New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

I am posting this to see what kind of interest there is in features that can't be modded, only hard coded by Aaron. Features such as vagabond space races, natives, etc...

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"He's dead, Jim."-- Lt. Commander Leonard "Bones" McCoy |Chief Medical Officer / USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

Components that can produce resources; the various elements required for making a nomadic race (i.e., population growth on a starship; maybe special super-sized hulls, with requirement for 50% population storage components; high-yield remote miners; resupply base component; resource storage components). Maybe a special cargo component that can ONLY hold population (I'm mostly certain this requires hard-coding, not just modding). Obviously, there'd also have to be a way for them NOT to start on planets, but on the special starship hulls.

Some of the above would also be nice for the generic races...

DRONES!!! Whatever they are, they sound interesting...

More options for ruins - maybe this is where "natives" belong...

TCP/IP multiplayer - to at least allow play across a LAN without having to send files to a server & restart SE4.exe...

More flexibility in cargo transfer and resource transfer menu selections - I dislike clicking the "Move 5" button 50 times to move 250M population.

Also more flexibility in number of units to build. Maybe I only need 7 fighters to fill a carrier, and have no more cargo space on the planet; I want to build just 7 fighters in the most efficient way. Building 5, then spending a turn building 1, and yet another turn building 1, is horribly inefficient and wastes mouse clicks. Building 10 would waste resources as the Last 3 fighters aren't completed due to lack of storage...

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

1. Interface improvements. None of these
change the game, just how it is played
(intent: reduce micromanagement,
repetition, and resulting sanity loss.
I usually play 255-system quadrants,
in case it's not obvious from below...)

Things like --

* Better information access.
* Allowing for a custom filter for, say,
listing colonies with idle queues and
facility space left. Or, just idle
spaceyards.
* System summary reports.
Is there a System Robotoid Factory here?
How many units, total, are in this
system?
* Searches.
Which planet in this system has my
fighters?
* Log bookmarks.
Re-opening the log file and scrolling
to find each event that I've "processed"
is repetitive, and should be easy to
avoid.
* Better, and more, log Messages.
If something (say, a random event)
destroyed a facility of mine, tell me
*what type*, for instance. If a queue
is now empty, *tell me* -- so I know
whether or not I need to update an idle
build queue.

And so forth.

Incidentally, if there were a way to generate a text dump of the Empire (listing, say, ship designs, whatever) it'd be simple Perl scripting to design arbitrary filters, and these could be hacked into XForms/Tk/whatever fairly quickly. But organizing all that data would be non-trivial.


* Better information entry.
* Letting me enter numbers, directly,
wherever numbers apply.
* Specifying a quantity for facilities;
e.g. "Build 200 Monolith IIIs" for a
Sphereworld, rather than clicking 200
times. Perhaps with a 'Change Qty'
button.
* Perhaps, allowing user notes on a per-
planet basis; or simply making the
per-system notes visible just by clicking
the system background.

* Other interface foo.
* Search and delete/replace for
construction orders would be nice --
replacing orders to construct old designs
with orders to create new ones, for
instance.
* Allowing the queueing of an order to
scrap something (taking zero time, just
delaying it until then) would be sweet --
Sometimes, I'd like to queue

* Scrap (1) mineral facility.
* Build (1) monolith III.

several times in order to replace
facilities with a minimum production
hit, and minimum repetitive micro.

A 'wait X turns' command would be
even sweeter, since we could
auto-scrap atmosphere modifiers
when they're no longer
needed.

* Per-planet unit auto-launch toggle.

2. Ministers that aren't high quite as often.
* Ministers sometimes try things they
cannot do, like create stars in SW
systems, or trying to drop people on a
world another M-controlled transport
just filled.
* Ministers that aren't afraid to resupply
if their path would cause them to run out
of supply...
* More configurable ministers; e.g. allow
me to specify maximum mine size, or what
sort of features I want to mine (my
stars, warp points between my systems,
'frontier' warp points, my planets,
all planets...). Default pop count for
Colonization minister. Option to NOT
use damaging warp points.


3. Funky stuff.
* Allowing components to have facility
abilities. I suspect that this may
add a fair bit of computational cost,
depending on how he set things up;
hopefully, it wouldn't have to iterate
over every ship component in every
ship on every turn.

* Mobile habitats. Needed for truly
vagabond races.

* Derelict ships; can happen if life
support, or MC, is entirely
destroyed. Board, repair and
analyze.

* Option for BAD things to happen from
mucking around in ruins. "A Fire Upon
the Deep", anyone? ;-)

* Multiple spaceyards on one big
project <sigh>.

* Option for e-build penalty to be
resource waste, not down time.

