eXperience: the 5h X
 

"eXperience: the 5h X" is a catch phrase used for advertising the new Master of Orion 3, but the discussion I am starting here goes beyond just MOO3 and will attempt to address the gaming concept in general, and how to implement more challenge into SE4 specifically.

This thread was actually started under the topic "Your History With SEIV", if you want more background info. For convenience, I will quote myself here:

"It certainly is a challenge for a game designer to create a good gaming experience. Ideally, a game should not have a preset difficulty level. Rather, the game should adapt the difficulty as the campaign unfolds.

Think about this imaginary situation: you have struggled in a SE4 game and overcome all the challenges the AI has thrown at you. You know you have won the game, and what is left of it is only hours of boring "insect crushing" of the Last enemies, as you lazily finish to research the Last technologies, and you spend more time micromanaging your 200 colonies than doing exciting stuff...

Sounds boring? It is... But, suddenly, out of nowhere, a warp point from another galaxy appears and an alien invasion fleet strikes your empire with fiery destructive force... What are you going to do? Sounds cool? It would be... This is an example of how the game decides that you must be bored and it gives you a new challenge. Unfortunately, such a game is yet to be invented. Just think about it..."

I didn't really think about implementing such a thing into a SE4 Mod but some of you actually took it seriously, and now I think "why not?". I just gave the situation as an example of a new challenge in the "boring phase" of most strategy games. But let's take a closer look; mac5732 mentioned we could actually implement it.

For those of you familiar with MOO2, such a challenge would be similar to the appearance of the Antareans (only we'd need to make them much, much, tougher http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif than in MOO2). So let's call the invading race "Antareans" for convenience. I am not sure how to implement them into SE4 because I haven't tried to "mod" the game at all yet. But here are a few ideas that I hope will kick-start the discussion:

1) If we make it into a scenario, the Antareans could start the game confined in a system with no warp points. Then their AI would give them some kind of incentive to research "warp point technology". Timing would be essential here.

2) Obviously, they would need some kind of superiority: in numbers, in technology, or both. The technology could be unique, and should be devastating. In fact, their appearance should be devastating enough to challenge the whole outcome of the game.

3) One problem I see is the lack of surprise: if one knows the Antareans are coming, one can prepare for it... This is not good.

4) So maybe there should be other challenges too. How about "space monsters" or internal revolts, or enemy alliances to face the player's empire, or a combination of these? Natural catastrophes? Some of these already exist but a) with a low magnitude and b) they are not necessarily triggered during the "boring phase"...

5) How about this: the "Antareans" are a race that cannot be challenged by conventional weapons (or only in a very limited way), requiring the discovery of a new technology tree, with prerequisites that change from game to game (so it is harder to "prepare" for the attack). Maybe the prerequisite is found in the ruins in the Anatarean home system (on a planet they cannot colonize). Or maybe the ruins are somewhere else. Maybe the prerequisites should be scattered around the galaxy, and gathering them all would require a mix of exploration/diplomacy/conquest (since some of the ruins will be found by other races before you).

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

I think that, generally speaking, boring-time hits at about the same time you hit MEE. At that point, you basically KNOW you'll win, its just a matter of time as you blow away/subjugate all the other races.

So....

Our 5th X...our Anti-Boredom schemes...should kick in somewhere around that time.

Now, to make this unpredictible, there must be a wide variety of things that can happen. All of them must have a serious enough impact so that it jeaopardizes the whole game when it does happen.

One thing that can happen is Civil War (as described in another thread). Where half of the MEE empire starts it's own empire.

The antareans is another interesting idea. They would come in at the edge of the system in one of the MEE Empire's systems and claim it and assimilate it instantly. This would be their starting base system. From here they would start building ships & launching attacks on everyone and everything.

It is important that they be VERY strong. To achieve this you would have to grant them some extraordinary powers...equivalent to a 5k race in a 2k game...with a level 5 bonus. You WANT them to proliferate quickly and to be able to produce & maintain a viable fleet unless defeated by a massive onslaught. If you were to grant them a special racial tech that made them very difficult to defeat (not Impossible to defeat), then you'd have to have a balancing effect of the players being able to research SOMETHING that would work. One way to do this is to add to the various ruins out there Unknown Techs. Unknow Tech 1 thru 5 would be used to produce Antarean Tech. Through Antarean tech you get Antarean Sheilds, Weapons, Sensors. From each of those you can break out how ever you like.

