[Taqwus]

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