* AIs that instead of surrendering to me,
possibly surrender to each other.
Remember MoO2 when you rejected the
Council (even if *you* were the one
elected, heh)?

* Option to have assimilated populations
*not* automatically take on your racial
traits (probably fairly nasty to do).

* Saner blockade rules. An unarmed moon
colony, for instance, should not be able
to blockade.

* A more configurable start. For instance,
spending race points for better starting
tech, or for primitive ships.

* More configurable race abilities, like
a higher default or higher maximum
experience level.

* Negative racial traits, like not handling
overpopulation well (ala Moties in
_The Mote in God's Eye_ and sequel).

* Option to make warp points cost more
than one MP, possibly with an amount of
'free' MP that you can use if you can't
meet the first cost (e.g. 1/0 means it
costs 1 always; 2/0 means if you only
have 1, you need to wait until you have
2; 99/98 means it'll eat ALL your
movement, but you only really need 1).

* Variable warp-point limit, if one has to
be there at all (currently, 10).

* Option to base refit cost limits on
original cost (to stop refit chains).

Uh-oh. Netscape's thrashing; better post now before it crashes.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

HOw about some good random events?

Drones or space probe type ships.

Warp capable missiles (a la Starfire).

I agree...some way to build the exact number of ships or units you want (ex. if you want 7 right now you have to build 5, then 1, then 1 again, as DirectorTsaarx said)

Well, others have probably already suggested these but I just wanted to get my 2 cents in!

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

An intelligence project like "PROPAGANDA". Points are applied to make planets happier. Supplements happiness facilities.

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

1) Launch extra units that won't fit in storage into orbit instead of wasting resources.

2) Repeat build repeats the LAST item. Then I can add one item to the queue, and not have to disable/enable repeat build after it finishes.

The repeat build LAST would give you a "Keep building nuke sats, but before you do that, finish your mineral miners"

Either that, or repeat build works like Research and Intel repeat. ie. when complete, move it to the bottom of the list. Then I could have 2 nukesat, 2 PDCsat, 2 nuke, 2 PDC, etc.

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

Well, there are things that need to be done to improve the UI (User Interface.) The UI gets cumbersome when you have a big empire. These things include:
- When you are working your way down a list and goto an item, usually there is no way to quickly return to your place in the list.
- The 'Ships/Units' screen has no way to display just Fleets PLUS ships that are not currently assigned to a fleet.

Lots of people have asked for the ability to create facilities/components that have additional empire-wide effects. For example:
- An empire-wide 'happiness' generator.
- An empire-wide ship/fleet experience generator (perhaps coupled with an empire-wide 'unhappiness' generator.)
- An empire-wide robotoid factory.

Ring Worlds/Sphere Worlds (RW/SW) have almost no reason to exist. It would be nice if they had some additional abilities. For example:
- Maybe RW/SW might serve as platforms for the new empire-wide facilities.
- Maybe RW/SW might be able to perform some of the Stellar Manipulation (SM) effects AT A DISTANCE (IE shoot storms at enemy planets, destroy planets, poison/destabilize warp points, etc
- Perhaps a RW/SW might serve as a platform for a long range artillery facility. IE target ships/planets on the strategic screen. This would give SE4 modders the ability to recreate the 'Guns of Navaronne' scenario.

Miles

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

I think the native races would have to be hard coded in, especially that bit about them advancing and the limits on what technology to give them, space probes going through space rather then worm-holes fall into the same catagory, and so do the nomad races. I'd love to see all that, plus some more options for ruins. Each of those has it's own post on here somewhere.

I also just thought up a new one, haven't posted the idea yet, but I was thinking that a new diplomacy option might be nice. It's a gambling option, sort of like medieval Jousting. I put up a planet/ship/tech, and so do you, we agree on the fighters, and the combat goes through, winner take all.

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Taqwus:
&lt;BIG snip&gt;
* Saner blockade rules. An unarmed moon
colony, for instance, should not be able
to blockade.
&lt;snip&gt;
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe an option to allow one planet/colony to attack a planet/colony in the same sector - right now, I think you have to have movement points available to perform an attack. However, if an enemy built a colony on one of my moons, I think my Weapon Platforms and/or Satellites would attack it soonest...

Re: New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded
 

Top three for me:

(1) AI intel file similar to research file where we can control what projects the AI will commence based on AI state (good way to eliminate 12 projects at once with 100+ year completion times and dump projects the AI will never use such as steal designs)

(2) Ability to call objects in the Construct_Vehicle file based on "Design Name" instead of "Design Type"

(3) Additional flag in the AI_Design_Types file to indicate whether this design should be added to a fleet.