Each of the Unknown Techs would be on random Ruins planets and you would not be able to research them unless the Antareans showed up (NOW we know what that is!). You would have to research all 5, or otherwise gain that research to achieve Antarean Tech. This means you'd have to gain at least one of the techs, and probably several of them, from other Empires.

More ideas as I cogitate on this http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Another idea that comes from Civilization (The Boardgame) along with the Civil War idea is the Barbarian Hordes.

In Civilization this is a 5th level calamity. Its basic premise is that the hordes are only looting & pillaging....and they loot & pillage until their resources are exhausted.

In SEIV, this would be an Antarean-like race that appeared at the edge of the galaxy in the MEE Empire's area, with a MASSIVE fleet of Modern ships and began to completely wipe anyone and anything in their path. Their path would be randomly determined. After they wiped a system, they would randomly choose a wormhole, or, just make a wormhole to where they want to go if there were no wormholes. They would continue until wiped out.

I would start them with a total fleet that was the SUM of ALL THE SHIPS IN THE GALAXY (maybe 50%). The edge that the player would have is that he can make more ships and the Barbarians cannot. He can also research whereas the Barbarians are stuck with what they came with.

[ 30 November 2001: Message edited by: Spyder ]</p>

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

1st I didn't mean in my other post that this can be done, only that I thought it could be implemented similiar to what has already been accomplished by the vets/modders in relation to new or modified races. Do to hard code changes in programing this addition would have to use what already is available, therefore we have to come up with ways that could be implemented without hard code changes. Those would have to be done by Aaron to the game itself.

Since new races/traits have been modified already another new race could be possible. As to the randomness or new abilities, we would have to ck with the modders on this as I'm not sure if we could add random factor/s like those that are being discussed.

I think that these ideas would be great additions to the game, IF they could be done without hard coding changes, otherwise it would be up to MM.

I like the ideas of the xenophobic race, I believe something similiar was discussed way back when during the time SJ was designing his P/N mod.

The only problem with having a race in an unattached system would be that it could be defended against, Unless, they could open a wormhole anywhere for any or at least a longer distance. This way you would not know or could guess where they would make their breakout. I like the idea of a race showing up from out system and attacking taking over system. I would suggest that they come in in more then 1 fleet. I would suggest several fleets attacking several different parts of the map and taking over several systems. this could be a random turn situation so you don't know when they would all come in. If only 1 fleet came in, you could mass you ships for 1 huge battle and you would have the advantage. This way your hit in more then one place, which in turn splits up your fleets and you have to decide where to make a stand, you can't defend everywhere at the same time, which would give the enemy time to invade, and begin their own builds, research etc.

just some ideas mac

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Hmmm...
What about simply having a secondary effect of the MEE being that one race (not human) stumbles across some ultimate technology.

It would give them some of the following if not all and it could be random as to what they get so the human player doesn't know what he'll be up against when it happens. I personally would suggest having it random, but having several of these listed:
1) Unlimited resources. (wouldn't be too hard...just make a new mineral/organic/radio extractor that mines 100000 per turn....this would work if the AI upgrades facilities, which I am not sure of.)
2) Gigantic hull designs.
3) These super components and hull cost virtually nothing, so they can build 50 in no time.
4) Super mega death weapons. (Don't know exactly what this would be.
5) A thick small shield tech that makes fighters a greater problem to erradicate.
6) A combat and defense component making their ships extremely hard to hit.
7) Space yards which can construct 10000 resources in a turn.
....ad nauseum......

I am not completely sure it is possible to mod in more MEE like events, but if that is possible then the rest certainly is. It would only take some serious detail changes to the AI design files so they actually use the new tech in no matter what form it comes in.

I see it may be impossible to radomize the actual rewards for the AI or who it goes to, but with careful consideration what is chosen to implement could be balanced.

Imagine having gone through a WP several turns ago and just seeing the remnants of an empire you have been crushing for a decade, when all of a sudden, a terror fleet of yours reenters the AI's system on a routine misson of death and solar rape, and there, hovering over a star, are 75 warships weighing in at 2500k a piece, which the AI can spit out at the rate of one every turn or two.

