that connects directly to the neurons in the brain during combat" myself.

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

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...designtype.jpg


If you meant old *Ship Designs*, that's automatic.
1) The design must be marked *obsolete*
2) There must be no ships remaining in existence which use the design in question. This includes those owned by other empires.
3) Every ten turns the game will run a cleanup routine to clear out the unneeded obsolete designs.

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

Oh...huh. I thought it was part of the psychic thing, and I just found it on a planet by coincidense. In that case, I suppose the exotic description would be justified.

Also, you have some pretty nifty ship design names.

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

A good tutorial. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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

Proposed many times before, but I still motion for a Scenario Editor. It would make certain mods much more fun, as scenarios for canon or custom situations are created. For example, if Atrocities could make Star Trek Mod scenarios of/revolving around certain (major) battles, episodes, series or movies (such as Wolf 359, Voyager, DS9, The Final Frontier), wouldn't it add much to the mod? Or if, in the B5 mod, you could start with Babylon 5 itself? Or, as proposed a long time ago, a Schlock Mercenary mod with appropriate scenario(s) (for example, one where you start with your Tausennigan Superfortress, with all the background of that time, another where you start with the Serial Peacemaker, a third where you play as Admiral Breya and your objective is to blow up a buuthandi, another starting at the current point in the series, with the Touch-and-Go, etc.)? Wouldn't all that be great, if only there was a way to accomplish it?

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

All this talk about real tiem comabt has me a little worried. Can the Devs leave a "classic mode" so it runs like SE4? SE4 and BOTF were my two favorite RTS games of all time.

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

Mentioned before, several times, by me, in this thread, but a topic that is dear to my heart and that I must have in SEV.

Space Yards should be restricted in what they can build by level. You should require a certain level shipyard to build certain level componets/size ships. This way you would have to have large sprawling shipyards to produce the largest most advanced ships. Orbital shipyards should be prohibitively expensive, capital investments that take a long time to build. Planetary shipyards should be resticted to building Frigate size vessels and smaller.

I also like the SEII style of building ships where the ship shows up in the sqare with all its componets destroyed and then has to be "built" a component at a time. This might be how it worked in SEIII, I did a generational skip however. This allows for two things.

1.) You can attack a shipyard and destroy a building vessel.

2.) In emergencies you can launch a vessel prematurely before it is done. Maybe require 50% complete before launch or something like that.

And though I know this is moddable, ships cruiser and up should take a significant amount of time to build increasing proportionally to their size. This would

1.) make the production of smaller ship classes always nessecary and add more depth to ship design/fleet strategy.

2.) make your larger warships scarce, prestegious, and important. In SEIV ship size becomes meaningless since everyone can build the latest size within say 10 turns of each other. Once everone is on par fighting with Dreadnaughts they might as well be Frigates.

What I am really trying to do with this is make ships more important "living" things. If you can only produce three large capital ships every 5 years (because you only have three large shipyards capable of building that scale vessel) those ships become important, trackable units. They will be behemouths among the many smaller vessel you have to maintain, renowned and well know within your empire and your neighbors.

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

ZOMG ?

Does this thread NEVER die ? rofl

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

Nope http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Making large warships important assets would also be a boon to roleplaying, as keeping track of them when your empire is huge can get hard (or at least less easy), and there's also a larger probability of the ship getting destroyed in combat. But you can mod it in; simply make the large warship hulls cost a lot of resources and scale SY sizes, costs and rates accordingly. Voila; you have to keep track of your large, important warships, lest some sneaky enemy strike reduces it to slag! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

Try GritEcon.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/

In that mod, ship build times go up proportional to size CUBED.
Maintenance costs are flat rate.

So it costs about the same amount of resources to maintain two 200kt scouts as it does to maintain two 800kt battleships.
However, those battleships take 64 times longer to build.

Thusly, big ships are super-awesome, but really hard to acquire. Small ships are nessesary as cannon-fodder in combat to protect your larger ships.

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

That seems like a really good balance. Is the Proportions mod similar in that respect?

TT

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

I want to thank the developers of GAL CIV for reading this thread and using many of the ideas out lined in this thread in their recent game GalCiv II. Job well done guys. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

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

amen.

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

An ability that allows you to board ships with no shields remaining, sabotage a component and/or steal the required technology and get the hell outta there. In short, boarding parties that do not capture the ship but instead either A.) destroy one single component (Boarding Sabotage Attack value must be higher than the comp's hitpoints) or B.) destroy the component and steal the tech needed to build it (BSA value must be higher than 2x the comp's HP).

