SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Here is some of the correspondence between MM and myself on this topic...

Now this thread will be to talk about this. And when were done chatting ... I will send the info from this thread to MM.

Here is the message


On Simon wrote:

> Hi Aaron
> Sorry to bother you.
>
> I was wondering what is going to happen in SEV with Races and contacts.
>
> The SEIV game allowed for everything to be seen. Which is not very good in
> the multiplayer games.
>
> The lovely posters at shrapnel have been chatting about this on and off.
>
> And we were wondering if there is going to be an option to Hide everything
> or degrees of obfuscation of an empire
> Such as. Not showing Ship classes and names.
> Not showing Race Stats , description and traits
> Not showing Renaming of Planets
> Not showing Who has a treaties with who.
> Ability to show only a few of the different score items... ( IE which ones
> can be seen )
>
> Stuff like that.
>
> Thank you in advance for your time reading this..

Reply

Hi Simon,

I've been thinking about this a bit. I would like to add levels of fog to
what empires can see about each other. My current plan is to add them as
Game Options where you can select the level of detail you can see about
other empires. Anything not seen could be found out through Intelligence
Projects.

If you guys can come up with a list of the levels you're interested in (if
different from what's listed below), then email them to me so I can
include them.

Aaron

[ May 07, 2004, 16:35: Message edited by: tesco samoa ]

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I had a similar discussion about 'fogging' information. I came to this conclusion:

You should only be allowed to see information about an empire based per system. So, total production = the number planets you can see, in the systems you have troops in.

Things like viewing treaties, that'd be down to two things:
1) have you made contact with either of the empires in the treaty.
2) do you have a treaty with one/both of the empires, i.e. are they friendly enough to mention "Oh we just signed a military treaty with your most hated enemies the Eee"

Things like warppoints opening/closing, stars exploding, etc... you can either:
1) Tell everyone about it
2) Only tell people who were in the system
3) Tell everyone, but only give full details to those in the system.

e.g. I'm in the system, the message might be: "The Eee have created a blackhole in the Xal system sucking in almost all life that previously existed, only a few traders made it to the warppoint before the attack."

e.g. I'm not in the system, I've never been there: "Astrologists report that a star in Q4 of the universe diminished and turned into a blackhole. It is sure all life / planets in this system will have been destroyed."

(Note, no mention of 'who-did-it').

I think news reports like that, and graphs and tables only showing near space would work. Just depends on the size and scale of the game, and how easy it is to move around.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I'd like fog to be sector by sector rather than system by system. THis would mean you'd have to equip ships with sensors to get even basic information about planets, and it would also allow range-dependant cloaking as well.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Just so long that once you learn something about the empire, the game doesn't forget if you lose contact, break a treaty, etc.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

What do you mean by 'class'? The size of a ship is one of the obvious things that you should always be able to see. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But, the mission of the ship, attack ship, mine sweeper, carrier, etc... now that should ne unknown until you get close enough to scan it or you actually meet it in combat.

I think the most important thing of all is that 'vision' in a system not be absolute as it has been in all SE Versions so far. There should be definite range degredation of normal sensors so you cannot see a ship of a given size beyond a certain range unless it is broadcasting some sort of 'ID' signal. And stealth or cloaking would reduce this range even more, of course. And rather than have things suddenly 'appear' clear as day there ought to be a gradual increase of available information.

First you sould get the simple notice of a ship of a given size at whatever range it first becomes detectable. This could be represented as a generic 'ship' outline with question marks or something. Then some details of things like configuration (meaning external design factors in this case -- the 'silhouette' of the ship). After a while you could learn to ID many ships simply by their silhouette of course. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Then finally some technical details like the type of engines it uses or whether it has shields (and how strong those shields are) could become detectable. It makes sense for engines and shields and certain other technologies to be identifiable at long range. They produce a lot of emissions. Only in actual combat (or with special scanners) should you be able to see all the components, with an important exception. BUT... that brings up long range scanners.