And think then about the unlimited resource addition. Say the empire which has gained this tech is on the other end of the galaxy. All the other AI empires they are allied with in at least a tech swap will suddenly have near unlimited resources through trade. Furthertheless, destroying their planets won't do much to hinder their mining ability...needing only two of each facility to produce what your spralling empire is producing.

Or there could even be multiple levels of MEE tech.

Although all this sounds like there would definitely be hard coding involved.

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

I read Capnq's post in history thread, Random factor is a hardcode change. So.. have to come up with something else, how about if it is possible to have a computer player be set to enter the game upon a specific game turn or after a specific event happens, etc, or would this to fall into the random factor? this would take something away from the idea but maybe its something to be looked at and worked off of. Something like AI player X enters on game turn 500 or player x enters after 70% of planets or certqain types of planets are populated??????

just some ideas mac

just some ideas mac

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Ship size would be possible I would think under current system. We alread have a base-ship, which in non-modded original Version the Ai never uses. How about if we just upgrade the current basehip to where that particular AI player starts with it, lower the cost for building, maintenance, increase capacity, defense, etc. They could start with both DN's and Upgraded base ships, probably some of the other smaller types and ftrs as well, as for weapons, couldn't we take some of the current ones and increase their ranges, damage,

Basically, what I mean is, couldn't we just take what we have and modify, (ships, weapons, etc) for only that particular race? We could even give them new names etc, This would be the only race that would have these capabilities, therefore, we could still use current weapons, tech against them, but they would be bigger, stronger and do more damage when they hit or attack but not undefeatable.

If this is all possible, then they hardest part would be as to how this race would enter into the game. Random factors as long as it needs to be hard coded is out, therefore......??

just some ideas mac

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

I thought we were talking about the evolution of the game to include the 5th X. I am specifically targetting Space Empires V ideas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The idea is to provide some extra spice to the game at the point where it seems to lag. In the case of SEIV, it lags when you reach MEE. So, MEE status is an event that can be used to trigger something that adds spice to a game that has begun to lag. In addition, the event needs variety or it can be defended against. For instance, in the Civil War Event, the player would know that inside the next xxx turns, half of his empire would secede, he could adjust production, storage, etc so that he would be able to choose an optimum set of planets to retain. If the player knew that Barbarian Hordes were imminent, he could stockpile partially built ships and release them when the Hordes landed. However, if he knew one of those were going to hit, but not when or which...then, it'd be much more difficult prepare for.

The idea is that its a random calamity that is potentially disasterous and that is targetted at the MEE Empire. This could actually save the PLAYER if one of the AI's got way ahead of him.

The Barbarian Hordes is a particularly good idea because: 1) It will eventually run out of ships and end the disaster...usually before wiping anyone out; 2) While it starts in the middle of the MEE Empire, it doesn't necessarily have to stay there; 3) It is not unsurpassable technologically and therefore can be beaten back.

The Civil War idea could be a bad idea unless you gave him a chance to prevent it from happening. Perhaps you could send a message to him saying "You have reached MEE status. Your Empire is in unrest. You must quell the unrest or suffer a Civil War." Quelling the unrest would require ships in every system....say a number equal to the number of colonized planets & mooons. You would have a time period to achieve this and if you failed, then you would lose half of the systems (you'd get to choose which ones you get to keep) that did not have the appropriate number of ships in orbit. If you DID achieve the goal, then you'd have to maintain this navy in each system you occupied, or go into a flux state where you have so many turns to cover the unrest.

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

If you're willing to do pre-game set up, there is a way to make "disasters", races entering via newly opened WPs, and such.

Take one race, create a new racial tech. Give this tech extremely overpowered, cheap components, and impenitrable cloaking. Give it a 1 MP engine.

Now, you set things up by creating the game and "idling" all the other empires while the dummy empire's ships are moved in position. What you need to do is decided when you want your "even" to occur; the event can be anything a standard empire can accomplish. Move the dummy ships that number of spaces away from the target, and give them orders.

Once everything is in place, nuke the dummy's colonies. The ships will contiue on their merry way and fire your events. This works best with exploding stars..