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

Something I'd like to see in SE5 would be for planets to be allowed facilities and cago when there is not active colony on them - so if you plague a thriving colony into extinction, the buildings left behind by the dead population don't myseteriously vanish.

Also, I think zero-population colonies should become "unowned". The previous owner loses any line-of-sight from that colony, and anyone who can put some population and/or troops down on it can claim it (and any facilities/ cargo on the planet) as theirs.

Maybe this is how se5 works already, I don't know.

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

Here's something else I'd like to see. The great thing about this idea, by the way, is that it's largely cosmetic and so (hopefully) it wold be relatively easy to code in at this late stage.


Now, take a look at this se5 screenshot from malfador.com.
See where it says "surface", "races"...."Abilities"? I'd like to see an additional tab there, called "notes". When you click on this tab the game would search for an external text file named after the planet, in a folder named after the game, which in turn would be kept in a special "notes" folder.

By default, this notes/gamename folder would be empty. The game doesn't generate anything at all to go in there, so it isn't taking up any extra disk space unless the player chooses to create files himself using notepad. Also, the file would only be stored locally, and would be for the exclusive use of this player, so these notes would be completely secure and wouldn't bulk out the savegame files at all. This also means that each player could keep their own notes about each planet- you could annotate your own planets, enemy planets or any other planet as far as you liked, without interfering with or seeing notes made by other players. Of course, players would be free to email notes files to one another and trade them or merge them or whatever, but that's all happening outside of the game mechanics so we don't need to worry about it.

Ok, so you've clicked on the "notes" tab. If no notes file for that planet is found (which is the default, remember), then nothing is displayed. However, if the file is found, what happens next is pretty obvious. The contents of the text file are dumped into the window. Players could keep game information in there ("atmosphere conversion due to complete in 2422.8", "Had 3 CSM weapons platforms when I attacked it on 2416.4") or roleplay information ("this is where the 3rd fleet gloriously brought the Phong Empire to its knees", "This is where the enemy's third fleet notoriously brought our empire to its knees") or absolutely anything else you like ("mum's birthday next week, buy flowers").

The file could be plain text - that would be fine - but some markup would be even nicer: a few select html commands would go a long way and would allow roleplaying players to publish their notes direct to the web if they wanted. H1, H2 tags etc spring to mind, UL, OL and the like. Tables might be overdoing it a little, but IMG tags would be cool. Imagine if you could use href tags to set up your own links and click the game directly from one planet to another- very handy for executing population tranfers etc.

Finally, this system needn't apply only to planets- it could be done for asteroids ("Claimed by Jraenar under treaty of 2413.1"), stars ("going nova on 2406.3"), and ships and fleets too ("commissioned in 2402.2, destroyed three enemy light cruisers in battle of Ceres").

Imagine the possibilities...

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

Any Classicist or Medievalist can tell you all about the fall of the Roman Empire and the following Dark Ages. That is the first example of technological degradation that comes to mind.

Second, Heron of Alexandria had devoloped a primitive "steam engine" which was used in religious ceremonies to create an atmosphere of majesty and wonder. These "steam engines" harnessed steam to open bronze doors, lift ceremonial thrones, and make statues of snakes hiss. Heron lived just under 2000 years ago.

And, more recently, it was discovered that the world as a whole seems to have lost the ability to maintain or create old WWII Lancaster Bombers. There is a group of engineers in Canada dismembering one in an attempt to figure out how build a new one. I think they were expecting it to take ten years.

Off topics aside, I'd like to see this as well. Think of it as a research 'maintentance' to be paid. I think degradation would be dificult to work out in SE, but there should be a base research point cost to be paid each turn before research can take place, and if these points can't be paid, you lose a tech. Just like if you cannot make maintenance costs can't be paid, you lose a ship. Think of it this way: If you have a large empire spanning 50 systems, and you have run to the end of the tech tree. You will likely scrap all those research facilities in favour of something more useful. Suddenly you've removed the intellectual core of your empire. There is no one training the coming generations, and the knowledge of all the empire's techs dies out with the old scientists. Sure, the old textbooks and whatnot still survive, but do you really think you could really build a nuclear plant after reading some books on nuclear physics? Thats why we have teachers. Words on paper can only instruct and convey so well.

Also- I'd like to see some turnbased gameplay OUTSIDE of hotseat. We play a lot of SE V over the lan over here, and none of us are very fond of simultaneous game play, even if it is faster. It takes so much of the control away.