Long range scanners should not tell you about components that YOU don't understand the technology for! How would you be able to recognize organic armor if you don't know what it is? There should be a 'blank' for these unknown components. Maybe each component should have an extra description, the 'unknown component' field which would be shown to enemies who do not or cannot possess the given technology. And also, the scanner jammer should work in combat like that do at long range and completely block scanning so you have no idea at all what the other ship contains.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

The class of the ship- he means the actual type. Right now the instant you see a ship you know the enemies's name for that design.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Yes, racial characteristics should not just appear in the info box as soon as you contact them. It should take some time to figure out what a race is like, technologically, socially, politically, etc.

I also agree that stars and planets should be individually nameable by each empire. You could have an option to turn on 'alternative names' where you could get the other names given to a system or planet by other empires which you have diplomatic contact with. Yes, it could get messy with 20 names for each planet and star system... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif But it would add SO MUCH to the realism of the game to be able to have internally consistent cultures in conflict over the 'external world' of the game map.

Colonies should not be instantly identifiable either. You should have to approach within a certain range, dependent on your sensors and any 'stealth' tech that the colony might have, just like ships before you can even see them. And you won't necessarily know whoinhabits the colony unless you approach closer for a scan, openly hail it, or sit and spy on it for a while.

Ships ought to be able to operate in some circumstances without being identified. First, if you destroy an enemy task force down to the Last ship, just how is the enemy going to get word that it was your forces which destroyed his? If he had a scan of your approach Last turn, that's on thing. But if you uncloaked and wiped them out in a single battle their loss should be a mystery. It should also be possible to set 'privateers' out to attack here and their without obvious connection to your empire. Only if one of them gets captured should it be possible to identify where it came from.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

The information you have on planets should not update if you are not present in that system. Right now, if you see a planet once, you can leave the system and after that, always have information on the current value and conditions, even if it changes.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I had posted in the SEV WishList topic about treaties having selectable options and various levels rather than set treaty levels. This could be incorperated into a treaty system like that as well.

eg: Level 1 Treaty. 10% mineral trade. Share ship info in same systems.

Level 2 Treaty. 10% Mineral trade. 20% Research trade. Hide all planet information. Share all ship locations.

and on and on.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I'm excited about this integration, but I feel strongly that this capacity involves Intel.

Intel should increase or decrease what you would know about other races.

In some instances, you would even get INCORRECT information (i.e. oponnent's intel capacity, and calculation for the attempt is superior = misinformation)

How wonderful would that be?

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I like my old idea of limited range scanners and sensors that can only see a sector around the ship on level one and 5 sectors by level 5.

Planets sensors arrays and or scanners would have a greater range of 5 to start out to 10.

This way a ship passing through a system may or may not see all the ships or planets in that system. They would have to EXPLORE the system.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Some good ideas here... I would like to run this thread for 2 weeks and then send in the ideas... See the reply and run it again for 2 weeks... for fine tuning.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

tecso- Thanks for your work on this.

If you have an open ear listening on the development front, I would also like to know if we could take the same initiative with the topic of intelligence.

Do you think you can ask how the intelligence model will work?

That is the one area of this truly stellar game... that most recognize as disappointing.

I can volunteer to start up a second thread and collect all the great ideas previously posted regarding what we think could be contributed to an excellent intel model.

Or has this been done? or is it a waste of time?

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

What would be nice is if each component had a visibility rating... two actually. One for intact and one for destroyed.

The visibility rating and the cloaking/sensors modifiers would determine how far away you need to be to identify the component.
Components which fail the visibility check would be fogged out.
Two ideas for destroyed components:
1) Destroyed components are easier to spot, but show up as the classic unidentifiable "broken" icons.
2) Destroyed components are harder to spot, but will be identifiable broken parts when they are spotted.
Perhaps even both ways could be done.
Note: Identifiable means when you right click, you can see what the component was before it got destroyed.

This would handle the silhouette idea, and you could intentionally make your ships similar in design to confuse the enemy.
"Hull size matches. Engine locations match. Active electronics match. That's all I can see from here, but it looks like their big minesweeper, captain!"
"Move to attack"
"Oh, no! There are antiproton beams where the sweepers should have been! We're all gonna die!"

-----

IMO, you should never see the enemy ship or class names unless you do an intel op, or the enemy chooses to show it, by painting the name in big letters on the hull or broadcasting it at every encounter like ST Federation ships enjoy doing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
(checkbox per ship, and a racial trait/penalty which would force it to be checked for every ship)

Each ship could be tagged with your own personal name and suspected class independent of what others call it. So as you figure out what components are on the ship during your approach, you can provisionally assign a class designation.
If the enemy dosen't take the "Military Blabbermouths" racial penalty above, then you would lose that info when the ship leaves your maximum detection range.
The info you've collected would still be saved under a "missing enemy ships" list, and if you come into contact with the ship again, you could copy the stats back.

This could backfire for you if the enemy plays a shell game with cloaking and decloaking ships, or does quick retrofits. You will need to get close enough (or have a powerful enough scanner ship) to match up enough components to be confindent in your assignment of who's who http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

-----

A "Homing beacon" component would be cool. Activated when your ship is captured by enemies, it will give you full stats on the ship so you can follow and try to recover it.
It would be integrated deeply into the hull, and only removable by retrofitting. Perhaps never removable.

If they were never removable, you could use the captured ship to provide misinformation about where your fleets are gathering.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Stone Mill Great Idea. As it ties in with this area. But if the Intel thread gets too bothersome then break it down.

Go ahead and run with it.

If you want I can send in the email when were done. Or you can. Your choice.

One of my goals here is to keep things open ended... as I do not want to tell MM what the game should be... ( Thats what mods are for http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) Just offer suggestions for areas that can be modded and or turned on or off http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Intel will be interesting.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Thanks Buddy, I'll get to work on it. I'll start a thread when I get my ducks in a row.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

A lot of these ideas are neat, but I wonder if their impact on micromanagement would be too much? Having imperfect views of systems would mean having to play all the movement logs every turn to see if any ships crossed through your unfogged area of each system. (though I suppose something could be put in place where you could be notified with a message in the Turn Log, or something). Limited scanning range would mean having to go and park ships/drop sats all over the place.

That said, as long as it is optional, sure, go nuts. But I wouldn't want to see a lot of features that increase micromanagement beyond the level already present in the game.

[ May 07, 2004, 18:47: Message edited by: spoon ]

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This would be a great feature, if just to eliminate the effectiveness of the annoying tactic of naming ships things like __..()((.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Simple. Have a toggle switch that draws a colored dotted line for the observed path of ships in the system. Select the sector with the paths, and you can pick one for more information on that particular ship/fleet that passed through. Have options to filter out based on various factors (eg. show only fleets of X ships, show only ships of X size AND Y weapon strength, hide ships greater than X size AND smaller than Y size -- show ships with Space Yard).

I think with the levels of fog, the biggest problem isn't going to be controlling the micromanagement, but making it so the AI isn't completely crippled by it.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I guess its going a little off topic, but it is about obfuscating plagues and intel projects...

For intel and plagues, it would be nice if it were planet and ship-based as well.

Spies should be something like a unit, possibly just a counter, though.
It would cost a lot of intel points to create a spy on an enemy world directly, but only a few to train one at home. Large populations should make it easier to find good and willing spies for your side, except for homeworlds, perhaps.

The difficulty of infiltrating spies from a ship to the surface should also depend on the population size.

The potential actions of spies on a planet should depend entirely on the facilities present. Sabotage would be limited to what is produced by the local facilities.
On a planet with research centers, the theft and sabotage of technology would be enabled.
On a planet with a spaceyard, tracking devices could be implanted into ships under construction. (They would reveal position and status of the ship to the spying empire)
On a planet with a resupply depot, ship bombs could be planted on passing ships.
And etc.

- The facility definition should probably specify which intel projects they make the planet vulnerable to.
- Some intel projects, like anti-population and unit storage info/sabotage would be specified as facility-independent.

The acutal spy projects should cost no intel points at all, but instead carry a significant chance of the spy being thwarted, a moderate chance of the spy being killed in the attempt, and a small chance of the spy being captured and interrogated to reveal who sent him.
Only when you run out of spies do you have to spend points to train more.

Intel points could be spent on maintenace, though, and would reduce the chance of the spies being discovered by counter intel projects.

-----

Plagues:
Each plague should have:
1) A specific incubation time.
- From 1 game turn to a year or more.
Short incubation times mean the plague is noticed early, and gives the player lots of time to halt ships and prevent it from spreading to other planets.
- After arriving at a planet, the plague will spread but not cause any effects until the incubation time has passed.
- After the incubation time has passed on the first infected planet, the disease will be discovered by the afflicted race. After discovery, all medical facilities and components across the empire will start to counter the plague, even planets still in the incubation stage.
2) A virulence rating.
- How many more people contract the plague each turn that it Lasts. Both a maximum % increase, and a maximum count increase.
3) A deadliness rating, separate values for each race in the game.
- The common cold may be rampant on earth, but causes mere discomfort and lowers happiness a bit.
When the Amonkrie visit and contract the plague, they could start dying after only 1 turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
- Out of the infected population, specify what % will be incapacitated, and what % will die. The remaining amount are carriers of the disease, but not hurt significantly by it.
The effective population for use in production and research points is reduced by the number of incapacitated people.

Higher level plagues would have longer incubation times, spread faster and be deadly to more than one race.
Low level plagues would show their effects right away, not spread to many people, and be deadly to at most one race.

Multiple plague bombs would infect more people initially. Enough hits would overwhelm the medical facilities.

Note: The incapacitated % could very well be more than 100%.
At 300%, it means for each infected person, two uninfected people are forced to stop working in order to care for them! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif
A high level plague like that which incapacitates the population very quickly, but dosen't kill, would be perfect for just before a ground invasion. After which you go and cure the people.

-----

For medical bays and facilities.
Medical facilities on the planet could subtract from the virulence of any plague, while curing a set number each turn.
Medical components in orbit would probably just cure a set number.
Any ships in the same sector as a medical bay would be cured of the plague if the plague has been discovered already

If the medics get there early, the # cured per turn may exceed the new infection rates, and the plague would slowly be eliminated. Otherwise, the medics will only be able to slow the progress of the disease until more help arrives in the form of extra medical ships and facilities.

When a plague is discovered, a new research area could open up, and allow the player to study better cures.
Each level researched could add some amount to the cure rate and virulence reduction of the specific plague.
If dynamically generated, the tech area name should probably be "[planetname] plague of [gamedate]" or some variation on the theme.

[ May 07, 2004, 21:11: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Simple. Have a toggle switch that draws a colored dotted line for the observed path of ships in the system. Select the sector with the paths, and you can pick one for more information on that particular ship/fleet that passed through. Have options to filter out based on various factors (eg. show only fleets of X ships, show only ships of X size AND Y weapon strength, hide ships greater than X size AND smaller than Y size -- show ships with Space Yard).

I think with the levels of fog, the biggest problem isn't going to be controlling the micromanagement, but making it so the AI isn't completely crippled by it. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Or just show all the info gathered during the turn.
You should only lose info on a particular ship if it flies completely out of range to where you can't see the hull at all.

If you fly past a ship, and see a wave motion gun, you will know where the wavemotion gun is as long as you keep track of the ship. You may not see it be destroyed in a distant 3rd party combat, but it should still appear there with a question mark or partly grayed out until your info is updated.

If the ship warps out of the system and then returns, you can't tell for sure if its the same ship, so you lose the info until you fly close by again.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Yes, I certainly agree that both 'natural' plagues and various 'bio weapons' (there should be more than one type) should affect different races differently. Each species needs a 'genetic code' as part of its definition. It could be something fairly simple like a 4 digit hexadecimal number, with each digit standing for a degree of similarity. The first digit could be for the 'type' of life chemistry, like carbon vs. silicon vs. some other wild ideas that SciFi has come up with like energy beings or whatever. The second digit could be a general 'class' thing like reptilian or mammilian or plant or whatever, and the third would be a species level code, leaving the fourth for very subtle differences betwen related species like Vulcan/Romulan.