Phoenix-D

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Cool,

Spyder, it's good to see someone else has played Civ (the board game). The barbarian hordes idea is a great one, I'd love to see that happen as a MEE random event.
Is it possible to have "first place player has XX times more points than second place player" as a trigger for the release of the hordes? Is it possible to set up the hordes so that they only attack the first place player (regardless of who it ends up being?)

The civil war ideas are good. While a warning may be good to give the player a chance to get ships back to his home systems, I think that he/she should lose _all_ planets that they didn't get ships back to in time. It reminds me of the Babalonian seige of Jerusalem, which lifted suddenly because the army had to return home to quell rebellions. If memory serves, I don't think they got back in time either!

[ 30 November 2001: Message edited by: jimbob ]</p>

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

"Is it possible to have "first place player has XX times more points than second place player" as a trigger for the release of the hordes? Is it possible to set up the hordes so that they only attack the first place player (regardless of who it ends up being?)"

no, and no. The civil war idea is also impossible.

Not without hard-code changes, that is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

It seems to me that when empires get really big, and super powerful, they tend to crumble from within. The citizens get used to being top of the heap, and just start to assume they will be forever (Assyrians, Babalonians, Greeks, Romans, Ottomans, British...). The result is a growing decadence within the citizenry, and the whole system becomes less productive and far more wasteful.

i.e.
As a part of the 5th X, I'd love to see a realistic lazy-factor for the most powerful empire. When my empire hits a score of say 5x more than the 2nd place empire, I'd get a message that the citizenry would rather play game boy than work (productivity and build rate drops 5%, maint. increases 50%). When I hit say 10x more than the 2nd place empire, everyone would rather go to holo-vid theatres than work (prod./build rates drop 10%, maint. increases 100%)plus the citizens on my home world would rather not pay taxes anymore so they rebel, etc.

And _then_ the barbarian hordes/space pirates hit! Oh sure, I've got the ships to kick his one-eyed, peg-legged, parrot lovin' butt across the galaxy... except every time I pull ships away from my planets they revolt! Now it's a challenge http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Wow! I didn't expect so many answers so fast, but then again, I'm new to this forum...

I think all ideas sound great. I also have some new ideas, which are similar to some of the ones I have read so far.

But first, a comment about the Civil War. I must admit I am not too fond of the idea anymore. Such an event, or the threat of such an event, would just translate into a lot of micromanagement (build troops, build and move around ships, etc...), into a phase of the game which is already plagued by too much micromanagement. I think what we need is more like "now we have all these high tech toys, let's use them for something productive, besides crushing insects".

I think the Antarean threat could be turned into something nice. And maybe we don't need to introduce them towards the end of the game. (BTW, this is probably a stupid question, but what does "MEE" mean??? As I said, I'm new here..). How about this:

a) create a race with access to a unique and very powerful and essentially militaristic technology tree (superior weapons, fighters, armors, ships, etc.). Let's call it "Antarean Tech." for the moment.

b) give them a NASTY AI.

c) maybe deny them access to colonization technology (I've read about the Pirate&Nomads mod - could we just make them into some very powerful "Pirates"???)

d) find some way to incentivize the Antareans to conquer with troops (to make up for their lack of colonization tech.).

e) create a second branch of technology, "Orion Tech.", which can only be found in ruins, and which is very (only??) effective against "Antarean Tech." This effectively duplicates the Orion/Antarean storyline of MOO2, but we could create our own flavor to it. Ideally, the "Orion Ruins" would only be found on special planets, with the following characteristics: i) massively damages ships, ii) are hidden by storms, iii) anything else? Can we do this? I mean, is it possible to introduce a new type of planet with special characteristics AND that always contains ruins?

f) One problem here would be to create the "right amount of ruins". Ideally there should be only one such ruin-planet per game, and the ruins would give to the new tech tree. Alternatively the ruins could give just one tech, in which case we could allow many ruins instead. I guess the key question here is: can we tweak the probability of a special planet appearing? In that case we could aim for an expected number of such planets of 2. Assuming a bell curve probability distribution, my ball park estimate would be the following probabilities:
- no Orion ruins: close to impossible
- 1 ruin: low chance
- 2 ruins: high chance
- 3 ruins: low chance
- more ruins: close to impossible
The idea is to always have at least one ruin.

g) in writing that Last point, I got another one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Why bother with these probabilities? We could just create a certain number of "Orion techs" that are all cery effective against Antareans, but with very different strategies, e.g.:
- one "fighter" tech
- one "planetary defense" tech
- one "troop" tech
- one "planetary attack" tech
- one "ship weapon attack" tech
- one "ship defense" tech
The idea here is to add uncertainty and decrease the possibility the player has to "prepare" against the Antareans. In two different games, the player would have to adapt completely different research strategies, depending on the Orion techs he/she has discovered so far, tryin g to "compensate" with regular techs in weaker areas.

