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

Special ship orders such as:
- Stop every ship trying to pass this sector
* when he don't want to, fire on ...
- Stop specified race ships.
- Stop on every request when abroad/home space.
- Ignore every stop request when abroad/home space.
- Block every foreign ship (it can't leave this sector without your permition).
- Allow foreing ships to leave through specified warp point.
- Escort foreing ships to leave your spece through specified warp pont.

And - Right of passage for specified foreign ships / specified foreign ships class.

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

First and foremost, keep everything that is currently in SEIVGold - it is the best game I have ever seen.

But, adding the following would make it even better (if such a thing were possible):

* Special characters. This has been mentioned before, but adds a lot to the game and, ideally, would be optional in the game start up screen. Each special character could have a design file with their attributes, and settings that dictate how they behave in game (are they greedy? Honorable? Chaotic? wander around, perfer a certain race to work for, help in quests, Etc?)

* Graphics: MOOII did only one thing better than SEIV - graphics, especially during combat. Having a tactical combat system that *looked* good is a nice to have, but a *very* nice to have...

* A setting forcing players to ?explore the galaxy? rather than allowing them to know the limits and location of systems from the get-go?and if your ships die or are killed quickly after going through a WP, that system would still be unknown?(perhaps a subroutine that determines if your ships had enough time to get off an "SOS" message pod before dying might give the player an idea of what killed them...)

* Planets that orbit and spin

* Mercenaries (when one side loses, the merc pools get those ships added to it, and can be hired with the use of resources, etc?) and privateers (to allow players to fund pirates with letters of marque against their enemies, as well as a random event that does the same?)

* A Combat model that has terrain and allows retreats - each tactical battle should have at least a chance for some random terrain (asteroids to hide behind, space wrecks, etc...) and a much greater chance if the combat takes place in a strategic hex with terrain...

* The ability to set the ?break formation? setting for individual ships in a given fleet. Plenty of times I've wished I could have only that single kamikaze Battleship break out of formation?

* The ability to make all of the above and most of the options in the current game optional or dialable from the game set up ? so we can do more in-game customization.

I've babbled enough.

Thanks,
Alarik

[ November 20, 2003, 13:10: Message edited by: alarikf ]

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OIC... special characters. When people mentioned special characters before i thought they meant support for foreign alphabets, you know, special characters. D'oh!

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Quests? you're not mixing SE up with DO are you?

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

As far as I know, SEIV supports ASCII characters fine. (I didn't have any trouble with non-English characters) But I wonder how other keyBoards (Japanese or Russian for example) would work with SEIV, or with any game for that matter.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Quests? you're not mixing SE up with DO are you? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">no, what I mean was implementing mod'able options for things similar to quests...such as "whoever is the first nation to find the mythical lost battlestar of Kor" or " the "first empire to build device X" or "whoever defeats space monster Y gets the secret of greek fire" or whatever...the creative possibilities are pretty wide open.

And, ok, for special characters I meant unique individual personalities in the game, similar to what MOOII had. The Dread Pirate Roberts, the Cloaked One, blah blah blah...a bunch of famous individuals wandering around the universe who can, if they come to your side, give you minor benefits (+5% to ship to hit, +5% to ground combat, blah blah blah)...

thanks,

Alarik

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

I still am hoping for satelite formations.

Derelict ships that can be taken by boarding actions --> then you could get technologies from them by dismantling them.

Once you get tractor beam, you should definitely be able to tow ships around. See the derelict...

I absolutely LOVE the pirate stuff! SJ made an entire mod for it, but was limited by the game to a large degree. I think this could go places.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You mean with AI? Yeah, smarter AI would be great. I'd also like to be able to tell them to keep their ships out of my systems, even if we are allies. As it is now, I often have to refuse alliances with AI just to keep the pesky buggers from colonizing (and then claiming!) my home systems.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Man, I -hate- the little square combat map! What, space has -corners-??? And a faster ship that is beyond weapon range should be able to stay out of weapon range and escape, not get caught in those %&^%*# corners!

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, at least some form of shipping that has to actually move from one place to another for trade to occur, that would be vulnerable to piracy, commerce raiding, or simply refusal to allow through controlled warp-points. This would vastly improve the strategic game to my thinking - especially if you could tick some option boxes for each empire, allowing all/none of their shipping, or only commercial shipping, or ban colony ships or military ships - or this could be automatic depending on the level of treaty you have with them, allowing only commercial ships to pass at NA, TA, and TRA, military ships for MA, and colony ships only for partners.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, it is so annoying sometimes now when you have a good number and variety of satellites in a sector either as guards or as reinforcements for a fleet of guarding ships, and then when combat comes they are all in one lump that may not be placed very well to assist in combat.


SpaceBadger

[ November 20, 2003, 23:49: Message edited by: SpaceBadger ]

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

A slightly better maitence scheme. What I'm thinking of is a empire slider for maintance, and -maybe- another one a the ship or fleet level. So you can over-fund or under-fund your fleets.

Over-funding would give a temporary bonus to experience (well rested crews), under-funding would do the reverse, and ships would not be able to completely re-fuel at resupply depots, repair themselves, or retrofit.

Ex: base maint is 20%. You fund at 10%. This is spread evenly over all your ships, so they must stay at a resupply depot two turns to be fully resupplied, their repair, construction and retrofit rates are at 50%. Each ship also has a 50% chance of taking damage each turn (if something breaks, it can't be replaced)

Underfunding, whether by choice or by budget starvation, becomes less the "ok, I'm loosing one ship per turn now" and a more realistic approach to what would happen in this situation.

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

The current scheme for determining the cost of racial characteristics is too conducive to min-maxing - look how many empires have +20 this and -20 that, because most of the thresholds are at plus or minus 20! Here's an idea to encourage more diversity in empire design:

Instead of specifying a base cost, a high and low threshold, a high and low cost, and an absolute minimum and maxmum, you would specify only four numbers in the data files: a base cost, an exponent, and the minimum and maximum. Then the cost to raise an attribute by 1 point would be calculated like this:

base cost * (current attribute level / 100) ^ exponent

Thus, if your base cost for an attribute was 100, and your exponent was 2 (a quadratic relationship), then to raise the attribute from 100 to 101 would cost 100 * (100 / 100) ^ 2 = 100 points, but to raise it from 80 to 81 would cost 100 * (80 / 100) ^ 2 = 64 points, and to raise it from 149 to a godlike 150 would cost 100 * (149 / 100) ^ 2 = 222 points, with a gradual progression in between instead of a sudden jump at 80 and 120.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A good model to study on underfunding the military would be the current Canadian forces. Our Prime Minister, in his infinite wisdom, has our guys flying around in 40 year old "Sea-King" helicopters... often referred to as "Seeking Helicopters" because they keep seeking the ground mid-flight http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif .