I just learned of SE5 and am checking in. I participated in the run-up to SE4 and had a blast with the game. Some of you may remember me from that, and Master of Orion where I was more involved. I have quite a few ideas for expanding the political and intelligence sides of the game, mostly with fairly easy spreadsheet stuff, but getting here late means most probably can't surface until SE5 Gold. But we might be able to squeeze some in.
My highest priority is to have player-definable racial animosities a la Master of Orion I and MOO3, both as a major, major, boost to role-playing, and as a vehicle for:
The Space Empires V Backstory Contest.
Backstories right now mean nothing in SE5 game play - one empire is the same as any other for diplomacy. But when some races hate each other's guts, err, innards, and others just love to sqooze each others' tentacles or whatever, that can make games much, much more interesting. Check out this MOO3 forum thread for examples -
http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums...hreadid=331031
(Making Diplomacy Make Sense: Fish Friends, Lizard Lickers, and Humanoid Haters)
That sort of thing could make good backstories an effective part of the SE5 - working within the backstory could the difference between winning and losing.
And I expect fans would love an opportunity to write backstories based on a new game feature of racial animosities. Malfador could have a contest for the best 3-4 backstories - those would become part of the game CD. The contest winners would design pre-set races and the racial animosity table to go with their backstories for players to import into new game setups, with randomly designed maps, etc.
It would also be nice eto have Space Empires V governments mean something besides a name - have governments modify racial/imperial attributes a bit, again player-configurable. And let those become part of the backstories too.
Tom Holsinger