All of this would have to be calibrated so that the Antareans start out by being just a nuisance in the early game, but as they grow stronger, they eventually constitute a Great Enemy in the latter part of the game.

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Quote: "We could just create a certain number of "Orion techs" that are all (v)ery effective against Antareans, but with very different strategies, e.g.:
- one "fighter" tech
- one "planetary defense" tech
- one "troop" tech
- one "planetary attack" tech
- one "ship weapon attack" tech
- one "ship defense" tech
The idea here is to add uncertainty and decrease the possibility the player has to "prepare" against the Antareans. In two different games, the player would have to adapt completely different research strategies, depending on the Orion techs he/she has discovered so far"

(Hey, how does everybody do the quote thing with the lines above and below the quote?)

This would really force people to use novel strategies to take on the "Antereans". Normally I avoid fighters, but if my only useful weapon is the fighters, I'll have to make due.

Would the Ruins techs be tradable? Would you get the techs from Empires that have surrendered to you? Concievably an empire could become massive, then end up confronting the "Antereans", but have no "Orion" weapons.. would they be as good as dead?

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

I remember some old Nintendo game that had something very like some of these suggestions happen.

Genghis Khan game or some thing... to long ago to remember... but I still very clearly remember the game and what happened.

I was playing as the Chinese and had successfully conquered all of the world cept for western Europe and England. I was just about to launch my final crushing blows to take out all the final opponents. Somewhere way back deep in my empire (Korea was first I think) one of my provinces revolts and breaks away. No problem I think. I had planned for revolts like this having had some earlier on (all provinces had more than one borer with another so I just made all of them have equal number of troops thus if one revolts the neighbors all invade and overwhelm the troops that would have been there that had revolted). I prepared to send in troops from the neighboring provinces and I take out the revolters. Next turn another one revolts. I take him down. Then another. Over and over it happens. Eventually my forces in the interior are exhausted and wiped out and poorly trained with fresh recruits. I am forced to send half my European invasion force into the interior to take control. Well the europeans attacked and though they lost they wiped out massive amounts of my troops. I no longer had enough to defend my borders and keep the wanton destruction in the interior from spreading out of control. To make a long story short (to late?) I wound up with India. From all the world of Asia and North Africa and Eastern Europe to India by itself.

Now if I remember correctly the effect that made this possible was that in this game you had a ruler and little peons. You as the ruler never had to worry about revolts in the provinces you ruled over directly. But you had an efficiency rating and the more you ruled directly the less efficient it was and the more you lost. Eventually it wasn't possible to effectively rule everything yourself. You were forced to delelate to the peons. Each one had a loyalty rating and other simple Ratings. You start with the loyals and move down. However eventually your ruler dies! Old age. An heir is there... but young and inexperienced with lower scores and untried. The loyalty of many of your governor peons drops cause it's a new ruler. Eventually revolts break out and it's hard to hold on.

This was a great gaming experience... this was around early 90's and I still quite clearly remember that part of the game. I don't remember the rest of it or the details or the name of the game even. But I remember what happened in that one. It was great going from almost conquering the world to nothing. It also pretty accuratly modeled what happened to real empires in ancient times that got too large.

Now imagine what happens if you take some of these ideas and bring em on over to SE4. For starters revolts. These happen in SE. But not on a large enough scale. Ooo... a planet revolted. Ok fleet wipe it out and build a new colonizer for it. Or alternatly have a troop ship in each system with troops on board waiting for it to happen. What needs to be there is not just planetary revolts. But the chance for system wide revolts and multi system wide revolts as well. With SE4 have it based on happiness or some such in each system. Each percentage down is a chance for revolt. If a single planet in a system passes the chance spread it around and check each planet in the system. If all planets in the system agree switch EVERYTHING in the system to the new empire, ships, mines, satellites, everything. It would all be under local control and could be locally seized. Maybe crew checks for each ship or fleet or something. I would say no just for simplicity at the moment. Now if all in that system say yes... move to all neighboring systems and run checks there. Repeat. Eventually it runs down and ends but by that time you can have anywhere a single planet to a few planets to a single system to a few systems all having revolted.

