[rdouglass]

Wanted to post this seperately. It is along the same discussion of many Posts, but I felt it deserved its own thread.

Instead of MM adding feature patches, why not an "expansion pack". Many games do - my logic is this.. I'm not talking about mods, but stuff that is 'in the code'. For instance, atmosphere types, setting initial tech levels, etc. (There could be quite a long list here)

Aaron has been doing, IMO, an awful lot of work (patches) for what seems like very little money - in fact, $0.00 from what I see. Don't get me wrong - I do like all the patches to enhance gameplay. However, many talk about changing the game as "a few lines of code" etc. Unfortunately, it is rarely that simple. I am not a professional programmer by trade, but have been doing an awful lot of it since the early '80s, and I am (usually painfully) aware of the problems of just changing a 'few lines of code'.

With the expansion pack offering, MM may be able to put many of these enhancement requests into the game. They also would allow MM to make a few bucks for all the time invested. (Personally I think we're spoiled by MM's continuing commitment to releasing patches - not many vendors do). If you want to incent someone to do something, stick a little monetary reward behind it - works almost every time!

I know I'll get some negative feedback, but I do believe there are a significant number of people that would buy this 'expansion pack', me included. (Just re-read some of the Posts relating to hacking the Demo code!)