Then your plague/bio-weapon could have a code of its own marking what life forms it affects and how virulent it is. Some weapons would affect only species that exactly match its code, some would affect any that match up to the 'species' code, and a few (very advanced) would match anything in the 'class' code. Would you want bio-weapons that could kill any and all of a given 'life form' (carbon, silicon, etc)? I wouldn't but I suppose some people would, so the game could allow it and people could mod to their taste as with so many other things in the SE universe.

As for 'types' of bio-weapons, you could have 'poisons' that are described as either chemical or biological that destroy immediately upon use but don't continue from turn to turn or linger after the population is gone, and you could have 'plagues' that are contagious and actually linger after the victims are gone, making the place unliveable for whatever they infect for years of game time.

Edit: Oh yes, plagues should travel between planets unless you implement quarantine which is the same as your planet being blockaded! All trade stops and whatever the planet produces is not available to your empire.

[ May 08, 2004, 03:08: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Those could be plagues with a virulence of zero... They'll incapacitate and kill the people they've already hit, but won't spread at all.
If left untreated the incapacitated people would start to die and the unaffected people would become incapacitated, but no uninfected people would get the plague unless a ship was still up there dropping bombs.

Eg: 100 M people hit out of 500M on the planet, 10% fatality rate, 50% incapacitation, and no virulence.
turn 1: 10M die, 50M incapacitated, 40M infected but ok.
turn 2: 90M left... 9M die, 45M incap, 36M infected but ok.
turn 3: 81M left... 8M die, 40M incap, 33M infected but ok.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ooh, yeah. I forgot to add that ships not carrying population should count as 1M infected people after visiting a plague world and travelling to another planet.
Given a virulence factor of 2.0, you'd end up with 1M infected on the planet at turn 1, then 3M, 7M, 15M. (2,4,8,16 minus the 1 that are from the ship)

Minimum new infections for non-zero virulence would be 1M per turn, just like how population growth works in SE4.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Rather than trying to make each digit represent a level on your taxonomy tree, why not just use it as a genetic code flat out?
The degree of similarity is how many digits match.

(binary for simplicity of example - decimal or hex would be better I agree)
01010-11010-10100 - Krill (5/15 matches)
10001-01101-00101 - Terran (control race)
10101-01001-00010 - Bobroba (11/15 matches)

Your plague could generate some semi-random codes, and the more differences, the less virulent and deadly it would be.
The randomness would depend on how high your tech level is... the higher tech, the closer you can get it to your target race.

-----

Perhaps the genetic code could be user-chosen during race creation, or even better would be if it were based on some function of the traits and characteristics you pick.

Then a race which chooses not to play the berzerker with maxxed aggression and defense and maint reduction would get a very different code from all the other copycat races...
The copycats would then all get thrashed by the same plague bomb http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

-----

Ooh, and the race using plague bombs should have to take extra care not to infect its own populations when the ships return home after an attack. The ships should be infected when they fire, and have to visit a medical facility for treatment or self destruct to prevent infection of the race that built it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ May 08, 2004, 02:31: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I supposed the 'tapering off' model would be a good way to deal with chemical weapons since the chemicals would indeed tend to hang around for a while, just not 'reproduce' themselves. So a declining kill per turn might be better than a kill on the first turn and then no more for certain weapons. But we will still want a 'neutron bomb' type weapon that kills population immediately with no after-effects.

The genetic code thing is just supposed to be a simple way to represent the very complex factors of life. The longer you make this code, the more variation you can have, sure, but also the more complex the game code gets. I think that a few digits is enough for our purposes. If you give plagues and bio-weapons a 'range' of effect as well as categories I think you can create some fairly interesting interactions with 4-8 digits.

