[Chronon]

Hugh: Great ideas! I agree that shields should be a more advanced tech, and I like your ideas about various special abilities on the armors and the abilities of the mindworms, etc. No problem about taking your time on the tech trees. I'm still working on the Verduran AI, and then I'll need to do a little re-texturing for the ships as well (Thanks again, Taera). So, it will probably be a couple of weeks before I can jump in to the AC Mod.

Fyron: I'm curious, how are you approaching the issue of combat sensors and ecm in the Adamant mod? I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to make the combat results less one-sided.

Taera: On the units, I'm pretty sure that we can mod things like ecm, soporific gas pods, etc, to be part of the regular tech tree, and make them "small." Just like shields and armor work in standard SEIV - there are ship-sized and unit-sized Versions.

On a related note, I was thinking some more about planet sizes, and I think we should make oxygen rock planets larger (perhaps double: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 facilities), give them all ice planet colonization at the beginning (they're just very cold rock planets - but I think the oxygen ones should be the same size as domed because it's very difficult to build a good-sized colony there) and not have gas giant colonization technology at all (I always thought this was a real stretch for humanoid life forms).

Since ALL of the factions will need an oxygen atmosphere (even the worms and Progenitors), this will create intense competition for oxygen rock worlds, with all the other rock and ice planets being domed, leaving the gas giants and asteroids for orbital facilities and resource extraction (using the space equivalent of crawlers - which should be much more useful than they are in SEIV). The larger size of the "homeworlds" will also make ground combat and weapons platforms much more important. I always thought it was unrealistic that one escort with a missle can wipe out an entire world (as it works in standard SEIV).

So, what do you think?

PS. I imagine we can create some new planet images (Capt. Kwok's Skool of Planet design, anyone?) to look more like Planet, with red land masses instead of green.

PPS. I also don't think we should have a stellar manipulation tech area. Destroying worlds, creating stars, etc., is way beyond AC technology. Solar panels could be part of the supply tree, and I think solar sails should be more of an emergency propulsion option for when the main engines are dead (they're really only good for in-system flight, and they're very, very slow).

[ July 17, 2003, 17:25: Message edited by: Chronon ]