Just my two cents.

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

You are talking about making the game into an RTS. All of the beta testers are committed to avoiding such a nasty fate.

This is a hard-core turn based strategy series. Plan your strategies around your hull designs, and plan your hull designs around your available strategies. Then send in your hundred-ship fleets to do battle.

Tactical combat is fun when you're playing with 10 or 20 ship fleets...
But, as my one poker buddy would say "we ain't playing tiddlywinks here". Send in your 300 ship fleets, primed with fine-tuned strategies and designs.

In CB3, I just schooled a guy by sending 300 ships against his 400 ship ambush. My well controlled ships executed a two-pronged pincer attack, with dedicated assault ships, PD ships, antifighter boats, missile bombardment and carriers with bombers and interceptors. All did their own thing, and worked together to overcome his 30%-50% statistical advantage (many of his vehicles were actually huge carriers)

Screenshot:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...Tudran2_02.jpg

You simply *can't* play a serious game using hotseat tactical combat. That took 12 hours to process (admittedly on an old machine), and resulted in a six megabyte combat file.

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

I can see your point. But then, the SE series being a bit of a niche game has its own niche players. I can't speak for everyone I play and lan with, but I have trouble managing larger or later simultaneous games. I realize that it's beneith a lot of you pbw players, but I'd just like the option to play turn based. Or even a simultaneous game without end of turn processing, which a few other turn based games have worked out. I'm certainly not looking to make SEV an RTS, but I would like to be able to suppliment my designing and fleet ordering skills with pure hands on control.

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

How would that work, though? Lets say player A has a fleet in player B's space. He could move it to a safer, defensible position in a turn before player B happens to look at the system in question. Now, player B is at a disadvantage not due to better strategy or better gameplay, but purely because he didn't click fast enough. This sort of click-festing nature can work ok in a mind-numbingly simple RTS game where there are very few locations and units on the map, but falls apart in a complex strategy game. If you have simultaneous issue ordering and execution, in real time, the game will become a mess.

Real time combat hairiness can be mitigated by agreeing not to issue any orders during the active time phases, only during the auto-paused phases. But how do you translate this to the main portion of the game?

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

Try games like Age of Wonders, which uses a simultaneous-turn system. Believe me, it's not a mind numbing click fest. To the best of my knowledge, what it does is processes the turn bit by bit. It is much more like everyone playing a turn based game at the same time. It places a limit on how quickly you can move units (So you don't suddenly have player B's fleet surrounded by ships player A brought in from neighbouring systems) but otherwise works out just like a regular turn based game mode. When you are done your turn you just hit end turn like normal, and when everyone has finished, the game moves on to the next turn. I understand your point, but I suggest you give a simultaneous/turn game a quick play to see what I mean. It works out very smoothly, and without the rush of real time games (Which I myself can't play worth a damn). I realize it would never make it into SEV, but I'd love to see it added to future SE titles. Who knows, you might find that you actualy enjoy it.

If you do want to give that style of play a look, if nothing else, you could find Age of Wonders and AoW2 in a bargin bin somewhere, or on amazon for 10$. I'll try to think of what other games I know uses the system.

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

Ah, but see?
It IS turn based!

You can tell your ships to move hither and yonder, and chase this or that, and drop troops and load fighters.
They execute the orders simultaneously.

And you give these guys their combat orders ahead of time in the form of strategies.

Personally, I love playing tactical combat and wincing as my ships take fire and trying to manoeuver them just so to protect the damaged ones and get everybody out alive.
But playing big games with lots of stuff is great too. And by creating your own strategies you can really make the ships do some surprisingly effective things.

Tactical combat just dosen't work in non hotseat multiplayer. Because you're not there to play it!


---

As for the map orders, you have better control in simultaneous... you can still do almost everything, and you can even cancel orders if you think better of it.

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

I'm not trying to argue that it is or isn't turn based lol. All I'm trying to say is that I'd like to see SE current turn based mode as an option for lan/internet games. We all wan't SEV and following to be the best possible game (in our view) and for me that would do it. 156 pages of posts from everyone just proves that.

As for the tactical combat- I play mostly lan games (and a few internet games) with friends. We don't use pbw or email, but are playing at the same time, so we would be there to play it.

Like I said, though, this is a wish list and I'm putting forward my wish. I realize it's too late for it to ever make SEV, but I think it's far too early to take it off the list at all.

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

Please someone tell me that there will be an integrates note-pad so you can annotate individual planets, fleets, etc. in SEV.