("Range" as in +/- a certain amount from the actual match but with less virulence. So you can have a perfect match suffer full effects while a species that is +1 or -1 would still be affected but less than a species that is a perfect match.)

I guess the bio-weapon would have to have its range independently defined at each 'code' digit. Messy but well worth the variability in use.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I don't have time to read the entire thread right now, so I don't know if this has already been mentioned (or is even appropriate), but what I would like to see is starcraft style fog-of-war for previously visited systems. The ability to remember which worlds were alien homeworlds (and not possible colinization destinations) would be greatly appreciated.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Baron:
You could simply set a 100% fatality rate, with 0% incapacitation. All infected people would die at the end of the turn, ending the "plague".

Even with a neutron bomb, not everyone will recieve an instantly-lethal dose, though... most would end up suffering a longer and more painful death at the outer edges of the bLast's kill zone.

It also allows for medical personnel to save some of the people. (Presumably the ones with the smallest doses)
Left untreated, more would die from survivable doses of radiation/toxin/plague.

-----

As for the number of digits in the code, definitely the dec/hex would require fewer digits to get an appropriate level of variation.
Computers are great at number crunching, though, and the optimum number of digits would depend on how efficient the implementation is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ May 08, 2004, 03:57: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

The idea of a few turns to fully kill off the population is a good idea - how about a intel project plant plague bomb - which would kill a % of people on a planet - would be cured next turn but could be used to weaken enemy planets and also with such a intel project a flexible amount of resources to put towards a project such as said above

Say 5000 intel points might be enough to kill 50M pop
10000 intel pnts say 100M pop
ANd rising steadily to say 200000 pop which would be enough to wipe out a large planet of say 2B population

Just some additional ideas to play with

The idea of progressing levels of scanner and extended range is a good idea. Some new components could reduce enemy scanning in a sector - sort of like increasin scanner tech vs increasing levels of anti scanner tech.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

If only the host keeps a copy of the full map, and each player has a separate .gam file to download, each player's file could be populated with the info they have seen Last.

The downloads for each player would be smaller, at the cost of more storage space on the host machine.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Separate .gam files for each player is generally a good idea. There would be no need to encrypt the data, and this would even encourage the player community to write addons for game data management. Only the administrative overhead is a bit higher, for instance pbw would have to be reprogrammed so that each player only will get his .gam file and do not have access to others.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Excuse me for returning to topic in this hijacked thread http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Fog of war is nice, but it should not just increase micromanagement. Forgetting given informations in not fogging, but forcing to micromanage. So, if you get informations about a system it is ok that you do not get the latest info every turn, but you should continue to have access to that latest info known to you. Disadvantage: this would create a lot of additional data per result file. But in times of Gigabyte HDs and DSL this should be tolerable.

There should be far more levels of sensors, revealing planet and/or ship details in increasing detail and ranges. Ownership of a planet and number of population should not be known instantly when you enter a system, but a sufficiently cheap scanner should allow you to get at least the "colonized" info from a large distance. May make the game more realistic, but much to chancey if your colonizers only get the "already colonized" info when about to settle down there. Data like number of colonists, and even number / type of facilities should be revealed only by better, more expensvie scanners, though.

I think ship names are fun. But they should not be given automatically revealing the class and the serial number. Especially when constructing new ships it is really bad that everyone seeing them built instantly knows how many other ships of that type you already have if you do not micromanage and instantly rename every ship. Ship names should be left blank and should be shown to everyone if you choose to name your ship. The classes should become visible when you have scanners to detect a ship's components. Too much micromanagement to manually write down a list of components of every ship encountered, compare them, and keep track of classes internally.