Now as an add on if the whole system doesn't agree then it doesn't move on to the next system. But those planets in that system that agree still revolt and form their own nation with a percentage of everything in the system equal to the percentage of planets in that system that revolted. Half the planets revolt then half the ships in the system also switch sides. Half the mine fields go over and half the fighters in space go over.

Setup a system of modifiers. For every planet that agrees add a certain percentage for others to agree to go over as well. Once a few go over it starts to snowball. Then have other modifiers kick in. Say 20% of your empire has just revolted. New checks start to apply for each planet that goes over... negative checks now. If done right such a system could have little revolts pop up in unhappy areas with a chance of spreading. If they get a one or two system the bonus modifiers would probably start bowling over and in the end before the negatives add back up you might have lost in a major revoltion 30-40% of your empire. If your really unlucky more!
You didn't choose what you wanted to keep. You might have lost your best fleet even and some of your best planets. That means it is next to impossible to plan for other than keeping people content.

With that in mind I would suggest changing those peace, agressive, neutral mods some. For peace it seems good cept needing a little more strength. Something like the war weariness in CIV3 would be good. For aggressive have peace weariness. The farther a planet is from a battle the less happy they are (there people didn't get to fight in the battle and thus didn't get any glory etc) thus your border areas in conflict stay happy but your central empire starts to get grumpier. For neutrals a mix. They don't like prolonged war but they also don't like anything much above a basic trade treaty. They can't fight big wars but they also don't get the big time peace treaty bonuses of reasearch intel etc unless they risk unhappy citizens revolting.

Perhaps add a new race characteristic. Loyalty or Units or some such. Range from 50% to 150% and have it modify the chances of revolt if happiness roles fail. Thus a hive society with 150% unity will almost never revolt on any planet but berserker societies in anarchy might do it all the time.

This is long enough now... so that is all... for now.

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Cyrien, that must have been quite an experience. However, I don't know if this is implementable in SE4, and again, I must say I'm not too fond of the whole civil war thingy. I like the idea of a control system where empire size introduces inefficiency. This was actually done in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC), although it didn't have a big effect. But I'll leave that to other games.

Jimbob, sorry, I don't know how to use quotes either. Anyways, I prefer to refer to past sections by using letters or numbers, like this:

g) In my opinion, the Orion Techs should be freely tradable/stealable/conquerable just like any normal tech. The Antarean Techs would not, however. But this is just my opinion.

As a side note on fighters: Jimbob, I feel sorry for you that you don't use fighters. They can be very, very powerful. Plus, they cost zero in maintenance. They are simply great to guard warp points in the early game. In my opinion, even greater than satellites or mines, because they can move to the warp point by themselves. Another "trick" with fighters is what I call the "instant fuel bug":

Situation: a fleet is out of fuel; if the fleet has carriers with fighters, these can be launched, thus creating a new group of ships with full tanks (!); if these ships are then integrated into the fuel-less fleet, the fuel is likewise tranferred and shared; all that remains to be done now is to dock the fighters on the carriers again (wait until the next turn to do this), and voila: the fuel-less fleet can move normally again. Repeat as necessary...

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Many of the interesting things proposed here need a hard-code change, but we have quite a few possibilities to keep the game interesting when your empire has reached MEE status and you actually have won the game (many of these ideas have already been mentioned on other threads):

1.) Switch you empire to computer contol and choose a small empire to continue the game: There has been a revolution and you have been exiled!
2.) Make a gift of as many systems/colonies/ships/technologies as you want to a computer empire (you may have to take control for one turn over that empire to make sure that the gift is accepted): This would correspond to the civil war/rebellion.
3.) Switch all computer empires to manual for one turn and make them surrender to one AI empire you think is the most dangerous: All other empires form a strong alliance to combat your empire.
I did this once with my Borg assimilation modification race and was quite in trouble!