This series of great games is long overdue for this feature.

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

Major_SNAFU: See my post about half a dozen posts down from here...

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

There's actually notes pages available for some of the items but I can't recall offhand which ones.

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

What Dogscoff said about being able to add notes into the game, time a thousand. Make that a million.

Haiving to keep a notebook or seperate text files is possible, but a real pain in the ###.

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

there is a decent note-taking feature in se4... but I find it hard to use. Example: system Malfador has something special. I note it in the system's notes. Then 50 turns later I think "hmm i vaguely remember something special about some system" so now if I really want to find it I have to search each system's notes... eventually if I don't miss it, I find it.

Here's the solution: make the included note system very basic. hit F8 for a notepad window! done! then, make this MODDABLE. I'll download the note system that works best for me. If nothing works well for me, then I get off my *** and make one.

BAM

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

Tech level interdependencies. What I mean, is that for instance, level I of tech B requires level III of tech A. Now, in SEIV, you can research the entirety of tech B without researching tech A any further. But what if you want research in tech B to require advances in tech A? In SEIV you'd have to create whole new tech areas to accomplish that. But why can't you just say that tech level II of tech B requires tech level V of tech A, and lvl III B requires lvl VII A, usw. What with the formulaic tech levels, this shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, would it?

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

shoud be interesting concept.
Alike, I think about multiple possibilities to get a tech:
To research ion canon, I can think from ion physic and particle guns, or from lasers and high energy weapons.

I tried to make a massive mod and this feature would have a great interest to make it more realistic.

note: Strategia_In_Ultima, you are german, no? (usw)

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

I dono if anyone has suggested this yet... But what about wormholes? Like natural wormholes that dont lead to the neighbouring system, i mean unstable wormholes which can lead to anywhere in the galaxy! Would make things interesting if you found one and succefully got a scout through to the other side of the galaxy, maybe even a colony ship? It would be tough though, and you could very easily lose many ships trying to enter it. This could tie into moral to, if you send a colony ship with millions of pop to their doom and then try to send another one (especially right away) the ships (and systems/empires to a lesser degree) moral would take a hit, but naturally they would follow your orders anyway (being the supreme ruler and all). But what if that ship is lost as well and you try AGAIN? The moral of the next ship would be even lower, eventually you could get to the point where the ship refuses to follow that particuar order, knowing it means their doom, and quoting some human (or Abbion/whatever) rights act you thought you got rid of http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif This could spread empirewide, happyness would fall and there would be a public outcry for your actions.

Would be interesting, these wormholes could lead to new and fascinating destinations, and be very strategically valuable but could also be a very bad thing if your not careful.

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

Another thing I'd like is sustained beam weapon firing, doing damage over time, and torpedo weapon volleys. Sustained beam fire could allow another thing; Strafing. Beams could be used to strafe across a ship, or even a few smaller ships. Also, fighters/small ships could perhaps go on strafing runs near a small enemy fleet.

Ships that stay cloaked in combat. You could set this as a toggle for your own ships; "Decloak and Enter Combat" or "Remain Cloaked in case of combat". Would be handy in case of tankers and such. (Of course, with high enough sensors level you can goad the enemy into combat, but if you don't they stay cloaked.....) You cannot see or control the cloaked ships during combat, and they will not decloak, to prevent you from abusing this option by keeping your most powerful forces cloaked, then decloaking them during combat.

No, I'm not German, I'm Dutch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I just wanted to use something other than "etc.", and I just like the abbreviation "usw." for some reason http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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

One thing I hope is already included for the game is an starfury style resistance system for armor and such. Like for example emissive armor rather then ignoring 15 points of damage it ignores 15% of damage, this i think is more balanced early through late game and makes weapons with really low damage but really high rate of fire doable without making them useless against emissive armor. Same goes with fighters since it looks like their weapons wont stack anymore rather they act like real fighter swarms and manuver/attack the target.

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

very similar to the civ4 tech tree, no? This would be an awesome addition to the game. With civ 4, there are so many more possible game progressions. I've gone all the way to the rennaissance (sp?) without horse back riding! This is a very popular facet of civ4 I think - there are different strategies to begin with, but add different tech paths to the key technologies (like civil service, astronomy, gunpowder...) and you get even more creative strategies!!

A tech tree that isn't strictly heirarchal adds a LOT of replay value to the game.