[ May 08, 2004, 12:07: Message edited by: Roanon ]

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Small note: I'd like to see the Proxy Partnership "feature" (viewing the systems\planets\ships of partner of your partner) removed in SEV. It's unrealistic, imho.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I kinda like the whole obfuscation thing, but I wouldn't go so far as to apply it to things like planets. I mean, a planet is BIG, and as soon as your ship enters the system they're gonna know where the planets are, and even have a rough idea of the conditions of said planets. So as soon as a ship enters a system we'd get a rough idea of what the conditions of all the planets were like but not if there's anyone living there, unless the colony has reached a certain stage of development. However, even if you know someone owns that planet, you won't know WHO until you wander on over and take a closer look.

But ships, even big ships, compared to the scale of an entire solar system, are TINY so naturally, they'd be a lot harder to find, and until genuinely advanced sensors are available, finding a ship in a solar system would be like... Well, you know.
When you detect a ship in a star system, I think there should be several stages of identification:
1) There's a ship over there somewhere.
2) There's a ship right there and it's about -this- big...
3) And it looks sort of like this (silhouette)
4) Now it looks exactly like this.
5) It's weapons/engines/shields are about this powerful

And that's all we'd ever know until actually making contact with the empire owning that ship. Then, under Diplomacy, one would have the option to 'Share IFF Codes'. Once this is done, any ships in you 'Unknown' list that belong the empire you shared with will be moved to that empires list. Obviously, any new designs will still come up as Unknown unless IFF codes are shared regularily.

More to say but no time to say it..

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I disagree. Look how little we know about planets in our own solar system- I mean until a few years ago we weren't even sure if there was water on the moon. Granted, SE4 tech is way ahead of us, but the very fatc that planets are so BIG makes it difficult to map and survey them quickly, especially from a distance.

The answer, of course, is to give modders as much flexibility as possible, thus allowing modders to satisfy both your and my points of view.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">When you say "removed", I assume you mean "A moddable option to allow/disallow it".

I think nothing should ever be removed by hard code- give modders as many toys to play with as possible. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm OK with this idea for sensing ships, but hiding planets is a bit too much. I think it's a good abstraction to be able to see all planets in a system once it's entered. I mean, on Earth, with today's technology, we can see system after system after system across the galaxy and determine if there are planets there or not. I'd buy having planet population size hidden until you're close, but ....

For me, greater fog o' war is good for spaceships, bad for systems. And even then, half the joy is reading the funny (and most often grossly misleading) ship names my buddies come up with. Nothing says fun like finding out the hard way that his scan-blocked "Flower Trader" class transport ship has a star destroyer on board.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

Actually, I meant "removed" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif But yes, making it optional feature is better.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

I would like to see where your not able to see ship designs of enemy or friendlies unless you have a treaty or until you have made contact with that particular ship. Then the only design shown would be of the ships you've already had contact with.... same with units..


my 2 cents Mac

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well... no. We can spot stars easily enough, and with a few months' worth of detailed observations and calculations we have been able to identify some systems that (probably) have large planets in orbit, but it's certainly not as easy as you make it sound, and we certainly can't build up detailed maps of those systems- we can just detect some of the more noticable bodies.

We still only barely know our own solar system. There are probably tons of planet-sized objects out in the Pluto/charon orbit that haven't been identified yet. I mean Pluto itself was only discovered about 50 years ago (IIRC) and until much more recently it was thought that Pluto and Charon were one planet. And again, these discoveries were based on extensive, careful observations & calculations with thousands of years' worth of sky-studying (ie knowledge of the movements of the nearer planets) behind them.

If we discovered a warp point in Earth orbit tomorrow and sent a ship through it and found a sol-like system, it would take us years just to find all the planets, moons and things and work out their orbits, let alone figure out what the surfaces of those bodies were really like. (ie SE4 conditions & value).

Of course I'm quite happy to accept that future tech will be far more advanced and do all this much more quickly, but I would like the option to play a more exploratory game.

It would also allow us to start player & AI empires from lower tech levels (yubyub) and build them up convincingly into star-faring races.

Re: SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Surely it's feasible that one empire would buy/trade enemy ship-design data from another. I agreee that this shouldn't happen automatically when you reach a certain treaty level, but that's only because I would like to see a more flexible, adaptable treaty system.