Of course nothing of this is random, but you can do it right now without any modification of the game.

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>(Hey, how does everybody do the quote thing with the lines above and below the quote?)<hr></blockquote>Square brackets around "quote" and "/quote" to start & end the quote.
[ quote ]You said blah[ /quote ]

Also useful:
[ b ], [ /b ]Bold
[ i ], [ /i ]Italics
[ url=shrapnelgames.com ], [ /url ]Shrapnel

In all cases, remove the spaces from inside th e [] brackets.

More stuff can be found by following the "UBB Code is enabled" link on the middle-left side of the posting page.

[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]</p>

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Can we do this? I mean, is it possible to introduce a new type of planet with special characteristics AND that always contains ruins?<hr></blockquote>Yes and no. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

In theory, something like this can be done in the Map Editor, but 1.49 has a bug that doesn't recognize ruins on maps that have been saved in the Map Editor. (I've reported this to MM.)

1.49 does recognize ruins on maps generated in 1.49 itself, so there might be a way to implement something similar via the Data files, but I don't know how to do it.

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

The main benefit of the "Antarean" feature of MOO II was that you could not count on being left alone if you accidently started in an isolated location. You had to build some planetary defenses and some warships just in case an Antarean raid would pop up. This was what 'space monsters' were good for, too. So it was much harder to get a "lucky start" and get way ahead of the other players in empire development because you didn't have to spend on military force until later.

Rather than duplicate MOO too literally in this case - much as I'd like some of the weapons technologies to be duplicated literally http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif - I think we ought to devise something in keeping with the character of SE. I've just recently posted to the beta forums about an idea that would cover this. Let me repost it here:

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Why should "ruins" always be technological candy? Maybe they should contain a nasty surprise once in a while. If you ran the risk of activating a new empire when you took a ruins planet, especially one with advanced technology, life could be much more interesting. If the 'ancient race' awakens they should take the planet from your fledgling colony of course, and revive a decent sized population on it very quickly. Since you will usually go for ruins early it's likely that this would occur in an outlying area far from your warships and the new rival would get a reasonable start. Especially, as the 'ruins' theme implies, if they start with higher technology than most of the other races.
It would be cool if MM would create a specific race/shipset for this. We could make a back story for it. This ancient race once ruled the galaxy but they faced some sort of plague that even they could not cure, so they put themselves into hibernation. It's been so long that no one remembers where all their planets were anymore and you never know when you might run across one...

It would be specially interesting if the various planets that got revived would be smart enough to automatically ally with each other rather than be seperate fragmentary empires.

Another way to possibly increase variability in the game is to have some of the 'neutrals' change their political character part way through the game and start expanding like regular empires.

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Anyway, with hidden enemies scattered around that may pop up at any time when you or any other player colonizes their 'hibernating' world we could have a 'threat factor' much like MOO II with the Antareans but in a unique style. I'd still like to see some MOO-style space monsters, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]</p>

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

ALMOST ALL of these great ideas, and many more, would be EASILY implementable right now, IF ONLY WE HAD A SAVE-GAME EDITOR, which is something that I've been begging for since the release of SEIV.

The only criticism of this idea that I've heard is that it might allow people to cheat. But that is easily handled by having the save-game editor use a special save-game file that can only be written if the appropriate check box was enabled at game start-up.

Once the save-game editor is available, you just make up your own rules for random events or MEE events and roll dice in the comfort of your own office. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Everybody, help me lobby MM for this tool! It would give us fantastic possibilities!

BTW, MEE means "Mega Evil Empire." And MM is "Malfador Machinations."

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Suicide

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>More stuff can be found by following the "UBB Code is enabled" link... <hr></blockquote>

thanks

Re: eXperience: the 5h X
 

Probably the single best 'Calamity' you could have is the "Pissed off Wife" calamity. She always appears after about 30 minutes of playing while you're meticulously solving the current crisis and she verbally threatens you if you don't get up. After about 30 more minutes, she comes in with hands on hips and threatens your masculinity with a paring Knife. After about 30 more minutes, she comes in and cuts your power cord. So, you have to win the game in 1.5 hours or you're done.

[ 03 December 2001: Message edited by: Spyder ]</p>