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

Really? I hated SF's emissive armor... it was rather bland compared to SE4's! After all, if your EA blocks 25% of all damage, rather than 25 points of damage per hit, all that does is effectively multiply your hitpoints by 1.2; it has no real tactical effect such as making your ship immune to fighter weapons and rapid fire weapons! Some may consider those effects unbalancing but I maintain that when modded properly, they can be quite interesting... MOO1 and MOO2 had "emissive" style shields, after all, and they were not horribly unbalanced! Instead, you had ships with Class 7 shields which were immune to mass drivers (6 damage) but not to heavy mass drivers (9 damage)... fascinating don't you think? Ships with heavy defenses requiring heavier armaments to damage them? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

edit: oh, given that SE5's combat will be realtime, perhaps a better model for emissive armor would be "bleedoff rate"? So an armor might be able to bleed off, say, 100 points of damage per second (calculated per game tick internally so you don't have silly "the second is up, now the ship is invulnerable" exploits), so if it gets hit with an alpha strike from a bunch of fighters all at once, it would get damaged, but if one fighter fires repeatedly over the course of a second, the ship would not get damaged? The concept of "bleedoff" is a bit more in tune with the name of the armor, anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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

I dont think it would work, what about fighters? They never do much damage, and since they all act as their own unit now rather then stacking up to deal more damage, everyone would fly with emissive armor and make fighters obsolete because they cant damage any of the ships. To me the percentage system made more sense. Hey I loved it too in those odd times when you got emissive armor III and came across a ship that couldent hurt you at all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif but it was unbalanced. IMO and this actually would make it more usefull against heavy weaspons, if your getting delt say 200 pts of damage which would you rather have a measly 15 pts taken of or 15% resisted, I would take the 15%!

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

In MOO2, fighters could carry powerful bombs which ships could only use against planets, but fighters (due to their agility) could use against ships as well. Why couldn't this be done in SE5? After all, fighters in SE4 have Small Rocket Pods, which are less than 10% the size and cost of CSM's but do comparable damage, just with a shorter range and longer reload time, and they're DF rather than seekers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
All in all, I think it would be best for both styles of emissive armor to be available to modders... who knows, with the scripting engine, they might be already! For all I know, you can do something like this to emulate the SF way:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
/* Functions.txt */
Name := CalculateHullDamage
Num Parameters := 4
Parameter 1 Type := Integer
Parameter 1 Name := amount
Parameter 2 Type := DamageType
Parameter 2 Name := type
Parameter 3 Type := Unit
Parameter 3 Name := source
Parameter 2 Type := Unit
Parameter 2 Name := target
Return Value := amount * type.HullDamage * (1.0 - target.Abilities["Emissive Armor"])
</pre><hr />
And to emulate the SE4 way:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
/* Functions.txt */
Name := CalculateHullDamage
Num Parameters := 4
Parameter 1 Type := Integer
Parameter 1 Name := amount
Parameter 2 Type := DamageType
Parameter 2 Name := type
Parameter 3 Type := Unit
Parameter 3 Name := source
Parameter 2 Type := Unit
Parameter 2 Name := target
Return Value := amount * type.HullDamage - target.Abilities["Emissive Armor"]
</pre><hr />

But of course all this is only speculation http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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

On a related note, both CBmod(se4) and GGmod(for se5) make big use of a pseudo-emissive damage system.

Small guns can't hurt the heavily shielded ships. But big guns blow through defenses.
Fighters are far from useless in practice. Sure, you have to design your fighters right, with just one or two heavy weapons for the bigger damage per hit. But that is perfectly reasonable.

If you consider today's armor, it follows a similar scheme.
9mm bullets are good, but if there is any armor, they just bounce off.
Rifles punch through light armor, but will still bounce harmlessly off a tank.
Modest tank shells can punch through thicker armor, but would still bounce off a battleship.
And so on.

The weapons all have their place, but if you use them against things with more armor than your weapon is rated for, it does pretty much nothing.
And if you use bigger guns (main tank gun) against things that are too small (infantry), then you waste major ammo on overkill. And, to a point, you can arm smaller units with bigger guns, or bigger units with smaller guns.

And therein lies the key to variety.

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

This would seem unbalancing, in that especially the smaller ships will not be able to compete with a bigger ship with more or 'bigger' armor and weapons. Which means we go back to the whole build your biggest ship only problem.

Yet historically this is was very similar to the whole development of cruisers, battlecruisers, dreadnoughts, and battleships in the 19th, and early 20th century. One country would field a ship with X gun, another would counter with a ship with X armor. Then to counter they would have to build a ship with Y gun, and so on...

