[deccan]

Note: Sheesh, I started this yesterday, but SJ beat me to it. Anyway, mine is just a list of the suggestions that I really like, so keep that in mind.

Okay, I've gone through the entire thread, and here's my favourites, edited and rewritten in many cases. I've assumed that it's given that SEV will use a real-time, 3-D, tactical combat system. I've left out "obvious", "too much is never enough" demands like greater modability, eye-candy, better sounds, better AI, better multiplayer support etc., some things into which I might to go into greater detail later and technical, behind-the-scenes stuff.

General Gameplay

1) Diplomacy system with greater granularity, mixing and matching specific conditions and rules, and of course, AIs that can understand and work with such a system. (Puke, Phoenix-D, dumbluck, dogscoff )
2) More realistic / sophisticated and less absolute minefields system, that factors in such things as number of ships moving in the mined sector that turn (small, single ships have a chance of slipping through from pure luck), complex characteristics of mines (instead of just damage) etc. (Pax, Imperator Fyron, LGM, Ed Kolis)
3) More realistic / sophisticated trading system with physical trade routes / ships that need to be defended and is linked to resource procurement even within an empire. (Puke, Slick)
4) Also, trade routes should initially cost resouces to set up and return a profit only over time. (Ed Kolis)
5) The ability to analyze units and facilities for tech, not just ships! (Ed Kolis)
6) Me would like the ability to tow bases in system. (Me Loonn, Ares)
7) Retrofitting should take shipyard capacity so that retrofitting is not a loophole past the capacity limit! (LGM, Erax)
8) Ability to change a race's abilities / characteristics through technology. (Some1, Gryphin, clark)
9) Units and facilities should cost maintenance. (LGM)
10) Realistic implmentation of passive / active cloaking and detection. (orev_saara)

User Interface

1) Ability to use mouse-wheel and move windows within the game, more keyboard support / more hotkeys (Gryphin, Loser, TerranC, Andres)
2) In the Construction Window, ability to right click on a given planet and select "Go to Planet." This will take to to the system map with the planet highlighted. (Stone Mill)
3) A list of spotted enemy ships, a way to remember their positions.
i e a foreign ship log, so that you can quickly see incursions and the way they are going. (Ruatha)
4) Editable / savable/ loadable orders for ships with greater detail and control. (Baron Munchausen, Me Loonn)
5) Queues / lists / reports need more sorting options. (Me Loonn, tesco samoa)
6) Search and replace for queues. (minipol)
7) Be able to give the launch order to planets from the colonies list. (rextorres)
8) Lists / queues / reports should remember their position. (minipol, Imperator Fyron, steveo)
9) Using TAB pages like when clickin planet(detail/facil/cargo/ability) on SECTORS too, when sector has more than one planet or whatnot. (Me Loonn)

Ship Modelling / Mechanics

1) The "Lego" ship design model. (Ed Kolis)
2) Percentage-based cloaking ability depending on many factors including cloak ability, enemy sensor ability, distance, ship size, sector-specific features etc. (dumbluck, Arkcon, Rigelian, jimbob, Ares, LGM)

Combat

1) Randomized damage within a range instead of a fixed number, perhaps influenced by partial successes (the die roll barely made it), critical successes (the die roll succeeded by a large margin) etc. Supplemented perhaps by a critical failure system (the die roll failed dismally, increase reload time for this weapon)? (Krsqk, Imperator Fyron, Baron Munchausen, Ragnarok, Rigelian)
2) Editable, independent damage types, shields only, skips armor, damage only to components with a specific flag etc. Might also be conditional, e.g. if shields, then quad-damage to shields, else normal damage to engines only or whatever. (Ed Kolis, Andres, Krsqk)
3) Damage to fighters should be one-hit, one-kill, instead of having damage spill over to the rest of the stack for normal weapons. (Rigelian)
4) Ability to switch from tactical combat to non-animated strategic combat. (TheBlip, Imperator Fyron)
5) Ability to retreat from combat. (Tenryu, Chronon, Jmenschenfresser, atomannj, Noble713, Magnum357)
6) More variation in the 'hit probability profile' of different weapons. (Rigelian)

Tools / Utilities

1) The ability to easily set the game to run for x turns or until some specified condition is reached. (PsychoTechFreak)
2) The ability to save/reload game settings and to regenerate a map on the first turn if you don't like your starting position. (HEMAN, Gryphin)
3) A scenario editor with ability to support pre-scripted events happening when set conditions are achieved. (BadAxe, pmazolo, Noble713)

[ July 03, 2003, 03:35: Message edited by: deccan ]