It might be interesting if done right...yet historically as well...Battleships where basically fodder for subs, and carrier based bombers/torpedo plans in the 1930's and 40's.

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

S_J, I'm ashamed of you! Rule 37 man, rule 37!

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

(This is a copy of my post in the thread 'SE:V Screenshots at the SE Depot')

I was wondering if the following sizes from the Neo- Stabdard ship set are included in Space Empires 5?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Also, I have some proposals:

TroopTiny- Machines and creatures the size of insects and small animals.
TroopMassive- Like TroopHuge, but...even bigger.
(There is FighterMassive, CarrierTiny, CarrierMassive.)
FighterTiny- Similiar to TroopTiny, but in space.
*Gigantic* size- More Massive. Gigantic is also the word used to describe Worldship.

So this would be the range: Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Massive, Gigantic.
Or maybe we could add three more to even it out at ten sizes: Enormous, Titanic, Colossal.(These three are the most likely candidates because they most often appear in a dictionary.)

So there would be sixteen sizes of ships from Scout to Worldship. I propose one more: Sphereworld Ship- The Ultimate. A current structure size but with mobility. (In 'Ringworld's Children' the Ringworld was made mobile.)

-Wade
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Scout- A ship smaller than an escort.
Corvette- Between Escort and Frigate.
DestroyerHeavy- Between destroyer and light cruiser.
CruiserHeavy- Between cruiser and battlecruiser.
DreadnoughtHeavy- Between Dreadnought and Baseship.
BaseShip- Very big base sized ship.
BaseShipHeavy- A larger version of the baseship.
WorldShip- A gigantic ship which resembles a moon or planet.
ResourceShip- A ship designed with resource production in mind.
ResourceStation- A station designed with resource production in mind.
CarrierTiny- Smaller than the light carrier
CarrierMassive- Bigger than the large carrier
WarStation- A base between BattleStation and StarBase
ColonyShipLarge- A larger version of the colony ship
TransportTiny- Smaller than TransportSmall.
FighterHuge- Bigger than FighterLarge.
FighterMassive- Bigger than FighterHuge.
TroopInfantry- Good old fashioned foot soldier (or tentacle soldier, wing soldier...)
TroopHuge- Like TroopLarge, but bigger.
Barge- A vast ship used for the construction of artificial worlds.
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Also,:
If Space Empires V will not have a ship creator similiar to below then will it let us choose any shipset during the custom race creation?

Space Empires V ship designer has a map / blueprint that we place components into. How about a unique map for every planet that we place facilities onto?

If customized ship sets are so popular for SE4 then maybe have a ship set creator as part of the in game for SE5.
Or, even better, we pick a basic shape : pyrimid, cube, sphere \ we stretch and shape it : triangular, rectangular, tubular, etc. \ we add a "hull material texture" and colors : smooth, moderate, rough: metal, ceramic, biological, crystal, energy etc.: glossy, glowing, moderate, dark, etc. \ we add hull "items" and customization : engine nacelles, wings, command bridge structure, etc. \ we add the components \ Complete .

-Wade

(Should I, instead, put these concepts in the 'SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List' thread?

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

there's no such thing as overkill, only "open fire" and "reload".

was that it?

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

Yeah, the problem with using guns that are too large is the reload part.

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

Asteroid Domains

Could we have asteroids provide bonuses such as hidden and defensive. The drawback could be a chance each combat turn of taking small asteroid minor dammage.

Guide:
Escort: 50% chance of being hidden per game turn, +50% defense / 10% chance of dammage per combat turn.

Frigate:..............40%, +40% / 20%
Destroyer:.........30%, +30% / 30%
Light Cruiser:.....20%, +20% / 40%
Cruiser:..............10%, +10% / 50%

These are some game play possibilities: more use of smaller ships to hide in asteroid rings and clusters; we never know what might be hiding in them; ambush possibilities; mid sized ships can attempt to hide but if they are seen and attacked then they will take more asteroid dammage then smaller ships and have a smaller defensive bonus then the smaller ships.

Asteroids could be the "hide and ambush" domain of smaller ships. Monsters of the appropriate sizes could also benefit.

-Wade

Also, the asteroid fields could be a natural barrier on the maps to slow down ships and monsters. Perhaps in a way similiar to the above guide. Larger ships will be slowed down more tha smaller ships.

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

-----An "Epic Generator". Just expand on SEIV's History in the Diplomacy screen.

-Wade

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

I suggest only to make the game ready to sell, and let patch of the next propositions!
Otherwise, I will never play SE V